There was a Lenny Khan. Now Khan might have been interesting, particularly with Gina’s connection to Zedanski. Khan was a Pakistani accused of terrorism offences but, according to Thatcher’s comments, Gina had read through some of the police notes and stated that it looked a flimsy case to her – nothing more than an order over the internet for ingredients which weren’t necessarily solely used for making explosives, a few phone contacts who had bad reputations, a holiday in Turkey and some questionable friends. A lawyer like Gina Marconi would have made short work of this. And she had. The case had been thrown out of court, although Martha would have been very surprised if MI6 hadn’t kept a watch over him.
Perhaps the nastiest creature was Pete Lewinski. He was currently accused of a road rage stabbing. Gina had claimed provocation, that the man who had been stabbed had been weaving in and out of traffic and slammed his brakes on, causing Lewinski to hit him, and then the man, a Bill Truman, had punched him. So where, Martha wondered, had the knife come from? She scanned Curtis Thatcher’s notes but couldn’t see that this very important question had been asked. Gina, it appeared, was not above defending the worst of villains. So how, Martha wondered, had she felt about releasing these offenders back on to the streets? Had she lacked a conscience, or had the guilt caught up with her? Goaded her to self-hatred? Had her defence of Steventon caught her in a sticky spider’s web? Was that the reason she had felt unable to marry Zedanski? But Gina had been a criminal lawyer. This would have been the nature of her work. Martha tried to focus back on the case. She was no lawyer but she sensed that Lewinski was one of Alex’s nasty pieces of work and the knife had been conveniently in the glove compartment of his car, ready to be used. Mr Bill Truman, Lewinski’s victim, had survived the assault, but his survival probably owed more to medical skill than Lewinski’s tale of simple self-defence. The knife had pierced his lung and missed his heart by just one centimetre.
Last of all in this list of villains was a guy named Jack Silver who was a fence for stolen goods and had been caught with antique jewellery, the result of a violent crime. Gina’s defence had consisted of the fact that he was a fence, not a violent thief. She had placed him far away from the robbery, which had consisted of threats, violence, torture and the rape of the homeowner’s wife. But Gina’s involvement in the case had been futile. She didn’t always win. The jury had been unconvinced. Silver was currently awaiting a similar sentence to the gang who had committed the crime. Thatcher had added his comment. Silver feels very aggrieved.
But surely even this involvement with the dregs of the human race wouldn’t have driven her to take her own life when so much lay ahead? Martha spent some time staring at the names and the crimes – hoping for what? Inspiration?
She rang Alex Randall and shared with him her information about Gina’s workload. He sounded buoyant. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Mixed bag or what? But I don’t see what any of this bunch of beauties can possibly have had over Gina. She was way above all that.’
She felt a twinge. So … Alex had a high opinion of the dead woman?
‘You knew her?’
‘Vaguely,’ he said, and she heard a teasing note in his voice. He’d picked up on her little green-eyed monster.
‘She was, after all, a criminal barrister,’ he reminded her gently. ‘Yes, we were usually on opposite sides of the court, but she was a very charismatic woman.’
He’d used the word deliberately. She felt cheated.
‘And that caused you to change your evidence?’
‘No, Martha, it didn’t.’ His voice was steady and uncompromising. ‘A criminal act is a criminal act. It was up to us to anticipate her questions and try and fend them off so the jury wouldn’t be taken in by her. But she was adept at finding a chink of light. She caused us a few nasty moments and there are people walking the streets who in my opinion shouldn’t be, but in general, yes, I respected her. She was good at her job.’ He paused. ‘Even if sometimes she used her feminine wiles a little too audaciously.’
‘Well, that’s given me a much clearer picture of our dead woman.’
‘It was out of character for her to commit suicide,’ he said, ‘but it isn’t really a police matter.’ She knew he was smiling with his next sentence. ‘More a job for an inquisitive coroner.’
‘Well, thank you for that,’ she said drily.
‘But under the circumstances, Martha – and I’ve visited the site – I can’t see how it can have been anything but a planned and deliberate act.’
‘Then she must have been driven to it.’
He paused before repeating himself with, ‘It isn’t a police matter.’
And she had to leave it at that.
TEN
Martha spent what remained of the week preparing for the opening of Gina’s inquest which would be on the Monday. It would be a brief affair. Adjourned pending enquiries. Mainly hers, from what Alex had said.
But Gina was not her only case. Her desk was full, her in-tray piled high with cases less interesting but which still demanded her attention.
The weekend went as planned – or rather, expected – an away win for Sam against Watford: 2–0. A triumph for Stoke City. Her little hero didn’t actually score but was as exuberant as ever when he rang to ask for a lift back from the ground.
‘We’re really on the way up, Mum.’
It would have been too much of a spoiler to comment that what goes up can also go down. But, as always, when Sam was such a presence, she knew she would feel his absence keenly when he left home. What would she do when he had gone, apart from miss him, miss him, miss him?
Sukey had turned up on Saturday lunchtime, her boyfriend Pomeroy in tow, mouthing off about her driving. Sukey simply looked pale, thin and exhausted. Unhappy. Almost defeated. Ill. But then life with Pom would never be a picnic. What, Martha wondered, was his family like? Had he got this depressingly critical outlook from his mother? His father? Or had it formed inside him like an abscess which would infect those who surrounded him? Or was it Sukey herself that brought out this mean streak in him? Sukey, clever and beautiful? Was he jealous of her successes? The real question was: why the hell did Sukey put up with it so sheepishly? Why was she letting him destroy her? Martha had never before seen her daughter like this. She had changed. And she wasn’t happy. Sukey was at university studying drama. Martha had had little doubt that her daughter’s career as an actress would be as successful as her twin brother’s career as a footballer, but Pom was dissuading her from following what had been her destiny since she had been able to walk and talk.
Mother-like, Martha kept schtum, put a meal in the oven for them, turned the heating up and lit the log burner. A bitter wind seemed to be howling right through the house. She smiled, remembering her mother’s mantra for March. In like a lion and out like a lamb. Or else, In like a lamb and out like a lion. The March winds had certainly found them.
Then she drove to the Britannia Stadium to pick up Sam and Tom Dempsey, his friend who also played for Stoke City. And even her football-playing son who usually noticed absolutely nothing unless it was between two goal posts seemed to have picked up on something of his twin sister’s mood.
‘Mum,’ he said halfway home after non-stop football chat with Tom, which included game plans and discussion of form, criticism of a player who’d committed the obvious offence of diving and whom they both agreed should have been sent off as a warning, and a complete analysis of every single move all of the players both Watford and Stoke had made or failed to make. Finally they ran out of conversation and he looked across at her. ‘Do you think Suks is all right, Mum?’
She wanted to clap. He’d noticed something off the pitch? Yay!
She turned to look at him. While Sukey had all the gifts – straight teeth, fine blonde hair, big baby-blue eyes and the most slender of figures, her brother was the diametric opposite. Not one of his teeth was straight and he now wore a brace to try and correct what nature must have flung at him on an off day. His hair was wiry
and ginger. It didn’t even have his twin sister’s faint hint of red-gold but, like his mother’s, it stuck out all over the place. But this odd little collection of cells which made up her son and had been flung together, much of it courtesy of both her own genes and Martin’s, had this most wonderful gift. Sam Gunn could dribble a ball as effectively as though it was attached to his feet with invisible elastic. He could shoot that same ball straight, guide it to the place his mind had set for it, curl it right under the goalie’s nose just under the bar. She’d watched his own particular kind of magic and, like watching her daughter pour herself into another part and not so much act as become that person, speaking, thinking, moving differently, she was in awe of them both, these gifted children who were twins but whose gifts could not have been at farther ends of the spectrum, and she watched and marvelled as each had glued themselves to their ambition.
‘Not really, Sam,’ she answered. ‘I don’t think Sukey is very happy but there’s not a lot we can do about it except sit it out.’
Her son settled back in his seat, thoughtful.
And she continued with her own thoughts. Pomeroy Trainer – the nasty big fly in the ointment. As she dropped Tom off and turned back on to the main road she smiled to herself. It wasn’t fair to be prejudiced against someone for their name but just hearing ‘Pom’ spoken in her daughter’s flutey little voice made her wince.
Unfair.
She could almost hear Martin’s voice scold her for her attitude as he would have done. Always calm, always reasoned. Predictable. A keel for her boat which invariably floated on choppy seas.
ELEVEN
Monday, 20 March, 11 a.m.
After the sensational circumstances of her death, Gina’s inquest could not have been less dramatic. It was quiet, subdued and orderly. Coroners’ courts are not backdrops for drama but a civilized, rational setting for a verdict.
Martha began with the almost-forgotten Graham Skander, first on the scene, still more concerned about his damaged wall than a woman’s death, a woman who, after all, he’d never known in life. He gave his evidence in brisk, unemotional fashion.
‘I was … asleep. I heard a loud bang.’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘I think it was about three a.m. I knew instantly what it was. It wasn’t the first time a car had hit my wall.’ He couldn’t quite obliterate the note of severity from his voice. His eyes skittered along the floor. ‘The police have suggested I have some chevrons put there. But …’ His frown deepened as though he now felt in some way responsible. And who did not feel responsibility in this crowded courtroom? Martha glanced around the faces, Bridget, Julius, Curtis Thatcher – not Terence, thank goodness. She homed in on Julius Zedanski, who was sitting in a dark grey suit, eyes half closed. What was he thinking?
Alex and a couple of his officers sat in a stiff row near the back. She would only be calling the officer who had been first on the scene, PC Gethin Roberts, a young officer who had the knack of turning up almost whenever there was a dramatic event. As she understood it wedding bells were about to ring for the PC.
Mark Sullivan, the pathologist, sat in front, watching everyone, listening intently. He looked very alert. It was his way to absorb all the information that surfaced. She smiled inwardly. She had a great fondness for the pathologist and respected and admired his work. He had had a drink problem in the past caused, she believed, by a bitter and unhappy marriage, but an internet date with a divorcee with three children appeared to have cured him of alcoholism. And the medical pathology department had benefitted as a result.
And Alex? As always, Alex’s legs appeared too long for the seating. They stretched out in front of him. Their eyes met for an instant and she felt the connection as physical as if there was an invisible line of silken thread that attached them unseen by anyone but themselves. He grinned at her and, in spite of the surroundings and the circumstances, she felt warm and relaxed.
She turned her attention back to Graham Skander. She could guess what he was about to say. ‘Carry on,’ she prompted gently.
‘I, umm. My house …’ His voice was confrontational, slightly aggressive, defensive. ‘It’s over three hundred years old. Built way before cars came careering around the corner. I have had the wall rebuilt numerous times. The council have offered to have markers put there to draw attention to the sharp bend. They’ve already erected road signs. But I don’t want some brightly coloured chevrons right outside my house. They would be out of character for what is a Georgian building.’ Like Zedanski, he too half closed his eyes then, hiding his emotions behind hooded lids. ‘But I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘Maybe.’ He squared his shoulders and pulled his face into a tight frown. ‘I think maybe, under the circumstances, I should reconsider.’
Said with admirable dignity. A little wave of appreciation rippled around the room. There is nothing people like better than for good to result from bad.
Bridget and Zedanski were sitting next to each other and now they leaned in very close. Bridget had her hand on his forearm. What a shame, Martha thought. They would have got on like a house on fire. Terence too. The family unit would have worked so well. But now there was this black hole right in its centre. Like a sink hole they would all tumble in. And the three people most affected by tragedy would inevitably drift apart, like planets after an explosion finding their own new orbits.
Graham Skander finished his statement sympathetically. ‘Poor woman. I think she was already dead when I reached the car.’ And then, addressing both Bridget and Zedanski directly, he finished with a gruff, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Almost, Martha thought, as though his wall had been the villain here.
‘Thank you.’ She dismissed him gently.
And then she heard the testimony of Zedanski, spoken in a quiet, dignified voice, that they had been planning to marry and he knew of no reason why Gina would want to take her own life.
Bridget added her response to this, as did Dr Milligan and Curtis Thatcher.
All spoke of Gina as being happy, clever, beautiful, vivacious with everything to live for. These were the words spoken in tribute. But it could not be true. She might have had everything to live for but, if her mother’s observation had been correct, maybe she’d also had something to die for.
The emergency ambulance team of paramedics and the police were factual. They gave no opinion but simply reported their findings. No pulse. Not breathing. Not conscious. Pronounced dead at the scene by the police. An attempt at CPR had proved futile. Life extinct had been pronounced at 04.27 a.m. Body transferred to the mortuary for the post-mortem.
And then over to Mark Sullivan who related his PM findings, the long list of injuries. Broken bones, torn blood vessels, catastrophic haemorrhage, head injury, brain trauma.
Martha closed her eyes. A textbook example of multiple injuries due to high-speed vehicular impact.
She could have uttered the verdict of suicide then, but something was holding her back. She looked at the waiting faces and knew something was missing here. There was that part of the story that Bridget had picked up on. Until she had that missing piece she would adjourn the inquest pending enquiries. When she said this she felt a shiver of relief in the room.
It wasn’t over yet. She set a date for a review and set the case aside.
Alex was waiting for her outside and he agreed with her. ‘Yes,’ he said in response, ‘we know only part of the story. There’s something behind this. I have the feeling Gina was cornered. Someone else is involved. I’ll make gentle, tentative enquiries, keep an eye on what’s going on and …’ He grinned. ‘Report back to you.’
‘Thank you.’
His eyes were far away now. He was somewhere else. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘the brick wall she drove into is almost an analogy for where her life was. No escape.’
Something about his tone and the abstraction in his eyes sent a shiver up her spine. He wasn’t talking about Gina Marconi’s death. She knew his home circumstances were not happy. She put her hand on his as a gesture
of friendship. ‘You’re being very deep today, Alex.’
But the moment had passed. His face lightened and he smiled at her. He met her eyes without flinching or looking away. ‘This suicide,’ he said, ‘feels like it is the beginning of something. Oh.’ He scolded himself. ‘Take no notice. I’m just being fanciful.’
Which was not like him. He was the pedantic police officer. It was she who sometimes took flights of imagination. He turned to leave and she watched him stride out of the building in a firm, even step, soon joined by DS Paul Talith and, trailing behind them, the gangly frame of PC Gethin Roberts.
But his words had left her wondering.
So what, she wondered, was the back story? Would she ever know it? And if Alex was right and this was the beginning of something, what was it the beginning of?
TWELVE
Tuesday, 28 March, 8.45 a.m.
She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
The irony of it all was that the day had started so well.
Martha had sprung out of bed and thrown back the curtains to let in sunshine. It seemed like the first day of spring – the first really hopeful day of the year after a miserably soggy winter when homes had been flooded just in time for Christmas and the temperatures kept warm enough to harbour the most persistent of colds and influenza. Everyone had seemed to be coughing or sniffing or sneezing into tissues. People felt they had been robbed of winter’s purifying frosts and seasonal traditions: sledging and bracing walks in ice-cold sunshine, skating on ponds. That was what winter was about – not this country drowning in mud. There had been something too reminiscent of WWI in the mud, something equally dreary and dismal about the perma-dull skies and the ever-present sound of rain hammering down on roofs. Added to that the people of Shrewsbury had worried and watched the River Severn swell almost to bursting only to be held back by the flimsy-looking flood defences. Their beloved town was safe and dry but they couldn’t rid themselves of a tinge of guilt about the swell of water now passing downstream, to other towns and villages: Bridgnorth and Ironbridge, even as far down as Upton-upon-Severn. However, Martha was putting all this behind her that morning as she drove to her office. Her spirits under the canopy of a blue sky were high enough to hum a tune she was finding it hard to forget. Goodness knew why.
Bridge of Sighs Page 5
