Jenny Cooper 03 - The Redeemed

by M. R. Hall

  ‘Ma’am, I wish to raise a matter of law in the absence of the jury.’

  ‘No, Mr Sullivan. There is no reason for this evidence to be withdrawn, and there is certainly no reason for its existence to be suppressed.’

  Sullivan jabbed the air with his forefinger, ‘Ma’am, there are extremely important issues of public interest that need to be addressed with a full consideration of the law.’

  ‘You misunderstand the nature of a coroner’s court, Mr Sullivan. I am not an arbiter between competing cases, I decide what evidence I consider relevant. If you have a complaint you make it to the High Court.’

  ‘Then I request an immediate adjournment.’

  ‘Out of the question.’

  Prince’s second assistant hurried to the door, phone in hand. Jenny had no doubt that within the hour a London QC would be in front of a judge pleading for an injunction to prevent reporting of the existence of Eva’s dubious body art.

  Jenny turned to the jury. ‘“Daddy’s girl” is what the tattoo says.’

  Kenneth Donaldson fixed her with an expression of icy contempt.

  Ignoring Sullivan, who remained stubbornly on his feet, she continued, ‘In a moment you’ll be hearing from the artist who drew it.’

  In a matter of seconds, half the twenty or so reporters in the room had dashed from their seats and hurried for the exit to phone the revelation through to their editors. In a tight race against a possible injunction they could have their story on the internet in minutes and spread out across the social networks and blogs seconds later. Even if a High Court judge could be persuaded on spurious grounds to rule that the public had no right to know, it would be already too late to put the genie back in the bottle, and the lawyers knew it.

  Calmly, Jenny said, ‘You can sit down now, Mr Sullivan.’

  The frustrated prosecutor slammed into his chair and turned to plot his revenge with a furious Ed Prince. Jenny didn’t dare look at the Turnbulls and Lennox Strong, but she did catch a glimpse of Father Starr: for a fleeting moment he was smiling.

  Jenny turned to Dr Kerr. ‘Is there anything else you wish to add, Dr Kerr?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said apprehensively.

  Fraser Knight rose to his full imposing height and fixed the young pathologist with a look of disappointment tinged with disbelief. ‘How long have you been a fully qualified pathologist, Dr Kerr?’

  ‘Thirteen months.’

  ‘I see. And Dr Aden Thomas?’

  Dr Kerr reddened with embarrassment. ‘I’ve only met him once or twice—’

  ‘Thirty-two years,’ Fraser Knight said. He looked down at his legal pad and cast a disapproving eye over its contents. ‘You have seen fit to “speculate” – your word – in a way in which he didn’t.’ He delivered his question while looking at the jury: ‘Do you think that in his thirty-two years of practice he may have learned that it’s not a wise, let alone a scientific, thing to do?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘No,’ Knight said, with an indulgent smile. ‘Nor do you know the state of mind of Miss Donaldson’s killer, or the exact manner in which he held the knife, or the exact sequence of events leading to her murder.’

  ‘No,’ Dr Kerr admitted.

  ‘From the evidence gleaned from her body, all you can say for certain is that she was killed by a single, powerful stab wound.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ Dr Kerr hesitated in mid-sentence, losing courage.

  ‘So you would accept, therefore, that your speculation does not help us to establish any key fact. It is only speculation.’

  With an apologetic glance to Jenny, Dr Kerr answered, ‘Yes,’ his authority all but destroyed.

  Sullivan asked only one question of the witness: ‘You have no factual evidence whatever, do you, for suggesting that anyone other than Paul Craven murdered Eva Donaldson?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Sullivan gave a theatrical sigh and threw the jury a look that said he pitied them for having their time so needlessly wasted.

  It was almost one o’clock, stomachs would be aching with hunger, but Jenny called the tattoo artist, Alan Turley, to give his evidence before the lunch break. With a shaved, tattooed head, and nose and ears peppered with rings and studs, he was a man Jenny would have crossed the street to avoid. But Turley, who practised his craft under the name Doc Scratch, was quietly spoken, and gave the impression that he was a gentle soul, devoted to his work.

  Alison handed him a copy of the photograph of Eva’s body. He looked at it briefly and lowered his head, visibly upset. Jenny took him carefully through the evidence he had given in a statement he had made to Alison the week before, making sure that he repeated every detail. He told the jury that Eva had booked the appointment by telephone several days in advance under the assumed name Louise Pearson. When she arrived for her appointment she wrote down the words she wanted tattooed and selected the font from a style book. It took no more than fifteen minutes to apply and she paid in cash: sixty pounds.

  Jenny stole a glance at Kenneth Donaldson. What she saw in his face surprised her. In the back of her mind she had invented a story of abuse for Eva’s tattoo: riddled with guilt at her years prostituting herself, it was to be an ironic testament to the true cause of her pain, a mirror image of the scars that disfigured her face. Marking her body in this way was a form of therapy: sex could never be had for the sheer hell of it again; it would always be married with the truth. But Donaldson’s expression didn’t fit with her neat version of history. In her many years in the family courts dealing with men who had done unspeakable things to their daughters, she had learnt to recognize the benign, detached, self-deluding smile the guilty ones adopted. There was nothing self-deluding about Kenneth Donaldson’s reaction; no, he was in genuine pain.

  ‘Mr Turley,’ Jenny said, ‘did Miss Donaldson talk to you at all while you were drawing the design?’

  ‘Very little. She seemed sort of distant.’

  ‘Did you ask what it meant to her?’

  ‘No. It didn’t seem right.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  Sullivan rolled his eyes. Ed Prince drummed his fingers impatiently. Jenny ignored them and urged Turley to answer.

  ‘It was just a feeling,’ he said. ‘A lot of people want tattoos when they’ve just lost someone – it’s like a memorial. The young lady felt like that. Sad. As if she’d just come to the end of something.’

  FOURTEEN

  WHAT HAD SHE DONE?

  It had been less than twenty minutes since Dr Kerr had revealed the existence of Eva’s tattoo and it was already the major headline on newspaper websites. Jenny surfed through them in her office. All grasped the opportunity to print photographs of Eva from her porn-star days, and took care to mention the fact that her father was a retired industrialist who had been widowed for almost fifteen years. Jenny could picture Michael and Christine Turnbull and their colleagues wincing at the damage the story would already have done to their campaign: even as she was championing anti-pornography laws that would have turned the clock back forty years, Eva was marking her body with a tattoo which was ambiguous at best. Somehow it smacked of hypocrisy and mixed motives, and far more damagingly of buried secrets from a woman who claimed to have none left. Out of a simple desire to have the whole truth told, Jenny realized that she had unleashed a story that wouldn’t die until there was an answer. She slammed down the lid of her laptop and grabbed her pills from her handbag.

  She had barely forced the tablet down when Alison arrived to tell her that Ed Prince had nearly come to blows with reporters who had swarmed around the Mercedes van he and his team were using as their mobile office. The Turnbulls and Lennox Strong were in there with them, besieged by a news-hungry mob who had blocked the van’s exit from the car park.

  Jenny said, ‘Can you call the police?’

  ‘They’re on their way.’

  Sensing Alison’s disapproval, Jenny said, ‘I had to do it—’

  ‘Mr Donaldson w
ants to give evidence,’ Alison retorted. ‘His solicitor would like you to call him this afternoon. He’s writing a statement now.’

  ‘Good. I’ll hear from him whenever he’s ready.’

  ‘Her old boyfriend Joe Cassidy’s finally answered his summons, but there’s no sign of Freddy Reardon yet. No one’s picking up the phone at his home address.’

  ‘He’ll be nervous. He might need a bit of encouragement. Maybe you can ask the police to send someone to get him.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t want to come?’

  ‘I’ll give him a chance to cooperate before I issue a warrant. I’m sure he will.’

  Alison gave a doubtful grunt.

  ‘What is it?’ Jenny said. ‘I’ve done something you don’t approve of. I can tell.’

  Alison stalled at the door. ‘It’s not you. It’s that priest, Father Starr—’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘It’s just an instinct – there’s something not quite honest about him. Even when we were at the prison, it didn’t feel as if he was being completely straight with us.’

  It was a concern that had been nagging at Jenny too, but she had put it down to her insecurity on being confronted with a man who led such an austere and observant life. His triumph over normal human weaknesses served to make her more painfully aware of her own.

  ‘What has he got to be dishonest about?’ Jenny said, asking herself as much as Alison.

  ‘You wouldn’t find me at the Mission Church of God,’ Alison said, ‘but at least they’re achieving something. On the brink of changing the law, churches all over the world, getting kids off the street and out of crime. How many would turn up to hear Father Starr on a Sunday morning?’

  ‘You think he’s jealous?’

  ‘My husband’s a Catholic, or was,’ Alison said. ‘They might pretend to be tolerant, but believe me, there’s only one road to heaven as far as they’re concerned, and it goes through Rome.’

  The ranks of journalists had swelled and the air was stuffy with the smell of too many bodies crammed tightly together. The Turnbulls and Lennox Strong had yet to return to their seats. Jenny assumed they were still outside in their vehicle, being tutored by members of their legal team. The faces of the lawyers in the courtroom had hardened. All three advocates seemed to have united to form a single opposing front. Sullivan wore a permanent threatening scowl. Behind him Ed Prince brooded like a wounded bear. Attempts to secure an emergency injunction had clearly failed. Jenny had outmanoeuvred them and embarrassed their clients. Human nature alone dictated that they would be seeking revenge.

  Ruth Markham half-rose from her chair. ‘Ma’am, might it be appropriate for Mr Kenneth Donaldson to give evidence first?’

  ‘Very well,’ Jenny replied.

  Donaldson marched to the front with the cold determination of a battle-scarred general about to testify before a committee of cowardly politicians. He completed the opening formalities with no hint of emotion.

  The jury listened respectfully as Donaldson gave a brief, but moving history of his daughter’s early life. She was an only child, he explained, and had been particularly close to her mother, a successful fashion model turned photographer, whose own life was cut short by cancer when Eva was only fourteen. It was a loss from which she would never fully recover. She spent most of her teens at boarding school, where initially she did well, but as she grew older increasingly found herself in mild bouts of trouble for all the usual teenage reasons – drink and boyfriends, though fortunately never any mention of drugs. Despite several near misses, she clung on and gained a place at Bristol School of Art. It was then that rebellion tipped over into outright rejection and defiance. Despite his best efforts to share in his daughter’s life, Eva drew further away, refusing to visit home even in college vacations. He was hurt and confused at her behaviour, but listened to the advice of friends who told him to trust that in time she would mature and reconnect.

  ‘I’d send her money, but she’d post the cheques back or never cash them,’ Donaldson said. ‘She was very determined to be independent. She kept saying she didn’t want to be reliant on me. I did what any father would do: I told her I would always be there whenever she needed me.’

  ‘And she continued to go her own way?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Yes. She would phone occasionally but never tell me very much. For example, I didn’t know she had abandoned her college course until six months after the event. It was a schoolfriend of hers who told me that she had left to become involved with films. I tried to persuade her out of it, but she was twenty years old and hell-bent on doing as she pleased. She was clearly making plenty of money, so I didn’t exactly have much leverage.’

  ‘Did you have any contact with your daughter during her career in the film business?’

  ‘Very little. There’d be the odd birthday card. She came to visit one Christmas, but she was very remote. I hardly saw her in four years – until she had the accident, in fact.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘We spoke more often. I wouldn’t say it was a normal relationship, but things certainly started to thaw. Once she became involved with the Decency campaign we spoke quite regularly.’ Eva’s father hesitated, showing the first hint of emotion since entering the witness box. ‘We started to meet. She would come round every few weeks. We had dinner once a month, perhaps. Eva talked about her work, her life at the Mission Church. I was very pleased for her. Her life had a purpose.’

  Jenny said, ‘Did she seem to be having any particular problems in the months before her death?’

  ‘She wasn’t earning what she was used to, but she seemed determined to manage somehow. She certainly never asked me for support.’

  ‘And emotionally?’

  ‘She was always tired; she had a tough schedule of commitments. That apart, I would say she was the happiest I had seen her in years.’

  Jenny looked down at her notes, feeling three sets of eyes boring into her. She pretended to read for a moment, preparing to broach the subject she had so far managed to avoid.

  ‘Mr Donaldson, we heard evidence this morning that several weeks before she was killed, your daughter had a tattoo—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know she’d had it done?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you any idea why?’

  ‘None. If Mr Turley’s dates are correct, we met the following day – the Saturday. She was in good spirits.’

  ‘You don’t know what the words mean?’

  ‘No.’

  Sullivan interjected, ‘Ma’am, before you go any further—’

  ‘A witness here has the same protection against self-incrimination as he would in a criminal court, Mr Sullivan. I presume that’s your concern.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sullivan barked.

  ‘Then you have nothing to worry about, have you?’

  Reluctantly giving way, he dropped back into his seat.

  Jenny turned to the witness. ‘I am obliged to remind you that you do not have to say anything which may incriminate you, Mr Donaldson. Nevertheless, I would like to ask you if your daughter ever suggested to you or anyone else that she believed you had at some time behaved inappropriately towards her.’

  ‘You’re asking if I interfered with my daughter. Never. Never. Never.’ His denial rang around the silent courtroom. ‘Eva undoubtedly slept with young men while she was still at school, possibly when she was as young as fourteen. But there was never anything untoward between us.’

  ‘I understand, Mr Donaldson,’ Jenny said gently, ‘but my question was whether to your knowledge she believed there might have been.’

  ‘No. Definitely not. She expressly told me that her decision to appear in pornographic films was nothing to do with me or how I had behaved. If I’m forced to psychoanalyse, I would say she was deeply hurt by her mother’s death and sought love elsewhere, but I’m not sure I would even go that far. She made a foolish mistake and she accepted that.’

&nbs
p; ‘Mr Turley said that she seemed sad when she came to his studio. He likened her to someone who was grieving.’

  Kenneth Donaldson then dipped his head as if he had been suddenly assailed by unexpected emotions. ‘I’ve had very little time to think, but I wonder if the truth is that Eva was grieving for a lost childhood, a lost innocence even.’ He struggled to find words to express his confusion of feelings. ‘These marks that people make on their bodies strike me as elemental. It’s possible she didn’t know the reason for it herself.’

  Jenny felt a pang of sympathy and wrote a note to herself: At a loss to explain. Believe his reaction genuine. Unpolished. Thinking aloud.

  ‘Where were you on the night your daughter was killed, Mr Donaldson?’

  ‘At my home in Bath. I was entertaining former colleagues, the MD of my former firm and his wife. I gave details to the police.’

  Jenny could have concluded her questioning there, but her gut told her that having opened Donaldson up, he had more to offer.

  ‘Is there anything else you would like to tell the court?’

  She saw Ed Prince trying to catch Donaldson’s eye, shaking his head from side to side, urging him to remain silent. Donaldson ignored him, frowning through painful memories. ‘Only this: that she was a more complicated young woman than I think any of us can or will understand. We talked once or twice about forgiveness; the church had asked her to contribute to a book on the subject. I remember she was a little melancholic about a conclusion she’d reached. She said she had come to realize that giving and receiving love wasn’t the profoundest experience in this life, it was giving and receiving forgiveness. To her, sadly, it meant that our highest expression is always bound up with sin.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Donaldson,’ Jenny said, still struggling to make sense of his evidence. She addressed the advocates’ bench. ‘Cross-examination?’

  All three lawyers shook their heads.

  Detective Constable Ray Stokes immediately struck Jenny as the safe pair of hands DI Goodison would have needed to organize the investigating team on the ground in a sensitive case. Well into his fifties, he was a solid, reassuring character who had managed to maintain a sense of humour after nearly thirty years of front-line police work.