by M. R. Hall
‘Would you like me to fetch you some coffee, Mrs Cooper?’ DC Wesley asked.
‘No thank you,’ Jenny whispered. The room was turning to a blur.
When Gleed spoke it was as if he were addressing her from the far end of an echoing passageway. ‘It could have been an accident, but why not tell the whole truth?’ He leaned insistently across the desk. ‘You see, in my experience there’s always something that gives it away, some little clue that all’s not well. Do you know what it is here, Mrs Cooper?’
Jenny shook her head.
‘There are two things, in point of fact. Firstly, I’m told your dad was a notorious shagger, and secondly my retired detective friend says your cousin had no knickers on. Just a skirt and blouse. He noticed when they lifted her onto the stretcher, but apparently no one ever said a word about it.’
He was lying, he had to be, but Jenny’s heart was pounding so hard she could scarcely breathe. My right arm is heavy, she repeated to herself, relax, relax, fighting to draw back from the brink of a full-blown attack.
‘I won’t pull my punches, Mrs Cooper, I can see you’re anxious for me to get to the point: did he ever muck about with you, your dad?’
‘No,’ Jenny whispered.
‘You don’t seem very sure.’
‘It’s not that. It can’t be.’
‘No knickers. Head injury. Running from the house . . . You’ve got to admit it’s worth more than a few minutes of my time.’
‘Why don’t you speak to Pope?’
‘Oh, we will,’ Gleed said. ‘We most certainly will.’
‘Would you excuse me—’
Jenny got up from her chair, her legs threatening to buckle beneath her. Wesley reached out a hand to steady her. She pushed it away and made for the door, wrenching it open and plunging into the corridor. She heard Gleed call out from behind her, ‘You can’t hide for ever, Mrs Cooper . . .’
She made it down the four flights of stairs and out of the side door onto the pavement. She leaned back against the concrete wall for a long moment, sucking in the cool air, filling her lungs slowly to the count of ten the way she had learned with Dr Travis. Inch by inch the feeling returned to her limbs. She glanced back at the door, expecting Gleed or Wesley to come after her, but neither appeared. She focused on her car parked across the main road from the station, and made her way unsteadily towards it.
She waited for a gap in the traffic. Stepping out from the kerb, something caught the corner of her eye. She turned to see a figure in the driver’s seat of a blue car parked to her left aiming a camera lens at her. He got the startled, head-on shot he was after, then tossed the camera aside and swept out of the space, passing behind her as she reached the far side. Jenny spun round to get a look at him, but he was gone.
The car had looked too smart for a reporter’s; she couldn’t tell the make, but it had seemed sleek and fast. She collapsed behind the wheel of her Golf and tried to get her panicked thoughts in order as she groped for a pill. Would Gleed have tipped off the press? No. There was nothing in it for him. He was just doing what he’d been asked: to rattle her. More than that: to scare her. Damn! She wrenched at the lid of the Temazepam bottle with wooden fingers and scattered tablets across her lap. She grabbed one and swallowed while she scooped the others up greedily like an addict.
She lay back in her seat, eyes closed, waiting for the drug to work, too jittery to drive. And then it came to her: if Turnbull’s lawyers had somehow put Gleed up to this, what else might they have done? Alan Jacobs had killed himself before she had decided to hold the inquest, but not Freddy Reardon. He had died the night before he was due to give evidence.
How would that work? She tried to reason it through: Freddy knew something about Eva that the Mission Church or Decency didn’t want known, perhaps something to do with Jacobs? Jacobs was in a mess, seeking truth and struggling with his sexuality. She recalled the witness at his inquest, Mary Richards, Jacobs’s fellow enquirer. Jenny pictured her in the witness box, her earnest expression as she ignored the glowering Father Dermody to breach Jacobs’s confidence. His words filtered back to her exactly as the witness had spoken them: ‘I’ve become involved with some people I shouldn’t have. I thought they were helping me but now I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. I feel as if I don’t know who I am any more.’ I remember the look of despair on his face, Mary Richards had said. I tried to get him to say some more but he wouldn’t.
Who were the people helping him? Perhaps Eva was one; if he had confided in anyone it was likely to have been her. Freddy? Others at the church? I don’t know what’s going on . . . I don’t know who I am any more. The words of a man who thought he was being taken in one direction only to find he was being led in another. Mary Richards had said he told her this about three weeks before he died. That would have been the first week of June; Eva had been killed almost exactly a month earlier.
She felt the Temazepam starting to work; a warm, slightly giddy sensation like the first drink of the evening. It took the edge off her nerves but caused her to stumble as she groped for connections: the police claimed Alan Jacobs’s hard drive had been wiped accidentally. Could it have held evidence relating to Eva, or was she letting herself drift into paranoia?
For a reason she couldn’t fully explain, Jenny still believed that Ceri Jacobs was as ignorant of the truth as she claimed to be. The widow had never struck her as a secretive or knowing woman, but rather absorbed in her role as a mother at the expense of intimacy with her husband. And she had been far too disapproving for Jenny to imagine Jacobs sharing his confusion with her. No, his comfort would have been with strangers. But Eileen Reardon, Freddy’s mother, was different. Broken down as she was, she had lived and suffered. Jenny could see that her physical addictions and attraction to strange philosophies were her insulation from a reality she would otherwise be unable to bear.
But even through the alcoholic fog, she would surely have seen something.
The flowers, now dead, remained on the floor of the landing collecting other scraps of litter to them, forming the beginnings of a mini rubbish heap.
The doorbell refused to ring so Jenny called through the letterbox into the dark hallway. ‘Mrs Reardon? It’s Jenny Cooper. I need to talk to you.’
No response.
‘Please, Mrs Reardon. Just a few minutes, then I promise I’ll leave you alone.’
Silence.
Jenny straightened up and cast a glance at the group of teenagers who had appeared at the end of the hall. Two boys with T-shirts stuffed in their jeans pockets were strutting bare-chested in front of the others, but at the same time letting her know they were there, and that it might be fun to scare her.
She leaned down to the letterbox one last time.
‘Eileen, if you don’t answer the door I’ll have to assume you’re in some kind of trouble. I’ll need to call someone to open it. I don’t think you’d want that.’ She waited for a reply. None came. ‘OK, Eileen, I’m going to have to call for help. I’d wait here but I’m not sure how safe it’s going to be.’
Jenny took out her phone and dialled directories to get the number for the housing association. She’d try to get the door unlocked before she called in the police.
She was being connected to the tenants’ welfare officer when she heard a click. She turned to see the door had opened an inch, but there was no sign of Eileen. She pocketed her phone and nudged the door open.
‘Mrs Reardon?’
She heard movement. Eileen emerged from the sitting room dressed in a tatty purple dressing gown worn over crumpled pyjamas. Her eyes were lined with broken veins. She looked as if she had been drinking.
‘You can’t go in there, it’s a mess,’ she said, as thick in the throat as a morning-after drunk. She opened a door to Jenny’s left and shuffled in.
Jenny followed her into the filthy kitchen, which smelled of burnt fat and festering rubbish. The only place to sit was at a small table stacked with unopened mail a
nd old newspapers. Jenny pulled out a chair while Eileen lit a cigarette from the gas ring.
‘What do you want?’ she said, leaning back against the stove.
‘To understand what was going on in Freddy’s mind.’
‘You tell me.’ Eileen sucked in sharply.
‘I can’t. That’s why I’m asking his mother.’
Eileen’s eyes flicked towards her as she blew out a thin stream of smoke.
‘He was part of you,’ Jenny pressed. ‘You knew what made him break down that time he ended up in the Conway Unit.’
Eileen looked away, studying a spot on the grimy tiles.
‘I’ve got a seventeen-year-old son who refuses to live under the same roof as me. I know what it’s like to feel you’ve failed at the one job you’re not allowed to . . .’ Jenny paused, a catch in her voice. Jesus. ‘You needed help with him, but I’m wondering if he didn’t always get the right kind. You’re the only one who’d know. Deep down a mother knows most things. Am I right?’
Eileen took another lungful of smoke, unable to look at Jenny any more.
‘I’m guessing that part of the reason he was unhappy was that there was no dad around. I mean, you had a partner, but Freddy didn’t know where he fitted in. I picture him as a sensitive child who wasn’t finding himself, but who had become so angry and hostile that you couldn’t reach him . . .’
Jenny felt something between them change. Eileen reached up with the back of her hand and wiped her eye.
‘Kids like that either lash out or break, sometimes both. Is that what happened to Freddy?’
‘He was hearing voices,’ Eileen said quietly. ‘The doctors called it psychosis, but to him they were real. He thought they were evil spirits.’
‘Were they telling him to hurt himself?’
Eileen nodded, still looking the other way.
‘What did you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘I just . . . I just wanted him to get well.’
‘The senior nurse there, Alan Jacobs, did Freddy talk about him?’
‘He liked him. He said he was the only one who’d listen and understand.’
‘About the spirits?’
‘Yes . . .’
‘And the doctors told him that was nonsense, that the voices were just parts of his brain misfiring?’
Eileen nodded.
‘Is that when Freddy got interested in religion?’
‘That’s when it began.’
‘With Alan Jacobs? Did he talk to Freddy about the Mission Church?’
Eileen pushed a hand through her lank hair. ‘He might have done, but it started with a black guy from the church who came in to talk to them about how he’d been a criminal, then got saved. I remember Freddy going on and on about him. He thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.’
‘You mean Lennox Strong?’
Eileen met Jenny’s eyes. ‘That’s the one. When he got out, Freddy took himself off to that church on the Sunday. He wanted me to come, but I couldn’t . . .’ Tears ran down her face but Eileen didn’t sob.
‘He came home saying he’d been cured and flushed all his pills down the bloody toilet. I was scared stiff for him, but damn me if he wasn’t like a completely different kid. There was Jesus this and Jesus that, but no pills or booze or drugs . . . I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it. I thought we’d seen a bloody miracle.’
‘How long did it last?’
‘He stayed well, at least until Eva was killed. It was me who went down. I was happy for him, of course I was, but this God stuff . . . I couldn’t stomach it. He wanted me to have what he’d got, but I just never . . .’ She tossed her cigarette butt into the sink. ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t for me.’
‘What happened when Eva died?’
‘The bad dreams and voices came back. I tried to make him see the doctor, but he wouldn’t. He kept saying people would pray for him to make him better.’
‘Anyone in particular?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t really want to know.’
‘Was Alan Jacobs one of them? Did Freddy mention him?’
‘Maybe once or twice. I . . .’ Another rush of tears. Eileen pressed her eyes into the crook of her elbow. ‘I should have done more, I know I should have. I was no good for him.’
Jenny said, ‘Eva died at the beginning of May. But before that, was he OK? You didn’t see any change in him before then?’
‘Maybe he started to change a bit before,’ Eileen said uncertainly. ‘He’d get impatient with me, but you know –’ she gestured to the mess around the sink – ‘why wouldn’t he, when all he got was promises?’
‘Eileen, was Freddy getting ill again before May?’
She thought about it for a moment. ‘I suppose he might have been.’
‘When did it start? What month?’
She shook her head vaguely. ‘March, April . . . But it was definitely worse when she died. We were both in here the morning the news came on the radio. The way he reacted, you’d have thought she was family.’
‘Did the police talk to him at all?’
‘Only to see where he’d been when she was killed. They checked all that out. He was helping out at church, in a prayer team or something.’
Jenny said, ‘I want you to think carefully about last week, the days before he died. Did anything happen to Freddy? Did he say anything? Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?’
‘What do you mean?’ Eileen said, alarmed.
Jenny hesitated, realizing that the wall she had mentally erected between Freddy’s and Eva’s deaths had come tumbling down. The return of his illness coinciding with Eva’s apparent waning faith, and Alan Jacobs’s involvement with people he shouldn’t have were coincidences too far. ‘I wasn’t going to mention this until all the lab tests come back, but the post-mortem showed that Freddy had marks on his wrists, almost as if they’d been caused by rope or handcuffs. They were quite fresh. He’d covered them with concealer.’
‘Handcuffs? Are you saying he was arrested?’
‘It’s one explanation.’
‘He can’t have been. He was still a juvenile. I would’ve been told, wouldn’t I?’
‘You’d have thought so,’ Jenny said, but nothing seemed impossible any more.
Jenny was grateful for the mania that had gripped her since her meeting with Eileen Reardon. It pushed out her fear and banished her ghosts. The message from Steve on her answer-phone had gone unanswered. The desk in her study was strewn with papers which she had covered with notes and diagrams exploring every possible connection between the spinning fragments of evidence.
She had yet to find the missing piece that linked Eva’s death with those of Freddy and Jacobs, but she felt that at last she was drawing close to its essence. In life, as in nature, there were two types of attraction: the healthy sort born of affection and generosity, and the compulsive craving of the kind that had killed the moths whose burnt remains lay beneath her anglepoise lamp. Watching their death throes, she was reminded of the outstretched arms and convulsing bodies of the worshippers at the Mission Church. They had found a light, too, and it wasn’t the sun.
TWENTY
JENNY WOKE TO THE SOUND of the telephone. It wasn’t six a.m. but the day was already as bright as noon. Blinking against the sharp light, she hurried downstairs and retrieved the receiver from beneath a mess of papers on her desk. She expected to hear Alison with news of some spectacular motorway collision, or perhaps a contrite Steve wanting to invite himself for breakfast and a little more, but it was a gruff, though polite Northern Irish voice which greeted her.
‘Mrs Cooper? Sorry to trouble you so early. DI Sean Coughlin. I’m a friend of Father Starr’s.’
‘Oh—’ was all Jenny could find to say.
‘It’s probably wise not to talk on the phone. Would it suit you to meet briefly, in say an hour’s time? I’ll be outside Tintern Abbey.’
‘Hold on a moment—’
>
Her protest was futile. Coughlin had already rung off.
Her hair was still wet, there had been no time to put on make-up, and three cups of strong coffee had left her feeling jumpy. The early-morning sun was blindingly bright as she reached the bottom of her lane and dog-legged across the main road towards the abbey ruins. There was only one other vehicle in the visitors’ parking area, a dark blue BMW cabriolet with the roof up, not a car that looked like it belonged to a policeman. Jenny pulled up and saw that it was empty. Maybe she had misheard? Her exhausted yet heightened state made her feel as if she were in a waking dream, not quite certain of anything. She turned off the engine and climbed out to get some air. It was cool and fresh against her skin. A halo of mist hung in graceful suspension over the river, tracing its serpentine path through the steep sides of the wooded valley. The abbey, a vast stone skeleton that once would have been as gilded and opulent as an Italian cathedral, was a dark, commanding shadow against the brilliant sky.
She heard the sound of solid, even footsteps. A male figure appeared around the corner.
‘Mrs Cooper?’
‘Yes.’
He was a man of uncertain age, somewhere between forty and fifty, tall and wiry with close-cropped greying hair.
‘Sean Coughlin. Pleased to meet you.’ He extended his hand.
Jenny shook it, noticing the inlaid silver crosses on his cufflinks.
‘Inspiring, isn’t it?’ he said of the abbey. ‘You live in a beautiful part of the world.’
‘And you, Mr Coughlin?’
‘London. I’m with the Met.’ He seemed anxious to change the subject. ‘Fancy a stroll down to the river?’
‘Don’t you think I should have a little more proof of who I’m talking to?’
Coughlin reached into his pocket and handed her his wallet. She opened it to find his Metropolitan Police ID, driving licence and credit cards. In the photo pouch there was a picture of the Virgin and Child.
Satisfied, she handed it back and decided to give him a hearing.
They wandered across the empty tarmac and turned right down the lane to the water’s edge.
