The Innocent: A Coroner Jenny Cooper Crime Short

by Hall, M R

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m told we’ve a potential Soviet defector downstairs – a Professor Roman Slavsky. Any idea who he is?’

  ‘Hold on. God, I hate this thing …’ Gordon heard Tim stabbing one-fingered at a computer keyboard. ‘Don’t hold your breath, it takes a while for it to flip through the directory or whatever the hell it does.’

  While Gordon waited, there was a knock on his office door. A messenger was standing outside holding a briefcase. Gordon motioned him in and pointed to the desk. The messenger set the case down and handed him the delivery docket to sign. He scrawled an illegible signature. As the messenger left, Gordon wedged the phone against his shoulder and sprang the catches, noticing that the inside carried a heavy odour of cigarette smoke.

  ‘I tell you, it was a damn sight easier with a filing cabinet,’ Tim was saying. ‘At least you could bloody well see what was in there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gordon said distractedly, his attention switching to the contents of the case. On the left-hand side was a stack of cardboard wallet files, and on the right four bundles of 5- inch floppy disks bound together with rubber bands.

  ‘OK, here we go,’ Tim said. ‘Professor Slavsky … Yep, looks like there’s only one with that name.’

  Gordon pulled out the top file and opened it. The documents were in English – some sort of complex scientific data that looked like computer code.

  ‘You lucky bastard,’ Tim said. ‘Roman Slavsky? Are you sure that’s who you’ve got?’

  Gordon scanned the page and spotted company details printed at its foot: Genix Inc., 1050 West Bronco Drive, Scottsdale, Arizona.

  ‘Why, who is he?’

  ‘Your ticket to the stars, my friend.’

  THREE

  Present day

  Jenny Cooper was free. Eight years after she had frozen mid-sentence in front of a bemused courtroom and felt the walls close in, she had emerged from the long dark tunnel of recovery and completed her last ever appointment with Dr Allen, the psychiatrist who had become such a troubling fixture in her life. He had seemed almost disappointed that she hadn’t suffered a panic attack for more than a year and was coping well with her job as the Severn Vale District Coroner. In the absence of symptoms to analyse, he had been reduced to sermonizing and platitudes: ‘Remember that life is precious, Mrs Cooper. It exists by chance but thrives by will. Always keep hold of your purpose.’ She had promised that she would and had stepped out into the bright morning to feel the warmth of the sun on her face as if for the first time.

  No more pretending. No more deceit. No more shame. She was well again. It was official.

  Jenny drove her Land Rover out of the car park and turned towards Bristol, saying goodbye to the Chepstow Hospital for the final time. In future she would drive past on her journeys to and from the office not with a sense of dread, but with only a fading memory of the years in which she had struggled to put her shattered life together. She felt like the sole survivor of a bomb blast; a woman who had emerged whole from the wreckage but couldn’t quite understand how or why. Don’t question, Jenny, she told herself, you’re done with all of that. Just live.

  Just live. What did that mean?

  Driving over the mile-wide expanse of the Severn Bridge, the sharp, fresh air of the estuary blowing in through her open window, she allowed herself to believe that it meant no more than being an ordinary, forty-something single woman, with mundane worries of the kind millions of women like her coped with every day. She was anxious about her future with Michael, the man who only sometimes referred to himself as her ‘boyfriend’. She fretted about the lines appearing in her still-attractive features and about the few pounds she was struggling to shed from around her middle. And she was missing Ross, her son, who was at university in London and who she feared would have grown even more distant when she went to collect him tomorrow. Ordinary worries. Nothing that couldn’t be overcome; nothing that need defeat her. After nearly a decade of being a ‘case’she had rejoined the common flow. She felt an unaccustomed sensation: was it happiness? No, it was something even more precious than that: it was contentment.

  Her brief moment of peace was rudely interrupted by the phone. The display on the dash behind the wheel said Unknown Caller.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Stephen Watling, Gloucestershire. We met last summer – the kids in the canoe.’

  She felt herself crashing back to earth.

  ‘I remember.’ Images of swollen, drowned teenage bodies invaded her mind. She pushed them away. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Body on the M5. Male. Thirties. Looks like he jumped from the bridge into the traffic – he was lying just along from it.’

  ‘Are there any witnesses?’

  ‘No. He was found at the roadside this morning by a verge-cleaning crew.’

  ‘Right.’ So far it sounded like an unremarkable suicide. She waited for the rest.

  ‘We think we know who he is. A two-year-old boy was found early this morning about a mile away in Bristol Memorial Woodlands. He’s the man’s son. His car was still parked there.’

  ‘What’s happened to the child?’

  ‘He’s alive. Hypothermia but no injuries. He’s been taken to the Vale Hospital. Mother’s on the way.’

  Now she understood. DI Watling was trying to pass the awkward conversation with the child’s mother over to her. Satisfied the dead man had killed himself, it had become the coroner’s problem.

  ‘Won’t you be talking to her anyway?’ Jenny said.

  ‘I’ll send a family liaison along – Annie Malik, she’s good. I’m tied up on a drugs inquiry.’

  What could be more important than that? Jenny wanted to answer, but held her tongue. She had made enough enemies in the police.

  ‘What’s the mother’s name?’

  ‘Karen Jordan. We think the guy was called Adam. Adam Jordan.’

  ‘All right. Tell your officer I’ll be ready to speak to Mrs Jordan in an hour, but I’d like to see the body first.’

  It was a task most coroners would have left to their officers. The days of being obliged to view the body in situ were long past. The coroner had increasingly become an office-bound official who kept contact with the bereaved to a minimum, but Jenny had never been able to operate that way. Having spent the first fifteen years of her legal career in the family courts dealing with the fallout from domestic violence and abuse, there wasn’t one human emotion that she hadn’t learned to cope with. Death was far easier to manage than a bitter struggle over a damaged child, her role so much more clearly defined than that of an advocate fighting an ugly case: gather the evidence and determine the cause of death. She was to the legal profession what the pathologist was to medicine: the last word.

  Some things she never got used to. The heavy perfume of the mortuary – pine-scented detergent and decomposing flesh – was chief among them. A warm day in July was guaranteed to be close to intolerable. A virulent outbreak of hospital infection had been killing elderly patients at three times the normal rate for the past month. Superbugs loved the summer, and their victims were lined up on gurneys in the long straight corridor, two deep. Jenny instinctively covered her mouth as she hurried past and pushed through the swing doors into the autopsy room.

  Dr Andy Kerr glanced up briefly from his work, then carried on, his muscular arms bare beneath the elbow save for a pair of blue latex gloves. He was dissecting the body of an emaciated young man with a shaved head, separating the lungs and removing them from the narrow ribcage. Two others, each wrapped in a shroud of white plastic, were waiting their turn for the knife.

  ‘No locum today?’ Jenny said, nodding towards the empty second table.

  ‘Called in sick.’

  ‘Coping?’

  ‘No,’ he said, in the unflappable Northern Irish way of his she had come to find so reassuring. ‘Maybe when they can smell us in the staff canteen they�
��ll hire in some more fridges.’

  ‘I just wanted to check on a suspected suicide – Jordan. I doubt you’ve had a chance to look at him.’

  ‘Only a glance.’ He placed the lungs on the steel counter alongside the liver and heart, and rinsed his bloody gloves under the tap. ‘It’s that one there.’

  She waited for him to dry his gloves on a paper towel and come over. He tugged his mask down beneath his chin and smiled. At thirty-five he still looked unnaturally youthful for a senior pathologist, his eyes bright and keen. His work was clearly suiting him.

  ‘You told me you weren’t squeamish any more,’ Dr Kerr said. ‘Have a go.’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘Please?’

  He lifted the plastic by the corner and pulled it back to reveal a face that had been staved-in by an overwhelming impact. Jenny felt an involuntary shudder travel the length of her spine. There were no visible features remaining above the lower set of teeth. The torso was spectacularly bruised and most of the ribs were broken. The right arm lay straight, but the left was dislocated at the shoulder and broken in several places, fractured ends of bones jutting through the skin. Dr Kerr drew the sheet all the way back and revealed another massive set of injuries around the waist. The pelvis was shattered and both legs showed every sign of having been driven over by a large, heavy vehicle. Jenny’s eyes went to his hands: they were almost untouched. The fingers were delicate and slender like a pianist’s. There was one ring: a plain wedding band.

  ‘Jumped from a motorway bridge,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Dr Kerr said. ‘I’d say he’d been run over several times. Look at the crushing injuries across the lower legs – that was done by big wide tyres.’

  ‘No one stopped.’

  ‘They never do.’

  Over the initial shock, Jenny leaned forward for a closer look. She ran her eyes over the forearms, looking for the telltale signs of an addict, but there were none.

  She noticed the skin was deeply suntanned above the waist and below the knees, and the man had been slim and muscular. No tattoos or other jewellery; no powerful smell of alcohol that usually accompanied male suicides.

  ‘Anything in the clothing?’ Jenny asked.

  Dr Kerr shook his head and reached beneath the trolley for the list of effects that was kept alongside the bag containing the bloodstained clothes. He handed it to Jenny. It revealed that Jordan had been wearing jeans, a T-shirt, cotton sweater and canvas shoes. The police had retained his wallet. There was no record of a phone, money or keys – the usual items that men carried in their pockets – nor was there any evidence of prescription drugs.

  Jenny said, ‘We’d better have a full suite of tests on bloods and stomach contents. I’ve never known a suicide be entirely clean.’ She turned away, Dr Kerr’s cue to draw the plastic over the body.

  ‘Is something troubling you?’ he asked, reading her frown.

  ‘No,’ Jenny lied. ‘I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more from his wife. When can you have him ready?’

  ‘Give me a couple of hours. We’ll clean him up best we can.’

  ‘Maybe a mask?’

  Dr Kerr nodded. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Jenny left the mortuary and crossed the car park to the main hospital building. She was dreading the encounter with the widow, not for all the usual reasons, but for the unusual ones she knew were coming. Fit, good-looking, well-dressed young men seldom jumped from motorway bridges; less still did they leave their two-year-old children to spend a night alone outdoors. It felt like the worst and most unsettling kind of death: a suicide that had come from nowhere.

  Jenny heard the woman’s anguished cries even before she had pushed through the door. They emanated from behind a curtain drawn around a bed in the children’s ward, and were disturbing everyone within earshot. Staff exchanged glances, parents at other bedsides attempted to distract their fragile sons and daughters from the sound. Jenny was momentarily paralysed, overcome by the widow’s all-consuming grief. She stopped and gathered strength, reminding herself she had to appear strong even if she didn’t feel it.

  A nurse appeared carrying an IV bag. Jenny intercepted her, fishing her identity wallet from her pocket. ‘Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner. I’m looking for Mrs Jordan.’

  ‘I’m not sure now’s a good a moment.’ She nodded towards the curtained-off bed.

  ‘Is the child all right?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Mild hypothermia. It’s not life-threatening.’

  ‘The police said he wasn’t found until this morning.’

  ‘He was admitted just under three hours ago.’

  The woman’s cries grew louder. The nurse responded to the anxious faces up and down the ward. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘This isn’t helping him, is it?’ Jenny heard her say patiently. ‘Maybe it’s best you come with me. Just for a while.’

  Mrs Jordan was younger than Jenny had imagined, perhaps not yet thirty, with long, crow-black hair and wide blue eyes that her anguish did little to dull. There was no question of talking to her in her current state, but curiosity caused Jenny to wait a moment longer while another nurse drew back the curtain to reveal a cot bed containing a tiny child. He was barely more than a toddler and was hooked-up to a heart monitor and several drips. He had his mother’s eyes and they were wide open, staring unfocused into space.

  Jenny felt the silent buzz of her phone. She fished it out of her pocket and saw her officer’s name, Alison, on the screen. She headed out into the corridor to take the call.

  ‘Mrs Cooper. Did DI Watling get hold of you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m at the hospital now. I tried to call you.’

  ‘Sorry. I was out of the office for a while.’ She paused. ‘How’s the little boy?’

  ‘Fine. Physically, at least.’

  ‘Oh … Good.’

  Jenny registered a flatness in Alison’s voice and sensed that something was troubling her. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. Would you like me to visit the scene of death? We ought to have some pictures.’

  ‘Won’t the police have done that?’

  ‘They’ve already emailed them. They’re not very clear. What about where the boy was found?’

  ‘Anything you think would be helpful.’

  ‘Righto. I’ll see you back at the office.’

  ‘Alison?’

  She had already rung off. Jenny held the phone in her hand for a moment, unsure whether to call back to tease from her whatever it was she had failed to say, but was interrupted by the nurse, who had appeared from a doorway to her right.

  ‘Now might be a good moment, Mrs Cooper.’

  Jenny looked at her, taking a moment to reorient her thoughts.

  ‘I’ve told her you’re waiting,’ she said with a trace of impatience. ‘She’s calmed down a little.’ The nurse started back towards the ward.

  Jenny approached the door. Pausing outside it, she glanced through the observation pane into an unoccupied side room. Beyond the empty bed, Karen Jordan was standing at the window looking out over rooftops to a line of distant hills. She wore jeans and a plain T-shirt that hugged her slender frame, and dabbed at her eyes with a wad of paper towel. Even with a door between them, Jenny felt her bewilderment like a radiating force. She knocked lightly and stepped inside.

  ‘Mrs Jordan?’

  The young woman turned, a sob catching in her throat.

  Jenny moved cautiously towards her. ‘Jenny Cooper. I’m the coroner.’

  Karen Jordan stared at her with eyes frozen in an expression of shock.

  ‘Would you mind if I asked a couple of questions about your husband?’

  She shook her head, her lips clamped tightly together.

  ‘His name was Adam Jordan?’

  She nodded.

  ‘His age?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’ The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘He worked for a charity. It’s called AFAD – Africa Aid a
nd Development … He came back from South Sudan at the end of May.’

  ‘Is there anything about your husband’s state of mind that I ought to know?’

  She shook her head violently, her hair sweeping across her face and clinging to her cheeks. ‘No.’

  ‘I was told he had parked at the Bristol Memorial Woodlands– that’s a cemetery, isn’t it?’

  ‘A natural burial ground. Adam’s father died last autumn. He’d gone there with Sam, that’s all. I was working.’

  ‘Sam’s your son?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Was your husband close to his father?’

  ‘I suppose—’ Her voice cracked.

  Thinking it better to get the painful conversation over quickly, Jenny persisted. ‘Can you think of any reason why your husband may have taken his life, Mrs Jordan?’

  ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘I see. And how do you know that?’

  ‘He was my husband.’ She stared at her with wild, enraged eyes. ‘Don’t you tell me I don’t know my own husband!’

  Jenny wanted to tell her the agony would pass, that as despairing as she felt now, it would not get any worse, but she was unreachable. There was no question of putting her through the ordeal of an identification. She turned to the door and quietly left her to cry herself out.

  FOUR

  From the moment she had entered the mortuary early that morning, Jenny had felt something intangible, a deep, uneasy sensation that had stayed with her and intensified after her unhappy encounter with Jordan’s widow. As hard as she tried to be rational, she couldn’t help acknowledging her instinct that something about the dead man hadn’t felt right.

  Dr Kerr, along with every other pathologist she had ever met, seemed able to deal with each set of human remains with the same degree of clinical distance: the flesh on the table was nothing more than a forensic puzzle to be solved. But for Jenny, each body carried its own complex atmospheres and stories. There were those empty shells from which the soul had passed peacefully; those that still carried the pain of a protracted struggle to cling to life; those that seemed still frozen in the violent moment of suicide; and those, like Jordan’s, that hurled confusion at her. She had dealt with more than a handful of bridge jumpers in her five years in post, and all had had a history of depression or worse. As suicides went, they were at the considerate end: they had chosen an emphatic death away from the intimacy of the home. Nearly all had jumped into water from either the Severn or the Clifton Suspension Bridge. But a leap from a motorway bridge was something altogether different. It was an enraged choice made by someone intent on inflicting their suffering on the innocent strangers who would have the misfortune to run over their bodies. It spoke of a fury that bordered on the murderous.