The Chosen Dead

by M. R. Hall

  ‘He’d been sat on. It explains why he looked so dreadful – he must have been tearing himself apart.’

  ‘I just don’t understand what they’re trying to achieve.’ For a former detective, Alison could be touchingly naive.

  ‘Hospitals are incubators for superbugs. International airports for bacteria. They swap DNA, mutate, encounter antibiotics and learn to outsmart them. Who’s going to agree to treatment in a hospital at the centre of an outbreak? If the management are caught out in a lie, the whole place could be shut down in days. The big bosses lose their six-figure salaries, lawsuits pile up, the Trust goes bust and eventually people start going to jail.’

  ‘But surely they can nip all this in the bud? It’s only two cases.’

  Jenny stopped herself from making the cynical remark she was tempted to make. ‘Let’s hope there are no more, but you ought to get over there and start collecting details.’

  Alison gave her an anxious glance. ‘I hope it’s safe.’

  ‘Ask your friend in the path’ lab – see what he thinks.’

  ‘The doctors aren’t scared, are they?’ She tried to reassure herself. ‘They deal with this sort of thing every day.’

  The cab turned off Whiteladies Road into Jamaica Street. As it drew up to their office, Jenny noticed a woman pressing repeatedly on the doorbell. It was Karen Jordan. Jenny and Alison exchanged a glance. She looked distressed.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ Jenny said.

  Leaving Alison to pay the driver, she made her way across the pavement. Karen hadn’t seemed to notice the cab pull up.

  ‘Mrs Jordan?’ She wheeled round. ‘Sorry. I was at court.’

  ‘What’s happening? Why isn’t my husband’s case being dealt with? He’s been dead a week. People keep asking me when the funeral is and I can’t tell them.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears of frustration. ‘They think it must be something to do with me, I know they do. Have you any idea what that’s like? . . . I don’t know why he did it, I don’t know.’

  Alison hovered at the kerb. ‘I’ll be getting on, Mrs Cooper –’ she glanced uncertainly at Karen Jordan – ‘unless you need me.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  She crossed the road to her car, preferring the unseen dangers at the Vale to the all-too-raw emotions of a grieving widow.

  ‘Why don’t you come inside?’ Jenny said.

  Karen’s tears had subsided by the time Jenny returned from the kitchenette with cups of coffee for them both.

  ‘Only instant, I’m afraid. Best I could do.’

  She drew her chair around to the same side of the desk so that there was no barrier between them. If she were to get truthful answers, she would first need Karen’s absolute trust.

  ‘I’m sorry I shouted,’ Karen said. ‘After your last phone call, I thought you must be hiding something.’

  ‘Forget about it,’ Jenny said. ‘And no, I can promise you, I’m not hiding anything.’ She trod carefully. ‘When a death seems to have been the result of suicide, it’s important that every effort’s made to find the motive. Sometimes there is none, but that’s rare. You told me your husband seemed perfectly happy – do you still think that’s the case?’

  Jenny hoped Karen had come to see her because there was something she was finally ready to say.

  ‘Perhaps we’d spent so much time apart that I’d stopped knowing him. We’d talk a lot about Sam, about work, ideas, but there was always a private side to him, a part I could never quite reach.’

  ‘I got hold of his medical records,’ Jenny said. ‘It seems he’d hardly been to a doctor in his adult life, certainly not with any emotional problems.’

  ‘It was me who was the emotional one. Adam was always very balanced. He wasn’t even a difficult teenager – his father told me that. I know he was very upset when his mother died – he was still at college – but he hardly ever spoke about it. He was so independent. Determined. He seemed to channel everything into his work.’

  Jenny said, ‘I’m interested to know how he got involved in AFAD. Did he always want to work in that field?’

  ‘He studied economics at Manchester, then did a Master’s here at Bristol. He specialized in economic development – what it takes for Third World countries to be able to run themselves without aid. He spent three years with UN programmes in Uganda and Congo, then about four years ago he met Harry Thorn. It was at a conference in London. That’s where I met him, too.’

  ‘Through Mr Thorn?’

  Karen shook her head. ‘I already knew Harry. I’d spent a year after university volunteering in Ethiopia. Harry was running an AFAD operation in the next village – trying to teach peasant farmers how to rig up solar panels.’ She smiled faintly at the memory. ‘I got talking to Adam in the lunch break. He started telling me how much he hated the idea of simply doling out aid parcels and so I told him about AFAD – how their philosophy was to establish basic infrastructure, giving local people the means to be self-sufficient. Ten minutes later I was introducing him to Harry. It was like watching someone who’d just got religion. Adam said his whole life changed that weekend. He left the conference with a new job and a new girlfriend.’

  Jenny looked for more pieces in the story. ‘So did you and Adam work together for a time?’

  ‘Nearly two years in Ethiopia. Adam loved the practical side but I got more interested in the politics. It seemed to me we were doing a lot of projects in the face of official resistance. There’s a breed of African politician that doesn’t like communities supporting themselves. If people are depending on you for the food in their mouths, you’re virtually guaranteed their loyalty. I wanted to get into policymaking, so decided to study for a doctorate. It meant a lot of time apart, but we figured if we could stick living together in a tent with a bucket for a latrine, we could cope with a bit of separation.’

  ‘And then you must have had Sam?’

  She nodded, a wistful expression lightening her face. ‘It was a bit of an unintended surprise, but if anything, being a father made Adam even more responsible. He was suddenly thinking about the future, making plans. He saw me working for the Department of International Development, or even the UN; in a year of two, he was going to end up running a charity like AFAD and train other people up to take over the fieldwork. A marriage of the practical and political, he called it. Oh, and we were going to write a book together, no, lots of books.’ She closed her eyes as if trying to ride a spasm of pain. ‘Is that what you wanted to know?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘It helps.’

  ‘I don’t see how. It doesn’t help me.’

  Jenny said, ‘Tell me about Harry Thorn.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ She seemed suddenly defensive.

  ‘Look, I won’t be anything less than truthful, Mrs Jordan. I’ve been told that, officially at least, he’s viewed with some suspicion.’

  ‘Who told you? What have you heard?’

  Jenny was candid. ‘A colleague at the Ministry of Justice was told by a friend in the Department of International Development that he’s someone they keep an eye on. I wasn’t given specifics, only that he’s thought to have got embroiled in politics on the ground. You’ll know more about what that means than me.’

  ‘You can’t drive down the road in Africa without paying someone off,’ Karen said. ‘And you certainly can’t run a project or help set up a business without getting caught up in the local way of doing things. Harry’s been in Africa most of his life, and the only reason he’s survived is because he knows how to handle people. Trotting out the Foreign Office line isn’t going to help when you’re at a roadblock with a Kalashnikov pointing at your chest.’

  ‘Have you got any particular instance in mind?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She was an unconvincing liar. Jenny looked at her, sensing she was getting somewhere close to the truth.

  ‘You must be thinking of something.’

  ‘Africa’s awash with rumours, most of them baseless.’
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br />   ‘But . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ She sighed. ‘A couple of years ago people were saying arms were being smuggled around Sudan in aid cargoes, but even if it did happen, it had nothing whatever to do with Harry or AFAD.’

  There was something desperate in her denial, Jenny thought. She was trying to convince herself that it couldn’t be true, that her idealist husband couldn’t have become caught up with something as distasteful as movements of illegal weapons.

  ‘I think you know what my next question’s going to be,’ Jenny said.

  ‘There’s no truth in any of it,’ Karen protested. ‘Adam would sooner have died than get involved in that sort of thing.’ It took her a moment to register the Freudian slip. ‘Look, Harry’s an old friend. I trust him. Yes, he’s an operator, but he’s an honest one. Honest to what he’s trying to achieve.’

  ‘Is that why you came here today, to tell me that?’

  Karen stared at her, then lapsed into a conflicted silence.

  Jenny patiently sipped her coffee, sensing she was about to cross a divide.

  A long, pregnant moment passed before Karen found her voice. ‘Something happens when you take government money for a foreign project. You think it’s given on the terms you’ve agreed, but it never is – there’s a whole lot of other strings attached that you don’t even know about until you’re so far committed there’s no way back.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘It all depends what the British interest happens to be. It might be that we’re supposed to be supporting one faction against another, or trying to smooth the way for a mining company, or encouraging the locals to vote against the government. Whatever it is, we’re expected to play our part. But Harry’s always had his own agenda. If he thinks the local population need a uranium mine like a hole in the head, he’ll tell them so. He doesn’t do political bullshit. Nor did Adam.’

  ‘Is that what happened in Sudan?’

  ‘If it did, I didn’t hear about it. But Adam would have told me.’

  ‘I understand they had to leave early.’

  ‘That was tribal stuff, not politics.’

  ‘I can’t pretend to know how Africa works, but I do know something about how government operates. It strikes me that if Harry Thorn was considered uncooperative, attention might have shifted to your husband.’

  ‘I told you before – we didn’t have secrets from each other.’ Once more, she seemed to be trying to convince herself that the truth and what she wanted to believe were the same thing.

  ‘I could be wrong, Mrs Jordan,’ Jenny said, ‘but I think what you might be telling me is that I should speak to Harry Thorn again – if only to make sure.’

  ‘When? I can’t go on like this much longer. The thought of Adam stuck in some—’ She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. ‘All Adam ever wanted was to be surrounded by nature. It’s what he loved, what he lived for.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Jenny said. ‘I’d like to hear.’

  ‘He wasn’t scared of dying. He was perfectly happy with the thought that we all return to dust and begin over again. He used to say that he didn’t believe in God, he believed in life. He didn’t mean being alive, he meant the whole of life, the entire vast, intricate, interconnected system. He thought that it was so complete that you didn’t need a God, except as a way of trying to make yourself feel that you counted for something more than just a grain of sand in the desert . . . But I remember him saying that if you could accept that, if you could just come to terms with your tiny role in creation, it was all you needed to find peace.’

  ‘Do you think he managed that?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I think I do.’ There was a stillness about her, now that she had finally shared something of the truth about the man she loved. She managed to smile. ‘I’ve taken enough of your time.’

  ‘Oh, while I remember,’ Jenny said. ‘Someone telephoned here last Friday. My officer took the call. It was a man asking what had happened to your husband. He had a foreign accent – I’m afraid my officer couldn’t place it except to say that it didn’t sound African – if that means anything.’

  Karen shook her head.

  ‘And do you still have no idea what he was doing in Berkshire, or why he didn’t tell you about his visit to Oxford?’

  The respite was over. Karen’s face hardened in anger. ‘Nothing I can say is going to stop you, is it? You don’t care who you hurt or how much.’

  ‘Mrs Jordan, please—’

  ‘Go ahead. Do what the hell you like. I don’t care!’

  She crashed out of the office, slamming the door so hard behind her the sound struck Jenny like a fist.

  Alison’s inquiries at the hospital proved as difficult as Jenny had feared. The mortuary had been locked down, Dr Morley had made himself scarce, and the director of the path’ lab claimed to be too busy to talk until at least the end of the day. She had managed to pick up only the barest details from the receptionist who had booked the deceased woman into Accident and Emergency. She had been brought in by two female friends, both in their early twenties, who claimed not to speak English. One of them wrote down the girl’s name – Elena Lujan – and managed to communicate the fact that she was Spanish. As far as Alison could ascertain, nothing else was known about her.

  A phone call to CID established that they were none the wiser. The hospital’s security video showed the woman being helped into the building by her two friends, one of whom was white, the other Asian. Efforts were being made to trace them. The Spanish consul had been informed. None of the local colleges or language schools had a student by that name, and a search of the social networks had drawn a blank. They were still awaiting word from the Border Agency as to when and where Elena Lujan had entered the country.

  Alison could only think of a couple of good reasons why a Spanish girl would be dumped at a hospital without details, and called a former colleague, a detective sergeant in the vice team. He confirmed that hundreds of unemployed young Spanish had arrived in Bristol in the last year. Most struggled to find work and some were ending up in the sex trade. Thirty minutes later, he called back to say a contact had confirmed that a girl named Elena had been working at the Recife Sauna in Western Street, St Paul’s.

  ‘You’re not planning on going there yourself,’ Alison said, as Jenny grabbed her bag.

  ‘I’d prefer the actual truth to Dr Verma’s version of it,’ Jenny said.

  ‘If you’re going to catch something, you’ll certainly catch it there.’

  ‘I’ll be careful who I touch.’

  ‘You’re not going by yourself!’

  Alison fetched her jacket and chased after her.

  The Recife was set at the end of a run-down arcade of shops in what was still the poorest of Bristol’s inner-city districts. Walking from Alison’s car, they passed a gossiping crowd of Pakistani women dressed in brightly coloured saris, and a smiling, toothless Rastafarian sitting drinking a can of Red Stripe on the steps of a launderette.

  ‘Hey, pretty lady,’ he called out to Alison, patting the step at his side, ‘come and sit down.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Alison said, ‘we’ve got a better offer at the sauna.’

  He let out a joyous whoop and threw up his hands, laughing uproariously.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve made someone happy,’ Alison said.

  They arrived outside a blacked-out shop window bearing the words Exotic Sauna and Video Lounge.

  ‘Prepare to be turned on,’ Alison said, and led the way inside.

  They entered a reception area decorated with fading posters of tropical beaches. It had the locker-room smell of steam, mildew and cheap deodorant. A girl with peroxide-blonde hair, dressed in tight, low-slung jeans and a top that stopped short of her sparkling navel stud, came through a doorway behind the desk.

  She froze, as if nothing had prepared her for being confronted with two suited women at the front of house.

  Alison produced her identity card, introducing
herself as the Severn Vale District’s Coroner’s Officer. ‘We’re not police. Do you understand? You’re not in any trouble.’

  ‘Police?’ The girl spoke in a heavy Eastern European accent.

  ‘No. Not police. All we want to know is if you had a girl who worked here called Elena – Elena Lujan?’

  The girl’s eyes moved suspiciously from Alison to Jenny, then flicked downwards to the rim of the desk.

  ‘We are not police,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s OK. Elena Lujan died in hospital this morning. We just need to know if she worked here. We want to trace her family.’

  The girl shot out a hand, pressed what Jenny guessed was a silent panic button beneath the desk, and turned to the door.

  Alison ran forward and caught her. ‘Elena. Was she here?’

  The girl rounded like a cornered animal and spat into Alison’s eyes. Startled, Alison loosened her grip and the girl fled into the dingy corridor beyond.

  ‘The little bitch!’ Alison wiped her eyes on her sleeve and chased after her.

  Jenny followed, but was immediately met with the sight of Alison being manhandled back towards her by a large, heavily muscled and tattooed young man who was unimpressed by her threats to have him arrested. Beyond them, Jenny caught glimpses of several semi-dressed young women and middle-aged men flying in panic from behind the flimsy doors of massage cubicles.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Jenny protested.

  He flung Alison towards her and bundled them both out through the door. ‘Get the fuck out of here!’

  ‘What did you think you were doing, Mrs Cooper?’ Dr Verma strode self-importantly towards the cordon that the police had strung up around the Recife, dressed in head-to-toe disposable white overalls.

  ‘Trying to contact the relatives of Elena Lujan; it’s fairly standard procedure.’

  ‘The police tell me you’ve managed to scatter all the occupants of this building to God knows where.’

  Jenny was unrepentant. ‘If your agency had informed me of Miss Lujan’s death instead of trying to conceal it from me, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened this way.’

  ‘Has it occurred to you that we might have delayed precisely to prevent this sort of dispersal? You could have sent infected people all over the city.’