by M. R. Hall
Avoiding the mounting pile of routine death reports collecting on the side of her desk, Jenny flicked to the latest online news reports and found a page accumulating photographs of the lost passengers. Top billing was given to Lily Tate, the model, but next to her in the A-list was a name Jenny had never heard before: Jimmy Han. His biography said he was forty-three years old and the CEO of Han Industries, a computer-chip manufacturer worth several billions of dollars. He had fled China for Taiwan aged twenty, where, despite a lack of university education, he had single-handedly built up his global computer manufacturing business from scratch. Much to the annoyance of the Chinese government, he had been an outspoken critic of their attempts to stifle access to information, especially through the internet. Wherever Han went he seemed to court suspicion and controversy. During a recent address at Cambridge University, a fight had broken out between pro- and anti-government Chinese students; while in India he had been photographed meeting the Dalai Lama. His death was described as a major loss to the cause of Chinese democracy. There were several other wealthy businessmen on board, though none as colourful, rich or young as Han.
‘I’ve identified the yachtsman.’
Jenny looked up to see Alison entering. Her expression was grim.
‘Gerry Brogan, thirty-eight. He’s been working for Hennessy’s for a year. Before that he did the best part of five years for sailing illegals into Ireland who he’d picked up in France. He’s also got form for violent assault, possession of cocaine with intent to supply and the Garda suspect him of having sailed guns out of the country to Scotland for the IRA during decommissioning. What you might call a real professional.’ She slapped a print-out on the desk headed Irish Criminal Records Bureau.
Jenny looked down the list of convictions, which stretched back to one of shoplifting handed down by the Waterford Juvenile Court. ‘Have you spoken to his employers?’ she asked.
‘Just now. They knew nothing about his past except that he’d been skippering some tycoon’s yacht in the Caribbean for the last six years. They say he could sail all right, and single-handed, too. He’d set out to deliver the Irish Mist to Jersey, but had phoned them early that morning to say he had a problem with the rudder and was putting in to Swansea for repairs. That’s the last they heard. They’ve no idea why he came all the way up the Bristol Channel.’
‘Is he married, single . . . ?’
‘There’s a girlfriend. I’ve got a number but she’s not replied yet.’
Jenny recalled the freshly broken boards on the yacht’s deck. ‘I presume our police had been in touch before you were?’
‘No. I had to break the news.’
Jenny nodded, deciding to keep her questions about Brogan and what had happened to his yacht to herself.
‘We know why he was wearing a holster now, don’t we?’ Alison said. ‘The man was a villain.’ And he got what he deserved, she might have added.
‘We’ll see,’ Jenny replied.
‘Oh, and he definitely had a lifejacket. Top of the range, apparently – illuminated on contact with water, and stayed lit up for twenty-four hours. I’m surprised no one’s found it.’ Changing the subject, Alison pointed to a box on the floor as she turned to leave. ‘The police left that for you this morning. It’s the effects from that man’s car on Saturday night. He was a photographer, apparently. I spoke to his wife but she didn’t seem that interested. Still in shock, I expect.’
In the drama of the plane crash Jenny had almost forgotten about Saturday night’s road accident. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ she said.
Alison glanced pointedly at the pile of papers sitting just as she had left them on the corner of Jenny’s desk four hours before. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it, Mrs Cooper.’
Now that she knew what the box contained, Jenny couldn’t have left it untouched if she had wanted to. There was always something troubling about objects retrieved from the scene of a traumatic death, as if they had absorbed something of the event into themselves and might pass the contagion on. She lifted the cardboard flaps with a sense of dread, half-expecting to find the contents were stained and crusted with the dead man’s blood. But what she found inside was a sturdy canvas holdall zipped shut. She opened it to discover that it contained a camera and two large albums bearing the name of his business – Whitestone Studios – which were filled with prints. The first album contained samples of work that she assumed made up the bulk of his business: wedding pictures, a smiling young woman at her graduation ceremony, team photographs taken at a rugby tournament and informal shots captured at a black-tie dinner of the kind that made their way into the back of trade magazines. The second folder felt more like an artist’s portfolio and consisted largely of artfully composed landscapes and studies of shifting skies. As she turned through the pages, Jenny saw the photographer’s themes emerge more clearly: the clouds, the sun, a fiery harvest moon; the mood on earth set by what appeared in the sky. Some macabre instinct made her reach for the camera and switch it on to search for the very last photographs the dead man had taken. The images that greeted her were far removed again from those in the folders. She scrolled through a series of beautiful portraits of a slender, dark-haired woman whom Jenny placed in her early forties. She wore an enigmatic half-smile, though her dark brown eyes were sad. The photographs were taken inside with a lens that blurred the background into obscurity. There were several of her head and bare shoulders, and a single picture of her leaning against a plain white wall, naked.
A memory stirred of opening the wallet that the technician at the mortuary had retrieved from the dead man’s blood-drenched coat. There had been photographs inside: two children and a woman she had assumed to be his wife. Her face had been pretty, but ordinary. And it definitely hadn’t belonged to the woman in the photograph.
Jenny heard determined high-heeled footsteps outside her office window which came to a stop at the front door. The buzzer sounded. She hurriedly replaced the camera and closed the box.
‘It’s Mrs Patterson,’ Alison called through from reception.
‘Who?’
‘The dead girl’s mother. She wants to see you.’
Already? She must have caught an overnight flight and travelled straight to Bristol. How could she have forced herself onto a plane so quickly?
She got her answer as soon as Alison brought Michelle Patterson through the door. Jenny could tell before she had spoken that here was a woman who had turned grief into anger and a furious desire for retribution.
Jenny gave a sympathetic smile and offered her hand, but Mrs Patterson ignored it, or was too preoccupied to notice, and launched straight in with her demand. ‘Where is she? I want to see my daughter’s body.’
Alison took her cue to leave.
Jenny proceeded gently. ‘Your husband may have explained to you – your daughter’s body has been taken to the main disaster mortuary. Her case has been handed to Sir James Kendall. He’s the coroner for those who died in the crash.’
‘I don’t understand. Yesterday you called me and said her case fell within your jurisdiction. As far as I can ascertain it’s all to do with where a body is lying when it’s found.’
‘Usually, but in this case the Ministry of Justice intervened.’
‘Why? Why would they do that?’
Jenny motioned her to a chair.
‘Administrative reasons. They don’t want the confusion of parallel investigations taking place.’
‘Is that lawful?’
‘Yes, it is.’
Mrs Patterson met Jenny’s eyes. She had the keen, searching expression of an academic.
‘Has my husband told you the precise reason why Amy wasn’t on the plane she was meant to be flying on?’
‘When my officer last spoke to him, he said something about the airline changing the reservation.’
‘Really? He’s hardly said a word to me. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him.’ Her voice quavered slightly. ‘She had never flown on her own before.’
>
‘I’m sure there was nothing he could have done.’
‘He could have done what he’d promised in the first place and flown with her. At least she wouldn’t have died alone.’ She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it briefly to her eyes, as if attempting to force the tears back inside.
Jenny waited, attempting to gauge how much she should tell her.
Mrs Patterson answered the question for her. ‘How did she die? Did she suffer? I need to know.’
Jenny said, ‘I don’t think your daughter did die alone. Initial post-mortem examination shows that in all likelihood she died of hypothermia – she probably survived the crash with non-life threatening injuries and was alive for some time in the water.’ She hesitated. ‘A man was found on the beach close to her, a yachtsman whose boat was struck by the plane. He appears to have died the same way. There’s a chance he was with her, but we don’t know for certain.’
The mother’s face became immediately animated. ‘Who was this man?’
‘His name was Gerry Brogan. He was delivering a yacht from Dublin to Jersey. We haven’t been able to get hold of his girlfriend yet.’
‘May I have her number?’
‘I’m really not sure whether—’
‘Are you a mother, Mrs Cooper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’ll need to understand why I need to know who was with my daughter during the final moments of her life.’
Jenny felt her stomach turn over and a lump form at the base of her throat. ‘I have be honest with you, Mrs Patterson – you may not like what you find out.’
‘What do you mean?’
Telling herself that she was only doing her duty, Jenny pulled Brogan’s record from among her papers and handed it across the desk. She looked away as Mrs Patterson read it through.
‘I’ve no reason to think that he behaved any differently from how any other human being would in that situation,’ Jenny said.
Mrs Patterson stared, unfocused, into space. Finally, she said, ‘Part of my work outside academia has been acting as a consultant to the aerospace industry – mostly in the field of aerodynamic modelling. In fact I did some of the early work on Boeing’s competitor to this aircraft – calculating the optimal surface area of the wings to carry such weight. I’ve a lot of faith in planes, you might be surprised to hear – scientists, on the whole, try to get things right. But politicians on the other hand . . .’ She left her thought half-spoken. Shifting to a more combative mood, she sat to attention in her chair, her hands folded on her lap. ‘Would you consider that my daughter’s case was taken from you partly for political reasons, Mrs Cooper?’
‘I very much doubt it,’ Jenny said, anxious that it wouldn’t be constructive to encourage that line of thinking, given Mrs Patterson’s current state of mind.
Mrs Patterson seemed to sense that she wasn’t being entirely truthful. ‘And what would you say to taking it back?’
‘I really can’t see how that could happen,’ Jenny answered tactfully.
‘My question is whether you would be prepared to take it back?’
‘I could hardly refuse, but it would take court action – a judicial review. The decision to take your daughter’s case away from me would have to be proved perverse or unlawful. Neither of those things is very likely.’
‘You meet grieving mothers all the time, Mrs Cooper – you must know what they’re capable of.’
Jenny paused. ‘I understand how you feel, Mrs Patterson, but a lot more will emerge in the next few hours. Why don’t we speak again in the morning?’
‘I’m at the Marriott on College Green,’ Mrs Patterson said. ‘And you should know this from the outset – I won’t be leaving this country without my daughter, or without the truth.’
Alison was scathing in her judgement, which she passed barely a moment after their visitor had left the office. ‘I know the poor woman’s lost a daughter, but you can tell the type – you could lay down your life for her and it wouldn’t be enough. I should steer well clear, Mrs Cooper.’
Jenny had learned to tolerate Alison’s eavesdropping, but lately her officer had abandoned all pretence and begun to treat Jenny’s private meetings as her own. The day was fast approaching when Jenny would have to have a stern word, but she hadn’t the energy for a confrontation right now. She was scheduled to meet Dr Allen after work and needed all her reserves of emotional strength.
Instead, she carried the photographer’s box through from her office and placed it on Alison’s desk. ‘It’s just a camera and some photographs he’d taken recently. There’s no reason they shouldn’t go back to his wife, except—’ She hesitated. ‘There are some pictures on the camera . . .’
Alison’s interest was piqued. She dived into the box and brought it out, working the controls like an expert. ‘They’re rather good.’ She clicked through several frames, studying the woman critically. ‘You know, I think I might know her. I’m sure I’ve seen her face somewhere . . .’
‘His office is just down the road. The chances are she’s local, too.’
Alison arrived at the shot of the woman standing naked. ‘Oh . . .’
‘What do you think we should do?’ Jenny asked.
Alison considered the dilemma. ‘I think his widow could do without seeing these, don’t you?’ She started to delete them.
‘No, don’t—’ Jenny said. ‘We should try to find whoever she is in the pictures. She might want them.’
Alison peered closely at the woman’s face. ‘Yes, I think I may have seen her in the street with a little child. I pass a nursery school driving to work, perhaps it was there.’ She placed the camera back in the box. ‘I’ve no idea, but I’ll certainly look out for her.’
‘I’d be grateful,’ Jenny said.
Alison set the box on the floor, then gave Jenny a look that seemed to read her thoughts.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Cooper? You look a bit pale.’
‘I’m fine,’ Jenny lied. ‘A little tired, that’s all.’
SEVEN
SHE HAD FAR MORE IMPORTANT things to think about than herself. The briefcase sitting at the side of her chair contained the air traffic control data plotting the last moments of a doomed airliner; somewhere in Dublin a young woman who had just learned that her lover was dead was waiting for her call. But here she was – yet again – sitting opposite the eternally patient and punctilious Dr Allen, who persisted in the belief that he could make her feel whole. Over the course of three years, the consulting room where they met in the compact, modern Chepstow hospital had become as familiar as her own home.
‘Do you love your father, Jenny?’
‘No.’
Dr Allen smiled. ‘I don’t recall you ever having answered a question so emphatically. It makes me suspicious.’
‘I was with him this morning,’ she said, deliberately softening her tone for the psychiatrist’s benefit. ‘He’s had a stroke, several in fact. He won’t live long. I have examined my feelings and I felt nothing towards him except fear. He can barely breathe, but merely being in the same building makes me feel panicked.’
‘He was the monster in your nightmares, wasn’t he?’ He flicked back in his notebook through many pages of meticulously handwritten notes. ‘The persistent dream – the crack opening in the wall of the room you slept in as a young child, the malevolent, unseen presence beyond—’ He glanced up at her. ‘When you’re in your father’s physical presence you experience the same sensation as you did in that dream.’
‘It’s similar, certainly.’
‘But it is him? The monster?’
Jenny felt her eyes suddenly well with tears, but she hadn’t been feeling anything.
‘You seem irritated by your reaction.’
‘We’ve discussed this before.’
‘It’s not weakness, Jenny. Far from it. You were weak when you had no mechanism for dealing with your feelings, when they simply overwhelmed you and caused you to break down. Now at l
east you’re expressing them.’
She concentrated on drying her eyes and swallowing the lump in her throat.
‘Tell me, have you been feeling emotional at unexpected or inappropriate moments?’ he asked.
Jenny recalled her reaction to the two bodies on the beach. There had been other moments, too. She had wept after a perfectly mundane phone call from her son, and again after she spotted her ex-husband in a supermarket car park with his young partner and their new baby. She nodded.
‘And tell me, were these occasions when you would expect a person able to experience feelings normally to have a genuine, spontaneous emotional reaction, albeit a less dramatic one?’
‘Yes,’ Jenny said, disconcerted by the fact that he seemed to be several steps ahead of her.
‘Good.’ He made a neat and precise note in his book. ‘Alarming as it may be for you, that tells me that we’re making very good progress indeed.’ He set down his pen and knitted his fingers. Although he was no more than thirty-five, Dr Allen had already assumed the aura of a sage. ‘Recapturing the memory opened a channel to your subconscious – the buried vault you’ve talked about. It may be a narrow channel, but trust me, the force of the tide behind it will make a wider and a wider one. Your challenge is no longer accessing feelings, it’s allowing yourself to experience them.’
‘Even when it’s inappropriate?’
‘Especially then. Although I wouldn’t ask you to break down in public.’
‘Just my style.’
He smiled, then studied her face. She felt self-conscious under his gaze and glanced away.
‘If you don’t mind my saying, Jenny, when you arrived today, I sensed something was weighing heavily on your mind – other than your work, of course.’
