by M. R. Hall
‘Has anyone else been here? You know who I mean.’
‘Straight up. There weren’t any files.’ He scratched his head. ‘I don’t know . . . Maybe she put them out with the rubbish?’
Pironi left Jenny to deal with the caretaker, Mr Aldis, an irascible old man irritated at being dragged away from the football match he was watching on television. The communal dustbins were in a locked cupboard on the outside of the building. They hadn’t been emptied for five days and he swore that the police hadn’t asked for access to them. Jenny borrowed a pair of rubber gloves and spent a cold and unpleasant hour sifting though garbage. There was no sign of any box files.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ McAvoy said. ‘It’s a cop in here who tipped me off. Dear God. Dead . . .’ Glasses clinked in the background. He sounded as if he’d made a night of it.
The hands-free cradle in her car had snapped and she had the phone wedged on her shoulder as she drove homewards, praying she wouldn’t meet a police car.
‘The police think she jumped,’ Jenny said.
‘She’d be going straight to hell, then,’ McAvoy said. ‘Like my crew – no messing. Suicides are roasted in fire “which is easy for Allah”, is what it says in the Koran. Guy inside lent it to me one time.’
‘Her files were missing. All her papers connected with the case.’
‘The cops would have had those, no danger.’
‘Pironi denies it.’
‘St Peter denied our Lord three times and still got to be Bishop of Rome.’
‘He looked me in the eye. I believed him.’
‘That’s because you’re an untainted soul, Mrs Cooper . . . Fucking dead. Why?’
‘She’d been drinking. Half a bottle of whisky.’
‘Poor soul . . . Poor wretched soul.’
She was clear of the bridge and skirting around Chepstow. She’d soon be past the racecourse and into the gorge of the valley out of radio contact.
‘I’m about to lose my signal. I’ll update you soon as I hear anything.’
McAvoy said, ‘I know what you’re doing, Jenny. I understand you want to stay above board, but I could help you . . . If you really want to dig down to the shit, you’re going to need a man like me.’
It was six steeply winding miles through dark woods between St Arvans and Tintern, the ancient village with its ruined abbey at which she would turn up the narrow lane and climb the hill to Melin Bach. Since the night the previous June, when – in the thick of the Danny Wills case and suffering from acute anxiety – she had pulled up in the forest car park and wrestled with desperate impulses, she dreaded this stretch of her journey. This late in the evening there was little or no traffic. A skin of water lay over the surface of the road and the bends, always sharper and longer than they appeared on approach, forced her to slow to a crawl or risk plunging down the steep embankment. Each year they claimed several lives.
She switched on the radio to distract her imagination from turning shadows into listless ghosts, and tried to lose herself in the gentle classical music. She conjured a pastoral scene of fields and wild flowers, attempting to engage all the senses as Dr Allen had advised her, but the purer she made the image, the sharper the point of her unprompted fear became. It was a cold, menacing, tangible presence, an entity that clung to her.
Go away, go away, she repeated in her head, trying to force herself back to her idyll. Then out loud, ‘You’re not real. Leave me alone . . . Leave me alone.’
There was a sudden noise, a sniff, a stifled sob of rejection. Jenny’s eyes flicked left to the passenger seat. Mrs Jamal’s wide, black, desolate eyes looked momentarily back at her then vanished. Jenny forced a long, deep breath against her pounding heart and pushed the throttle down as far as she dared. She had been battered with all manner of symptoms, but she’d never seen things before.
She hurried from the car to the house, rationalizing that her imagination had been playing tricks. The eyes were flickers of reflected light, the face a fleeting shadow. It was only natural for the mind to make pictures out of darkness.
She locked and bolted the front door.
Hostile rap music with a window-shaking bass boomed out of Ross’s room. She called up to say hi, but there was no answer. It was nearly eleven, too late to eat. She needed to calm down. What she would have given for a drink. She stepped into her study, resolving to release her tension onto the page.
She switched on the light and saw that the papers on her desk had been disturbed and that the drawer where she kept her journal wasn’t fully closed. She wrenched it open. It was there beneath the jumble of envelopes and writing paper – the black cover clasped shut by the band of elastic – but had she left it that way, with the spine to the left?
‘Hi. You’re late.’
She spun round to see Ross in the doorway dressed in a hooded sweat top and baggy Indian trousers.
‘Have you been touching my things?’
‘No . . .’
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘There was no food in the house. I was looking for money to go down to the pub and get some.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I didn’t touch anything.’
‘You must never go through my desk. My personal things are in there.’
‘Yeah, a lot of crap.’ He turned and went up the stairs.
She chased after him. ‘Ross, I’m sorry . . .’
‘You’re a mess,’ he said, more in pity than anger.
‘Ross, please—’
He crashed into his bedroom and slammed the door.
FIFTEEN
SHE WOKE AT FIVE, drained by the fitful dreams that had disturbed her shallow sleep. Her body was exhausted but her brain was firing, making wild connections and hurling itself into crazy speculation: a confusion of police and government agents, secret deals and concealed evidence; and, hovering in the shadows, the faintly smiling figure of McAvoy. Where did he fit in? Was he genuine or was he, as Alison feared, using her? As if in answer, two images presented themselves at once: an angel and a demon. One of them was him, she was sure, but which she couldn’t tell. Perhaps he was both.
The initial shock of Mrs Jamal’s sudden death had dulled to a low ache that contained within it several different sources of pain. There were guilt and pity, but beneath them a sense of the shame that she must have carried with her in the moments before her death leap. Jenny still couldn’t relate the well-dressed woman who had arrived in her office, and who had sat with such quiet dignity in court, with the crumpled remains she had viewed on the grass the previous afternoon. She climbed out of bed, pulled on a jumper over her pyjamas and went downstairs to make a pot of coffee, which she took through to her study. She sifted through the notes and papers she had brought home, now searching for another piece in the jigsaw: the thing that Mrs Jamal hadn’t told, the thing that had pushed her over the edge.
She read and reread the original police statements, then picked over every word that had been said in court. Apart from the fact that Mrs Jamal had reacted so violently to Dani James’s evidence, there was no clue. She tried to recall the conversation with her at her flat, wishing now she had made notes. Mrs Jamal had been distressed when she heard about Madog’s evidence but mistrustful of both McAvoy and his investigator friend: there had been tears, but Madog’s story had felt like more mud in the same waters. It was only when Jenny had asked her whether there had been another girl that she had reacted differently and reached a state beyond tears. She had remembered the voice of the girl who telephoned as if it were yesterday – she was Nazim’s age, well spoken and white. It couldn’t have been Dani James, Mrs Jamal would have noticed her Mancunian accent. Their exchange had been brief, yet it had affected her profoundly. Jenny groped for possible explanations. It was more than mere disapproval. Was there a scandal – had the girl been pregnant? Had Mrs Jamal caught them together in her apartment perhaps? Had she driven the girl away and forced such a rift with her son that he never forgave her?
And if that was the case, why had the girl never come forward?
Apart from Dani James, the only young female to have given a formal statement to the police was Sarah Levin, now Dr Levin in the department of physics. She was another pending witness, whom Jenny should not contact before the resumed hearing; her instinct told her it was a further occasion on which the rules should be stretched. Besides, she was in desperate need of a lead, anything to unlock the past.
To much grumbling and protest, Jenny dragged Ross from his bed at seven and dropped him at a café near the sixth-form college, still groaning, before eight. She had planned to apologize for her outburst the previous evening, but he had insisted on sleeping for the entire forty-minute journey. It was becoming a pattern: during their increasingly rare moments together he would do anything but communicate with her.
Sarah Levin’s home address, gleaned from a sequence of early-morning phone calls to obstructive university officials, was a second-floor apartment in a large Victorian terraced house close to Bristol Downs: an expensive piece of property for a young woman. The label next to the doorbell said Spencer-Levin, and it was a man’s voice that came over the intercom.
Jenny announced herself and said that she needed to speak to Dr Levin immediately.
‘She’s in the shower. And she’s got a class at nine,’ he said, with the self-important tone she associated with corporate lawyers or investment bankers.
Irritable following her bad night, Jenny said, ‘Didn’t I make myself clear? I’m a coroner conducting an official inquiry.’
There was a brief pause.
‘Don’t you have to have a warrant or something?’
‘No. Now are you going to help me out or make this difficult?’
She heard him curse. The buzzer sounded angrily.
He didn’t look like a lawyer or any sort of professional for that matter. He was wearing a T-shirt under a canvas jacket and trainers. His shoulder-length hair was tweaked and gelled and his jeans slung just-so across hips that were starting to fill out. Advertising or TV, Jenny guessed, a dress-down business that seems like a good idea when you’re twenty-one but becomes embarrassing by forty. Spencer – she assumed that was his surname and he didn’t have the manners to introduce himself – showed her into an open-plan kitchen-diner. It was a self-consciously stark affair: a polished wood floor and everything white, a single abstract print on the wall.
‘I’ve got to go. She’ll be out in a minute.’
He picked up a designer shoulder bag and headed out to ply his uncertain trade.
Sarah Levin came in towelling her long blonde hair. She was tall and slim, effortlessly attractive in a way Jenny could only describe as refined. Spencer had struck exceptionally lucky.
‘Hi. What can I do for you?’ she said, guardedly. ‘It’s Mrs Cooper, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Sorry to disturb you at home,’ Jenny said, aware Sarah Levin’s arresting beauty had temporarily distracted her. ‘There are a few questions I’d like to ask you . . .’
‘Your office called the other day. I was told the inquest had been adjourned.’
‘Only until next week. I’m trying to fill in some detail on Nazim Jamal’s first term at Bristol. I understand you and he were both studying physics?’
‘We were.’ She placed the towel on the counter and pushed her hair back from her face. It reached nearly down to her waist.
‘Did you talk? Were you friends?’
‘Not particularly. Can I get you some coffee?’
‘No thanks. You go ahead.’
Sarah flicked the switch on an electric espresso maker and fetched a stylish white cup and saucer from a glass-fronted cupboard. Jenny watched for a moment, sensing her tension. Not particularly. What did that mean?
Jenny said, ‘His mother died yesterday.’
‘Oh . . .’ Sarah turned, unscrewing a jar of coffee, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t suppose you ever met her?’
‘No.’
‘She told me that she suspected Nazim had become friendly with a girl towards the end of that first term.’
‘I can’t say I remember.’
‘So you were close enough that you’d have noticed?’
‘Not really . . . Obviously I’ve thought more about him since than I did at the time.’ She leaned back against the counter waiting for the coffee maker to heat up. She seemed uncomfortable, on edge.
‘Did you ever call Nazim on his mobile?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Mrs Jamal answered a call on his phone that December. It was a girl – well spoken, English. She acted as if she’d been caught out, as if she knew Nazim’s mother wouldn’t approve. Any idea who she might have been?’
‘Sounds like half the girls at Bristol. Sorry. Not a clue.’
‘How close to him were you?’
‘We went to the same lectures and seminars. We partnered up in a few practicals. He was just one of the crowd, not a friend of mine, especially . . . or of anyone’s for that matter. He was pretty determined to set himself apart, as far as I remember.’
‘Because of his faith?’
‘The Muslim boys tended to hang out together. Still do.’ She turned round to check the machine.
Jenny said, ‘So he was in your class, he set himself up as religious, separate – wouldn’t you find it odd that he had a white girlfriend?’
‘Did his mother see her? There were plenty of Muslim girls who spoke without an Asian accent.’ She pressed a button that noisily filled her cup. ‘I hardly knew him, but people like me weren’t exactly going to throw themselves at a guy with a beard and whatever you call those clothes.’
Jenny watched her tap the spent grains into the waste disposal and wipe up the drips on the counter, thinking she didn’t look much like a physicist. Back in her student days the scientists had been mostly lank-haired guys with bad skin. The few women among them were the kind that always looked as if they were about to set off on a hiking trip.
Jenny said, ‘What’s your specialism, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Particle physics, theoretical stuff. Looking for new forms of energy – that’s the Holy Grail.’
‘Must be quite a man’s world.’
‘My family were all scientists. I never thought of it that way.’
But I bet you like the attention, Jenny thought unkindly.
‘You gave a statement to the police after Nazim and the other boy disappeared,’ Jenny prompted. ‘You said you’d once heard him in the canteen talking about “brothers” who’d gone to Afghanistan.’
‘That’s right . . . He was with a group of friends. It seemed like a bit of bravado at the time. I only heard snatches – boys talking about how cool it would be to fire guns and kill people, that sort of thing. They were laughing, showing off to each other.’
‘You don’t remember anything more specific?’
‘If I had, I would have told the police.’ She sipped her coffee with a steady hand. ‘It was a hell of a long time ago.’
‘No gossip around the department? Rumours, speculation?’
‘No.’ Sarah Levin frowned and shook her pretty head. ‘It seems just as weird now as it did then. He just . . . vanished.’
Alison was in one of her tense, frosty moods, which had been become an increasingly regular feature in recent weeks. Annoyed and refusing to say why, she bustled noisily around her office and banged the cupboard doors in the kitchenette. Jenny had put them down to menopausal mood swings or the usual tussles with her husband – and doubtless the issue with her daughter was part of it – but this morning’s atmosphere was unusually thick. The more Jenny tried to ignore her, the heavier Alison’s footsteps became. Reading through the latest batch of post-mortem reports she tolerated it for nearly an hour. She was switching her attention to the list of black Toyotas when Alison entered without knocking and dumped a pile of mail on top of the document she was reading.
‘Your post. And some
of yesterday’s, too.’
Holding her temper, Jenny said, ‘Is something the matter?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cooper?’
‘You seem out of sorts.’
Alison forced a tight, patient smile, ‘I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. I’ve arranged to take a statement from Mr Madog.’
The game was following its usual pattern: Alison would repeatedly deny anything was wrong until finally, as if she were conceding only to satisfy some irrational need of Jenny’s, she would tell her what it was.
‘I’ll get through all the outstanding files this weekend,’ Jenny said. ‘If there are consultants at the Vale hassling you for decisions you can tell them Monday at the latest.’
‘Last time I checked we were no more behind than normal.’
‘Then is there something I’ve overlooked?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Anything I’ve done?’
Alison’s frown hardened.
Jenny said, ‘I sense I’m getting warmer.’
Alison sighed. ‘It’s not for me to tell you how to do your job, Mrs Cooper, but I do sometimes get a little tired of being piggy in the middle.’
‘Between whom, exactly?’ Jenny said.
‘I had Dave Pironi calling me at home last night asking what a coroner was doing interfering with a police investigation.’
‘Mrs Jamal’s death impacts on my inquest.’
‘It’s not just him. Gillian Golder has phoned more than once this week demanding to know what on earth is going on during this adjournment.’
‘It’s none of her business . . . Why didn’t you just put her through to me?’
Alison gave her a look which said: isn’t it obvious?
‘She’s asking you to spy on me for her?’
‘It wasn’t expressed in quite those terms.’
‘I’ll deal with her,’ Jenny said.
‘That puts me in a rather awkward situation.’
‘I won’t mention your name.’
Alison looked doubtful.
‘Honestly. Trust me. Anything else?’
Alison sucked in her cheeks and agitatedly flicked some imaginary fluff from her lapel. ‘You know I wouldn’t normally say anything like this . . .’
