by M. R. Hall
'I'm under no illusions,' Jenny said. 'The next time I see him will be in court. That's a promise.' She pushed the buzzer.
Andy Kerr came along the corridor to meet them, dressed in a radiographer's apron, surgical mask and cap.
'I can't let you go any further,' he said, holding up his hands. 'We've found hazardous levels. Sonia's got some kit up there that should help identify the source. Undertakers are on the way with a lead-lined coffin.'
Jenny craned past him to see a young woman dressed in a similar outfit to his. She was kneeling on the floor tapping on a laptop. It was hooked up to some equipment housed in boxes that resembled photographer's cases.
'Could she have been poisoned?' Jenny said.
Andy said, 'Come through here. It's one room which isn't giving a reading.' He pushed through the swing doors into the empty autopsy room. Jenny and Alison followed.
Andy pulled off his mask and ripped at the Velcro tabs on his apron. The beach club T-shirt he was wearing underneath was soaked through with sweat. 'Sonia says she's found radioactive particles on the surface of the skin. They're beta emitters, which starts to narrow it down. She also found a particle in the nasal passage. It's early days, but her initial impression was that Mrs Jamal has been in an environment where she's come into contact with a radioactive substance.'
'Such as?' Alison asked.
'There are some medical and commercial applications for these radionuclides - iodine 129 is used to treat thyroid complaints - but it's more likely she's been exposed to low- or medium-level nuclear waste.'
Jenny said, 'How likely is that?'
'Beats me,' Andy said. He pulled his dosimeter from his pocket - a small yellow gadget about the size of a pager - and switched it on. He waved it in Jenny and Alison's direction and checked the digital readout. 'You're both clear.'
Sonia Cane was a Ghanaian woman who wore a permanent frown. Having finished her work at the fridge she scrubbed down in the autopsy room while reeling off a list of urgent tasks. The Health Protection Agency would have to be informed immediately. Their radiation team would oversee the clean-up of the mortuary and the storage and eventual disposal of the body. Until the building was clear of contamination it would be sealed off and no bodies would be allowed to come or go. The levels of radiation were high enough to make this a significant incident.
'Do you have any idea where this came from?' Jenny asked her.
'No, but I can tell you what the substance is. There'll be more detailed tests, but I'm pretty certain it's caesium 137. Tiny amounts - no more than specks of dust - but from a potent source.'
'What's that when it's at home?' Alison said, saving Jenny from revealing her ignorance.
'A by-product of the nuclear industry,' Sonia said. 'It results directly from the fission of uranium. You'd also find it where there'd been a nuclear explosion — '
Jenny interrupted, 'This woman worked in a clothes shop.'
Sonia said, 'I find it as puzzling as you ... If she worked at a nuclear power plant you could understand it.' At a loss, she shook her head. 'You read about terrorists trying to get hold of this stuff to make dirty bombs. It doesn't make any sense.'
'Do you know when she was contaminated?' Andy said.
'Very recently - the particle in the nose can't have been lodged there for more than a few days, even hours before death. The natural processes would have expelled it.'
'And this contamination was on her skin, right?' Jenny said. 'Her body was found naked.'
'I'm not sufficiently expert to tell you whether or not she was clothed or not when she was exposed,' Sonia said. 'We'd have to bring in specialists.'
Jenny's mind raced through a number of equally baffling possibilities. None of them seemed credible. All of them pointed to Amira Jamal having a far more complex connection with her son's disappearance than Jenny could ever have imagined.
'We'd better inform the police,' Alison said.
Andy reached for the phone on the wall.
Jenny stopped him. 'Hold on. I'd like to go to her flat first. It's only a few minutes away.'
Sonia said, 'This is a radiological incident. We're under a legal duty—'
'I know. But let's find out how big the incident is first, shall we? Could you come with us?'
Sonia and Andy traded an uncertain glance.
'He can make the call in half an hour. Meanwhile I'm gathering evidence for my inquest into her son's death - I'll explain on the way. Bring whatever you need to take measurements, but we'll have to be quick.'
Alison held fire until they were marching back out across the car park. Sonia, following behind, was on the phone offloading the day's domestic duties to an evidently disgruntled husband.
Alison said, 'Would you mind telling me what you think you're doing, Mrs Cooper? We have a duty to report this incident immediately.'
'It was you who told me that the Security Services put pressure on the police to shut down their investigation in Nazim and Rafi's disappearances before they wanted to.'
'I told you there was talk, that's all,' Alison said defensively.
'That's not how I remember it . . . Look, I know Pironi's your friend—'
'He did everything he could.'
'He could have resigned.'
'Why are you bringing him into this?'
'Why wouldn't I? He's part of it.'
'He's a decent man.'
'That's not what I'm hearing.'
'Oh, from McAvoy—'
Jenny stopped abruptly next to her car. 'You may trust a man who allowed himself to be silenced. I don't, and I'm the one running this inquiry. So which horse are you going to ride?'
Alison met her with a flinty glare as Sonia's arrival brought their exchange to an unresolved end.
'Your call,' Jenny said.
Jenny drove Sonia the three miles to Mrs Jamal's flat in her Golf, repeatedly checking her mirrors for Alison's Peugeot.
There was no sign of it. She felt an unexpected pang of sadness verging on betrayal. Relations with Alison had always been bumpy, but until this week she had never truly doubted her loyalty. In the space of a few days it appeared to have all but dissolved.
It took three long blasts on the doorbell to rouse the irritable Mr Aldis, the caretaker, who growled over the intercom that he didn't work on weekends so could they kindly get lost. Jenny responded with another extended ring which finally drew the hefty, bulldog-faced Mrs Aldis hobbling to the front door on a single crutch. She shoved a set of keys at Jenny telling her to help herself, then limped back indoors.
Sonia Cane produced a sensitive dosimeter the size of a small cellphone. It was fitted with a Geiger-Muller counter, she explained, and was able to differentiate between different categories of radiation. She held it discreetly in her hand so as not to alarm any passing residents and took a reading in the front hall. There was an electronic crackle - each blip an electron firing through the dosimeter's sensors like a microscopic shotgun pellet. It was a similar reading to that she'd found on Mrs Jamal's body - fifty milliSieverts. It petered out towards the stairs, but spiked alarmingly to eighty when they entered the lift.
'We're going to have to get this building cleared,' Sonia said anxiously.
'Five minutes,' Jenny said. 'Let's just sweep the flat.'
Sonia moved quickly, not wanting to take a fraction more radiation than she had to. The trail cooled to twenty-five milliSieverts along the stretch of landing between the lift and the front door of Mrs Jamal's apartment; once inside the front door the dosimeter erupted like dry twigs on a bonfire.
'Je-sus,' Sonia said, poking the meter around the living- room door. 'Ninety-three.'
Jenny pointed to where Mrs Jamal's clothes and the whisky bottle had been found. 'She was sitting just about there.'
Sonia hastened into the room, pointed the meter at the spot, then swiftly drew it in a circle around her. She stepped towards one of the two armchairs and swept the meter over it.
'A hundred and ten.' She head
ed for the door. 'That's enough. We're going.'
Sonia was reluctantly persuaded to sweep the remaining four landings of the building before reaching for her phone, but found only slightly higher than background levels. It confirmed that the trail led from the front door directly to Mrs Jamal's flat. The fact that the fabric of an armchair had the highest reading suggested that someone or something contaminated had come into direct contact with it. It was only a matter of a few particles - a faint dusting, Sonia called it - but it screamed to Jenny that in her final hours Mrs Jamal had had a visitor.
Sonia refused to take the lift and hurried ahead down the stairs, making a call to the Health Protection Agency. Within the hour the building would be evacuated and sealed off. A team of operatives in post-apocalyptic white overalls would search for and suck up every last radioactive crumb. The neighbourhood would never have witnessed a more incongruous sight.
Descending the penultimate flight of steps, Jenny heard voices in the lobby below. She turned the corner to see Alison standing on the doorstep of the caretaker's flat talking to Mrs Aldis. Sonia was already outside the building, phone pressed to her ear as, with much gesticulating, she explained the situation to an incredulous official at the Health Protection Agency.
Leaning on her crutch, Mrs Aldis nodded gruffly towards the lift. Jenny heard her say, 'Tall fella, slim.'
'Colour?'
'White. Fiftyish, I'd say. Baseball cap on. Shoved straight past me. No sorry or nothing.'
Alison said, 'Did you tell the police this?'
'I wasn't here, was I? I was on my way to hospital to have my knee seen to.'
'At what time?'
'Must've been about one-ish, maybe a few minutes after.' Mrs Aldis noticed Jenny. 'You remembered to lock up, love? There's no way my husband's going up there today. Lazy sod. It'd take a bomb to get him off that sofa when the football's on.'
Jenny said, 'You might be in luck.'
They sat for a while in Alison's car, a few moments of peace before the air would be split by the scream of sirens. Jenny resisted any temptation to discuss her officer's decision to step away from her friend and fellow churchgoer, DI Pironi. She was simply grateful that she had. She hated to admit it, but it was a childlike gratitude: there was something of the mother substitute in her relationship with Alison. What did that say about her? She heard McAvoy's voice: there's someone who's had the confidence knocked out of her.
'I'll take a statement later,' Alison said quietly. 'The man who came out of the lift sounded rather like the one Dani James saw in the student halls all those years ago.'
'White ... I don't know why, I was expecting her to say he was Asian.'
'We don't know he was connected with Mrs Jamal. He could have been anyone,' Alison said, but with no conviction.
After a moment of silence, Jenny said, 'Anna Rose Crosby worked at Maybury power station. Our missing Jane Doe had a thyroid tumour . . .'
'You can't start building castles in the air, Mrs Cooper. Best start with what we know.'
Then came the first one. A squad car screamed up behind them and screeched to a halt outside the block. Sonia Cane rushed to meet the two constables who scrambled out.
Alison said, 'She may never get another one like this. We'll leave her to enjoy the limelight, shall we?'
'Why not?' Jenny said. 'And talking of which, I think Monday might be a little soon to start taking evidence again, don't you?'
'Whatever you think's best, Mrs Cooper.'
The day had taken on a dreamlike quality, its moods shifting as swiftly as the restless sky. She used the last of her phone's battery dialling Ross's number, only to reach him for a few short seconds in which he announced he was staying at his father's for the rest of the weekend, and could she drop his things off on her way to work on Monday?
Deflated and dejected, Jenny drove home. The roads were eerily quiet as the sun sank towards the hilltops, briefly casting the Wye valley in a light of almost angelic clarity. For a brief moment the whole of life seemed to stop and be held in stark relief. She was a mere onlooker to the series of baffling tableaux which made up her present existence: a son disillusioned by her weakness; a disturbing and erratic man to whom she felt a visceral attraction; a case that, as much as she tried to ignore the fact, touched her darkest fears; and the latest bizarre composition in the city that lay a mere river's span behind her - a trail of radiation that led to the naked corpse of a woman whose final call for help she had ignored. She should have felt guilty, horrified that she'd taken McAvoy's call in preference to Mrs Jamal's, but in this moment of stillness she felt almost a selfish sense of relief. It was as if everything that had been ominous and unseen had briefly surfaced and shown itself. Mrs Jamal's killer - Jenny had convinced herself that was who the spectre in the baseball cap had been - was one and the same demon who had visited on the night of Nazim and Rafi's vanishing. Eight years ago he had left only scratch marks on the door frames; this time he'd left a smear of hell itself.
Evil now had a form if not a face.
There was no time to reflect or elaborate on her theories; the phone calls came relentlessly for the rest of the afternoon. Andy Kerr, the undertakers, various functionaries from the Health Protection Agency, DI Pironi and even Gillian Golder managed to obtain her supposedly ex-directory number. All wanted information she didn't have and none of them believed her when she claimed ignorance. Both Pironi and Golder sounded close to desperate for any lead to the source of the radiation; both seemed convinced she was keeping critical evidence to herself. She told them about Mrs Aldis and the man in the baseball cap, rationalizing that in doing so she had fulfilled her duty, but made no mention of either Madog or Tathum. They belonged to the past and that, she told herself, was still her exclusive territory.
Between calls Jenny sat at her desk, trying to work out her next moves. She had already gone far beyond the accepted bounds of coronial practice by behaving like a detective, but her gut told her there were questions that would never be answered merely by examining witnesses in court. The stolen Jane Doe had an early-stage thyroid tumour possibly caused by exposure to low-level radiation; the missing Anna Rose worked in the nuclear industry; Nazim Jamal had been a physicist. It was more than just wishful thinking, there had to be a connection.
The phone interrupted her thoughts for what felt like the fiftieth time. Jenny answered with a weary hello.
Steve said, 'That good, hey? Busy?'
Jenny's mood lifted. 'What did you have in mind?'
Steve said, 'I'd like to talk.'
The Apple Tree was quiet for a Saturday. Steve was a lone figure sitting next to the iron brazier on the flagstone patio. The snap of the fire and the rush of the nearby stream making its final descent to the Wye were the only sounds in the damp, chilly night.
'Can you stand it out here?' Steve said as she climbed the uneven steps.
'I like it,' Jenny said and took a seat next to him on one of the three rustic benches arranged around the fire. It was throwing out a good heat, but she was glad of her thick wool sweater and the waxed jacket which made her look like a farmer's wife.
Steve touched his roll-up cigarette to a lick of flame and took a draw. 'Got you a Virgin Mary.' He handed her a glass.
'Thanks.' She took an alcohol-free sip. 'God, it's boring being virtuous.' She reached for his tobacco tin. 'Am I allowed one sin?'
'As many as you like.' He gazed into the flames.
Clumsily rolling a cigarette she said, 'I'd tell you what kind of week I've had, but I'm not sure I'd believe it myself.'
'Ross told me some of it,' he said, as if from a far distance.
'You've been talking to him a lot. . .' Jenny replied, fishing.
'Here and there.' He blew out a thin trail of smoke. 'He worries about you.'
She licked the paper and performed the final roll. Not bad. She poked it though the iron slats of the brazier to catch a light.
'He really does,' Steve said.
'What ca
n I say? I do my best ... Is this what you wanted to talk about?'
'No. You mostly.'
'What about me?'
He held his cigarette hesitantly in front of his lips.
'What?' she insisted.
'The other night when we were in bed ... it was as if you weren't there. And it's not the first time.' He turned and held her gaze. 'You don't feel the same way any more.'
'That's not true.'
'You hardly call me.'
'I'm a working mother.'
'And I go to an office, too . . . I'm not the same, am I?'
'The same what?'
'The fantasy. The guy with no chains.'
Wounded, Jenny said, 'I think you're confusing me with your ex-girlfriend. If you remember, I encouraged you to go back and qualify.'
'I really didn't want to argue, Jenny.' His head sank towards his knees. 'I just want to know what's going on with us, what you're expecting.'
She drew hard on her cigarette until the hot smoke scorched her mouth. 'I'm sorry if I seem that way. It's probably the pills my shrink put me on. I'll be off them soon.'
'Didn't I used to make you happy?'
She felt her legs twitching nervously. A shiver passed through her, physical sensations taking the place of thoughts. 'You know what I am, Steve. I try to keep the parts of me I'm trying to deal with separate, but sometimes they escape from the box.'
'You know you can talk to me all you like. I wish you would.'
'It doesn't work like that. That's not what I need from you.'
'Can you tell me what you do need?'
To touch me, hold me, reassure me, give me a place to hide . . . The words tripped out of her mind but stumbled and fell somewhere short of her mouth. All she could manage was to shake her head.
Steve said, 'Do you love me? Or just the idea of me.'
'You're not leaving?'
'I need to know what the future is, I need to know how you feel. A girl at work asked me if I was with anyone the other day. For a moment I didn't know what to say.'
