The Redeemed

by M. R. Hall

  But outright confrontation wasn't an option. It wasn't just a small army of lawyers ranged against her, it was the entire Establishment. The one thing in her favour was that it played mostly by the rules. Hard as it was, she would have to try to stick to them. Keep composed and pretend that the questions she was about to ask were nothing but a regrettable necessity.

  Jenny pulled the crime desk call log from amongst her papers and motioned to Alison, who, as she took it from her, whispered that Mr Justice Laithwaite could see her at two p.m. in the Royal Courts. Not a minute later. Jenny checked her watch. It was nearly eleven. She had only a few minutes left to deal with Turnbull if she was to catch a train that would deliver her to London in time. Bringing him back yet again would make her look chaotic.

  Turnbull studied the log which Alison had handed him with an expression more of interest than alarm.

  Sullivan rose in objection. 'Ma'am, will counsel be provided with copies of this document?'

  'In due course, Mr Sullivan,' Jenny said. 'I'm afraid our resources aren't as great as those in the courts you are used to.'

  There was a ripple of weary laughter from the journalists crowded on their uncomfortable seats. Sullivan sat down with a scowl.

  Jenny said, 'Lord Turnbull, the document is an extract from the log of calls received by the crime desk on the night of 15 March this year. There is an entry recording a call from a Miss Eva Donaldson complaining that she was being harassed by an unnamed male. The official noted that she appeared intoxicated and incoherent.'

  'That's certainly what's written here,' Turnbull said.

  'And the follow-up entry next to it shows that when she was telephoned a week later she denied all knowledge of having made the complaint.'

  'Yes.'

  'Can you confirm that the telephone number written down there is her home number?'

  'Yes, I recognize it.'

  Jenny became aware that the room had fallen into unnatural silence.

  'Do you have any idea as to who this man was?'

  'I don't.'

  'Had you ever seen Eva intoxicated or incoherent?'

  'Never.'

  Jenny glanced at the lawyers and could tell she had landed them in uncharted territory. Fraser Knight QC, counsel for the police, was conferring with his instructing solicitor, no doubt demanding that the original log be brought to him immediately. Annabelle Stern was whispering instructions to an underling, Ed Prince marginalized for the moment.

  Jenny said, 'Had you ever seen her drink alcohol?'

  Turnbull hesitated, but it was a calculating hiatus and the jury sensed it. Sullivan caught his eye and pulled him back from the brink of offering a dangerous hostage to fortune.

  'I can't say I did.'

  'It was unusual then, or a side of herself she kept hidden from you?'

  'Unusual, certainly.'

  'Except that she was also drinking alone, at home, on the night she was killed, or so the evidence suggests.'

  Turnbull said, 'I can't see that I can make any useful comment.'

  Jenny reached into the box at her side and brought out the letter from Reed Falkirk & Co.

  'We do have some evidence for what may have been weighing on her mind on the March occasion, at least,' Jenny said. She handed the letter to Alison. 'Miss Donaldson's lawyers wrote to her on the 13th of that month. Could you please read it aloud, Mrs Trent?'

  Jenny stared at her legal pad while Alison, reddening with embarrassment, struggled through the contents of the letter.

  Waves of impotent fury emanated from Turnbull's legal team and crashed across her desk with almost physical force.

  St Eva had been dethroned.

  'Did you know that she was suing for royalties owed for her work in pornography?' Jenny asked.

  Turnbull could no longer hide his disquiet. 'No, I didn't.'

  'Do you find it surprising?'

  'I can see that if she was struggling ... I didn't know what was going on in her private life. I wish I had. I'm sure I could have done more to help.' His shoulders sank and the unassailable figure that had entered the witness box seemed now cut down to human size. He looked up as if about say more, but the words failed him. His lawyers watched him in horror: their man was starting to crack open.

  Jenny said, 'Is there anything more you wish to say, Lord Turnbull?'

  'Yes,' he said, after a pause. 'I know Eva was complex - how could she not have been? What she had lived through would have broken most people. But that's what drew others to her, her vulnerability, and her spirit. Only she knew the true depth of her faith, but I'd stake my reputation . . . No, I'd stake all I possess on Eva having been as righteously opposed to pornography on the day she died as she ever was. None of what I have heard today will change the way I feel about her in the slightest. All of us in the Decency campaign have nothing but the profoundest respect for her memory.'

  But she scared the hell out of you, Jenny thought. And she still does.

  She offered the lawyers the opportunity to cross-examine, but none volunteered. There had been a heartfelt quality to Turnbull's peroration and nothing they could offer would improve on it. With a final grateful glance in the direction of the jury, he made his way back to his seat.

  'Ma'am,' Sullivan said, rising to his feet, 'might I ask if you are planning to produce any further documents without prior disclosure? I'm sure I hardly need remind you that failure to conform with usual practice risks compromising the legitimacy of these proceedings.'

  'No, I've no further documents in my possession, Mr Sullivan,' Jenny said, choosing her words carefully, 'but I'm afraid I'm going to have to suspend our deliberations until tomorrow. I've an urgent meeting in London. I'm sure you and your colleagues will understand,' she said, aiming her pointed remark at Prince and Stern.

  'I beg your pardon, ma'am? We were given no warning of this.'

  'Nor was I,' Jenny said, gathering her papers. 'I'll do my best to conclude the evidence tomorrow, but I'd like Mr Joel Nelson, Mr Lennox Strong and Mrs Christine Turnbull present. I may need them to clarify some of the points raised this morning.'

  Puffed up with indignation, Fraser Knight interjected. 'Ma'am, I must protest. The interested parties to these proceedings really are being treated in a quite unacceptable manner. We must at least be informed as to which witnesses will be called, and in what order.'

  Jenny looked at him steadily. 'Mr Knight, this is an inquiry into the cause of death. My task is not to make life easy for you or for myself, it's to make sure we arrive at the truth.' She shuffled her papers noisily. 'Whatever that takes.'

  Jenny left the building through the back door, issuing instructions to Alison not, under any circumstances, to tell anyone where she was going. The excitement of the moment was too great for the news crews, who broke with convention and swarmed around her as she fought her way through them. Reporters hurled a barrage of questions. 'Who was harassing her, Mrs Cooper?' 'What do you think the Decency campaign has to hide?' 'Is Michael Turnbull a suspect?' She kept her lips firmly closed. Talking to the media was one professional offence for which there was no excuse: a coroner who spoke to the press wouldn't be a coroner the following morning.

  She piled into her car and headed back towards the city. In her rear-view mirror she caught a glimpse of reporters surging around Michael Turnbull and his lawyers as they scrambled into their Mercedes van. Jenny could only imagine how they planned to retaliate. She expected a blow to land before the end of the day; she had to make sure to strike first.

  Chapter 22

  The train slowed to a painful crawl through the dismal London suburbs and arrived in Paddington late, leaving Jenny just fifteen minutes for the cab ride across the centre of town to the Royal Courts in the Strand. And then there was the time it would take to clear the security check and find her way through the labyrinth of corridors to Mr Justice Laithwaite's chambers. She called Alison and pleaded with her to contact his clerk to beg for ten minutes' grace. She promised to try, but calle
d back almost immediately to say that her request had been refused: the judge had a car waiting and would be leaving if she wasn't in his office at two on the dot. The taxi came to a dead halt on the Euston Road. It was the roadworks at King's Cross, the cabbie said, decorating his speech with expletives, you'd spend half an hour in a jam and find the lazy sods having a smoke and scratching themselves. If she was in a hurry, she'd do better by tube.

  Damn. Jenny shoved a twenty-pound note through the slide window and jumped out between the three static lanes of traffic. Dodging the motorcycle couriers, she made it to the pavement and ran through the slow-moving tourists to

  Baker Street underground station.

  It was nearing three o'clock when she arrived, perspiring and out of breath, in the welcome cool of the Cromwell Hospital's reception area. Jenny approached the long, blond- wood reception desk and spoke to a receptionist.

  'Could you tell me if Mr Justice Laithwaite has booked in? I need to see him immediately.'

  The young woman tapped on her computer.

  'Your name, please.'

  'Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner. It's a professional matter.'

  Unimpressed, the girl ran her eyes over a list of patients. 'I'm afraid he's not checked in yet. You're welcome to wait in the lounge.'

  Jenny stepped away from the desk and pondered the etiquette of buttonholing a sick judge on his way into hospital. She wasn't even sure what points of law she would argue; in the rush for the train there had been no time to consult textbooks.

  'Are you quite sure? My surgeon assured me ten days. Well, could you please make enquiries? I'll need to speak to my insurers.'

  Jenny noticed the small, round man in the beige linen suit for the first time. He was getting testy with a receptionist at the far end of the desk.

  'Mr Justice Laithwaite?'

  He snapped round with a startled expression.

  'Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner.'

  'Good God.'

  'I'm sorry to disturb you — '

  'Really, this is hardly the time — '

  'I know, Judge, but my inquest into the death of Eva Donaldson has reached a critical stage. I only learned this morning that you granted an injunction forbidding any disclosure of her private documents or affairs. I need to know what's in that material.'

  'The moment to discuss this was at two o'clock.'

  'I had to come from Bristol.'

  'I'm no longer available, Mrs Cooper.'

  'Judge, I need an order lifting the injunction for the purposes of my inquest. It's a formality—'

  'It's out of the question.' He turned back to the desk and rapped on the counter. 'What's going on?'

  'I'm trying to get through to your surgeon's secretary, sir.'

  Jenny refused to give in. 'I can impose reporting restrictions. Judge, it's vital I know what was happening in her private life - the inquest is meaningless without that knowledge.'

  'Mrs Cooper, don't you think the public interest might best be served by not raking over these coals until the Decency Bill has at least had its first reading? We both know how the media work. What you propose risks derailing the bill completely.'

  'With respect, Judge, I can't see how the public interest can be served by anything less than the truth.'

  He grunted dismissively.

  'Judge, it's not Eva's Donaldson's murder that is at issue here. What you won't have read in the newspaper is that two of her close associates in the church have committed suicide in the last two weeks. One of them was a sixteen- year-old boy. I can't prove a connection with whatever was going on with Eva, but I can't disprove one either. All I know is that it smells bad, and this injunction makes it smell even worse.'

  There was a pause as Laithwaite tried to absorb this information. She had stirred his conscience.

  Taking advantage of the lull in conversation, the receptionist offered him the phone. 'Are you able to speak to her, sir? You might be able to explain it better than I can.'

  'In a minute.' Laithwaite moved away from the counter, gesturing Jenny to follow him around the corner into an alcove that afforded a small degree of privacy. 'What sort of connection are we talking about?'

  'Both of them were in Eva Donaldson's study group at the church Michael Turnbull helped to establish. The boy hanged himself the night before he was due to give evidence at my inquest. They were close.'

  'And the other?'

  'A married father of one who'd had sex with a man hours before he took his own life. It gets more complicated - he was senior mental health nurse at a unit the church tried to get involved with. A month before he died he persuaded a patient, a teenage girl, to give up her medication. She hanged herself too.'

  'It all sounds rather circumstantial.'

  Jenny said, 'The little evidence I have suggests Eva was falling out with the church in the weeks before she died. She was drinking; on one occasion she called the police and claimed she was being harassed. There - now you know more than I do.'

  Laithwaite pressed a hand to his midriff and grimaced. He looked for a moment as if the pain in his stomach might overwhelm him.

  Jenny reached out to steady him. 'I'm so sorry. Do you need to sit down?'

  'No. Please—' He pushed out a hand to hold her at bay and waited for the spasm to pass. 'You've caught me in a weak moment, Mrs Cooper. But I can see why you considered it so urgent.' He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. 'Given what you've told me, I'm prepared to accept there's a public interest in you being able to view any restricted material held by solicitors for the respective parties, but on strict condition that you only make public that which has a direct bearing on the case.'

  'I'm not even sure who the respective parties are,' Jenny said.

  'Ah, of course.' Laithwaite lowered his voice, as if fearing they might be overheard: 'They were Eva Donaldson and Lord Turnbull. I'll telephone my clerk and have him draft the order. I suppose you'll want it immediately.'

  'If you could, Judge. Thank you.'

  With a nod, he started back to the desk.

  Chancing her luck, Jenny said, 'You wouldn't happen to recall what it was Turnbull wanted to suppress?'

  Laithwaite stopped and looked her up and down, as if only now weighing the full consequences of his hasty decision. Jenny feared he was having second thoughts, but the doubt seemed to pass, giving way to an air of resignation.

  'Sex,' he said, 'and a large measure of hypocrisy. A few years ago, while he was still in business, Turnbull liked to play the magnanimous host. Apparently on one occasion Miss Donaldson was part of the cabaret, a fact she chose to remind him of earlier this year.'

  'They had a history.'

  'More of a chance encounter.'

  'And she was trying to blackmail him with it?'

  'I'm afraid I can't recall every detail.'

  'But the injunction must have covered more than that. She had other contractual disputes her solicitor wouldn't discuss with me.'

  Laithwaite looked suddenly tired. Answering her was becoming an effort. 'It covers anything that might bring Lord Turnbull, the Decency campaign or his church into disrepute.' He gave a pained smile. 'Do try not to be late next time, Mrs Cooper.'

  He moved off to the desk, where the receptionist was waiting for him with an explanation for his query. Jenny watched him give a tired, indifferent shrug as if all the fight had drained out of him; and something told her that it probably had.

  Jenny made her way to a sprawling internet cafe in High Street Kensington and hired a terminal at which she set up a temporary office among the students and travellers. It was too risky to use her phone with so many people in earshot, so she communicated with Alison via email, instructing her to request Mr Justice Laithwaite's clerk to fax copies of his order waiving the injunction to both sets of solicitors and to her office. She wanted old-fashioned hard copies to arrive in the lawyers' hands: email was too easily erased.

  It was a long anxious wait for a response. Staring at
the screen, waiting for a message to appear, she thought about what Laithwaite had said. It sounded as if Eva had been a hostess at one of Turnbull's parties, and more than just a pretty girl serving drinks. The judge had given the impression that Eva had been one of many girls Turnbull would have encountered while living the life of a high-rolling businessman. It was possible he wouldn't have remembered her, but she would have remembered him.

  Nearly twenty minutes passed before Alison's reply arrived. Jenny clicked open the attachment long enough only for the time it took to press 'print', collected the hard copy from the desk and hurried out to hail a taxi.

  The text was far briefer than she had anticipated.

  IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

  CLAIM No. TD280110

  BETWEEN:

  A

  and

  B

  ex parte The Coroner for the Severn Vale District

  ORDER

  Upon application by the Coroner for the Severn Vale District, the terms of the order in this matter dated 28 January are varied as follows:

  1) The Coroner for the Severn Vale District, namely Mrs Jenny Cooper, shall have the right to inspect all documents and materials which are subject to the terms of the said order, and to make whatever use of them as she sees fit in the conduct of her inquiry into the death of Miss Eva Donaldson.

  Signed on behalf of Mr Justice Laithwaite by his clerk, it bore the court office seal. It was the genuine article, but less than Jenny had hoped for. There was no mention of the contents of the previous order, and no schedule of the documents covered. It meant that even if the lawyers opened their files to her, she had no means of checking if they were complete.

  The cab was crossing Hyde Park Corner en route for Lincoln's Inn Fields when her phone rang. It was the office number. She pulled the glass screen separating her from the driver tight shut and answered.