Bridge of Sighs

by Priscilla Masters

  Melanie looked startled and even Martha didn’t quite know why she had chosen that particular phrase. Driven to this. Unfortunate analogy, but more than that – if he had been driven, who had done the driving?

  Melanie was looking again at her sister with an unmistakable message: Tell her. And at that point Amanda Elson’s shoulders crumpled as she bent down and reached for her handbag. It was large, capacious, brown plastic, an ugly object. She lifted it on to her lap, unzipped it, reached inside and pulled out a brown A4 envelope.

  She handed it to Martha, indicated with a dip of her chin that she should look inside.

  And Martha knew.

  She kept her gaze steady on the two women as she pulled out a couple of poor-quality pictures, fuzzy and indistinct, obviously printed from an iPhone. She fanned them out on top of her desk then studied each one without comment. The contents turned her stomach. The first one was of the child, Patrick. He was naked, hunkered down, sobbing, hands half covering a distraught face. Martha turned the picture over to look at the back.

  Cry Baby Elson. Want these to go viral?

  In the background a china lady danced, red skirts swirling in front of net curtains looped back.

  The second picture was of the same boy. She could tell by his mop-cut hair, the same shining brown as his mother’s. Patrick, trousers down, bottom bare, bending over. The worst of it was that he could have been bending down for a thrashing or for sex or simply obedience. You couldn’t see his face but in the hunching of his shoulders and hands on knees, head as low as he could, she sensed the child was terrified and humiliated. A man was on the edge of the picture and he looked as though he was about to …

  Martha turned it over. On the back was written another mocking message in the same childish writing. Waiting for it, Pat?

  She looked up. The pictures were horrible. To that boy’s mother and aunt they were dreadful; to a twelve-year-old they would have been devastating. Destroying.

  She met the two women’s eyes, read the anguish in them. Melanie spoke up for her sister. ‘We found these afterwards.’ She swallowed. ‘We think Patrick wanted us to find them.’

  Martha nodded. ‘You should have taken these to the police,’ she said softly. ‘They’re evidence.’

  ‘Of what?’ Again, it was Melanie who spoke. She didn’t have her sister’s soft voice nor the submissive tone. She was challenging. Feisty.

  ‘But this is obviously why …’

  In a panic, Amanda was already stuffing the pictures back into the envelope. ‘Mrs Gunn,’ she said, ‘my boy died so these would not be made public. So no one would know except us. I’m not going to go against that.’

  Martha was temporarily stumped. She always put relatives’ wishes first, unless they clashed with the police investigation. But they had a point. Patrick had died because he didn’t want the shame of these pictures being seen.

  ‘But someone is responsible.’ She spoke slowly, feeling her way along a wall in the dark. ‘Whoever it is might do something like this again. Your son, Amanda, was underage. This is an imprisonable offence. A police matter.’ Again, she wished she could share these with Alex who would, she felt certain, have dealt with it better. She leaned forward. ‘There might be another boy.’

  She recalled Bridget’s words once more. At least I didn’t have to find her body.

  It spoke of consideration, forethought. Planning. Both Patrick and Gina had wanted to protect their loved ones from further upset. But Patrick had left behind this clue for his mother to find.

  She dropped her eyes to the photographs. ‘He left these for a reason.’

  Amanda supplied the answer quickly. ‘To tell us we weren’t to blame. To explain.’

  Martha sat back and wondered. Had something similar been the trigger to Gina’s suicide too? Even possibly Erica Randall’s? Or was she stretching the elastic too far?

  If Erica had deliberately thrown herself down the stairs there would be no physical evidence to find, nothing except Alex’s testimony. That was the way these things worked. And she would be in the same dreadful limbo land where Gina’s mother, son and fiancé were. Never able to find the answer. At least Amanda Elson and her sister had an explanation for Patrick’s anguish and death. They would always feel they’d failed him but they did have an answer. Her eyes slid back to the envelope. Out there she sensed someone malicious enough to want to destroy lives. Someone with one thing in mind? Destruction?

  She stopped breathing for a moment and recalled the traumatized Eileen Tinsley’s description of the boy standing on the bridge, arms outstretched, the similarity to Landowski’s statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro, the brief hesitation and then the fall she had described apologetically as graceful but which had ended up in such carnage, tearing into that otherwise beautiful spring morning. Martha felt fury rip through her too. Someone had engineered this. Planned it, felt the hatred, photographed the boy in the most humiliating position conceivable. A grown man had …

  It had awoken the monster inside her, which reared up now, releasing the Devil so far only hinted at by her red hair and sparkling eyes. She wanted to find the sick person who found this sort of thing entertaining. Who mocked. And as she knew a man was present, she also knew the writing on the back was a minor’s hand. She wanted to destroy him just as they had destroyed not only Patrick’s life but also Gina Marconi’s. And then sensible coroner mode kicked in.

  Wait a minute before jumping to conclusions, Martha. What evidence apart from your so-called Irish intuition do you have for connecting Gina Marconi’s death with Patrick’s – and come to that Erica Randall’s, an even bigger stretch of the imagination? You don’t even know the circumstances surrounding Erica Randall’s death, except that it could have been a leap into oblivion, not into a wall or on to a busy road but down a flight of stairs. So what are you doing – stringing the row of beads together to form a necklace? There is no necklace. You have strung the beads together. You have seen just one set of photographs so far. And there is nothing in those that involves Gina or Alex’s wife.

  And then she began to respond to her own doubts. You’ve already put your finger on it, haven’t you? Intuition. She’d always sensed the similarity in these two suicides.

  The two women were watching her, waiting for her to make the next move without realizing it was they who should speak.

  Martha’s eyes were on them but her inner voice was still speaking. So what are you going to do about it, Coroner? She mentally answered her own question. Something. That’s for sure. Not nothing. That is not an option.

  And now she put her hand over the envelope, spanning the fingers to cover as much of it as they could, and asked the question quietly. ‘What do you want me to do with these?’

  ‘We don’t want them being made public.’

  ‘Absolutely not. They will not come out in court. I quite understand that.’ She didn’t point out the obvious, that there would be electronic copies – somewhere.

  ‘Perhaps I should keep them for now?’

  The sisters looked at each other, obviously confused by the request. They had not expected this and they were not certain it was proper. They were right, of course. It was not, strictly speaking. There was probably something in the rule book to prevent this, Martha reflected. But as neither woman would have read the rule book she continued to meet their eyes with an air of confidence. She accompanied this with a vague smile intended to reassure them, convey the fact that they were on the same side – that they were together in this, side by side, standing against the sick person who … Side by side.

  The phrase caught her. Her hand shifted slightly, inching the envelope millimetres towards her. ‘Surely,’ she appealed, ‘you want this person found before …’

  Both women finally nodded.

  Martha’s toes had grown cold and she knew why they had capitulated. It was that one word. Before … Before what? Another one? Please God no. Out of nowhere she felt vulnerable and couldn’t understand why. Why did t
hat possibility seem so dreadful and also so personal? This could be nothing to do with her. But at the back of her mind she recalled Gina’s confident manner and loud laugh. There was one word that linked them.

  Status.

  Gina had had a lot to lose, as did she. Martha frowned and shook her head to the bemusement of the sisters.

  But now Amanda’s hand was also on the envelope, to stop it shifting further in either direction. ‘You promise …’ she reminded her. Then it turned into a question wanting confirmation. ‘You promise?’

  Martha nodded. ‘I promise. I will share these with the police and no one else. They will not be in the public domain, neither will they be published in the press. But if we can find this person, stop them ever doing this horrible crime again, your son’s death will not have been in vain.’ She hesitated before her next sentence but knew she must expose this possibility. ‘We can hope that with Patrick’s death these pictures will not surface on social media.’ She didn’t add that it was a vain hope but hurried on. ‘It’s possible there have been other victims in the past. It’s also possible there may be more planned in the future.’

  And then Amanda, in a silent gesture, pushed the envelope towards her. ‘Have it,’ she said bitterly. ‘I never want to see them again. Ever.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘It’s bad enough they’re in here.’

  Martha nodded and returned to the safe subject of the inquest. ‘Have you thought about someone to speak up for Patrick?’

  ‘His teacher.’ Melanie’s voice was harsher than her sister’s. ‘Mr Trimble,’ she said. ‘He was Pat’s form teacher. Pat thought the world of him. I’d like him to say a few words.’

  Martha nodded, understanding. At a guess Mr Trimble might even throw some light on the background to these photographs. She looked forward to meeting him.

  At the back of her mind was the solemn promise she had made to the sisters. I will share them with the police and no one else.

  She would have shared them with Alex (who was police) and no one else. Together they would have decided what to do. Now she had to make that decision alone.

  She covered a few more details but when the two women had left she still felt the heat of her own anger until she worked something out. Amanda and her sister had not destroyed the photographs. They had kept them and brought them here today, possibly intending to show them to her. Bridget Shannon might be more protective of her daughter’s reputation. Somewhere, if Gina Marconi hadn’t destroyed them herself, were there equally shameful pictures? Pictures which would destroy the little Shangri-La she and Julius Zedanski had mapped out for themselves? Or had she burnt them? An action that was probably futile – the person who shared these pictures would have plenty of copies. Backed up and stored ready for social media or any other cruel way of exposing. But why? What was the motive? Money? Blackmail? Patrick Elson wouldn’t have had any money to stump up, unlike Gina, so in his case blackmail was unlikely. And he didn’t exactly have a reputation to protect. At least not like Gina had. So was the motive simply to cause havoc? Destruction? Simple malice? A feeling of power? It was difficult to fit a twelve-year-old boy into the same frame as Gina. They moved in different circles. She had had power and opportunity, almost celebrity status, whereas Patrick was an anonymous child, an unknown. Was it possible that to preserve her future Gina might have been persuaded to commit a felony, bend the rules a little, distort the facts? Martha recalled the sound of that loud, uncontrolled burst of laughter at the charity evening. There had been something reckless about Ms Marconi. She could have been a risk-taker. But not Patrick. Not that serious, intelligent child. Gina might have perjured herself or kept silent over some inconvenient detail but again, not Patrick. So if there was a connection she must look around them. One thing struck her now. We all have our vulnerabilities. Alex’s was his wife. That was his weak spot. His Achilles heel.

  Mark Sullivan might already know why and how even though she had not yet discussed with him her idea that there was a link between the two suicides. But he was intelligent enough to have worked it out for himself. Perhaps he too had connected a) with b), unearthed cause and effect.

  So now she had to find Gina’s weak spot, the place where her defences might have been breached. And in Martha’s mind she had the feeling that it was Terence who was more likely to lead her towards an answer than his grandmother, who would be inhibited by overwhelming shame. She suspected the boy would be less inhibited. She also suspected he had more insight into his mother’s character than his grandmother. So how could she access him and persuade him to speak out when the law stated he must be accompanied by a responsible adult? And that responsible adult would inhibit him?

  Was she right? Were there, out there, similar photographs of Gina to the ones Amanda and Melanie had just produced? Or had Gina destroyed them?

  Vain hope.

  She would have been smart enough to have covered her tracks and destroy any photographs in her possession, but she would also have known that they could always exist somewhere, out there in the social media ether … if someone wanted them to be made public.

  The answer bounced back, as clear as a voice in her ear, mocking her. Gina wasn’t that smart. She fell right into the hole dug for her. She still died. Martha leaned back in her chair.

  This afternoon the office seemed stuffy with secrets. She needed air.

  Fortunately her office, based in Bayston Hill, a large village three miles to the south of Shrewsbury, was a Victorian house with a generous private garden. Sometimes when she saw clients, if the day was pleasant, she suggested they speak in this garden, and though the weather today was, frankly, cold and miserable, she still needed to be out there for clarity of mind and not for pleasure. She needed to fill her lungs with pure cold, clear air because she needed to think. She frequently had this moral dilemma arguing at the back of her mind. How much sordid detail did the dead and their families want exposed? As little as possible. But a coroner’s court is meant to provide answers. Gina and Patrick had both died because of some reason, some event in their lives and a threat. But how could she, as coroner, who boasted of her voice being the voice of the dead, go against their final wishes? That this event should remain hidden? When she had first left medicine and moved to the coroner’s office, in the years before he had died, she had discussed this problem with Martin. And they had recognized there is not one easy answer for all. Each case warrants individual consideration.

  She walked, noting with pleasure that her brain was clearing in the damp, pine-scented air that whistled around the garden. The bulbs which had struggled now pushed their way through chilly, wet earth, ready to bloom and welcome in the spring – when it returned.

  After a few turns along the paths she had made her decision, drawn up the battle lines and returned to her office, her head clearer now, her thoughts in order. Someone had been bullying Patrick. Someone had taken pictures and destroyed the poor boy. And she believed that someone had found out a shameful secret about Gina Marconi. While it was easy to see why Patrick had reacted in such an extreme way to his humiliation, Gina Marconi was a much more complex and intelligent character. She would have been quite an adversary. If she could have found a way to overcome this without sacrificing her life she would have done so. But she hadn’t. With all her intellect and cleverness, her talent as a criminal lawyer, this had been something which she must have known would destroy all that she held dear – her fiancé, her mother, her son. Her career even. And so, without explanation, she had decided to kill herself. How this malicious person must have revelled in her death. And everything threw up questions.

  Who was it? And had his motive been blackmail or simple spite? There would have been no point blackmailing Patrick. He would hardly have had access to funds. So in his case at least, the answer was simple spite.

  And if the same person had instigated both suicides, what was the connection between them? Or had the reasons behind them been different? A paedophile for one and a connection wi
th the criminal underworld for the other? Had one been a trial run? If so, she would have expected Patrick to be the first victim and Gina the second. But it had been the other way round. So who was the intended victim?

  And lastly, why was she trying to drag Erica Randall into this when the facts pulled her away? The answer was as obvious as the freckles on her nose. Because of Alex, whom she wanted to see off the hook. If her theory was right she could explain both Erica’s sad life and her death.

  And following the success of two of their plans who, she wondered, was the next intended target?

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Friday, 7 April, 1 p.m.

  She had waited long enough. Mark Sullivan would have completed his post-mortem on Erica Randall by now and written up his notes. Her fingers hovered over the keypad. She had no business ringing but she had to know. She simply couldn’t resist the urge.

  It took a while to be connected and she felt increasingly anxious, waiting and worrying what was going on. Then Sullivan’s hearty voice came on the line. ‘Martha.’ He sounded bright – a good sign? She was clutching at any omen.

  ‘I just wondered about DI Randall’s—’ She got no further before Sullivan dived in.

  ‘Yes – of course. I would have rung you later today but I’ve only just finished writing it up. Rather a surprise. Bit of a puzzle really.’

  Her heart sank. Oh, no. Not a puzzle. She wanted answers, not questions. Certainty, not uncertainty. She wanted Alex off the hook, his wife pronounced the victim of a tragic accident. Plenty of sympathy and he would be a man free of his damaged domestic situation.

  ‘How so?’ She wished she could have kept that tension out of her voice.

  ‘We-ell. Not to put too fine a point on it, there’s no doubt Erica Randall, poor thing, died from a broken neck consistent with a fall downstairs. It’s what came before that’s interesting.’