The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5)

by Hall, M. R.

  Forced to wait for answers, Jenny turned to the pile of other cases that sat accusingly on the corner of her desk. July, along with January, was the most popular month for death. Pneumonia took the old in winter; in summer it was heart attacks and infection. But it wasn’t only the old and sick that accounted for the rise. July was the month when the sunshine tricked the unwary into feeling invincible: they fell from ladders, crashed their motorbikes, tumbled drunk from balconies and drowned in rivers. Senseless, random deaths of the kind to which Jenny had never reconciled herself.

  She was studying a photograph of a young woman’s body – an evening of heavy drinking had caused the rupture of an undetected stomach ulcer, from which she had bled to death in her sleep – when she heard Alison’s familiar footsteps pass her window and stop at the front door. Jenny listened to her movements. She heard Alison hang up her raincoat and step through to the kitchenette to make tea. She seemed to open and close the cupboard doors with a forced measuredness that told Jenny she was working hard to keep whatever she was suppressing firmly under control.

  Her concentration disturbed by the tension, Jenny was eager to dispel it. She got up from her desk and went through to find Alison returning to her desk.

  ‘Good morning, Alison,’ Jenny said brightly.

  ‘Afternoon, I think, Mrs Cooper. Nearly one o’clock.’ Far from appearing depressed, Alison looked convincingly cheerful. Her face glowed with natural tan after a recent holiday in Cyprus, making her eyes appear startlingly white. Slim, tastefully dressed, she couldn’t have looked more vital or any less like the former detective she was.

  ‘Was it worth the trip?’ Jenny asked. ‘I didn’t get much joy out of Mrs Jordan. She was in no fit state for anything.’

  ‘Not much to see at the motorway. He was found about thirty yards from the bridge. He must have been swept along. Probably a lorry.’ She settled at her desk, surveying its tidy surfaces with a smile of satisfaction. ‘Did you notice I’d had a clear-out?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘You don’t realize how much rubbish you’ve built up until you come to get rid of it.’

  Jenny waited for the subtext to emerge, but Alison changed the subject and slotted a USB stick into her computer. ‘I got some good photographs of Jordan’s car, though – got there just before the police took it away.’

  She called the first image up on to the screen: an unremarkable shot of the abandoned Saab.

  ‘Should I be seeing something significant?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Where he left it, for one thing. He hadn’t gone as far as the car park. There’s a snaking driveway off the lane. He’d pulled up on the verge.’

  ‘What’s in the field behind it? It looks like an orchard.’

  ‘It’s been planted with young trees – each one’s a natural burial plot.’

  ‘Is that where the child was found?’

  ‘That was several fields away. It’s a large site. I think he must have wandered. The passenger door was left open – maybe to let air in. He might have managed to undo his seatbelt and climb out.’

  ‘But he’s tiny—’

  ‘The child seat was found with the buckle undone – look.’ She clicked to an image showing the child seat in perfect detail, the restraints hanging over its sides.

  ‘Or Jordan took the child with him out into the field, then went off alone,’ Jenny speculated.

  ‘Possibly.’ Alison was dubious. ‘It’s odd, though. You’d think he would either have made sure the kid was safe or have taken him with him. Look, he left his keys in the ignition.’

  Jenny scanned another picture of the front seats. On the passenger side were a sandwich wrapper, an empty carton of juice and two crumpled plastic water bottles. Suicidal, but not so thoughtless as to toss his rubbish out of the window.

  ‘I forgot to ask his wife where home is,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Bath,’ Alison replied. ‘I think Watling said she’s a postgrad at the university.’

  She clicked to the final photograph: a wider angle of the whole interior.

  Jenny studied it, aware of something feeling out of place. ‘There was an object hanging from the rear-view mirror – it was there on the police photographs.’

  Alison scrolled back through her pictures. ‘Was there? I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Jenny walked back into her office and called up the email from Gloucester CID. She opened the pictures taken by the police photographer, time-coded at 9.48 a.m. Hanging from the rear-view mirror was a wooden figurine. ‘Look – here it is.’

  Joining her, Alison peered at the monitor. ‘No, I didn’t see anything like that. Perhaps the police took it? It’s possible.’

  Before Alison could come up with an alternative explanation, the phone rang on her desk. While she hurried out to reception to answer it, Jenny zoomed in further on the figurine until, blurring at the edges, it filled half her screen. Close up it looked crude, something whittled at the fireside rather than a precious object. It hung from a rough leather thong attached to a small metal loop screwed into the crown of the skull.

  ‘It’s Mrs Jordan, for you,’ Alison called through. ‘She sounds a bit fraught. Shall I deal with her?’

  ‘I’ll take it.’ Jenny picked up the handset on her desk. ‘Mrs Jordan?’

  Karen Jordan responded in a dull yet determined, heavily medicated voice. ‘I want to see my husband.’

  ‘There’s no hurry. An identification can wait until tomorrow. Or perhaps he has another close relative—’

  ‘I want to see him now,’ Mrs Jordan said. ‘I have a right.’

  Jenny was in no position to dispute that.

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘At the hospital. Where else would I be?’

  ‘I can you meet you at the mortuary at two o’clock.’

  ‘Fine.’ She rang off.

  Jenny put down the phone to see Alison at the doorway. ‘You don’t have to do that, Mrs Cooper. I’ll go.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to her anyway.’

  ‘You’ve got more than enough to see to.’ Alison nodded at the untidy heap on Jenny’s desk. There was a hint of desperation in her offer, as if she couldn’t bear to be left in the office alone.

  ‘She’s expecting me. She’s very fragile.’

  Alison nodded, smiling so widely it threatened to crack her face, and turned back to her desk.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Jenny asked.

  She glanced back. ‘Perfectly, thank you, Mrs Cooper.’

  They both knew it wasn’t true.

  Karen Jordan was waiting alone outside the entrance to the mortuary, her pretty face as grey as winter. Jenny drove past in the Land Rover and parked behind the building, out of sight. She knocked at the service entrance that was used largely by undertakers and was shielded from the hospital car park by a pair of painted metal screens. It was a tawdry spot, littered with broken plastic cups and cigarette ends that the caretakers and cleaners seemed to have forgotten existed. The junior technician who opened the door looked surprised to see her there.

  She skipped the explanation. ‘I need to see Dr Kerr.’

  ‘He’s in his office.’

  Jenny stepped through into the loading bay, passing several bagged bodies stacked on the floor awaiting collection, and continued on into the main corridor. Andy Kerr came to the door of his office wiping crumbs from his mouth. How he could eat lunch at his desk with cadavers lying on the other side of the door was beyond her understanding.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Cooper. I was just about to call you.’

  She closed the door behind her, shutting out the worst of the mortuary’s nauseating aroma.

  ‘Did you find anything? His wife’s outside – I wanted to check.’

  ‘Nothing. That’s the oddity. No alcohol in the blood, no sign of drugs in the stomach. I got hold of his medical records, but apart from some harmless anti-malarials, he’s had nothing prescribed
in five years. No depression either, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Massive crushing injuries, and multiple haemorrhages. I’d say there’s more than a sporting chance he struck a vehicle before he hit the road.’

  ‘Had he eaten?’

  ‘A few hours before – maybe three. All that was in his stomach was water.’

  Jenny pictured the empty bottles on the passenger seat. ‘How much water?’

  ‘A cupful. It’s hard to say. It can take time to be absorbed after death.’

  ‘He’d walked a mile and a half from his car. There were two empty 300ml water bottles in it. Does that make sense?’

  ‘That seems about right.’

  Biologically perhaps, but Jenny wondered about a sober man who calmly drank water before hurling himself from a road bridge. The two actions seemed incompatible somehow.

  ‘He was an aid worker. He’d spent a lot of time in Africa, apparently. Might that make you look for something out of the ordinary?’

  Dr Kerr shook his head. ‘Forensically, all I found was trauma. Injuries aside, he was a perfectly healthy specimen.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘The boys have tidied him the best they could.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jenny said. ‘I know you’re crowded, but if you don’t mind, I shan’t be releasing the body for burial just yet. Not until I have some answers.’

  He gave a resigned smile. ‘What possible difference could one more make?’

  Jenny led Mrs Jordan in from the main entrance. The long walk down the corridor to the refrigeration unit took them past trolleys stacked two, sometimes three deep. At times such as this, when the mortuary was overwhelmed, the technicians employed what they called a carousel, giving each body that was more than a day old a turn in the fridge until it chilled down to below five degrees. Mrs Jordan passed them without a sideways glance, the light stolen from her eyes by sedating drugs.

  They arrived at the fridge. Joe, the junior technician Jenny had met at the door, slid open a tray on the bottom stack of three and gave Jenny a look, awaiting her instruction.

  Jenny turned to Mrs Jordan. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to identify your husband facially. I’d like to ask you to do it from his hands, if that’s possible.’

  Karen Jordan shook her head. ‘I want to see all of him.’

  Jenny glanced at the technician. ‘Can you show us the hands, please?’

  He leaned down to pull back the flap of plastic at waist level.

  ‘I said, I want to see all of him,’ Karen Jordan insisted.

  ‘I really wouldn’t advise—’

  ‘Are you telling me I can’t see my husband’s face?’ She spoke with a level and determined assurance that didn’t seem to come from the same woman that Jenny had met outside the paediatric ward. It was as if the drugs had allowed only the coldest part of her to remain conscious.

  ‘If you’re absolutely sure.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Jenny nodded to the technician, who pulled the flap back a little more.

  ‘All the way,’ Mrs Jordan said.

  The hands and arms came into view, and then the savage, crudely stitched autopsy scar than ran from neck to navel along the midline. A separate, oval-shaped piece of plastic covered the staved-in features.

  ‘I said all,’ Mrs Jordan said. ‘Do I have to do it myself?’

  She moved half a step forward. Jenny touched her arm, holding her back, and indicated to the technician to do as she requested.

  He lifted the covering clear. Jenny glanced away, but Mrs Jordan’s gaze held steady. She took in every detail, forcing herself to record the image that would never leave her.

  ‘It’s Adam,’ she said, then dipped at the knees and touched his still-perfect fingers with a whispered goodbye. As she straightened, she turned to Jenny and said, ‘I suppose we should talk. You probably know more than I do.’

  They sat in the staff section of the hospital canteen where they served strong, rich Italian coffee that wasn’t for sale at the public counter. Karen Jordan glanced out of the window, her expression saying she was trying to find something that would make sense of it all.

  Jenny said, ‘I spoke to a girl called Eda – at the office in London. She said your husband was there last week and in good spirits.’

  ‘He always was,’ Karen said. ‘He was laughing and fooling about with Sam when I left yesterday morning. He doesn’t—’ She paused to correct herself: ‘Adam didn’t get depressed. It wasn’t in his nature.’

  ‘Nothing had upset him recently?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not that he told me.’

  ‘No arguments?’

  ‘No . . . No more than usual.’ She pushed her hair back from her forehead, a nervous gesture. ‘We’re both busy with work, we’ve a young child – you know how it is.’

  ‘Was Adam good with your little boy?’

  ‘Always.’

  They lapsed into silence, Jenny beginning to feel that maybe it was too soon to push Karen for reasons. She had yet to encounter a suicide of a grown man that defied explanation, but sometimes it took a bereaved wife a little while to admit to herself that she hadn’t read the signs. The best Jenny could do was to ease the process along.

  ‘You should understand, Mrs Jordan, that people determined to kill themselves don’t want to be stopped. The pathologist found no alcohol or drugs in your husband’s system. He died in full control of himself.’

  ‘He hardly drank anyway. He certainly didn’t touch drugs.’ Karen Jordan seemed offended at the suggestion that he might have done.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything.’

  ‘We’ve known each other four years, been married for two, and for half that time he’s been in South Sudan. When he’s home we get along, and when he’s away . . .’ She faltered, aware that she’d mixed up her tenses again. ‘We didn’t know everything about each other, but who does? We didn’t choose to live in each other’s pockets, but Adam was very committed – to his work and to me. We trusted each other completely. We had no reason not to.’

  ‘And your marriage—’

  ‘We didn’t sleep with other people, if that’s what you mean,’ Karen Jordan said sharply.

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘Really?’ Karen looked at her accusingly. ‘It didn’t happen. The plan was that when I’d finished my PhD we were going to find an African project to work on together. We didn’t choose to live apart deliberately, it was just how things worked out.’

  She felt guilty. Jenny could feel it seeping its way out from beneath the chemical layers.

  ‘Eda Hincks told me your husband had been working with a man called Harry Thorn.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Karen answered flatly.

  ‘Were they close?’

  ‘They’d worked together for the best of three years. Ethiopia, then Sudan.’

  ‘You sound a little . . .’ Jenny searched for the appropriate word, ‘ambivalent.’

  Karen shrugged. ‘There’s no rule saying that only saints can work in the aid business.’

  ‘Would you like to tell me about him?’

  ‘About Harry? What for?’

  ‘I ought to talk to him, Mrs Jordan. It would help me to have some background.’

  She gave a reluctant sigh. ‘He’s worked in the field for over twenty-five years—’ She stopped herself mid-sentence. ‘I don’t want to talk about him. You can judge for yourself.’ She turned her gaze out of the window, retreating inwards again.

  Jenny said, ‘There was a wooden figurine hanging up in the car your husband was driving.’

  ‘What about it?’ she said, from far away. ‘It was just something Adam brought back from Africa.’

  ‘The police haven’t given it to you?’

  She shook her head, still distracted.

  ‘Does it hold any significance?’

  ‘It’s just a Dinka doll. I think someone out in South Sudan gave it to him.’ She breathed out sharply
.

  ‘Do you know who?’

  ‘No. He didn’t say.’ She was growing impatient. ‘I should be with Sam now. I have to go.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Karen pushed unsteadily to her feet, leaning on the table for support as she fought against the light-headedness caused by the drugs.

  ‘What’s “Dinka” mean?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘They’re a race of people who live in South Sudan.’

  ‘I suppose I should know that.’

  The widow looked at her for a moment as if there was something more she wanted to say but couldn’t find the words. And then, just as they seemed to form, a silencing shadow appeared to pass over her. She turned away, and walked quickly to the exit.

  FIVE

  JENNY HAD BECOME USED TO sleeping alone. During the rare nights Michael stayed over she would often find herself lying awake, disconcerted by his presence and unsettled by his fitful dreams. But after several weeks without his company the lonely ache returned and she wished he were next to her again. They had never settled anything that could be called an ‘arrangement’, but had simply fallen into an irregular routine of spending the odd night at each other’s homes, and somehow it seemed to work. Dr Allen had, of course, isolated the one problem that was nagging at her during their final appointment: she and Michael didn’t talk, or at least not in the way that lovers were meant to. When she had been married to David they had found themselves with less and less to say to each other except during their frequent and eloquent arguments. Her former lover, Steve, had been the opposite: sensitive and concerned, almost too eager to prise her open and share her most intimate thoughts. Michael was neither intrusive nor hostile; like her, he was naturally self-contained. And there was the nub: they ran on parallel rails. Both damaged goods, both healed just enough to get by, but both frightened of taking the next step for fear of missing it and finding themselves floundering in midair.

  Drawing back the curtains, Jenny blinked in the piercing morning light and looked out over the valley falling away from her window all the way down to the River Wye. Here and there clusters of stone-walled fields interrupted the ancient woodlands that had hugged the hills for millennia. A memory surfaced: she had been looking out at the same view on another summer morning with Steve. It’s all there waiting for you, Jenny, you just have to reach out and take it. For a moment she could almost feel his hands resting on her hips and the warmth of his breath on her neck, and she wished she had never let him go. He was living happily in France now with a beautiful young wife and a newborn; he had moved on, but she remained behind the same glass, still looking out. She caught her reflection ghosted in the pane: time was tugging at her face. She stiffened with defiance. She had to resist; she had to do something.