by M. R. Hall
Alison handed him the handwritten list of people spoken to at the Mission Church of God on Monday, 10 and Tuesday, 11 May.
‘Yes. I wrote that,’ he answered.
‘Did you make any more detailed notes?’
‘Individual officers might have done, but if they didn’t form any part of the investigation they wouldn’t have made it into our files.’
‘What sort of notes might they have made?’ Jenny asked.
‘I had a team of half a dozen detectives. I sent three of them into the church to ask anyone who knew her if they had heard anything of interest, whether she was having a problem with anyone, that sort of thing.’
‘And this is a list of people they spoke to?’
‘It is. And we didn’t get anything out of it as I recall. We’d already established from Mr Strong that she’d stayed at home on the Sunday evening feeling tired, but that was about all of any use we learned there.’
‘Why was that useful?’
‘It wasn’t particularly. It just served to rule out everyone who was at the service. We had a time of death at about eight or nine p.m. The service wasn’t over until nearly ten.’
Jenny said, ‘One of the names on the list is Alan Jacobs. Do you know who questioned him?’
‘It was me. I had a list of people in her study group. There were about four or five names. I spoke to each of them.’
‘Do you recall the conversation with Mr Jacobs?’
‘Yes. I caught him at work, up at the Conway Unit. He was very helpful as I recall. He said that he had met Miss Donaldson a number of times in a group at the church, and that he’d been at the service on the Sunday night.’
‘Were you able to verify that?’
‘I think he gave a few names, people who confirmed he was there.’
‘You think?’
‘It was early days. If Craven hadn’t come forward so soon the investigation would have dug deeper. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary.’
‘Would you have made a note of the names he gave you?’
‘If I did,’ DC Stokes said, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got it now. It was just preliminary stuff, running around. You scribble something down or make a note on your phone and don’t necessarily hold on to it.’
‘You didn’t follow up on his movements or those of anyone else at the church?’
‘Not in detail, no, ma’am,’ the detective said with a shrug. ‘Like I said, we talked to lots of people.’
Jenny considered what a study group might mean. She assumed it was a sociable gathering and that the conversation must have drifted to the group’s families and work. It was hard to imagine Alan Jacobs and Eva Donaldson not having found each other interesting. It must have occurred to Jacobs that Eva could have served as an inspiration to many of the kids in his care, particularly the drug-addled teenage girls who’d have sold themselves for their next fix. And she in turn must have been intrigued by a man who worked with young people of precisely the sort her church was setting out to reach and help.
Jenny said, ‘It must have struck you that professionally at least, they had much in common. Did you ask him if he discussed his work with Eva?’
‘No. We didn’t get much beyond the basics I’m afraid.’ Ed Prince and his team were in whispered conversation with Fraser Knight and his solicitor. What the hell is she driving at? Prince was undoubtedly asking. Nobody seemed to have any answers. Neither did Jenny. There was only a hunch, a vague, uneasy suspicion that two deaths in one study group amounted to more than mere coincidence. She knew there were many more answers to come – her problem was finding the right questions. From his seat at the back of courtroom Starr held her in his calmly critical gaze, judging, assessing, and fiercely willing her on.
Michael Turnbull returned to the hall accompanied by his wife and Lennox Strong. The three seemed inseparable. As he came forward and prepared to testify, Jenny could tell that it wasn’t facing the court that daunted him, but the fact that his words would be broadcast around the world within moments of him uttering them. There was no room for error.
The consummate professional, Turnbull sat angled towards the jury, speaking to them as if they were concerned friends. Jenny wanted them to hear Eva’s story from his perspective and led him through the chain of events which had brought them together. Turnbull began by describing the occasion when Pastor Lennox Strong first introduced her to him. He had been wary at first, he admitted, but over the course of several discussions in the following weeks Eva convinced him that she had been led to the Mission Church for a reason: to combat the industry that was corrupting a generation. He offered up many prayers before presenting her to Decency’s board as a potential ambassador, but they were unanimous in their decision to take her on.
‘She made me rethink the whole issue,’ Turnbull said. ‘Before I met Eva, my focus had been on the damage done to consumers by this material, how it engendered brutal feelings towards women and led to a spiral of dishonesty and guilt. But I always struggled against well-intentioned, liberal-minded people, both men and women, who said the effect was the opposite; that tolerating pornography was a necessary part of a free and honest society. Eva’s argument was simple: no one can be set free by watching men and women debase themselves. To obtain pleasure from that is to be corrupted. That is how corruption works – by preying on our greatest vulnerabilities.’
Eva’s media appearances, Turnbull said, took the Decency campaign from a fringe group treated as an object of derision by the popular press to the heart of the mainstream. Here was living, breathing proof of the damage the so-called ‘adult entertainment’ business wrought. Without Eva Donaldson, he conceded, he would not, in only a few days’ time, be faced with the realistic possibility of taking the first steps to passing a stringent anti-pornography law. Her contribution had been nothing short of miraculous.
‘This was a multi-billion-pound business you and she were attacking,’ Jenny said. ‘You must have collected enemies.’
‘There was a steady stream of abusive correspondence, certainly.’
‘Were you aware of Eva receiving threats to her personal safety?’
‘Quite the contrary. Eva was deluged with messages of support. Much of it from men addicted to pornography. They wanted to be set free.’
‘But what about the vested interests, the companies such as the one Eva used to work for?’
‘They’re very sophisticated. Like the tobacco business, they hire lobbyists and seek to persuade politicians with the economic arguments. And no doubt they’ve prepared amendments to our bill designed to allow material which has passed certain ethical standards. If they play the politics right they could still be the big winners. Instead of a ban they would get regulation in exchange for legitimacy.’
‘So you’re saying they had no motive for silencing Miss Donaldson?’
‘I’m sure they would have loved her to support their compromise position, but I don’t think for a moment they thought she ever would.’
‘Do you think they might have tried to win her over?’
‘I can guess what you’re driving at,’ Turnbull said. ‘But I can assure you Eva was as committed as it was possible to be. No amount of money would have bought her. Ask anyone – once Eva was set on a course there was no persuading her from it. She had a will of iron.’
Jenny saw Kenneth Donaldson nodding in agreement.
She moved on, touching briefly on Eva’s financial problems, but Turnbull was dismissive, saying that if she had needed more money there were any number of PR companies who would have paid her many times the salary she earned from Decency. She was acting out a vocation; money wasn’t her focus.
She broached the issue of the tattoo, but Turnbull denied all knowledge and refused to speculate on her state of mind. He was her employer, not her confidant, he insisted.
‘Are you honestly saying you have no thoughts on what might have motivated her to have that tattoo?’ Jenny asked.
‘Yes.’
‘As far as her work was concerned, she remained determined and focused. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘You didn’t notice her showing signs of strain?’
‘She seemed to be coping well. But you have to understand: ours was a professional, not a personal, relationship.’
Resigned to the fact that Turnbull wouldn’t deviate from a well-rehearsed corporate line, Jenny moved on to the night of Eva’s death. Turnbull explained that he and his wife had been in London the previous day. Christine had caught the train home to Bristol on the Sunday morning. He had meetings to attend and had followed later in the afternoon. His driver delivered him straight to the Mission Church, where they met at approximately six-thirty. There were more than four thousand in the congregation that evening and the service lasted for several hours. It was after ten when he and his wife finally got to leave.
‘I understand Eva stayed at home that evening,’ Jenny said.
‘Yes. We’d hoped she’d say a few words about the campaign, but I got a message from the office to say she was feeling too tired after a weekend on the road.’
‘Who gave you the message?’
‘That would have been our administrator, Joel Nelson. I think he took Eva’s call.’
‘Did anyone else apart from you and Mr Nelson know that Eva was at home that evening?’
‘The entire congregation. As I recall, Lennox Strong made an announcement explaining that she couldn’t be with us.’
‘Had she done this before?’
Turnbull had to think before answering. ‘No, I don’t remember her having missed an important engagement.’
‘So this was a formal engagement?’
For the first time since he started giving evidence, Turnbull glanced at his lawyers, looking for a prompt. Jenny’s eyes were on Sullivan before he could offer one. Turnbull was left to answer alone.
‘Not formal in the sense that she was being paid for it,’ he said without conviction.
‘But she was expected to address the crowd?’
‘She had offered to.’
‘And instead she stayed at home and opened a bottle of wine.’ Jenny picked up the booklet of police photographs and turned to a shot with a clear view of the bottle. ‘It looks as if she had drunk about two-thirds of it by the time she died.’
Turnbull made no comment.
‘Was she much of a drinker, do you know?’
‘Not that I was aware of.’
Jenny studied the photograph again. There was a single, partially full glass of wine on the counter, and next to it a corkscrew and an ashtray containing several butts. On the counter opposite, a peninsula unit, was some broccoli wrapped in cellophane. There was no sign of cooking in progress. It looked as if Eva had opened the bottle and stayed at the counter drinking.
‘Lord Turnbull,’ Jenny said, ‘are you aware of any reason, other than the one Miss Donaldson gave, as to why she might have stayed at home that night?’
‘No.’
‘I see,’ Jenny said, leaving him in no doubt that she wasn’t persuaded. Up to her eyes in debt, alone, traipsing around the country delivering the same lines for an employer who refused to give her a rise: it was impossible not to suspect that Eva was becoming more than a little resentful. Added to the fact that two weeks before she’d had her crotch tattooed, it painted a picture of a young woman who was going through a rough patch of turbulence, to say the least.
Sullivan was the only lawyer to cross-examine. ‘Miss Donaldson’s indebtedness has been alluded to. Am I right in saying she wrote to you in November of last year asking for a pay rise?’
‘She did. I put the request to the board and they decided it would be inappropriate, given the fact that she had been employed for less than a year.’
‘How did she react to that refusal?’
‘She understood the reasons and accepted them.’ He turned to the jury. ‘Look, I think we have to acknowledge that we are talking about a fallible human being here, not a saint. Eva came under the same pressures as the rest of us.’
‘One more thing,’ Sullivan said, with a dismissive glance in Jenny’s direction, ‘I think what Mrs Cooper may have been intending to ask, but didn’t quite, is whether to your knowledge Miss Donaldson was planning to meet someone at her home the evening she was killed.’
‘I don’t know of any such arrangement.’
‘And she’s not the only one of us to have had a glass of wine alone at the end of a hard day.’
‘Quite.’
Jurors smiled. They liked the idea of Eva having an Achilles heel.
Christine Turnbull was just as skilful as her husband at evading the issue of Eva’s state of mind. Composed and dignified, she described a purely professional, arm’s length relationship between them. In her capacity as a member of Decency’s board, she met Eva mostly to discuss forthcoming engagements and to plan strategies with their media consultants. Eva had impressed everyone with her ability to operate under pressure without letting emotion intrude, which was a remarkable feat given her painful history. Their social contact had been limited to a few dinners and the odd cocktail party Decency had hosted at the Houses of Parliament. Even on these occasions their conversation had rarely become personal, let alone intimate. ‘I got the impression that in public she was above all concerned to maintain her dignity,’ Christine said. ‘To have discussed intimacies would have been out of the question. I’m sure there were people with whom she did have such discussions, but they weren’t with me. I think she saw me very much as an employer. She was comfortable with that, and so was I.’
Jenny said, ‘You didn’t try to establish a personal relationship?’
‘No,’ Christine replied. ‘Much as I liked her, it didn’t seem right. I’d go so far as to say that Eva preferred to have purely working relationships that didn’t cross borders. She had a very strong sense of propriety. It was one of the things I admired about her.’
Jenny could quite believe their relationship was a distant one, but not for the reasons Christine Turnbull gave. Surely they would have been wary of each other: Eva intimidated by Christine’s age and experience, Christine both intrigued and repelled by Eva’s years in front of the camera. Christine wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t wanted to know what it was like for a young woman to walk onto a crowded set and copulate with half a dozen men before lunchtime.
Wearing an open-necked ivory-coloured silk shirt beneath his black suit, Lennox Strong looked more like a TV host than a man of God. But Jenny’s hopes of getting him to shine a light on the Eva Michael and Christine Turnbull claimed not to know were soon dashed. He happily described the night when Eva first came forward to give herself to Christ, how he had laid hands on her and seen the burden lifted from her shoulders, but when Jenny asked him what they had discussed in subsequent conversations he answered with a phrase that had Ed Prince written all over it: ‘You’ll understand I’m not able to repeat things said to me in confidence in my role as pastor.’
‘Even after the subject is dead?’ Jenny pressed.
‘A confidence doesn’t end with the confider’s death,’ Strong said with a patient smile, ‘not unless that was her request. Eva never made such a wish, so her confidences go with me to my grave.’
For nearly half an hour Jenny pushed and probed for the slightest detail to prise open Eva’s mind. There were hints at her complexity – Strong described how writing their book on forgiveness had pushed Eva back to the brink of depression – but for the most part he described her as a woman who had embraced a simple, uncomplicated faith which she used to banish her past. She didn’t discuss her time in the porn business, Strong explained, because she didn’t want to dwell on it. ‘Through my own experience I was able to prove to her that God gives you the freedom to move on. You don’t have to drag the past around behind you like a ball and chain: that’s what being born again means.’
‘Can you say h
ow having the tattoo squares with leaving the past behind?’ Jenny asked.
‘I don’t have an answer, but I do have a theory. It’s not breaching a confidence to say that Eva and I had been talking about her future. She was thinking of coming to work for the Mission Church full time after the Decency campaign had finished. It was a huge step for her. The one bit of security she’d had in life was money. Working for the church would have meant she had enough to survive, but no more. When you’re making that sort of commitment you’re tested in all sorts of ways you’re not expecting. It’s as if you’re questioning every aspect of your character, peering into every dark corner. You ask yourself, am I truly worthy of this? Can God really want me, of all people? And that rebellious part of your spirit, it’s going to show itself one last time before you can put it away. That’s what was happening to Eva.’
‘Did you see any evidence of this “rebellious spirit” in her?’
‘Not explicitly, no.’
‘Had you noticed any change in her, anything of the mood Mr Turley detected when she came to his studio?’
‘Eva was just like the rest of us. Some days she was full of enthusiasm, other days the world got on top of her.’
He fell silent.
‘Mr Strong?’
‘You know, I don’t know if this is the right place to say it, but the reality for Eva was that she was in the middle of a battle. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to surround yourself with good and trustworthy people, evil’s always going to come and seek you out. That’s why we pray, every day, “deliver us from evil”; having faith alone is no protection, in fact it puts you on the front line. She was caught off her guard. She made one bad call and that was all it took; the enemy got her.’
There was a moment of stillness as all in the courtroom seemed to share in his grief; all except Father Starr, whose features remained as hard-set as the concrete in his cathedral.
As the pastor stepped away from the witness box and made for the exit with Michael and Christine Turnbull, Alison came and whispered to Jenny that police had gone to Freddy Reardon’s address but no one had answered; did she want to issue an arrest warrant? Jenny pictured officers arriving at the flat and staving in the door to drag a frightened Freddy to court.