by M. R. Hall
‘I do hope you haven’t been placed under any pressure, Mr Lynd?’
‘I’m really not at liberty to discuss this any further. I know it sounds odd, but that is the situation.’
‘Mr Lynd, either you make Eva Donaldson’s files available to my inquest in their entirety, or I will use the full force of the law to compel you. Do I make myself clear?’
With the pained expression of a man walking an excruciatingly fine line, Lynd said, ‘I understand your impatience, but if you were to take that approach I can tell you that it would trigger a different order of legal proceedings entirely.’
‘What kind of proceedings?’
‘Enforcement, I would imagine.’ Lynd spoke in such a way that suggested there was a subtext she was expected to understand.
The light slowly dawned.
‘Are you trying to tell me that there is some sort of court order preventing you from disclosing Miss Donaldson’s papers?’ Jenny asked.
Lynd gave her look indicating that even to answer that question was a risk he couldn’t take. She was left in no doubt: he had been gagged in a manoeuvre that only a lawyer of Annabelle Stern’s expertise could have executed.
‘I can’t claim to be an expert on the law of confidentiality, Mr Lynd, but I do know that there is no lawful means of putting Miss Donaldson’s papers beyond the reach of a coroner.’
‘Moot point, Mrs Cooper. And not one I’m willing to test,’ Lynd said.
‘And if I were to make the order here and now and summon police assistance to take the documents from the premises?’
‘I would pick up the phone to a judge.’
‘Any judge in particular?’
Lynd’s forehead creased with the mental effort of charting a course through his complex ethical dilemma. Whichever way he jumped, he risked being found in contempt of court, and many lawyers had been struck off for less.
Jenny said, ‘Don’t say anything. Just listen. I’m assuming there’s an injunction in force preventing you discussing or disclosing any documents relating to Miss Donaldson or her affairs, and I can guess who obtained it. I can also guarantee that the judge wasn’t told anything like the whole story, nor did he intend to derail a perfectly legitimate inquest.’
‘All logical conclusions,’ Lynd said, starting to relax a little now that she had retreated from her earlier threats.
‘I appreciate you can’t tell me who the parties were or even confirm that this injunction exists, but if it does, I’m sure it doesn’t contain a provision preventing you from naming the judge who granted it.’
‘Almost persuasive, Mrs Cooper.’ He glanced anxiously at his watch. ‘I think our time’s nearly up.’
‘Just a moment.’ Jenny fetched out her phone and speed-dialled Alison’s mobile.
She answered from her car.
‘Alison, I need police assistance at the offices of Reed Falkirk & Co., Montego House, Queen Square. Right now.’
‘Police? What for?’
‘To enforce an order for disclosure.’
‘Now, hold on a moment—’ Lynd protested.
Jenny cupped a hand over her mobile. ‘Yes?’
Lynd pressed his fingers to his temples in an agony of indecision.
‘Mrs Cooper?’ Alison’s tinny voice cut through the ominous silence between Jenny and Lynd.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have time for this. Alison?’
‘No!’ Lynd said. ‘Mr Justice Laithwaite.’
‘Thank you.’ Jenny spoke into her mobile. ‘Blank that last instruction, Alison. But I want you to call the Royal Courts and get me an appointment before Mr Justice Laithwaite. As soon as possible.’
She rang off and turned to Lynd. ‘If a single document goes missing from those files I will hold you personally responsible. Do you understand?’
‘I think you’ve made yourself perfectly clear.’
‘And by the way, I know about her dispute with GlamourX.’
Lynd’s mouth fell open: she clearly wasn’t meant to.
‘Someone left a letter in her personal papers. I’m presuming the £15,000 she owed you was spent dealing with the injunction. Hard to catch everything, I suppose.’
Getting up from the shiny table, Jenny paused. ‘One thing you might be free to talk about – Eva called the police on 15 March to complain that someone was harassing her. A male. Any idea who?’
‘I have no knowledge of any complaint,’ Lynd answered woodenly.
‘I don’t suppose you’d care to speculate as to who Eva had upset enough to want to kill her.’
‘Why do you say “upset”?’
‘I get the feeling she was a woman of extremes; you’d either love her or hate her, possibly both.’
‘No comment,’ Lynd said.
TWENTY-ONE
THE NEWS VANS AND PEOPLE CARRIERS had filled the clubhouse car park and spilled out along the litter-strewn margins of the road. Jenny arrived fifteen minutes late and was forced to carry her heavy briefcase and unwieldy box of documents fifty yards along the busy carriageway, an articulated truck threatening to pull her over in its slipstream.
Alison was waiting fretfully on the front step in her usher’s gown. ‘I thought we’d lost you, Mrs Cooper. The lawyers have been threatening to leave.’
Jenny offloaded the box on to her. ‘Did you make an appointment with the judge?’
‘I don’t think it’s going to be possible. He’s hearing applications this morning and checking into the Cromwell Hospital at three – gallstones.’
‘Great. Well, I’ll just have to catch him between the two.’
She pushed through the door.
‘I don’t think—’
‘It can’t wait,’ Jenny insisted. ‘Call his clerk and tell him I’ll come to his hospital bed if I have to.’
She opened the door to the hall and walked straight to her desk at the front, the hubbub of speculative chatter dissolving to an expectant silence as she took her seat and removed several legal pads and her copy of Jervis on Coroners from her briefcase. Ignoring the indignant lawyers, she addressed the jury.
‘I apologize for my lateness, but I can assure you that I’m as anxious as you are to conclude proceedings.’ Jenny turned to face the hall and saw that Michael Turnbull was present. ‘I see your client has finally arrived, Mr Sullivan.’
‘Good morning, ma’am,’ Sullivan said, with exaggerated deference. ‘I am glad to say that Lord Turnbull has indeed been excused parliamentary duties this morning.’
‘Then we’d better hear from him. Come forward, please.’
Turnbull made his way unobtrusively to the witness chair, smiling briefly in the direction of the jury before taking his seat. Ed Prince and Annabelle Stern sat side by side, watching their man closely. It was their moment of greatest danger and the tension was written in their faces.
‘We’ll deal with the issue of your contempt before we go any further,’ Jenny said. ‘The consequences of failing to attend were clearly stated in your summons.’
Turnbull stiffened. ‘If I might offer my apologies—’
Jenny cut him short. ‘I fine you the sum of one thousand pounds. You’ll arrange payment with my officer before leaving court.’
Turnbull made no comment, responding with a not quite contrite nod she could imagine him having practised with Ed Prince.
Jenny turned to her handwritten notes of Cassidy’s evidence, conscious that she was far from mentally prepared for the coming confrontation. You can get through this, she told herself. You’re the coroner, for goodness’ sake.
‘Lord Turnbull, you weren’t present, were you, when Miss Donaldson’s former partner, Mr Cassidy, gave his evidence?’
‘No.’
‘You might have heard that he stated his opinion that by the time of her death Eva didn’t have faith any more.’
‘That certainly wasn’t my impression,’ Turnbull said mildly. ‘In fact, I would say that her faith had never been stronger. Her efforts on behalf of Dec
ency were relentless.’
‘Campaigning for a ban on pornography doesn’t require religious faith.’
‘Eva was an ever-present member of the church. I never heard of her expressing doubts.’
Fighting the urge to go in hard at the outset, Jenny told herself to stay calm. Even the merest hint of bias would send Prince scurrying to the High Court; the Ministry of Justice would leap at the chance to remove her. She had to appear neutral, however hard Starr stared at her from his seat at the back of the room. She turned at the sound of Alison emerging from the office door behind her. She walked to her desk, giving Jenny a nod as if to say an arrangement had been made.
Jenny addressed herself to Turnbull with a renewed sense of purpose. ‘How would you describe her state of mind the last time you saw her?’
‘It would have been at a briefing session on the Friday afternoon. She seemed in very good spirits.’
‘Was she ever prone to mood swings?’
‘I think I have already stressed her levels of professionalism.’ He spoke to the jury: ‘I can only emphasize that.’
Jenny turned to the tab in her pad marked ‘Turnbull’, and brought up her notes of his previous evidence. ‘Perhaps if we can just revisit the night of her death, briefly. I know that you and your wife were at the church when you received the message that she was too tired to speak that evening.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Are you aware of any additional strain that she might have been under which caused her not to come to the service?’
Turnbull appeared to think hard for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Did she talk to you about her mounting financial problems?’
‘Not in any detail. I was aware there was an issue, but as I think Lennox tried to explain, she was considering her whole future. She clearly couldn’t live as she once had while working for an organization such as ours.’
‘Quite. But did you know, for example, that apart from mortgage arrears and other debts she had outstanding legal bills of nearly £15,000?’
There was a collective flinch from the Decency legal team. Annabelle Stern shot Ed Prince a frigid sideways look to which he didn’t respond.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Turnbull said with admirable calm.
He was good, Jenny thought. She could imagine him going as far in politics as he had in business.
Jenny continued, ‘Mr Cassidy said that in his experience of living with Miss Donaldson it was very out of character for her to miss a professional engagement. Would you agree with that?’
‘It was out of character, but not inconceivable. Her work for Decency affected her deeply. I would imagine she had become subject to all sorts of emotions she had simply shut down in her previous career.’
‘You only imagine, or you know that to be the case?’
‘I saw her looking tired and drained on occasions. People expected much of her and she gave it.’
‘That’s something I wanted to ask you about. She was the leader of a study group, two members of which have, it seems, committed suicide within days of each other. One was a young man of sixteen with a history of psychiatric problems, the other was a man in his thirties who worked as a senior psychiatric nurse.’
‘It’s very sad,’ Turnbull said. He struck a homely tone. ‘Look, churches like ours attract desperate and unhappy people, it’s only to be expected. It’s our Christian duty to do our best to help. It saddens me very deeply that these two were lost to us.’
‘Did Eva ever speak to you about either of them?’
‘No.’
‘But she would have been on relatively intimate terms with them.’
‘Prayer counselling has to be confidential. I’m sure if Eva thought either of them needed help she couldn’t give she would have urged them to get it elsewhere.’
‘You’re not aware of any unhealthy aspect to her relationship with these two, and I mean that in the broadest sense?’
‘The church has strict protocols. If there was any problem she would have gone straight to Lennox Strong.’
His delivery was flawless: distanced but compassionate, rational yet spoken with warmth. He was a hard man not to trust. Jenny’s every instinct was to tear the facade down: to make him explain the coincidence of the three deaths following so swiftly after one another; to ask him why Freddy’s psychosis had returned just as Eva was struggling with debts and crippling legal battles; to press him on the identity of the people with whom Jacobs had regretted becoming involved.
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?�
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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.