by M. R. Hall
‘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.
TWENTY-TWO
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 called 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.
‘You got the order, Mrs Cooper?’ Alison asked.
‘It’s pretty flimsy but I guess it’ll do. Have all the parties received it?
‘I just called both offices to confirm. It’s there, or at least a PA’s taken it off the machine . . .’ Alison paused. ‘You won’t have seen the Post, of course.’
Jenny felt a rising sensation of dread. ‘Why? What have they written?’
‘Are you sure—?’
‘Tell me.’
‘There’s a photo of you coming out of Weston police station. The article says you’re helping police with their inquiry into the death of your cousin in 1972 . . . It’s not so much what it says as the way they say it.’
‘Say what?’ Jenny snapped.
‘It says the case has been reopened following a complaint by the dead girl’s younger brother.’
‘What other lies have they printed?’
‘They quote someone—’
‘Just read it to me.’
‘A former colleague described Mrs Cooper, 43, as a somewhat driven but fragile character, who gave up a successful career in family law due to ongoing emotional problems exacerbated by an acrimonious divorce. She has one child of her own who lives with his father.’
‘That’s nice. No name?’
‘No.’
Jenny’s first thought was of Ross reading the article, or, more likely, one of his college friends taunting him with it. And then there was David and his prissy pregnant girlfriend.
None of them knew about Katy. Should she phone them? What would she say?
‘So, is any of it true, Mrs Cooper?’ Alison asked warily.
Avoiding the question, Jenny said, ‘Make sure you speak to my three witnesses. Offer them a ride to court in a police car if they’ve got a problem with it.’
She ended the call and thrust Katy out of her mind.
The firm of Kennedy and Parr occupied a smart Victorian building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a quiet, green oasis set behind the roaring thoroughfare of High Holborn. Like all the pleasant central London squares, it had been built to keep the rich insulated from the poor and it had succeeded. It was now home to expensive law firms and upmarket finance houses. Quiet, discreet and reassuringly solid, it was a place in which time seemed to have stood still, and where the wealthy came for succour and sanctuary.
Jenny stopped by the railings of the next-door building and searched her handbag for the Temazepam tablet she knew was in there somewhere. She found it wedged in the folds of her wallet and swallowed it dry. It was a drug for serious insomniacs which these days barely touched her. Another thing she’d have to deal with when this was all over. They were stacking up.
She approached the front door and was buzzed through without demur. She stepped over the threshold into a reception that resembled the set of a fashion shoot.
The receptionist had been chosen to complement her surroundings. Jenny approached her with a disarming smile.
‘Jenny Cooper.’ She handed a business card over the counter. ‘I need to speak to either Ed Prince or Annabelle Stern. I’m sure they’re expecting me.’
‘Take a seat.’ The girl motioned her to a sofa.
Jenny flicked through a pristine copy of Tatler as the girl phoned around the building, evidently being passed from one PA to another. It was a full five minutes before she had any joy. ‘If you’d like to pick up the phone, Mr Prince will speak to you.’
Jenny reached for the sleek handset sitting in the middle of the table. It felt unnaturally smooth to the touch, like alabaster.
‘Mrs Cooper?’ Prince bark
ed, making sure to have the first word.
‘I’ve trust you’ve seen the order made by Mr Justice Laith-waite,’ Jenny said, dispensing with the niceties. ‘I’d be grateful if you would comply. I’d like to take copy documents back to Bristol this afternoon.’
‘There’s nothing to copy. They were all destroyed months ago.’
‘If that’s true, I have to call you as a witness of fact, Mr Prince, and Ms Stern also. Are you in the building? If so, you could at least have the decency to conduct this discussion in person.’
‘It doesn’t matter where I am, there’s nothing to discuss. Number one, there is no evidence for you to see; number two, the order doesn’t say anything about lawyers giving evidence; and number three, I’d go to jail before I broke a client’s confidence.’
‘You may well have the opportunity to put those principles to the test.’
‘I doubt that, Mrs Cooper. I doubt that very much.’
Prince hung up.
Jenny marched over to the reception desk. ‘Please get me Ms Stern.’
‘She’s not available.’
Jenny said, ‘I’m here to enforce a High Court order. She has a choice: speak to me now or I’ll have her office door broken down by police officers.’
‘Just a moment.’ The girl dialled a number while Jenny drummed her fingers impatiently on the counter. ‘Is she in the building?’ Jenny asked.
‘Excuse me,’ the girl said and stood up from her chair. She opened a door behind her desk and went through.
‘Hey—’
The girl shut the door after her. At the same moment, a large man in a buttoned-up blazer which barely met across his pumped-up chest stepped out of a doorway next to the elevator. His plastic lapel badge read, ‘Kennedy and Parr, Security’. He walked towards her with no expression on his dull face.