by M. R. Hall
‘Ma’am, as I see it, having been duly signed by eight of the jurors there is no possible ground for objection.’ The intervention came from Richard Cotterell QC, the smoothly understated lead counsel for the hospital trust. ‘Mr Walters’s outburst was unwarranted and intemperate, but hardly undermines the conclusion of the others.’
‘I agree, Mr Cotterell,’ Jenny said, her eyes still fixed mistrustfully on the silent lawyer next to Kelly Bradford. ‘The verdict will stand.’
As Bradford opened her mouth to renew her objections, her colleague held up a hand to stop her. They had fought and lost and it was time to throw in the towel with dignity. He patted Alan Thompson’s arm and whispered words of condolence in his ear.
‘I will overlook your rudeness on this one occasion, Ms Bradford,’ Jenny said, ‘but don’t expect me to be so forgiving in future.’
The young lawyer’s face reddened in anger and embarrassment. Behind her, reporters smirked.
Jenny once again began to read out the completed form of inquisition signed by eight members of the jury. It stated that Diana Thompson had died from a cardiac arrest during surgery and that her death was accidental. There were muted smiles and looks of relief on the faces of the hospital team. Simon Moreton, too, visibly relaxed. Alan Thompson, who had remained stoical throughout, broke down.
Jenny hastily concluded the formalities and dismissed the jury against the sound of a grown man sobbing like a child.
SEVEN
‘Well done, Jenny. Very deftly handled.’
Simon Moreton had invited himself backstage and insisted on taking Jenny for tea in the judges’ dining room. It was a place Jenny usually avoided. Judges, in her experience, formed a tight clique and tended to view coroners as their poorer, intellectually inferior cousins. Perhaps it was just a lack of confidence on her part, but when she was at Small Street, she tended to keep her own company.
‘Thank you.’ She took a sip of the lapsang souchong Simon had specially requested and tried not to wince at the unpleasant, smoky flavour. She preferred her tea strong, white and ordinary.
‘You don’t sound altogether convinced.’
He was right. She wasn’t. ‘I felt obliged to accept the verdict, but I suppose in an ideal world I would like them to have spent another hour or two making sure they were certain.’
‘But if you hadn’t taken their verdict immediately, they would have assumed that you weren’t happy with it.’
‘Which was one of several reasons I did what I did.’ She gave the tea a second chance. It hadn’t improved. ‘Just one of those cases, I suppose.’
Moreton gave her what he must have assumed was a reassuring smile. ‘You might as well share it with me, Jenny. Strictly entre nous.’
‘The one who stormed out, Walters – he had a point. The surgical team would have assumed her to be fit and healthy. It’s entirely possible they did cut a few corners.’
‘You can’t tell me that between you, you and Ms Bradford didn’t cross-examine every one of them to within an inch of their lives.’
Jenny had to concede that he was right. She had interrogated the evidence rigorously. The surgeon had spent nearly half a day in the witness box and the anaesthetist even longer. Their accounts and those of the nurses had been thoroughly consistent and never altered: Diana Thompson had died from a sudden, unexpected and catastrophic cardiac arrest that had defied all attempts at resuscitation.
‘Well then,’ Moreton said, ‘you’re merely suffering from an entirely understandable bout of excess sympathy.’ He took an appreciative sip of tea. ‘You’re a good person, Jenny. You’ve done an excellent job in a sticky situation, and for the sake of your continued sanity, you have to move on – and with a clear conscience.’
It was easy for Simon to say. He hadn’t spent the previous five days sitting opposite a thirty-four-year-old widower and father of three motherless children. But she kept these protestations to herself. Simon prided himself on never becoming emotionally involved in the work of the coroners he oversaw. Jenny also had another reason to keep her feelings private. She had strived hard over recent months to prove that she wasn’t the erratic, oversensitive female that Simon and, no doubt, the Chief Coroner, had previously assumed her to be. In fact, she had made a determined effort to appear as capable and responsible as she could. Perhaps it was something to do with being in a steady relationship for the first time since her divorce, or a function of slowly creeping away from forty-five towards the next unmentionable milestone, but from somewhere unexpected, she had developed a desire to survive in her career as the Severn Vale District Coroner. In future, she did not intend to risk her tenure, livelihood and sanity with every hard case.
‘You’re right,’ Jenny said, trying to appear cheerful. ‘Eight to two is an unequivocal verdict. My conscience should be clear.’ She corrected the note of ambiguity: ‘It is clear.’
Simon smiled gently and seemed to appraise her for a moment before satisfying himself that her sentiments were genuine. ‘Glad to hear it. Now then, you may not be surprised to learn that I didn’t cancel my tennis match with the Cabinet Secretary this afternoon just to watch you in action, however much of a privilege that always is.’
Sitting in the judges’ dining room wasn’t good for Simon. It encouraged his florid tendencies. Over a drink in a pub he was capable of being perfectly human.
‘I’m not in trouble, am I?’ Jenny hastily ran through a mental list of her recent inquests. Some had been knotty, but so far as she knew, none was controversial enough to bring Simon running all the way from London.
‘Quite the opposite.’ Simon’s eyes brightened as he leant forward and knitted his fingers on the starched white tablecloth. ‘We received very complimentary reports from your performance on the training course back in the spring. I don’t think we’ve had a chance to discuss it. So, what did you think?’
‘I enjoyed it,’ Jenny lied politely. ‘I met some very interesting people and learned a lot I didn’t know.’ She hoped to sound enthusiastic without overdoing it. The fact was, she had found the whole experience slightly sinister. She had been chosen to be one of the dozen or so coroners who were to receive special instruction to qualify them to conduct military inquests. Given her past reputation as a headstrong boat-rocker, she was astonished to have been selected at all. She had assumed that she had been included to make up the female quotient.
The course had taken place over an intensive eight days at Magdalen College, Oxford during the student vacation. Quite literally cloistered in splendid medieval surroundings, the trainees had been subjected to an intensive series of lectures and seminars given by various military bigwigs, government lawyers and shadowy officials from the Ministry of Defence along with a handful of tame coroners who had managed to conduct inquests into the deaths of military personnel without making political waves or awkward headlines. A few relatives of young men and women killed in action had made brief walk-on appearances, but Jenny had gained the impression that their contributions had been carefully stage-managed to give the best possible spin. If they were to be believed, they all trusted the military authorities to be nothing less than entirely truthful at all times. Their only complaint was that the coroners they had dealt with seemed to lack understanding of life in the armed services. The principal lesson Jenny had learned was not one the organizers had intended to convey: the military didn’t much care for its business being pried into by civilians. In fact, it was positively hostile to the idea.
‘How would you like to put it into practice?’ Simon asked delicately.
The way he posed the question without referring to specifics told her there must be a catch. But as one of the chosen twelve, she could hardly turn him down.
‘I’d be glad to.’
‘Excellent. That’s what I hoped you’d say.’
‘Do you know Highcliffe? North Somerset. Don’t you hail from that neck of the woods?’
He had clearly been digging deep into her file.
‘A garrison town. And a tight-knit one at that,’ Simon pronounced. ‘There was a young man killed in Helmand yesterday, twenty-four hours before his company was due to fly home. We thought someone with a touch of the local burr might be what’s called for.’
‘The “local burr”?’
‘You’ll be trusted, Jenny. Feet firmly rooted in Somerset soil and all that. We’d like the family to feel as if they’re being looked after by one of their own. They’ll be terribly traumatized.’
Jenny had never thought of herself as rustic, or even realized that she still carried more than the merest hint of her childhood accent. But evidently to Simon’s sophisticated London ears, there was no doubting that she was a West Country girl. It was a revelation. She wasn’t sure whether to feel insulted or oddly proud.
‘As I said, I’m happy to take the case, but I can’t help feeling there’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘Not really.’ His obfuscation was transparent. ‘The only slight wrinkle is the time issue. We’d like it all tidied up within the next few weeks.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘We’re wrapping up our operations in Afghanistan. The Secretary of State wants it all to end on a high note. No sour aftertastes. Quite right, too, given all the sacrifices our people have made.’
‘I’m going on holiday next week. My first in years.’
‘Oh? Where?’
‘Italy.’
‘Splendid. But far nicer in the autumn. No mosquitoes or bad smells. Still warm enough for cocktails on the terrace.’ His expression became serious. ‘Jenny, please. We’ll meet the expense. I’m asking you as a friend as well as a colleague – I really would appreciate you taking this one for the team.’
She knew that she was being given no choice.
Five minutes later, Jenny found herself in her office with Simon and Alison, being handed a fait accompli. She was to adjourn the one remaining inquest on her current list and start the military case immediately. A file of highly confidential documents would be couriered to her office shortly. Her initial point of contact was to be Sergeant Steven Price. He was the regiment’s Notifications Officer and had been appointed official Army Liaison Officer to the Coroner. The idea seemed to be that he would operate as a sort of second coroner’s officer alongside Alison. This wasn’t the only novel aspect of the procedure – she was to be based not at her Bristol office, but at Highcliffe Camp itself. She and Alison would be provided with rooms in the administration block and the hearing would take place in the regimental hall.
Simon seemed thoroughly satisfied by these arrangements but Alison was not. The moment he left to be whisked back to London in a chauffeur-driven government car, she delivered her verdict: ‘It’s not an inquest they want, Mrs Cooper, it’s a whitewash. And if you’re the one who delivers it, it’ll look whiter than white, won’t it? The whole thing stinks, if you ask me.’
‘You’re not looking forward to having a colleague, are you?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Alison said. ‘No one tells me what to do.’
Jenny believed her.
It was oppressively hot and the traffic was heaving. Jenny wound up the air conditioning and endured an agonizing forty-minute crawl along the Portway as she tried to escape the city. The sight of the softly swaying trees that lined the Avon Gorge and the glints of sunlight off the river made her confinement in the car even more painful. She was longing for fresh air, loose clothes and the feel of grass beneath her feet. She finally left the traffic behind as she left the northern outskirts of Bristol and headed along the motorway towards the Severn Bridge. Ten miles further on, its twin supporting towers soared against a clear blue sky. Striking out across the mile span of the estuary, Jenny felt the weight of the previous weeks’ work lifting from her shoulders. She would be starting a new and no doubt harrowing case in the morning, but at least it involved a change of scene and she would no longer be cooped up in the stuffy court building.
The final stage of her evening commute took her beyond the Welsh border town of Chepstow that sat at the foot of the hills on the far side of the bridge, and northwards along the Wye Valley. This was her favourite part of the journey: the winding road beneath the forest canopy felt like a tunnel connecting her workaday world to a brighter one beyond. Since the burnout seven years ago that had prompted her to gather up the fragments of her life and move from Bristol over the water to Wales, Jenny had come to think of this valley as her refuge, her sacred wilderness. Each morning she drew on its beauty as she made her way to work, and each evening it soothed away her tension as she returned. Five miles further on, she emerged from the trees into the riverside village of Tintern, from where she made her way up the steep, narrow lane that led to her home. By the time she arrived at Melin Bach, her stone slate-roofed cottage set amongst meadows and woods, she felt almost whole again. Her only immediate problem was how to break the news to Michael that Italy would have to wait.
Michael’s car was parked on what remained of the old cart track at the side of the house but there was no sign of him indoors or outside in the garden. Jenny guessed he had taken off into the woods for one of his walks. A former RAF pilot, he now worked long hours for a small airline that specialized in high-value and time-critical freight. Because of his military background, his employers expected him to keep flying when others wouldn’t. A series of fierce summer storms over continental Europe during the past fortnight had not prevented Michael from continuing to ferry cargoes of rare pharmaceuticals and specialist medical equipment from Zurich to destinations as far apart as Athens and Oslo. Jenny had frequently woken in the night to imagine him bumping through thunder clouds, the instrument panel a blur in front of his tired eyes.
She quickly showered, changed into a cotton dress and took a cool drink to the rough pine table in the garden together with the file that Simon had had sent to her office. It was a glorious summer’s evening. Warm sun, a clover-scented breeze, sheep grazing in the meadow that surrounded her half-acre of garden and tiny trout making ripples in the stream at the end of the lawn. Almost too perfect to spoil by thinking about work.
The documents in the file were thankfully few and brief. There was a short dispatch from the company commander, Colonel Hastings, an official confirmation of death issued by a military surgeon at Camp Bastion and a copy of the army’s slender personnel file on the dead soldier, Private Kenny Green. Skimming through the details, Jenny learned that Kenny had recently turned twenty-one, that he had joined the army at seventeen and that at the date of his death he was at the end of his third tour in Afghanistan. He was single, but the next-of-kin was nevertheless recorded as, ‘Sarah Tanner, fiancée’. In terse, military prose, Colonel Hastings described the circumstances of the fatal incident as he understood them:
Following the suspected kidnap of Pte Lyons (23135627), Pte Green (21913408) was one of a multiple led by Maj Norton (542461) which attempted to secure his release. The patrol travelled 2 km from the PB to the village of Shalan-Gar where intelligence suggested Pte Lyons was being held. The objective was to negotiate with kidnappers through the village elder, Musa Sarabi. Once inside the compound the multiple was engaged by small-arms fire and grenades. Pte Green sustained a single fatal GSW to the head. Ptes Roberts (31134626) and Carter (33245726) also sustained serious injuries assessed as T2. All casualties were extracted by MERT within 20 mins of initial contact. Lessons learned report to follow.
The military surgeon had inspected Green’s body some two hours after the incident in the hospital at Bastion. He stated that the medical officers who arrived at the scene found Green already dead from a single bullet wound to the head. Death was judged to have been instantaneous. An official note added at the foot of the document confirmed that the body had been cleared for immediate repatriation.
‘There you are.’
/> Jenny looked up with a start. She had been so absorbed that she hadn’t heard Michael approach.
‘Still working? I thought you were getting a verdict today?’ He leaned over to kiss her cheek.
‘We got there in the end. Accidental death.’
‘That’s what you were expecting, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes . . .’
Michael sat in the other lawn chair next to her and tilted backwards, soaking up the sun. ‘I can’t tell you how good it feels knowing I’m off the hook for another couple of weeks.’
Jenny felt a painful pang of guilt. She knew she should get the bad news over with but didn’t like to spoil the moment. He looked so content. So at peace with himself.
Michael reached over and touched her hand. His skin was warm from the exertion of his walk over Barbadoes Hill. ‘When we hit the beach I was thinking of hiring a boat. Have you ever sailed?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘You’ll love it. Skim over the waves for a while. Drop anchor in a little secluded bay. Sip a cold beer watching the sun go down.’ He seemed to sense her rising tension. ‘I didn’t see “MOD” on that file of yours, did I?’