A Life to Kill

by M. R. Hall

  Jenny winced as she opened the lengthy document Dr Kerr had sent her. It included a full set of autopsy photographs. The first showed Kenny Green’s body laid out naked on the stainless-steel table. The last showed his brain in a kidney dish – two flagged pins marked the entry and exit wounds. In between were pictures of each of his vital organs as they were weighed, examined and cut into sections. Post-mortem was a brutal procedure, as close to butchery as it was to surgery.

  Skipping quickly to the substance of the report, Jenny noticed that Kenny Green weighed only 65.2 kilos – not quite 10st 4lb. It was very low for a young man over six feet tall. The alcohol finding was included in the Histology section: 15mg/100ml of blood. The legal limit for driving a car was 80mg, suggesting that this was indeed a morning-after residue. It wasn’t much, but added to the finding under Hair Analysis that recorded THC Metabolites detected at 3pg/mg. It painted a picture that Major Norton would have great difficulty explaining away. Her eye was then caught by a short sentence in the penultimate section of the report, headed, Other Comments and Observations. It read: Small amount of broken glass found in left breast pocket of tunic – approx. 12g. She checked back and saw that two of the three bullets that didn’t make it through Kenny Green’s Kevlar vest had struck the left side of his chest. She scribbled a note to investigate further.

  Jenny turned at the sound of the door to the corridor being opened from the outside. She felt her hackles rise as she braced herself for an intruder, but it was Alison who tiptoed in. She pointed to the connecting door.

  ‘It’s all right, he’s still out,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Sure?’ Alison mouthed.

  ‘Yes. What’s going on?’

  ‘I went to have a word with Danny Marsh,’ Alison said in barely more than a whisper, just to be on the safe side. ‘Tracked him down at the pub. He’d had a couple, but he started to talk about Norton – said he’s trigger-happy, loves a fight. It sounds like he pushed them so hard some of them ended up with a bit of a screw loose.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He seemed to be saying that if you’re involved in that much action, you can end up with a death wish. He’s not in a great way himself. I suppose there’s only so much one lad can take.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll say it again on oath?’

  ‘Maybe if you feed him three or four pints first. But I wouldn’t bank on it.’

  ‘Oh, well, it’s good to know, I suppose.’

  ‘How was court?’ Alison asked.

  ‘We won.’

  ‘Fantastic!’

  ‘Not really, as it turns out. Hastings released his document but it doesn’t tell us anything we haven’t already learned. The only explanation he gives for Private Lyons’s disappearance is “possible lapse in vigilance”. Kenny Green’s post-mortem is more interesting, though – he had traces of alcohol in his blood and his hair sample tested positive for THC.’

  Alison’s misaligned eyes stared back at her in disbelief. ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘I’ve never known Andy Kerr to be wrong.’

  ‘No wonder taking their statements was like pulling teeth. They could be court martialled.’

  Jenny nodded, and felt herself shudder at the prospect of the press getting hold of this information.

  ‘What are we going to do about Sergeant Price?’ Alison said. ‘You don’t want him seeing this report yet, do you?’

  Deception went against the grain, but in this case Jenny didn’t see much alternative.

  ‘I’ll produce an edited version. He can see that. I also want to hold a preliminary hearing first thing on Monday morning. There are some directions I need to give.’

  ‘I can guess,’ Alison said.

  They both fell silent at the sound of Sergeant Price returning to the next-door office.

  His chair scraped on the polished wood floor as he sat at his desk.

  ‘Set the wheels in motion,’ Jenny said.

  They exchanged another look, understanding each other perfectly.

  Chris was upstairs in the bath. He had been in there for an age. Melanie Norton eyed the unopened bottle of wine on the counter as she peeled potatoes. Her rule was, and always had been, nothing to drink before dinner. She tried to keep to one glass, only occasionally allowing herself a second on a Friday or a Saturday night, but Sundays and Mondays were strictly dry. It was a rigid system she had adopted to prevent herself ever going the way of her mother, whose sudden death aged forty-six came after years of secret, heavy drinking. Like her, her mother had suffered during the lonely months when her husband was away. But unlike her daughter, she had sought the company of other men. Now and then, at unprompted moments, Melanie would recall the crippling shame of coming home unexpectedly from school one afternoon, to hear her mother upstairs with a lover.

  Somehow her father had managed never to see beyond the pretty frocks and pasted-on smiles. The two of them had seemingly inhabited parallel realities. Military couples could do that. For the ones that stayed the course, it was their distinguishing feature.

  The wine was beckoning. Just a single glass would dissolve the pain and give her all the artificial cheer she would need to steer Chris and the girls through dinner. She felt her willpower dissolve. She pulled herself back from the brink. No. It wasn’t the answer. She needed to deal with the problem. Talk to him straight. Tell him that he was clearly traumatized and in need of help. If he wouldn’t take steps to get it for himself, she would arrange it. She quartered the last potato, placed the pan on the stove and steeled herself to confront him.

  Melanie tapped on the bathroom door. ‘Chris? Can I come in?’

  ‘Hold on.’ She heard him lean over and slide back the bolt. ‘It’s open.’

  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. He was lying chest-deep in the tub. Even after a week of home-cooked food there was no flesh on his bones. His skin was stretched tight across his ribs. His eyes seemed unnaturally large in his hollowed-out face.

  ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Chris?’ Melanie said with concern. ‘You really don’t look well to me.’

  ‘Just a little tired.’ He seemed impatient at her presence.

  She sat on the side of the bath and realized that she was still wearing the blue striped apron she wore around the kitchen. ‘Not my best look – sorry.’

  ‘I’ll be out in just a moment. Must have got lost in thought. A lot on my mind.’

  Melanie tried not to look too closely at his emaciated body, but she couldn’t help noticing that he was a mass of goose flesh. She dipped her fingers in the water. ‘It’s cold. What are you doing in a cold bath?’

  ‘Is it? I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘It’s stone cold. How could you not notice?’ She touched his arm. ‘And so are you.’

  ‘It was hot in Helmand,’ he said. ‘Forty degrees through the night. You dream of being cool.’

  She took hold of the chain and pulled the plug. ‘Well, it’s certainly come true. Come on. Get out before you catch your death.’ She reached for a towel but felt his icy fingers snatch hold of her wrist. ‘I am perfectly capable of bathing myself.’

  ‘Ow! You’re hurting me.’

  He let go. ‘Sorry . . .’

  Melanie rubbed at her sore skin. She saw that he was breathing rapidly. His pupils were wide, like black saucers.

  ‘You need to see someone, Chris – to help you unwind. I’ve never seen you this way after a tour. You need to talk about it with someone professional before it turns into anything worse.’

  ‘You want me to see a shrink?’

  ‘Or a counsellor. Someone. Yes, I do.’

  He inhaled deeply and brought his rapid breathing under control. ‘If that was what I needed, darling, believe me, I would have no objection.’ He smiled, as if the very thought of it were absurd.

  ‘What happened, Chris? You can tell me. I’m your wife.’

  ‘Mel, I can assure you – apart from feeling a little undernourished, I
feel absolutely fine. If I’ve seemed a little distant, I apologize. Frankly, I’m exhausted.’ He stood up and stepped out of the bath. He reached for a towel with a look that said he would now like to be left alone.

  It was no good. There was no getting through to him.

  Melanie went back downstairs to check on dinner. She poured herself a large glass of Merlot, swallowed it in three mouthfuls, then poured another. Then, ashamed of herself, she stowed the open bottle out of sight at the back of the cupboard under the sink.

  SEVENTEEN

  Jenny drove to work on Monday morning in the afterglow of an unexpectedly romantic weekend. Michael had prised her from her study, led her on a long meandering walk, cooked dinner on the outdoor barbeque he had built earlier that summer and told her she was the only woman he had ever truly loved. Lolling on the warm grass, watching the sun go down, they had both agreed that Italy wasn’t a patch on the Wye Valley and almost convinced themselves that they had forgotten the disappointment of missing their holiday. She arrived energized and rejuvenated outside Highcliffe’s old magistrates’ court.

  ‘I’m glad someone’s smiling,’ Alison said, as they met on the front steps of the building. ‘There won’t be many on the faces of the lawyers this morning. They don’t take kindly to being dragged down from London at short notice – especially when they don’t know what for.’

  ‘They’ll find out soon enough.’

  She followed Alison through the large oak doors into an impressive lobby. ‘Wow – is this a court or a museum?’

  A statue of a long-forgotten dignitary stood in the centre of the marble floor. An elaborate oak staircase with ornately turned balustrades wound up to the courtroom on the floor above. The building had been erected in the early 1800s when Highcliffe had been a prosperous trading port and crime was sufficiently rife for the town to hold quarterly assizes. For hosts of smugglers, roistering sailors, prostitutes and petty thieves, this would have been the last stop before the gallows or a creaking, stinking prison ship bound for the colonies.

  ‘We’ve had worse, Mrs Cooper,’ Alison said.

  It was certainly in a different league from the draughty church halls in which Jenny had held many of her more challenging inquests. She continued up the stairs, passing beneath a vast and splendid portrait of Admiral Horatio Nelson.

  Jenny gave Alison strict instructions that she was not prepared to meet with any of the lawyers before the hearing and retreated to the office that had been the original judge’s chambers. A polished mahogany table with four chairs occupied the centre of the high-ceilinged room. A portable gas fire sat incongruously in an elaborate, now redundant, marble fireplace. A set of glazed bookcases contained a set of All England Law Reports and an extensive set of volumes, bound with tooled leather, containing the annual records of the Highcliffe Assizes beginning in 1810 and ending in 1939.

  It was odd to think that this was the room to which judges had retired before delivering sentences of death. She wondered what some of the old boys would have made of her. Not much, she guessed.

  As she unloaded her files from her briefcase, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She drew it out to find a text from Michael: ‘No fear! Love you. M x.’ She was touched. She could count the number of spontaneous messages he had sent her. Then she remembered he was attending a biannual medical that morning. He was probably sitting in a doctor’s reception with only his phone to amuse him. Still, she appreciated the sentiment.

  It was scheduled as a brief hearing formally opening the inquest, but with five minutes to go, Jenny felt a familiar flutter of anxiety. She could hear the voices in the courtroom from across the passage. She felt irrationally self-conscious and empty-headed. In the past, she had tried dosing herself with pills to counter this stage fright. It had proved a poor sticking plaster. Experience had taught her that the only effective method of overcoming it was to let the fear flow freely and to allow the imagination its full rein. For several minutes before entering court, her mind would flood with increasingly disastrous scenarios of public humiliation; her heart would pound, her palms sweat, and then, as the crescendo of panic threatened to overwhelm her, it would recede as quickly as it had arrived.

  Alison chose the moment shortly before this turning point to knock on the door and announce that everyone was ready for her.

  ‘Just a second.’ Jenny pretended to be searching for something amongst her papers. Beneath her calm exterior, her heart was still thrashing.

  ‘There’s quite a crowd,’ Alison commented. ‘Even Colonel Hastings turned up. I wasn’t expecting that. I left Sergeant Price looking after him – thought it was the best way to keep them both out of your hair.’

  None of this made Jenny feel any better.

  ‘All right?’ Alison prompted.

  No, was the truthful answer, but there was no point cowering. Jenny gathered up her file with trembling fingers and told Alison she was ready.

  They crossed the narrow corridor and, for a tense moment, Jenny waited like an actor in the wings while Alison went ahead and issued the instruction: ‘All rise.’

  Jenny entered, her legs wanting to buckle beneath her, and took her seat at the head of a full courtroom. Among the sea of faces she immediately picked out those of Paul and Rachel Green and, several seats away from them, Sarah Tanner. In the rows behind them were numerous young soldiers with their wives and partners. Seated at the rear of the room were half a dozen or so senior officers. Jenny spotted Hastings at the end of the row next to Major Norton, but there was no sign of Lieutenant Gallagher. In amongst the crowd there would be a number of reporters, some of whom, she could be sure, would be relaying proceedings in real time over social media.

  A silence descended. Jenny felt the weight of expectation on her shoulders.

  ‘Good morning, everybody,’ she began, then paused to swallow. ‘This is a short hearing, the purpose of which is formally to open my inquest into the death of Private Kenneth Green, aged twenty-one years and three months, who died in Shalan-Gar, Helmand, Afghanistan, on the morning of 22 August this year. He was, of course, on active service at the time. I propose to begin the full hearing later this week once some preliminary matters have been dealt with.’ She turned to address the lawyers. ‘Could the legal representatives please introduce themselves.’

  Robert Heaton QC was their nominated spokesman. ‘Ma’am, I, together with my junior, Mr Cameron Clark, represent the Ministry of Defence. Mr Claydon White and Ms Carrie Rhodes appear for Private Green’s fiancée, Miss Sarah Tanner.’

  Claydon White rose to his feet. ‘Ma’am, before we go any further – if indeed we are going any further – there are two urgent matters I wish to raise.’

  ‘If you’re quick, Mr White.’

  ‘Firstly, this . . .’ He snatched up a thin document from the desk and held it at arm’s length. ‘A young soldier dies. Two more sustain life-threatening injuries. A colonel holds a lessons-learned inquiry, and we are expected to believe that this is all he comes up with. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, or which alternative is more shocking.’

  Jenny held up a hand urging Robert Heaton to remain in his seat. ‘Mr White, I’m sure we’ve all got questions about that document and the discussions that preceded its writing. I suggest we deal with those at the next hearing.’

  ‘Ma’am, the order of Mrs Justice Talbot was for full discovery. If that has not been complied with, it is a serious matter of contempt, and a potentially imprisonable offence. I need my opponents and Colonel Hastings to be aware of that fact.’

  Robert Heaton rolled his eyes wearily. Colonel Hastings, and next to him Major Norton, remained impassive.

  ‘Point taken, Mr White. We’ll deal with this later in the week. And please, although you may be in the habit of issuing sound bites in other courts, please try to keep them to a minimum in mine. They don’t impress me, and they certainly won’t help us get to the facts.’

  Claydon White took the blow on the chin and responded with a dis
arming smile. Jenny refused to soften. ‘Your second point?’

  ‘We are all still waiting for the post-mortem report, ma’am. I’m sure there can be no disagreement that it is customary to release the pathologist’s findings before an inquest begins.’

  ‘If you’ll be patient, Mr White, I’m coming to that.’ From her file, she produced copies of Dr Kerr’s full report, though with the photographs omitted for the time being. She nodded to Sergeant Price, who was seated next to Alison on the court clerks’ bench, and asked him to distribute them to the lawyers and family members. ‘You will see that much of what the report contains is relatively straightforward and uncontroversial, however the histology and hair analysis findings are not.’

  The lawyers hurriedly scanned the report’s pages. There was a long moment of silence as they read, reread and digested the salient information. Then Claydon White and Robert Heaton leaned towards one another and engaged in an intense whispered conference. Meanwhile, the officers at the back of the court exchanged puzzled glances. Jenny saw Colonel Hastings turn to Major Norton, who shrugged.

  Jenny pressed on. ‘The report’s findings are matters for exploration later this week, but in the meantime I am making the following order—’

  Robert Heaton shot to his feet. ‘Ma’am, on behalf of my client I make formal application for a further post-mortem examination by a pathologist of my client’s choosing.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Claydon White added.

  ‘And in the meantime, we would be grateful if the contents of this report were to remain undisclosed until the substantive hearing.’

  It was precisely the request Jenny had anticipated. Both parties had their own powerful reasons for wanting to rubbish Dr Kerr’s findings, and if she gave them long enough, she was in no doubt that a small army of highly qualified experts would be produced to do just that.

  ‘I am making the following order: all members of 2 Platoon including Major Christopher Norton will provide hair and blood samples for the purposes of drugs and alcohol testing. I have made arrangements for the samples to be collected this afternoon in the gymnasium at Highcliffe Camp. Any men unable to attend will be visited at home this evening. I will have results within forty-eight hours and will make them available to all parties immediately.’