Jasper shouldered his weapon and shouted “Pull!” He squinted down the barrel trying to obliterate the annoying twitches of his left eye as he tracked the spinning discs in the sky. He squeezed the trigger twice and was enveloped in a cloud of cordite smoke. Both discs continued to fly, untouched.
“The grapevine never ceases to surprise me,” Jasper said, grinding his teeth.
“Bad luck old boy, you’ll get into the swing of it soon.”
Jasper ejected the cartridges and reloaded.
“The three year old was the vector for infecting our victim, but obviously parental responsibility would legally place his parents in the dock.”
Merrill snapped the breach of his weapon shut and cocked it.
“Uh-huh. Pull!”
Jasper watched as his rotund friend dispatched the two discs with precision shooting.
“Does the case not interest the CPS?” Jasper asked as he assumed his stance. “Pull!”
Jasper could feel the rippling muscles of his left shoulder tugging the shotgun off line as he struggled to keep the trajectory of the discs in his sights. He wondered if Merrill was staring at his wavering weapon. Two shots in close succession and one disc sprayed fragments off its trailing edge.
“Bravo! You’re getting into your stride again,” Merrill said as though marvelling at a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan. “What are you thinking, Jasper, manslaughter by gross negligence I presume?”
Jasper looked across at Merrill. They had sat their bar exams together in a busy law firm in York, the two highest achievers of their year. Colleagues, friends and yet also academic adversaries back in those early exciting days. Merrill had gone on to join the Crown Prosecution Service while Jasper had pursued a legal career of private enterprise.
“Why not? Vaccination is widely accepted in public medicine as an effective tool to improve the health of society. Surely the decision not to have the vaccination against government advice constitutes a disregard for public safety, a careless and negligent act endangering others?”
Merrill lowered his gaze as he twiddled two fresh cartridges between his stubby fingers.
“An interesting proposition, Jasper.”
Merrill nodded thoughtfully as he loaded and cocked his shotgun.
“Pull!”
Two more discs disintegrated in the pallid autumn afternoon light. In the distance a few grouse could be seen scrambling to safety in the bracken at the forest edge.
“But you would have to prove gross negligence. Not easy I should think.”
“We do have a dead three year old boy. A good starting point for any jury,” Jasper said.
“Mmmmmh,” Merrill said nodding slightly. “Are you familiar with the Adomako Test, House of Lords, 1994?”
“Pull!” Jasper shouted, determined to improve on winging one disc.
He struggled to keep the shotgun pointing at the targets as the contortions of his face conspired to make the task even more difficult. Eventually Jasper simply closed his eyes tightly and pulled the trigger defiantly. Two blasts thudded into his shoulder and, miraculously, one disc shattered.
“Well done, old boy. To prove a case of gross negligence manslaughter you would have to satisfy four stages in the Adomako Test. First, the existence of a duty of care to the deceased, and I’m not sure that participating in a vaccination program can be legally defined as a duty of care to members of the public. Second, a breach of that duty of care which, thirdly, contributes to the death of the victim. Finally, the breach has to be considered as gross negligence to constitute a crime.”
Merrill continued to stare at the uncontrollable fasciculations in Jasper’s face and neck, which were like a bag of worms writhing beneath his skin.
“There are precedents,” Jasper said, self consciously rubbing his face with a balled fist. “The whooping cough epidemic of the 1970’s saw vaccinations fall and infections rise, resulting in many deaths – exactly what is happening now with measles.”
Merrill turned towards the field and shouldered his weapon.
“Pull!”
Another two deadly accurate cordite bursts followed. Jasper’s eyes stung, not just from the gunpowder smoke but from the indignity of so comprehensive a beating.
“I do see your point, Jasper, but I think there is some way to go before a jury will be convinced that an individual’s decision not to be vaccinated constitutes as a crime against society.”
“It is in many states of America.”
Merrill nodded and inclined his head to one side. “That may be, and I’m not saying that there are not the makings of an interesting legal debate here, but…”
“Pull!” Jasper shouted, increasingly frustrated not only by his failure to convince his learned friend of the legal potential of his case, but also by his struggle to shatter even one clay disc with two barrels of lead pellets flying through the air.
Jasper squinted, willing the powerful writhing muscles to desist, but this seemed only to encourage their mutinous behaviour. As he squeezed the trigger, his left arm pulled the shotgun down violently; as a result the discharge was much closer to the ground than ever intended. The trap operator dropped to the ground in a fluorescent heap and Merrill gasped, his small lollipop mouth open wide.
“Good God, Jasper, you nearly shot Max.”
“Brad Pitt! I’m really sorry,” Jasper said, feeling both embarrassed and angry.
Merrill continued to stare at him, narrowing his eyes inquisitively.
“Are you all right, old man?”
Jasper let the shotgun fall from his shoulder as he stumbled back. He raised his arm in a placatory gesture to Max who was picking himself up off the wet grass and brushing mud and moisture off his clothing.
“I should stop. Cheese and rice, what am I thinking?”
Jasper sat down on one of the canvas director’s chairs set out behind them and rested his forehead and eyes in the palm of an outstretched hand. Reaching into his shooting jacket he pulled out a hip flask filled with Chivas, hoping that its warming, malty nectar would ease his embarrassment.
“Well no more shooting for you if you’re on to that stuff,” Merrill said, easing his frame into the groaning chair beside Jasper. “Give us a swig.”
Jasper could feel his friend’s gaze upon him: a lurid, curious stare that would miss nothing as he passed the pewter flask over.
“Are you perhaps a little too close to this case, Jasper?”
Jasper rubbed his twitching temples between the thumb and index finger of the hand supporting his forehead. He could still feel the warm glow of the Chivas in the back of his throat.
“It’s a good argument, Merrill. I know that there is a significant body of medical opinion out there that is firmly behind fundamental change to the vaccination system. The timing is right for judges to consider a unique case that will act as a catalyst for improvements to a failing system.”
“You really believe all that?” Merrill said.
Jasper shot a look at his friend.
“You used to, my friend, what’s changed?”
Merrill looked away and took a deep breath.
“You know what I’m asking myself, Jasper – what was the mens rea of the defendants? The actions speak volumes as you point out, but what was their state of mind that led to that decision not to have their child vaccinated? Have you considered that, because the judge will?”
Jasper pondered this as he held out his hand for the hip flask to be returned.
“I know that if it wasn’t for the failure of Seamus Mallory’s parents to vaccinate him, Ollie Kowalski would not have caught measles from him and died. I will find out their mens rea and I will crucify them with it,” Jasper said in a steely, sarcastic tone.
Merrill sighed and his round shoulders sank on his bulky frame.
“There are those who admire your determination, Jasper, and there are those who despise your methods. As a friend, don’t walk into an obvious ambush and let your adversaries shoot you down
. This is too big.”
Jasper shook his head without looking up.
“Are you suggesting that I’m not up to the challenge, Merrill, or that the case of this three year old boy, who died as a direct result of someone else’s reckless endangerment, is not worth pursuing?”
“What I’m saying is that you look like shit and I think you need some time away from this sort of thing. Take a break, go away for a week with your lovely wife, enjoy yourself.”
Jasper looked up and turned slowly towards Merrill, his eyes now bloodshot and bleary. He lifted the hip flask with trembling fingers to his lips once more. Merrill straightened in his chair, sensing the intensity in Jasper’s face as the tics ravaged the corner of his mouth.
“What is it, old boy?” Merrill said apprehensively.
Jasper felt his shoulder roll demonically and his left arm convulse once, twice, as though he had been poked with a cattle prod. His mouth was open, but not for the first time, he struggled to form the words he wanted to speak.
“Jennifer… committed suicide… last week.”
THIRTY
Dr Whitehouse was sitting at the white melamine worktop in the corner of the autopsy room, cradling a mug of steaming soup in both hands. Dressed in green surgical scrubs and white gumboots, as was her registrar Tom, they filed piles of printed papers.
“I don’t know how you can eat that,” Tom said.
Whitehouse looked at him from beneath her mass of copper hair with wide eyes.
“What, spicy parsnip?”
“No, I mean how you can eat in here, with the smell and the…” he turned towards the naked cadaver stretched out on a stainless steel autopsy table behind them.
She took one hand off the soup mug and clipped him on the shoulder.
“I don’t even notice it anymore. Now, where were we?”
Tom rummaged through a pile of assorted papers in his lap as Whitehouse slurped noisily at her soup.
“Toxicology results for… Jennifer Candle.”
“Ah, yes, an interesting one this.”
Tom looked at her with an odd expression on his face.
“What, the suicide, rope asphyxiation in the hallway?”
She smiled.
“The husband, he’s the interesting part. Well, out with it.”
Tom read from the first sheet.
“Negative tox screen, no drugs, prescription or recreational, no alcohol, no… nothing it seems.”
“Uh-huh. Vaginal swab?” Whitehouse asked from behind the huge mug.
“Er, it’s here somewhere… negative. No signs of recent sexual activity detected, no semen…”
“Right, so there are no suggestions of foul play, no intoxication.”
“Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, probably is…” Tom began.
“Yes, suicide. Wait a bit, we sent off a foetal DNA match with the husband. Is it back?” Whitehouse jumped in, lowering her soup mug.
Tom thumbed through the papers and pulled out a pink sheet.
“Here it is.”
Whitehouse was leaning right over, peering at the paper. What she read surprised her and her face hid nothing.
“Oh dear… Mr Candle isn’t going to like that. He won’t like that at all.”
THIRTY ONE
Stacey placed a new white shirt on the corner of Jasper’s desk, beside it a little pastry box and a paper cup of steaming coffee. She began to tip-toe out of the office when Jasper stirred beneath the ruffled black duvet on his bed.
“Morning Mr C,” Stacey said, casting a shy look towards the bed.
The room smelled stale, inhabited; it felt wrong.
Jasper sensed her embarrassment. “Don’t worry, Stacey, I’m wearing panoramas,” he said in a voice thick with sleep.
This appeared to heighten Stacey’s embarrassment as she blushed a bright ruby shade under her Gothic clothing and black hair. She paused at the door without looking in Jasper’s direction.
“I half expected that you might have… slept at home.”
A pregnant silence hung over them as Jasper sat up in the bed and rubbed his creased features.
“Not yet, Stacey, not yet. Thank you for the breakfast.”
Stacey pulled the door open.
“Two messages, Mr C. A Mr Ferret is very persistent, he’s called several times about Edward Burns, and your sister in law phoned.”
“Charlotte?” Jasper straightened in the bed, instantly awake.
“She wants to see you urgently and suggested meeting in York at the railway station. I have the message on my desk.”
Jasper felt a shiver of apprehension cut through him. He had not spoken to Charlotte, other than a brief call to confirm Jennifer’s death, and he sensed that they had unfinished business to cover. The prospect both excited and frightened him.
THIRTY TWO
The London to Edinburgh Flying Scotsman roared through Durham Station, creating a whirlwind on the platform that lifted papers and dried leaves into pirouetting spirals in its wake.
Jasper sat on a bench drinking hot coffee out of a paper cup, emitting a plume of steam into the cold air.
“You know, guv, I felt very uncomfortable doing this, as though I was snooping, not investigating,” Lazlo said beside Jasper.
“You’re an investigator, for Tommy Dodd’s sake, you were investigating. Now, what did you find?”
Lazlo squirmed on the bench as he flipped through the curled pages of his bedraggled notepad.
“I’ve checked her phone records, I’ve checked her bank card statements you gave me, I’ve interviewed neighbours…”
“Yes, yes… did you find anything, Lazlo?” Jasper interrupted.
“No, guv. Nothing with any pattern, nothing… out of the ordinary.”
Jasper sipped the hot coffee, his eyes fixed on the cold, steel rail tracks. On the platform beneath the Victorian wrought ironwork, adorned with Durham’s deep blue and red crest, people continued to gather, standing alone or in huddles and waiting for the next departure. Everyone was wrapped up to fend off the biting cold wind that whipped through the station.
“What about her phonebook?”
Lazlo flicked over a few pages, licking his stubby index finger as he did so.
“Did you have onion for lunch?” Jasper asked, shooting a look of disapproval at Lazlo.
“Sorry, guv. Yep, I checked her personal phonebook and dialled all those numbers that were unaccounted for.”
“And?”
“Well, Dr Giordano we know about,” Lazlo made a ticking movement with his index finger on his pad as he worked down the list, “I don’t think anyone else fits the profile of a… a…”
“A lover?”
“Yeah,” Lazlo said, nodding, visibly embarrassed.
Jasper rubbed his chin thoughtfully. This should have been good news, reassuring news, but it did not help in any way to explain why Jennifer had so furtively sought contraception without his knowledge.
“But why, Lazlo, why did she need to see Dr Giordano?”
Lazlo was visibly uncomfortable at discussing his boss’s personal dilemmas surrounding his dead wife, but he kept the notepad open and continued to stare at it.
“There is one number here, guv, that I cannot explain. Perhaps you can.”
Jasper sat up straight.
“Did you call it?”
“Yep, it’s in London. A clinic in Harley Street.”
Lazlo flipped the notepad shut and shoved it deep within his brown leather jacket. He looked across at Jasper, whose coffee cup was trembling in his hand, his elbow flexing occasionally as it jerked away from the warmth of his lap.
“Jennifer had been to London many times to see… infertility specialists.” Jasper’s head bowed forward and he stared at the chewing gum splats on the platform. “That’s what she told me, anyhow. To be honest, I never went with her.”
Lazlo rapped his fingertips on the cold steel bench.
“Do you want me to check it out?”
&n
bsp; Jasper stared at the tracks, then at the sea of brown and black coats on the platform; ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, just as he thought he and Jennifer had done.
“The next train to arrive on platform two is the 14:21 to London Kings Cross, calling at Darlington, Northallerton, York, Peterborough, and London Kings Cross,” said an announcement over the tannoy.
Everyone on the platform turned their heads to the right. Jasper stood up.
“If he’s in Harley Street it’s bound to be an infertility specialist.”
“I don’t know if it’s a he,” Lazlo said.
The train pulled in, the doors opened and people began to move around busily, like bees entering a hive. Jasper turned at the carriage door to see Lazlo standing up slowly, like a man older than his years.
“Lazlo!” Jasper shouted above the clamour. “I think you should check it out.”
Though it was painful, Jasper wanted, in fact needed, to believe that there must have been someone secret in Jennifer’s life, because the alternative was simply unthinkable.
THIRTY THREE
Dr Giordano was quite different towards Jasper this time. She was relaxed and smiled a great deal, revealing beautiful white teeth. She told him she was from a small, coastal village south of Naples called Positano, one of four daughters born to poor fishermen folk.
“The film The Talented Mr Ripley was made along the coast around Positano. It is beautiful there,” Giordano said.
Jasper shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
“Jude Law was in it,” she prompted, raising her eyebrows hopefully.
Her informal approach was surely designed to make him feel at ease when the time came to ask him searching questions.
Jasper tried to relax, taking deep and slow breaths, aware of her alluring perfume, but his facial tic was omnipresent, always tugging, annoying, like a fly.
“Tell me about your childhood.” she said, leaning back in her swivel chair.
Jasper folded his arms across his chest and forced himself to maintain eye contact.
“My parents are both deceased and I had a brother who lived in the east end of London, where I grew up.”
The Secret Anatomy of Candles Page 12