The Innocent: A Coroner Jenny Cooper Crime Short

by Hall, M R

  ‘If you put it like that—’

  ‘I do, Mrs Stewart. I’d like your honest answer, please.’

  Elaine folded her hands on her lap. ‘Let’s just say I believe Mrs Cooper was swayed by personal feelings.’

  ‘I see. Thank you, Mrs Stewart.’ Bolter made a verbatim note of her words. ‘That’s a very serious allegation.’

  NINE

  It was an odd experience for which Jenny wasn’t equipped: like watching a river burst its banks and a wall of water rush towards you; the sense of unreality was more overwhelming than the injustice of it. First Judy Harris, then Elaine Stewart and now Karen Greenslade. Karen dabbed away tears as she narrated a history casting Jenny as a lawyer on a one-woman crusade to prise Natasha from a loving home. At first, Bolter had listened with what Jenny had tried to convince herself was polite neutrality, but the more he heard from Karen, the more sympathetic he appeared to become.

  ‘How did this closeness you say you observed manifest itself, Miss Greenslade?’

  ‘It wasn’t just the last court case, it was the one before that, too.’ She glanced in Jenny’s direction. ‘She’d have Natasha sit next to her. Always whispering in her ear, touching her,’ she patted her forearm to demonstrate, ‘trying to pretend she was her friend.’

  ‘Couldn’t it have been perfectly innocent – a way of putting Natasha at her ease?’

  ‘Everyone who works with kids knows you don’t touch them. Not even teachers are allowed. And I bet she didn’t do it with every kid. I bet it was no accident that Natasha was as pretty as they come.’

  ‘What are you suggesting, Miss Greenslade?’

  ‘I’m suggesting she was preying on my daughter.’

  ‘And your evidence for this is her behaviour during the court hearing in July?’

  ‘She never missed an opportunity to get her alone in one of those interview rooms. I only wish I’d said something.’ She pressed a soggy tissue to her eyes. ‘But who was going to listen to me?’

  ‘Were you ever aware of Mrs Cooper contacting Natasha at other times?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have known about it. But there must have been something going on. Why else would Natasha have called her from the station? I can’t help wondering if they got close, then Mrs Cooper got scared and dropped her.’

  ‘Let me get this straight.’ Bolter showed no sign of embarrassment. ‘Are you alleging that your daughter had a sexual relationship with Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t see any other explanation. And if you think how well Natasha was getting on with her granddad, Mrs Cooper must have worried what she might say to him. Worried that he was going to shop her.’

  Mr and Mrs Bartlett, the foster parents, testified one after another, offering Jenny only the faintest glimmer of light. Both said that Natasha had been no trouble at all for the entire six weeks she had lived with them. The only hint of real upset had come the evening before her disappearance. She had arrived home twenty minutes late from school. When Mrs Bartlett asked her where she had been, she reacted angrily saying it was none of her business, and stormed up to her bedroom. But after a little while she cheered up and the incident was forgotten. The three of them ate dinner together, watched TV until ten o’clock, then Natasha had gone to bed as normal. The Bartletts had discussed having a word with her teacher, but decided to leave it a day or two. When they came down for breakfast at seven the next morning, Natasha had already left the house. She had been crafty: to avoid the noise of unlocking the heavy bolts on the front door, she had climbed through a downstairs window.

  Bolter pushed them both for anything that might have suggested Natasha had a secret or inappropriate relationship they hadn’t been aware of. Frank Bartlett said no, she had always seemed very happy, but when his wife was faced with the same question she hesitated, then answered that there had been one or two occasions during the fortnight since she had been back at school, when Natasha had come home a few minutes later than usual seeming slightly withdrawn.

  ‘Did you ask her what the matter was?’ Bolter inquired.

  ‘The second time it happened I asked her once if she had a boyfriend. She went bright red and said, “No way.” I thought then that must be it – boy trouble. It usually is.’

  Jenny had wanted to dislike Jack Greenslade, but she couldn’t. He looked like what he was – an ageing manual labourer, with thick arms and a drinker’s gut – but there was something disarming about him: she supposed it was the honesty of the penitent. He had been a young man when he met Karen’s mother, he told Bolter, and they’d had a turbulent on-again off-again relationship for most of his daughter’s young life. He had tried to patch things up with Karen during her teens, but it hadn’t worked – his fault more than hers – and then he had moved to London. After fifteen years away he had decided to come back to Bristol and, hoping that time would have healed some of the wounds, wrote to Karen saying he’d like to meet and talk. She didn’t respond – in his heart he hadn’t expected her to – but he knew he had a granddaughter, and a woman at the Citizens’Advice Bureau told him he might have a right to see her. He was put in touch with Judy Harris who arranged for him to meet Natasha at a family contact centre, by which time she was already living with the Bartletts.

  ‘You can’t understand till you’ve known it yourself,’ he said, his voice thick with emotion, ‘this young girl comes through the door and you recognize her straight away, even though you’ve never set eyes on her before. You just know … And so did she.’

  Jack had met with Natasha three times. On the first occasion for thirty minutes, then for an hour, and the last time they had spent the whole afternoon together, ending with a walk around the neighbouring park and ice creams at a café. They didn’t talk about the past, just about this and that. ‘Everything felt natural between us,’ he said, ‘like we’d known each other for ever.’

  ‘Did Natasha talk to you about her school, or her foster family?’ Bolter asked.

  ‘Said she was very happy with both. Missed her mum, of course, but we steered off that.’ He gave Karen an apologetic look. ‘Like I said, I didn’t want to rake over things. I just wanted to be there for her. Like I never was for her mum, I suppose.’

  ‘And Natasha seemed content?’

  ‘Hugged me. Gave me a kiss. Called me Granddad. Said she couldn’t wait to see me again the next week.’

  Karen Greenslade’s composure finally cracked and she broke down in muffled sobs. Judy Harris leant forward and placed a consoling hand on her shoulder.

  Jack looked at his daughter: he was grey and lined and full of the pain of a lifetime of regret. ‘I’m so sorry for you, sweetheart. She was a beautiful, beautiful girl. You did your best.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Greenslade,’ Bolter said, his gaze fixed on Karen as she continued to weep. ‘I won’t detain you any longer. Mrs Cooper, please.’

  Jenny steeled herself. Now it was her turn. Her only opportunity to justify herself. She wondered if her pounding heart would allow her to speak. She was forcing herself to her feet when a man pushed through the door at the back of the hall having evidently hurried to be there.

  ‘Ah, Dr Markham,’ Bolter said. He turned to Jenny. ‘My apologies, Mrs Cooper. We’ll hear from the examining pathologist first, if you don’t mind.’

  Jenny sank back into her chair gratefully and tried to breathe. She had to be strong. It wasn’t her fault. She had only tried to make Natasha feel happy and secure, hadn’t she?

  Dr Markham took his place in the witness chair and recited the oath without glancing at the card. In his mid-thirties, he was tall, relaxed and confident. It must be easy dealing only with the dead, Jenny thought. No danger of emotional entanglements in a mortuary.

  His post-mortem findings were cut and dried: death through multiple catastrophic trauma. Instant and painless. A full suite of blood tests had failed to reveal the presence of any alcohol or drugs in Natasha’s body.

  Jenny waited for the uncomfor
table questions she assumed Bolter had prepared for him: was there evidence of recent sexual relations? Did her medical records show any recent requests for contraception? Did she have any tattoos or piercings that might give a clue to her sexual orientation? But Bolter took a different tack.

  ‘I passed a request to you via my officer earlier this morning, Dr Markham, asking if you wouldn’t mind conducting a thorough search of Natasha’s clothing. Have you managed to do that?’

  ‘I have,’ Markham replied. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced two small, clear plastic bags. ‘There was small change and an elastic hair band in her jeans pocket,’ he placed the first bag on the table next to him, ‘and a small scrap of paper with what appears to be a phone number written on it in the right-hand pocket of the red hooded top. That was all.’ He placed the second bag on the table alongside the first.

  ‘Hand them to me, please,’ Bolter said.

  Jenny felt her shirt clinging to her body with cold sweat as Bolter opened the second bag and pulled out a tiny, crumpled piece of paper which she knew was the corner she had torn from her legal pad the last time she had seen Natasha.

  She replayed the moment in her mind:

  I wish I could have had a mum like you.

  If you’ve a problem, whatever it is, you can call me and I’ll do what I can to help.

  Thanks. I will.

  And she had.

  TEN

  Jenny came forward to take her place in the witness chair and found herself directly facing Karen and her father. She felt like a prisoner at the gallows.

  ‘You are Mrs Jenny Cooper, senior lawyer for the North Somerset Child Protection Team,’ Bolter said dispassionately.

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny answered weakly.

  ‘I can see from your statement that you first encountered Natasha Greenslade nearly six years ago.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  Elaine Stewart and Judy Harris stared at her with the disinterest of strangers.

  ‘And you dealt with her in four sets of court proceedings over that period?’

  ‘I did.’

  Bolter scratched the side of his thick skull, taking his time, carefully choosing his angle of attack.

  ‘The reason you’ve been asked to give evidence of course, Mrs Cooper, is that you were the person Natasha phoned, or attempted to phone, from the station foyer just before she took her life.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Did you answer her call?’

  ‘No. My phone was switched off at the time. I had just come from court, and dropped into a café briefly. I didn’t pick up my messages until half an hour or so later. There was one from Natasha.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  Jenny lowered her eyes to the floor, unable to look at Karen and her father as she gave her answer. ‘It was very short. She said, “Jenny? Jenny, it’s Natasha.” Then she paused briefly, then said, “It’s OK—”.’

  ‘Meaning that she was OK, or that she had decided not to leave a message?’

  ‘The way she said it, it could have been either. Each time I hear it in my mind it means something else.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I don’t think any of us could draw a conclusion from so few words, but the fact is, the last person she chose to contact was you. Why?’

  He wasn’t asking her to speculate; he wanted a straight answer and believed she had one to give.

  ‘Because …’ Her throat tightened. She drew in a breath. ‘Because the last time I saw her – at court in July – I gave her my phone number. I told her to call me any time she needed. I wrote it on a corner of my notebook and gave it to her. I expect that was the number found in her pocket.’

  Karen smiled with grim satisfaction.

  Bolter was as startled as Jenny was by her answer. ‘But you told the police you had no idea how she got your number.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You lied to them, Mrs Cooper?’

  Jenny had stepped outside herself and become two people. One was answering Bolter’s questions, the other was watching in disbelief. ‘I knew what they were thinking. They were wrong, and I knew they weren’t going to give me the benefit of the doubt.’

  Bolter addressed his officer. ‘Hand this to the witness, would you?’

  She passed Jenny the small polythene exhibit bag containing the crumpled corner of paper. Jenny recognized it at once: written in dark blue ink in her distinctive slanted hand.

  ‘Yes. That’s my number. This is what I handed her in July.’

  ‘But why, Mrs Cooper? You were the lawyer for the local authority, not her social worker. Why would you involve yourself in this way?’

  ‘I felt she needed someone she could trust. I imagined myself in her shoes.’

  Jenny heard Elaine Stewart sigh.

  ‘You had advised that she be placed in foster care despite the feeling among your specialist colleagues that she would have been safer in secure accommodation. Again, why?’

  ‘I’d grown to know her. I didn’t want to see her locked up. I didn’t see how it could possibly do any good.’

  ‘Surely those judgements weren’t yours to make?’

  ‘I was persuasive. I felt strongly. She was a sensitive child. You meet some that are blunted, coarsened, tougher than she was. Those are the kids who can cope. She wasn’t one of them.’

  ‘You perceived this girl as special in some way?’

  Jenny lifted her eyes and looked squarely at Karen. ‘Natasha had insight. Intelligence. She loved her mother, put up with her drinking and drug-taking, bringing men back to their flat. And it hadn’t broken her. Some kids spiral into oblivion. She didn’t. She had become her mother’s mother. She felt ashamed, but also responsible. It was a burden that was too much for a girl of fourteen.’

  Karen’s expression remained steady and confident. Since the moment of Jenny’s admission she had been imperious. Nothing Jenny could level at her now could undo the damage she had already done herself.

  ‘Pardon me, Mrs Cooper, but this sounds as if you had stepped far beyond your professional boundaries.’

  ‘I could have remained detached, avoided her questions, let her believe that there really were no adults she could trust and confide in, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.’

  Bolter’s eyes seared into her. ‘Was there anything inappropriate in your relationship with Natasha, Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘No.’

  Karen sneered and shook her head.

  ‘You touched her arm in court.’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘And you knew she was vulnerable—’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And therefore more likely than most to form unhealthy attachments.’

  ‘That didn’t enter my mind.’

  ‘Did she grow fond of you? Romantically fond, I mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mrs Cooper? Did you have contact with Natasha after the court hearing?’

  ‘None at all. I took that as a good sign.’

  ‘You didn’t call her, meet up after school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The thing that upset Natasha the night before she died wasn’t an argument or break-up with you?’

  ‘How many times do I have to say it? There was nothing, nothing of that sort.’

  Bolter glanced at Karen and her father. ‘This wasn’t a case of a teenage crush – call it what you like – encouraged by you, that ended in despair? And suicide?’

  There it was: the accusation that everyone in the room had been waiting for, and to which, now she was facing it, Jenny found she had no answer.

  Karen sat back in her chair, taking Jenny’s silence as final proof.

  ‘Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘I never thought …’ Her answer trailed away in a confusion of thoughts.

  ‘You never thought what?’

  Jenny couldn’t reply.

  ‘You never thought that Natasha might have harboured those sorts of feelings towards you? Is that it?
’

  She had fleetingly considered the possibility, but pushed it away as quickly as it had suggested itself. It was unthinkable. Grotesque. The bond she had with Natasha had been innocent. Pure. Hadn’t it?

  ‘Are we getting somewhere, Mrs Cooper? Because there’s always a reason for suicide. It never comes out of the blue. A young woman takes her life at the moment when the pain of living becomes too much to bear. And it seems there was only one person Natasha felt might have been able to take that pain away – you.’

  Jenny felt herself crumble. ‘I thought of her like a daughter. I cared about her. I held out a hand because no one else would.’

  ‘A hand that when she needed it, wasn’t there?’

  ‘At any other time, at almost any other time, I would have answered. It was almost as if she chose the one moment …’

  ‘I see, Mrs Cooper. I see.’ He addressed the lawyer, Samantha Rose. ‘Do you have any questions for this witness?’

  She gave Jenny a pitying look. ‘No, sir. Whether she intended it or not, I think Mrs Cooper has said it all.’

  ELEVEN

  Bolter paused, then turned to Jenny one last time, ‘In your statement you say you were in your office the afternoon before Natasha died – you’re sure that’s correct?’

  ‘Yes. I was in meetings all day. Mrs Stewart was with me.’

  Bolter glanced over at Elaine Stewart, who nodded.

  He made a sound – a sharp, sceptical grunt – deep in his cavernous chest. ‘All right. You may stand down, Mrs Cooper.’

  Jenny made her way across the hall unsteadily. The walls seemed lopsided, the floor sloped left, then right. She gripped the metal frame of the chair in both hands and guided herself into her seat.

  Bolter remained ominously silent as he turned through the statements in his file, comparing passages with the longhand notes he had made of the morning’s evidence. Finally he looked up and stared for a moment into space, before switching his gaze to Karen.

  ‘Would you mind stepping back to the chair for a moment, please, Miss Greenslade.’