B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm

by M. R. Hall

  ‘You’re right,’ Jenny said, ‘I won’t be sure of anything until I see the plane for myself.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll let you?’

  ‘It was directly responsible for Brogan’s death. I don’t see how I can be stopped.’

  ‘Would I be able to come?’

  ‘I don’t think that would work.’

  He seemed to accept her unspoken reasons, and they lapsed into silence as they stared into the fire.

  After a while, Michael said, ‘I ought to tell you – I looked you up online. I saw the newspaper stories about what happened when you were a kid.’

  ‘I thought you might,’ Jenny said, surprised that she didn’t feel more shocked.

  ‘It must be tough. At least I can keep what happened to me during the war to myself.’

  ‘Take it from me – keeping secrets doesn’t work.’

  Michael nodded, his eyes fixed on the flames. ‘I always thought it would be me who’d die in a plane, not Nuala.’

  Jenny said, ‘Is that what you wanted?’

  ‘You sound like a psychiatrist.’

  ‘I visit one – there, another secret. He tells me living is a conscious choice; it’s something you’ve got to keep finding a reason to do.’

  ‘What are your reasons?’

  ‘My work . . . and my son, I guess.’

  ‘You never mentioned you have a son. How old is he?’

  ‘Eighteen. He’s at university. At least, I assume he is – he never calls.’

  ‘He’s finding his feet. We all have to do that.’

  ‘How about you?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Pass.’

  ‘You should find something, Michael.’

  He gave her a sideways glance. ‘I have to be in the air early tomorrow. I should go.’

  He got up from the sofa and fetched his jacket that he’d thrown over a chair.

  Jenny looked at the half-empty bottle on the rug. ‘Are you sure you’ll be safe?’

  ‘Safer than I would be if I stayed here.’ He smiled, leaving her unsure if he was joking or deadly serious.

  As he headed for the door, he paused, as if hesitating over a decision, then reached into his inside pocket. He drew out a brown envelope folded lengthways. ‘They sent me a copy of Nuala’s post-mortem report.’ He placed it on the table. ‘We think we’re at the controls, but I guess ultimately we’re all just passengers along for the ride.’

  He let himself out, closing the door quietly behind him.

  The single-page report was written in Dr Kerr’s brief, inimitable style. Two short paragraphs outlining the fatal injuries – severe trauma to the head resulting in massive haemorrhage, and deep lacerations and trauma to the abdomen caused by the force of the lap belt on impact – and a third under the brief headline OTHER FINDINGS. It read: Recently healed scarring to the lower abdomen caused by surgical sterilization. Both fallopian tubes stapled. Evidence of early stage lymphoma confirmed by biopsy. No evidence of diagnosis on medical records. Attached to his report was a photocopy of a set of lab results confirming morphologic cell type in a nodular pattern consistent with malignant non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

  Jenny heard Michael’s car pulling away down the lane. It was too late to call him back to try to persuade him that none of this made any difference, but had he stayed she doubted if she would have convinced him. This must have looked to him like the final proof that his leaving Nuala had closed the door to hope. If she couldn’t have him, she was going to have no one, and certainly no one’s child. The early-stage cancer was most likely fully treatable in an otherwise healthy young woman, but that’s not how Michael would have read it. He would have seen Nuala dying on the inside, and it all being his fault.

  Safer than I would be if I stayed here. His words lingered with her as she folded the report back into its envelope and carried it through to her study to stow in her briefcase. Michael was both drawn to and frightened by her; she had seen it in his eyes. She hated to feel the pull of another troubled, damaged man when all she longed for was to be free of complication, but she sensed it was too late. The winter wind had blown him to her as surely as the tide had delivered Brogan and the little girl.

  EIGHTEEN

  FRIDAY BEGAN BADLY. No sooner had Jenny made it through the freezing rain into the office than Alison announced that Simon Moreton had demanded she call him immediately. She retreated to her room expecting the worst, and wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘I’ve two things to tell you,’ Moreton said in the brisk, dispassionate tone he reserved solely for relaying bad news. ‘Firstly, your conduct of the Brogan inquest will be treated as a formal demonstration of your competence to continue in the office of coroner. I have been personally requested to report on your handling of the case to the Director General, and I needn’t tell you that any goodwill that has previously existed between us was conclusively exhausted by your actions yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how pompous you sound?’

  ‘I haven’t finished, Mrs Cooper. Do hear me out.’

  Jenny sighed. Now it was Mrs Cooper.

  ‘Secondly, all matters connected with the downed aircraft remain strictly outside your purview. Sir James Kendall’s inquiry will deal with the issue fully and with the benefit of all appropriate expertise. You will kindly inform the Patterson family that any hope they have of manipulating your inquiry to extend its scope is entirely misplaced. Do you understand me?’

  ‘I’m entitled to inspect the wreckage, Simon. To deny me that would be as absurd as preventing me from viewing a murder weapon.’

  ‘Not even Sir James Kendall’s experts are being granted access until the Anti-Terrorist Branch formally announce that there is no line of criminal investigation they wish to pursue. That will take some weeks at least. There is no question of you gaining access in the meantime.’

  ‘Then I’ll have no option but to postpone until I can inspect it.’

  ‘Do you wish to hand me your resignation now?’

  Jenny thought of several smart remarks at once, but resisted all of them. ‘No, Simon, I don’t. Have a nice day.’

  She dropped the phone back in its cradle and jabbed an angry finger at the on switch of her computer. As it whirred and groaned into action she tried to imagine what life would be like if she were to call Moreton’s bluff and resign. For the first time in her tenure as coroner she had to admit that she was tempted. There was a far easier existence waiting for her if she wanted it.

  Alison appeared in the doorway. ‘Mr Patterson called while you were on the phone. He said he’s nearby and wondered if he could talk to you.’

  ‘Did he say what about.’

  ‘No, but reading between the lines –’ Alison lowered her voice – ‘I think he might have had a set-to with his wife.’

  More private meetings with relatives only risked compromising herself further, but having met with Mrs Patterson several times it hardly seemed fair to refuse.

  ‘All right. Tell him I’ll see him, but please stress I can’t discuss the substance of the case.’

  Less than twenty minutes later, Greg Patterson arrived in Jenny’s office carrying an overnight case and with the pallid, sunken features of a man who hadn’t slept properly in days. Jenny had learned to read the stages of bereavement in a relative’s face as clearly as a doctor diagnosing the progression of jaundice. He had passed through shock and anger – the stage at which his wife had become temporarily arrested – and tipped over the brink into acceptance and despair. He seemed bewildered by the emotions that were assailing him and fidgeted nervously with his cufflinks as he spoke. Gone was the veneer of corporate sophistication that had carried him through the early days of his loss.

  ‘I’m sorry to take up your time, Mrs Cooper,’ he said. ‘Your officer kindly explained the situation to me, but I can assure you I don’t wish to trespass in any way on your inquiry.’

  He was so fragile, Jenny thought he might break.

  ‘How can I h
elp you?’ she asked gently.

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that I shan’t be attending the remainder of your inquest into Mr Brogan’s death . . . I’m content to wait for the outcome of the main inquest – whenever that may be.’

  ‘I see.’ She hesitated. It would have been enough just to leave it at that, but curiosity and an overwhelming surge of sympathy for the man persuaded her to push further. ‘Not that it’s any of my business, Mr Patterson, but may I ask why?’

  ‘You’ve met with my wife on several occasions . . .’ He faltered for a moment, struggling with what Jenny interpreted as a combination of bitterness and embarrassment. ‘And you will know that she has formed a number of theories—’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said neutrally.

  ‘Without wishing to be disrespectful –’ he forced the words past a barrier of guilt – ‘she’s a highly strung woman at the best of times. What happened to Amy is beyond any ability she has to cope rationally, or at all.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You don’t, Mrs Cooper, because all you see is what she shows you. Behind closed doors—’

  ‘Really, I don’t need to know that.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you ought to know that in my view – for what it’s worth – she has become delusional. Perhaps dangerously so . . . She has even accused me of having some sort of foreknowledge of this accident.’ He stiffened his face against threatening tears. ‘As if I would endanger my own daughter . . .’

  Jenny let him continue, sensing this was the first time he had opened up to anyone since losing Amy.

  ‘The fact is she couldn’t function alone. She’s being propped up and encouraged by these lawyers, who are more than happy to take our money and listen to her wild ideas . . . I don’t want any more part of it. My wife and I are no longer speaking . . . I have told the lawyers, they don’t represent me.’ He groped for words to express his confusion of feelings. ‘They have no right to behave this way. Both my wife and I have lives to lead once this is behind us . . . reputations—’

  ‘If it’s any comfort at all, most couples who face what you’re going through are pushed to breaking point. Give her time. A lot can change in a short while.’

  Mr Patterson shook his head. ‘It isn’t just the inquiry . . . Amy was the last thread holding us together. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have troubled you with this.’

  ‘It’s quite all right—’

  He rose from his seat and picked up his case. ‘I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t because I don’t care. I do . . . I can’t tell you how much.’ He turned to the door and let himself out.

  Greg Patterson’s visit brought her sharply back to reality. A man who had just lost his young daughter was seeing more clearly than she was. Jenny felt her righteous anger fade, to be replaced by a vague feeling of shame at her hubris and credulity. Mrs Patterson’s increasingly delusional state of mind had become painfully obvious at their last meeting, yet even so Jenny found herself entertaining the possibility that mysterious helicopters had shot Flight 189 from the sky. Had she learned nothing about the dispassionate evaluation of evidence from all her years in the service of the law?

  The mist seemed to lift, leaving her standing in the hard, painful light. She understood now what Dr Allen had been hinting at when he said she gave too much of herself to the dead. It was seductively easy to wallow in the misery of others. Succumbing to the temptation of shady conspiracies was nothing more than a failure fully to embrace life. The dead were dead. They haunted her thoughts only because she was weak enough to let them.

  She reached for her files and began to order proceedings for Monday. She would call all relevant witnesses but make no judgements until the evidence had been heard and tested in cross-examination. She would call a witness from Forenox to lead with the evidence on Brogan’s lifejacket, and Lawrence Cole to testify to the presence of the helicopters. She would instruct Alison to contact all local air traffic control towers to establish whether the craft were real or a figment of Cole’s whisky-fuelled imagination. As for whatever contraband might have been stowed in Brogan’s yacht, Jenny could do no better than to submit a formal application to Sir James Kendall to release details of any evidence that navy divers might have recovered from the estuary floor. The chances of him doing so were slim, but protocol, at least, would have been satisfied.

  It felt good to be back in control. An hour later, her plans complete, Jenny printed out a set of instructions for Alison and carried them through to reception.

  She was on the phone. Jenny waited patiently at the side of her desk.

  ‘I’ll be over right away. Have next of kin been informed? . . . I see. Do let me know.’ Alison looked up with a solemn expression. ‘A woman’s body has been found in a lay-by just along from where the photographer crashed his car. Dark hair, early forties, attractive, wedding ring, photographs of two young children in her pocket. Looks like a suicide.’ Her eyes dipped guiltily to the box of effects which still lay untouched at the side of her desk.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Jenny said. She handed Alison the instructions, grabbed her coat and hurried out of the door before they could exchange another word.

  Jenny rounded the steep corner she remembered as the accident scene she had visited two weeks previously and passed the oak tree, which still bore the fresh scars of the collision on its trunk. A hundred yards further on the road was coned off to a single lane. Inside the cordon was the usual collection of police vehicles that attend a fatality and an unmarked black undertaker’s van. She pulled in at the far end and took a moment to steel herself.

  She turned, startled, at the sound of knocking on the passenger window. A face she dimly recognized was looking in at her. In the seconds it took to open the window and introduce herself, she placed it as belonging to a police officer she had last seen during her days practising law in the family courts: Detective Sergeant Karen Fuller.

  ‘Good to see you again, Mrs Cooper,’ Fuller said, as Jenny climbed shakily out of the car. ‘It must be five years.’ Having spent two decades specializing in domestic violence and sex crime, DS Fuller seemed to be treating a straightforward suicide as something of a welcome relief from the usual routine.

  ‘Six,’ Jenny said, as they shook hands. She remembered the case vividly: Fuller had arrested a woman for soliciting and broke into her home just in time to save the life of her two-year-old daughter, who, besides suffering from advanced malnutrition, had been decorated with cigarette burns by her mother’s boyfriend.

  ‘Miss it?’ Fuller asked.

  ‘Now you come to mention it, no,’ Jenny answered truthfully.

  ‘Can’t say it gets any easier,’ Fuller said. ‘This is a bit of an odd one, though – that’s why we called you, just in case you thought it didn’t add up.’

  Jenny glanced down the inside of the line of vehicles but didn’t see any sign of a body.

  ‘She’s in the field on the other side of the gate,’ the DS said. ‘Not long dead – only a couple of hours, the medic estimates. That puts time of death at around nine o’clock this morning. No vehicle here, no identification on her – just this in her pocket.’ Fuller dipped into her parka and brought out a small, tagged plastic evidence bag. She held it out for Jenny to see two small, passport-sized photographs of smiling girls, one of about three, the other a little older. ‘We think they must be her kids. She’s wearing a wedding ring.’

  ‘I heard. How did she do it?’

  ‘The usual – sleeping pills. No note.’

  ‘Any sign of violence?’

  ‘No. Why don’t you have a look for yourself?’

  Fuller led the way into the lay-by and through a partially open five-barred gate into a large field of dormant pasture. The body lay some twenty yards to their right next to the hedgerow under a sheet of black plastic. Two white-suited scene of crime officers had finished their work and were walking towards them, hefting their bulky rucksacks of kit.

  ‘All ready to move her now, boss,’ one o
f them announced to Fuller.

  ‘Give us a moment,’ she answered.

  As they neared the spot where the woman lay, the detective seemed to sense Jenny’s trepidation. ‘I thought you’d be used to this by now.’

  Momentarily mute, Jenny shook her head.

  Fuller leaned down and pulled back the plastic sheet to expose the fully clothed body of a woman lying on her side, the fingers of her right hand still curled around the small brown plastic jar that had contained the pills. A foot to her right lay an empty bottle of water of the sort you might buy in any convenience store.

  Jenny stepped around to the side so she could see the dead woman’s face. She was pretty, with pale skin and black, shoulder-length hair. She wore a stylish rust-coloured scarf inside a dark wool coat. Her shoes were flat but smart. Elegant; just as she had been in the photographer’s pictures. There was no doubt in Jenny’s mind that it was her.

  She stepped back and swallowed hard.

  Karen Fuller looked at her puzzled.

  ‘Is it her, Mrs Cooper?’

  Both women turned at the sound of Alison’s voice. Buried in her anorak, she was marching across the grass from the gate.

  She gave Jenny no time to protest or question what she was doing here. ‘It is her, isn’t it?’

  Fuller looked to Jenny for an explanation.

  ‘My officer—’

  ‘I know who she is. What’s going on?’

  Jenny started to stumble through the story of the fatal car crash and the pictures on the dead man’s camera.

  ‘It is—’ Alison said. She turned on Jenny. ‘I was going to see her yesterday, except you had to change your plans again, didn’t you?’

  ‘Alison, please—’

  ‘I was on my way out of the door when you called.’

  ‘This really isn’t appropriate.’

  ‘I had it all planned. I was going to tell her that her secret was safe and that no one need ever know. I even had the number of a grief counsellor with me.’