Crowner and Justice

by Barrie Roberts

  This year she was back on a year’s sabbatical leave from her department so she could research and write a book on the convicts transported to Oz. Even that didn’t keep her out of trouble. Her researches upset someone who responded with firebombs and booby traps. Altogether an interesting lady to be around — if she’d ever stop bouncing back and forth to Australia.

  She looked up as I appeared.

  ‘Bushed?’ she asked.

  ‘Cream-crackered,’ I agreed.

  ‘Cream-crackered?’ she queried.

  ‘Knackered,’ I said. ‘Totally,’ I added, falling onto a bench. ‘What I need is a long, cool drink.’

  She reached for a bottle on the table at her side and poured me a tall glass of something pale yellow.

  ‘White wine,’ she said, passing it across, it’s not bad.’

  ‘Not so,’ I said, when I’d taken half of it at a swallow and was beginning to come back to life. That is not any kind of wine. That is Britain’s greatest gift to the world of drink — still perry.’

  ‘I thought perry was fizzy, sweet stuff that dirty old men give to teenage girls ’cos they reckon they won’t get spliffed on it,’ she said, frowning.

  ‘So it is,’ I said, ‘though the nation that invented alcoholic lemonade can hardly criticise. This, on the other hand, is a still perry from Herefordshire, than which there is no more ideal summer drink.’

  ‘Well, cheers then,’ she said, and poured herself another large one.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘why were you intoning that daft old song? Where’d you get it from?’

  ‘It’s not a daft old song and I found it on one of your late mother’s records.’

  I nodded. ‘My late mother,’ I said, ‘used to get paid small sums of money for singing ancient quaintnesses like that to small groups of aficionados in draughty upper rooms over pubs many years ago. She also used to sing them to me as lullabies.’

  ‘What — that one?’ Sheila exclaimed.

  ‘Even that one — “The Berkshire Tragedy”, to give it a proper name.’

  She laughed. ‘So there’s these two sisters after the same bloke, and one tries to bribe the other to give him up, and when she won’t her sister pushes her in the river, and she floats down the river till a miller fishes her out with a pole and hook and she offers him ten guineas to take her home and...the miller takes the money and pushes her back in the river and she drowns,’ I continued the story.

  ‘Then the Crowner he comes — what’s a Crowner?’ she asked.

  ‘A Coroner,’ I said. ‘A tax officer charged under the medieval Statute of Coronary with investigating mysterious deaths.’

  ‘A tax officer?’

  ‘Yup. The view was taken that murders and mysterious deaths were usually about money, so a Coroner’s duty was to investigate and see if there was any money involved that the King could take in tax or fines.’

  ‘And your mum used to sing you to sleep with that song?’

  ‘Not just me, but audiences all over the country. Sometimes I think that song is the principal reason why the Folk Revival went back to sleep.’

  Sheila shook her head. ‘No wonder you grew up warped,’ she said, and picked up her guitar again.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, ‘sing songs about Coroners, please. I have had an Irish lady banging on at me for more than hour about how the Belston Coroner has covered up her son’s murder as suicide. I am not into Coroners tonight.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’

  I took another long draught of perry. ‘I will tell you about it on one condition — that while I’m showering you will prepare an enormous meal of something cold and sustaining accompanied by two more bottles of chilled perry.’

  To my surprise she agreed without a murmur.

  An hour later the heat had gone off the day and my mind was at least slightly less tangled. Sheila and I sat on the patio over the remains of a large cold repast, breaking the second bottle of perry and watching the sun sinking beyond the garden. I was beginning to feel human again.

  ‘Right,’ she announced. ‘Time to tell.’

  Telling a story to another person always helps to put things in the right order in your head. Sometimes it helps you to see what’s important and what isn’t.

  I filled my glass, took a sip and began.

  ‘Mrs McBride is a middle-aged Irish lady who lives on the Orchard estate. She works part-time, as a cleaner for a couple of different customers and she has a school-age daughter, about nine. She did have an eighteen-year-old son called Sean.’

  ‘The one who was murdered?’ Sheila interrupted.

  ‘The one who his mother thinks was murdered,’ I corrected.

  ‘What happened to him, then?’

  ‘On a Friday evening in May, Sean was at home. He had said that he was going on a short holiday the next morning, and Mrs M had been washing and ironing for him. So far as she knew, he wasn’t going out that night because he had to be up early in the morning to travel.’

  ‘What did he do for a living?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt or I’ll get it all wrong! He had been an engineering apprentice at BDS, but they’re mean buggers and they usually let a lot of apprentices go once they start expecting a full wage, so he was working as a mechanic at a mate’s garage.’

  I drank again before continuing.

  ‘On that Friday evening, a friend of his came to the back door of the house, and he and Sean had a chat.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I don’t know. His mother didn’t hear, but after a bit he came and said that he was going out for a while. His mum told him not to be too late because of his early start. That was the last time she saw him alive. He went off with his mate and she never saw him again.’

  ‘So, where did he go? His mate must know.’

  ‘His mate says that it never happened, that he never called at the house that night and he never saw Sean that evening. That’s what he told the Coroner, apparently.’

  ‘But his mother knew who the caller was, surely?’

  ‘Ah well, not quite. Sean had answered the door, talked to someone at the door and then told his mum that he was just going out for a while with Charlie. Mum never actually saw Charlie. It appears that, when this came out in front of the Coroner, he decided that Mrs M was mistaken and that the caller had been someone else.’

  ‘Could have been,’ Sheila commented.

  ‘So it could, but Mrs M is absolutely certain that it was Charlie.’

  ‘Do you believe her?’

  ‘I believe that she believes it was Charlie. I don’t know what else I believe. Can I go on?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Sean never came home that night. Mrs M worried — not too much because he was eighteen, after all, and he was a big lad who could usually take care of himself, but when the weekend had passed, she rang the police. They, of course, didn’t want to know, as they almost never want to know about missing teenagers. Then Charlie turned up, asking if Sean was back from his weekend trip.’

  ‘So he thought Sean had gone away?’

  ‘Apparently. Mrs M told him she hadn’t seen Sean since Friday night and asked him where Sean was. He said he didn’t know.’

  ‘Did he admit that he’d gone off with Sean on Friday night?’

  ‘He didn’t admit it, but Mrs M says he didn’t deny it, either.’

  ‘That’s pretty peculiar, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Mrs M spent Monday asking anyone she thought might have seen Sean if they knew anything about him, but no one had seen him all weekend. Then, on Tuesday morning, the police arrived on her doorstep. He’d been found dead.’

  ‘Where and how?’

  ‘He had a car that he kept in a lock-up garage, a few streets away from his home. Mrs M had been there, but it was all locked up and she hadn’t got a key.’

  ‘So how was he found?’

  ‘Charlie found him.’

  ‘Charlie?!’


  ‘The very same. It seems that Charlie thought that Sean might be in his garage...’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Good question. I don’t know. Charlie just had this thought out of the blue, so he went along on Tuesday morning only to find that the place was all locked up.’

  ‘Who had a key?’

  ‘Only Sean it seems, but if he was murdered, someone else must have had. Charlie checked the only door and it was locked. So he climbed up on the roof, because he knew there was a loose area in the roofing and he thought he could get in.’

  ‘Why did he want to get in, if the place was locked? Why didn’t he think that Sean couldn’t be in there, like Mrs M?’

  ‘Another good question. Anyway, whatever the reason, he got up on the roof and looked in through the loose area. He could see the front of the car and Sean’s foot in the passenger seat area, so he scrambled down again and called the police. They forced the door and found Sean dead in the rear seat of his car.’

  ‘What did he die of?’

  ‘Carbon monoxidepoisoning — exhaust fumes.’

  ‘You mean a hosepipe in the exhaust job?’

  ‘No. That’s part of the problem. He died because the engine had run in the garage and the garage was largely airtight.’

  ‘Which he must have known?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And the door was locked?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So he sat in his car, with the engine running, in a locked garage to which only he had a key, and which he must have known was airtight. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Sounds like suicide to me, Chris.’

  ‘That’s what the Coroner thought. That’s what the death certificate says. Mrs M disagrees.’

  Sheila mused a while over her drink.

  ‘So he was about to go off for a weekend,’ she said at last. ‘With a girl — a bloke — was he straight or gay?’

  ‘Straight, so far as his mother knew.’

  ‘Everybody’s straight so far as their mother knows. Did he have a current girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never said so.’

  ‘You never asked and anyway, she didn’t give evidence at the Inquest.’

  ‘What might she have said?’

  ‘We don’t know — she never said it.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘Now there you’re on an interesting trail. She was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl at the Abbey Gate School.’

  ‘That’s a bit posh, isn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly is — children of thirty-second degree Masons and minor royalty only.’

  ‘And which is her dad?’

  ‘Well, he might be in the first group. He’s a lawyer, a top commercial bloke, always whizzing off to see clients in Singapore and Miami and San Francisco.’

  ‘So he’d have been pretty upset at his lovely daughter wasting herself on a garage bloke?’

  ‘I imagine so, if he knew.’

  ‘Did he know?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She glared at me. ‘It strikes me, Chris Tyroll, that there’s a lot about this case you don’t know. Hasn’t anyone interviewed the girl?’

  ‘No. The Coroner’s Officer was most anxious that that shouldn’t happen.’

  ‘What’s a Coroner’s Officer?’

  ‘A policeman — usually a Sergeant — assigned to assist a Coroner.’

  ‘And why didn’t he interview the girl?’

  ‘Mrs McBride tells me that she asked him to. She thought the girl might shed some light on Sean’s death, but the Sergeant was adamant. He was more than that, in fact. She says that, when she tried to push it with him, he banged his fist on the desk and kept shouting at her, telling her that Sylvia Wellington was a schoolgirl from a nice family who wouldn’t want her mixed up in this affair and that he wasn’t going to get her mixed up in this affair. He wasn’t going to interview her or involve her in any way, and Mrs M could face up to the fact that her boy’s death was accident or suicide, whichever the Coroner decided.’

  ‘That sounds pretty hard. Do you know this Coroner’s Officer bloke? Is he usually like that?’

  I shook my head. ‘Coroner’s Officers are usually chosen because they can be relied on to do their job without upsetting the relatives of the deceased. That’s the sort of man Sergeant Wilson is.’

  ‘So what do you make of Mrs M’s tale about him?’

  ‘Mrs McBride is a highly emotional Irish lady, whose son has died. She gets angry and upset very easily and she shouts at people. She did at me a few times and I’m supposed to be on her side. Maybe she did that at Sergeant Wilson and he lost his rag at her. But I still can’t see him telling her that he wouldn’t involve the girl.’

  ‘So you don’t believe her?’

  ‘I find that part hard to believe. As to the rest, well, the garage door was locked and only Sean had a key.’

  ‘Might still have been an accident,’ Sheila said. ‘Surely there’s got to be some indication of a reason for a Coroner to find suicide?’

  ‘Right. He said that the boy had been having headaches and that he was worried about a driving prosecution and that, as teenagers do, he magnified it all out of proportion and committed suicide.’

  ‘Had he been having headaches? Was he being prosecuted?’

  ‘Mrs M says that she never knew he was being prosecuted, but the Coroner’s Officer picked it up. Sean was awaiting trial for driving with excess alcohol. As to headaches, Mrs M insists that Sean was robustly healthy and had never complained of a headache in his life.’

  ‘So that’s not true?’

  ‘Apparently not, but it is true that the Coroner gave that as his reason for finding suicide. She showed me the press report of the Inquest.’

  ‘So, then, Sherlock, what do you make of it all?’

  ‘I’m damned if I know, Watson!’

  ‘Sherlock never said that!’

  ‘I’ll bet he did. It’s just that Watson never let on.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was less hectic the next day. I had no court appearances, so I could sit in the office and try to tidy up my notes from the previous afternoon.

  I started with what I thought was the easy one — Samson’s daughter’s pony. A polite letter to the bloke who’d seized the ponies,’ saying that I was instructed by the ponies owners, that they were very sorry that they’d trespassed on his field, but they had nowhere to graze their animals and hadn’t been able to find out who owned the field; they would gladly pay reasonable fees for the weeks of grazing that they’d had and would he please consider letting them rent the field in the long term. Very persuasive, I thought. No reasonable bloke could refuse an offer to make money out of a field that he wasn’t using, surely.

  Next it was the BDS strike. It seemed to have started with Mohammed Afsar, so I started trying to put my notes in the form of a proof of evidence.

  ‘MOHAMMED AFSAR states that:

  I am 26 years old and single. I live with my parents at 37 Hospital Terrace, Belston, West Midlands.

  I am unemployed at present, but was recently working for BDS at Belston as a Computer Programmer. I hold a degree in Computer Studies from the University of Bradford and, after leaving university, was employed for some years by the Communications Corporation at Swindon.

  I started work at BDS about two and a half years ago. I cannot describe my work in detail, as it is covered by the Official Secrets Act, but in general I was concerned with the software which controls the launching and guidance of the Retaliator missile.

  I worked in the Computer Department under a Mr Swan. In the early stages of my work there I found it very interesting. Incidents during the Gulf War and in Bosnia had made it necessary to refine guidance systems so that there was virtually no chance of an error in targeting. At first the management of BDS was always hurrying our department up, so that Retaliator could be tried out on test ranges.

  In the early part of this year we
found that things were changing. There seemed to be difficulties with the mechanical and electronic development of Retaliator and our work became less urgent. In fact, things turned right around. We were developing software which we believed would do the jobs required, but the necessary circuitry or mechanisms had not been developed so that we were unable to try out our programs in practice. It was very frustrating.

  At the same time, it seemed that BDS were cost-cutting. All sorts of staff were let go, in almost all departments, to the extent that there were frequently not enough personnel to man some of the production lines. There was a notice at the main gate, advertising casual vacancies to be filled. As each shift clocked on, the shift foreman would be told to check if they had the men that they needed and, if not, to notify vacancies to the main gate. There was usually a queue there of men from the Jobcentre who knew that there was always a chance of getting a shift’s work at BDS, and the security men at the gate would let in as many as were needed and send them to the departments that were short.

  When I first joined BDS I became a member of the Union, the Munitions Industry Union. It has a reputation as a ‘company union’ because it is the one that the Government prefers to operate in defence factories, but my father is a great believer in trade unions and told me that I must join. The MIU was, in fact, the only trade union that BDS would recognise on its premises.

  Although I thought that MIU was a company union, I was pleasantly surprised by its activities at BDS. The Shop Stewards were very keen and the Chairman of the Shop Stewards, Mr Mulvaney, was very aware of what was going on all over the plant.

  I know that Mr Mulvaney and the Shop Stewards were extremely unhappy about the practice of undermanning. They said that an awful lot of time was wasted in training unskilled casual labour and a lot of product was wasted in the process. They kept arguing with the management that the whole system needed to be completely re-organised and enough labour hired to do all the work properly. The management kept saying that times were difficult and that they hadn’t got the funds to hire at will. They kept telling us that once Retaliator was up and running and the government orders were in, there would money in plenty and everything could be put right.