I reflected on this as I headed down the M5 in perfect driving conditions except for the apparently obligatory contraflow – a moveable feast along this stretch of almost permanently under-repair motorway. On this occasion each lane slowed virtually to a stand-still somewhere around the turn-off to my old home town of Weston-super-Mare. Thanks to this, a certain amount of seasonal traffic already, and an accident on the treacherous three-laned North Devon link road out of Tiverton, the journey from Bristol to Barnstaple took me just over two and a half hours, considerably longer than my February trip to see Todd Mallett. Fortunately, for once in my life I had allowed plenty of time.
I parked in the police station car park and walked the couple of hundred yards or so along the busy main road which led to the Castle Centre, which was, as is common practice for inquests, merely a room hired for the occasion. An alleyway led into the Centre which I knew to be more usually the home of various evening classes and community groups. I entered through its slightly awkward double doors and was glad that I was early. There were only a handful of people already there but I was still paranoid enough to think they were all staring at me as I walked in. Inside I quickly found myself a wooden chair at one end of the back row. The floor was covered with incongruously bright pink linoleum tiles and notice boards on the walls carried the assorted announcements pinned to them by the Centre’s other users.
I had been warned about the North Devon coroner, a solicitor called Martin Storey OBE. He insisted that the OBE be used at all times, I had been told – not actually when you addressed him in court but almost – and he was a man who never missed the opportunity of making the most of his position. He was a lay preacher, and apparently his addresses from the coroner’s bench were inclined to turn into sermons. He used his office to make statements on all manner of things he thought were amiss in the world, often linked only spuriously with the case in hand – something that is actually against regulations and which most coroners frown upon – and if he were about to hold forth on a topic dear to his heart he would often tip off the press in advance.
He had only recently taken over from a well-respected and long-serving coroner in North Devon, who had once gone on record as saying that it was his ambition to conclude his tenure without ever gracing the pages of the News of the World – quite unlike his successor whose almost weekly aim seemed to be to do just that. I had been told it was generally believed that Martin Storey OBE would not last long. However he remained the man currently in control and that was just my luck because he was particularly hot on police incompetence, apparently – even though traditionally coroners work very closely with the police and indeed in North Devon the coroner’s office is actually in Barnstaple nick and the coroner’s officer, not unusually, is a former police officer. I gathered that even Storey, if he had something particularly scathing to say, would at least let any police officers know if he intended to tear a strip off them. I had had no such warning.
However, nothing I heard about Mr Martin Storey, a grey world-weary looking man who didn’t look as if he smiled much, filled me with any optimism about how he might be expected to react to my behaviour. He did, however, grant my request to sit through the proceedings – I was a witness but not one considered crucial to the outcome.
A jury is obligatory in an unexplained death like Natasha’s, but the coroner himself remains very much in control. It is the coroner who questions witnesses and gives the final summing up, often directing the jury as to what their verdict should be.
There were the usual expert witnesses including a doctor. Young Jason Tucker was called to the stand and looked completely bewildered and near to tears. He no longer stood tall and proud but instead bowed his head most of the time, and when he did look up I could see that his features were drawn and his previously tanned complexion now pale.
‘I don’t remember nothing,’ he said.
‘Let me get this straight, you have no memory at all of leaving Natasha Felks on the Pencil?’ asked Mr Storey.
‘No, I ain’t. I don’t even remember taking her on the boat at all.’
‘Now then, let’s be clear on this Mr Tucker,’ said the coroner sternly, ‘are you trying to tell me that you did not take Miss Felks to the Pencil, or just that you don’t remember?’
‘Oh, just that I don’t remember,’ replied Jason, his black eyes wide and staring. ‘I must ’ave taken her. Nobody else would ’ave, would they? It happens to me sometimes you see . . .’
His voice tailed off. He appeared to be very frightened. I wondered if it was the court which was frightening him or the knowledge that he was not in full control of what went on in his head. Both probably.
I studied Jason closely. It seemed barely possible that his memory blackouts could be so complete. But I knew for a fact that they could be.
The coroner’s court didn’t frighten me the way it did Jason. After all, I had spent enough of my life in courts. The Castle Centre was hardly imposing and an inquest has few of the forbidding formalities of other courts. Still, I never found giving evidence a pleasant procedure. And I had a feeling that Coroner Storey viewed me with distaste from the moment I began to speak – although that could have been the disconcerting effect of his lazy left eye which never quite caught up with the focus of the right one.
To begin with what was required from me was simple enough. I merely had to relate exactly what had happened during my November holiday on Abri when I had had such a narrow escape. Then the coroner asked me the question I was expecting and not looking forward to answering.
‘You were staying on a holiday island, Detective Chief Inspector, the management of which you had reason to have considered to be negligent of your safety,’ he said in his very precise, clipped tones. ‘Did you report the incident to the appropriate authorities?’
He knew I hadn’t, the bastard. I decided not to make my position worse by trying to explain myself too much at this stage.
‘No, sir, I did not. I was satisfied at the time that what happened to me was an isolated incident which would not be allowed to happen again.’
‘Were you, Detective Chief Inspector? Well, tragically for Miss Felks that did not prove to be the case, did it?’
‘No sir,’ I said quietly. The utter bastard, I thought to myself. Didn’t he realise how bad I felt about that?
‘Did you not even consider that further guests on the island might be put at risk and that you might be able to prevent this, Miss Piper?’
‘Of course I considered the safety of other guests, sir. But I became convinced that Mr Davey and his staff would contain the situation. I was assured quite categorically that Jason Tucker would never again be allowed to take passengers out alone in any vessel. I never thought for one moment the same thing could happen again. If I had I would have done something about it.’
‘You were, however, proven to be wrong in every way, Detective Chief Inspector.’
It was a statement, not a question. That overly precise smug manner of his was beginning to irritate me. The jury, however, looked as if they were lapping it up. I suppose it’s not every day you see a DCI being given the third degree. And a woman DCI at that. I carefully studied the unpleasantly vivid pink linoleum tiles of the floor and made no reply. Neither did one seem to be expected of me. I was stood down.
Robin Davey was the next witness. He looked grave but dignified. I had only ever seen him wearing jeans and chunky sweaters before. On this occasion he was immaculate in a very dark grey suit and he looked even more handsome than he did in casual clothes. Some men don’t. Robin Davey did.
The coroner gave him quite a grilling, although I fancied he was not as hostile in his line of questioning to Robin as he had been to me. But then, maybe Mr Storey didn’t like senior women police officers. He’d have a fair bit of company if that was the case.
Either way Martin Storey began by expressing his sympathies at Robin’s loss, and Robin inclined his head graciously. Certainly if there were still or had ever bee
n any genuine lurking suspicions about Robin having any direct involvement in Natasha’s death none seemed apparent in this court.
Whatever else he might have been, however, the coroner was no push-over.
‘I find it hard to believe that you could have continued to employ Jason Tucker after Miss Piper’s narrow escape,’ said Storey coldly. ‘Was that not the height of irresponsibility, Mr Davey, on an island where hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors every year put their safety in your hands?’
Robin seemed to wince as he bowed his head and looked down at his hands, clasped before him. I could see how white his knuckles were.
He was silent for several seconds. Eventually he raised his head and met the coroner’s interrogative stare – or at least met the one effective half of it.
‘Yes sir, it was criminally irresponsible,’ he said, and there was a buzz around the court. The reporters at the press table opposite the jury began to scribble furiously.
Robin sighed quite audibly.
‘I took a risk, and my fiancée has paid the ultimate price for my folly. I thought I had the situation in control and I didn’t. There is not a day, and there will never be a day in my life, when I will not regret that I didn’t send Jason Tucker off Abri when I had the chance – because I now accept that was the only course of action which would have been sure to avoid such a tragedy on the island.’
He paused. There was a hush in the courtroom.
‘I didn’t do so because Abri was Jason’s home. He was born and brought up there. His family have been on Abri for generations. The Davey family have owned Abri for almost 200 years. The people of Abri are our extended family.’ Robin’s voice broke a little. He paused again. ‘You don’t turn family out,’ he continued eventually. ‘It didn’t even occur to me to do so. I wish to God, for everyone’s sake, that it had.’
Even the coroner seemed mesmerised. I felt tears pricking the backs of my eyes. Mind you, they may have been tears of self-pity.
Storey was not completely bowled over, though. He criticised Robin sternly in his summing up, and made a crack about there being no place in the modern world for feudal loyalties taking precedence over public safety, but he reserved his big guns for me.
‘It is highly regrettable that a senior police officer given first-hand experience of a very dangerous situation should have taken no steps to alert the public safety authorities. Detective Chief Inspector Piper was in the unique situation of being an outsider with an insider’s insight.’
I had expected a bit of a rough ride, but I hadn’t reckoned on being made into some kind of scapegoat, which was the way things were beginning to turn out. An ironic outcome, though, was that as I sat listening to the bloody man I began to feel angry at the injustice of it all more than anything else. My sense of guilt receded quite nicely, in fact. It was one thing for me to feel a certain responsibility – it was entirely another to be treated by a court of law almost as if I were solely to blame for Natasha Felks’ death.
Ultimately the jury recorded the only possible verdict, an open one, which was what the coroner indeed directed, even though coroners traditionally hate open verdicts because they reckon it looks as if they are incapable of coming to a proper decision. However I had begun to think that if Coroner Storey had had it in his power to get me landed with a murder wrap then he may well have done so. As the proceedings closed I glowered into his one good eye and wondered if I could persuade Traffic to follow him around for a few days in the hope of finding the sanctimonious so-and-so a pint or two over the limit. Even getting him for going through an amber light would be something.
I could sense that Robin Davey was looking at me, a mite apologetically it seemed, however I was in such a bad mood by the end of the case that I just wanted to get out of the courtroom, into my car, and be on my own.
I was pretty sure that I heard Davey call my name as I rushed for the exit, but I didn’t turn round. At that moment I genuinely wanted nothing more to do with him or his bloody island for as long as I lived. I had quite enough problems of my own to deal with.
Mercifully my homeward journey was considerably swifter and easier than my outward one had been that morning. I went straight to my flat rather than into my office as I would normally have done, even though it was gone five o’clock when I passed the Portishead turning off the M5. I reckoned that any further misery could wait until the next day, and I could all too clearly picture the newspaper headlines I would have to face in the morning following the ribbing I’d been given. I could also imagine vividly the response of the blessed Titmuss, and I was not to be disappointed on either count.
My local daily dropped through the letter box and fell on to the door mat just before seven the next day with exactly the same plop as it always did – giving no indication whatsoever of how serious its content might prove to be for more than one of us concerned with the case.
‘Top woman cop “grossly negligent” – court told how she failed to report near death incident. Coroner hits out,’ screamed the Bristol-based paper.
Extraordinary how it managed not to mention that I was the one who faced the ‘near death incident’ until quite low down in the piece.
I forced myself to read on, not daring to imagine what the national tabloids, undoubtedly tipped off by regional agencies, might have made of the inquest. The local paper also reported how the coroner had recommended that because of his illness Jason Tucker should not face a manslaughter charge, which may have been a possibility.
I was drowning my sorrows in lip-burningly hot tea, bitterly strong and dark enough to leave a distinct stain on the mug as its level subsided, when Todd Mallett unexpectedly called.
‘Just wanted you to know I don’t reckon you deserved that hard a ride,’ he told me gruffly.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and I meant it. I was grateful for any kind of solace.
There was an uncomfortable pause. I found myself asking him about Jason Tucker.
‘We’ve got a police psychiatrist on the case,’ said Todd. ‘He’ll be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, then sent to a secure hospital, I reckon. Frustrating, of course, because it means we don’t get a trial . . .’
His voice trailed off just as I was thinking how strange it was that even at that moment I had the time and energy to once more feel a bit sorry for Jason. But I did. It had to be accepted that he was a danger to have around but he had seemed to be such a free soul. I could even sympathise a little with Robin Davey for not wanting to banish him from Abri, a place the lad so patently adored, even though the consequence of Davey’s sentimental paternalism had apparently been so dire.
Somewhere in the distance I could here that Todd was still talking.
‘Watch your step, Rose, won’t you,’ he advised. ‘I’m afraid your ride is going to stay rough for a bit . . .’
He was dead right too. When I arrived at Portishead an hour or so later I had no more opportunity to worry about anyone’s plight other than my own. Titmuss the Terrible bollocked me rotten.
‘Not only did you behave with total irresponsibility when you were on the island, right until now you have completely failed to fully inform your senior officers of the seriousness of your involvement.’
‘You knew I was giving evidence at the inquest, sir,’ I interjected lamely.
‘Yes, Rose,’ he roared. ‘And that’s about all I did know. Todd Mallett knew exactly where you stood on this, apparently, exactly the bother you could be in, and he’s not even in this force. Nobody saw fit to let me in on it, did they?’
‘Well, it was Superintendent Mallett’s case,’ I suggested. Another mistake.
‘And you are under my command, Rose,’ he bellowed. ‘Unfortunately for both of us.’
That was about as close as he had ever got to expressing what I had always known to be his true feelings about my being his deputy.
He hadn’t finished either. ‘I have bosses, too, Rose, or had you forgotten that we do have a chain of command in the force?
You could face official disciplinary action, do you realise that?’
I did, of course, although I also realised it was against Titmuss’s interests almost as much as mine to let it get that far if he could possibly avoid it. I was not, however, altogether surprised the next day to be sent on another management training course.
About three weeks later I received a letter from Robin Davey.
‘I would just like to sincerely apologise for having dragged you into this terrible mess,’ he wrote. ‘I would have contacted you again earlier but was afraid of merely making things worse. I thought the coroner was completely out of order to attach so much blame to you.
‘If anyone was to blame for Natasha’s death it was me – not even poor Jason, and certainly not you. This is something I somehow have to live with.
‘I hope you will not be angry with me for writing. You quite rightly objected to me telephoning you so soon after Natasha’s death. It was crass and thoughtless to approach you at such a time in such a manner. I trust a letter now will be deemed more appropriate. I just had to say how sorry I am about everything.
‘And if it’s not pushing my luck I wondered if I could perhaps take you to dinner in Bristol one night? I’m often there for business. Maybe it could help both of us to get together and talk. If I don’t hear from you I shall not contact you again. But I do hope that you will call me.’
In spite of myself my cheeks flushed as I read the letter. I still had some kind of adolescent crush on the bloke, it appeared. Meeting him had not done my already flagging career a lot of good, but that made little difference. My undimmed attraction for him combined with curiosity left me with little choice.
It didn’t take me long to wrestle with my common sense or my conscience, which were always going to be on the losing side in this one. I may have had a pretty unpleasant time of it but the coroner’s court had recorded an open verdict and the whole thing was in the past – all that remained for me really being the scars from the public mauling I had received. I told myself they would heal in time, that they were of my own making not Robin Davey’s, and that the situation had changed totally from when he had made that rather misguided phone call to me. The man was no longer involved in a police investigation into a suspicious death. The case of Natasha Felks was closed – her death just one of the many truly bizarre accidents that happen every year. And, of course, her loss did mean that Robin Davey was unattached, I reflected shamelessly, as what little conscience I had retained melted into the atmosphere.
For Death Comes Softly Page 9