by M. R. Hall
‘I’ll speak to the owner. Can you let go? I’m getting cold.’
He jammed his knee against the door, wedging it open. ‘And say what – do you remember a cash job eight years ago?’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘That you try a bit harder, Mrs Cooper. Jesus.’
Exasperated, Jenny said, ‘I think we’ve had this conversation already.’
‘Listen – those boys over there are Latvians. They’ve seen a guy with a ponytail come to rent a car once or twice. Mid-forties or thereabouts. Comes over in an old Mark 1 Land Rover and has it seen to in that garage. Had an aluminium hard top made for it last autumn – one of the Lats is an arc welder by trade, helped the mechanic get it done.’
Jenny sighed. ‘Do they know the man’s name?’
‘Not a clue.’ McAvoy gave an innocent smile. ‘All I’m suggesting is a polite inquiry.’
‘Fine. But I’ll be the one making it.’ She climbed out of the car. ‘Don’t you dare follow me.’
She returned to the office to find the young man coming off a call. He looked surprised and slightly disconcerted by her reappearance.
Jenny said, ‘Help me out here – you have a customer, a man in his forties with a ponytail. Drives an old Land Rover. Do you know who I mean?’
He shook his head. ‘No . . .’
She came up close to the counter, giving him the smile. ‘This is just between you and me, all right – do some customers pay in cash to hire a vehicle, no records, no paperwork?’
‘Not from me,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Can’t speak for the boss.’
She tried again, ‘I really need to know about this man with the ponytail. Are you certain you haven’t seen him?’
‘I’ve only been working here six weeks.’
‘I’ll believe you,’ Jenny said. ‘You’d better give me the boss’s address.’
McAvoy was sitting on the bonnet, blowing into his hands and looking across the yard through the open front of the mechanic’s workshop.
Jenny said, ‘He’s new here. I’ll have to talk to the owner.’
McAvoy said, ‘Why don’t you try over there? That guy’ll know him – spent a week working on his vehicle. Makes more sense than approaching a man you’re asking to incriminate himself.’
She glanced over at the garage. The mechanic, a big man with heavily muscled arms, was working on the exhaust of a vehicle sitting up on an overhead ramp. ‘Stay here.’
She stepped between puddles on the rough gravel, water seeping through the soles of her shoes. She made it to the concrete forecourt and approached the doorway. She’d never been sure of the etiquette in these places – should she wait for him to come to her or call out?
She knew from the glance he’d cast as she headed over that he’d seen her, but he let her stand there getting colder while he continued to wind off another bolt.
‘Hello,’ she called out, competing with a radio that was pumping out non-stop nineties techno.
Only when he was good and ready did he turn slightly and look her over. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘My name’s Jenny Cooper. I’m the Severn Vale District Coroner. I’m trying to locate one of your customers. Have you got a moment?’
The mechanic slotted the spanner into a long pocket on the leg of his overalls and ducked out from under the ramp, wiping oil-stained hands on the backs of his thighs. He was tall, six-three at least, and broad as a bull across the shoulders.
Jenny told him politely about the man with the ponytail who owned a Mark 1 Land Rover.
The mechanic’s eyes flicked towards the carpentry shop as he worked out who had sent her here.
‘I would appreciate your assistance. He could be an important witness.’
He slowly shook his massive head. ‘Don’t know who you mean.’
‘You made something for him last autumn . . . a cover . . .’ Jenny said, out of her depth talking to mechanics. ‘One of the Latvian guys over there helped you.’
‘Not me,’ he said, and turned back towards the ramp.
Jenny said, ‘Excuse me. I’m not sure you realize how serious this is. I could call you as a witness.’
‘Go ahead.’ He fetched out his spanner and went back to work.
‘Then you can expect a summons. I’ll see you in court on Monday morning,’ she threatened feebly and to no effect.
‘Hey, big fella.’ She turned to see McAvoy coming across the gravel at a jog. ‘You ought to know who it is you’re protecting.’
Jenny gave him a look that pleaded for him to stay away.
He held up his hands, ‘Relax.’ He called out to the mechanic, ‘This ponytail guy’s a nonce. Likes to spray paint on little kiddies.’
The big man turned round.
‘That’s right. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to have people like that known to be my friends. The way people talk—’
Jenny said, ‘Please, Alec, for Christ’s sake.’
Ignoring her, McAvoy stepped over to the ramp and pressed the button that released the hydraulics. The mechanic darted out from underneath as it started down, the spanner in his hand, ‘The fuck are you doing?’
‘Getting your attention.’ McAvoy took a step forward. ‘Forget about a pick-up truck – hell will rain down on you, my friend, if you don’t try to be a little more helpful . . .’
The mechanic tightened his grip on the spanner. Jenny watched, open-mouthed. The muscles in her throat contracted in panic.
‘A little girl of six years old, that’s who he preyed on. You want someone like that going about?’ McAvoy moved forward another half step, inches away from the taller, much heftier man, ‘Or do you want to do the decent thing?’
Jenny watched, disbelieving, as the mechanic met Mc-Avoy’s eyes, raised the spanner a fraction ready to strike, weighed the odds, then slowly lowered it, lifting his chin defiantly as he took a step back. Without saying a word he crossed to the messy shelf – a plank laid across stacks of tyres – that served as his office, tore off a scrap of paper and scratched on it with a stub of pencil. He handed the note to Jenny then disappeared into the back of the building. He’d written: Chris Tathum, Capel Farm, Peterchurch.
They sat in stationary traffic outside what had once been a cattle market. Their damp coats were steaming up the windows, making Jenny feel increasingly claustrophobic. She wanted to take a pill but didn’t dare in front of McAvoy: she already felt as if she had no secrets from him, as if he had an unnatural ability to detect her weaknesses and work his way into them.
He broke the silence which had persisted since they’d left the garage. ‘You don’t want to pay this man a visit now you’re out here?’
‘I’m not a detective,’ Jenny said flatly.
‘But you’ll have to ask him to make a statement saying where he was that night.’
‘I’ll send my officer.’
They crept forward several feet. The lights ahead flicked back to red.
‘If you ask me, you should show your face, let him know you mean business. Politely, of course.’
Jenny tapped her thumbs nervously on the wheel, keeping her eyes fixed on the road ahead, fighting the feeling that the sides of the car were closing in on her.
‘If you don’t,’ McAvoy said, ‘he might just slip through your fingers. Those Latvian guys have seen him a few times. The boy in the car-rental place will already have called his boss, the mechanic might even have tipped him off, we don’t know. If it were any other case, you might say to yourself the police can always help me out, but I doubt that’s an option here.’
‘What’s it to you anyway?’ Jenny said. ‘Why this case? You’re not even getting paid for it.’
He nodded towards the distant tower of the cathedral, poking above the faux city wall surrounding a supermarket on the far side of the lights. ‘Same reason they built that – seems like the right thing to do.’
‘The spirit moved you, huh?’
‘If you like.’
‘Why wouldn’t you – a man with my history?’
‘Well, there you are. You can see why I’m not about to drive you out to say hello to Mr Tathum.’
McAvoy wiped his window with his cuff. ‘You know, Jenny, I don’t believe it’s me you’re frightened of, or Tathum – whoever he may be. I think the person who scares the living shit out of you is you.’ He looked at her sideways across his shoulder, studying her face with a quizzical frown. ‘I followed that case you did last year, the kid who died in custody. That must’ve taken some guts. And you know what I believe?’
Jenny closed her eyes and shook her head. He’d done it again, cut right through her.
‘That we find ourselves in these situations for a reason. I bet you learned something about yourself. Took on those principalities and powers without even thinking. I’ll bet it’s only afterwards you thought to be scared.’
‘Not quite true.’
‘What I’m saying is you know as well as I do what it is to be moved. It’s not comfortable. The first time you’re swept up on the wave. Each time after that you tend to have a choice.’
The address was that of a small stone farmhouse in the shadow of the Black Mountains. From the village of Peter-church they threaded along three miles of narrow lane, which dissolved into a further half mile of rough track. It was fully dark by the time Jenny pulled up at the gate to an untidy yard littered with tools and building materials. The house, which looked like two cottages joined together, was in the process of being renovated. One half looked inhabited and had lights in the downstairs windows, the other was still a roofless shell. She made McAvoy promise, swear on the Holy Mother herself, that he would stay in the car. He told her to please herself and reclined his seat a touch, settling back for a nap.
She lifted the latch on the heavy gate and picked her way across the pot-holed yard by the light of a miniature torch on her key fob, passing the elderly Land Rover with its smart new aluminium hard top. Before raising the heavy iron knocker on the front door she looked back at her Golf to check: in the darkness McAvoy was invisible. He’d better stay that way.
A man dressed in jeans and a paint-spattered sweatshirt answered. Dogs barked excitedly from behind an inner door. He was the right age, but his skull was shaved in a tight crew cut. He looked fit and muscular, an outdoors man. More nervous than she had expected, Jenny asked him if he was Christopher Tathum. He confirmed that he was, with no trace of anxiety or apprehension, she noticed, just a man living out in the country doing up a house.
She felt guilty saying it, her heart in her throat, but regretfully told him that his name had arisen as a possible witness in a case she was investigating.
‘Really? What case is that?’ he said. ‘I don’t think I know anyone who’s died recently.’ His voice was educated but not overly so. It had a quality Jenny found familiar but couldn’t place. His eyes were intelligent, his expression patient but questioning.
The words tripped out of her mouth without conscious thought. ‘Two young Asian men went missing from Bristol in late June 2002. We have a sighting of them in the back seat of a vehicle we believe you may have been renting at the time.’
Tathum smiled, nonplussed. ‘Where did you get that from?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you at the moment. What I need is for you to give a statement saying where you were at the time, 28 June to be precise.’
He seemed amused. ‘And if I can’t remember?’
‘Have a think. See what comes back to you.’ She offered him the last business card in her wallet. ‘Maybe you could set it down in the form of a signed letter and fax it through to my office over the weekend? Or I can send my officer over to take a statement if you’d prefer.’
He peered at the card by the light of the dim bulb in the open porch in which they were standing. ‘I don’t know anything about any Asians. I’m a builder.’
‘Was that your job at the time, sir?’
‘I thought you wanted me to write a letter.’ There was a hint of threat in his expression now, his facial muscles tightening into a defensive mask.
Jenny said, ‘If you could. Thank you.’ She stepped away from the door and started across the yard.
Tathum said, ‘Hold on a minute. What is it I’m being accused of here?’
She stopped and glanced back. ‘You’re not being accused of anything. A coroner’s inquest merely pieces together facts and events surrounding a death, or in this case a presumed death.’
‘I know nothing about your case. You’re wasting your time.’
‘Then that’s what you should write. Set down where you were working, who you were with, and I can discount you from my inquiries. Goodnight, Mr Tathum.’
She turned back towards the gate.
‘You come all the way out here and won’t even tell me what I’m meant to have done?’
An instinct told her not to stop.
‘Hey, lady. I’m talking to you.’ She heard his footsteps coming after her.
She wheeled round to face him. Away from the lights of the house, he was nothing more than an angry shadow.
‘It’s very simple, Mr Tathum, I’m just asking you to account for your whereabouts on a particular night: 28 June 2002.’
‘You know what?’ He stepped closer. Jenny moved back and found herself pressed against the gate.
‘Mr Tathum—’
Where was McAvoy now she needed him?
Tathum glared at her and seemed to swallow the abuse he was ready to hurl at her. She flinched at a sudden movement of his head towards hers, but there was no contact, only a violent jolt to her nerves. He marched back to the house. She fumbled for the latch on the gate, made it through and tumbled into the car.
When she’d got her breath, McAvoy said, ‘That was more like it.’
It was McAvoy’s idea to pull over at the pub. If she hadn’t been desperate to swallow a pill she would have put up more resistance. She retreated to the sanctuary of a draughty ladies’ room and thanked God for the opportunity to medicate herself. She had got it down to a fine art: just enough to soothe her nerves without making her dopey. She had asked him for tonic water and had drunk most of the contents of the glass before she realized the feeling of well-being spreading through her wasn’t only due to the log fire in the inglenook or the relief of having escaped her encounter with Tathum unscathed. There was vodka in it. Six months of sobriety up in smoke. She should have told him, but part of her thought: what the hell? I’ve been longing to feel this good. Where’s the harm in just one drink? Instead, she sipped the rest of it slowly, telling herself it would hardly touch her that way. Like McAvoy said, she didn’t want to go through life frightened. Having a drink was part of learning to handle herself again.
He was funny and contagious, sensitive and witty. He told her stories about his courtroom adventures that made her laugh until she cried, and tales of the tragic characters he’d met in prison that moved her to tears. And the more he drank, the warmer and more poetic he became. She began to see the complex layers of his contradictory character and to understand his moral code: his acceptance of people, both good and bad, with equal humanity because ‘ultimately we’re all God’s creatures’. In her mildly intoxicated state she found him a beguiling mixture of humility and creativity, of wilful independence and thoughtful submission. His guiding philosophy as a lawyer, he said, had always been, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ It didn’t mean – as most people thought – that judging others was sinful, but that all who cast judgement would one day be judged, and by far more demanding laws than any contrived by man.
‘And that’s where I find my grain of solace,’ he said, his fingers cradling his tumbler a whisker away from hers. ‘I’ve done some wicked things in my life, mixed with some truly evil men in this fallen world, but I’ve never doubted for a moment that I’ll be judged as harshly as the next.’
‘Do you think you’ll get through the s
trait gate?’ Jenny said, with a smile.
‘I’d like to think I might squeak it . . . who knows?’ He sipped his whisky, his gaze drifting inwards.
Jenny watched him, wondering what he was thinking, what sins he was hoping this crusade might wash away. She was tempted to ask, but something stopped her. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be forced into judgement. She was learning from him, that was enough, drawing down some yet to be defined wisdom.
From deep in his reverie, McAvoy said, ‘Do you think those kids really were terrorists?’
Jenny said, ‘Does it matter?’
‘What’s done in the dark must always come to the light,’ McAvoy said. He tipped back the rest of his whisky. ‘We should be going.’
SEVENTEEN
‘MUM . . . YOU OK?’
Jenny rose out of a leaden, dreamless sleep, her limbs too heavy to move. Ross’s anxious voice was coming from the foot of the bed.
‘Mum?’
‘Mmm?’ she said, turning her eyes away from the shaft of light streaming through the partially opened curtains.
‘I thought you might be ill . . .’
Something felt wrong, constricted. Barely awake, she tried to move to a sitting position and realized she was dressed in her skirt and suit jacket.
‘You weren’t well when you came home last night,’ Ross said. ‘I didn’t know what was wrong.’
She blinked, her vision slowly coming to focus. Her sleepy gaze wandered around the room. She saw her shoes lying near the door, her handbag on the floor at the side of the bed, the contents – including her two bottles of pills – spilling out on the rug.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine . . . just tired. What time is it?’
‘Just gone nine. It’s all right, it’s Saturday.’
He glanced down at the pills then back at her with the same questioning eyes he’d had as a young child. ‘What happened?’
She didn’t have a clue. Didn’t remember going to bed or even arriving home. A dim memory surfaced of driving out of Bristol on the motorway, jerking awake at the sound of a rumble strip under her tyres, a loud horn sounding behind her . . .