by M. R. Hall
‘You asked them for closer cooperation, this is it.’
‘I thought they might do something useful like email a photograph.’
‘It’s progress, Mrs Cooper. Between you and me, I get the impression you’ve embarrassed them enough times that they’re frightened of you.’
Jenny couldn’t imagine frightening anyone. ‘I suppose I’d better show willing. Where is it?’
‘St Peter’s church, Frampton Cotterell.’
‘I don’t think I know it.’
‘You’ll like it. It’s a lovely spot.’
The Severn Bridge was all but empty of traffic as Jenny crossed the mile-wide river into England. Beneath her, the tide was chasing out to sea at a gallop: the best time to jump if you didn’t want to be found; you’d be halfway to Ireland before low water. That’s how Alec McAvoy had judged it, over three months ago now. She thought of him each time she crossed, picturing his wispy hair blowing over those moss-green eyes, too young for his face, as he said his final prayers. He hadn’t wanted his body fished out and cut open, or for her to see him lying naked in the drawer of a mortuary refrigerator. She told herself it had been a kindness on his part, the last and only thing he could give her.
A forensics van, a single squad car and an unmarked pool vehicle were parked in the quiet road outside the elaborate Gothic church. A skeleton Sunday crew. A handful of teenagers were loitering on the other side of the road, a little blonde girl talking excitedly into her phone, thrilled with the drama of it all. It wasn’t even a policeman who had been posted at the churchyard gate, but an overweight community support officer who made a meal of checking Jenny’s credentials before letting her through, as if he were doing her a big favour.
The activity was in a far corner beyond the gravestones; an untended triangle that had been left to grow wild. A plain clothes detective glanced up and saw her coming but made no effort to step forwards to greet her, his focus switching immediately back to the body. He watched intently while one man in white overalls positioned a measuring tape and another took photographs.
She made an effort to sound friendly. ‘Good morning. Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner.’
The detective gave a perfunctory nod.
‘Tony Wallace. DI.’
Somewhere in his late forties, slim and fit, he spoke with the clipped abruptness of a man who still entertained ambition. He was wearing what might have been a hand-tailored suit, far smarter than most policemen.
She followed his gaze to the body lying amongst the rye grass and buttercups. It was that of a naked, well-built man in his thirties. His head, which was facing towards them, was shaved to a tight crew cut to disguise his balding temples. He was lying on his back, arms at forty-five degrees to his torso. Carved into his chest and abdomen, stretching all the way down to his groin, was the sign of the cross. By the outstretched fingers of his right hand Jenny caught the glint of a kitchen knife, the blade no more than four inches long. His skin was waxy yellow and his stomach and face had begun to bloat; bluebottles were gathering on the eyes, lips and genitals.
‘Looks like he’s been here a few hours,’ Jenny said, familiar enough with corpses after a year as coroner not to be shocked by the sight.
‘Yesterday evening at the latest, I’d say,’ DI Wallace replied.
The men in white overalls nodded their agreement, the larger of the two saying, ‘Definitely twelve hours plus – you’ve only got to look at the colour of his skin.’
‘Any idea of the cause of death?’
‘Not yet,’ Wallace said. ‘No obvious signs of injury.’
‘Who found him?’
‘Couple of kids looking for somewhere to drink their cider. We found his clothes in the bin over there.’ He nodded towards the corner of the church.
‘Do we know who he is?’
‘Not for certain, but a woman who lives a couple of miles down the road reported her husband missing this morning. Sounds like him – Alan Jacobs, thirty-five, senior psychiatric nurse at the Conway Unit.’
Jenny felt a shudder pass through her, a cold, tight feeling around her chest. The Conway Unit was a secure psychiatric facility for the newly sectioned and acutely ill. At the height of her ‘episode’ she had once spent a single night there. Dr Travis had persuaded her it was for the best, but it was the closest thing to hell on earth she had ever known. Lying awake through the night, believing she might die at any moment, while the woman in the bed next to her screamed at invisible ghosts and demons.
She looked again at the dead man. She could imagine him as a nurse. He was big, like so many of them were, but with gentle hands and a soft face.
‘What do you make of the cross?’ Wallace asked, his tone softening a little now he could sense she wasn’t vying for control.
Jenny shrugged, ‘I’d say God was on his mind, or what was left of it.’
Wallace nodded, making no comment, then said, ‘I’ve got a busy week ahead – I persuaded the pathologist to come in and do him straight away. Is that all right with you?’
‘Fine,’ Jenny said. ‘What’s this, be nice to the coroner week?’
‘You’ve got yourself a reputation, Mrs Cooper,’ DI Wallace said. ‘And I’m trying to make super.’ He gave her a look, as if to say, you see my problem?
Jenny said, ‘It’s a tough world.’
She had a hectic week in store, too. There’d been a messy construction accident the previous Tuesday which had prompted five separate firms of lawyers to bombard her office with demands for all manner of forensic investigations her puny budget wouldn’t stretch to. The inquest, when it came, would last the best part of a month. Two workmen and a site supervisor had been crushed to death in a crane collapse, six others injured. She was already beginning to sense the political pressure to avoid any verdict which might prompt manslaughter charges: the CEO of the lead contractor was a major government donor. Compared with that mess, dealing with a simple suicide would be a holiday.
‘Seen enough?’ Wallace said.
‘For now,’ Jenny said, and made her way back across the graveyard, passing two smiling undertaker’s assistants carrying a stretcher. One of them beamed at her, not a care in the world.
She drove into the city for a light lunch at a new Italian cafe on the waterfront, sipped her mineral water like a good girl – she’d managed to stay dry since her little slip-up with Alec McAvoy – and headed out to the mortuary at the Vale hospital in time to catch the end of the autopsy.
Dr Andy Kerr was stooped over the steel counter when Jenny entered, picking over a portion of viscera. The radio was playing the same kind of tuneless R&B her teenage son inflicted on her every time they shared a car. Andy – he had somehow persuaded her not to call him Dr Kerr – was creeping reluctantly towards his mid-thirties and trying to turn back the clock. He’d recently added a gold stud to his left ear.
She tried not to look at the corpse which lay open from neck to navel on the autopsy table. ‘Hi. Find anything?’
‘Hold on . . .’ Andy said, concentrating on a delicate task. With a pair of tweezers he lifted something tiny out from what she could now see was the dead man’s stomach and placed it in a kidney dish. ‘Looks like we might have a cause of death shaping up. He had a belly full of pills.’
‘That makes sense. If he’s who the police think he is, he was a psychiatric nurse.’
Andy extracted another object, an undigested white tablet, and held it up to the light. ‘PB 60. Phenobarbital, probably. Used to treat seizures. Depresses respiration and leads to a fairly painless death. And there’s liver inflammation which would be a side-effect of the overdose.’
‘An open and shut suicide.’
‘More or less.’
‘There’s something else?’ She sneaked a glance and wished she hadn’t; the empty rib cage a site from a butcher’s window.
‘Minor lesions on both forearms,’ he looked at her over his mask, ‘as if someone had dug their nails in, perhaps.’
/> ‘Violently?’
‘Hard to say.’ Finished with the stomach, he picked it up in both hands and placed it alongside the other major organs he had examined and cut into sections. ‘You don’t know if the police turned him over? Blood had pooled towards the front of his body but the photos they took at the locus show him on his back.’
‘Unlikely. The DI said some kids stumbled across him – maybe it was them?’
‘Kids? You think they’d touch a stranger’s corpse?’ He stepped over to the body with a scalpel and began cutting around the hairline in preparation for peeling the scalp forwards over the face. It was Jenny’s cue to leave.
‘Keep me posted.’
‘Will do.’
She left him alone in the autopsy room, humming along with the radio.
She telephoned DI Wallace as she stepped out into the welcome fresh air, the smell of death clinging stubbornly to her clothes. Wallace listened to Andy’s findings and said it sounded as if it would have to remain a police matter, at least until he’d ruled out the possibility of foul play. He informed Jenny that Mrs Jacobs had identified her husband’s body from a photograph but had been too emotional to talk. In the meantime he’d been over to the Conway Unit in Clifton and met Alan Jacobs’ line manager, a Mrs Deborah Bishop. Jacobs was Senior Staff Nurse in the young persons ward dealing with twelve- to eighteen-year-olds. As far as Bishop had been aware he’d been in good spirits; she had seemed badly shaken at the news.
Jenny said, ‘Have you got Mrs Jacobs’ address?’
‘Thirty-nine Fielding Road, Coalpit Heath,’ DI Wallace said after a brief hesitation, the tightness in his voice suggesting that he’d rather she stayed well away from the bereaved until it was her turn.
Jenny’s gut told her there was more to his reluctance than protecting his turf. She wondered if Bishop had told him something he hadn’t let on. A death, however loosely related to vulnerable teenagers, would have set alarm bells ringing all the way to Whitehall. Senior civil servants in the Department of Health would already be asking questions of their own.
Jenny thanked him for the information and let him know he wouldn’t be having it all on his own terms: ‘I’ll have my officer take Mrs Jacobs through the procedure. Oh, and by the way – did your people alter the position of the body before I arrived?’
‘Not to my knowledge. Seen as found.’
‘Let me know if you hear different. Dr Kerr thinks it had been rolled over.’
The detective gave a dismissive grunt and rang off.
Jenny waited until early evening before calling on the widow. Technically there was no need for the coroner to disturb the next of kin while the police were still investigating, but she liked to make contact while emotions were still raw and questions had to be thought about before being answered. And there was something about Wallace that had troubled her.
Coalpit Heath was an outlying suburb at the north east of the city. She had resolved not to disturb the household if it was in darkness, but as she drew up opposite number 39 she noticed a crack of light behind the drawn curtains in the downstairs front room.
A woman in her sixties answered the door on the security chain, her face set in a hostile frown. ‘What is it now?’ The sound of a child’s cry carried from somewhere in the house.
Jenny passed a business card through the crack. ‘Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner. I’d like to speak to Mrs Jacobs.’
The woman held the card out at arm’s length trying to make out the print. ‘I’m her mother.’
‘Would it be all right to have a brief word?’
Sighing, she unhooked the chain and opened the door. ‘I’d thought we’d have some peace.’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
She led Jenny through a short hallway and into a living room that ran straight through into a kitchen. Her daughter, the widow, was lying on a tan leather sofa wearing pyjamas and a towelling gown. In one hand she held a string of rosary beads. A waste basket next to a coffee table was overflowing with used Kleenex.
‘Ceri? It’s the coroner,’ the older woman said quietly. ‘Don’t worry about Josie. I’ll see to her.’
Mrs Jacobs pocketed her beads and lowered her feet to the floor. She was thirty-five or thereabouts, pale with mousy blonde hair in a sensible bob. She attempted a smile with her ‘hello’, and Jenny saw in her face that she was suffering from shame as much as grief.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Jacobs. I know it’s a difficult time.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said with a soft Welsh accent.
Jenny sat on a chair that matched the sofa and glanced around a room that seemed to have been disturbed. The books and DVDs on the shelves by the television were in a jumble. Toys spilled over the edges of a plastic crate.
Embarrassed by the mess, Ceri Jacobs said, ‘The police were here most of the afternoon. They went through everything. I haven’t been able . . .’ She swallowed, holding back tears. ‘How can I help you?’
‘They might have explained that if they don’t suspect foul play it’s my job to determine your husband’s cause of death.’
Mrs Jacobs nodded, and reached for a Kleenex, which she twisted in her fingers.
Were they looking for anything in particular?’
‘They said it was routine. I can’t remember all the things they took.’
‘Computer? Address book?’
She nodded. ‘And some of his clothes.’ She pressed the tissue to her eyes. ‘Ones that hadn’t been washed. I don’t know what for.’
‘Computers are always taken as a matter of course. They’ll check the clothes for third-party DNA,’ Jenny said. ‘Just in case.’
‘No one wanted to kill Alan . . . Why would they?’ Ceri Jacobs shook her head with an expression of bewildered incomprehension.
‘The pathologist found pills in his stomach, Mrs Jacobs. Phenobarbital. It’s a barbiturate, something he might have got hold of at the unit.’
Her gaze turned inwards as she seemed to disengage, not yet ready to absorb this information.
‘Was he depressed, upset about anything?’
‘No, not that he said to me,’ she mouthed quietly. ‘Work was always difficult, but he loved it. It was his vocation, he always said so.’
‘Was he being treated for any psychiatric condition, or had he ever been?’
She shook her head.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Yesterday afternoon. He said he’d had a call from the unit saying they had several staff sick and could he cover for the night?’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘It happens.’
‘What time did he leave?’
‘About four o’clock.’ She reached out for her beads, clinging to them for security. ‘I thought he’d be back by midnight. Josie woke me about six and I saw he hadn’t been home. I tried to call him but his phone was off . . . I don’t know why, but I called the office at the unit. They said he hadn’t been in, they had all the staff they needed.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s when I called the police.’ The widow pressed her hands to her face. ‘Why? . . . What was he thinking of?’
Jenny had tried to train herself not to form judgements on first impressions, yet she couldn’t help thinking that Mrs Jacobs’ knowledge of her husband might have been incomplete, to say the least. The house was focused exclusively on their child: framed baby photographs on every surface, nursery school paintings plastering a noticeboard that took up most of the kitchen wall, Ceri’s stretchy pyjamas decorated with purple hippos. Alan Jacobs left here each day to work with the city’s most mentally disturbed teenagers, a job you could only succeed in by winning their respect and connecting on their level. It was as if his wife had organized her home as a shield against all that; there was nothing of him or his life outside these walls to be seen.
Then she realized her mistake: God featured here, too. The simple oil painting on the wall behind the sofa was an icon – a modern render
ing of the Virgin and child – and Ceri wore a silver crucifix around her neck.
‘Did the police tell you anything about your husband’s body, Mrs Jacobs?’
‘I know he was . . .’ she could barely bring herself to say it, ‘. . . naked.’
‘And the cross on his torso?’
She shot Jenny a look she wasn’t expecting, a flash of steely anger as sharp as a razor. ‘What about it?’
‘Why might he have done that, assuming it was him?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘I assume you’re a Catholic, was—?’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ she interrupted. ‘For most of his life Alan wasn’t religious at all; his family had poisoned him against it. But he had begun to change. He was an enquirer at St Joseph’s. He’d been every Tuesday night for the last five months.’
‘An ‘enquirer’?’
‘The church runs courses for those who want to learn about the faith.’
‘Did he talk to you about it?’
‘We talked about everything, Mrs Cooper. We were man and wife.’ She stood up from the sofa. ‘I’m sorry, my daughter’s still crying. I’d like to go to her please.’
‘Of course.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind seeing yourself out?’
Ceri Jacobs left the room.
As Jenny made her way to the front door she felt the coldness of the widow’s disapproval follow her to the threshold and beyond. Driving away from the house she was left with an image of Ceri’s face, the look she had given her: like an accusation of heresy. She imagined her dead husband mute in the face of her disapproval, enduring his suffering alone.
Praise for The Disappeared
‘The second book by M. R. Hall, whose debut crime novel, The Coroner, made the bestseller list last year, does not disappoint . . . an excellent and compelling detective drama’
Daily Mail
‘The Disappeared is every bit as accomplished and challenging [as The Coroner] . . . High-mindedness can be too heavy a burden for some thrillers to carry. They become all intellectual argument and no action. Equally, literary ambitions – Hall has a particular knack for conjuring up landscapes, including the Wye Valley, Cooper’s base and his own home – can get in the way of the necessary narrative thrust. But The Disappeared avoids both potential traps triumphantly’