by M. R. Hall
'Yes.'
'No insight into her state of mind at the time?'
'As far as her work was concerned, she remained determined and focused. That's all I can tell you.'
'You didn't notice her showing signs of strain?'
'She seemed to be coping well. But you have to understand: ours was a professional, not a personal, relationship.'
Resigned to the fact that Turnbull wouldn't deviate from a well-rehearsed corporate line, Jenny moved on to the night of Eva's death. Turnbull explained that he and his wife had been in London the previous day. Christine had caught the train home to Bristol on the Sunday morning. He had meetings to attend and had followed later in the afternoon. His driver delivered him straight to the Mission Church, where they met at approximately six-thirty. There were more than four thousand in the congregation that evening and the service lasted for several hours. It was after ten when he and his wife finally got to leave.
'I understand Eva stayed at home that evening,' Jenny said.
'Yes. We'd hoped she'd say a few words about the campaign, but I got a message from the office to say she was feeling too tired after a weekend on the road.'
'Who gave you the message?'
'That would have been our administrator, Joel Nelson. I think he took Eva's call.'
'Did anyone else apart from you and Mr Nelson know that Eva was at home that evening?'
'The entire congregation. As I recall, Lennox Strong made an announcement explaining that she couldn't be with us.'
'Had she done this before?'
Turnbull had to think before answering. 'No, I don't remember her having missed an important engagement.'
'So this was a formal engagement?'
For the first time since he started giving evidence, Turn- bull glanced at his lawyers, looking for a prompt. Jenny's eyes were on Sullivan before he could offer one. Turnbull was left to answer alone.
'Not formal in the sense that she was being paid for it,' he said without conviction.
'But she was expected to address the crowd?'
'She had offered to.'
'And instead she stayed at home and opened a bottle of wine.' Jenny picked up the booklet of police photographs and turned to a shot with a clear view of the bottle. 'It looks as if she had drunk about two-thirds of it by the time she died.'
Turnbull made no comment.
'Was she much of a drinker, do you know?'
'Not that I was aware of.'
Jenny studied the photograph again. There was a single, partially full glass of wine on the counter, and next to it a corkscrew and an ashtray containing several butts. On the counter opposite, a peninsula unit, was some broccoli wrapped in cellophane. There was no sign of cooking in progress. It looked as if Eva had opened the bottle and stayed at the counter drinking.
'Lord Turnbull,' Jenny said, 'are you aware of any reason, other than the one Miss Donaldson gave, as to why she might have stayed at home that night?'
'No.'
'I see,' Jenny said, leaving him in no doubt that she wasn't persuaded. Up to her eyes in debt, alone, traipsing around the country delivering the same lines for an employer who refused to give her a rise: it was impossible not to suspect that Eva was becoming more than a little resentful. Added to the fact that two weeks before she'd had her crotch tattooed, it painted a picture of a young woman who was going through a rough patch of turbulence, to say the least.
Sullivan was the only lawyer to cross-examine. 'Miss Donaldson's indebtedness has been alluded to. Am I right in saying she wrote to you in November of last year asking for a pay rise?'
'She did. I put the request to the board and they decided it would be inappropriate, given the fact that she had been employed for less than a year.'
'How did she react to that refusal?'
'She understood the reasons and accepted them.' He turned to the jury. 'Look, I think we have to acknowledge that we are talking about a fallible human being here, not a saint. Eva came under the same pressures as the rest of us.'
'One more thing,' Sullivan said, with a dismissive glance in Jenny's direction, 'I think what Mrs Cooper may have been intending to ask, but didn't quite, is whether to your knowledge Miss Donaldson was planning to meet someone at her home the evening she was killed.'
'I don't know of any such arrangement.'
'And she's not the only one of us to have had a glass of wine alone at the end of a hard day.'
'Quite.'
Jurors smiled. They liked the idea of Eva having an Achilles heel.
Christine Turnbull was just as skilful as her husband at evading the issue of Eva's state of mind. Composed and dignified, she described a purely professional, arm's length relationship between them. In her capacity as a member of Decency's board, she met Eva mostly to discuss forthcoming engagements and to plan strategies with their media consultants. Eva had impressed everyone with her ability to operate under pressure without letting emotion intrude, which was a remarkable feat given her painful history. Their social contact had been limited to a few dinners and the odd cocktail party Decency had hosted at the Houses of Parliament. Even on these occasions their conversation had rarely become personal, let alone intimate. 'I got the impression that in public she was above all concerned to maintain her dignity,' Christine said. 'To have discussed intimacies would have been out of the question. I'm sure there were people with whom she did have such discussions, but they weren't with me. I think she saw me very much as an employer. She was comfortable with that, and so was I.'
Jenny said, 'You didn't try to establish a personal relationship?'
'No,' Christine replied. 'Much as I liked her, it didn't seem right. I'd go so far as to say that Eva preferred to have purely working relationships that didn't cross borders. She had a very strong sense of propriety. It was one of the things I admired about her.'
Jenny could quite believe their relationship was a distant one, but not for the reasons Christine Turnbull gave. Surely they would have been wary of each other: Eva intimidated by Christine's age and experience, Christine both intrigued and repelled by Eva's years in front of the camera. Christine wouldn't have been human if she hadn't wanted to know what it was like for a young woman to walk onto a crowded set and copulate with half a dozen men before lunchtime.
Wearing an open-necked ivory-coloured silk shirt beneath his black suit, Lennox Strong looked more like a TV host than a man of God. But Jenny's hopes of getting him to shine a light on the Eva Michael and Christine Turnbull claimed not to know were soon dashed. He happily described the night when Eva first came forward to give herself to Christ, how he had laid hands on her and seen the burden lifted from her shoulders, but when Jenny asked him what they had discussed in subsequent conversations he answered with a phrase that had Ed Prince written all over it: 'You'll understand I'm not able to repeat things said to me in confidence in my role as pastor.'
'Even after the subject is dead?' Jenny pressed.
'A confidence doesn't end with the confider's death,'
Strong said with a patient smile, 'not unless that was her request. Eva never made such a wish, so her confidences go with me to my grave.'
For nearly half an hour Jenny pushed and probed for the slightest detail to prise open Eva's mind. There were hints at her complexity - Strong described how writing their book on forgiveness had pushed Eva back to the brink of depression - but for the most part he described her as a woman who had embraced a simple, uncomplicated faith which she used to banish her past. She didn't discuss her time in the porn business, Strong explained, because she didn't want to dwell on it. 'Through my own experience I was able to prove to her that God gives you the freedom to move on. You don't have to drag the past around behind you like a ball and chain: that's what being born again means.'
'Can you say how having the tattoo squares with leaving the past behind?' Jenny asked.
'I don't have an answer, but I do have a theory. It's not breaching a confidence to say that Eva and I had been tal
king about her future. She was thinking of coming to work for the Mission Church full time after the Decency campaign had finished. It was a huge step for her. The one bit of security she'd had in life was money. Working for the church would have meant she had enough to survive, but no more. When you're making that sort of commitment you're tested in all sorts of ways you're not expecting. It's as if you're questioning every aspect of your character, peering into every dark corner. You ask yourself, am I truly worthy of this? Can God really want me, of all people? And that rebellious part of your spirit, it's going to show itself one last time before you can put it away. That's what was happening to Eva.'
'Did you see any evidence of this "rebellious spirit" in her?'
'Not explicitly, no.'
'Had you noticed any change in her, anything of the mood Mr Turley detected when she came to his studio?'
'Eva was just like the rest of us. Some days she was full of enthusiasm, other days the world got on top of her.'
He fell silent.
'Mr Strong?'
'You know, I don't know if this is the right place to say it, but the reality for Eva was that she was in the middle of a battle. It doesn't matter how hard you try to surround yourself with good and trustworthy people, evil's always going to come and seek you out. That's why we pray, every day, "deliver us from evil"; having faith alone is no protection, in fact it puts you on the front line. She was caught off her guard. She made one bad call and that was all it took; the enemy got her.'
There was a moment of stillness as all in the courtroom seemed to share in his grief; all except Father Starr, whose features remained as hard-set as the concrete in his cathedral.
As the pastor stepped away from the witness box and made for the exit with Michael and Christine Turnbull, Alison came and whispered to Jenny that police had gone to Freddy Reardon's address but no one had answered; did she want to issue an arrest warrant? Jenny pictured officers arriving at the flat and staving in the door to drag a frightened Freddy to court.
'We'll leave it for now,' Jenny said. 'I may not need him.'
Joe Cassidy was the final witness of the day and, save for Freddy Reardon, the last on Jenny's list. He had cut his hair for the occasion and was dressed in a movie star's suit, but beneath the slick exterior he was edgy and impatient and cast nervous glances at the lawyers, who whispered to each other behind their hands.
He stated his profession as company director and claimed to have known Eva for over five years. 'We acted together, then we lived together,' he said. 'We broke up after her car accident, when she became depressed, but we stayed friends.' He spoke directly to the jury. 'I might not have been on the same religious kick, but no one could have known her better than I did.'
Jenny was taken aback by his abrasive tone. He was hardly recognizable as the tousle-haired TV producer who had tried to flirt with her over drinks.
Jenny said, 'Shall we rewind a little and hear how you and Miss Donaldson met?'
'Can I say something first?' Cassidy asked. 'In all the time I worked with Eva, she never once failed to turn up for work, even when it was the last place she wanted to be. I've heard a lot of speculation about her today, but one thing I guarantee is that she wouldn't have let down four thousand people without one hell of a reason.'
Anticipating Sullivan's objection, Jenny said, 'Do you have any evidence for this, Mr Cassidy?'
'Yes. This is a woman I've seen climb out of a sickbed at dawn and scrape the ice off her windscreen to shoot a gang bang with a bunch of strangers.'
'I meant, do you have any evidence that she was told not to come to the Mission Church the night she was killed?'
'I don't know who told her to stay away,' Cassidy said, 'but I'm pretty sure I know why.' He aimed his last remark at the press. 'I don't think Eva believed any more.'
Chapter 15
Cassidy's statement caused uproar. As the journalists rushed to file their second sensational story of the day, Sullivan furiously accused him of being in the pay of the pornography business, and of having used his sham TV company to solicit young women for adult films. Cassidy hit back with the claim that Eva wouldn't have approached him to help her start a straight acting career unless she was planning on leaving the Mission Church of God behind.
Jenny fought a losing battle to restore order. The session ended in disarray with Cassidy swamped by reporters as he tried to leave the building, and Sullivan demanding that his evidence be ruled inadmissible. Shouting above the commotion, Jenny declared the day's proceedings over and sought sanctuary in her office.
She emerged twenty minutes later to find Alison straightening the empty rows of chairs. She didn't have to say I told you so - it was written in her every pernickety gesture, restoring order where Jenny had unleashed chaos.
'Has everybody gone now?' Jenny asked.
'All except him,' Alison said, nodding towards the exit.
'Who?'
'Who do you think? The Grand Inquisitor. I asked him to wait outside.'
'Oh . . . Did he say what he wants?'
'That'd be far too polite.' She crossed to her desk and tidied her papers. 'Are you planning on calling any more witnesses tomorrow? We'll save fifty pounds if we're out of this place by lunchtime.'
'I haven't decided. I might have to call Michael Turnbull back to answer Cassidy's allegations.'
Alison looked up with a worried frown.
'Why would you do that? There's not been one shred of evidence that's made me doubt for a second that Craven killed her. Don't take this the wrong way, Mrs Cooper, but if you keep on, it's just going to make you look worse.'
'Worse than what, exactly?'
'Than you do already. Someone has to tell you - that priest thinks you're an easy touch. He preyed on your conscience because he's feeling guilty for what Craven did. It's not your job to make him feel better.'
Jenny picked up her briefcase and marched to the door.
He was waiting in the car park, standing with his back to the building and looking out across the choppy estuary to the shadowy Welsh hills ghosted on the horizon. He turned slowly, unsure of himself as he addressed her.
'Am I permitted to speak to you during the proceedings, Mrs Cooper?'
'I don't see why not. I've no plans to call you as a witness.'
'Then I'll be brief.'
He moved towards her, hands clasped awkwardly behind his back. 'You're going to pursue this allegation of Cassidy's?' he asked.
'I doubt it. My job is to determine cause of death, not to pick over her relations with her employer.'
'If she was asked to stay at home that evening, it surely raises a number of questions. Other suspects may emerge—'
'I can't drag respectable people through the mud without a very good reason, you must understand that.'
'She was clearly unbalanced. Perhaps they were frightened she would say something inappropriate, or damaging?'
Jenny said, 'My apologies, Father. I made a mistake. This isn't an appropriate conversation after all.' She started to unlock the car door.
'I see you have lost faith, too.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'It was our friend Mr McAvoy who once told me that, for a lawyer, believing in a client's innocence is like a priest believing in the possibility of redemption. No matter what the outcome, it is the pursuit of that belief that brings us closer to—' He checked himself. 'That dignifies us.'
Jenny rounded on him. 'Is that your trump card, mentioning his name again? Do you really think I'm that stupid? I know what you want, Father. You want to believe your faith in Craven wasn't misplaced. Because if you're wrong about that you can be wrong about anything. Am I right?'
He looked at her defiantly. 'I am not wrong about Paul Craven.'
'Because he said some prayers and told you so?'
'No.'
'Oh, yes. I remember, God told you.'
'Is it so ridiculous? It's my job to act to the full extent of my faith, yours to act to the full exten
t of the law.'
'There are limits. For both of us.'
She yanked open the car door and threw her handbag onto the passenger seat.
'If it's of any interest, I had a word for you, too, Mrs Cooper.'
'Really?' She climbed in and reached for the door handle to pull it closed. Starr put out a hand and held it open. 'Please let me go,' Jenny said.
'I was told you're carrying a terrible burden and want to be set free. Am I right, Mrs Cooper?'
She heard the telephone ringing from the street outside her office. As she pushed angrily through the door and made her way along the gloomy corridor it ceased as the answer- phone cut in, then seconds later it started again. She entered the empty reception area and glanced at the caller ID screen on the console on Alison's desk. 'Number withheld.' She flopped into Alison's chair, braced herself and lifted the receiver.
'Mrs Cooper? Amanda Cramer here.'
She needn't have bothered with the introduction. There was no mistaking the owner of the sinister, robotic voice. Jenny flicked on the monitor of Alison's computer.
'How can I help you?' Jenny said, checking her email.
'Have you seen the newspapers?'
'I've glanced at them.'
'You've certainly given the press a sensational story.'
'Not me, the evidence did that.' Her in-box started to load with the day's messages.
'But you called the evidence, and at a time of your choosing. All matters undoubtedly within your discretion, but a coroner does have a duty to use her discretion wisely.'
Jenny scanned the list of forty new messages. 'In what way are you suggesting I haven't, precisely?'
'It's not just the specifics, Mrs Cooper, there is a wider public interest to consider - a highly sensitive bill being introduced to Parliament.'
Jenny struggled to hold her temper. Still furious with Starr, Amanda Cramer's interference was making her feel murderous. 'The day causing embarrassment to politicians is a good reason to soft-pedal an inquest is the day justice has died, don't you agree?'