The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5) (17 page)

‘I’ll adjourn briefly to consider my verdict,’ she announced.

All stood in unison, and feeling the hostile gazes of the spectators like a hail of arrows, Jenny exited the courtroom.

Behind the door of her stuffy, claustrophobic office, she attempted to compose the few paragraphs that would stand for all time as the last word on the cause of Sophie Freeman’s death. But as she started to write, she became increasingly unsure. Something wasn’t sitting right. She cast her mind back over the evidence. None of the witnesses had entirely convinced. Dr Morley had looked harried and exhausted. Dr Kerr had been intimidated by his bosses into withholding his real concerns. Dr Verma had given a pre-prepared presentation, not testimony.

It was no good. She couldn’t deliver a verdict without an answer to a question Dr Kerr would never have answered directly in court. Breaking every rule of procedure, she dialled his mobile number.

‘Mrs Cooper?’ He sounded alarmed to hear her voice.

‘I’m about to give my verdict,’ Jenny said. ‘I just have one question.’

‘Is this permitted?’

‘No. But nor is not telling the whole truth. I need to know why don’t you want the body disposed of?’

He paused, then answered in a hurried whisper. ‘It just doesn’t seem like good practice, that’s all. While investigations are continuing it should be available for further samples.’

‘The HPA say they have all they need.’

‘They would, wouldn’t they? Sorry, I have to go now.’

No further forward than before she made the call, Jenny was switching off her phone again when it buzzed in her hand, indicating she had an unread message. She checked her texts and saw that David had sent one thirty minutes earlier:
Call me
.

‘Mr Tarlton’s in theatre all afternoon,’ the secretary to the cardiac team barked at her. ‘I can only page him if it’s an emergency.’

‘Can you get him a message that I called?’

‘I can’t guarantee when he’ll get it.’

Thanks for nothing, is what Jenny would like to have said, but was interrupted by a knock at the door.

She looked up to see Alison enter.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Cooper.’ She looked as if she had brought bad news.

‘What is it?’

Alison took out her own phone and handed it to Jenny. ‘I thought you might want to see this. I think it might be from Jim Connings at the path’ lab.’

On the screen was an email sent a little over an hour earlier from an address that gave no clue as to its sender. It read:
Another neiss. men. this a.m. Female 23. Bristol. Dead.

The anger in the public benches was palpable. Reading the mood, and with an eye to avoiding the online slander that might be coming his way, Radstock had put some distance between himself and the two barristers, who sat as still and expressionless as sentries, waiting for their verdict and the large fees they would doubtless be receiving for a successful and painless morning’s work.

‘Before we conclude, I’ve one small matter to clear up with Dr Verma,’ Jenny said. She picked her out in the second row. ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming back to the witness box.’

Dr Verma seemed surprised, affronted even, by the request.

‘It won’t take a moment.’

She edged out from among her colleagues and returned to the witness box.

‘You are still on oath, Dr Verma – you do understand that?’

‘Yes.’ Caught unawares, she was suddenly less sure of herself.

‘And you do also understand that you have sworn on pain of prosecution to tell the
whole
truth?’

Her eyes travelled anxiously to Martlett, who had turned to consult with the other members of Dr Verma’s team, leaving her momentarily adrift. ‘I do,’ she answered uncertainly.

‘Then please take this opportunity to tell the court the whole truth.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, ma’am,’ she ventured cautiously.

Martlett cut short his conversation and shot to his feet. ‘Ma’am, may I request a brief adjournment?’

‘No, Mr Martlett, you may not.’ She turned to Dr Verma. ‘I want to know why you didn’t tell me that another patient was admitted to the Vale in the early hours of this morning also suffering from meningitis, and from which she has died.’

Martlett played the only card he had left. ‘Ma’am, may I remind Dr Verma that she does not have to answer any question which may incriminate her.’

Competing with the sudden excited eruption on the public benches, Jenny said, ‘I’m adjourning these proceedings until further notice. And when they resume, I expect answers.’

Fiona Freeman was already out of her chair and challenging Martlett and the grey-suited officials behind him, demanding to know what they were hiding from her. United in outrage, Ed Freeman followed her into the fray.

Jenny slipped out of the courtroom unnoticed. She knew now that this was only the beginning.

J
ENNY SHARED A CAB BACK TO THE OFFICE
with Alison, expecting at any moment to receive another call from Simon Moreton imploring her not to cause any further embarrassment. She could only imagine the panic that would now have gripped the Vale Hospital management and which would rapidly be spreading like a contagion into the corridors of Whitehall.

‘What amazes me is that Dr Morley must have known about this other patient,’ Alison said, ‘but he didn’t say a word.’

‘He’d been sat on. It explains why he looked so dreadful – he must have been tearing himself apart.’

‘I just don’t understand what they’re trying to achieve.’ For a former detective, Alison could be touchingly naive.

‘Hospitals are incubators for superbugs. International airports for bacteria. They swap DNA, mutate, encounter antibiotics and learn to outsmart them. Who’s going to agree to treatment in a hospital at the centre of an outbreak? If the management are caught out in a lie, the whole place could be shut down in days. The big bosses lose their six-figure salaries, lawsuits pile up, the Trust goes bust and eventually people start going to jail.’

‘But surely they can nip all this in the bud? It’s only two cases.’

Jenny stopped herself from making the cynical remark she was tempted to make. ‘Let’s hope there are no more, but you ought to get over there and start collecting details.’

Alison gave her an anxious glance. ‘I hope it’s safe.’

‘Ask your friend in the path’ lab – see what he thinks.’

‘The doctors aren’t scared, are they?’ She tried to reassure herself. ‘They deal with this sort of thing every day.’

The cab turned off Whiteladies Road into Jamaica Street. As it drew up to their office, Jenny noticed a woman pressing repeatedly on the doorbell. It was Karen Jordan. Jenny and Alison exchanged a glance. She looked distressed.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Jenny said.

Leaving Alison to pay the driver, she made her way across the pavement. Karen hadn’t seemed to notice the cab pull up.

‘Mrs Jordan?’ She wheeled round. ‘Sorry. I was at court.’

‘What’s happening? Why isn’t my husband’s case being dealt with? He’s been dead a week. People keep asking me when the funeral is and I can’t tell them.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears of frustration. ‘They think it must be something to do with me, I know they do. Have you any idea what that’s like? . . . I don’t know why he did it, I don’t
know
.’

Alison hovered at the kerb. ‘I’ll be getting on, Mrs Cooper –’ she glanced uncertainly at Karen Jordan – ‘unless you need me.’

‘It’s all right.’

She crossed the road to her car, preferring the unseen dangers at the Vale to the all-too-raw emotions of a grieving widow.

‘Why don’t you come inside?’ Jenny said.

Karen’s tears had subsided by the time Jenny returned from the kitchenette with cups of coffee for them both.

‘Only instant, I’m afraid. Best I could do.’

She drew her chair around to the same side of the desk so that there was no barrier between them. If she were to get truthful answers, she would first need Karen’s absolute trust.

‘I’m sorry I shouted,’ Karen said. ‘After your last phone call, I thought you must be hiding something.’

‘Forget about it,’ Jenny said. ‘And no, I can promise you, I’m not hiding anything.’ She trod carefully. ‘When a death seems to have been the result of suicide, it’s important that every effort’s made to find the motive. Sometimes there is none, but that’s rare. You told me your husband seemed perfectly happy – do you still think that’s the case?’

Jenny hoped Karen had come to see her because there was something she was finally ready to say.

‘Perhaps we’d spent so much time apart that I’d stopped knowing him. We’d talk a lot about Sam, about work, ideas, but there was always a private side to him, a part I could never quite reach.’

‘I got hold of his medical records,’ Jenny said. ‘It seems he’d hardly been to a doctor in his adult life, certainly not with any emotional problems.’

‘It was me who was the emotional one. Adam was always very balanced. He wasn’t even a difficult teenager – his father told me that. I know he was very upset when his mother died – he was still at college – but he hardly ever spoke about it. He was so independent. Determined. He seemed to channel everything into his work.’

Jenny said, ‘I’m interested to know how he got involved in AFAD. Did he always want to work in that field?’

‘He studied economics at Manchester, then did a Master’s here at Bristol. He specialized in economic development – what it takes for Third World countries to be able to run themselves without aid. He spent three years with UN programmes in Uganda and Congo, then about four years ago he met Harry Thorn. It was at a conference in London. That’s where I met him, too.’

‘Through Mr Thorn?’

Karen shook her head. ‘I already knew Harry. I’d spent a year after university volunteering in Ethiopia. Harry was running an AFAD operation in the next village – trying to teach peasant farmers how to rig up solar panels.’ She smiled faintly at the memory. ‘I got talking to Adam in the lunch break. He started telling me how much he hated the idea of simply doling out aid parcels and so I told him about AFAD – how their philosophy was to establish basic infrastructure, giving local people the means to be self-sufficient. Ten minutes later I was introducing him to Harry. It was like watching someone who’d just got religion. Adam said his whole life changed that weekend. He left the conference with a new job and a new girlfriend.’

Jenny looked for more pieces in the story. ‘So did you and Adam work together for a time?’

‘Nearly two years in Ethiopia. Adam loved the practical side but I got more interested in the politics. It seemed to me we were doing a lot of projects in the face of official resistance. There’s a breed of African politician that doesn’t like communities supporting themselves. If people are depending on you for the food in their mouths, you’re virtually guaranteed their loyalty. I wanted to get into policymaking, so decided to study for a doctorate. It meant a lot of time apart, but we figured if we could stick living together in a tent with a bucket for a latrine, we could cope with a bit of separation.’

‘And then you must have had Sam?’

She nodded, a wistful expression lightening her face. ‘It was a bit of an unintended surprise, but if anything, being a father made Adam even more responsible. He was suddenly thinking about the future, making plans. He saw me working for the Department of International Development, or even the UN; in a year of two, he was going to end up running a charity like AFAD and train other people up to take over the fieldwork. A marriage of the practical and political, he called it. Oh, and we were going to write a book together, no, lots of books.’ She closed her eyes as if trying to ride a spasm of pain. ‘Is that what you wanted to know?’

Jenny nodded. ‘It helps.’

‘I don’t see how. It doesn’t help me.’

Jenny said, ‘Tell me about Harry Thorn.’

‘What do you want to know?’ She seemed suddenly defensive.

‘Look, I won’t be anything less than truthful, Mrs Jordan. I’ve been told that, officially at least, he’s viewed with some suspicion.’

‘Who told you? What have you heard?’

Jenny was candid. ‘A colleague at the Ministry of Justice was told by a friend in the Department of International Development that he’s someone they keep an eye on. I wasn’t given specifics, only that he’s thought to have got embroiled in politics on the ground. You’ll know more about what that means than me.’

‘You can’t drive down the road in Africa without paying someone off,’ Karen said. ‘And you certainly can’t run a project or help set up a business without getting caught up in the local way of doing things. Harry’s been in Africa most of his life, and the only reason he’s survived is because he knows how to handle people. Trotting out the Foreign Office line isn’t going to help when you’re at a roadblock with a Kalashnikov pointing at your chest.’

‘Have you got any particular instance in mind?’

‘Not really.’

She was an unconvincing liar. Jenny looked at her, sensing she was getting somewhere close to the truth.