The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5) (26 page)

He looked impatiently down at his notes.

‘Then good night.’

She walked to the door and let herself out.

‘Busy night, Mrs Cooper?’

Jenny had arrived late in the office the next morning and had yet to shake off the effects of two sleeping pills swallowed deep in the night to switch off her racing thoughts.

‘I had a call from a woman named Webley,’ Alison said, ‘at about midnight. Apparently you made a quick exit from St Aldate’s police station in Oxford.’

‘What did she want?’

‘What business you had with a woman called Sonia Blake, and what did she have to do with Adam Jordan.’

Jenny rubbed her aching temples. ‘What did you tell her?’

‘The truth. I’ve never heard of her.’

‘Did she believe you?’

‘I got the impression she was rather frustrated.’

‘Good. Did you get my email?’

‘Yes,’ Alison said cagily. ‘The printouts are on your desk.’ Jenny saw Alison look at her with concern. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me? It does sound as if you’ve got yourself mixed up in something. Just because I’m under the doctor doesn’t mean you have to carry it all on your shoulders.’

‘I appreciate the thought,’ Jenny said, and changed the subject. ‘I don’t suppose we’ve had an answer from the manager of Hampton’s Health Club?’

‘That’s on your desk, too.’

‘Thanks.’ Jenny headed for her office. ‘I could do with some coffee. As strong as you can make it.’

She threw her bag and jacket over a chair, her impatience to see the message from Hampton’s bringing her back to life. A list of names and their contact details stretched over three sides of paper. She scanned through them, noting the proliferation of expensive addresses. No wonder the manager had sounded anxious. Every top-rate taxpayer in Bristol seemed to be a member. Halfway through the third page an entry leaped out at her:
Fielding, Christopher, Major (Salisbury member).
The address next to his name was a military one: Bulford Camp, Salisbury, Wiltshire. A quick check on her computer confirmed that Bulford, home to several regiments, was only ten miles from Porton Down. Containing her excitement, she reminded herself that the small cathedral city of Salisbury was home to hundreds, if not thousands, of military personnel. It was the Army’s principal centre in the south of England. It was hardly surprising that the only Army officer on the list should live within commuting distance of the government and military laboratories. Still, it was a lead.

Alison arrived with coffee. ‘What have you found? It’s Jordan, isn’t it? I knew there was something more going on with him.’

‘Actually, it’s Sophie Freeman.’

Without naming Dr Kerr as the source of her theory, Jenny told Alison that one of the laboratories where rarefied strains of the most dangerous diseases were to be found was at Porton Down, and that she had just discovered a potential connection with the dead girl.

‘Then why don’t I deal with that for you?’ Alison said, reaching for the list.

Jenny placed her hand on top of hers. ‘Not yet. I haven’t been through it properly.’

‘This is what I’m worried about, Mrs Cooper – you’ve really got to trust people. You mustn’t let yourself get paranoid.’

‘Is that what you think I am?’ Jenny said defensively.

‘Why don’t you try to take it easier today?’ Alison said, avoiding the question. ‘Now, what can I help you with?’

‘I’ll let you know.’

Alison gave her the kind of look a mother would give a wilful teenager. ‘You won’t be able to keep this up, you know.’ And having uttered her warning, she left Jenny alone.

Jenny didn’t need Alison to tell her she was slowly coming apart at the seams. After many months of keeping her anxiety contained, she felt it stirring again. She could trace its arrival back to the moment Alison had shown her the photographs of Adam Jordan’s car, when she realized that the Dinka doll was missing. A childish, superstitious part of her had read it as a portent.

She studied the slightly indistinct colour printouts of the photographs she had hurriedly taken in Sonia Blake’s study room. Apart from the spilled coffee they were wholly unremarkable. There was no sign of disturbance, no drawers left open, no books pulled from the shelves. If there had been a deliberate break-in while Sonia was out on her regular evening run, the intruder had come for something specific. But what? She pored over the images, trying to isolate some small clue, some object out of place, but found nothing. It was just an untidy academic’s room.

Resigned, she was pushing the pictures aside when she registered a detail she had entirely forgotten: during her initial visit several days before, she had spotted an identity tag on the desk. She looked again at the close-up shot of Sonia’s desk; there was no tag. She remembered the two words she had seen printed on it: Diamond Light.

Switching on her computer monitor, she entered the words into a search engine and came up with an immediate result:
The Diamond Light Source.
She clicked the link and found herself looking at an image of a large circular building in the Oxfordshire countryside at Harwell which, she learned from the accompanying text, was home to the UK’s national synchrotron. She read on, picking her way through the jargon and learning that the synchrotron was a particle accelerator, a 561-metre-long circular tube through which electrons were accelerated close to the speed of light. But unlike its famous cousin at CERN, the Diamond synchrotron didn’t collide particles together. Its function was to collect the energy they shed in the form of light to use for scientific experiments.

But this was no ordinary light. The kind the synchrotron generated was at the far end of spectrum between X-ray and infrared and invisible to the human eye. Having been collected, it was channelled into twenty-two separate ‘beamlines’. The light was many millions of times more powerful than any that could be produced from a conventional source, and in the X-ray spectrum was at such minute wavelengths that a beam could be focused to create an image of something as small as a molecule. It was, in short, one of the most powerful microscopes in existence.

What had Sonia Blake been doing there? Her field was international relations, not science. Jenny scouted further through the website and learned that it was a publicly funded facility available free of charge to scientists who intended to release their research to the public domain, and for a fee to commercial companies or researchers whose results were to remain confidential. The beamlines were used by scientists from a host of different disciplines to examine samples down almost to the atomic level. Life scientists used them to analyse the chemical make-up of the most fundamental parts of the human organism.

Jenny tried to think of a reason why Sonia Blake would be visiting such a facility. Could it have been entirely innocent? Perhaps, but two facts told her she had to look further: Blake’s late father had been just the sort of scientist who would now be using the Light Source to peer at the building blocks of life; and according to the map on the website, the facility was fourteen miles from Great Shefford and almost exactly the same distance from Oxford.

Jenny was considering her next move when her mobile phone rang. Another unknown caller. Anticipating Webley, she answered frostily, ‘Jenny Cooper.’ It was even worse.

‘Detective Inspector Ian Gregson. Thames Valley Police.’

‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘I thought you might like to know the result of Mrs Blake’s post-mortem examination.’

‘I’d be grateful.’

‘As we hoped, it’s nothing sinister – cardiac arrest caused by something called endocarditis. Apparently it’s an infection in the lining of the heart. Feels like a head cold, but physical exercise is about the worst thing you can do for it, I’m told. Just one of those things, the pathologist says. Plain bad luck.’ He delivered the news with the same deadpan tone she had grown to loathe the night before. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought of anything overnight that might be of interest to us.’

‘I thought Mrs Blake’s death wasn’t being treated as suspicious.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Then I’m afraid I don’t follow.’

‘I’ll leave it with you, Mrs Cooper. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.’

The conversation was over in less than a minute. No apology for holding her like a prisoner for most of the evening, just a vague hint of a threat. If she had been tempted to share anything with him, he had ensured she never would now.

Jenny had recorded endocarditis as a cause of death several times in her career. From memory, the infection clustered in the heart valves and caused the surrounding tissue to swell. Its victims were usually old, infirm or rundown. Sonia Blake could easily have fallen into the latter category. A driven professional woman was just the sort to deal with a niggling symptom by trying to jog it off.

There it was. The exit sign was lit. Sonia Blake was dead and would never be able to testify to what had passed between her and Adam Jordan. Jenny was free to forget about her. Except that she couldn’t. Gregson’s call had been a crude attempt to trade one piece of information for another. Webley’s involvement was proof that Sonia Blake and Adam Jordan were suspected of being part of something far bigger. She wasn’t being paranoid: she was in a simple race to get to the truth before it was buried.

Jenny grabbed her bag and pushed through into reception, where Alison was gathering yet another pile of papers to burden her with.

‘I’m going out to fetch some coffee,’ Jenny said.

‘You just had some—’

‘Won’t be a minute. See if you can get hold of Major Fielding. You’ll find him on the list from Hampton’s.’

‘Mrs Cooper—’

Jenny slipped out through the door and dashed down the corridor.

S
IMON
M
ORETON
’
S VOICE BARKED OUT
of all six speakers as Jenny once again headed east on the motorway.

‘What the hell’s going on, Jenny? I’ve got the top brass at the HPA on my back saying you’re refusing to conclude a perfectly straightforward inquest.’

‘ “Straightforward” is not a word I would use.’

‘It’s a death from meningitis.’

‘That’s part of the story.’

‘There’s only so much of this I can tolerate. It’s not just the HPA. I’m told the parents of the dead girl are deeply distressed by the delay.’

‘Believe me, Simon, if you had half the facts you wouldn’t be saying any of this.’

‘Such as?’ he challenged.

‘Nice try.’

‘Jenny, unless the Freeman case is resolved by the end of the week we are going to have to carry out an urgent review of how you conduct your business.’

‘Is that a threat to remove me from the case? On what grounds – being too conscientious?’

‘Jenny, please—’

‘Who’s been talking to you, Simon?’

His momentary pause was enough to confirm her suspicions.

‘Let me guess – a rather attractive young woman named Ruth Webley.’

‘I’ve no idea who you’re talking about,’ he answered.

‘I’ll make you a deal,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll move as quickly as I can on the Freeman inquest, and you remind Ms Webley and her colleagues that they’ve no business interfering with a coroner’s inquiries, no matter how uncomfortable it is for them.’

He answered with an ominous silence.

‘So the law no longer applies?’ Jenny said. ‘The Coroners Act has been repealed, has it?’

‘Jenny,’ he said pleadingly, ‘I like to think we’re friends.’

‘They’ve really got you on the hook, haven’t they? Why don’t you just show these people the door and tell them they can’t interfere with justice?’

‘There are limits. You know that as well as I do.’

‘No one respects boundaries, Simon. It’s one of the laws of nature – boundaries are battlegrounds. Someone or something is always trying to move them.’

‘I really can’t protect you this time, Jenny.’

‘Then see if you can manage not to do me any harm.’

‘You don’t make it easy.’

‘Think how dull your life would be without me.’

Another sigh. This one more wistful.

‘Where are you, by the way? Your officer sounded at the end of her tether.’

‘Never mind. Goodbye, Simon.’

She ended the call and was about to switch off her phone when she noticed that she had a voicemail. She checked it, expecting to hear a grudging apology from Michael – it was about time – but it was from Ross, asking if she was free to have dinner with him and Sally. Jenny called straight back. She’d love to. She’d pick them up from David’s at eight. The deal sealed, she rang off, feeling her worries about him dispersing like smoke in the wind.

It wasn’t the porter she had encountered on the two previous occasions behind the desk in the lodge at Worcester College, but a junior deputy with a thin frame and a cautious, helpful smile. Jenny introduced herself and informed him she was here to look over Sonia Blake’s rooms. In a dilemma, he explained that his boss, Mr Davies, had told him that the police had left instructions that no one was to be allowed in without their express permission. Jenny patiently informed him that the police had no power to obstruct her inquiry, and if it was any comfort, all she wanted to do was look. She wouldn’t be disturbing a thing.