The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5) (32 page)

‘Are you intending to explain this to Mr and Mrs Freeman?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She glanced at the documents she held in her hand. ‘And to Mrs Jordan.’

Jenny waited for her to continue.

‘This is an unusual situation. There are several organizations involved. Initially the Health Protection Agency thought it was dealing with a simple outbreak, but an analysis of this strain of meningitis revealed – as I think you’ve worked out – that it carries the characteristics of a recombinant organism. That immediately triggered the involvement of the biological weapons team from Porton Down and my service. Our procedure is quite simple: we worked through our watch list to look for any possible connections. One of the names on our list was Sonia Blake’s. We had received intelligence that she had been in contact with a man named Adam Jordan. We looked into his background, tried to find him, then discovered he was dead. I think you can appreciate our interest, especially as he’d recently returned to the country from an area where this disease is commonplace.’

‘What did you think he had done?’ Jenny said.

‘We had no idea, but we do know this about him.’

She brought some blown-up photographs out of her briefcase and handed them over to Jenny. They were similar to pictures she had seen at AFAD’s offices: a lush, green plantation standing in the midst of a parched, dry landscape. Adam Jordan could be seen in one of them, sitting shirtless behind the wheel of a stationary jeep.

‘One of his organization’s irrigation projects. It’s marijuana. Twenty-five acres of mature crop alongside the maize. From what I hear, he and his boss, Mr Thorn, took a principled stand on the issue – growing a lucrative cash crop was the fastest way out of poverty for these people.’

Hiding her disappointment, Jenny said, ‘Maybe they had a point.’

‘I’m sure they did, but once you’re in the drugs business you’re in everything that goes with it. People will do almost anything for a share of that kind of money, particularly somewhere as war-torn and poor as South Sudan.’

‘For what it’s worth, I get the impression that Adam Jordan’s heart was genuinely in the right place. Why else would he have been in contact with someone like Sonia Blake?’

‘We’re keeping an open mind about his motivations,’ Webley said coldly, ‘and about why he jumped off a bridge. Let’s just say the picture looks increasingly complicated.’

Jenny thought back to the photographs of Jordan’s car that Alison had shown her. ‘Was it your people who got to his car the morning after he died?’

‘What do you mean?’ Webley was puzzled.

‘The police took photographs – there was a wooden figurine hanging from the rear-view mirror. Someone took it before my officer arrived later that morning.’

‘No,’ Webley said. ‘I know nothing about that.’

For a reason she couldn’t pin down, Jenny believed her.

‘Is there anything else we should know? Really, Mrs Cooper – you’ll have to take my word when I say we have only a sketchy knowledge of what Adam Jordan had been doing.’

Again, Webley sounded sincere, but Jenny reminded herself who she was. It was her business to win trust as a means of extracting information. Human feelings existed merely to be exploited. She thought of the African girl with Adam at the filling station, of his regular withdrawals from a cashpoint in central Bristol, of Sonia Blake’s visit to the Diamond Light Source, of her father’s murder and her interest in the Soviet biologist Roman Slavsky. All were pieces of the puzzle that Webley and her colleagues were desperately trying to piece together, as she was. But she also recalled her last conversation with Karen Jordan, and her suspicion that Adam had seen legal drugs withheld from disease-stricken communities in South Sudan; drugs that were being used as weapons in a proxy war. A war over what, Jenny couldn’t begin to speculate. Oil? Minerals? Or perhaps nothing more than political influence in the great, long-playing African game?

Karen’s words rang in her head as she looked into Webley’s expectant face: ‘
This is government, isn’t it? He didn’t kill himself – they murdered him . . .
’

Jenny served her the question straight. ‘Did you have anything to do with the break-in at Mrs Jordan’s home?’

Webley was bemused. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’

‘Because his colleague, Harry Thorn, says that the British government is never off his back. In fact, he gives every impression that independent aid agencies such as his are seen as tools of foreign policy, and when they refuse to play they find themselves in trouble.’

Webley smiled. ‘I think you’ll find that Mr Thorn is generally considered to have “gone troppo”, as the Australians say, some years ago. The file I’ve seen suggests that he would be one of the last people our agents would attempt to deal with.’

‘And Adam Jordan?’

Webley hesitated, choosing her words with care. ‘He wasn’t unknown to us, but neither was there a close relationship. As I said, the picture is complicated.’

It was Jenny’s turn to dissemble. ‘It’s clear you know far more than I do, Ms Webley. Perhaps you’d be good enough to forward me all you have for the purposes of Mr Jordan’s inquest.’

Ruth Webley’s voice hardened. ‘I’ll pass your request on, certainly, but we can’t allow the inquest you’re currently conducting to go any further.’

‘What do you mean?’

Moreton leaned forward. ‘Jenny, you know as well as I do that this inquest is turning into one massive fishing trip. Both girls died of meningitis. There’s nothing more to say. If you insist on delving further I’ll have no choice but to request the Secretary of State to have you removed on grounds of unfitness.’

Jenny fought her desire to fire back and forced herself to think ahead. She was now as sure as she could be that there was a connection between Jordan’s death and those of Sophie and Elena. And if she were removed from one case, it would surely follow that she would be removed from the other.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But perhaps we can we agree on a compromise?’

Moreton looked pleasantly surprised. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘All rise.’ Alison’s voice rose above the hubbub that had continued unabated for the full twenty minutes since proceedings had been abruptly adjourned.

Jenny entered the courtroom at a brisk walk and sat at her desk without looking up. Dismissing the lawyers’ attempts to register their protests, she began to read from a handwritten note she had brought in with her. ‘Having heard all the evidence currently available to me, it is clear that Sophie Freeman died from a deadly antibiotic-resistant strain of meningitis. Much as I would like to inquire further into the nature of this organism and the manner and circumstances of her infection, the law places limits on the scope of a coroner’s inquiry which, in this case, I judge I have reached. Normally, in the case of a person who has died as a result of an infectious disease contracted by chance, a verdict of death by natural causes would be returned. I do not feel able to make such a finding, so am therefore returning an open verdict.’

All three lawyers rose as one to voice their objections. Jenny glanced up and saw the shock and dismay on the faces of Ed and Fiona Freeman.

‘I have nothing more to add,’ Jenny said. ‘The inquest is closed.’

She exited as swiftly as she had entered, feeling, for the first time in her career as coroner, that she had delivered grieving parents a bitter injustice. She only hoped she could find answers before one of them decided life was no longer worth living.

‘J
ESUS
, J
ENNY.
W
HAT DID YOU
think you were doing? I just had a call from Fiona Freeman. She said you didn’t even offer an explanation. One minute the inquest was in full swing, the next you’d delivered an open verdict. Now they’re both going over the edge.’

Jenny had been back behind her desk in Jamaica Street less than an hour when she answered the call from David. She was already consumed with guilt, and he was confirming her worst fears.

‘I will speak to them. It’s just—’

‘Just what, Jenny? Have you any idea how upsetting this is? I told them they could trust you, for God’s sake.’

‘I know!’

‘And?’

‘I said I’ll talk to them.’

‘When?’

‘When I’ve something to say. It may take some time. A few days.’

David sighed, infuriated. ‘This is hopeless. Thanks for nothing. I hope you can live with yourself.’

She started as he slammed down the phone. A hard lump had formed in her throat: all the symptoms of anxiety clawing at her one by one. She knew the signs well enough; she was approaching the load at which she would soon no longer be able to function without resorting to the drugs she thought she had kicked for good. If only she could grow a skin as thick as her ex-husband’s she could push on, confident that she had done the right thing, but she was like a child, tossed to and fro by the emotions of others. Where was her sense of herself?
You’re a coroner, for pity’s sake, you can’t let him diminish you like that.

The words boosted her self-esteem for a fleeting second, only for a fresh wave of anxiety to surge over her. Teetering towards a full-blown panic attack, she grabbed her handbag and searched for the Xanax she kept tucked away for emergencies.

She popped one out of the foil and swallowed, forcing it past the tight muscles of her throat. As the drug seeped into her blood and slowly began to untie the knots that had threatened to choke her, she asked herself why she couldn’t be like David, Simon Moreton, Ruth Webley and the lawyers who had barracked her. They all asserted themselves as naturally as they breathed, while she, just as Dr Allen had told her, invariably found herself on the defensive. She was always the one reacting, always searching for the sense of entitlement that others seemed to claim without conscious thought.

It was a chemical calm, but a calm nonetheless. She used it to weigh her options. Part of her was desperate to give up the fight and bury herself in the hundred mundane cases mounting on her desk, but each time she tried to imagine the calls she would make to the Freemans and Karen Jordan, all she could feel was the emptiness of their despair. No, retreat wasn’t an option, but the way she was feeling, neither was going it entirely alone.

Jenny went through to reception, where Alison was behind her desk, her things arranged neatly around her, a safe and secure pocket of order in which she had ensconced herself. She continued to type on her computer, her expression registering nothing other than mild irritation as Jenny recounted all that she had found out about Jordan and her suspicion that his death somehow linked with those of Sophie Freeman and Elena Lujan.

‘I need to find the African girl,’ Jenny said. ‘We can’t know anything without her.’

Alison didn’t answer.

‘I thought that might be something you could help with – your contacts in the police.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cooper,’ she answered flatly. ‘I can’t.’

‘It shouldn’t be that difficult. Someone connected with Adam Jordan must know who she is.’

‘I’m not sure I know how to make myself any clearer.’

‘I’m only asking you to do your job.’

‘No. You know that’s not right. You’re asking me to get involved in something they don’t want us involved with.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t do that any more.’

‘Have Moreton and Webley spoken to you, too?’

‘Mr Moreton did, yes. But it’s not because of him . . . I need to give myself the best chance, Mrs Cooper. I’m not ready to say to hell with it all.’

‘Oh.’ Jenny tried to fathom her reaction. ‘I just . . . I thought you wanted to keep on as normal.’

‘I do. But this isn’t normal, is it?’ She met Jenny’s gaze. ‘You’re talking about murder, and not just the ordinary kind. You know as well as I do, Adam Jordan’s case is the least normal we’ve ever had.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You’ve got in so deep you can’t see it for what it is.’

‘What do you mean, Alison?’

‘I mean you’d be foolish not to give it up now. But I know I’m wasting my breath.’

It wasn’t yet five o’clock, but in their brief phone call Detective Superintendent Owen Williams of the Gwent police had suggested the Chepstow Castle Inn as their meeting place. Nestled at the foot of the town next to the medieval castle that stood imperiously on a cliff overlooking the Wye, the pub was far enough away from the police station for him not to risk being seen by his colleagues. Several times in recent years she had persuaded him into investigations in which his force could claim only limited interest, and the new Chief Constable – a ‘frigid English bastard with both thumbs stuck up his backside’ – wasn’t prepared to tolerate any more of the border skirmishes Williams so relished.

She carried her orange juice out from the empty bar to the garden at the rear, and found him soaking up the late-afternoon sun, a pint glass in his hand.

‘Come to disturb my tranquil waters again, Mrs Cooper?’ Williams said, in the exaggeratedly sing-song Welsh accent he had cultivated to make every sentence sound like a line of poetry.

‘Some might say I’ve made your life more interesting, Superintendent.’