Jenny had touched a nerve. 'I can see that. I can see that you loved her very much. I will find out what happened to her, Mrs Taylor. I promise you.'

  The unseasonal rain had returned and the recreation ground, a grand title for a tired, unkempt two acres of public park, was largely empty. Jenny turned up the collar of her mac and went in search of dissolute teenagers. There were none to be seen. She found their cigarette ends, empty beer cans and alcopop bottles and, by the benches in the corner furthest from the gate, several used condoms in the untended flower beds. It was depressing but not shocking, only a few degrees worse than she had been. She'd drunk her share of alcohol, smoked joints when they were on offer and probably would have given cocaine a whirl if the right boy had waved it under her nose. There was sex, too, but under slightly more savoury conditions, and mostly in the belief that it was the route to eternal love.

  Making her way across the wet grass to the exit, she spotted two girls, aged around fourteen or fifteen, who came into the park, clumsily lit cigarettes and swaggered in her direction en route to the benches. Both wore a semblance of school uniform, one had a phone pressed to her ear.

  Jenny addressed the taller of the two, the one without the phone, a dark-haired, mixed-race girl with a pretty face. 'Excuse me. Did you know Katy Taylor?'

  'What d'you say?'

  'She was the girl who died at the end of April. She used to hang out here.'

  The girl struck an aggressive pose, cocked a hip. 'I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.'

  'Hayley Johnson?'

  The other girl came off the phone and said to her friend, 'What does she want?'

  Jenny said, 'I'm trying to find people who knew Katy Taylor. I'm the coroner. I'm investigating her death.'

  The girl with the phone said, 'We don't know shit,' and walked on. Her friend followed, stepping in close to Jenny and bumping her with her shoulder.

  Jenny fished in her jacket pocket, pulled out a card and set off after them. 'Look, there's money in it. A hundred pounds for anyone who can tell me where Katy was on Sunday 22 or Monday 23 April. I also want to speak to Hayley Johnson. You see her, give her my number.'

  She offered her card to the taller girl. 'It looks like she was murdered. You could be a lot of help to me.'

  The two girls traded a look, their bravado wearing a little thinner.

  'Take the card. Think about it.'

  It was the phone girl who reached out and snatched it, then tossed it on the ground.

  It was nearly eight p.m. and she was still at her desk. She had cleared today's death reports - already becoming inured to the gruesome details - and was contemplating opening the accounts file to see just how big and dreary a task awaited her. She had managed to lift it on to the desk and open the cover when she heard the outer door opening and Alison call through, 'Hello? Mrs Cooper?'

  'In here.'

  She appeared in the door clutching a large brown envelope. 'The surgery had passed the records back to the main archive at the hospital. We were lucky to get hold of them - it took the girl ages. They were bagged up, ready for the shredder.' She handed the package across the desk.

  Jenny opened it and pulled out a crumbling cardboard file. Marshall's name and date of birth were written on the front in the kind of cursive script that hadn't been used for decades.

  Alison said, 'They go right back to when he was six months old.'

  Jenny turned through the fragile pages, smiling at the neat, perfunctory entries made by the Marshall family doctor: 'Cough, moderate. Reassured mother (fussing) not whooping.' 'Complains of stomach aches - only on week days!'

  'The later stuff is mostly about his blood pressure. He was taking statins for his cholesterol.'

  Jenny turned over a chunk of dusty pages and found the most recent entries. She could sense Alison's jumpiness.

  Harry had visited the doctor approximately every six weeks for the last two years to have his cholesterol measured, and the trend was mostly downwards. His final reading, a month before he died, was a respectable four point five, two points lower than what she would have expected from a coronary victim. The final entry was dated Friday 27 April, just short of a week before his death, and three days before the Danny Wills inquest. It read: 'Symptoms of depression, feelings of being overwhelmed, insomnia, TATT, anxious about ability to function at work. Advised long summer holiday in order - agreed. 4 x 5omg Amitriptyline for two weeks then review.'

  Alison said, 'What does TATT mean?'

  'Tired all the time. These are classic symptoms of depression. He prescribed a sedating antidepressant, quite a high dose.'

  'I thought so.'

  'Have you spoken to Mrs Marshall about this?'

  'No. Why would I?'

  Jenny slid the notes back into the envelope. 'Maybe I'd better.'

  'What for?'

  'For one thing, it would be useful to know how many pills he had left from his prescription.'

  'No. You mustn't.'

  Jenny looked at her, surprised at the sharp note of alarm in her voice.

  Alison said, 'Let me talk to his GP first. There's no point upsetting Mrs Marshall and his girls.'

  'Alison, there's something you've got to understand. I am going to find out what happened to Harry Marshall, and if it's relevant information it will become public. I am not and never will be in the business of protecting anyone's reputation if that stands in the way of justice.'

  Alison fixed her with an accusing glare. 'You may be grateful for your friends one day, Mrs Cooper. And real friends are there even after you're gone.'

  The phone rang at nearly midnight, waking Jenny with a jerk from her first, fitful dozes of the night. Unexpected calls always made her think something terrible must have happened to Ross. He had barely more than grunted during their twice- weekly conversation last Friday and it left her feeling empty and rejected. She gripped the banister as she went downstairs, fighting the effects of half a bottle of red and a sleeping pill. She lurched into the study, barely able to focus as she picked up the receiver.

  'Hello?'

  'It's Alison, Mrs Cooper. I didn't know if I should disturb you—'

  'What is it?'

  'I spent most of the evening with Mrs Marshall, talking. She's still very upset, of course ... I did manage to mention the tablets, but she didn't know about them. I looked them up. They're ones you're not meant to mix with alcohol, but Harry was still having his gin and tonic in the evening. We think he might not even have picked up the prescription.'

  'She didn't find any drugs bottles in his clothes or anywhere?'

  'No. Nothing, Just his statins - he kept them in a drawer in the kitchen.'

  'Did you mention the phone call he made to you the night he died?'

  'I didn't like to.'

  'Anything else?'

  'Not really. Like me, she'd noticed he was out of sorts, but he didn't really talk to her about his work much. She says it depressed her.'

  No wonder Harry liked his gin so much. Alone all day with the dead and no one to offload to in the evenings.

  'OK. Thanks.'

  'So what do you think?' Alison sounded genuinely hopeful that Jenny would say that was an end to it, that Harry's death was tragic but clearly natural.

  Jenny said, 'I'll think about it. Goodnight, Alison.'

  She set down the receiver and sank into the upright chair at her desk. The room was spinning slightly. Through the haze, she tried to picture what this information meant. Either Harry had so much gin on top of his antidepressants he accidentally nudged himself into a coronary, or he swallowed his entire prescription, flushed the containers down the toilet, picked up the phone to Alison to say goodbye - perhaps even to make a declaration of love - and ran out of courage at the last minute. As the pills began to seep into his system he climbed the stairs, changed into his pyjamas, bade his wife goodnight and quietly lay down to die.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After seven good hours' sleep Jenny decided to face the world on a single tablet, which she snapped in half. One half with breakfast, one saved for lunch. She toyed with taking no more with her, but wasn't ready to let go of the security blanket just yet. Instead she zipped them away in the furthest recess of her handbag, making it an effort to get to them.

  Her first stop was at the offices of the Severn Vale Youth Offending Team, a dreary 1970s building that stood in the middle of a row of convenience stores, nail bars and take-aways, only a few hundred yards from the Broadlands Estate. There was no reply when she arrived at nine a.m. and she had drunk two cups of tepid coffee in the greasy spoon opposite before she spotted a slouching figure that looked like Justin unlocking the front door at gone half past.

  He took a long time responding to the buzzer, four attempts in all.

  'Who is that?'

  'Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner. I've a few more questions I need to ask you, Mr Bennett.'

  'Right ... I'm about to see a client.'

  'I'm sure the client can wait.' .

  'Can't we fix a more convenient time?'

  Jenny lost patience. 'I'm conducting a major inquiry, Mr

  Bennett. You are under a legal duty to comply. Please let me in.'

  There was a brief pause. The door-release sounded.

  Justin's office was as she expected. Poky, untidy and tucked away at the end of the first-floor corridor. He sat apprehensively behind his desk in jeans and a Lil' Kim T-shirt and tried to look busy, shuffling coffee-stained papers into a heap.

  'What can I do for you?'

  'I'm trying to find out where Katy Taylor was and who she was with on the days before her death.'

  'No idea. I only saw her once after she came out of Portshead, on the Wednesday ... apart from passing her in the corridor on the Friday.'

  'When she went to her Recovery from Addiction class?'

  'That's right.'

  'In this building?'

  'Upstairs. We have a meeting room.'

  'Uh huh.' Jenny brought a legal pad out of her briefcase and turned to a blank page. She noticed Justin looking at it, wary. 'You said in evidence you talked about the terms of her contract on that Wednesday. Did you talk about her time in Portshead?'

  'I probably asked her how she managed. I don't remember our exact words.'

  She jotted a note. 'Did she tell you she was taking drugs all the way through, marijuana and coke? They seem to have been in plentiful supply.'

  'No. She didn't mention that.' He crossed and uncrossed his arms, having problems finding a comfortable position.

  'She was here before Christmas, wasn't she, on a drugs awareness course? She was on a supervision order that time for possession with intent to supply cannabis resin.'

  'I believe so.'

  'Did you have dealings with her back then?'

  'Not directly. I knew of her - her name came up in team meetings, that's all.'

  'Was the fact that she might be selling sex discussed?'

  'I think so.'

  Jenny made a note and looked up. 'Can I see her file please? I'd like to take it with me.'

  'What, now?'

  'As she's dead, I can't think you've any more use for it.'

  'I'll have to get authority. My boss is in shortly.'

  'The only authority you need is mine, Mr Bennett. The file please.'

  Justin rose hesitantly from his chair and went to a filing cabinet. Jenny kept her eyes on him, checking that he didn't try to weed out any documents. He removed a slender wallet file and handed it over the desk. She opened the flap and took out the handful of papers, no more than twenty separate sheets. All of them were tick-box forms apart from a typed report written prior to her sentence. She skimmed through it and didn't learn anything she hadn't already known.

  'Don't you write down any personal observations?'

  'I don't tend to, no.'

  'Why not?'

  He shrugged. 'It's just not how it's done.'

  Jenny glanced through the forms. They were all designed to ensure that criteria were met, meetings attended and appropriate actions taken. The young offender was often referred to as the 'client'. There was the odd scribbled note, but the accent was on keeping it all as impersonal as possible. These soulless, bureaucratic pro-formas said this agency was more concerned with protecting itself and its employees than its clients. One of the documents was Katy's contract with the Youth Offending Team in which she promised to keep her curfew, go to school, arrive punctually at meetings and attend Recovery from Addiction classes. There was also a clause about understanding her responsibility to society, respect for others and our laws. Fine words.

  Jenny slotted the papers back in the file. 'Do you have any idea who Katy was associating with when she came out?'

  'No.'

  'Didn't you talk to her about that? You must have a lot of local knowledge.'

  'As I tried to explain to you in court, my job is to win the young person's trust, not to act as an authority figure.'

  'And you earn this trust how?'

  Her question caught Justin off balance. He stammered, 'I try to make them see me as someone they can talk to . . . honestly.'

  'But you don't ask questions.'

  'Building trust is a process.'

  Jenny wanted to say, and meanwhile she's out on the streets getting herself killed. 'Tell me who you think she was associating with.'

  'I can't say. I don't know.'

  She was fast losing patience. Even as a lawyer several steps removed from this street-level work, she got to know personalities and reputations. Justin was part of the neighbourhood, all he did every day was meet its most persistent teenage criminals.

  She held him in her gaze. 'Why are you lying to me, Justin?'

  His cheeks flushed red and his Adam's apple rose and sank in his throat. 'I'm not. I don't know who her friends were . . . She wasn't very open with me.'

  'Really?' She kept her eyes on him. 'She was an associate of Danny Wills, wasn't she? When they were younger they were at school together, they were in the same drugs awareness class here last December, and they met again in Portshead. He died while she was in there.'

  'She didn't mention him.'

  'He was one of your "clients", too, wasn't he?'

  'Yeah ...'

  'You didn't think to say what a shame about Danny? Had she seen him at Portshead? Was she upset?'

  'We didn't talk about him.'

  Jenny let him sweat for a moment. She didn't know what to make of him. Was he a liar or just a natural-born bureaucrat already skilled in the arts of self-preservation?

  'What time of day did you meet with Katy on the Wednesday?'

  'At the end of the day. Around five, I think.'

  'That explains a lot,' Jenny said, and let him reach his own conclusion. She shut her legal pad and opened her briefcase. 'I'll take Danny's file, too.'

  She read through it sitting in her car, which was parked outside a bookmaker's where old white men and jobless young West Indians seemed to be forging an unlikely common bond. A permanent cluster stood outside smoking cigarettes, finding plenty of things to joke about. The file didn't contain many laughs. It was thicker than Katy's but just as impersonal. It held almost no clue as to who Danny Wills was apart from the list of offences he had committed. No one perusing the pages would have gleaned any insight into the mind of an unhappy teenager who grew up without a father or any security. The good news for Justin Bennett and his bosses was that the form marked 'Reoffending Behaviour' wouldn't be getting any more ticks. There was no box to record a death; if they were deft enough Danny could even make it into the annual statistics as a success.

  What troubled her most was the lack of personal information - the kids' interests, friends, skills. It felt like the only public official who had made a genuine attempt to understand him was Harry Marshall when he compiled his pre-inquest report. What she had found this morning made her angry. Without thinking, Jenny took out the half-tablet she had saved for later and swallowed it. Washed down with a mouthful of Diet Coke, it made her feel a little better, but not much.

  She watched the men outside the bookmaker's, happy low- life, all smoking, friends together. It struck her how quickly friendships must be made in prison. A frightened child like Katy or Danny couldn't have avoided being drawn to a familiar face in the canteen. They must have spoken.

 

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