This layer of bureaucracy had to be negotiated carefully. The Attorney General was a politician with special responsibility for the public, for which read government, interest. Any application which smacked of emotion or outrage or which spelled potential embarrassment wouldn't even make it past the low-grade civil servant who opened the envelope. Jenny's letter would have to be as dry as dust and focus on one unanswerable objection: the family social worker had tried and failed to get a psychiatric assessment for a mentally ill teenager. He was sent to an institution which placed him on suicide watch but still did not have him psychiatrically examined. Had this evidence been heard, a verdict of death caused by gross negligence would have been highly likely.

  She drafted, then read and re-read her legalistic letter and tried to conceive of how the Attorney General, part of an administration which claimed to put children first, could possibly refuse her request. She couldn't. The facts were too stark; it would have to get through.

  The grass had started to sprout daisies again and weeds were reappearing among the herbs. It was gone eight and she could barely pull the cork out of the bottle, let alone contemplate gardening. As it was Tuesday, she had half expected to come home and see that Steve had been again. Secretly, she had hoped she would find him still here, turning to greet her with that smile.

  She filled the large glass up to the top so she had to sip a quarter-inch off before lifting it to her lips. A couple of mouthfuls and it was two-thirds empty. What did it matter? No one was watching. She filled it up again. She'd make the second glass last. The wine was good. A Chianti. Why not just enjoy it?

  After another refill she could have been sitting in her own private paradise. The leaves on the ash trees glittered, the sky was the colour of the Mediterranean. When you could feel this good on your own, who needed company?

  The second bottle was a screw top, cheap French red. Not bad, though. She was relaxed, enjoying herself. She felt like a cigarette and remembered an emergency pack she kept in the bottom kitchen drawer. She lit one off the electric stove and wandered back outside, a glass in her hand, not feeling the cold at all. Sitting in her garden at sunset, her bare feet on the wet grass, a stream running by, what could beat it? Forget Steve. If she ever wanted a man, she could do much better.

  She woke in the semi-darkness. Her skull was splitting and she was shivering. She looked around, disoriented, and realized she was still at the scrub-top table on the lawn, two empty bottles in front of her. She lurched inside. Her phone was blinking on the kitchen counter. She snatched it up and struggled to focus: Missed call. Ross 20:25. Shit. How had that happened? What was the time? She looked over at the clock - ten to four.

  As she hit the pillow, the birds struck up. Thousands of the little bastards.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  She made it to her desk by ten a.m., loaded up with aspirin, temazepam and caffeine. Fortunately, Alison was out of the office, so wasn't there to see what a wreck she was. Jenny would have been angry with herself had she had the energy, but she was shattered, every slight movement making her head pound. It was a deep, rotten hangover that bitter experience told her would last all day and into tomorrow. Forcing herself to throw up several times had had no effect. She felt too sick to eat and her lungs were sore from the ten cigarettes she had smoked. The last time she had been in this state was the morning after she left David. How had it happened?

  Sitting on her desk was a print-out of a report Ruth Turner had emailed through, repeating the story she had told yesterday, a neat stack of receipts bulldog-clipped together and a manual ledger in which Alison had attempted to enter them. With it was a long note full of queries which needed answering and a detailed form which had to be submitted to the council's auditor. She pushed the accounts aside and turned instead to the fresh stack of reports she had picked up from Alison's desk. It contained the usual collection of depressing hospital cases, a woman of ninety who had choked on her dentures and a thirty-five-year-old farm worker who had fallen into a slurry pit, cracked his head and drowned.

  Just what she needed. Reading about death in a cesspool.

  She tried to lose herself in work, but as she read Dr Peterson's post-mortem reports she could smell his autopsy room. Fighting a wave of nausea, she headed out to the kitchenette to make more coffee. While she was leaning against the counter trying to calculate how many more aspirin she could safely take, Alison arrived, busy and excited.

  'They got the tape back from the lab. They think they've got a sighting of Katy at eleven o'clock on the Sunday evening getting into a blue car, a Vectra.'

  Jenny tried her best to sound bright. 'They can't be certain?'

  'It's bit grainy, apparently. A security camera outside some flats.'

  'Any chance we could get a look?'

  'They haven't gone public yet. We're not meant to know. You could call Swainton and ask him how it's going.'

  'I'll give it some thought. I don't want to make him any more defensive.'

  Alison, relieved, said, 'I've got a feeling they'll get a result.'

  Jenny stirred a second spoon of instant coffee into her cup. 'At least we haven't had any more trouble from Grantham. I don't know what his problem was.'

  'You. He likes to be in control.'

  'You sound as if you've heard something.'

  Alison reached down a mug, not wanting to be drawn.

  Jenny said, 'What is it?'

  'Nothing in particular . . . But it just looks bad for him, doesn't it? Everyone knows he and Harry were close. If there was something wrong with the way Harry handled Katy's inquest it'll reflect on him.'

  'Too bad.' Jenny took her coffee and headed for her office.

  'Did you pick up the message from the Attorney General's office?'

  'No.'

  'I left it with the accounts. They're sending someone down to talk about your letter. I booked them in for midday.'

  Her headache was no better when Adam Crossley arrived five minutes ahead of schedule; if anything, all the fluids she had taken had made it worse, swollen her brain. Crossley, an ambitious, ex-military type in his late thirties, was bright and alert, refreshed after a ride down in first class at taxpayers' expense. To make the day even jollier he had brought a young colleague. Kathy Findlay was an attractive, bookish young redhead who sat in a corner taking verbatim notes. During the obligatory pre-business chit-chat, Crossley explained he was a criminal barrister who had been headhunted to take a two- year contract with the AG's department to help steer through a programme of radical change. He spouted a lot of management speak about 'streamlining' and 'concentrated focus', but what it amounted to was that the department was being brought under political control. Forget the law, he could have said, in future politics was going to come first.

  As soon as he said 'criminal barrister' Jenny had him pegged. Not bright enough for commercial law, probably scratching a mediocre living prosecuting and destined only, if he got lucky, to serve out his final years on the Crown Court Bench. A low- level lawyer hungry for a fragment of power.

  Niceties over and already presuming to use her Christian name, Crossley said, 'I've read your letter, Jenny - it raises some very significant points.'

  'That's why I wrote it.' Her hangover was making her tetchy.

  'Do you have a copy of Mrs Turner's evidence?'

  She handed the statement across the desk. Crossley sat in silence for a full minute, reading it in detail. Kathy Findlay tapped her pen on her legal pad and glanced around the room with a look of mild disgust.

  'Very interesting,' Crossley said. 'May I keep this for my records?'

  'Sure.'

  He tucked it into his file. 'You do appreciate that rehearing an inquest is quite a drastic step. The Attorney General would have to be convinced that an alternative verdict would be highly likely to result.'

  'A secure training centre took in a boy whose family social worker told them needed to be seen by a psychiatrist, but they didn't do it. They didn't even have access to a psychiatrist because of a contractual dispute. That to me seems a clear breach of their duty of care.'

  'But how sure can you be that seeing a psychiatrist would have made any difference? The boy might still have killed himself.'

  'A psychiatrist might have had him sectioned or medicated.'

  'Plenty of people properly diagnosed as medically ill kill themselves.'

  Jenny felt a fuse blow. 'We're talking about a children's prison operating without access to a psychiatrist. Doesn't that concern you?'

  'It's certainly regrettable, but I'm not altogether persuaded—'

  'Perhaps a coroner's jury would be.'

  Crossley eased back in his chair and knitted his fingers, the smile replaced with a frown. 'This is what I was concerned about, Jenny, that you had become personally involved in the case. I note your background is in family law.'

  She could have jumped over the desk and punched him. 'What concerns me, Mr Crossley, is that someone's sent you down here scared that I'm about to embarrass the government by exposing gross flaws in the private prisons it's so keen on.'

  'You're giving every impression of partiality, I must say.'

  'The coroner is not an impartial judge like those you are familiar with in the Crown Court, she is an inquisitor with one overriding duty: to discover the cause of death. My predecessor failed to call vital witnesses. If you choose not to give me leave to ask the High Court's permission to examine this again, I really will embarrass you - I'll seek judicial review and it'll be all over the press that your department tried to stand in my way.'

  'You're imputing a very disreputable motive to us, verging on the paranoid.'

  'Well, tell me I'm wrong.'

  'In the light of Mrs Turner's statement I can see that we might be sympathetic to your application, but you'll understand that we're concerned that any inquest conforms to the highest standards. You'll be under a good deal of scrutiny from the Ministry of Justice.'

  'Their time might be better spent scrutinizing their prisons.'

  'You're really quite angry about this, aren't you?'

  'Danny Wills was a sick child. Who wouldn't be?'

  Crossley gave an uncomfortable smile. 'If you really are intent on hearing this inquest again you can at least conduct it in dignified surroundings. Call the Ministry - they'll find you a proper courtroom. We can't have the public thinking we're running a third-world system.' He rose from his chair. 'I hope we understand each other.'

  Alison showed Crossley and his young companion out and recommended an Italian restaurant where they'd be sure to get a table for lunch. Through the partially open door to reception Jenny could hear her, calling him Mr Crossley, and wishing him a pleasant journey back to London, doing everything she could to repair the damage.

  Alison appeared a few minutes later with a handful of printed emails. She gave her a look that Jenny now recognized, the one that said she was concerned when what she actually wanted was to give her opinion. 'I do hope they let you go ahead, Mrs Cooper.'

  'They've got no choice. If they refuse, I'll go straight to the High Court, seeking judicial review.'

  That look again. 'You seem tired.'

  'If you've got something to say, just say it.'

  'You did sound rather aggressive.'

  'He was the aggressive one. I was honest.'

  'This will be the only chance they give you, you know that.'

  'I can't think of a better case to take it on, can you?'

  The call came as two delivery men were manoeuvring a desk through her office door. She was jammed up against the bookshelves, pleading with them to be careful as they trod files underfoot and knocked lumps out of the paintwork. She snatched the phone before one of them tripped over the wire. 'Jenny Cooper.'

  'Mrs Cooper, it's Isabel Thomas, Ross's Head of Year.'

  'Oh, hello.'

  'I'm afraid we've had a situation. Ross is all right, but he's rather the worse for wear.'

  'Oh . . .' Her heart was bouncing off the back of her throat. 'What's happened?'

  'We're not sure exactly. A member of staff found him at lunchtime. He's intoxicated.'

  'Drunk?'

  'No. I think it's some kind of drugs. As you know, school policy is to inform the police — '

  'Please don't do that. It's completely out of character.'

  'I'll hold off this time, but my feeling is that this has been going on for a while.'

  'No one's said anything.'

  'It's just an impression, that's all . . . Look, I've got him here in my office. I tried to contact your husband—'

  'Don't. I'll be right there.'

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The irony wasn't lost on her as she swallowed another pill before venturing into the building. Schools filled her with dread at the best of times: the sense of judgement which suffused them. Her footsteps reverberated around the scruffy corridors. The air was stale, heavy and smelt vaguely of bleach and the lasagne that had evidently been served for lunch. She passed classrooms, some orderly, others bordering on riotous, in which teachers pleaded with unruly children to be quiet. It brought back memories of her own schooldays in a precious girls' grammar: always on edge, waiting for the sharp reproach or hurtful jibe. It had felt like a prison. She had hoped Ross's experience would be less pressured, but she could feel the tension in the air. Different, but no less intimidating.

  Isabel Thomas, a brisk, impersonal woman in her early thirties, was hovering in the corridor outside her office, talking into her phone. When Jenny approached she rang off and glanced at her watch as if to say, what took you?

  'Mrs Thomas?'

  'He's in here, but I just wanted a quick word.' She ushered her several yards along the corridor out of earshot. 'Ross won't say anything, but I'm pretty sure he's been smoking cannabis. Another member of staff found some roaches and he had papers and tobacco in his pockets.'

  Jenny felt a wave of relief. 'At least it wasn't anything worse.'

  'Some of his teachers have noticed that he's been a bit vague in lessons recently. I see from the register that he's had a large number of absences this year.'

  'Really? I'd no idea.'

  'So he's not been staying at home?'

  'I don't think so . . . Actually, he lives with his father most of the time.'

  'You separated earlier this year, didn't you? It's often a crisis point for teenagers.'

  'We will deal with it. I'm sure it's just a phase.'

  'I'd recommend you get him some professional help if you can. Normally this sort of thing would result in immediate expulsion.'

  'You can't. We don't even know what happened.'

  'I've had to tell the Head. It's her decision, but in Ross's case I think she might be persuadable.'

  'So what's his status?'

  'She'll call you, but you can presume he's suspended until further notice.'

  'He's still got exams to sit.'

  'He'll be allowed to sit them, just not to remain on school premises.'

  'This is such an overreaction.'

  'I'm sorry it was your son, Mrs Cooper, but it can happen to anyone.' She gave her a look of faux sympathy. 'You'd better take him now.'

  Ross lay back in the passenger seat, his eyes half closed, as Jenny climbed into the driver's seat. He looked peaceful, not at all rattled by the events of the afternoon. She looked at him: he was profoundly stoned, probably feeling on cloud nine.

  'Where do you want to go - home or my place?'

  'Wherever. You decide.' The words drifted out of him.

  She considered the alternatives. Whichever she chose, the day would end in an ugly confrontation with David blaming her for ruining their only son. It made sense to take Ross back to his own house, where he could sleep off the dope, but it would send a message to his father that she couldn't cope. And if there was to be a showdown she would prefer to be on her turf and not have Deborah as an audience.

 

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