B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (37 page)

Susan Roberts, the farmer’s wife whom Jenny had briefly spoken to nearly a week ago, had probably never been in a courtroom before. An anxious witness, her eyes darted from one lawyer to the next, then back to Jenny as she struggled to control her nerves while going through the preliminary formalities. She had given Alison only a brief, one-page statement and Jenny had it on the desk in front of her. If she repeated what she had told her officer, it would be enough to bolster Cole’s shaky testimony, but no more.

‘You were in your kitchen overlooking the estuary with your husband and child when the plane went down?’

‘I was.’

‘How far from the crash site is your house?’

‘A mile or so.’

‘The D-Mort is set up on one of your fields, is that right?’

She nodded, preferring to speak as little as possible.

‘Tell me what you saw, Mrs Roberts?’

‘Nothing. I was feeding the baby.’

‘Then what did you hear?’

She paused and tugged at her cuff. ‘A bit of a bang, that’s all.’

‘Can you be any more specific?’

She shook her head. ‘Could have been a bird scarer, I suppose. That’s what it sounded like.’

Jenny looked at the statement in front of her. It wasn’t what she had told Alison less than forty-eight hours before.

‘Did you hear anything else after that?’

‘No. My husband thought he heard something. He went down to the field and saw the rescue helicopters and that. It was too foggy to see the plane.’

Jenny studied her face. She could tell the woman was lying, but why?

‘You made a sworn statement to my officer the day before yesterday. In it, you say you were in the kitchen when you heard a loud explosion coming from the direction of the river. Your husband went outside to investigate. Later he told you that he had been hearing helicopters from the moment he set foot outside your front door, and that shortly afterwards they moved away. Isn’t that what you said?’

Mrs Roberts gave another fearful glance in the direction of the lawyers, each of whom had been handed a copy of her statement by Alison. Mrs Patterson was craning over Rachel Hemmings’s shoulder to read it.

‘It’s the way she asked the questions – those weren’t my words, exactly.’

Jenny looked at Alison and saw her bristle with indignation.

‘Are those your words or aren’t they?’

‘No.’

Alison’s face had turned a bright shade of crimson. Jenny had never before heard her accused of not recording a witness’s words accurately.

‘You signed the statement, Mrs Roberts.’ She held it up for her to see. ‘There’s your signature.’

‘There was a bang, an explosion, whatever you like to call it. My husband went outside to see what it was. That was the beginning and end of it.’

‘Has someone told you to downplay your evidence, Mrs Roberts?’

Her eyes fixed on the floor, Susan Roberts shook her head. If she were an advocate, Jenny would have been permitted to harry and cajole her, but as a coroner she had to avoid the appearance of bias at all costs.

‘Mrs Roberts, what did your husband tell you about hearing helicopters?’

‘He said he heard some. They were buzzing round all day.’

Giles Hartley and Rufus Bannerman exchanged a glance of mock consolation.

Jenny tried one more time. ‘Have you discussed the contents of your written statement with anyone other than your husband since you put your signature to it?’

There was a pause that stretched for several long seconds.

‘No,’ Mrs Roberts said finally.

It was the one of the baldest lies Jenny had ever heard from an otherwise honest witness, but there was nothing she could do. From the corner of her eye Jenny saw Simon Moreton’s mouth curl into a smile.

T
HE HELICOPTERS FADED FURTHER
into the mist with the arrival of Brigadier William Russen in the witness chair. A trim, compact man with an impatient military manner, he had provided only the briefest statement affirming that he was aware of no helicopters in the vicinity of the Severn Bridge until the arrival of the first rescue helicopters nearly forty minutes after Flight 189 went down. There was only one helicopter at his camp on that morning, a Puma, and it was out of action undergoing routine maintenance. He insisted that there were not, nor had there ever been, any Apaches at the camp or any other aircraft that resembled one.

His evidence was precisely what she had expected it be. Hartley and Bannerman both looked delighted by what they were hearing, if not somewhat baffled as to why Jenny would have called a witness who was so obviously going to contradict the already tenuous evidence of Lawrence Cole. But there was more than a hint of method in her madness, and it would take a little while longer for it to play out.

‘Brigadier,’ Jenny continued, ‘if two such helicopters had indeed flown past your camp, would you necessarily have noticed them? You’re not an airport, you don’t have radar, and I don’t suppose you have people visually scanning the estuary at all times of the day.’

‘I accept it’s possible that aircraft might pass by with which we have no radio contact. Not every civilian helicopter pilot flying at low altitudes does us the courtesy of announcing himself.’

‘So it is possible that two helicopters passed by without you noticing them?’

‘Possible, but unlikely, especially the kind of machines you’ve mentioned. As far as I’m aware, all those operated by the British forces are currently abroad.’

‘And just so that I’m clear about this – if you were to see two suspicious aircraft over the estuary, what action would you take?’

‘We would seek to make radio contact, and if that failed or proved unsatisfactory, I would refer the matter up the chain of command.’

‘There is a prescribed procedure for dealing with potentially hostile aircraft, I take it?’

‘Yes,’ the brigadier said smartly, ‘but of course I’m not at liberty to disclose precisely what that is in a public arena.’

‘If the aircraft was deemed a sufficient threat, I presume an RAF jet would shoot it down.’

‘That has never happened in the UK, but yes, it is theoretically possible.’

‘Thank you, Brigadier.’ Jenny turned to the lawyers. She could see that Rachel Hemmings was being loaded with questions from Mrs Patterson, who had been furiously writing notes throughout the witness’s evidence. ‘I’m going to ask the brigadier to remain in court until the final two witnesses have been heard. He may have something to say about their testimony. I suggest you may want to save your cross-examination until that time.’

Hartley, Bannerman and a brooding Crowthorne were more than happy to cooperate, and after a brief skirmish with her client, Rachel Hemmings too agreed to hold fire.

‘Very well. Please take a seat, Brigadier.’

Jenny spotted him glance briefly at Moreton, whose forehead was creased in a frown. Moreton then gave a hint of a nod and the brigadier did as Jenny had bidden, following Alison’s direction to a vacant seat.

‘We’ll hear from Dr Ravi Achari, please.’

The forensic scientist was younger than Jenny had pictured him – only twenty-six – and with his delicate features could have passed for eighteen. Quietly spoken and slightly built, he didn’t look a match for Giles Hartley, but Jenny didn’t need him to impress, she just wanted the facts about what he had found. He told the court that he held a doctorate in analytical chemistry and had worked as a chemical analyst at Forenox for nearly two years. He didn’t have experience on his side, but he certainly gave the impression of being at the cutting edge of his field.

Jenny directed Alison to hand him Brogan’s lifejacket and watched the lawyers’ reaction as Achari methodically described the processes of spectrometry and chromatography which had yielded his results. As she suspected, the three men on the advocates’ bench appeared unsurprised at the revelation that minute traces of plastic bonded explosive had been discovered embedded in the fabric of Brogan’s lifejacket, but the evidence caused a sensation in the Patterson camp. Jenny, the jury and all the people sitting around her heard Amy’s mother excitedly whispering about terrorists and the sophisticated weaponry she supposed they possessed.

But her reaction turned to one of puzzlement as Achari described the recent severing of the lifejacket’s webbing and the tiny traces of metal swarf found both on the strap and at the site of the puncture. She didn’t have a ready narrative for this twist and, nor yet, did Jenny.

‘Tell me, Dr Achari, in your opinion, was the explosion that caused this residue one that took place above or below the water?’

‘Above, I’m fairly sure. My recent conversation with Dr Kerr substantiates that – I understand Mr Brogan had flash burns on exposed areas of his skin.’

‘I see. And are you able to say how far from the explosion Mr Brogan might have been?’

‘Of course it all depends on the size of the blast,’ Achari said, ‘but these particles were not deeply embedded in the fabric, and as far as I can ascertain, the flash burns were not intense. All I can offer is an educated opinion that the subject was at least fifty yards away from the blast, possibly much further – perhaps as far as two hundred yards.’

Hartley and Bannerman glanced at one another. Jenny intuited that this was a fact they hadn’t fully grasped from whatever information Moreton had managed to extract from Achari’s superiors at Forenox.

‘Let’s put that in context, shall we?’ Jenny said. ‘According to a witness we heard from last week, Mr Corton, a marine accidents investigator, Mr Brogan’s yacht would have gone down literally seconds after being struck by the descending aircraft. That being the case, if the explosion emanated from his boat, it’s hard to see how he could have got more than fifty yards away from it in only a few seconds.’

‘I agree,’ Achari said.

Hartley couldn’t contain himself. ‘Ma’am, no one could say how quickly Mr Brogan’s yacht went down apart from Mr Brogan. It’s a complete unknown.’

‘I accept it’s uncertain, Mr Hartley, but I have a note of Mr Corton’s testimony in front of me.’ She read aloud. ‘“Given the extent of the damage to the yacht, I would say it went down almost immediately.” Do tell me if you have a different recollection.’

Hartley looked to the attractive young junior counsel sitting obediently at his side. She flipped through her verbatim notes, then shook her head.

‘Those may be his words, but I remain unsatisfied as to their meaning. I would caution against too literal an interpretation, ma’am.’

‘I thank you for your advice,’ Jenny replied, straining to remain courteous. She turned her attention back to Dr Achari.

‘I understand that Dr Kerr asked you to carry out another set of tests over the course of the weekend that has just passed.’

‘That’s correct.’

Jenny glanced over at Moreton and the lawyers and saw that the revelation had caused the ripple of alarm she had expected. This was information they didn’t have and their faces showed traces of panic. Moreton was already reaching for his phone.

‘What did he ask you to examine?’

‘He sent a hair and a tissue sample. I understand that both were taken from the rear of the skull of a child who was a passenger in the aircraft – Amy Patterson.’

Hartley shot to his feet. ‘Ma’am, not only have we not been put on notice of this evidence, it appears to relate to a person who is not the subject of this inquest.’

Jenny couldn’t resist a dose of sarcasm. ‘I’m surprised this evidence is news to you, Mr Hartley. I understand you were fully briefed on Dr Achari’s findings relating to Mr Brogan’s lifejacket.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about, ma’am,’ Hartley replied, daring her to raise the stakes and accuse him of dishonesty – a charge that would send him immediately scurrying to the High Court to accuse her of bias.

‘Sit down please, Mr Hartley. I wish to hear the evidence. You were saying, Dr Achari?’

Achari opened the folder he had brought with him to the witness box and produced a number of photographs of small sealed Petri dishes containing labelled samples. Alison passed them around the jury.

‘I examined both samples microscopically, using the same techniques I had applied to the lifejacket samples. In each I detected minute traces of uncombusted plastic bonded explosive. This, too, lacked the chemical marker required by the Montreal Treaty, making its origin impossible to trace. In addition, the hair sample showed definite signs of heat exposure: there was evidence of singeing, particularly at the tips. This is consistent with the girl having been briefly subjected to a high temperature such as that caused by an explosion.’

Moreton was now making his way along the row towards the aisle, a phone pressed to his ear. The legal teams behind Hartley, Bannerman and Crowthorne were in frantic consultation, but for once Mrs Patterson was still and silent. She looked at Achari with wide staring eyes; the shock of hearing something truly revelatory knocking her completely off her axis.

Jenny said, ‘Is there any particular significance relating to the part of the skull from which the samples were taken?’

‘Dr Kerr carried out microscopic examination of both the front and back of the skull and found evidence of heat exposure only at the back.’

‘Amy Patterson was facing away from the explosion?’

‘She was.’

‘Are you able to say at what distance she was from it?’

‘She was closer to the blast than Mr Brogan. You’ll see from the photographs that, viewed under the microscope, her tissue sample showed at least a 20 per cent greater concentration of PBX particles than the sample taken from his lifejacket.’

It took a moment for the full implications of Achari’s finding to register.

‘Tell me if you think this assumption is correct,’ Jenny said. ‘If Mr Brogan’s yacht sank approximately three hundred yards upstream from where the wreckage of the plane was recovered, and the tide was coming in, then Amy Patterson, who was wearing a lifejacket, would have been swept towards the yacht. She was closer to the explosion than Brogan, which in my understanding suggests that the explosion was more likely to have come from the direction of the aircraft than from the yacht.’