The Burning (10 page)

‘Bugger!’ Alison wiped it away with the back of her hand and grinned. ‘You’ll tell me if I start dribbling, Mrs Cooper?’

‘I will.’

Dr Kerr had emailed three characteristically concise postmortem reports, each confined to a single sheet. Ed Morgan’s was the first Jenny opened.

Jenny turned to the second report. Dr Kerr had reported Amanda Hart as being eleven years eight months old and weighing thirty-six kilos. He had listed two conditions as
causative of death: gunshot wound to the chest / asphyxiation by smoke inhalation. In his comments he wrote: Circumstantial evidence indicates that death was caused by a gunshot wound. Due to the
condition of the remains, it is impossible to determine if smoke had been inhaled before the infliction of this injury. Knowing that his conclusions on Layla Hart would be much the same, Jenny
skimmed the final page, noting that the shot had entered the upper back between the third and fifth thoracic vertebrae. Again Dr Kerr commented that it was impossible to say whether she had inhaled
smoke before death, but concluded with a remark that Jenny had to read twice: Close examination of charred tissues of lower abdomen reveals evidence of foetal remains. Estimated fifteen
weeks’ gestation.

Jenny grabbed the phone and dialled Andy Kerr’s mobile number. She impatiently counted eight rings before he answered with a cautious hello. Small children were squealing excitedly in the
background.

‘Sorry – it’s not a good time,’ Jenny said.

‘Family gathering. Hold on, I could do with a moment’s peace.’ She heard him step outside and close the door on the noise. ‘That’s better. I expect I know what
you’re going to ask, Mrs Cooper – is there any retrievable DNA from the foetus? The answer is maybe, but maybe not. It’ll take some expensive work that probably won’t yield
anything conclusive.’

‘I’ll find a way of paying for it. It won’t come out of your budget.’

‘We’re talking about multiple samples – it’ll be £5,000 at least.’

‘I’m owed a few favours. I’ll call them in.’

‘If you’re sure. I’ll have Jasmine ship it to the Home Office lab this afternoon. I can’t promise they’ll be quick.’

‘It can wait a few days. Enjoy the party.’

‘I’ll try,’ he said, with more than a hint of resignation. ‘Oh, one more thing, while we’re talking – I’ve been thinking about the father’s broken
tooth. If you’re getting the gun’s scatter pattern tested, you might want to think about getting an opinion on its recoil. It could be that it knocked the tooth out jumping back after
it was fired. It’s bagged up at the mortuary, if you want to collect it. I’ll be in tomorrow.’

‘On the Saturday before New Year’s Eve?’

‘You’re not telling me you’ve got a better offer?’

‘For once, yes. Have fun.’

The list of death reports in her inbox awaiting attention had grown by six during the course of the morning. Aside from Daniel Burden’s case, the others were largely
routine matters – four deaths in hospital and one suspected coronary in a 45-year-old male who had crashed off the motorway seemingly having fallen asleep at the wheel – but each
required tough decisions and form-filling. With a flavourless sandwich in one hand and working her keyboard with the other, Jenny tried to force herself to stick to these mundane tasks, but her
mind refused to be distracted from the mounting questions she had about the deaths at Blackstone Ley.

Losing the battle, she grabbed a pen and a blue legal pad and, in no particular order, started to commit her disjointed thoughts to paper. Behind it all was the question of what had lit the fuse
on the night of the 28 December, and how far she felt obliged to go in finding the answer. Would she take the evidence at face value and return a simple verdict of unlawful killing by Ed Morgan,
followed by his suicide, or would she feel compelled to dig deep into the reasons and come up with a narrative that explained the whole chain of events? Before learning of Layla’s pregnancy,
she might have been tempted by the easy road. But the more she thought about it, the less she could square the prospect of leaving questions unanswered with her conscience. Ed, Layla and Kelly all
had complicated histories that needed excavating; she would have to talk to friends, neighbours and employers. She would need medical records, bank statements, lists of phone calls made and
received. She would have to sort rumour from fact and lay it all out in a public inquest that risked churning up painful memories and turning a community inside out.

In the space of a few minutes she filled two whole pages with a complex web of questions, theories and fragments of evidence. Her sandwich lay half-eaten and the pen poised, trembling in her
hand. She had tackled big cases before in her modest inquests, held in village halls in unlikely corners of the county; she had embarrassed corporations, exposed corrupt public officials and even
uncovered heinous crimes, but there was a peculiar kind of darkness that loomed out of her spiralling frenzy of notes. The fatal fire no longer seemed to carry the violent energy of an explosive
conflagration, but rather its opposite: the dark, inky centre of a very black hole. And underneath it was the nagging fear that what had happened just a few nights before was a strange and
not-unconnected echo of Susie Ashton’s vanishing.

‘DI Ryan for you.’

Jenny looked up from her computer, having finally managed to turn her mind to other things.

‘Shall I show him in?’ Alison asked.

‘Please do.’

Alison smiled, as if to say ‘I wouldn’t say no’, and ushered him in.

Gabriel Ryan came through the door dressed in a well-chosen outfit and greeted her with an amused smile.

‘Your officer’s very friendly.’

‘She had an accident,’ Jenny said quietly. ‘It’s her first day back.’

‘I heard about that. Sam Abbott told me. Drove into the path of a couple of mad Saudis out in the woods.’

‘I’m sure it lost nothing in the telling.’

‘I heard you handled yourself pretty impressively, too.’

‘I didn’t have a lot of choice.’ She pushed the painful memories of that night from her mind. Ryan wouldn’t have known what had happened to Ross. Her son’s
connection with events had remained a closely guarded secret. Even he didn’t know the whole story that had led to him nearly losing his life to a genetically modified bacterium.

Ryan gave her a look that was partly admiring, partly amused. He cast his eyes around her office in the same way he had done in her kitchen the day before. ‘When you hear
“coroner” you think – well, I didn’t think you.’

‘My officer mentioned you had something for me,’ Jenny said, in what she hoped was a convincingly formal tone.

He reached into his inside pocket. ‘I got hold of the passwords from Ed and the kids’ Facebook accounts. I haven’t asked for them to be taken down yet – you never know if
someone might post something useful.’

He handed her a single sheet of folded paper containing three email addresses and passwords. Ed’s was the vaguely poetic
Viewfromthew00ds
. Layla had chosen
Sexylilbitch
, and
Mandy
My89Hart
.

‘Says something about them, don’t you think?’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Look at Ed’s, those two zeros like eyes staring out at you.’

‘Or the barrels of a shotgun?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that. Are you sure you didn’t study psychology?’

‘I sometimes feel like I have.’ She tucked the passwords away into her pad, aware of Ryan’s eyes on her. ‘Is that it? You came all the way over here just to give me
these?’

‘Not exactly.’ He tugged at his shirt cuff, the nervous gesture telling Jenny he was holding something back. ‘Have you spoken with Kelly?’

‘I met her this afternoon.’

‘You asked her about Ed’s message?’

‘I did. She denies there was anyone else in her life.’

‘That’s what she told me. I
think
I believed her.’

‘Meaning you did or you didn’t?’

‘Meaning I was worried that she felt it was her fault in some way. Even if there
was
someone else, it would be no excuse for anything.’

Jenny tried to read him, searching for a motive other than one that seemed too unlikely for a detective. ‘Are you worried about her? I am, though she did her best to reassure me, which
isn’t always a good sign. Her precise words were “I do still believe in something. I do still have a reason to live.”’

Ryan gave an uncertain nod. ‘You were right in what you said on the phone – a real detective would forget about it and move on.’

‘There’s something you might be able to help me with,’ Jenny said. ‘Have you seen the post-mortem reports?’

He shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

‘Layla was pregnant. Nearly four months. There’s only a slight chance of recovering DNA. You can’t help wondering if it was Ed, and if she was going to tell her
mother.’

‘Does Kelly know?’

‘No. I didn’t hear until after I spoke to her.’

‘That would put it all together,’ Ryan said. ‘I’ll ask around off company time, see if I can turn anything up.’

‘You could just leave that to me,’ Jenny said, giving him a way out.

‘I can’t seem to help myself,’ Ryan responded. ‘Something about this case.’ He glanced off into space. ‘I guess they’re bound to come along.’ He
looked back at Jenny. ‘Do you ever get angry?’

‘All the time.’

‘I’ve never been angry with a dead man before – it’s a peculiar feeling.’

‘Maybe you should talk to someone.’

Ryan smiled, amused at the thought. ‘Maybe I will.’ He got to his feet. ‘See you around.’

As he made his way out, Jenny heard Alison collar him in reception.

‘I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.’

‘No—’

‘Alison Trent. I used to be DS in Bristol CID before I fetched up here. Spent my last eight years on serious crimes. I was on the team seconded to the Susie Ashton case – Gloucester
didn’t have enough bodies to deal with it on their own.’

‘Right.’ Ryan was showing little enthusiasm for the conversation.

Alison failed to notice. ‘I learned a thing or two about country coppers out there. Nice blokes, clever enough in their own way, but definitely old-school. Not what you’d call
sophisticated.’

Jenny heard Ryan move towards the door.

‘Give my best to Sam Abbott,’ Alison called after him. ‘He could be a right calculating bastard sometimes. Can’t think what he must make of a pretty boy like
you.’

Jenny imagined Ryan giving her a tolerant smile as he walked out of the office and closed the door quietly behind him.

T
HE
F
ORESTRY
C
OMMISSION DEPOT WAS
a mile northeast of Blackstone Ley, at the end of a lane. It was not
yet four o’clock, but after only a few brief hours of daylight, the countryside was sinking rapidly into another sixteen-hour midwinter night. Jenny eased the Land Rover along the
single-track lane with still more questions accumulating in her mind. She had spent the hour after Ryan’s visit trawling through Ed’s and the two girls’ Facebook histories and had
found no evidence that he was a man who had harboured murderous tendencies. He had posted once or twice each week, mostly with photographs of Robbie, animals he’d spotted out in the woods or
birds that had visited a feeder outside his kitchen window. His few online friends appeared to share similar harmless interests. The only reference Jenny found to violence was a brief account of
his running into a couple of poachers the previous October, one of whom had broken his ankle struggling to haul a deer carcass back to their truck.

Layla’s posts had been more colourful, but from what Jenny could see, all the talk between her and her friends was of meet-ups, parties and who fancied who. Once you learned to see past
the code in which it was written, it was just the same kind of harmless, posturing stuff kids of Jenny’s generation used to share at the bus stop. Far from trading secrets, the kids in
Layla’s circle seemed to hide behind carefully constructed personas. Jenny searched hard for evidence of a boyfriend, but found nothing that could be called intimate. Layla seemed to conduct
most of her online conversations with a girl named Nicky Brooks. Nicky’s security settings allowed Jenny to access only basic information, but it was enough to establish that she also lived
in Blackstone Ley. Jenny assumed that she was Darren Brooks’s daughter.

Mandy Hart had opened her account only two months before, and had used it very little. Contrary to all the scare stories that filled the newspapers, Jenny’s observation was that
eleven-year-old girls behaved quite innocently online: it was all pictures of pop stars, harmless chit-chat about boys, and playground gossip. Layla and Mandy hadn’t become online friends
(Layla had ignored Mandy’s request), and Ed, it seemed, had kept entirely away from them both.