The Burning (18 page)

‘Beat you to it, Mrs Cooper,’ Alison announced gleefully as Jenny arrived, weighed down with a heavy briefcase.

It wasn’t yet 8.30 and she was already at her desk, surrounded with paperwork. Across the room, a workman was standing on a stepladder doing something with wires in a junction box.

‘This is Cal. He’s from Dublin.’ Alison nodded to the man up the ladder. He gave Jenny a good-natured smile. He was in his thirties, good-looking in a rough, unshaven sort of
way, and Alison had evidently noticed.

‘Fixing you a new cable from outside. It’s all on us – it was our equipment down the street that blew it,’ the man said. ‘All froze up in this ice.’

‘Thanks,’ Jenny replied, not sure if she was meant to be grateful or annoyed. She turned to Alison: ‘Have you got a moment?’

‘He’s not bad, is he?’ Alison said as she closed the door of Jenny’s office behind her.

Jenny gave a strained smile. ‘I need you to have a look at Daniel Burden for me – the suicide in Henleaze. I called in at the mortuary yesterday – it turns out he was born a
woman. There was no note, nothing of any particular help forwarded from the police, so I’ll need to talk to a next of kin.’

‘I can do that,’ Alison said eagerly. ‘I went on that training day last year, remember? I’ve still got all the ridiculous PC jargon they gave us written down
somewhere.’

‘I’d rather have that conversation myself, if you don’t mind.’

‘Don’t trust me not to put my size eights in it?’ Alison said.

‘No, it’s not that—’

Alison cut through her with a look. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Cooper. I can take it. If you’ll be honest with me, I’ll do the same with you.’

‘All right,’ Jenny said cautiously.

‘Fine. Now we’re getting somewhere. What else?’

Jenny summoned her few remaining shreds of patience. ‘How did you get on with the CCTV from the petrol stations?’

‘Watched nearly nine hours of the stuff. Didn’t see Ed Morgan, though. I’ll keep looking, but I’m not hopeful.’

‘Thanks. It would be helpful to see him actually buying the diesel, but I’ve a feeling there’ll be more than enough evidence stacking up against him. If you can track down a
copy of his medical records, I’d be grateful.’

‘Consider it done. Is that all? Only I’ve got a young telephone engineer to ogle. I think I might ask him out for lunch and see if I get lucky.’

‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’

Alison’s face cracked into a mischievous smile. ‘You’ll have to sharpen up before your next inquest, Mrs Cooper – you’re falling for it every time.’

Jenny strained to smile and rubbed her aching temples.

‘And if you don’t mind my saying, you’re looking a bit off-colour. Not looking after yourself, are you? I’ve seen it before. It’s not good for a coroner to get
depressed. Look what happened to Mr Marshall.’ Alison was referring to Jenny’s predecessor as Severn Vale Coroner, a man who had slipped into despair and ended his life with a large
measure of gin and a handful of sleeping pills. Alison had been fond of Harry – even a little in love – and had never quite forgiven him for the manner of his departure.

‘I’d better get on,’ Jenny said, eager to change the subject. ‘I also need to speak with Nicky Brooks at Blackstone Ley. She was a friend of Layla Hart. Can you fix a
time for me to see her?’

‘Will do,’ Alison said absently. She turned to go, but stopped short of the door and paused to gaze at the bookshelves that were still home to Harry Marshall’s dusty collection
of leather-bound law reports. ‘I still sometimes forget that it’s not him working in here. He fooled me completely. I think he even fooled himself.’ She let out a lingering sigh.
‘Coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Righto,’ she answered brightly, and left the room humming to herself.

Jenny tried to settle to her work, while trying to blot out the constant stream of chatter between Alison and the telephone engineer on the other side of the door. She had to
give her credit – the young man did seem to be enjoying her jokes. The coffee finally chased away the remnants of her headache and she began at long last to feel like herself again. Newly
invigorated, she reviewed half a dozen files of deaths that had occurred since Christmas Eve, and was satisfied of cause of death and able to issue death certificates in five of them. The sixth
would require more investigation: a nine-year-old girl who had died in the night following an asthma attack. Her single mother and younger brother had been present in the flat at the time, but the
police report said that the mother had been drunk and insensible and had to be shaken awake by her five-year-old son to call an ambulance. Reading through the file, Jenny realized that, having
heard the evidence, there was every chance an inquest jury would decide that the girl’s death had been caused by the mother’s gross negligence. Such a verdict would pave the way for a
criminal charge of manslaughter and possibly a prison sentence. Jenny hated to be the one to pile more misery on top of tragedy, but she would have little choice. The most she could do to ease the
family’s suffering was to afford them a little time to grieve in peace. She scheduled the inquest for early February.

A sharp knock at her office door made her start. She checked the clock in the corner of her computer monitor and saw that it was just past midday. The morning had slipped past in what had felt
like minutes.

Alison entered with a pile of fresh death reports. ‘Bank holiday specials – four of them. Must have been a wild party.’ She dropped them on the desk. ‘There’s a Mr
Falco out here to see you. Says he’s a solicitor. No appointment, but I told him I’d see if you could spare a minute.’ She lowered her voice, but not sufficiently that it
wouldn’t carry through the semi-open door: ‘Thinks he’s a wee bit special.’

‘I’ll give him ten minutes. Did he say what it’s about?’

‘Strictly confidential, apparently. Shame he’s not as discreet with his after-shave.’

Jenny pressed her finger to her lips in a vain attempt to make Alison keep her voice down.

‘I don’t think he’s the sensitive type,’ Alison said, failing to take the hint, and returned to reception, where she haughtily informed their visitor that the coroner
would see him now.

Jenny did her best to conceal her embarrassment as a sharply suited man with collar-length black hair and more than a dash of the Mediterranean blood his name suggested came confidently through
the door.

Jenny rose from her chair and offered her hand. ‘Jenny Cooper. I don’t believe we’ve met.’ He enclosed it firmly in a fist decorated with two gold signet rings.

‘We haven’t. Louis Falco. Falco Associates.’

‘I’m sure I’ve heard of you,’ Jenny said, gesturing him to a seat. ‘Criminal lawyers, aren’t you?’

‘Only when it pays,’ Falco said, and settled into the seat on the opposite side of the desk.

Jenny noticed that his dark chalk stripe suit fitted too well to have been bought off the peg, and his well-cut shirt and tasteful silk tie hadn’t been purchased in any of Bristol’s
department stores. Either he’d dressed up especially to meet her, or he wasn’t the kind of criminal lawyer who spent too many nights on a duty shift at Broadmead police station.

‘White-collar offences only,’ Falco said, anticipating her next question. ‘And definitely nothing involving bodily fluids.’ He smiled. ‘We also look after our
clients’ private affairs.’

Jenny responded with a neutral smile, refusing to appear impressed. She had met one or two Falcos before – the kind of lawyers who got a vicarious thrill from their clients’ illicit
activities, and more often than not picked up a few of their devious habits.

‘What can I do for you, Mr Falco?’

‘I presume our conversation won’t go any further than these four walls?’

‘Not unless what you’re about to tell me contains admissible evidence.’

Falco gave a nod and glanced around the room, taking in the untidy stacks of papers piled either side of her desk and the two large filing cabinets with overflowing drawers.

Jenny felt herself bridle at what she assumed from his faint smile was his amusement at her unglamorous surroundings. ‘You were saying, Mr Falco? I really don’t have much
time.’

‘I had a client, a very good client,’ Falco began obliquely. ‘His name was Rozek. Jacob Rozek – sounds Jewish, but he wasn’t. He was a Catholic, I’d even call
him devout – he and his family used to worship at Our Lady of Ostrabrama on Cheltenham Road. That’s where I first met him, in fact. Jacob was a first-class businessman. Arrived here ten
years ago without a cent and built a portfolio of property worth £10 million.’ He paused and gave her a questioning look. ‘I thought you might have heard of him.’

Rozek. The name carried a dim significance.

‘He went missing the week before Christmas. Set off for the gym in his Jaguar and never came home. Police found the car abandoned over at Barrow Gurney, about half a mile from the
airport.’

‘Yes, I do remember now – the local news. Weren’t the police saying they thought he’d disappeared following some business problems?’

‘That was their initial theory. But just before the weekend we had the result of forensics on the car. Blood and saliva spatters on the inside of the windows. Traces of urine and faecal
matter on the driver’s seat. No one’s coming right out and saying it, but it all points to him having been – in the parlance – popped.’ He pressed a finger to his
temple. ‘The spatter patterns suggest a bullet to the left side of the head. A low-velocity round designed not to make a mess. That takes a measure of foresight and sophistication.’

‘It also involves bodily fluids.’

‘I’ll make an exception for Jacob. He was a good client.’

‘It’s a harrowing story, Mr Falco,’ Jenny said, ‘but Barrow Gurney comes under the jurisdiction of the Bristol Central Coroner’s Office. It’s outside my
purview.’

‘I’ll level with you, Mrs Cooper,’ Falco continued, appearing to disregard her point, ‘Jacob Rozek probably did have enemies. The expatriate community to which he
belonged has more than its fair share of rivalries, shall we say. He himself was under investigation for several alleged criminal offences – none of them of any material substance, but
that’s another matter.’

‘As I was saying, very disturbing, I’m sure—’

‘Burden,’ Falco said, bringing Jenny up short. ‘The police tell me that you’re investigating the suicide of a man named Daniel Burden.’

‘What about him?’

Sensing that he had her attention, Falco drew a slip of paper from his inside pocket and floated it across the desk. It contained a mobile number written in longhand.

‘We have Mr Rozek’s phone records,’ he said. ‘We can account for all the numbers he dialled in the last fortnight of his life, except for one. That one. We did our
research and discovered that it was registered at an address rented by Mr Daniel Burden in Henleaze, though the account was in the name of a Miss Diana Francis. We don’t believe that she
exists.’

Daniel Burden had been born Diana Francis Burden, but Jenny decided not to entrust Falco with this information before she had delved a little deeper into Burden’s case herself. She had a
feeling it might be about to become interesting. ‘I’ll be talking to Mr Burden’s next of kin shortly,’ Jenny said. ‘If you’d like me to, I’ll raise it with
him.’

‘As far as I can establish, he was just some low-level official at the Newport passport office.’

‘So I understand.’

‘It would help me greatly to understand what his connection was with my client.’

‘I’m sure the police will be interested, too,’ Jenny said, although she already had her suspicions that Falco wasn’t the kind who would be content to limit himself to the
official channels.

‘The bizarre thing is,’ Falco said, ‘the police say there was no phone found at the premises, not even a landline, which strikes me as odd. And you know what’s even
odder?’

Jenny smiled, playing along. ‘Please tell.’

‘My CID contact has had a look at the records for that number. It has never made a single outgoing call. Not one, in the entire eight months since it was registered.’

‘That sounds like even more reason for the police to be interested,’ Jenny said, picturing the pornographic images on Burden’s computer, and wondering if they might hold some
clue to a private life that she was beginning to suspect was more complicated than she had imagined.

‘As one lawyer to another, Mrs Cooper, Mr Rozek’s family don’t have much faith in the police. In fact, they get the distinct impression that Jacob’s murder – and we
firmly believe that’s what it was – isn’t exactly top of their list of priorities.’

Jenny’s tolerance for Falco’s insinuations was running thin. ‘I appreciate your concerns, but you know how the law works – if my inquiry into Burden’s death throws
up evidence relevant to a murder inquiry, I’ll be forwarding it to the police, not to the victim’s family.’

Falco pushed himself up from his chair and tugged at his shirt cuffs. ‘Trusting the upholders of the law is a wonderful ideal, Mrs Cooper, but in my experience the reality often falls
short of expectations.’ He glanced past her and out of the window, as if expecting to spot someone eavesdropping on them from the pavement outside. ‘You’ll have your opinions of
me, I’m sure, but please take this much seriously: my client was murdered on December the 19th. Burden hanged himself four days later. As far as Rozek’s family knew, there was no
connection between them. But Jacob called him: he telephoned this nonentity of a civil servant, who uses a phone in the same way as a criminal.’ Falco spread his palms in a gesture of
sincerity. ‘My simple advice to you is to be careful.’

He turned to leave.

‘Do you know what kind of sex Mr Rozek was into?’ Jenny asked, as Falco laid a hand on the door handle.

‘If that’s what Jacob had wanted, believe me, he could have had the prettiest girls in town. He was a good-looking guy. Thirty-eight years old and six feet tall, muscles popping out
of his shirt.’

‘Just a thought,’ Jenny said, hoping to have planted a seed. ‘Sometimes they’re just the kind that look for a new challenge.’