The Burning (32 page)

‘Yes,’ Jenny answered weakly.

‘Then with a little luck the Chief might never know,’ Moreton said. ‘Make sure she takes it down. Immediately.’

‘I will.’

‘Keep me posted. And perhaps we should arrange that lunch. I’d like that. ‘

Jenny pulled up outside the office as the snow shower was turning into the predicted storm. The street was deserted. Weeks of relentless cold seemed finally to have brought the
city to a complete halt.

Jenny shivered as she walked along the hallway towards the office. Her footsteps seemed to ring off the walls. She felt like an executioner as she turned the brass handle and stepped inside.

Alison was craning forward at her desk watching CCTV footage on her computer. The room was warm and damp and smelt of the gas fire and the breakfast roll Alison had heated in the microwave.

‘I told you they’d forecast snow,’ Alison said with a note of triumph. ‘A few more days like this, we’ll be up to our necks. I’ve never known anything like
it.’ She nodded to the screen. ‘This is the BP station on Gloucester Road. I thought I had Ed, but it wasn’t him. Have you ever done this? It’s like watching paint dry. I
could hardly sleep at all last night – I kept thinking, why? Why the burning? Why go to the bother of killing everyone twice? And all that business with Nicky being shot at – Sandra
said the house was
already
in flames. I can’t make sense of it.’

There was something manic in Alison’s manner. Her eyes were wide and staring as if she’d been peering at the screen for hours. Her hair was slightly askew. Jenny counted three empty
mugs on her desk next to the pile of DVDs she was working through.

‘What time did you come in?’

‘I’m not sure. Five-ish. I wanted to beat the weather. Couldn’t face another day stuck at home.’

Jenny pulled off her coat. ‘Alison, can you do something for me, please – bring up your Facebook page?’

‘
What?
’

‘Your Facebook page.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘I had a call from Simon Moreton on the way in. He’d seen something on it.’

‘Moreton? What was he doing looking me up?’

‘I imagine he was tipped off.’

The colour drained from Alison’s face. She hurriedly closed the window on which the video was playing and brought up the internet browser. Moments later they were both looking at her
timeline. There were three offending entries in total, each made shortly before midnight. They had been ‘liked’ more than 200 times. Jenny watched the counter register two more
approvals in the space of a few seconds.

Alison stared at it in disbelief. ‘I didn’t write this. I didn’t. I was in bed by half past ten. Ask Paul, he’ll tell you.’

‘You had better delete them.’

Alison clicked edit and delete, and in moments the three entries had vanished, although she continued to stare at the screen as if doubting they had ever existed.

‘Is it possible you got out of bed?’ Jenny asked, treading carefully.

‘No. I’d remember. Surely I would.’

‘Do you forget things?’

Alison looked at her blankly with the same suddenly confused expression Jenny had seen the other day.

‘Where do you keep the computer at home?’ Jenny asked.

‘I use an iPad. I was reading on it.’

‘Then what?’

‘I have it next to the bed, but I didn’t touch it again. I’m certain . . .’

But she wasn’t. Jenny could see it. The phone rang. Alison snatched up the receiver before Jenny could reach it.

‘Coroner’s Office.’ Her face fell. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll get her for you now.’

She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and spoke in a flat, expressionless voice. ‘Mr Lever for you, Mrs Cooper.’

Jenny walked through to her office and closed the door behind her. She spoke as quietly as she could into the phone, aware that Alison would be listening out for every word.

‘I presume you know what this is about, Mrs Cooper,’ Lever began.

‘I do. And it’s been dealt with.’

She heard a click of computer keys at the other end of the line. ‘That’s a start. But you’ll appreciate there will be further consequences. As your officer is legally your
agent, my clients will be holding you, or at least your office, responsible for this libel.’

‘You’ll appreciate that, as sympathetic as I am, I really shouldn’t discuss this any further.’

‘There will be a court application made today requiring you and Mrs Trent to desist from disseminating any further opinion or information. You’ll understand it’s likely to be a
formality. But perhaps you could explain to her that once the order is made, she will find herself in grave trouble if anything of this nature were to happen again.’

As Lever issued his threat Jenny had another doom-laden realization: it would be no excuse that Alison had suffered a serious injury. The only reason she had access to sensitive evidence and was
able to discuss it was that Jenny had allowed her back to work when by any objective standard she wasn’t fit.

‘Is there anything you wish to say, Mrs Cooper,’ Lever was relishing their unexpected reversal of fortunes, ‘before I issue proceedings?’

‘No. There’s nothing more.’

Jenny set down the phone and returned to Alison to find her already pulling on her coat and stuffing the DVDs into a briefcase.

‘You don’t have to say anything, Mrs Cooper. I’ve left you the file for Thursday’s inquest. Everything should be in order. Court five at 10 a.m.’

‘I think perhaps a report from Mrs Trent’s neurologist—’

‘Yes. That would be the proper thing to do.’ Her voice was brittle, as if at any moment she might break down. ‘Of course it would.’ She buckled her briefcase and went to
the door. Unable to bring herself to look at her, Alison said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cooper. I’ve let you down. At least it won’t happen again.’

Before Jenny could find any words of comfort, she was on her way out of the building.

Moreton was nothing if not thorough. Alison had been gone no more than ten minutes when he called again to check on progress. Satisfied that the offending messages had been
taken down and that Alison’s career as a coroner’s officer was effectively over, he informed Jenny that he would be taking personal control of negotiations with Harry Grant and his
lawyers. All he required from Jenny was a signed statement setting out what had happened. Jenny knew that he was doing her a favour – if he had chosen to, Moreton could have laid the blame
for what had happened equally at her feet, for having allowed Alison to come back at all – but it was hard to see it that way. She had tried to be generous to a woman to whom she probably
owed both her life and her son’s, but Moreton wasn’t interested in sentimental justifications, only in keeping the lid firmly screwed down and ensuring that Jenny knew she was now under
scrutiny.
Close
scrutiny.

‘You’ll be stressed, Jenny,’ he said, ‘which isn’t an ideal state in which to be conducting a delicate inquest. Consider me a helpmeet – there to assist if
you’re unsure of your judgement. You’ll survive. We’ve weathered worse together.’

Moreton’s niceness did little to sugar the bitter pill of having to write Alison a letter informing her that her misconduct would be reviewed in light of a detailed medical examination. If
she preferred not to endure this ordeal, she was free to tender her resignation on the understanding that an
ex gratia
payment would be offered as a gesture of goodwill. Signing her name on
the hard copy, Jenny was reminded of a phrase her father used to utter – ‘there is no such thing as a weak and generous man’ – and realized that until that moment, she had
never understood what he had meant.

Turning to the carefully prepared file Alison had left for her, Jenny struggled to believe that it had been put together by the same woman who had blurted out her secrets to Michael and taken to
the internet with wild and inappropriate allegations. She had become two entirely separate beings: one rational, one mentally incontinent. Jenny had to remind herself of what the neurologist had
told her the previous autumn: the part of Alison’s brain that controlled social responses had been badly damaged. She wouldn’t have appreciated the consequences of what she was writing.
The fact that she could pass as remotely normal was a minor miracle.

Forcing herself on, Jenny reviewed the short list of witnesses she would call in her inquest into Daniel Burden’s death. There was DI Ballantyne, Dr Hope the pathologist, Burden’s
brother and a man called Kenyon who was Burden’s line manager at the passport office. True to her word, Alison had sent the laptop recovered from his flat to a data-retrieval expert. His
report was short but interesting. The concluding paragraph read:

Daniel Burden was a computer buff who had learned to cover his tracks. There was nothing too surprising in that. What was more intriguing was the prospect that whatever he had
been hiding might prove to be the key to understanding his suicide. Pornography was the obvious inference, but as far as Jenny knew, you didn’t need a particularly powerful computer for that.
She turned a page in the file and found another document attached to an exchange of emails Alison had conducted with a computer shop in central Bristol. It was a copy of an invoice dated the
previous July, for a MacBook Pro and a 10-terabyte hard drive. She had no idea how much data that could store, but she knew it was a lot. Enough to support a process being conducted on an
industrial scale. Longing for one straightforward case to cross her desk, she opened a legal pad and started writing questions.

Jenny had worked at her desk for five hours straight until hunger got the better of her. She was heading out along the snow-covered pavement to a cafe on Park Street when a
familiar black Toyota turned the corner into Jamaica Street. Ryan spotted her and called out as he pulled up across the street.

‘Jenny – got a moment?’

‘If I don’t get some lunch, I’m going to drop.’

‘Room for another?’

‘If you’re quick.’

She waited impatiently, stamping her feet while he backed into a space.

He emerged from the car wearing yet another coat: mid-length, dark blue with leather pocket-trim and a black upturned collar. The fabric was thick and expensive. If she hadn’t suspected he
was fishing for it, she would have paid him a compliment.

‘Are you all right?’ Ryan said as he joined her. ‘You’ve had staff problems.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘We were briefed. A member of the public saw something online and tipped off the team looking for Robbie Morgan.’

‘It makes you wonder how anyone keeps a secret nowadays.’

‘How much trouble are you in?’ Ryan asked.

‘Enough,’ Jenny said, and turned the corner onto the main road.

She and Ryan both ordered a large paper cup of soup with a crusty roll. The cafe was crammed with people having the same idea, and the only seats they could find were high stools at the end of a
counter by the kitchen door.

‘Are you OK to talk here?’ Ryan said.

Jenny glanced at the diners nearest them. Most of them were students from the university and caught up in their own conversations. She couldn’t spot any obvious journalists or
criminals.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Three things. Firstly, there’ll be a police presence outside your house for the next few days. The DCI over at Chepstow was happy to oblige – says he’s a friend of
yours.’

Jenny smiled. ‘Our paths have crossed.’

‘Secondly, we’ve had a look at the dog from the Brookses’ place. The vet says it has four broken ribs, a broken jaw and suffered pulmonary haemorrhage. The most likely
explanation is that it was hit by a car.’

‘Are there any less obvious alternatives?’

‘It ran into someone who really hates dogs. Seriously, they spoke to Sandra and she thinks the animal might have got scared off when all the police and the ambulance arrived. She
can’t remember clearly. Obviously.’ He gave her his reassuring look. ‘So that’s one thing you can strike off your list of worries.’

‘Thanks. What’s the third?’

‘Actually there’s four. Number three is that the animal body parts dumped outside your house are not going to yield any forensics.’

‘Because?’

‘Abbott’s not prepared to pay for it and you haven’t formally reported a crime to your local force. Whether you want to take that step is up to you.’

‘It sounds as if you’re suggesting there’s a reason I shouldn’t?’

Ryan wiped his mouth a napkin. ‘That’s number five. Do you know anyone who drives a blue Saab saloon? The vehicle’s about ten years old.’

‘Yes. Michael. My ex. Why?’

‘Your neighbour at the foot of the lane saw the car drive up in the direction of your place late yesterday afternoon. About thirty minutes later it came down again.’

Jenny set down her soup, frightened that she would spill it. ‘Michael? . . . No. Why would he do that?’