The inquest on Callum Hughes was held on the following Tuesday and as Martha had anticipated there was a large crowd outside an hour before it was due to begin. She pulled her Audi into the parking space and cast her eye around.
Reflecting her mood accurately it was pouring with rain, a dull day smothered in thick grey cloud. She fished her umbrella out from under the back seat and threw the door open. Immediately a microphone was pushed towards her. She appealed to the blonde, female reporter. ‘Come on. Be reasonable. You know full well that anything I have to say I’ll say inside. Let me get on with the inquest and you’ll have your story.’
She was always ambivalent about the Press. It was a great servant but a terrible master. Anything you said on record could be twisted and cut so it sounded as though you’d said something completely different.
And yet coroners could serve a useful purpose, drawing attention to potentially lethal situations to bring about social change. Childproof tops on toxic substances had resulted from a toddler who had died as a result of ingesting bleach. They had argued for the wearing of compulsory seatbelts after hearing terrible details of wrecked faces and bodies which had
been propelled through windscreens. It had been a coroner who had suggested the removal of toxic wadding in sofas after a series of children dying of smoke inhalation in tragic house fires. Because of its awful finality sometimes death can achieve something that life never could. Coroners are the mouthpieces of the dead.
As she mounted the steps to the court she was reflecting how she could add to the list of changes wrought by untimely death. Her own dilemma was that although Callum’s death was certainly suicide there had been a chain of events which had led up to it. So should she now draw attention to that lethal sequence of circumstances and even perhaps hope that something would be done about it? Perhaps.
Jericho was waiting for her in the hallway wearing his one and only court suit with an appropriately grave expression on his face. ‘Mrs Hughes is in the ante-room.’ His voice too was in a hushed tone.
Had Jericho Palfreyman not been a coroner’s assistant, she mused, he would have made a very good undertaker. Perhaps the jobs were not so far apart. She pushed the door open.
Shelley Hughes was standing up when Martha entered, and as soon she turned around Martha knew she had been crying. Her eyes were swollen and her mouth limp and quivering. She waited. Shelley sniffed and blew her nose on a well-used tissue. She managed the tiniest of smiles and crumpled the tissue in her hand as though she was trying to hide it. She was wearing no make-up. It made her look very pale and very young.
‘How are you?’
Shelley snorted out an answer. ‘How do you think?’
Then she seemed to remember that Martha was on her side.
‘Lonely,’ she said. ‘I miss him. Every day just after
four-fifteen
, the time when he used to get home I think I hear him.’ She squeezed her eyes tight shut to stop the tears. It didn’t work. They rolled down her cheeks, dripped off her chin. ‘I never thought I could feel so awful,’ she said. ‘I never thought my mind could go round and round the same events. I keep going over and over every single thing he said, wondering over and over again what I could have done.’ Her fists were tightly clenched. She beat them against her sides. ‘What could I have done? I don’t know.’
Her hands had shredded the tissue and small flakes were falling to the ground. ‘I have no future, Mrs Gunn. It’s destroyed. Toxic waste.’
There are all sorts of platitudes for this sort of situation and in her time Martha had probably trotted them all out – sermons about time being a great healer, about something coming along in the future, that good could come out of bad, that grievers should move on. But to have said any one of those useful phrases would have been an insult to the raw grief Shelley Hughes was experiencing so Martha said nothing, merely watching her until the worst flood of grief had passed.
‘Remember, Mrs Hughes, this inquest is about your son’s suicide not about the assault. We’re not concerned with the circumstances which led up to your son’s being at Stoke Heath only what led up to his death.’ Martha touched her arm. ‘It’s better that way,’ she said. ‘If we focus on the tragedy of your son’s death it will be kinder than if you speak about the part others played in his incarceration.’ She needed to know. ‘Do you understand?’
Shelley Hughes nodded and they walked into the courtroom together.
Martha opened the inquest in the accepted formal fashion.
They began with the two police officers who had accompanied Callum to the magistrates’ court. Martha had already read their separate statements and thought it best if PC Gethin Roberts spoke for both of them. He was smartly turned out in full and polished uniform, his helmet tucked under his arm as he approached the witness box. But even the uniform couldn’t hide his nervousness.
He read from a statement beginning with the Tuesday
afternoon
and his arrival at the school. Martha imagined, just for a moment, the mayhem which must have followed Callum’s assault on his schoolmate. The screaming ambulance, the hysterical children, the agony of the boy and in the middle, thin, pale and almost certainly shocked, Callum himself, hardly knowing what he had done.
‘He did not resist arrest,’ Roberts said. ‘We took him to Monkmoor police station where he was put into the care of the custody sergeant.’
Sergeant Paul Talith was next to take the oath. He too looked uncomfortable. Martha watched him carefully. The coroner’s court frequently did this to people, particularly in such a case, made them feel guilty – responsible.
She settled back in her seat.
‘They handed Callum Hughes over to the custody officer at five-thirty,’ he said solidly, ‘while we called to collect his mother, him being a minor.’
‘How did he seem,’ Martha asked.
‘He was in a state of shock. He seemed to be dazed, as
though he hardly knew what he’d done. We charged him with malicious wounding. We contacted the duty solicitor and collected his mother. The police surgeon pronounced him fit to detain.’
Shelley Hughes’s shoulders twitched.
‘He was very quiet during the questioning and we told him he’d be up in front of the magistrates in the morning. His mother left, as did the solicitor.’
‘How did he seem,’ Martha asked again.
‘Still very quiet. As you’d expect. We gave him something to eat.’
Talith’s eyes flicked around the court and Martha wondered whether he had felt any pity for the boy.
‘How did Callum seem overnight in Shrewsbury police station?’
‘He slept all right.’
There was a gasp from the back of the court. Martha looked up warily. She had expected scenes.
‘Sergeant Talith,’ she said, ‘did he say anything that would have led you to believe he might be a suicide risk?’
Talith scratched the back of his neck. ‘He didn’t say anything, your honour, but we keep a close eye on all our detainees. Callum had had a shocking day. That was enough.’
There was another gasp from the gallery. A woman had shot to her feet.
‘A shocking day,’ she screamed, ‘what about my lad? I call that shocking.’
She was appealing to the entire gallery. ‘What he did to my boy. He doesn’t deserve your sympathy.’
Martha banged her gavel once. ‘Silence please. Sit down.
This is the inquest for the tragic death of a young teenager.’
‘Tragic?’ Another voice from the back of the gallery. Male this time. ‘God rot his soul.’
‘If you can’t be silent,’ Martha said, ‘I shall have to order the police to clear the court.’
It worked – for now.
Talith continued. ‘In the morning he showered and put on some clean clothes. He had his breakfast and we drove him to the magistrates’ court.’
There was another angry gasp and Martha shot a warning glance towards the back row of the gallery. This time it was enough.
All this time she had avoided looking directly at Shelley Hughes but now she looked down at the front row. Shelley was wearing a black suit. And even her neat figure and pretty face couldn’t disguise the fact that it was a cheap black suit, the skirt very slightly too short with a puckered hem. She was sitting very still, looking very alone, on an empty row.
She looked small and hunched and vulnerable which made Martha reflect that perhaps Callum’s vulnerability had come from his mother.
Behind Shelley, also alone, sat Adam Farthing – almost unrecognisable in a neat, charcoal suit. His hair had been combed and trimmed. He wore what was surely a university tie – blue with a narrow yellow stripe and a badge in the middle. Martha couldn’t see his feet but at a guess his footwear today wasn’t the scruffy trainers. There was something very different in his manner. He sat, composed, staring straight ahead. Looking so different Martha almost
wondered whether it was the same person. He looked an academic.
Deaths have a ripple effect and sometimes the waves lap into far and unexpected corners.
Martha resumed the inquest. ‘Can you complete your statement please, Sergeant Talith?’
Talith looked out into the courtroom. ‘He was perfectly polite. Very quiet and he said nothing about wanting to kill himself.’
‘Did Callum injure himself at any time?’
‘No, Ma’am.’
‘And did you need to apply restraint?’
The answer was the same. ‘No, Ma’am.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
The policeman stepped down from the witness box, his shoes squeaking as he walked. In another place it could have been funny but here no one was laughing – or even smiling.
Talith sat down again, his heavy form causing the chair to creak as he lowered into it.
It too sounded terribly loud in the silence of the court.
‘This is a load of nonsense.’
An obese man wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt had jumped to his feet. ‘The guy was a psycho. He killed himself because he was a psycho.’
Shelley Hughes had frozen on the bench as the man appealed to everyone in the court.
Martha banged the gavel again and ordered the police to clear the public gallery.
Minutes later the gallery had been cleared and Martha heaved a sigh of relief. But this in itself was a mixed blessing.
It meant that the papers could string out different headlines. ‘Protests at Coroner’s Court. Angry scenes’ and so on. And if she knew the Press they’d be busily taking comments from the mob outside.
But it also had a downside. It robbed the papers of their chance to portray Callum Hughes not as a knife-wielding psychopath but as a flesh and blood person, someone who had a life other than when he stuck a knife into a school fellow. Martha had followed the story in both the national and the local papers and the angle they had unanimously taken had been that this had been an ‘unprovoked attack’ by a quiet and strange boy. Without actually saying the words they had already sown the seeds that Callum Hughes had had some mental disorder – psychopathy, schizophrenia. It didn’t really matter which. In the media all mental illness is lumped together. They are all weirdos.
The police surgeon was next to be called. Delyth Fontaine. Unruffible, professional. She lumbered up to the witness stand, her hair grey and dry, wearing a huge peasant skirt of muted browns and creams. Delyth had a presence. No one could be indifferent to her. She was invariably noticed. She gave her evidence concisely, anticipating exactly what Martha would need to know.
‘I saw Callum Hughes on the Tuesday evening,’ she said, ‘at about eight o’clock. I pronounced him fit for detainment.’
Martha interrupted. ‘When you pronounced him fit for detainment did you examine him physically?’
‘No. Callum had no complaints. He appeared well. There was no reason for me to examine him.’
‘So you are unable to tell me whether he had any injuries?’
‘None that he complained of.’
A more junior police surgeon might have baulked under the omission but Delyth Fontaine was sure of her ground.
‘Did you form any opinion about the boy’s mental state?’
The police surgeon hesitated for a split second and could not prevent her eyes from sliding towards the boy’s mother.
‘He was calm,’ she said. ‘Frightened but calm.’
‘Did you deem him a suicide risk?’
Again the police surgeon seemed to take the time to consider the question afresh. ‘No,’ she said, ‘at least not particularly. As with all young offenders, particularly first time young offenders who have committed a violent crime, I would warn the custody officers to take careful watch.’
‘Did you in this case?’
Again the split-second hesitation. ‘Truthfully,’ she said, ‘I cannot remember in this specific case. All I can say is that in these circumstances it is my usual practice.’
In the front row Shelley Hughes’s shoulders drooped a bit lower.
The police surgeon had probably picked up on the movement. She addressed her next sentence to Shelley Hughes. ‘I think I would have done,’ she said firmly.
She continued. ‘I did not see him again until the Thursday morning, at seven-thirty, when I pronounced him dead. A computer cable had been looped around his neck in a
slipknot
. When I saw him he was lying on the floor. I understood the prison officers had found him in a hanging position and had cut him down.’ She spoke coldly and with a professional detachment but something crossed her face – some hesitation, some brief moment to think. Martha had known Doctor
Fontaine ever since she had first come to Shrewsbury, more than ten years ago, and this was one of the times when she had read some sympathy for a victim. Delyth glanced across at her. She was frowning.
Martha could have pressed her as to the cause of death but Mark Sullivan was sitting on the second row, yards away from Adam Farthing. He had slipped in about half an hour ago.
Don’t mess this up, Martha thought. At least do the boy the courtesy of representing him sober.
What would young Callum have made of all this, Martha wondered? All these people from diverse occupations, some of whom he had never met, others with whom he had had the briefest of glancing encounters and yet others part of his everyday existence, like the Gough family who ranted outside and his mother and teacher who sat inside, openly grieving for him.