The Coroner (12 page)

    On
the scrub-top table was a note weighed down by a rusty horseshoe. It read: 'Got
a bit carried away and worked till seven. Hope it doesn't look too drastic.
Steve.' Too coy to mention payment, but he was letting her know that he'd
worked more hours than she'd left money for. She had cash in her purse but he
hadn't left his address. 'Catbrook way' was all he'd said, and no telephone.

    Why
not see if she could find him? It was a nice evening and she had yet to explore
the tangle of lanes which wound through the woods on the west side of the
valley. It would be an adventure. She decided to leave the wine until later and
keep good relations with the gardener.

    She
put on a white linen blouse with her jeans and faded blue canvas trainers,
checking in the bedroom mirror that she didn't look too citified. She changed
her mind about the trainers three times before settling on a pair of
Caterpillar work boots she'd bought before the move, picturing herself digging
vegetables and chopping logs. They were pristine, straight out of the box, but
the solid weight of them on her feet felt right, grounded. As a final touch,
she bunched her hair in a black elastic. She checked her reflection: rural but
businesslike, not trying to look sexy but still feminine. No less self-
conscious now than when she was sixteen.

    She
drove off up the hill, the single-track lane following the stream up the
steep-sided valley lined with dense oak and beech. Here and there she passed
cottages set in small clearings at the side of the road, but none scruffy or
bohemian enough to belong to a thirty-five-year-old backwoodsman. She spotted
several rough tracks that looked like they might lead to dwellings deeper in
the woods, but all too rutted to risk negotiating in her Golf. Emerging at the
other side of the small forest she circled back across the reed- and gorse-strewn
heath and trawled the rectangle of lanes around the hamlets of Whitelye and
Botany Bay: she was only three miles from home as the crow flies but had
travelled nearly fifteen.

    She
considered knocking on someone's door to ask for directions, and even pulled up
outside a ramshackle-looking farmstead with a sign advertising eggs and local
honey, but was gripped by a shyness which prevented her from stepping out of
the car. It was the same affliction that since her 'episode' had often seized
her before going to a dinner or cocktail party: a dread not of meeting other
people, but provoked by the thought of doing so. When it struck, without a
drink or a pill, she couldn't get outside of herself. Even the most
insignificant of small talk became an ordeal; when she spoke her own voice
would echo in her head as if she was hearing herself from a great distance, her
cheeks would burn, her diaphragm tighten and her heart pound. With Dr Travis's
help she had learned to control these symptoms by consciously relaxing, but it
was the fact that the simplest of encounters could prove so difficult which
infuriated her. It made her feel so foolish, such a child.

    Angry
with herself, she started off down the lane back towards the north end of
Tintern. As her self-critical thoughts escalated into a torrent of rage she
picked up speed. With the high hedges and verges bursting with waist-high grass
and cow parsley, the chances of seeing oncoming traffic were zero. It was an
old Ford tractor towing a load of freshly cut silage that met her coming around
a hairpin. The tractor driver saw her first and pulled sharply into the gateway
of a field. Jenny rounded the bend and was faced with an implausibly narrow gap
between the hedge and the trailer. Instinct took over. She jerked the wheel
sharp left, smacked her wing mirror on the trailer as she skimmed by with
inches to spare and fish-tailed to a halt, her left wheels jammed in a ditch
hidden by the long grass on the verge.

    She
sat, dazed for a moment, aware that the car was leaning and stuck. There was a
knock on the driver's window. She turned, startled, to see a ruddy-faced old
farmer smiling in at her, several of his teeth missing. She lowered the window.

    'In a
hurry, were you, love?'

    'I'm
sorry—'

    'Lucky
I saw you coming.'

    'I
don't know what happened. I must have been miles away.' She felt a sudden urge
to cry but fought hard against it. 'Is your trailer all right?'

    'He's
fine.' The old boy glanced over her car. 'Looks like you might have got away
with it, too. I've got a rope in the back - I'll tug you out.'

    'I'm
so sorry . . .'

    The
farmer grinned, only four brown teeth in the whole of his mouth. 'You're Mrs
Cooper, aren't you? I've heard you're one to look out for. Still, you won't be
doing that again, eh?'

    Fifteen
minutes later and having suffered no more than a broken mirror and wounded
pride, Jenny drove carefully up the track lined with silver birch leading to Ty
Argel, where, the good-natured farmer had assured her, she would find Steve
'still skulking in the woods'. She rounded a bend and pulled up outside a small
farmhouse. There was a dirt yard in front in which stood his elderly Land
Rover, assorted tools, building materials and a handful of chickens. Jenny
climbed out, glad of her boots, and was met by an exuberant sheepdog running
towards her, barking loudly. Dogs were one thing Jenny wasn't frightened by.
Her grandparents had owned three of them. Patting her thighs, she said, 'Come
on, then. There's a good girl.' The dog, sensing a friend, jumped up and
planted two dirty paws on her shirt. Jenny pushed her down and ruffled the fur
on her head, making the kind of baby noises all dogs love.

    'He's
a boy. Alfie.' Steve appeared from the stone barn at the far side of the yard,
an axe in his hand. He dropped his roll-up and ground it underfoot as he walked
over.

    'He's
very friendly.'

    Alfie
rolled on his back, feet in the air. A sign of complete trust.

    'Unless
you're the postman. Can't stand anyone official, can you, Alf? Just like his
owner.' Steve crouched down and joined Jenny in stroking the dog's belly. He
was in bliss.

    Steve
glanced at her boots. 'Come dressed for work, I see? I've got five ton of logs
in there need splitting.'

    Jenny
smiled, noticing his smell: sweat and rolling tobacco, strong but not
offensive. 'I figured I owed you some overtime. The garden looks great, by the
way.'

    'You
should have seen it years ago when Joan Preece was still fit. It was beautiful,
but sort of natural.'

    'Hopefully
it will be again.'

    'The
thing about gardens, they take a lot of attention. Don't touch them for weeks
at a time they get resentful.'

    Jenny
pulled some notes out of her jeans pocket. 'I'm sure I'll need some regular
help, if you're interested.'

    'Sounds
dangerously like a job to me.'

    'I'll
leave it up to you.' She offered the money.

    He
stood up from stroking the dog. 'If you're sure?'

    'I
didn't come all the way over here and drive into a ditch to stroke your dog,
nice as he is.'

    Steve
smiled and stuffed the money into his hip pocket. 'Cheers.' He ran his eyes
over the Golf, scratches all along the nearside. 'I can see you've been giving
the hedge a trim. What happened?'

    'Nearly
ran into a tractor up the lane. Luckily he was decent about it and towed me out
of the ditch.'

    'Wasn't
an old lad with no teeth?'

    'Could
be. Said his name was Rhodri something.'

    'Glendower.
That's him. Keep your doors shut tonight - he's got a real thing for the
ladies.'

    'I
could hardly contain myself.'

    'Since
his wife died he's had most of the women up this valley. Promises them all half
his farm.' He smiled. 'Let me get you a beer. I'll show you round.'

    He
fetched two bottles from the pantry - he didn't have a fridge, he said - and
gave her a tour of the homestead. It comprised twelve acres of mostly coppiced
woodland in which he cut logs and grew a variety of trees which he sold to a
commercial nursery. At the back of the house was a vegetable garden where he
raised produce which he supplied to local shops. He didn't offer to show Jenny
inside, saying he was still working on the house, but from the glimpses she
caught through the downstairs windows she saw a tidy but stark interior: solid
floors and wooden furniture he might have made himself.

    Leading
her between the rows of produce, he rolled another cigarette - somewhat
guiltily, she noticed, hiding from her whatever he had in his tobacco tin - and
told her about some of the local characters. There was Dick Howell, an
alcoholic accountant who lost his job, his wife, then took to living in the
back of his estate car while he drank what was left of the money he had stolen
from his clients. He'd camped out in Steve's barn for a while, then went to
live with a woman old enough to be his mother. And there was Andy the
carpenter, a young guy who went to do a job for a couple who had just moved
down from London and never left; two years later the three of them were still
sharing the same house. Some nights they'd all come to the pub together.

    Listening
to him talk, she found herself weighing him like a lawyer would a witness,
thinking, was his calmness genuine or did it come from what he smoked?

    She said,
'So what's your story?'

    Steve
stopped by the crooked wooden gate leading from the vegetable garden to the
yard and took a slow pull on his beer. 'It's not the life I planned, that's for
sure.'

    Jenny
leaned back against the fence. 'And what was that?'

    'I
was at architectural college in Bristol. Bought this place in my fourth year
with money my dad left me. Had big plans for it. Then I met a girl . . .' He
set his bottle on the gatepost and started to roll a third cigarette, a pained
expression on his face. 'She was an art student. Talented, but mad. We fell in
love, moved out here and fought like hell.' He broke off to strike a match and
took a deep draw. 'Couple of years of that and I'd sort of let the studying go.
She got high and threw herself in the river a couple of times, then took off
with some bloke she met in rehab in Cardiff. Last I heard she was out in
Thailand or somewhere.'

    'What
was her name?'

    'Sarah
Jane. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? He tugged his T-shirt down across his left
shoulder revealing a jagged scar that ran almost to his neck. 'Did that with
the kitchen knife. Could've killed me. Had the best sex ever the next day.'

    Jenny
tried to hide her embarrassment. 'How long were you with her?'

    'Five
years. And I've had another five here on my own since. Quiet sometimes, but at
least there's no one trying to kill me.' He spotted Alfie stalking a chicken in
the yard and called out to him to leave it alone. The sheepdog scuttled away.
'You got me sounding sorry for myself, now - it's not like that. Life's good.'

    'You'd
be the envy of a lot of people.' She swallowed the last of her beer. 'Thanks
for the drink. If you fancy more work you know where I am.'

    He
lifted the gate, sagging on its hinge, and let her through into the yard. As
she headed back to her car, feeling lightheaded from the beer and wondering
whether she was safe to drive, he called after her, 'I'll see you next Tuesday.'

    Jenny
got to the office the next morning with the aid of only one temazepam,
determined to put her relationship with Alison on a professional footing.
Having slept on it, she could see two distinct explanations for Marshall's failure
to hold an inquest for Katy Taylor and his lack of passion in conducting the
inquest into Danny Wills's death. Either improper pressure had been brought to
bear on him, which like all conspiracy theories, was unlikely, or else there
was a far more human and personal reason. Having suffered the ravages of a
minor emotional collapse, she had an all too vivid insight into what a major
one might be like. Marshall's behaviour during his final few weeks bore all the
hallmarks. A man struggling with depression would be moody and listless; the
Danny Wills investigation might have caused him to rally briefly, only for the
clouds to gather again once he realized the futility of his task. By the time
Katy Taylor's file landed on his desk he had probably lost all will. Slumped in
despair after twenty years of processing the dead, there would have seemed
little point in mounting yet another inquest in which the outcome - accidental
death - was a foregone conclusion.