erratic, and not at all ashamed of having put him through years of hell before taking off to sleep her way around the world.
'Mad as ever . . . said I owed her money. Left screaming when I told her to get lost, then turned up in the middle of the night wanting to share my bed.'
'Did you?'
'What do you think?'
'Sorry.' She wished she hadn't asked. 'I didn't mean —’
'I know.' Steve let go of her hand. God, he was tetchy. 'I don't even know why I'm telling you ... I thought I'd got rid of her. She's like some sort of succubus. You know what it's like - the one person in the world who can cut you down with a single word.'
Jenny had never known him like this, shaken up, absorbed in himself, but she could understand. She'd met women like
Sarah-Jane: emotional parasites who passed off their selfishness and violent moods as creativity. Steve was methodical, a planner and, Jenny had come to realize, quite delicate in many ways. Her instinct was to take him home, comfort him and build him up, but at the same time she was frightened of smothering him and pushing him further away.
She wanted to say something kind and insightful, but what came out was, 'I guess the last thing you need is another complicated woman to deal with.' She realized how needy that sounded even as she said it.
Steve said, 'It's cold. I should be getting you home.'
He walked her as far as the gate and headed off without pausing for the customary moment in which she might have invited him in. She was confused. He had come calling for her, but at some point during their walk she had come to feel as if she were imposing on him. She thought she'd learned how to read him, how to lift him from his occasional melancholy and make him laugh. Nothing had worked tonight.
Ross wasn't yet home and the house was cold and still. Standing in the silence, she could hear its ancient fabric creak and contract, noises that even now, in her fifth decade of life, her imagination turned to ghosts. A faint tapping in the hot- water pipes became the lost spirit of the Jane Doe, wandering listlessly, looking for an earthly soul to tug at and whisper her secrets to.
She retreated to the smallest, most secure room - her study at the foot of the stairs - and closed the door securely behind her. She switched on a fan heater, as much for its reassuring rattle as its feeble heat, and fetched the legal pad from the bottom drawer of her desk which was to serve as the journal Dr Allen had asked her to keep. She closed her eyes for a moment, allowing her emotions to rise as fully into consciousness as she could safely let them, then wrote:
Chapter 4
Alison put down the phone abruptly as Jenny entered the office. She seemed edgy.
'Everything all right?' Jenny said.
'Fine.'
She could tell that it wasn't and knew that Alison wouldn't welcome her probing any further. From snatches of overheard phone calls, Jenny had gathered that Alison and her husband, Terry, were going through a difficult patch. Also a retired detective, he bumped between temporary jobs that always seemed to disappoint. Most recently he'd been working for a private investigator contracting for an insurance company. His task was to spy on personal-injury litigants. Alison thought it tacky, following a man with a video camera to try to catch him out playing football with his kids when he was signed off sick, but Terry had aspirations to a condo on a Spanish golf course and didn't much care how he paid for it.
'Mrs Jamal left you some messages,' Alison said tersely. 'Five actually.'
'Oh? What about?'
'The police mostly - how they're all liars and criminals and like to intimidate defenceless women. If she wasn't Muslim, I'd say she'd had a few.'
Ignoring Alison's snipe, Jenny went through to her office and played them back. They were each preceded by a time code. Mrs Jamal had first called at ten p.m. and had left her last message after midnight sounding tired and tearful. Jenny didn't think she sounded irrational, just lonely, grief-stricken, and needing to share her tormented thoughts. At the heart of her anguish was a belief that the police knew far more about her son's disappearance than they were prepared to reveal. Jenny sympathized, but her instinct was that Mrs Jamal's suspicions were ungrounded. It was difficult enough to get the police to investigate a missing persons case thoroughly at the best of times. Two Asian boys who'd flirted with extremism and left the country were two potential problems off their hands. After a cursory search, their files could have been shelved marked 'No Further Action', and with no suggestion that more should have been done.
Jenny prevaricated about whether to phone back then decided she ought to, if only to lay down some ground rules.
She dialled Mrs Jamal's number and reached an answer- phone. She started to leave a message: 'Mrs Jamal, this is Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner. Thank you for your calls. I can assure you your son's case will get my full attention, but if you could bear in mind the fact—'
The receiver was snatched up at the other end. Mrs Jamal spoke in an urgent whisper. 'They've been watching me, Mrs Cooper. I know they have. They can see my flat from over the road. There are men in a car. One of them tried to break in last night. I heard them trying the door.'
'I know this is a very anxious time for you, Mrs Jamal, but you really will have to trust me to —'
'No, Mrs Cooper, it's true. They went away for years, and now they're back. I can see them from my window. Two of them. They're out there now.'
Dismissing her would do no good and probably provoke another flurry of calls. Jenny decided to humour her. 'OK.
Maybe you could go to the window and tell me what they look like, or what kind of car they're driving.'
She heard the receiver being set down and the sound of feet shuffling across the room, a curtain sliding back, then an exclamation of mild surprise.
Mrs Jamal returned to the phone. 'They've gone. They must have heard us.'
'I see,' Jenny said patiently. 'This is what I want you to do. By all means contact me with any piece of evidence that you think I should have which you haven't already given me, and as soon as I've carried out a few inquiries I'll open an inquest.'
'When?'
'I can't say exactly. Soon. In a week or two. But in the meantime, if there's anything else that's bothering or frightening you, you must call the police.'
'Huh! Do you think I haven't? I call them all the time, and always the same answer: name, address, crime number. What good is it calling the criminals?'
Jenny held the phone away from her ear while Mrs Jamal launched into a lengthy tirade. When, after some time, she showed no sign of letting up, Jenny spoke calmly over her, promising to be in touch as soon as she had anything to report.
Alison came through from the outer office wearing a wry smile. 'I'll screen her out if you like.'
'She'll calm down.'
'Are you sure you want to take this one on, Mrs Cooper? It's not that I'm unsympathetic, but there are some you just get a feeling about.'
'And what is your feeling?'
