Chapter 10
Alison was frantically dealing with a hitch in the jury's catering arrangements - the promised sandwich delivery had failed to arrive and she was organizing a convoy to the nearby bird sanctuary's waterside restaurant. Outside, at the front of the hall, clusters of angry young Asian men were courting the media pool gathered incongruously in the quiet village lane. Two television news vans had appeared and make-up girls were busy powdering faces. The lawyers hurried through the melee, refusing to answer any questions, and took off in a posse of expensive cars. A cluster of puzzled locals watched the chaotic scene from a safe distance, wondering what could have brought such madness to their quiet corner of the countryside.
Feeling suddenly drained, Jenny slipped out of the back door and found a damp plastic bench which looked out over a field. A tractor was ploughing, a swarm of assorted birds followed after it, fighting over the worms thrown up in the freshly turned earth. Huddled in her thin raincoat, she ate the chocolate bar Alison had dredged up for her, and sipped coffee tasting vaguely of detergent from a cracked mug.
She attempted to process the morning's events and unravel the various parties' competing agendas. She understood that the police mainly wanted to cover their backs, and she presumed that the Security Services were keen to vindicate their theory that Nazim and Rafi had gone abroad. Yusuf Khan and his friends, who appeared to include Anwar Ali, were harder to fathom. Khan's mention of agents provocateurs entrapping young radicals had caught her attention, but on reflection it struck her as another baseless conspiracy theory. Khan was representing a lobby with a positive message to sell - that young British Muslims were good, responsible citizens - and this didn't sit well with the proven fact that a few of their number had taken up arms against their country.
'Is this the best those stingy bastards can do for you?'
She looked up to see McAvoy rounding the corner of the building. The sound of the tractor had masked his footsteps.
Alarmed, she said, 'You're a witness, Mr McAvoy. I can't talk to you before you give evidence.'
His face creased into a smile that managed to be both boyish and menacing. Trying to avoid the blue eyes which looked straight into her, she noticed his hair was starting to kink at the back where it needed a cut, and that he wore a dark green silk paisley scarf inside his upturned coat collar.
'I don't think you can afford not to talk to me.'
'Look, this really isn't—'
'I'd have got to you before, but you kicked off faster than I expected. I've been up to my neck in a trial.' He brought a battered soft pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and offered it to her. 'Something to warm you up.'
'You know the rules . . .'
'Fuck 'em. Anyway, I thought these things were different from criminal trials. You're a coroner, you can talk to who you like.'
He tapped out a cigarette, struck a match in cupped hands and leaned back against the wall. He took a slow, full draw and slowly exhaled, letting the breeze carry the smoke from his lips.
'Did Mrs Jamal tell you that I was solicitor for both families for four months?'
Annoyed, Jenny said, 'I'd rather you kept what you've got to say for the witness box.'
She got up and tossed her half-eaten chocolate bar into a rusting wire waste bin. The damp on the bench had soaked through to her skin.
'No, you wouldn't. It'd only screw it up, put those bastards so far out of reach you'll never get to the truth.' He took another draw and glanced lazily towards her, 'Maybe you don't care either way.'
'Which bastards are we talking about, precisely?'
'I don't know. They put me away before I got the chance to find out.' He gave a hint of a smile. 'Would you like to hear about it?'
'How about writing a statement and handing it to my officer? That's the usual practice.'
'Screw that. This case has already cost me one marriage and a perfectly good career.' He strolled across the weedy concrete slabs towards the pig-wire fence bordering the field. 'Are those seagulls? We're miles from the bloody sea.'
'The estuary's almost the sea.'
'I suppose . . . Look at them, kicking the other ones out of the way.' He stared out at the field. 'They pecked that poor girl's guts out, didn't they? That's what I read in the paper.'
'Then it must be true.'
'Didn't dare look that far down myself . . . Heard anything about where the body went?'
'Not yet.'
'Madness. What's anyone going to do with it? You always see on the TV - the bad guys dig a hole in the woods. Have you ever tried putting a spade in the ground where there are trees? It's all roots. It'd be as easy to get through concrete.' He sucked hard on the cigarette and flicked the butt over into the field margin. 'It's not as if I don't know villains, but that's a new one on me . . . right out of the morgue.'
He stood and watched the tractor stop at the end of the row, lift its gear and turn around. A sudden change in the wind carried the sound of the birds to them: a raucous, vibrant, strangely beautiful cacophony.
McAvoy smiled. ' 'I could scale the blue air, I could plough the high hills, Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer, To heal your many ills . . . My Dark Rosaleen' . . . My God. Where did that come from?' He laughed and shook his head. 'Schoolmaster for a father - drilled all sorts of stuff into me.' He turned, walked several steps towards Jenny and stopped. 'I thought you weren't going to talk to me, Mrs Cooper.'
'Mrs Jamal said you went to prison.'
'I had that pleasure.'
'What was your offence?'
'Being a nuisance. My record says perverting the course of justice. Cops set me up with an undercover wearing a wire. Spliced it all together, made it sound like the alibi she was offering my client was all my idea.' He shrugged. 'Not that it wouldn't've happened eventually. Show them up too many times they'll skewer you in the end.'
'You were a criminal defence solicitor, right?'
'Solicitor
'And Mrs Jamal came to you after her son disappeared?'
'She and the Hassans both. October '02. The cops had stopped answering their calls. Hired me to rattle their cage. Three months later I was behind bars. Didn't even get bail.'
'And you don't want to talk about this in evidence?' Jenny said.
'Look, I applaud your efforts getting this thing on so quickly, but let's be realistic for a moment. You'd think that with all their resources they could have found out the truth by now if they'd wanted to. No offence, Mrs Cooper, but in my humble opinion they're pimping you out. An honest woman like you wouldn't want that, surely?'
'You've a charming way of putting things.'
'Tell you what - why don't you call off this afternoon and talk to me instead?'
She looked at him, astonished. Arrogant prick, telling to tell her how to run her inquest.
'I don't think so. I'll see you inside.'
She headed for the back door of the building.
'You won't. And if you send me a summons I'll stand mute. I've got sod all to lose, and now it's come round again I think I've probably got more interest in finding out what happened than you have.'
'Oh, really?'
'Yes, really. You see, I'm a man with not a few past sins that still need atoning for, Mrs Cooper - my alleged offence not one of them, by the way. So there's no way I'm going to put my hand on the Holy Bible and swear to tell you the whole truth when this inquest you're conducting's a fucking sham.'
She fought an involuntary urge to hit him, hard.
McAvoy said, 'I'm hungry. I'll be down the road at that bird place. Took the ex-wife there once, I recall - pink flamingos.'
