'David-'
'Jenny.' He didn't seem pleased to see her. 'You can't go in, I'm afraid. Forensics have got to sweep it first.'
'What happened?'
'Looks like she fell from the balcony.'
She looked up at the building. 'How could she fall? Those railings must be waist high.'
He balled up the plastic bags and gloves and tossed them into the gutter. 'She could have jumped, I suppose.'
'Why would she do that?'
'No idea. You can take a look at her if you like. She's still there.' He gestured to a female constable who didn't look old enough to be out of school. 'Show the coroner the body, would you? Don't get too close.' He aimed a key fob at a pool car that was double-parked in the street. 'We've booked her in for a post-mortem early this afternoon. I thought you'd appreciate a swift turnaround, what with the inquest and everything. I expect we'll talk in the morning.' He gave her a flat smile and left.
Jenny followed the constable, stepping over the cordon tape and crossing a damp patch of lawn around to the side of the building. Two more uniforms stood guard in front of a temporary screen made from black plastic stretched between two poles. The constable said she was permitted to look around the edge but not to go beyond the barrier. Jenny moved towards it, reminding herself that it was just a body behind there, an empty shell, and took another step forward.
The corpse was naked and the legs soiled. It lay in a contorted heap: bent in the middle, partially kneeling, a dislocated arm twisted under the torso, face planted in the grass. Jenny was surprised at how little shock she felt.
'Did anyone see it happen?' she said.
The constable said, 'No one's come forward yet. A neighbour thinks he might have heard a scream.'
'What happened to her clothes?'
'In a heap on the sitting-room floor - next to a whisky bottle.'
'
'The man who found her said she reeked of it.'
A sense of loyalty and a large measure of guilt propelled Jenny to the mortuary. Next of kin - her ex-husband and a sister in Leicester - had been informed. According to the detective sergeant she had spoken to, neither had showed any inclination to get involved. Both, apparently, had listened to the news in silence and merely thanked the officer for letting them know. He had gained the impression that Mrs Jamal's apparent suicide hadn't come as a shock to either of them.
Jenny sat and waited by the defunct vending machines in the empty reception area. It was nearly six p.m. and all but one of the technicians had left for the night. The only sound in the building was the whine of the surgical buzz saw, which she pictured Dr Kerr carefully tracing around Mrs Jamal's skull, not forgetting the little v-cut at the back to stop the excised portion slipping when replaced.
In the silent thirty minutes that followed Jenny couldn't help but imagine the procedure being conducted on the other side of the wall. The brain would be lifted free of the skull and cut into slices on the stainless-steel counter. A small sample would be taken for analysis, and the remainder would be stuffed unceremoniously into a polythene bag along with the rest of the carved-up internal organs and pushed back into the abdominal cavity. She could tolerate the dissection of liver and kidneys, even heart and lungs, but there was something about the treatment meted out to the brain that felt sacrilegious.
Andy Kerr came out to meet her already washed and scrubbed. The smell of soap only partially obscured that of sickly disinfectant, which, after a day in the autopsy room lodged deep in a pathologist's pores.
'It's pretty much as per the police report,' he said rapidly, eager to finish up and get home. 'There was a dislocated shoulder, neck fracture and broken ribs. Those alone wouldn't have been fatal - cause of death was cardiac arrest, probably caused by the shock of the fall. Judging from the photographs of the body at the locus I'd say it was pretty much instantaneous. It didn't look as if she moved after impact.'
'What about alcohol?'
'We'll know in the morning, but there seemed to be a large amount of what smelled like whisky in the stomach.'
'Could you tell if she was a regular drinker?' Jenny said.
'Her liver was perfectly healthy. No scarring. I've asked for tests that'll tell us if it was an unusual occurrence or not.
Anyone who consumes alcohol regularly develops certain enzymes to digest it.'
'Was there anything else in her stomach - had she taken any tablets?'
'No. Apart from the alcohol it was virtually empty.'
Jenny nodded, her uneasy sense of being personally responsible for Mrs Jamal's death intensifying. How much had Mrs Jamal drunk after she'd dodged her call? Could anything she might have said stopped her, or would she have snapped at her to calm down and merely hastened the end?
'Are you all right?' Andy said, 'You look—'
'I knew her. Her son—'
'The police told me. I'm sorry. But I don't have to tell you, we see a lot of suicides like this. Drunk, naked. There's always something that's tipped them over the edge. I guess it was the inquest.'
'She fought for it for eight years,' Jenny said.
Andy shrugged. 'Maybe the fight was the one thing that kept her going.'
'Surely she would have waited for a verdict?'
'What if it turned out to be the wrong one?'
The Coroner's Rules obliged the coroner to step aside while the police investigated a suspicious death, but Jenny was in no mood to wait. She knew her motives were partly selfish - the urgent need to absolve herself of blame - but there was also something else, a niggling fear that Mrs Jamal's emotional phone calls weren't entirely the product of delusion after all. Painful experience had taught her how easily irrational thoughts could take hold, but what if she had been far saner than she appeared? What if someone bad been watching her? Or what if she had been lying and hiding evidence vital to the inquest all along?
By the time she had crossed the hospital car park Jenny had convinced herself of the need to trespass on police territory. She imagined Pironi's foot soldiers, lumbering and incompetent, knowing nothing of Mrs Jamal's state of mind or history. Whatever they could do, she could do better and faster.
Revving the engine to crank up the sluggish heater, she started to make calls. She checked in with Ross and told him she'd be back late. She caught Alison as she was leaving the office and told her to record Mrs Jamal's surviving messages to tape and pass a copy to the police. She already had. Lastly she called directory enquiries and tried to track down Zachariah Jamal. She got hold of the number of his dental practice: her call was answered by a machine. She tried the emergency number it gave out and reached the off-duty receptionist, who was dealing with a crying baby. The woman refused to give out Mr Jamal's private number and would only agree to pass on her details.
Waiting for his call back, Jenny checked her own messages. There were two from consultants at the Vale asking if death certificates had been issued for their respective deceased patients - second only to being sued, the prospect of their professional competence being scrutinized in a public inquest was the most frightening prospect a doctor could face - and one from McAvoy. Sounding apologetic, he said, 'Sorry you can't make it - I'll have one for you. You know where to find me if you change your mind.' She was fighting the temptation to call him back - but to say what? - when a beep indicated an incoming call.
Zachariah Jamal sounded as if he was phoning from outside his home: there was traffic noise in the background, his voice was brittle and uncertain. She wondered if he had even broken the news of his first wife's death to the new Mrs Jamal and children. Drunk, naked and very publicly dead, they'd know soon enough.
'What is it I can do for you?' he said. 'I've had very little contact with Amira in recent years.'
Jenny said, 'It looks as if she might have taken her own life. Would that surprise you?'
He sighed. 'I don't know. She was a very complicated woman. Emotional, but. . .'
