She waited for him to articulate his thoughts.
'. . . determined. Long after I had resigned myself to Nazim's death, she kept on.'
'Why do you say death?'
'Of course he died. Probably in Afghanistan. I know my own son. If he were alive he would have made contact.'
'But your wife, your ex-wife, didn't want to believe that?'
He paused for a moment. She could feel the force of his suppressed emotion. 'No. She didn't want to believe that.'
'I suppose it's possible that the inquest into your son's disappearance was confronting her with having to accept that.'
'Yes . .
'I think we might be having the same thought, Mr Jamal. Maybe you could give me your version?'
'Our contact has been entirely businesslike. I don't know what was in her mind.'
You don't want to get involved, Jenny thought, too many painful memories, guilt layered upon guilt. Shut the door and bolt it. Forget that she or Nazim ever existed.
Jenny said, 'I've met her a few times in the last two weeks. She was emotional, maybe even a little paranoid, but I wouldn't say depressed. Depressed people go into themselves, shut off from the world. She'd forced an inquest, she was being dynamic. Wouldn't she have wanted to hear the jury's verdict?'
'I really can't say.'
'I can imagine a bereaved mother killing herself in the belief that she might be reunited with her son. Is that possible?'
Mr Jamal didn't answer.
'Was your ex-wife a religious woman?'
'Very much so.'
'Excuse my ignorance, but doesn't Islam consider suicide a serious sin?'
'It does,' he said quietly.
'I wouldn't expect someone who feels suicidal to think logically—'
'She must have been ill,' he said, and then, with a catch in his voice, 'she must have been very ill . . .'
'The post-mortem showed that she'd been drinking whisky shortly before her death. Quite a substantial amount.'
At this Mr Jamal fell completely silent. Jenny could hear the wind over his handset, a car pass by.
'I'm just trying to get a picture of what it would mean. Alcohol, suicide - even if she were ill, certain taboos can be more powerful even than the disease. I was with her yesterday, she wasn't psychotic.'
Faintly, Mr Jamal said, 'I agree with you, Mrs Cooper. I don't know what to say. It doesn't make any sense.'
'I'll let you go now,' Jenny said, 'but there's one more thing. Has your wife ever told you anything about Nazim's disappearance, about his friends, anything she might not have wanted to be publicly known?'
'No. There was nothing. That's what drove her - the need to know.'
The last members of the forensic team were dribbling out of the building and climbing into their minibus. A single constable was winding up the plastic cordon tape. Business appeared to be nearly over for the day. The front door was propped open with an upturned broom. Jenny stepped inside and took the lift up to Mrs Jamal's floor. DI Pironi and a younger plain-clothes officer with patchy stubble and his hair in corn rows were locking up the apartment as she approached along the landing.
Jenny said, 'Hi. Any objection to me having a look around?'
The detectives exchanged a look. 'Mrs Cooper, the coroner,' Pironi said to his subordinate. 'I think we should christen her Mrs Snooper.'
The young guy smiled and ran his eyes over her, thinking - she could read his mind -
Jenny snapped angrily, 'Have you got a problem with that or not?'
Pironi looked at his fancy watch and sighed. 'As long as you're quick.'
'Mind if I catch a smoke, boss?' the younger man said. Pironi waved him on and drew out a set of keys, sorting through them laboriously as if she were asking a huge and unreasonable favour of him.
'Have you taken anything away?' Jenny said.
'Some prints, a pile of clothes and a whisky bottle. Looks like she swallowed about half of it - enough to send anyone out the bloody window.' He found the key, unlocked the door and held it open for her. He might as well have said,
Jenny stepped inside. It looked and smelled just as it had yesterday, a vaguely exotic scent in the air: herbs and spices. She pushed open the bathroom and bedroom doors. Both were spotless and tidy. The bedspread was drawn tight across the single bed, chintz cushions arranged against the headboard. The kitchen, too, was in perfect order. There was a single dirty cup in the sink, breakfast crockery sitting clean on the drainer. A shopping list was stuck to the fridge with a quaint, floral-patterned magnet.
'Mind if I look in the drawers?' she said to Pironi, who was waiting impatiently in the doorway.
'Go ahead.'
She pulled several open: cutlery, tea towels, utensils. Everything clean and in its proper place.
'Any sign of prescription medication?'
'Nope.'
She opened an overhead cupboard and found the source of the smell: bunches of dried thyme and outsize jars of spices. 'No booze in the house apart from the whisky?'
'Not a drop.'
'No note?'
Pironi shook his head.
Jenny stepped past him and went into the sitting room where she had sat yesterday morning. It was precisely as she remembered it, only stiller. There was an inertia about the rooms of the recently deceased, as if the air had ceased moving. She could smell the carpet and the fabric of the furniture: the place, rather than the person who had inhabited it. Her eyes circled the room a second time. Something had changed.
'Has anything been moved in here?' she said.
'Just that chair.' He pointed to the wooden upright chair which yesterday had been at the desk in the corner. It was now on the opposite side of the room next to the French window leading to the balcony. 'It was where you're standing. Her clothes were in a heap next to it with the bottle.'
'With the top screwed on?'
'Who are you trying to be, Miss fucking Marple?'
Jenny let his remark pass without comment. 'Were the curtains open? What about the French window?'
Pironi rolled his eyes. 'The curtains were closed and there was one lamp on in the corner. She sat there drinking, took her clothes off then jumped out of the window.'
'It's only three storeys down.'
'If you're having a brainstorm, you don't fetch out the plumb line and measuring tape,' Pironi said. 'Seen enough? I'm expecting a call from my lad in Helmand.'
'Won't be a moment.' She moved over to the French window and tried to picture a naked Mrs Jamal climbing over the railings. It wouldn't have been a graceful exit. She turned and took one last look around the room. The photographs of Nazim were all arranged as she remembered them, as were the ornaments on the shelf unit: fussy china figurines and several shiny sporting trophies.
She was walking back to the door when she noticed - the two shelves above the desk. The day before they had held half a dozen grey box files. Now there was a stack of magazines on the top shelf and a few paperbacks on the bottom.
'Did you take any files from here?' Jenny said. 'There was a whole row of them on that shelf when I was here yesterday. All her paperwork to do with her son.'
'We didn't take anything.'
'Has anyone else been here? You know who I mean.'
