The Redeemed

CHAPTER 3




It was in the early evenings that the effect of her slow-release medication tapered off and the ghosts it held at bay returned to haunt her. They had no faces, these forms hovering at the margins of her consciousness, but they wanted her to know that they were only a breath away; that she had only one foot in the world of the living. Lately their presence had become sharper. It was as if the eruption of spring into summer, with all the valley humming with the urgency of life, had spurred them to greater efforts.

There was no relief from them tonight. Throughout her drive home their presence had grown. They were waiting for her in the shadows at Melin Bach, behind the trees at the end of the cottage's garden, amongst the clutter of ancient tools and implements in the dilapidated mill shed. She couldn't settle to read her papers at the scrub-top table on the lawn without feeling watched by unseen eyes, feeling the touch of their hands in the breeze on her neck. The psychiatrists would call it mild paranoia, but that didn't begin to explain the dark and complex landscape of her other world.

The scent of the newly mown meadow was overpowered by the smell of the churchyard where Alan Jacobs's body had lain. His features hovered behind her eyes, and the shame and anguish of his final moments tugged at her, as if she were somehow wrapped up in the cause of his despair.

Such irrational thoughts were nothing new. They had dogged Jenny throughout her short career as a coroner, taunting her with the notion that she was doomed to consort with the dead, denying her the chance to live unselfconsciously among the living. She had tried to pull free, to confine her imagination within normal limits, but then Alec McAvoy had arrived and flung the door to the abyss wide open. My Dark Rosaleen, he had called her. He had seemed to know her secrets without her saying a word and he had left without saying how. But left her to what?

Listless, and for the first time in weeks fighting the desire to drive into town to buy a bottle of wine, Jenny retreated to her little study at the front of the cottage and tried to lose herself in the most urgent files she had brought home. Top of the pile was Eva Donaldson's. There'd been an email late in the afternoon from Eva's next of kin, her father, asking when her body might be released for burial and her death formally registered. It was Jenny's custom not to allow homicide victims to be released until the conclusion of a trial; there was now no good reason not to hand her remains back to her family, especially as Craven's claim to innocence, such as it was, was based purely on the soundness of his confession.

She reached out for a Form 21, Coroner's Order for Burial, and began to complete it, but as she did so she heard the steady voice of Father Starr: 'Believe me when I say I can divine whether he's lying about such a profound matter as whether he committed murder.' It was illogical, precisely the sort of superstition she had strained so hard in recent months to avoid, yet completing the form suddenly felt like a betrayal. What was it McAvoy had said that morning in the car when he'd been scratchy and hung-over? 'Try going to confession once a fortnight and spilling your sins out to a celibate priest. There's something to put you in your place.' She remembered the smell of his cigarette smoke, the odour of cramped courtrooms, dirty cells and seedy nightclubs that clung to his damp woollen coat, a world she came to understand he was both called to and despised.

She flipped open the lid of her laptop and ran a search on Father Lucas Starr. He was listed as Roman Catholic chaplain of Telhurst Prison. A short biography recorded that he was thirty-nine years old, the son of American and Mexican missionaries, and had spent his early life in Bolivia and New Mexico. While still a teenager, he had entered the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York, and was now in the sixteenth year of his formation as a Jesuit. He had spent time with missions in Nigeria, Angola, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Colombia, where he served in the chaplaincy of La Modelo prison, Bogota. She began a fresh enquiry with 'La Modelo' and learned that it was considered the toughest, filthiest, most violent and dangerous jail in South America.

What would McAvoy have said? His answer sounded clearly: give the man a chance; you don't devote body and soul to God for twenty years without becoming wiser than most. They'll scare the hell out of you, these Catholic priests, with their iron wills and cold certainty of what's to come, but they'll go to places you wouldn't dare and draw on strength you'll never possess.

Jenny typed 'Eva Donaldson' and was met with a barrage of the sacred and profane, a galaxy of hardcore pornographic websites vying with reports on the Decency campaign. She clicked 'images' and wished she hadn't. A single dignified portrait of Eva's post-accident face sat amongst a carousel of lurid shots of her in every form of sexual congress. In one scene she was a delicate virgin, in others a whore, an unwilling victim, a cheating wife. Of all the roles it was innocence she performed best. She was such a successful commodity, Jenny realized, because despite the squalor of her poses she retained an aspect of purity. She encouraged in her voyeurs the fantasy that through knowing her they would somehow lift themselves out of their own wretchedness.

Jenny quickly navigated away and scrubbed her images from the machine's memory. Be rational, she told herself, get a grip, behave like Her Majesty's Coroner and follow the protocol, but she knew the battle was already lost. Attempting to reason away her emotional decision, she tried to convince herself that it was merely a question of showing respect for Father Starr. Surely it would be a proper and humane gesture to visit Craven in prison before letting Eva's body be returned to the earth. Her thoughts were interrupted by the creak of the front gate and the sound of a man's footsteps on the flagstone path. She craned forward to see Steve approaching. He was carrying flowers.





She brought the lupins out to the garden table in a tall clear vase that had belonged to her mother and saw him crouching at the edge of the stream. He pressed his fingers to his lips as she went over to join him. She knelt beside him and followed his gaze to what she called the swimming pool, a hollow in the stream bed deep enough to wallow in. A flash of silver broke the surface and leaped among the lazily circling flies. He turned to her and smiled, a day's growth on his hollow cheeks. His face was tired, but his eyes were bright as he shielded them from the sloping sunlight with a cupped hand.

'There's scores of them. Must be the pure water,' he said.

'I suppose I should feel blessed.'

'Too right.' He held her gaze with a playful, questioning look. 'May I?'

He leaned forward and kissed her mouth without waiting for an answer, his skin rough against her cheeks as he stroked her hair.

'You don't mind?'

'Why would I?'

He drew back, letting his hand drop to her shoulder then slide down her back to her waist. 'I don't know.' He shrugged. 'It's been a while.'

Jenny stared down into the stream, watching the school of fish dart through a shaft of milky light. 'I'm sorry. I've been useless.'

'I was worried about you.'

'I'm OK,' she lied.

'Ross decided to stay with his dad?'

'Yes ... it makes more sense for him to be in town.'

'And you've been hiding away here getting lonely.'

'I've had a lot of work.'

He gave her a look which said she could do better.

'I know I've not been much of a girlfriend.'

Steve grinned. 'Girlfriend? I've never heard you call yourself that before. Wow.'

She contrived to look hurt, but a laugh forced itself out. One of relief, of having a distraction from herself. And he looked handsome tonight, somehow more confident in his new life as a nearly-qualified architect. He still remained partly the romantic backwoodsman who had brought the countryside alive for her, telling her the names of every plant and tree, showing her where the deer stood at night and where the fox slunk through the hedges, but he seemed to inspire more trust now that his world had expanded beyond the boundaries of his out-of-the-way farm.

'I know it threw you when I said those things . . .' He sounded almost apologetic, referring to when he had told her he was in love with her, but too embarrassed to repeat it. 'It must be tough coming out of a marriage, all the baggage ...'

She nodded, no more ready to have this discussion now than she had been three months ago.

He paused, trying to fathom her expression. 'That day you went to see you father - what happened?'

'Nothing.'

He gave her the searching look, the one more intimate than the sex that had first disarmed her. 'The shutters came down that day, Jenny, I felt it. Was it just because of what I said? I was only being honest.'

'Partly ... I don't know.'

'I didn't want to spoil it between us.'

'I know what you wanted.'

'If you don't want things complicated, why don't you just say so? Put me out of my agony.'

He touched her lightly on the shoulder, longing for an answer she couldn't give. As he lifted his hand she caught it and brought it to her lips. 'Can we talk about this afterwards?'

They didn't make it to the bedroom or even indoors. They made love on the grass as urgently as they had the first time last summer. She was young again, feeling his every touch, his every minute caress with an electric thrill, until at last they both exploded in the scattering colours of grass and sky and spiralled slowly back to earth, a pair of gently fading butterflies.





She brought tea outside to the table as the sun dipped beneath the crest of the hill. They sat side by side, she leaning into him as he told her about his plans for when he was qualified. The firm he was attached to had lost out on a lot of business recently: clients' budgets weren't stretching to the extra cost of the ecological buildings in which they specialized. The chances of a full-time position were slim and he'd no choice but to start looking elsewhere. So far the only interest had been from a British firm in Provence. The money was appealing, but it would mean taking beautiful old farmhouses and turning them into vulgar, air- conditioned villas for ex-pat retirees. He hadn't spent seven years of study only to ditch his principles at the first sight of a cheque.

'At least you'd see the sun,' Jenny said.

'You sound as if you're trying to sell it to me.'

'There are worse places to be than the south of France.'

He looked a little hurt. 'Would you visit?'

'If you'd forgive me for using the plane.'

'We might even see each other more often.'

'Ouch.'

'I'm serious, Jenny. I'm going to get an answer out of you one way or the other.' Despite the light-hearted tone she could tell he meant it. After her months of evasion he was pressing her for commitment.

'By when?'

'I qualify in six weeks.'

'Then what? You'll give up on me?'

'No.' He hesitated. 'But after that I'll leave it up to you to make the moves.'

It occurred to her to tell him the truth then, to confess that it had taken all her strength to try to cope with her demented father accusing her of being a child killer. It would be a relief to share it with him, to have someone to reason it through with. But what if he recoiled and turned his back on her in horror or disgust? She couldn't face his rejection, not now, not on top of everything else.

Jenny felt tears in her eyes. She hurriedly moved to wipe them away.

'What's the matter?'

'Nothing. It's just. . . There are some things I need to get straightened out. It's healthy. You're giving me a spur.'

'Anything you can share with me?'

'No.'

'I'd better head back.' He got up from the table.

Jenny reached out and touched his fingers. 'I'm glad you're being honest, really. And I'm trying to be. Just give me a little more time.'

He smiled again, decent enough to give her the benefit of the doubt. Better than she deserved. He stooped down to kiss her goodbye. As he walked away towards the old cart track that led around the side of the house, he stopped suddenly. 'Oh, by the way - there was a man with a little girl who seemed to be waiting for you around the front last night.'

'A man?'

'Yes. I drove past at about six. They were still there when I came back up around seven.'

'What did they look like?'

'He was in his thirties, the girl can't have been more than five or six.'

Jenny shrugged. It didn't sound like anyone she knew.

Steve said, 'Maybe they'd got the wrong place. You'll call?'

'I promise.'





Jenny spent what was left of the evening working, the only light in the house coming from her ancient desk lamp. It was nearly midnight and her eyes were smarting from staring at the computer screen when the return email from Father Starr arrived. He had arranged for her to visit Craven the following afternoon and Craven's solicitors were forwarding their files to her office. Her diary was already full, but Starr's tone brooked no argument. She dithered, then replied that she would meet him at the reception desk. Frustrated with herself for being such a pushover, she slammed her laptop closed and switched off the lamp. Feeling her way into the tar-black hall, she fumbled for the light switch. The single bulb stuttered into life like a guttering candle. Starting up the foot-worn treads of the narrow staircase, she heard the sound of gentle rapping at the front door: the cautious knock of a small hand. She turned, startled, telling herself it was only the wind. It came again: four patient, evenly spaced taps.

She told herself it was nothing, a plant knocking against the porch, a restless bird nesting in the eaves. She listened to the reassuring silence for a long moment and resumed her climb. As she reached the landing, feet shuffled on the path outside the front door accompanied by whispered voices: a child's whimper, a man, patient and reassuring. Jenny stood frozen, her heart pounding in her ears, waiting for the next tap, willing it to be real people outside, but they faded away. She waited for the squeak of the gate, for the turn of an engine, but nothing came.

She tiptoed softly across the creaking boards and fetched her sleeping pills from the bathroom cabinet. She shook one out, then made it three.





Telhurst Prison was set anonymously outside a small hamlet on the southern plain of the Severn estuary. Surrounded by wheat fields, there was nothing to indicate its presence except a discreet sign directing visiting traffic from the main road down the narrow lane leading to its front entrance. Shielded from the surrounding countryside by a screen of poplars, it occupied a site the size of several football pitches.

The main building was of modern construction, red brick with tiny windows like the arrow slits in the walls of a medieval castle. The perimeter was contained by two twenty-foot- high fences studded with cameras and patrolled by officers with dogs.

Alison had objected on principle to the coroner being summoned to interview a convicted murderer, and having voiced her objections sat in stubborn silence for the entire journey. Still suffering the effects of the previous night's sleeping pills, Jenny was too tired and preoccupied to attempt talking her round. She was thinking about ghosts, whether they were real or imaginary, and if it made any difference either way.

Alison broke her silence as they walked across the rain- spattered tarmac to the prison's main entrance. 'They've got no sense of perspective, priests. Just because they're governed by conscience they think everyone else should be, too.'

'I thought you were a believer,' Jenny said.

'I was, but things change. And so do people.'

'How is DI Pironi - are you two still friends?'

'He calls now and again.'

'I see.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Nothing - but I can't help remembering that the two of you used to go to church together.'

'There was never anything between us, Mrs Cooper. Certainly not in that way.' Alison tugged indignantly at the strap of her handbag. 'Anyway, I was still with Terry.'





Father Starr was waiting for them inside the door. After a polite greeting, he led them to the front of a queue of impatient lawyers waiting to collect their security tags and signed them in. The officer behind the glass screen treated him with unquestioning respect, as did each of the guards they encountered on their journey through an unending series of corridors interrupted by heavy steel gates. Even Alison started to thaw, calling him 'Father' as if she were a devoted member of his flock.

He explained that Craven was being held in the close supervision circuit inside the segregation unit while his mental health continued to be assessed. The stress of being locked in a cell around the clock was destabilizing him further, but he was caught in a catch-22: the prison psychiatrist's idea of help was to persuade him to accept responsibility for a crime he hadn't committed. Protestations of innocence were treated as delusional.

Jenny said, 'This prison must seem quite tame after La Modelo.'

Starr smiled, as if she had mildly embarrassed him. 'I see you've been doing your research, Mrs Cooper.'

'I'm intrigued to know what brought you here.'

'We're an international organization. We go wherever we are needed.' He attempted a joke: 'And you've been short of Catholic priests ever since your King Henry decided we lived better than he did.'

He stopped outside a room at the end of a window- less corridor and knocked on the toughened glass pane. The door was opened from the inside by a heavy-set prison officer with the flattened nose of an ex-boxer. Father Starr asked him if he would mind waiting outside during their interview. The officer glanced dubiously at Jenny and Alison.

'It's perfectly safe,' Starr said. 'You know I trust him like a son.'

'You're a better man than me, Father,' the guard said, and stepped into the corridor. He turned to Jenny. 'I'll be right here if you need me.'

They entered an interview room not much bigger than a cell. The man sitting at the small table in handcuffs rose to his feet. 'Good morning, Father.'

'Paul, this is Mrs Cooper, the coroner, and Mrs Trent, the coroner's officer.'

Craven glanced at them shyly and nodded in a cautious greeting. He waited for them both to be seated before following suit. Jenny had read on the file that he was in his upper thirties but his face looked much younger. A prison- issue navy tracksuit hung shapelessly from his skinny frame. There were tiny hints of his age in the creases on his forehead, but it was as if the teenage boy had been held in suspended animation.

Father Starr said, 'As I explained to you, Mrs Cooper has to determine Eva Donaldson's cause of death. She does this free of the police and criminal courts and has a reputation for dogged independence.' Jenny shot him a glance. He ignored her and continued. 'She needs to take a statement from you. You have to tell her precisely what happened.'

'I'll be taking the statement,' Alison interjected, and pushed a form across the desk. 'This states that what you have to say is the truth and that you're liable for prosecution if anything you include in it is false. Do you understand?'

'Yes.' Craven spoke quietly, looking to Starr for reassurance.

Jenny said, 'You mustn't think of this as being like a police interview. We're here to listen to what you have to say, not to judge.' She felt Alison bristle, the detective in her refusing to entertain the idea that their visit was anything other than a sop to a troublesome and bloody-minded priest. 'We'll start at the beginning, shall we? Eva Donaldson was killed on the night of Sunday, 9 May. I believe you were released from prison on Thursday, the 6th.'

'That's right.'

Alison coughed pointedly. Jenny sat back in her chair and let her officer take over.

'Where did you go when you left prison, Mr Craven?'

He stalled before answering, requiring a nod from Father Starr to prompt him. 'The probation service fixed me up with a bedsit.'

'Address?'

'19b Clayton Road, Redland.'

Alison wrote it down in laborious longhand, determined not to put him at his ease.

'And what did you do once you were installed at this address?'

Craven shrugged. 'I stayed inside mostly, went to the shops once or twice, saw my parole officer on the Friday - she'd sorted my paperwork and that, told me where to go to collect my benefits.'

'And on the Saturday?'

'I don't remember ... I think I stayed indoors. And the next day.'

'Did you communicate with anyone?'

Craven shook his head. 'No.'

Father Starr said, 'Paul lost contact with his family when he was ten years old. He was taken into care.'

'Where were you on the Sunday evening?' Alison asked.

'Inside. I didn't go anywhere.'

'Were there any neighbours, or anyone else, who might be able to verify your movements?'

'I never saw them to speak to.'

Alison frowned. 'And when did you make your confession to the police?'

Craven looked down and shook his head.

'It was on the following Wednesday at about midday,'

Father Starr said. 'I received a phone call here at my office from Detective Inspector Goodison. He handed me over to Paul, who asked me to find him a lawyer. I arranged that for him.'

'Why did you turn yourself in to the police, Mr Craven?' Alison asked.

Jenny watched him twist the fingers of his cuffed hands together as he struggled to explain.

'I wanted it to go away ... I couldn't take hearing about it any more.'

'What did you want to go away?' Alison said.

'The pictures on the television. They didn't stop. She was everywhere . . . looking at me.'

Alison carefully wrote down his answer. 'You're saying you went to confess to Eva Donaldson's murder because you couldn't bear seeing her picture on television?'

Craven didn't answer, his gaze fixed on the table between them.

'Did you explain this to the police?'

'I can't remember.'

'What happened when you went into the station? What did you say?'

He shook his head.

'Do you remember?'

'Kind of.'

'Had you been drinking, taking drugs?'

'No.'

Jenny leaned forward, lightly touching Alison's arm as she interrupted her. 'We've read your police interview, Mr Craven - was what you told them true or false?'

He lifted his face and met hers with his child's china-blue eyes. 'It wasn't true. I didn't kill her, I didn't. I didn't. That's God's honest truth.'

'Then why tell the police you did?'

Craven's eyes flitted to Father Starr, then back to Jenny. 'Because I was weak. Because I let my faith weaken.'

There were many leading questions Jenny would like to have asked but they all fell into the category of cross- examination, which wasn't appropriate unless or until she held an inquest. A statement had to be an unprompted narrative by the maker, and they had already strayed too close to putting words into his mouth. But there was one direct question she could properly ask him: 'You told the police in interview that you urinated outside Eva Donaldson's house. They later claimed to have found traces of your DNA on the mat outside her front door. Can you explain that?'

Craven slowly shook his head.

Father Starr said, 'Samples get confused or contaminated at laboratories, it happens all the time. Even experts can be mistaken.'

Alison said, 'Do you have anything to say about the DNA evidence, Mr Craven?'

'It's wrong. I never went to her house. The only times I saw it was on the TV. That's the truth.' Agitated, he turned to Starr. 'That's right, isn't it, Father? Tell them. That's God's honest truth.'

Starr reached out and put a comforting hand on Craven's. 'That's what Mrs Cooper is going to do, Paul. She's going to find out the truth.'

Losing patience, Alison kicked Jenny's ankle under the table.

Ignoring her, Jenny said, 'Do you have anything else to add, Mr Craven? This is your one chance to speak to me directly. We won't be meeting like this again.'

The prisoner closed his eyes for a moment, as if summoning the strength to force the words out of his mouth. When they came, it was in a lucid stream that seemed to bubble up from deep inside him. 'You're right to think I'm lying to you. I did once murder an innocent young woman and I know God will judge me for that, but I didn't kill Eva . . . I'm a different person now. I couldn't do that. I'd kill myself before I'd hurt another human being.'

And as he held her in his innocent gaze, Jenny was tempted to believe him.





Jenny waited for Alison to stop off in the ladies' room at reception before turning to Father Starr, who had hardly spoken during the walk back through the prison. 'There was a question I should have asked him - why wasn't he at church on the Sunday?'

'My fault, Mrs Cooper. I should have made arrangements. I was on a study retreat during the week he was released.'

'If I was a more cynical person I'd say you were finding it hard to accept that a man you'd worked so hard with could have left here and killed three days later.'

'There is more than likely to be an element of pride. I am only human.'

'I don't doubt your good intentions, Father, but I'm afraid that the scales didn't fall from my eyes. I saw a man who needs a psychiatrist, a priest and a good criminal lawyer, probably in that order.'

'You were touched by him, weren't you?'

'I beg your pardon?'

Father Starr smiled. 'Lack of prejudice is a wonderful gift. I have had to work hard to try to acquire it. I sense you possess it naturally.'

'Listen, let's be straight about this now. If I decide to hold an inquest it'll be because there are issues around the cause of death that require further investigation, not out of any desire to assist Craven.'

'Of course. I understand.'

'I may even turn up more evidence against him.'

Father Starr turned his gaze out of the rain-flecked window and up towards a moody sky. 'Do you believe in good and evil, Mrs Cooper, and that the former attracts the latter?'

'I try not to get too philosophical during business hours.'

'Really? That's not what a mutual friend of ours once told me.'

Alison emerged from the ladies in a fresh cloud of perfume and glanced between Jenny and Starr, sensing an atmosphere between them. 'Is everything all right?'

'Yes, thank you,' Starr said. 'One other thing I should have mentioned, Mrs Cooper - as far as I know the police neglected to interview Miss Donaldson's former boyfriend. His name's Joseph Cassidy. He's an actor of sorts. I understand she and he resumed their acquaintance in the weeks before her death.'

'How do you know that?' Jenny said, feeling her cheeks flush with emotions she couldn't yet articulate.

'Craven's lawyer tried to speak to him, but he was reluctant to cooperate. I contacted his local priest.'

'You're quite the detective, Father,' Jenny said, feeling an unchristian stab of hostility.

'I try to live by a very simple philosophy: there is that which is right and just, and that which is not. As convenient a belief as it may be, there is no middle ground.' He opened his hands in a gesture of gratitude. 'Thank you both for coming here today. And now I must excuse myself; I have to conduct Mass.'

With a nod he turned and retreated into the depths of the prison.

'Didn't I tell you, Mrs Cooper?' Alison said. Jenny scarcely heard her. She was thinking of their mutual friend, and dared to wonder with thundering heart if Alec McAvoy might still be alive.