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.
Chapter 4
Ignoring Alison's warnings that anything other than an endorsement of the criminal court's verdict would threaten her already shaky tenure as coroner, Jenny wrote to Eva Donaldson's father informing him that she was ordering a final post-mortem examination of his daughter's body before releasing it for burial. Her next pressing task was to track down Eva's ex-boyfriend, Joseph Cassidy. He wasn't hard to find. An internet search revealed that he had starred alongside Eva in a number of films, all with names as obscene as the images that advertised them, and since leaving that business he had reinvented himself as the managing director of Wild West Productions, a television production company with offices in Bristol and Soho, central London. Not surprisingly, his company website contained no mention of his past in adult movies.
Jenny called him at his