really for Eva? Did she actually need to be here or was she allowing herself to be bullied by Starr? She stared through the windscreen at a carrier bag drifting across a scrubby patch of grass littered with crushed tins and broken glass and hoped for an answer. None came.
It was an image of McAvoy which formed behind her eyes. She pictured his face the day she confronted him in the courtroom, at the moment he confessed his fear of what, or more precisely the one, he had called the 'author of all this sadness'. He had managed at one and the same time to be both a wicked and a good man who feared for his soul. During the months since he had gone, Jenny had scarcely dared acknowledge the fact that their coming together had been something far more than mere sex could consummate. Without exchanging a word, they had both known that she was offering him a route to redemption and he was doing the same for her. It might have happened, only in wringing out the truth he had killed a man, and then thrown himself into purgatory, leaving her to face the conclusion alone.
The lift that took her to the fifteenth floor of the Molyneux Tower was plastered with obscene graffiti and smelled so overpoweringly of ammonia that it burnt her nostrils during its painfully slow ascent. Bursting out of the doors, Jenny found herself looking down a long, noisy corridor. As she made her way along its full length to number 28, she was assailed by the sound of domestic arguments, barking dogs and the heavy thump of bass permeating the flimsy apartment walls.
The woman who eventually shuffled to the door and half- opened it looked old enough to be Freddy's grandmother. Eileen Reardon was heavily overweight with unkempt greying hair that straggled to her shoulders. A loose, kaftan-style dress did little to disguise her bulk. Around her swollen neck she wore a pewter Celtic cross.
'Mrs Reardon?'
The woman peered at her suspiciously.
'Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner. I called earlier—'
'Freddy's not back yet.' She looked Jenny up and down. 'I suppose you want to come in.'
'If you wouldn't mind.'
Mrs Reardon moved back along the small, stuffy hallway. Jenny followed her into a dingy living room. The only natural light was the little that leaked around the edges of shabby, tie-dyed drapes tacked permanently over the windows. Two mismatched sofas smothered in cheap ethnic throws were arranged on either side of a low table. The air was stale with the smell of Indian incense and cigarette smoke. Jenny had the feeling that Mrs Reardon spent most of her waking hours in this room.
'Would you like some coffee?' Mrs Reardon asked.
Jenny eyed a collection of filthy mugs sitting next to a grubby ashtray. 'No thanks. I'm fine.'
She took a seat and noticed her host's badly swollen ankles and the wheezing sounds she made as she lowered herself onto the sofa opposite. A heart condition, Jenny thought, and wondered if Mrs Reardon was even aware that she was ill.
'You want to talk to him about this girl, do you?' Eileen Reardon asked in a manner which suggested that she didn't approve of Eva Donaldson.
'Yes. Did you know her?'
'No,' she said, as if the idea was ridiculous. 'I don't go in for any of that.'
'Church, you mean?'
'All that puritanical stuff. I ask you, who cares? She regretted her past - so what? So do lots of us.' She gave a self-conscious laugh.
'She seemed to have a lot of time for Freddy.'
'He's that sort of boy, friends with everyone.'
Jenny glanced at a rickety set of bamboo bookshelves jumbled with books on the New Age: titles on crystals, auras and chakra healing.
'I know,' Mrs Reardon said, following her gaze, 'Freddy and I aren't exactly peas in a pod, are we? I'm afraid I haven't read the Bible since I was at school, if I ever did then.' She shrugged. 'Whatever works for you, I suppose.'
'How did Freddy get involved with the Mission Church?' Jenny asked as innocently as she could. 'I've got a son almost the same age, I can't imagine how it happens.'
'I don't remember,' Eileen said dismissively, 'probably someone at school. It seems to be a bit of a craze - a weird one, but I suppose that's the point. You don't rebel by doing something your parents would like.'
'You don't quite approve.'
'It's not the only way people get better, I know that much.'
'I'll confess, I was there