half-shift Sunday evenings,' Ceri Jacobs said. 'He had done for several months.'
Jenny stepped outside into reception to make the call. She caught Deborah Bishop just as she was leaving the office and persuaded her to return to her computer to check staff rosters. The answer was as she expected: Alan Jacobs hadn't worked on a Sunday evening all year, and on Fridays he had worked one hour of agreed overtime and clocked off at six.
Ceri Jacobs listened to the news wearing a look of pure contempt, not for her husband, but for Jenny for shattering her already fractured illusions beyond any hope of repair.
Father Dermody did his best to soften the blow. 'I know how much you wished for him to enter the faith, Ceri, but there are other types of Christian.'
Deaf to his soothing words, Mrs Jacobs said, 'You won't stop here though, will you, Mrs Cooper? You won't be happy until every last sordid detail is dragged out and paraded in public. Can't you let the poor man rest in peace?'
How can there ever be peace without truth? Jenny wondered, but kept the thought to herself. Now was not the time for preaching.
Chapter 13
The chilly, grey Monday morning could as easily have been in March as late June. Jenny gave an ironic smile as she gazed out at the bleakness of the scene that perfectly reflected her mood. All attempts to persuade the Courts Service to provide a courtroom in the handful of intervening days had failed. The only venue Alison had managed to find which could accommodate an inquest at short notice was a former working men's clubhouse on the fringes of Avon- mouth, the area of heavy industry where the River Avon emptied into the Severn estuary. Nestled between the factories that lined the shore from the sprawling docks to the east to the new Severn crossing in the west, it was a single-storey cinder-block building with a sheet tin roof, surrounded by a weedy area of gravel which merged into the surrounding wasteland. Nearby the massive chimney of a bitumen plant pumped out foul, cream-coloured smoke that smelled of hot tar and burning rubber. It was an unloved place that existed only to be passed through on the way to somewhere else; a fitting location, Jenny decided, to unpick the details of Eva Donaldson's death.
She had had five days including the weekend to prepare and summon witnesses, and had fully expected the Ministry of Justice to intervene to make her think again. But apart from a solitary email from Amanda Cramer, they had remained eerily silent. Cramer's message had been tersely headed 'FYI', and contained a link to a newspaper article reporting insider gossip that the government and Decency were in advanced negotiations to secure the Decency Bill's safe passage through Parliament. It was to have its first reading in a week's time. Michael Turnbull himself was slated to open the debate in the Lords. Jenny interpreted it as a warning for the long term rather than as a threat. It was intended to remind her that as a junior member of the Establishment, she had a duty not to throw a spanner into the machinery of government. Even if she was technically within her rights to conduct an inquest, it would count as yet another black mark against her.
To make matters worse, Steve had been asked to stand in for his boss at a series of meetings with prospective clients in Edinburgh. He had been stuck in the office at the weekend, and Ross had cancelled their fortnightly Sunday lunch, claiming he was overwhelmed with coursework. Jenny had made the mistake of calling her ex-husband while she was still smarting with the pain of rejection, and had humiliated herself by bursting into tears. It was the excuse David needed to suggest she should try a new psychiatrist. He recommended a colleague at the hospital. She had felt so wretched she had taken the woman's number. Before he rang off, David said, 'I'm so glad you can talk to me like this now, Jenny. You do realize how far you've come in three years?'
Pushing open the creaking door to the former Severn Beach and District Working Men's Club, Jenny couldn't be sure if this was progress or not. Before her 'episode', the formal beginning of which she marked as the day she dried up and broke down in the middle of a family court hearing, she had been a well-respected lawyer running an entire local