The Coroner, page 39
Williams nodded to Arvel, who got to his feet. 'Witnesses Mr Frank Grantham and Dr Nicholas Peterson are now present, ma'am.'
A murmur of anticipation spread through the gallery. Jenny called for quiet and asked Grantham to come forward. She felt an unhealthy burst of adrenalin, and while a constable followed him all the way to the witness chair, she picked a mint out of the packet on her desk and sucked out the half-pill.
She then thanked the police officer and released him, affording Grantham the dignity of being able to face the court without looking like a criminal. But he nevertheless glared at her with a degree of venom she had only experienced in the bitterest of marital rows. She fought the tightness in her throat and offered a brief, silent prayer. She was in charge and had to act as if she meant it.
Affecting the look of only partial interest that Pamela Sharpe had used so effectively to intimidate her, she glanced down at her notes at her notes. 'Are you Mr Frank Grantham of 18 Belvedere Park, Bristol?'
'Yes.' His answer was terse, given with no attempt to disguise his anger.
'You failed to answer your summons this morning, why was that?'
'I should imagine my counsel made that perfectly clear.'
Pamela Sharpe rose to her feet. 'Ma'am, if I might—'
'Not at the moment, Miss Sharpe. I'll deal with the issues of contempt later.' She turned to Arvel. 'We'll have the witness sworn, please.'
Grantham looked to Pamela Sharpe, but all she could offer was a slight shrug, as if to say that if he didn't know anything, he'd have nothing to fear.
Looking at his swollen, indignant face as he boomed out the oath, Jenny was surprised at how much loathing she felt for him. She checked herself. In the quiet of her hotel room she had planned this moment, and it was to be sober and low- key. She wanted only one piece of information from him and she wanted it extracted without exposing herself to even the slightest risk of criticism.
'Mr Grantham, you are head of the legal department of the Severn Vale Local Authority?'
'Yes. I've held the position for twelve years.'
'And your department advises the council on a whole range of legal issues which confront it?'
'It does.'
'Without giving away any commercially sensitive information, can you confirm that at the time of Danny Wills's death UKAM Secure Solutions Ltd was a bidder for a multi- million-pound contract to build and operate a new secure training centre in the Severn Vale Local Authority's area?'
Grantham looked straight at the jury. 'No. I have no knowledge of that.'
'Your department wasn't asked to advise on any planning issues the tender may have raised - I understand the proposed site would have been substantial, thus raising numerous issues.'
'No. I have no knowledge of any such tender.'
Jenny made a note, more to steady herself for the next phase than to record his answer. She continued with a change of tack: 'The former coroner, Mr Marshall, was a close friend and colleague of yours, was he not?'
'We'd certainly known each other a long time.'
'Personally as well as professionally?'
Grantham cast an uneasy glance at Pamela Sharpe. 'We socialized on occasions, certainly. I was technically his employer, however. My department pays the coroner's salary, as you know, ma'am.'
Reacting to several puzzled looks in the jury box, Jenny said, 'A historical anomaly, members of the jury: the coroner's office is paid for by the local authority, but the coroner is in no way answerable to or a servant of local government. He or she answers directly to the Lord Chancellor . . .' She couldn't resist adding, 'No matter what Mr Grantham may say.'
Those who understood smiled. The rest were losing interest. Jenny nodded to Arvel, certain she'd soon have their attention again. 'Would you please hand the envelope to Mr Grantham.'
As Arvel carried the Jiffy bag across to the witness chair, Jenny said, 'Do you recall the date Mr Marshall suffered his fatal coronary?'
Not liking the turn her questions were taking, Grantham twisted his neck in his collar, as if it were too tight. 'Not the exact date, no.'
Jenny double-checked her notes. 'He died in the early hours of Friday 4 May. On Thursday the 3rd he posted an item of recorded mail to you. I have the receipt if you wish to see it later.'
He looked suspiciously at the envelope that had been handed to him.
'Do you recognize the handwriting on the address label as Mr Marshall's?'
Grantham peered at the distinctive, looping script. 'It resembles his.'
'The envelope was addressed to you at your office but you didn't sign for it. Why was that?'
'The post goes to our mail room. I'd never be there to sign for anything personally.'
A fact Marshall must have known, surely. Jenny wondered if he ever meant for it to arrive, or if he had seen as far as the situation they were now in, his sins and Grantham's dragged simultaneously into the public gaze.
Jenny said, 'For reasons of confidentiality I don't intend the contents of that envelope to be made public, but would you please look at them.'
Arvel stood in front of Grantham, screening him from the rest of the courtroom, affording the jury only a sideways view. With clumsy fingers, Grantham reached into the envelope and brought out the photographs with Harry's handwritten note attached: Dear Frank, Your friend. H. She watched his expression turn from apprehensive to horrified as he glanced at the first photograph, then the second and third.
'Hand them back to the usher when you've seen enough.'
He fumbled the photographs back into the envelope, which Arvel took and carried to his desk. A room full of reporters saw the undisguised shock on Grantham's face. Williams, standing against the wall at the back of the room, gave Jenny a look of approval, admiring the elegant way she'd handled him.
With no trace of admonishment, she said, 'I appreciate you oversee a department that must be dealing with literally hundreds of issues at any one time, but I would ask you to cast your mind back and think again. Are you sure you know nothing about a tender?'
Pamela Sharpe and Hartley both rose at once with the same objection. Miss Sharpe got the first word in. 'Ma'am, can the witness please be informed of his right against self- incrimination?'
'Certainly. Mr Grantham, you do not have to say anything which may incriminate you.' She turned to the jury. 'In other words, a witness does not have to answer a question the answer to which may lay him open to criminal charges.'
The lawyers resumed their seats, leaving Grantham on the horns of a dilemma. Jenny watched him look out at the rows of eager press, calculating how much they would dig out in any event, and weighing it against what would be made of his silence if he refused to answer. With admirable nerve, he turned to the jury and said, 'Obviously we deal with thousands of planning applications. Now that I'm thinking about it, I do recall an enquiry relating to some sort of juvenile prison.'
Jenny said, 'Do you know if the plan was to build the prison on local-authority-owned land?'
The flare of alarm in his eyes gave her the answer, but Pamela Sharpe's look stopped him from giving it. Jenny wanted to push him, to get the fact admitted so she could legitimately go after the details until the whole rotten core of the deal and the reason for UKAM's cover-up had been exposed, but she sensed he had gone as far as he would. His expression now became one of entrenched stubbornness. He had calculated that he could distance himself from the photographs of Harry Marshall, leaving him only one problem to deal with, on ground he controlled.
She probed one last time. 'You must know if your authority was doing a land deal with UKAM Secure Solutions Ltd on a multi-million-pound contract.'
Calling her bluff, Grantham said, 'I would have to consult with those who handle such matters and come back to you.'
What worried her was the fact that, given time, he could bury the trail, spend the night in the office feeding the shredders, but any more questions would meet with the same resistance. She agreed on a compromise. 'I'll stand you down while I take evidence from the next witness. You can make the necessary enquiries by telephone. Please don't go any further than a hundred yards from this building. I expect an answer by the end of the morning.'
He hurried from the witness chair and marched outside, pursued by his twitching solicitor. From the back of the hall Williams gave her a nod, as if to say she'd done what he needed, enough to get him through Grantham's office door.
Moving straight on, she called Dr Peterson forward. She had expected the lawyers to rise as one to demand a private audience in chambers, where they would demand to know what it was in the envelope and what exactly Grantham was accused of being involved in. But as Peterson threaded his way to the front, the three counsel were locked in secret discussion: Hartley and Golding seemed to be in cahoots and Pamela Sharpe appeared to be hearing something shocking for the first time.
Peterson's face was lined with fatigue; it wouldn't have surprised her to learn that he hadn't slept since receiving his summons. While she had no sympathy for Grantham, there was a part of her which felt for the overworked pathologist. There could be no way back for a member of his profession who had wilfully covered up evidence which might have proved an unlawful killing.
'Dr Peterson, you examined Danny Wills's body on Monday 16 April and concluded that his death was a simple case of suicide - that he asphyxiated by hanging himself from the bars of his cell window with a strip of bed sheet.'
'That's right.'
'And that is what you told the inquest Mr Marshall held on i May, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
He couldn't have sounded more contrite, but Jenny noticed Golding was showing no obvious signs of concern. The lawyers' attitude was disconcerting.
'Could you confirm, please, that you conducted a second examination of Danny's body on Monday 2.3 April.'
There was an excited rustle of paper as the journalists who had followed the story scented a revelation.
Peterson said, 'Yes. On the Monday morning Mr Marshall asked me to examine the body again.'
The fact that he had answered at all was surprising. She had expected him to claim his right against self-incrimination. What it meant, she didn't have time to think through. She had to plough on.
'Can you tell me why you carried out that second examination?'
'Mr Marshall telephoned me on that Monday morning and asked me to. He said that he had received information that Danny might have been involved in violence of some sort prior to his death and requested that I check for any signs of injury.'
'Did he say that this information had come from a fellow inmate at Portshead Farm, Katy Taylor?'
'No. He didn't tell me where it came from.'
Jenny tried to read him. He was flat, solemn, but not shocked like Grantham had been. He was resigned. She glanced again at Golding and it dawned on her that he and Hartley already knew the worst, perhaps even about the photographs of Marshall, and were somehow prepared with a tactical response. She took another mint from her packet.
'What did you find when you examined him again?'
Peterson reached into his pocket and pulled out a document. 'Would you like me to read you my report?'
Jenny said yes, if he wouldn't mind. While she struggled to make sense of what was happening, he read out his report concluding that Danny had suffered restraint injuries at a time proximate to his death, and could have been partially conscious or even unconscious when he was hanged from the sheet.
'Does that mean, Dr Peterson, that it's possible in your opinion that he didn't hang himself, but was hanged by someone else?'
Simone Wills held on to her friend's hand, too shocked for tears.
'All I can say is that it's possible. I see lots of hangings where there are signs that the victim has tried to loosen the ligature and a number where there aren't any. I couldn't possibly say either way.'
'But he did have injuries consistent with forced restraint, to the extent that a patch of his hair had been pulled out.'
'Yes.'
'And you gave this second report to Mr Marshall?'
'Yes, I did.'
Jurors exchanged looks. Journalists whispered to each other, but the lawyers barely reacted. The lump in Jenny's throat swelled, a rock sitting in her oesophagus. She took a gulp of water.
'The question then remains why you didn't mention this second examination at the inquest into Danny's death held by Mr Marshall?'
'On the Friday beforehand, 27 April, he telephoned me to say that he had received evidence that Danny had been involved in altercations with staff which explained the injuries. He said could I please not mention them in open court because it would lead the family to believe he had been murdered when clearly he hadn't been: all the evidence, including CCTV, he said, proved that Danny was alone in his cell at the time of his death.'
'He asked you to suppress evidence to stop his family jumping to conclusions?'
Peterson glanced apologetically towards Simone. 'I'll put it in context. For the entire fourteen years I've been in my job, Harry Marshall was the coroner. From time to time we dealt with distressing deaths, usually suicides, where he was very keen to deliver a clear verdict. He said to me on many occasions that if families didn't come away knowing exactly how their loved one had died, it could destroy not just one but many lives. I didn't always agree with him, and on this occasion I'm not afraid to say I was wrong not to make these findings public. Since that inquest I had resolved to make them known, and I am grateful now for the opportunity to do so. I would add, however, that I would not alter my original finding of suicide. I firmly believe that Danny Wills died by his own hand.'
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Her lunch lay uneaten on her desk, her stomach so tight with tension she could barely swallow her own saliva. Every calculation she had made was wrong. Not asking Grantham to explain the photographs in public, and not having forced him to an answer on the tender, had allowed him to slip through her fingers. He had come back to the box before the recess with a vague formulation about the local authority having been approached by UKAM over a possible purchase of land, but flatly denied any personal involvement. She could have pushed him harder, asked him to deny outright any contact with UKAM, but she'd succumbed to her desire not to appear oppressive. She'd let her own weakness get in the way of exposing the ultimate motive for UKAM's cover-up. Maybe Williams would find evidence of his corruption eventually, but it would be too late to have any impact on her inquest.
The revelation of Peterson's second examination had also misfired. She had expected him to deny it, or at least to have refused to answer, creating a cloud of suspicion that would have left the jury in no doubt there was a reason for his previous silence which amounted to deliberate deception. Instead, he had expertly shifted the blame to Harry Marshall and at the same time neutralized the evidence of Danny's injuries. How he had found the courage to take such an audacious risk, she didn't know. Perhaps he had so much dirt on so many surgeons at the Vale he had frightened his bosses into letting him keep his job in exchange for his silence on their negligence and misdemeanours. However he had arrived at his decision, it was clearly one the lawyers knew about. Their expressions during his testimony had confirmed to her beyond doubt that they were playing to a plan. And so far it was going their way.
She reached for her temazepam and shook out another dose. It would dull her, but she had to make a calculated risk of her own: to find the strength to beat something out of the two remaining witnesses Williams's men had rounded up and hauled to court just before the lunch break: Kevin Stewart and Darren Hogg. If she didn't make headway with one of them, the jury would still be left with no alternative but to return a verdict of suicide. She would have failed, with only herself to blame.
She looked at the single tablet in her hand and wondered what it said about her, the fragility of life and the elusiveness of truth that any hope of justice depended on her swallowing it.
Darren Hogg, the Portshead Farm CCTV operator, claimed a drunk housemate had answered the door to the process server on Saturday night and had forgotten to hand him the papers. It raised a laugh from the jury. Unsmiling, Jenny pushed him to recall any incidents he may have seen in the days leading up to Danny's death where forcible restraint was used on him. Hogg said he hadn't seen any and reminded her that the camera covering the corridor in the male house unit was down. She asked whether he had seen any incidents where restraint was used on any of the inmates in any part of Ports- head Farm in the days leading up to Danny's death. Again, she met with denial. If restraint was used, he insisted, he hadn't seen it.
