Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

Whether or not any one individual was really to blame, it was still a fact that she had presided over just about the biggest and most public failure in the history of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

Karen dealt with it all by trying to put the Marshall case out of her head and getting on with whatever else was on the books. It was a big ask. She never seemed to quite succeed. There were constant reminders, for a start.

Just over two weeks after the successful appeal, The Sun newspaper carried a major series on the affair: “MY THIRTY-YEAR ORDEAL BY MAN CLEARED OF MURDERING HIS WIFE. HOW THE POLICE NEVER GAVE UP PERSECUTING ME. I WAS INNOCENT BUT THEY WOULDN’T LEAVE ME ALONE.”

They had bought up Richard Marshall. He was a free man, properly acquitted in a court of law, and there was nothing in any kind of editor’s code to stop them. Karen and everybody she knew in the force was devastated. It was truly sickening stuff. Sean MacDonald called from Edinburgh more than once. He, too, was sickened by the series.

“This is the final straw,” he said. “It’s like having your face rubbed in the dirt. There must be something else we can do, something else you can do, Karen.”

“If there is, Mac, then I don’t bloody well know what it is. The CC has more or less said we have to write it off. To let the fuss die down. To be honest, I can’t think of any alternative myself. We are all deeply upset.”

“She wasn’t your daughter, Karen. I’m just not prepared to let it go. I can’t let it go. Not when we were so close, not when Marshall was actually convicted and sent to jail. To see him walk free after that has been just too much to bear.”

There was an edge to Sean MacDonald’s voice that Karen didn’t like at all.

“Mac, you must leave it to us. If it is ever possible to do anything again we’ll jump on him straight away. Right now I just don’t see it, that’s all. But you mustn’t try to interfere. You’ll only cause trouble for yourself, and you don’t deserve more trouble, you really don’t.”

“Karen, I have left it to the police for nearly thirty years, and it’s got me nowhere. My daughter’s killer is still a free man. Her death has still to be avenged. That’s wrong, Karen, that’s very wrong.”

“I know it is, Mac.”

There was nothing else she could say except that. Nothing else she could do except agree, and maybe apologize yet again.

It was Mac who finished the conversation quite abruptly, and very nearly hung up on her. Karen was left with a distinctly uneasy feeling. She hoped Mac was not going to do anything stupid, not attempt to take the law into his own hands. She didn’t give a damn about Richard Marshall. But if Mac did anything outside the law he’d be sure to be caught. However, he was no criminal, and he was also eighty-three years old, she reassured herself. She was being silly. Mac would not step out of line.

All day, that first day of the Sun series, she was aware of a certain atmosphere in the station. Officers gathered in clusters, pointing at sections of the story and muttering about it. And away from the whispering groups they all seemed much quieter than usual. There was very little banter going on. Even the air they were breathing seemed heavy with a leaden silence.

Cooper appeared to be sunk most deeply of all into grim despair. She spotted him in the corner of the canteen at lunchtime, sitting with his head in his hands. A copy of the Sun was open on the table in front of him.

“Can I join you?” she asked.

His face lit up at the sight of her — that was how it was between them — but then swiftly fell again.

She sat down opposite him, only narrowly resisting touching his hand. She was vaguely aware of a number of pairs of eyes fixed on them and a bit of whispering going on. Station gossip had been inevitable, of course, but she reckoned there was little doubt that word was getting around, and it was doing so considerably quicker than she had expected, even in a police station. Their body language was partly to blame, she thought, firmly clasping her hands together in full view on the table before her. Whatever the reason, she suspected that the vast majority of officers at Torquay nick already at least suspected that there was something going on between her and Cooper. It was not a comfortable situation.

She ignored the buzz of interest which her sitting with him had provoked, and so did he. She considered it likely, however, that Cooper was so preoccupied he did not even notice.

“You look happy,” she said. It was an inane remark. All the more so because she knew exactly what was troubling him.

“Ecstatic,” he said.

“It wasn’t your fault, Phil,” she said quietly.

He grunted. “That’s not what you said before.”

“No, well, I had a hidden agenda, didn’t I? I was pissed off with you. You were right, though, right when you told me that nobody else would have picked up on who Jennifer Roth really was either. And even if we had known, well, we would have been forewarned I suppose, and maybe we wouldn’t have gone ahead with the original prosecution. But there is no way we could have done anything more about securing a conviction, not up against her evidence.”

Cooper looked grey and drawn. There was no sign of that face-splitting grin she so adored.

“That’s all right for you to say, boss. I messed up, whatever way you look at it. It was my responsibility. I was supposed to be checking Jennifer Roth out, and what a balls-up I made of it. I still can’t get my head around it, that’s the trouble. And then you read crap like this...”

He gestured at the Sun spread out before him. She noticed that his hand was shaking. His frustration suddenly got the better of him. He picked the paper up, screwed it into a ball and threw it across the room against the nearest wall. Everybody in the canteen turned to look. Cooper seemed oblivious.

“It’s the last straw, boss,” he said, unconsciously echoing Mac’s words. “Nothing’s changed. There can’t be anybody who doubts that Marshall killed Clara and his elder daughter, can there? And God knows what he’s done to Janine’s head, or Jennifer, or whatever she calls herself now. What has she gone through, what’s he done to her, for God’s sake? She believes the bloody man’s innocent, she really does, I’m sure of it. How can that be? She and her sister were about the same age as my kids when it happened...”

Cooper paused, shot her an anxious look. After that second time they spent together, when he told Karen that he had always been faithful to his wife, they had never discussed her again, and neither did he ever talk about his children. It was part of a kind of unspoken deal between them.

“It’s all right, Phil,” she said.

He half-nodded. “Well, I think of them, I think of something like that happening to them, of one of them being killed, of the other one being screwed up somehow, screwed up for life. That’s what happened to Jennifer, there’s no doubt about that. And when I watch my kids playing or eating their tea or something, I get this vision... I just can’t bear it...”

Phil looked down abruptly. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m a bit wound up about everything right now.”

That was an understatement, thought Karen. She studied him anxiously. She knew how torn apart he was. She knew he didn’t know what to do, and that his personal dilemma was adding greatly to the stress he was experiencing at work. She also knew that what there was between them was just as important to him as it was to her. She did not doubt that for one moment. They were both in a state of turmoil, but she actually thought his was probably worse than hers.

It was so obvious that his personal feelings were all mixed up with his feelings of failure over Richard Marshall. He really was deeply upset. It hurt her to see him like this. She wanted to reach out and take him in her arms. She almost always wanted to do that. But in this instance more than ever. She could not, however, do so in the police canteen. Not if she wished to survive. She compromised by reaching out under the table with one hand and squeezing his knee.