A jury is obligatory in an unexplained death like Natasha’s, but the coroner himself remains very much in control. It is the coroner who questions witnesses and gives the final summing up, often directing the jury as to what their verdict should be.
There were the usual expert witnesses including a doctor. Young Jason Tucker was called to the stand and looked completely bewildered and near to tears. He no longer stood tall and proud but instead bowed his head most of the time, and when he did look up I could see that his features were drawn and his previously tanned complexion now pale.
‘I don’t remember nothing,’ he said.
‘Let me get this straight, you have no memory at all of leaving Natasha Felks on the Pencil?’ asked Mr Storey.
‘No, I ain’t. I don’t even remember taking her on the boat at all.’
‘Now then, let’s be clear on this Mr Tucker,’ said the coroner sternly, ‘are you trying to tell me that you did not take Miss Felks to the Pencil, or just that you don’t remember?’
‘Oh, just that I don’t remember,’ replied Jason, his black eyes wide and staring. ‘I must ’ave taken her. Nobody else would ’ave, would they? It happens to me sometimes you see...’
His voice tailed off. He appeared to be very frightened. I wondered if it was the court which was frightening him or the knowledge that he was not in full control of what went on in his head. Both probably.
I studied Jason closely. It seemed barely possible that his memory blackouts could be so complete. But I knew for a fact that they could be.
The coroner’s court didn’t frighten me the way it did Jason. After all, I had spent enough of my life in courts. The Castle Centre was hardly imposing and an inquest has few of the forbidding formalities of other courts. Still, I never found giving evidence a pleasant procedure. And I had a feeling that Coroner Storey viewed me with distaste from the moment I began to speak — although that could have been the disconcerting effect of his lazy left eye which never quite caught up with the focus of the right one.
To begin with what was required from me was simple enough. I merely had to relate exactly what had happened during my November holiday on Abri when I had had such a narrow escape. Then the coroner asked me the question I was expecting and not looking forward to answering.
‘You were staying on a holiday island, Detective Chief Inspector, the management of which you had reason to have considered to be negligent of your safety,’ he said in his very precise, clipped tones. ‘Did you report the incident to the appropriate authorities?’
He knew I hadn’t, the bastard. I decided not to make my position worse by trying to explain myself too much at this stage.
‘No, sir, I did not. I was satisfied at the time that what happened to me was an isolated incident which would not be allowed to happen again.’
‘Were you, Detective Chief Inspector? Well, tragically for Miss Felks that did not prove to be the case, did it?’
‘No sir,’ I said quietly. The utter bastard, I thought to myself. Didn’t he realise how bad I felt about that?
‘Did you not even consider that further guests on the island might be put at risk and that you might be able to prevent this, Miss Piper?’
‘Of course I considered the safety of other guests, sir. But I became convinced that Mr Davey and his staff would contain the situation. I was assured quite categorically that Jason Tucker would never again be allowed to take passengers out alone in any vessel. I never thought for one moment the same thing could happen again. If I had I would have done something about it.’
‘You were, however, proven to be wrong in every way, Detective Chief Inspector.’
It was a statement, not a question. That overly precise smug manner of his was beginning to irritate me. The jury, however, looked as if they were lapping it up. I suppose it’s not every day you see a DCI being given the third degree. And a woman DCI at that. I carefully studied the unpleasantly vivid pink linoleum tiles of the floor and made no reply. Neither did one seem to be expected of me. I was stood down.
Robin Davey was the next witness. He looked grave but dignified. I had only ever seen him wearing jeans and chunky sweaters before. On this occasion he was immaculate in a very dark grey suit and he looked even more handsome than he did in casual clothes. Some men don’t. Robin Davey did.
The coroner gave him quite a grilling, although I fancied he was not as hostile in his line of questioning to Robin as he had been to me. But then, maybe Mr Storey didn’t like senior women police officers. He’d have a fair bit of company if that was the case.
Either way Martin Storey began by expressing his sympathies at Robin’s loss, and Robin inclined his head graciously. Certainly if there were still or had ever been any genuine lurking suspicions about Robin having any direct involvement in Natasha’s death none seemed apparent in this court.
Whatever else he might have been, however, the coroner was no push-over.
‘I find it hard to believe that you could have continued to employ Jason Tucker after Miss Piper’s narrow escape,’ said Storey coldly. ‘Was that not the height of irresponsibility, Mr Davey, on an island where hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors every year put their safety in your hands?’
Robin seemed to wince as he bowed his head and looked down at his hands, clasped before him. I could see how white his knuckles were.
He was silent for several seconds. Eventually he raised his head and met the coroner’s interrogative stare — or at least met the one effective half of it.
‘Yes sir, it was criminally irresponsible,’ he said, and there was a buzz around the court. The reporters at the press table opposite the jury began to scribble furiously.
Robin sighed quite audibly.
‘I took a risk, and my fiancée has paid the ultimate price for my folly. I thought I had the situation in control and I didn’t. There is not a day, and there will never be a day in my life, when I will not regret that I didn’t send Jason Tucker off Abri when I had the chance — because I now accept that was the only course of action which would have been sure to avoid such a tragedy on the island.’
He paused. There was a hush in the courtroom.
‘I didn’t do so because Abri was Jason’s home. He was born and brought up there. His family have been on Abri for generations. The Davey family have owned Abri for almost 200 years. The people of Abri are our extended family.’ Robin’s voice broke a little. He paused again. ‘You don’t turn family out,’ he continued eventually. ‘It didn’t even occur to me to do so. I wish to God, for everyone’s sake, that it had.’
Even the coroner seemed mesmerised. I felt tears pricking the backs of my eyes. Mind you, they may have been tears of self-pity.
Storey was not completely bowled over, though. He criticised Robin sternly in his summing up, and made a crack about there being no place in the modern world for feudal loyalties taking precedence over public safety, but he reserved his big guns for me.
‘It is highly regrettable that a senior police officer given first-hand experience of a very dangerous situation should have taken no steps to alert the public safety authorities. Detective Chief Inspector Piper was in the unique situation of being an outsider with an insider’s insight.’
I had expected a bit of a rough ride, but I hadn’t reckoned on being made into some kind of scapegoat, which was the way things were beginning to turn out. An ironic outcome, though, was that as I sat listening to the bloody man I began to feel angry at the injustice of it all more than anything else. My sense of guilt receded quite nicely, in fact. It was one thing for me to feel a certain responsibility — it was entirely another to be treated by a court of law almost as if I were solely to blame for Natasha Felks’ death.