'No . . .' Mrs Jamal said, but without much conviction.
'What I want you to do is go to your doctor and talk about how you're feeling. This won't get better by itself and I want you to feel calm enough to sit through an inquest if we can hold one.'
'I'm not insane, Mrs Cooper, I know what I see. I can't stay here. They'll come in the night—'
'Trust me. Please. I know enough about how people react to understand exactly how you're feeling.' She paused and sensed that, now she had got the attention she craved, Mrs Jamal was actually listening. 'You're feeling very alone, very exposed and very uncertain,' she continued, 'but once you start to see some progress these feelings will pass. You'll have to take my word on that.'
'But I'm frightened, Mrs Cooper.'
'That's perfectly natural. You've lived with an unanswered question for seven years. You're frightened of what the next few weeks might bring.'
Mrs Jamal spoke through quiet sobs. 'I know he wouldn't leave me. He was a good son. He always came to see me, even when his father tried to stop him. Nazim wouldn't leave me.'
Jenny said, 'I'll make you a deal. I'll get on and do my job the best I can, and you get yourself some help to see you through the next few weeks. Can we agree on that?'
'Yes . . .' came the feeble reply. 'Thank you.'
Ross spent the evening locked in his room talking to friends over the internet and listening to music, anything rather than come downstairs to spend time with his mother. To stave off the pangs of rejection Jenny retreated to her study and tried to make an impression on her ever-increasing pile of untended paperwork. Corpses were a good indicator of social trends. In recent weeks she'd had two women under twenty-five who had died following sudden and catastrophic alcohol-related liver failure, and a third who had collapsed and died in a nightclub toilet from alcohol poisoning; two depressed fifteen- year-old boys who had committed suicide after meeting in a chat room; and a married father of thirty-five who had jumped from a motorway bridge when his mortgage company foreclosed. If the young seemed unhappy, the old were scarcely better off. In front of her lay a photograph of an eighty-year- old widower who had rigged up the bedroom in his tiny flat as a makeshift gas chamber. He had left a note explaining that the struggle of making ends meet was too much to bear.
Depressed, Jenny dumped her papers into her briefcase and picked up the phone to call Steve, hoping he might welcome an hour or two away from his draughty barn. There was no reply, not even a machine on which to leave a message. And he didn't have a mobile. She supposed he was out walking his dog, who was now confined to a chicken-wire pound during the weekdays, but when she tried again later, and again and again until midnight, she accepted he wasn't at home. There were any number of explanations why he would be out late on a Wednesday evening, she told herself: he was probably with friends, or staying over with a colleague in Bristol. He wouldn't be with another woman. He couldn't be. Their relationship, however tenuous, was too significant to be betrayed by the temptation of casual sex. And she had never turned him away when she sensed he wanted to spend the night.
Too restless for once to write in her journal, she took two pills and lay in the darkness listening to freezing rain beating on the window. The leaded panes rattled in their shrunken frames and the wind moaned fitfully under the eaves, conjuring ghosts and darker spirits, as she dipped in and out of consciousness. Her last sensation before being pulled into a deep, uneasy sleep was of the ground shifting beneath her, a groaning of the earth, and a sense that something had changed profoundly.
Preoccupied and disturbed as she was, she clung to a semblance of normality throughout the morning routine, making Ross breakfast and keeping up light conversation until she had dropped him at college. Only when he merged into the stream of kids pushing through the school gates did she succumb to the mild attack of panic which had been bubbling under since she had stood under the shower and barely felt the water on her skin. Dr Allen had convinced her that the worst symptoms of her disorder had been confined to the past. He'd drawn her graphs explaining how the medicated brain retrained itself, returning the fight-or-flight response triggered deep in the amygdala to normal levels. He had promised her she wouldn't go back to where she had once been. Yet six months later, trapped in rush-hour traffic, her heart felt twice its normal size and a band was tightening around her diaphragm.
She railed against the symptoms. She shouted and swore at them, drawing stares from other drivers. How dare they return to pollute her life? She fought through each diminishing wave, refusing to pull over and succumb, until the adrenalin at last subsided and left her feeling tired, heavy and hollow. She stopped at lights and pulled down the vanity mirror to look at herself. Her pupils were wide and staring, her face pale: both classic signs of acute anxiety. Fury gave way to despair. Why? Why on an ordinary morning, with nothing to threaten her, was she terrified? What was stirring in her? And why now, when she needed more than ever to be in control, had it chosen to resurface?
Her mobile rang as she pulled into a parking space opposite her office. She nudged the car behind as she fished it out of her handbag. There was a crunch of plastic. She pretended she hadn't heard.
An agitated voice said, 'Mrs Cooper? It's Andy Kerr at the
Vale. I wondered if you had signed release for the removal of the Jane Doe.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I thought perhaps you might have authorized its removal . . . it's gone.'
'What?'
'The body was here yesterday evening and it's missing now.'
'You're serious? Who was on duty?'
'There was only one person on last night. I guess it's possible if someone managed to break in . . .'
She could hear the alarm in his voice. She could already imagine the newspaper headlines: Unidentified Body Stolen from Morgue.
'It's not here, Mrs Cooper. It was in your custody. What should we do?'
'I'll be right there.'
Dr Kerr looked even more ashen than she felt. She followed him along the corridor and stared down at the empty drawer. He explained that the assistant who'd been on night duty was more of a watchman, a Filipino who worked a cleaning shift in the day and sometimes remained overnight. Chances were he would have spent most of his time asleep in the staff rest room, which was around the corner, at least thirty feet from the refrigerator. Intruders could either have come through the door opening onto the car park or along the underground tunnel which led over from the sub-basement level of the main hospital building. There were no signs of forced entry, but the locks were hardly sophisticated.
Jenny said, 'You're sure there hasn't been a mix up? It's not unknown for undertakers to take the wrong body.'
Andy Kerr shook his head. 'We've got thirty-six here at the moment. Every one accounted for.'
Jenny's mind raced over the possibilities, but there was only one logical conclusion: the Jane Doe had been stolen. But why would anyone steal a body?
Nervous, Andy said, 'There's one other thing. You know you mentioned the missing girl who worked at Maybury?'
'Yes?'
'I couldn't get hold of any sophisticated kit, but I did manage to borrow a basic dosimeter from the radiology department. . . The body was emitting low levels of beta and gamma radiation. I couldn't say what isotope, but she'd definitely been exposed to a significant source at some point.'