The Disappeared Read Free Page A

liberation - but driving south along the
twisting Wye valley early on Monday morning through the dense, leafless woods,
she was glad that she'd shortly be relieved of her own company. A workaday week
awaited: hospital and road deaths, industrial accidents and suicides. She drew
a certain comfort from dealing with others' unimaginable traumas with
professional detachment. Being a coroner had given her an illusion of control
and immortality. While Jenny Cooper the forty-two-year-old woman was still
struggling to stay sane and sober, Jenny Cooper the coroner had come to enjoy
her job.
     
    With
a take-out coffee in one hand and her briefcase in the other, Jenny shouldered
open the door to her two-room office suite on the ground floor of the
eighteenth-century terrace off Whiteladies Road. While her small domain had
been made over, the common parts of the building remained tatty and the boards
in the hallway still creaked under the threadbare carpet. The landlord's
refusal to pay for so much as a coat of paint irked her each time she crossed
the threshold. Alison, her officer, was pleased with the compromise, however.
Having spent most of her adult life in the police force, she was comfortable in
down-to-earth surroundings and suspicious of outward show. She liked things
simple and homely. The stylish kidney-shaped desk at which she now sat, sorting
through the pile of documents that had arrived in the overnight DX, was home to
a selection of pot plants, and her state-of-the-art computer monitor was
decorated with inspirational message cards bought at the church bookshop:
Shine as a Light in the World, encircled with childlike angels.
    'Hi,
Alison.'
    'Good
morning, Mrs Cooper. Fifteen death reports over the weekend, I'm afraid.' She
pushed a heap of papers across the desk. 'And there's a lady coming in to see
you in about five minutes. I told her she'd have to make an appointment, but-'
    'Who?'
Jenny interrupted, running through a mental list of the several persistent
obsessives she'd had to fend off lately.
    Alison
checked her message pad. 'Mrs Amira Jamal.'
    'Never
heard of her.' Jenny reached for a spiral-bound folder of police photographs
sitting in her mail tray and flicked through several pictures of the frozen
corpses in the supermarket lorry. 'What did she want?'
    'I
couldn't quite make it out - she was gabbling.'
    'Great.'
Scooping up the reports, Jenny noticed that Alison was wearing a gold cross
outside her chunky polo neck. Not yet fifty-five, she wasn't unattractive - she
had curves and kept her thick bob of hair dyed a natural shade of blonde - but
a hint of staidness had recently crept into her appearance. Ever since she'd
become involved with an evangelical church.
    'It
was a baptism present,' Alison said, a challenging edge to her voice as she
scrolled through her emails.
    'Right.
. .' Jenny wasn't sure how to respond. 'Was this a recent event?'
    'Yesterday.'
    'Oh.
Congratulations.'
    'You
don't have a problem with me wearing it at work?' Alison said.
    'Feel
free.' Jenny gave a neutral smile and pushed through the heavy oak door into
her office, wondering if she'd go the same way at Alison's age. Organized
religion and late-onset lesbianism seemed to be what hit most frequently. She
couldn't decide which she'd opt for given the choice. Maybe she'd try both.
     
    Amira
Jamal was a small, round woman barely more than five feet tall and somewhere in
her fifties. She wore a smart black suit with a large, elaborate silk scarf,
which she lowered from her head and draped around her shoulders as she took her
seat. From a small pull-along suitcase she produced a box file containing a
mass of notes, documents, statements and newspaper articles. She was clearly an
educated woman, but emotional and overwrought: she spoke in short excited
bursts about a missing son, as if assuming Jenny was already familiar with her
case.
    'Seven
years it's taken,' Mrs Jamal said, 'Seven years. I went to the High Court in
London last week, the