The Innocent: A Coroner Jenny Cooper Crime Short Read Free

busy.’
    ‘Is this my punishment for not having her locked up?’
    ‘These things happen, Jenny. It can’t be helped. They’d like you there as soon as possible, if you don’t mind.’

FOUR
    The thought of visiting a mortuary filled Jenny with dread. The only dead body she had seen had been her grandmother’s when Jenny was twelve, and then only a glimpse of her face and the chalk-white skin of her bony hands. She arrived at the old Victorian mortuary at Frenchay Hospital and was met with the heavy smell of disinfectant and decay leaking through the door and polluting the air outside. She pressed the intercom.
    ‘Hello?’ a disembodied voice crackled back at her.
    ‘Jenny Cooper. I’m here for the identification.’
    ‘Come in.’
    Jenny entered a gloomy tiled corridor with a vaulted ceiling. The architects had attempted to conjure the atmosphere of a church, but had created a crypt. There were no windows that Jenny could see, just a line of gurneys – there had to be at least half a dozen of them – each one holding a body wrapped in dazzling white plastic.
    Jenny’s legs felt suddenly weak, as if they might fold beneath her.
    A short, slight male dressed in a waist-length white coat buttoned tight across his narrow chest emerged through swing doors to her right.
    ‘Mrs Cooper?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Joe, the technician.’ He was a man of sixty but moved with the speed and lightness of a flyweight boxer. He smiled as he approached her, not kindly, Jenny felt, but with a morbid sense of mischief. ‘The police officer’s already here. Do you want to come through?’
    She nodded – she could hardly refuse – and followed him along the length of the corridor to another set of doors marked ‘Refrigeration Unit’. Jenny bowed her head to avoid looking at the shrouded bodies.
    ‘Not family, are you?’ Joe said.
    ‘No,’ Jenny answered. ‘I dealt with her professionally.’
    ‘That’s good. You wouldn’t want family to see this.’
    Jenny followed him through the door. She felt nauseous.
    Detective Sergeant Pete Murray was leaning against the wall checking his text messages. With short, dyed-blond hair and a gold stud in his ear, he didn’t look like a police officer. He was Jenny’s age, perhaps a year or two younger, and, she had always assumed, gay. She suspected he’d suffered in his young life and was still trying to settle the score.
    Pete looked at her, but didn’t say a word.
    ‘All right?’ Joe said.
    Jenny nodded and watched while he opened a large refrigerator door, then slid out a drawer that moved on silent runners.
    Even though the girl’s remains were wrapped in plastic, Jenny could see that they were in several parts.
    ‘Just the face.’ Pete broke his silence to issue the instruction.
    Joe peeled back the flap covering the head and Jenny forced herself to look, digging her fingernails into the palms of her clenched hands.
    The face was violently bruised and the long, black hair matted with blood, but the delicate features were Natasha’s. Even dead she was beautiful. Too beautiful . The words popped into Jenny’s mind unprompted. She pushed them away.
    ‘Yes. It’s her.’
    Joe slid the drawer back into the cabinet. Jenny turned and went with Pete to the door, anxious to get away.
    They walked several steps along the tiled corridor in silence, then Pete said, ‘I’ve got the mother in the car. I don’t know if you want to say anything to her.’
    ‘Oh. Do you think it’s a good time?’
    ‘Up to you.’ He gave her a look that said it would be cowardly of her to leave it all to him.
    ‘OK. I’ll talk to her.’ Nothing could be worse than what she had just experienced.
    Karen was sitting in the front seat of the unmarked police car dressed in the black suit she always wore to court, her plaited hair tied up in a bun with artfully arranged strands framing her face. She was a pretty woman who in another life might have had a house, a job and a husband. But Jenny