When he had gone the room seemed empty, although, as Martha contemplated, Alex was hardly an intrusive personality. He didn’t fill the room with loud jokes, a booming voice or a dominant presence. His voice was quiet – she’d rarely heard it raised. And he tended to think carefully before he spoke, hesitating as he searched for the right word or phrase. He was a man of quiet decency and strong convictions. For a while after he left she sat, thinking. Then she picked up the file, and as she read through it she began to see why Alex Randall had come to her to share his concerns.
It was baffling. As Martha read each page and began to form a picture of the dead woman, she began to realize something here was very wrong.
Gina Marconi had been a high-profile, intelligent criminal lawyer and, looking at the photograph again, she had also been beautiful. In a town the size of Shrewsbury, she would have been well known. Martha stared at her photograph for a few seconds, trying to understand what on earth had driven this woman to such a violent act when she had, apparently, so much to live for. She searched her memory. Had she ever met her in real life? In the flesh? She shook her head. But she had been aware of her through pictures in the two local papers, The Shrewsbury Chronicle and The Shropshire Star, as well as pieces in Shropshire Life. Alex had photocopied a couple of them and inserted them into the folder. Martha read through them and studied each one of the accompanying photographs. Gina’s vibrancy shone from the pages, a brilliant smile, beautiful teeth, confidence lighting up every single picture. Not a hint of doubt or depression. She had been as photogenic as a supermodel with a huge, white-toothed smile on a perfect face, a curtain of dark, shining hair, a slim figure and confident air. Martha read more. Not many supermodels have an Oxford first degree in law, are articulate as a public speaker and are a partner in a flourishing practice in an affluent town. Gina had been everything a small girl might aspire to. She had both the gifts: beauty and intelligence. She had been admired in and around Shrewsbury, not only for her wit and skill in defending high-profile cases, or even because she was photogenic. The cherry on top of the icing on the cake had been that she’d been engaged to a BBC foreign correspondent who was equally charismatic, except his charisma had been augmented by bravery and a certain gung-ho spirit. Julius Zedanski had been filmed facing a Daesh member wielding an AK47 and had not flinched. That image alone would have been enough to ensure his place in the nation’s hearts. Don’t we all love a hero? Wasn’t that what everyone would like to have done when in real life their legs would have turned to jelly and their brains to water? But Julius Zedanski had somehow survived this encounter when so many others had not. He had kept his head, literally and metaphorically, continued with his broadcast, practically ignoring the bent arms, the clenched fists and the black flag waving behind him, and had coolly returned to his Jeep and left. Film intact. On another occasion, cameras rolling, he had grabbed a gun from a terrorist in Beirut and brandished it at the cowering and clearly terrified man, but not shot him. Oh, no. Julius Zedanski had handed the man (and the gun) over to the authorities, cameras still rolling. And then, to show his softer side, he had rescued refugee children from the waters around Lesvos, one under each arm. These pictures had given him the romanticism of a Robin Hood, a Black Prince, a defender of the faith. A saviour. He was what we all wanted: a real life superhero. Brave Heart – that was the epithet which had been applied to him.
Brave Heart.
Had Rageh Omaar not already been given the epithet of Stud Missile it could equally have been applied to Julius. He was devastatingly romantic and attractive, and with Gina on his arm they almost outclassed the Clooneys. They were a charmed couple.
In reality Julius Zedanski was a Politics, Philosophy and Economics Oxford graduate of Polish origin with an engaging grin and bright blue eyes. This was Gina Marconi’s fiancé. A wedding had been planned for September at St Chad’s Church in the centre of Shrewsbury.
Alex was right. This death was odd. Gina had had everything to live for … surely?
Martha picked up the phone to speak to Jericho, preparing to set the date for the opening of the inquest, which would be adjourned pending investigations. Monday, 20 March.
Then she connected with the mortuary, only to be told that Dr Sullivan was in the middle of the post-mortem and would ring her back.
Maybe, she thought, he would have some answers. But somehow she doubted it.
She looked at the pictures and articles scattered across her desk. She rarely had so much colour in her cases. Normally she couldn’t put flesh on bones or form living pictures because she never met her subjects living, only their ghostly shadows after death illuminated by the accounts of others, family, friends. Sometimes rivals or enemies, people who hated them as well as those who had loved them. She only ever saw the negatives, their imprint, empty footprints without feet or shoes. That is the nature of a coroner’s work. All she would have to work with would be the written and submitted statements about them, descriptions seen through others’ eyes, and watch the tears shed for them. The detritus of a life and death. Gina had been dead for just a couple of days. One week ago she had been a living, breathing person, with something bad growing inside her. And now the investigations had hardly begun. According to the preliminary police reports and interviews there had been no indication of Gina’s intention in recent days.
Martha scanned the statements. According to Gina’s traumatized son and her equally traumatized mother this was totally – totally, they’d repeated more than once – out of character.
So what was all this about?
She picked up the phone and connected with Alex Randall. ‘What do you know about her professional life?’
‘Huh. Murky, Martha,’ he said. ‘She was involved with some high-profile cases and defended some very nasty pieces of work, but if you want more detail you really need to talk to her partner, Julius Zedanski, and her law partner, Curtis Thatcher. They’ll know much more.’
‘I will.’
She could picture his frown.
‘Why are you barking up this tree? She wasn’t murdered, you know. It just isn’t possible given the facts. She took her own life which, as you can imagine, means it isn’t really a police matter, so it’s over to you. None of those idiots she was happily defending would have had the brains to get the better of her.’
‘I’m only digging around,’ Martha defended. ‘Just digging. And her GP?’
There was a pause, probably while Randall looked this one up, finally coming up with: ‘A Doctor Milligan.’
‘Stuart Milligan.’
‘Yes, that’s the guy.’
‘I know him, or rather I know of him. A trusty and experienced Sheffield graduate with years of experience behind him. I’ve had a few dealings with him.’
‘Did you ever meet her, Martha?’
‘No.’
As she put the phone down, she knew she had two good starting blocks.
She returned to the file and read through two of Gina’s friends’ statements, both of whom expressed shock and knew no reason why their friend might have wanted to end her life. No clue there.
She closed the file and caught the picture again. Stared at it, searching for something.
But what she actually felt were the stirrings of guilt, a memory. What she’d told Alex about not knowing Ms Marconi wasn’t strictly true. While she hadn’t been familiar with her, she had met her.
Two Christmases ago Martha had attended a charity ball in aid of the NSPCC. It had been held at the Albrighton Hall Hotel, an upmarket place with lovely grounds to the north of the town, coincidentally within half a mile of the road on which Gina Marconi had decided to kill herself – if that was the truth and there was no other explanation. Martha smiled. She had been with Simon Pendlebury that night – since both were widowed they tended to attend formal occasions together, simply as a way of going at all. They had arrived late, around nine p.m. Simon had been concluding some business deal and had apologized profusely. When they had entered the ball had been well under way – crowded and noisy even in the anteroom but not too noisy to hear, just as she walked in, a loud, earthy laugh. There had been something sparkly about it.
She had searched for the source of the raucous merriment and had seen a woman in a short gold dress standing in the centre of a group of men and women. She had been tossing around her head of long, shining dark hair with its hint of a curl, and her animation and warmth had reached right across the room. She was obviously relating some funny story and had her audience’s rapt attention and mirth. The man on her arm, olive-skinned, was also suitably glamorous. Martha had been intrigued.
She’d turned to Simon. ‘Some lawyer or other,’ he’d said, reading her mind. ‘Don’t really know her. Not personally, anyway.’ And then the evening had gone on and Martha had forgotten the encounter.
Until now.
And this was the same woman who had apparently driven her car straight and deliberately into a brick wall?