Martha didn’t need to go over the facts again. She knew them all off by heart. And yet she was still missing something. Probably staring right at it.
Sitting quietly in her office with no distractions, Martha was able to dig deep into her experience as a coroner and focus on this one case, revise what she believed. Gina Marconi had loved her mother, her son and her fiancé, and she would have spared them from this pain if she had been able. Perhaps Gina’s personal life really had been as perfect as it appeared. Happy and comfortable. But what about her professional life? She was a lawyer who had mingled with dark forces. What was it Curtis Thatcher had said?
‘She dealt with the underworld.’
Martha nodded and recalled something else Thatcher had said.
‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Mosha was in her debt. He’s an evil fellow with a lot of influence. There have been some very dark rumours of murder, torture, bribery, organized crime. If these are true he would have protected her.’
From threats made by other criminals? From blackmail?
‘They were better off in prison.’ Better off? For whom? For them? Had he meant safer on the inside than on the outside? And then his next comment: ‘That even defending them put her in a tricky position.’
Tricky in this instance meant vulnerable. Was there something there? Something Gina had not quite handled right? Had one of her villainous clients a score to settle? And somehow exposed or threatened to expose some anomaly? Martha shifted in her chair. It would have to have been under Mosha Steventon’s radar or he would have avenged her. Who could have known about this? Obviously her partner, Curtis Thatcher. How much would he have known about Gina’s cases? How much had she shared? Did they work together? Even as she wondered about him too she started planning her next move. It seemed a promising area to begin with.
She kept the notes on her desk. The trouble was her link with the police – her mole, Alex, was no longer active. He had his own problems to deal with and was suspended or on ‘gardening leave’ or ‘enforced holiday’ or whatever it was called these days, so she would be restricted to formal channels. Enter by the front door. And tread very gently.
But before events had removed him she and Alex had talked about these two cases and agreed on a few facts. He had been just as wary and dissatisfied with the lack of explanation as she was and he had been aware that she would dig deeper. Alex had helped up to a point, but mobile phone records had revealed little, mainly calls to family and friends. And nothing conclusive had been unearthed during interviews. Colleagues at work (her secretary and the cleaner) had said she had appeared distracted recently. But they always say that after the event and there was no detail. Her secretary had added she had seemed a bit dreamy.
What imminent bride is not?
Martha cupped her chin in her hand and dreamed herself. Dreamy, distracted. She made a silent apology – Forgive me for being a romantic – but didn’t that sound just like a woman anticipating a wedding to a heroic character?
But if you factor in a suicide with someone appearing dreamy or distracted prior to her wedding the picture forming starts to look rather different. Had Gina been having second thoughts? Had Gina let herself down? Was she about to let Julius down? Her mother and son too, who had formed such a close bond with him?
Only one way to find out.
She picked up the phone and asked Jericho to make further appointments with Gina Marconi’s mother, her fiancé and her son. Feeling she was fumbling her way forward in understanding Gina’s death she put her notes to one side and picked up Patrick Elson’s file.
Her other mystery.
A little like Gina Marconi’s, his life had appeared on the surface clean and untroubled. Yes, he was being brought up by a lone mum and there was little evidence of a father figure, but Patrick had been part of a huge extended and loving family. He had grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. The Elsons had been a large, rumbustious, supportive family and financially sound – not wealthy, but they had managed. Amanda Elson had a part-time job as a support teacher. Martha picked up the school photograph of the boy, looked at his confident, freckled face, his big grin. It could have been Sam, her own son, footballer, wannabe teacher. She imagined how she would feel if he too had jumped off a bridge on to a road and into the path of fast-moving traffic. Her heart almost stopped at the thought. It was too awful. She suppressed the urge to ring him. Right now. Check he was OK.
She glanced at her watch. He would be in training.
So instead, when she picked up the phone she asked Jericho to make another appointment with Amanda Elson. Now she had her distractions. Adding the two cases to her routine work would keep her busy; her next few days spoken for. It would make it easier for her to hold back on her instinct to try and find out the truth behind Erica Randall’s death.
She could leave that to the police, David Steadman and Dr Mark Sullivan. It was their job. Not hers.