Read The Innocent: A Coroner Jenny Cooper Crime Short for Free Online Page A

was preying on my daughter.’
    ‘And your evidence for this is her behaviour during the court hearing in July?’
    ‘She never missed an opportunity to get her alone in one of those interview rooms. I only wish I’d said something.’ She pressed a soggy tissue to her eyes. ‘But who was going to listen to me?’
    ‘Were you ever aware of Mrs Cooper contacting Natasha at other times?’
    ‘I wouldn’t have known about it. But there must have been something going on. Why else would Natasha have called her from the station? I can’t help wondering if they got close, then Mrs Cooper got scared and dropped her.’
    ‘Let me get this straight.’ Bolter showed no sign of embarrassment. ‘Are you alleging that your daughter had a sexual relationship with Mrs Cooper?’
    ‘I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t see any other explanation. And if you think how well Natasha was getting on with her granddad, Mrs Cooper must have worried what she might say to him. Worried that he was going to shop her.’
    Mr and Mrs Bartlett, the foster parents, testified one after another, offering Jenny only the faintest glimmer of light. Both said that Natasha had been no trouble at all for the entire six weeks she had lived with them. The only hint of real upset had come the evening before her disappearance. She had arrived home twenty minutes late from school. When Mrs Bartlett asked her where she had been, she reacted angrily saying it was none of her business, and stormed up to her bedroom. But after a little while she cheered up and the incident was forgotten. The three of them ate dinner together, watched TV until ten o’clock, then Natasha had gone to bed as normal. The Bartletts had discussed having a word with her teacher, but decided to leave it a day or two. When they came down for breakfast at seven the next morning, Natasha had already left the house. She had been crafty: to avoid the noise of unlocking the heavy bolts on the front door, she had climbed through a downstairs window.
    Bolter pushed them both for anything that might have suggested Natasha had a secret or inappropriate relationship they hadn’t been aware of. Frank Bartlett said no, she had always seemed very happy, but when his wife was faced with the same question she hesitated, then answered that there had been one or two occasions during the fortnight since she had been back at school, when Natasha had come home a few minutes later than usual seeming slightly withdrawn.
    ‘Did you ask her what the matter was?’ Bolter inquired.
    ‘The second time it happened I asked her once if she had a boyfriend. She went bright red and said, “No way.” I thought then that must be it – boy trouble. It usually is.’
    Jenny had wanted to dislike Jack Greenslade, but she couldn’t. He looked like what he was – an ageing manual labourer, with thick arms and a drinker’s gut – but there was something disarming about him: she supposed it was the honesty of the penitent. He had been a young man when he met Karen’s mother, he told Bolter, and they’d had a turbulent on-again off-again relationship for most of his daughter’s young life. He had tried to patch things up with Karen during her teens, but it hadn’t worked – his fault more than hers – and then he had moved to London. After fifteen years away he had decided to come back to Bristol and, hoping that time would have healed some of the wounds, wrote to Karen saying he’d like to meet and talk. She didn’t respond – in his heart he hadn’t expected her to – but he knew he had a granddaughter, and a woman at the Citizens’Advice Bureau told him he might have a right to see her. He was put in touch with Judy Harris who arranged for him to meet Natasha at a family contact centre, by which time she was already living with the Bartletts.
    ‘You can’t understand till you’ve known it yourself,’ he said, his voice thick with emotion, ‘this young girl comes through the door and you