She smiled politely. He had confused her with somebody else.
One of the book trays contained foreign language novels. She rifled through the French section, looking for something her mother, Claire, might like to read. Her fingers halted at a tattered paperback, the cover striped in green and cream bands, like an old Penguin crime. La revanche de Peredur. She pulled it out. In the corner, someone had written what looked like O/S in faint pencil. She supposed it could be a zero and a five – a price tag, in old money. She turned the pages. The novel was presented as a parallel text. Half in French. Half in Kreol.
‘How much for this?’ she asked.
*
The inquest room was plainer than Odette had expected. She’d never been to court, and legal dramas had led her to imagine a panelled chamber, rather than magnolia walls and stackable conference chairs. A dozen people were already waiting, scattered like counters on a battleships board. Odette sat at the end of a row. Her nearest neighbour was a man of thirty or so, who was slight, with dark curls. He held a tablet and was frowning at whatever was typed there.
A side door opened to admit the coroner. Earlier in the month Odette had met him for a brief conversation. His name was Stuart Yelland; he was in his sixties, likeable, and he screwed up his left eye when he thought of a question. He took his place behind the table and said a few words about the process to follow.
‘You will have noticed,’ he said, ‘that the inquest announcement didn’t include the deceased’s name. Although DNA, dental and fingerprint profiles were gathered, she could not be matched to a missing person record. Nor were there identifying documents on her person.’
In Odette’s row, the curly haired man sighed and shook his head.
The first person Yelland called to speak was the police officer who had taken statements at the museum. She recounted the police’s initial impressions of the scene, and the body.
‘The deceased was in a basement room, with only one entry point, which had been bolted from the inside. The bolt had been wrenched from the wall, allegedly by the first person on the scene.’
She stared hard at Odette. The memory of the bolt, swinging in the half light, flashed through Odette’s brain. She raised a hand to her mouth.
Returning her gaze to the coroner, the policewoman continued. ‘The deceased was white, female, and of advanced age – in her seventies or a well preserved eighties. At the base of her neck she had a laceration scar, ten centimetres in length, which predated the occasion of her death. She had four fresh gunshot wounds in her stomach, one in her left hand, and one in her head.’
Each detail that the police officer provided made the pictures before Odette’s eyes a little more vivid. Odette’s palms were damp. Her breathing was shallow.
‘The bullets were embedded in the wall behind, indicating she had been shot at the scene. The number of gunshot wounds raises the probability of homicide.’
‘How so?’ Yelland asked.
‘It’s hard to shoot yourself more than once.’
‘Hard – but not impossible?’ Yelland prompted. ‘I’m trying to reconcile how she could have been murdered, then locked the door after her killer’s departure.’
‘Shooting yourself more than once might be possible, but it’s improbable. And in my professional experience, gunshot wounds to the hand are defence injuries.’
To Odette’s relief, that drew the police officer’s testimony to a close. Revisiting the details of the crime scene made Odette nauseous. How on earth was she going to give her own account, if she struggled to hear the police officer’s?
The coroner called the pathologist as the next witness. She enumerated, in slow Yorkshire vowels, the weights and lengths of internal organs, which took some time. Eventually she moved on to the deceased woman’s injuries.
‘Swabs from the wounds revealed some evidence of bacteraemia,’ the pathologist said. ‘The culture was somewhat… unusual.’
‘Unusual how?’
‘We identified two types of bacteria. Deinococcus radiodurans, and a nasty little pathogen called alkalibacterium macromonas. They’re both bacteria that thrive in radioactive environments. Previously I’ve only encountered them in high concentrations at nuclear power stations. My conjecture is that either the deceased had recently visited such a site, or the bullets had been stored in radioactive conditions. The bullets may then have introduced the bacteria to her bloodstream at the point of impact.’
‘Might this woman have died from an infection?’
‘No. Macromonas works quickly, but not as fast as a bullet to the brain.’
Odette twisted the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. She focused and defocused on the dots in the cotton. Anything to root her in the here and now, to prevent her from flying back into that room in the museum cellar.
But she had to return there. Her time to speak arrived.
There was a jug of water waiting, when she took her place at the front. Gratefully, she poured herself a glass and took a sip.
‘Please take us through the events as you experienced them,’ the coroner asked.
‘It was two o’clock in the afternoon,’ Odette began. ‘I know it was dead on two, because it was my first day volunteering, and I kept checking the time. The main door was locked. I let myself in, and there was the most awful, rotting smell.’
She paused.
‘Take your time,’ the coroner said. But Odette had only ever heard that phrase from people who wish you to continue. She took another sip of water, and blinked slowly.
‘I opened the windows. The smell was coming from the back of the room, and down the stairs.’
‘Was there any evidence of disturbance?’
‘Nothing but the smell. Everything looked… normal. But I had only been there once before. Everything looked normal till I reached the boiler room door.’
She remembered the maroon stain across the floor.
‘Miss Sophola?’
‘Something had… collected… in a pool… It was reddish, and clotted. I thought my imagination might be running away with me.’ She looked at the coroner fearfully. ‘That’s why I didn’t call the police straight away. I tried the door. It was locked.’
‘Miss Sophola, this is a very important point. The evidence points to an assailant who must have escaped the room somehow. Are you quite certain that the door was locked on your arrival?’
‘Absolutely. When I forced the door, I wrenched the bolt off – I saw it swinging – I saw it—’
Her lip trembled. The discovery behind the bolted door was present and vivid and filled her senses. Stuart Yelland was asking another question, but Odette barely made out the words: she was hearing, again, the boiler ignite in the basement. She could smell the corpse. She was standing in its blood. Without thinking she covered her face with her hands, as if she might still block out the stench.
‘Miss Sophola?’ Stuart Yelland’s voice sounded so far away. ‘I’m going to call a short break.’
Odette felt a hand on her shoulder. It was the coroner’s assistant – a stocky woman in a grey suit. She smiled reassuringly at Odette as she led her to the next room.
*
No further questions were required of Odette once she had collected herself. She was unsure whether to stay for the rest of the inquest. Her desire to understand the case repeatedly collided with the fear she would lose her grip again. In the end she reached the compromise of sitting in the corridor until the close of day.
The attendees eventually filed from the inquest. Stuart Yelland was the last of them. She stood up and caught his attention with a wave.
‘Can I ask how it went?’ she asked, when he approached her.