A reader once told me that she pictured me writing my books while ‘sitting in a summerhouse overlooking a lake’. An idyllic image but one that would raise a wry smile among fellow authors. In fact, writing the 2500+ words a week required means sitting at the laptop six or seven hours a day, staring out of a window at an often-rainy East London. I do it because I love the results of the process – a published novel that hits the spot with readers. (I love Dorothy Parker’s brilliant response when asked if she ‘enjoyed’ writing: ‘I enjoy having written.’)
Because Cassie Raven, the lead character of my series is a crime-solving goth girl mortuary technician who spots overlooked clues in routine (ie non-forensic) post mortems, I need to conduct lots of research, which enlivens my day. I have a ‘panel’ of specialists on speed dial – including a mortuary technician, a pathologist, a former coroner, and police detective.
Recently I escaped my desk to attend an inquest – not, thankfully, involving anyone I know – but in order to describe the process for a scene. The coroner’s court I visited is set on the edge of a cemetery, and to reach it you have to walk past the old mortuary, a creepy and dilapidated single-storey 19th century building. By contrast, the court building itself is spanking-new, all blond wood and lofty ceilings, and in the waiting area, the coroner’s clerk was welcoming a bereaved family and explaining sensitively what they could expect. Inquests, like almost all court proceedings, are open to the public but I did explain to the clerk that I was there for research purposes, in case the deceased’s family members wondered who was the lone woman in the public seating area.
The case was a sad one: a late-middle-aged man living alone who had apparently died of a drug overdose. Because this poor guy had a history of contact with mental health services, representatives from the hospital trust were there to give their account of events and be questioned by the coroner. It is not, however, the coroner’s job to apportion blame; he or she can advise improvements to systems, but any further judicial action is for other courts. In this case the coroner was relaxed and informal and made great efforts to involve the family, asking for their input and explaining any tricky legal and medical details. And I hope that the family took some comfort from his finding, that the cause of death was an accidental overdose, exacerbated by underlying health issues.
A summerhouse with a lake view might sound idyllic, but an East End coroner’s court on a rainy Tuesday provides far more food for the imagination.
Case Sensitive by A K Turner is published by Zaffre Books and available via Amazon and all good bookshops. A K ‘s website is www.anyalipska.com.
