Chapter One

Sensible, professional people weren't meant to experience the things that Jenny Cooper often did. Sane. Sober. Rational. Those were the sort of words that oughtto describe one of Her Majesty's coroners. She held judicial office. Her job was fearlessly to examine the circumstances of unnatural deathsand deliver solid answers. She had become, hard though it was for her to believe, a figure of authority. But in unexpected moments - it could happen as easily during a testy courtroom exchange as in the silence of the night - the membrane between this world and the next became so thin, she felt that if she chose to, she could peer through it like a gauze...