The spectre of Natasha did not entirely leave us. Once I found him studying a snapshot of her that he must still have kept in his wallet and the pain in his eyes was all too clear. But then, I was learning that he was deeply passionate, and I would not have wanted him to be the kind of man able to readily forget.
‘I will never forget her,’ he told me one night as I lay in his arms. ‘Any more than I will my wife or child. But you have made me believe there might still be something else for me, Rose. Another new start . . .’
His hands began to explore me again. Neither of us could get enough of each other. Our lovemaking overtook our pasts, overwhelmed our present, and would, I knew, shape any future we might have together.
We were still at the stage where the sex was getting better and better when the bombshell struck. Robin was at my flat early one morning when he phoned the island to pick up his messages. I saw the muscles of his face stiffen. He looked strained and uneasy when he replaced the receiver and didn’t answer at first when I asked him what was wrong.
‘Apparently I have to call Superintendent Mallett,’ he said eventually, and I could tell that he was trying to sound cool and unconcerned and not succeeding very well.
I felt the need to reassure him.
‘Just routine I expect, clearing up the loose ends,’ I told him, vaguely aware that was a fairly standard police response.
‘I expect so,’ he murmured. ‘Something about some new evidence, and needing to talk to me again.’
‘Todd Mallett has a reputation for never giving up,’ I remarked, more to myself than to him.
He glanced at me sharply. Then he gave a wry smile.
‘It’ll be nothing,’ he said. ‘I just sometimes wonder if I’m ever going to be allowed to live my life again.’
I left for the nick soon after seven and Robin said he would call Todd later in the morning from my flat. Obscurely, and a little disloyally, I felt glad that I had had the 1471 call back facility removed from my home telephone line. I didn’t particularly want any of my colleagues, and certainly not Todd Mallett, to know where Robin Davey was ringing from. Not yet anyway.
Robin didn’t call me on my mobile during the day, as he had already got into the habit of doing, and I resisted the temptation to try to call him. In any case I had quite enough to occupy my mind playing political games with Titmuss the Terrible who seemed determined to keep me on a back burner for as long as possible.
Mainly because of this I had nothing to keep me late at the office any more. I left Portishead shortly after 6 p.m., and when I got home found the flat in darkness. I switched on the lights in the living room first, and was startled to see Robin sitting quite still in my leather swivel chair. I wondered how long he had been there, alone in the dark.
‘Please tell me,’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
At first I feared he was not even going to answer me. It seemed a very long time before he spoke.
‘It’s all started again, Rose, they’ve reopened enquiries into Natasha’s death.’
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘There must be a reason.’
He nodded. ‘It’s bizarre,’ he said. ‘Quite bizarre.’
Again I waited. Eventually he continued.
‘It appears that Natasha carved my name into the Pencil while she was trapped out there . . . or so they say . . .’ his voice trailed away.
‘But who found it, and how do they know Natasha did it?’ The questions tumbled out.
Robin glared at me. ‘You’re the cop – how the hell am I supposed to know the answers to stuff like that?’ he snapped. ‘All I do know is that whatever they have found and whatever lies behind it they reckon it’s enough to start raking over the whole bloody thing again.’
He looked tired and strained.
‘Can’t think how they didn’t spot it to begin with, then it would all be over by now,’ he said. ‘Right after Tash died, they sent a load of those Scenes of Crime people over in all that fancy gear they wear, for goodness’ sake.’
I shrugged. ‘People think missing evidence and mistakes like that don’t happen any more with modern methods,’ I told him. ‘But of course they do. I once worked on a case where the SOCOs managed to miss a suicide note.’
On a good day that may have made him smile. Not today. I went to him and put an arm around him in a bid to give him comfort, but to no avail. He shook himself free.
‘They want to interview me again,’ he said glumly. ‘I’m to go to Barnstaple tomorrow.’
That night was the first night we had ever spent together when we didn’t make love. And I don’t think either of us slept more than an hour or two either. In the morning I went through the pretence of making some breakfast which we didn’t eat. Robin was very quiet. Perhaps neither of us knew what to say to each other.
‘I’ll fly back to Abri direct from Barnstaple,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ve been away too long again already.’
He reached into his pocket and took out the key to my flat, which I was already in the habit of giving him when he was in town, and put it on the kitchen worktop.
Robin travelled to and from the island by helicopter, and I knew there was a field just outside the North Devon town which passed for a heliport. I understood his need to return to Abri but I was suddenly afraid to let him go, certainly without being able at least to talk to him after his interview at Barnstaple nick.
‘Couldn’t you come back here tonight and then fly on to the island tomorrow?’ I asked, trying not to sound too intense about it.
‘That doesn’t make much sense, Rose,’ he began. ‘It’s a longer journey and besides . . .’
He was looking at me in a curious sort of way as his voice just tailed off. With one hand he touched my hair, which, as I had yet to force it into some sort of submission, was even more of an unruly ball of fluff than usual.
‘Of course,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll see you back here tonight.’
And it was at that moment that I first thought that perhaps he loved me, although he had yet to tell me so.
We both left the flat just before eight. Me to go to work, Robin to drive to Barnstaple for the interview – yet another interview, as he described it.
The day seemed to last for ever. It was the end of July now, and the hot sticky weather which had begun in June continued. Portishead was supposed to be air conditioned but the heat was such that I felt drained and uncomfortable. I found it extremely difficult to concentrate on the report on abuse of handicapped children which I was still compiling. Every time my phone rang I hoped it would be Robin with some news. He didn’t call. And somehow I resisted the temptation to phone Todd Mallett or any of my Devon and Cornwall Constabulary contacts. When I arrived back at the flat I was relieved for more reasons than one to see that at least the lights were on.
Robin was in the kitchen preparing a salad. A couple of juicy looking salmon steaks sat on the grill pan ready to cook. Like everyone else in my life Robin had already learned that it was probably best if he did the cooking.
He turned and smiled as I walked in. He still looked tired and strained, but he seemed and sounded curiously determined when he spoke.
‘I’m not going to let this get me down, Rose,’ he said. ‘We have too much together, you and I. I’m not going to let it be spoiled.’
I went to him and wrapped my arms around him as I had tried to do the previous night and this time he did not reject me. He leaned towards me and kissed the top of my head. Then he tipped my face towards him and his lips found mine. He tasted as good as ever. The kiss was warm, loving, reassuring – and as full of the sensuality and sexual promise that I had grown to expect.
After a few seconds he drew away, and rubbed the tip of one finger lightly along the line of my mouth.
‘Later,’ he said, with a big big smile. ‘First, let’s have a drink. There’s some champagne in the fridge.’
We took our glasses into the sitting room and sat side by side on the cream sofa.
&nb
sp; ‘Always remember, Rose, when in doubt drink champagne,’ he instructed, and used the tip of his tongue, chilled by the cold drink, to lightly tantalise my lips. For a moment I thought maybe everything was going to be all right again after all. But it quickly became apparent when Robin began to tell me what he had learned that day and what had happened to him at Barnstaple Police Station, that his good humour was more than a little forced.
‘I was interviewed for over two hours, then asked to wait, then interviewed again, over and over, the same thing, Rose,’ he said. ‘It was as if they were trying to trip me up, or maybe break me.’
‘Robin, just explain to me exactly what they’ve got,’ I said.
‘This bloody carving. Tash always carried a small penknife on her. It was still in her pocket when they found her body, apparently. And they’ve checked it out. That was the knife used to carve my name in the rock . . . just where she would have been clinging to it before she couldn’t hang on any longer.’
He hesitated slightly over the last few words. It may have been the light but his tan seemed to have faded dramatically. His face looked almost white.
‘But that doesn’t prove anything, Robin,’ I told him.
He looked at me, and I could hear the anguish in his voice when he spoke again. ‘I know. But it seems it’s enough for them to start a whole new investigation, to rake up the whole nightmare. That’s what I find so hard to cope with, having to relive it all. They kept going on about a new witness. Wouldn’t tell me more. I thought they were trying to frighten me, perhaps.’
He looked away, ran a hand across his forehead.
‘I don’t know any more Rose, don’t know what to think. I thought it was all over, I really did.’
I wasn’t sure what else to say to him. It was difficult to find the right words, impossible maybe.
‘Would you like me to grill the salmon?’ I asked eventually.
He stood up quickly. ‘Don’t you dare go near it,’ he commanded. ‘Things aren’t that desperate yet.’
Even at a time like this he could make me laugh. He really was a magical man.
I was, however, very uneasy. The guilt I felt concerning Natasha Felks, and not least over my shameless sense of relief that she was tidily out of the way, niggled at me. Ever since the night Robin and I had first made love I knew that I had been behaving like an ostrich. I had simply put the whole horrible business of Natasha out of my mind, dismissing it as just something in the past. I had chosen to ignore the suspicious aspects of the woman’s death. Now it was all back again.
There was, however, no way I could make myself stop seeing Robin. That was not something I even considered – and seeing was a very polite way of putting it. The physical side of our relationship overshadowed everything else at work and at home. Some days it felt as if that was all I lived for, perhaps all that either of us lived for.
My workload was lighter than it had ever been. I could toss off the various reports, most of them meaningless, which Titmuss was now firmly in the habit of landing on my desk – in order to keep me away from real police work I had no doubt – with one hand tied behind my back. I had not joined the police force to shuffle bits of paper about and I had never been quite so dissatisfied with the job. I even used to sometimes sneak home for an extended lunch-break when Robin was in Bristol, and more often than not we would end up making love. I had never before allowed sex or matters of the heart to interfere in any way with my career. My ambition had always taken precedence – until Robin came into my life since when the job had on some occasions ceased to matter at all.
It was perhaps ironic that we were in bed one early September afternoon in the throws of particularly imaginative sex, certain as ever to make me forget all sense or reason, when my mobile phone rang and I received another bit of news which shocked me rigid.
Young Stephen Jeffries had disappeared.
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I began to wonder what sort of judge of character I was. Could I be wrong about Stephen Jeffries’ father? And, if so, what about the man I loved? Both men were such plausible characters in their very different ways. It was unlike me not to be sure of myself. But I really wasn’t any more.
Certainly, as far as Richard Jeffries was concerned I knew that I had turned my back on my instinctive gut reaction to the man and listened only to logic. Young Stephen was now missing and the implications were all too obvious. Police history is littered with cases of persistent child abuse when the abuser has gone too far, or maybe simply become afraid that the child will tell, and the result has been a murder investigation.
I knew all too well that it was my pronouncement at the Information Sharing Meeting in March, that we had no grounds to continue a police investigation, which had realistically dismissed any possibility of Stephen Jeffries being taken into care or even being kept on the At Risk register. I also knew that the final decision had been made responsibly by a body of experienced experts, that the weight of responsibility did not lie solely on my shoulders, and that the investigation I had headed had been properly and thoroughly executed. None of that made me feel any better.
‘We’ve got to accept we were wrong, boss,’ said Peter Mellor. ‘Maybe we should have pushed for those children to be taken away from their parents. Certainly it looks like we shouldn’t have closed the investigation.’
‘Do you think I’m not aware of that, Peter,’ I snapped. I shouldn’t have spoken to him like that, but my nerves were shot to pieces on this one. I feared the worst and I really didn’t want the death of a nine-year-old handicapped boy on my conscience.
Mellor flinched. I kicked myself.
‘Sorry Peter,’ I muttered.
He nodded imperceptibly, and then, professional as ever, merely continued with what he had been going to say in the first place.
‘It’s not cut and dried, though, boss,’ he said. ‘Claudia Smith was almost certainly right that something was going on concerning Stephen Jeffries. But even assuming the likelihood of persistent sexual abuse, there is still no evidence yet that Richard Jeffries was involved.’
I sighed involuntarily. I was unconvinced. ‘But as the boy’s father he would have had more access than anyone else,’ I said. ‘Particularly in the case of a Down’s Syndrome child, who is physically and mentally less able to move around and to mix than other children.’
‘Well, yes, boss,’ Mellor replied, thorough in his thinking as in everything else. ‘I’m just saying that even now we shouldn’t rush to prejudge Jeffries, that’s all. He may still be innocent.’
‘I wish I could believe that,’ I said.
It was early in the morning of the day after Stephen Jeffries had been reported missing. Mellor and I were sitting in the incident room at the new Kingswood Major Crime Investigation Centre, which had finally taken the place of the old portacabin complex at Staple Hill. We were waiting for Richard Jeffries to be brought in. Somewhat to my surprise, in view of my present poor relationship with Titmuss, I had been asked to head the missing-child investigation. Apparently the general feeling was that I had learned too much about the Jeffries case not to make my services invaluable as Senior Investigating Officer.
I at once appointed my old friend Inspector Phyllis Jordan, the best organiser in the business, as my office manager and got to work. A missing-child investigation is mounted on the same scale as a murder enquiry. And although it was not the kind of investigation anyone would relish, and I had more cause than most to be disturbed by it, I was also aware of a buzz of adrenaline. After all, this was what I did. This was what I was good at, given half a chance. And I set to work with gusto, organising and guiding my troops.
I had all the facilities of Kingswood at my disposal, including state-of-the-art computer equipment, most notably HOLMES TWO, the latest version of the Home Office Large Major Enquiry Systems, an advanced computer network on line to other police forces throughout the country, and was expecting to have a total of fifty or sixty officers working for me. A team of two sergeants a
nd two detective constables had the previous day already thoroughly grilled both Dr and Mrs Jeffries at their home.
I decided the time had come to bring the pair of them in again for formal recorded interviews. I planned to conduct the interview with Richard Jeffries myself along with a detective constable, while at the same time Mellor and a woman detective constable would interview Elizabeth Jeffries. We could later check for any way, however apparently minor, in which their stories contradicted each other. And I hoped that the knowledge both Mellor and I already had of Richard Jeffries in particular might help us pin him down.
It was only just after 5.00 a.m., and Mellor and I were hitting the black coffee in a big way, trying to sharpen the last vestiges of our wits. We had sent a uniformed team in a squad car to pick up Jeffries and his wife. The choice of such an ungodly hour was quite deliberate. Shock tactics sometimes bring results.
Elizabeth Jeffries certainly appeared to be shocked when she arrived at the station. She had lost the somewhat arrogant aggression I had earlier been aware of. Her eyes were puffy and swollen, but her hair was combed, she was neatly dressed in a sweater and slacks of nicely blending shades of pale beige and, although her distress was quite apparent, she seemed in control. I watched her retreating back as Mellor led her along the corridor to an interview room. She walked with a straight spine, her head held high. I considered, not for the first time that she was undoubtedly stronger than her husband.
Indeed Dr Jeffries looked like a broken man. He was gaunt, unshaven and dishevelled. His grey sweater was grubby and his trousers were crumpled. He sat opposite me in a second interview room, slumped in his chair, the expression on his face one of listless incomprehension.
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