For Death Comes Softly (13 page)

‘And if it's not pushing my luck I wondered if I could perhaps take you to dinner in Bristol one night? I'm often there for business. Maybe it could help both of us to get together and talk. If I don't hear from you I shall not contact you again. But I do hope that you will call me.'

In spite of myself my cheeks flushed as I read the letter. I still had some kind of adolescent crush on the bloke, it appeared. Meeting him had not done my already flagging career a lot of good, but that made little difference. My undimmed attraction for him combined with curiosity left me with little choice.

It didn't take me long to wrestle with my common sense or my conscience, which were always going to be on the losing side in this one. I may have had a pretty unpleasant time of it but the coroner's court had recorded an open verdict and the whole thing was in the past – all that remained for me really being the scars from the public mauling I had received. I told myself they would heal in time, that they were of my own making not Robin Davey's, and that the situation had changed totally from when he had made that rather misguided phone call to me. The man was no longer involved in a police investigation into a suspicious death. The case of Natasha Felks was closed – her death just one of the many truly bizarre accidents that happen every year. And, of course, her loss did mean that Robin Davey was unattached, I reflected shamelessly, as what little conscience I had retained melted into the atmosphere.

Naturally I called him. And naturally I said yes.

Seven

We agreed to meet at San Carlos, my favourite Bristol restaurant. When we parted Simon and I had split up restaurants and bars the way some people split up their possessions, their animals and their children. Simon had agreed that I could have sole use of San Carlos, as it held rotten memories for him anyway of times when I had left meals uneaten and him abandoned while rushing off to do my bloody job. Or allegedly to do my bloody job, he had said. That had been a snide afterthought.

I was on time, but Robin Davey was already waiting in the bar. At first sight, propped on a high stool, gazing into the middle distance, he had about him the same gravity I had noticed in the coroner's court. He looked drawn beneath the tan which seemed to be a permanent feature, and he had certainly aged since my fateful visit to Abri Island, but his face seemed to light up when I walked in. His smile of greeting was warm but diffident, as if he were still unsure of the kind of response he was going to get.

He was dressed casually in a soft light-brown suede bomber jacket, his white shirt open at the neck. I was beginning to realise he looked good in whatever he wore. I glanced down at my slightly crumpled cream linen trouser suit, which I had put on over a plain black tee shirt, and hoped that I had achieved the smart casual look I had taken so long to decide upon. It wasn't like me to fuss over clothes, but I certainly had that evening.

Robin Davey's manners were, of course, impeccable He stood up and held out his hand formally. I had forgotten how very tall he was. I just about reached his shoulders.

‘Good evening, Rose. Thank you so much for coming,' he said.

He asked if I would like a gin and tonic – he had remembered my usual drink, but then he would, he was smooth indeed – and suggested that we go straight to our table and have the drinks delivered there.

Although I had been looking forward to meeting him, in spite of everything, I found that I was glad to be at first occupied with the business of getting seated and ordering our meal. It meant that proper conversation could be conveniently deferred. There was inevitably a certain awkwardness between us to begin with. I kept trying to smooth down my relentlessly fluffy hair with one hand, a silly habit I have when I am nervous, as if a sleeker hairdo would bring with it the kind of sophisticated cool I yearn for at moments like these.

When we had eventually chosen – fresh linguini, char-grilled prawns, and Chianti – Robin leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath, as if preparing himself for something.

‘I must apologise again for involving you in my troubles,' he said quietly. ‘I was horrified by the comments the coroner made. I couldn't understand why he was so hard on you.'

I shrugged. ‘Goes with the territory,' I replied. ‘If you're a copper, you're inclined to get the tough treatment if you appear to have stepped out of line at all. Can't grumble really, after all we are supposed to be there to call the rest of the world to order.'

‘I just hope it hasn't caused too much trouble for you.'

I grinned wryly. ‘I'm something of an expert on trouble,' I said.

He smiled the to-die-for smile. It was the first time I had seen it since my stay on Abri, and it had lost none of its charm.

‘I promise you at least that I will do my utmost never to cause you any more trouble,' he said solemnly.

‘Don't worry, I can do that all on my own,' I said.

‘I want to make your life better, not worse,' he went on. He sounded so earnest. I was taken by surprise by his tone. Suddenly I wasn't quite sure how this evening was going to turn out at all.

For the moment I decided to sidestep him, and in any case there was one topic we could not avoid.

‘I never said how sorry I was about Natasha,' I remarked obliquely.

He nodded. ‘It was a dreadful shock. Then all the fuss, the police investigation, the coroner's court. I felt responsible enough without any of that. Still do. So guilty.' His voice shook very slightly as he spoke.

‘So do I,' I said quietly.

He seemed alarmed. ‘You mustn't. Really, you mustn't.'

I decided to be quite honest with him about my feelings.

‘Robin, I allowed you to persuade me to more or less ignore the dangers of Jason's illness and to cover up what happened to me on the Pencil, even though I knew better. If I had behaved differently, Natasha might still be alive . . .'

He interrupted me. ‘Neither of us could see into the future, Rose. Jason knew he was forbidden to take passengers out in the boat and Natasha knew that too. I still can't understand why she went with him.'

Abruptly he leaned forward and lightly touched my hand. The man had such presence, such force of personality

‘I thought I had dealt with it all, I was sure that Jason would never endanger anyone again after you,' he said. ‘I was wrong, and I will never forgive myself. The burden is mine, and mine alone. You have to understand that, Rose.'

‘I'll try,' I said, and to my surprise I actually did feel the weight of the guilt which had been bugging me ever since I heard of Natasha's death lighten just a little.

For most of the rest of the dinner we more or less made small talk. I asked him about Abri and he asked me about my work and my life. I avoided telling him anything very personal, and certainly did not feel ready to talk about my marriage. I did tell him all about my new flat at Harbour Court in the old city docks. And when we stepped outside later he suggested suddenly that I let him walk me home.

‘Your flat can't be far from here, and it's such a lovely night,' he said, gesturing at the clear moonlit sky.

The idea of walking home beneath the stars with the handsome Robin Davey by my side was instantly attractive. The kind of weather Flaming June was supposed to be famous for, which had begun on the very first day of the month when I had driven to North Devon for Natasha Felks' inquest, and which we so rarely seemed ever to experience in this country, was continuing. This was a glorious night and almost sultry. More like the south of France than Bristol. I should have known better, but I have to admit that my heart fluttered a bit.

Around by the bit of the Floating Harbour where the old SS Great Britain sits surreal in dry dock, we stood close to the edge and watched the reflection of the moon in the water. Robin was very still and very silent. I glanced at his profile. He seemed lost in thought. For a minute or two I wondered if he were even aware of me. I also wondered if he would make a pass at me, and found myself shamelessly half-wishing that he would.

He didn't. He took me lightly by the arm for the remainder of the walk to Harbour Court, escorted me into the lobby and then kissed me in a warm brotherly fashion on the cheek before bidding me goodnight.

‘Thank you for having dinner with me,' he said. ‘You have been more generous than I deserve.'

I was fleetingly tempted to take the initiative and invite him in to my flat for the ever ubiquitous coffee, but his manner somehow prevented me. He said he would watch me safely into the elevator and my last glimpse was of him standing there as the doors closed, a small smile just playing on his lips.

He had not even mentioned another meeting. And as I later prepared for bed alone, I wondered if I would ever see him again. The sensible half of me cautioned that probably the best thing that could ever happen to this chapter of my life was for it to become firmly closed. The other half, the part of me which had almost invited him in, kept me awake most of the night thinking about the bloody man.

The flowers were waiting for me with my neighbour when I arrived home from work the following evening.

There was a card. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening. Could you bear to do it again sometime?'

Could I bear it? The man was either deluded or bluffing.

I knew he should already be back on Abri and I called him there to thank him for the flowers. We chatted inconsequentially for a few minutes, and then, to my joy, he asked me out again.

‘I'm in Bristol much more than usual at the moment on business, talking to bankers mostly,' he said, sounding rather weary. ‘I'm inclined to need cheering up after a day of those sort of meetings, and another dinner with you would do that admirably, I'm sure.'

I said it sounded good to me.

‘Same place, same time, on Thursday then?' he suggested.

I agreed.

This time it was different. The awkwardness of that first dinner was no longer with us. And we did not talk about Natasha or the inquest or Jason Tucker, or, indeed, any of that at all. Instead he coaxed me to tell him about my life.

‘You already know so much about me, and I know so little about you,' he said.

I began hesitantly. ‘Yes, you do,' I fibbed. ‘I've been in the police force since I was eighteen. There's not a lot more to tell.'

‘I suspect there is,' he said. And he gently but persistently prodded away at my tightly coiled reserve until I began to open up as never before. It was a relief really, a kind of therapy. I was in the habit of revealing so little, and certainly since the break-up of my marriage I had kept my feelings strictly to myself. I still had the feelings though.

I found myself talking to Robin Davey as I had not done even with Julia. And certainly not with Simon. But then there was a lot more to tell now than when I had met my ex-husband. In my job and in my life I had seen so much since then, experienced so much, and a great deal of it I would have liked to forget. Or, better still, preferred never to have known about.

For starters I told Robin Davey about my upbringing in Weston-super-Mare and my desperately social-climbing mother. Then I gave him the story of how I had first met Simon on an intercity train and had virtually fallen on top of him and poured coffee down his trousers, and how we had fallen almost instantly in love, had married and stayed together for twelve years. I even tried to explain how it felt when that marriage, born of so much passion and promise, began to fall apart, not because either of us had found someone else, not for any reasons I could easily relate. Perhaps because of my job, that was what Simon always blamed, but more perhaps because we grew apart and the rift that came between us was inevitable.

I told him about my work in Child Protection, and the big serial murder case I had worked on previously, and the way something like that takes over your whole existence, eroding all thoughts of a personal life and coming back to haunt you in the middle of long lonely nights for ever more.

I told him what I had not even admitted to Julia – how I had been so disturbed by that case and the effect it had had on me and on my marriage that I had not just considered leaving the police force, I actually wrote a letter of resignation. And I told him about the days when I still didn't quite know why I had never posted it.

‘You see, when I realised that my marriage was over, there was nothing else for me except my work,' I said. ‘And yet, ironically, the job has never been quite the same since . . .'

Robin Davey was a good listener. I talked for a long time, and when I had finished I could not believe that I had said so much, nor did I understand why I had done so. If he thought my frankness was anything other than completely normal and ordinary he certainly gave no sign, although still he did not speak. A thought occurred to me.

‘I don't know why I'm going on like this, I'm supposed to be a professional,' I said. ‘I have been lucky, I've never had any personal experience of tragedy. A broken marriage is nothing compared with what you have been through. You have had far more than your share of tragedy.'

His slow smile tugged at my heart.

‘You know my story,' he said. ‘You know about my wife and son, it seems like everybody in the world does, and, on top of everything else, Natasha's death has brought all that back to me very vividly. There can't be anything much worse in life than watching those you love die of AIDS.'

He paused and I remained silent, not knowing what to say.

‘There was guilt in that too,' he went on. ‘Sometimes I was as afraid for myself as I was for them, you see. At first it seemed inevitable that I must have the disease too . . .'