For Death Comes Softly (29 page)

The representative of AKEKO Worldwide, the Japanese syndicate which had leased Abri, now more or less worthless, said in his evidence that he and his associates now believed categorically that Robin must have had foreknowledge of the true state of Abri. It was a damning allegation, its impact lessened only slightly by the awareness that the only hope AKEKO had of recovering any of its investment in Abri was to prove that Robin had not leased them the island in good faith – that he had in fact known the island was unsafe and had deliberately concealed information to that effect.

Robin stood stiffly before the enquiry chairman and protested his innocence. His fists were clenched at his side, and only the whiteness of his knuckles betrayed his tension.

‘If I had had any idea of the danger do you think I would have stayed on the island myself all those years, let alone allowed people I had known and cared for all my life to do so?' he asked.

I sat in the body of Torridge Court's great hall and thought how much the events of the past three months had aged him. Robin was still an overwhelmingly handsome man, but the lines of pain were now deeply etched around his mouth and eyes. Obscurely he reminded me of a magnificent Greek sculpture, finally becoming pitted and flawed by the ravages of time. I so hated to see him suffer more, to have to face up to aggressive cross examination as if he were on trial – which he was not, although that nightmare might yet await. I thought again about how scapegoats are invariably sought whenever there is a major disaster, and I continued to fear that this was the role in which Robin was being cast by Lord Justice Symons and his cohorts.

A lot of fuss was made about the maps of Abri's gold-mine network which had been made available to the surveyors employed by AKEKO. These dated back 150 years and, as had been proven first by the disaster itself and then by the team of surveyors and mining experts sent in afterwards by the enquiry, were woefully inadequate.

Lord Justice Symons glanced up from studying them and peered unenthusiastically at Robin over his half-moon spectacles. His surprisingly bright blue eyes remained hooded. His voice managed to convey the impression of painstaking enquiry mingled with vague world-weariness at the same time.

‘Are we really supposed to believe that these are the only maps in existence of Abri's gold mines, Mr Davey?' he asked tiredly.

This was a key point of issue. Robin answered it clearly and reasonably. His integrity was so patently being questioned yet again, but he did not rise to the bait. I was proud of him.

‘Yes, they are, sir,' he said. ‘People did not chart mines in those days in the way we would now. You have that problem throughout the tin-mining areas of Cornwall and everywhere in the country where there is the legacy of an old mining industry.'

Judge Symons grunted. ‘But these maps are extremely detailed, are they not?' he asked. He lowered his head over them again. ‘Beautifully drawn, too.'

‘They are, sir, yes,' agreed Robin.

‘Yet it now appears that gold was mined on Abri for a further ten years or more after these maps were made, is that not so?'

Robin agreed that it was.

‘And did you know that, Mr Davey, when you leased the island out, for example?'

‘I was never sure of the exact dates of the gold-mining operation on Abri, sir,' said Robin. ‘I don't think anyone is, to be honest, not even now. It's only because the mining surveyors have found a network of shafts and tunnels so much greater than we believed to exist on the island that it seems clear mining for gold, or at least further exploration, must have gone on for at least ten years after those final maps were dated.'

‘And yet the last of these maps, which we all agree are detailed and apparently remarkably accurate for the period in as far as they go, was drawn in 1850, is that right?'

‘Yes sir, which is why everybody thought the digging stopped then, too.'

‘But why would that be, Mr Davey? Why would mining engineers who had all along chronicled their activities in such detail suddenly stop doing so?'

‘I don't know the answer to that, sir,' replied Robin much more calmly than I could have managed. ‘Except that in view of the damage that was done to the structure of the island it could be that the gold miners knew they were going too far, even for those days, and wanted no further record of what they were doing. Gold makes people greedy, sir. History records that well enough.'

‘Indeed, Mr Davey,' said Judge Symons. ‘And so does property, does it not?'

Robin had no choice but to agree again.

‘Hu-hmmm,' murmured Mr Justice Symons. ‘I must ask you one final time, are you absolutely sure, Mr Davey, that neither you nor any of your family have ever had possession of or knowledge of any later maps of the gold mines of Abri?'

There was the merest hint of a tremor in Robin's voice when he replied.

‘Upon my honour, sir,' he said in that old-fashioned way of his. ‘Upon my honour, no. Absolutely not, I swear it.'

‘Hu-hmmm,' murmured the judge again. And he took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes wearily with the back of his hand.

He switched tack then to the reasons behind the leasing of Abri.

‘The very existence of your family has revolved around Abri for generations,' he told Robin. ‘Surely it would take something truly momentous to lead you to hive off the place for what could well be the rest of your life – like learning that the island was desperately unsafe, perhaps?'

‘Do you think I'd have planned to have my wedding there, put the life of my future wife and virtually all my family and friends in danger?' asked Robin. ‘My only brother died on Abri. I also regard the islanders as my family. Many of them died in the disaster. Do you think I would knowingly have put them at risk? I leased Abri because I had to. I simply ran out of money. I did what I did to safeguard the future of the island. I had no reason whatsoever to think that Abri had no future.'

Symons rifled through the papers on his desk.

‘The leasing deal you did was comprised in such a way that you received an extremely large lump sum in advance, well in excess of two million pounds, and, unless deliberate intent is found against you, this money cannot be reclaimed from you even though Abri is now almost certainly worthless as any kind of business proposition. You have secured your own and your family's security most effectively, have you not?'

Robin was still admirably calm, although I could see the hurt in his eyes.

‘That is quite true,' he said. ‘But all I lived for was to one day get Abri back as a financially viable proposition which I could pass on to my children. And I planned to spend the next twenty-five years working to increase the money I had been paid in order to put it all back into the island when it became mine again.'

He paused but Mr Justice Symons remained silent.

‘The money meant nothing to me,' Robin continued quietly. Hard for the likes of me, who had never had any money worth mentioning, to grasp, but I knew that for him it was true. ‘Only Abri Island mattered,' he went on. ‘And now she has been lost for ever and in such a way . . .' His voice tailed off.

I thought he had acquitted himself remarkably well, particularly in view of his weeks of depressive behaviour, but I really had no idea what impression he had made on the enigmatic Judge Symons.

Neither Robin nor I attended the enquiry except when required to do so in order to give evidence. I too had to give evidence of course, but I was not questioned with the ferocity which Robin faced.

Primarily I was asked to describe the terrible events of my wedding day as I had witnessed them from the vantage point of the helicopter. I was questioned a little about my own knowledge of the island and its gold-mining activities, but I was able to make it quickly apparent that I knew little and just about all that I did know had come from Robin.

I was asked to briefly relate what Robin had told me about the leasing of the island and when he had decided to go ahead with it, and, of course, my evidence backed up everything he had told the enquiry.

Our presence was required on only a few days out of the two months over which the enquiry sat, and as I was no longer working, for the first time in my life I had a great deal of time on my hands, something I was not at all used to. Robin continued to maintain normal office hours and left home every day just before 8.30 a.m. His timekeeping was meticulous. I played at keeping house, never previously either a talent or an interest of mine. In a bid to maintain my sanity I busied myself with shopping, rearranging the furniture, and obsessively cleaning the house from top to bottom almost every day. Completely out of character, really. I even learned to cook – a bit – which would have made poor Simon laugh had he known.

I didn't go out much. I had lunch with Phyllis Jordan one day and the conversation was agonising. There were really only two relevant topics, the Abri Island disaster and the disappearance of Stephen Jeffries – both of which the pair of us spent a painful couple of hours or so avoiding.

I missed my police-work, I missed the sense of involvement as much as anything, but I did not know if I would ever be able to go back to it.

My most pleasant diversion was to sit in the big bay window of our living room, with its sweeping views right over the city, and plan my wedding. Strange, when I look back on it, but marrying Robin seemed the only worthwhile thing left in the world. It would have to be a much smaller affair of course, perhaps abroad. To tell the truth I didn't care where it was or who came – shamefully again, I even barely stopped to consider who was left to come – I just wanted it to be soon. I wanted Robin to be mine, officially mine. I longed, with a terrible obsessive longing to become Mrs Robin Davey.

On a really bad day I came close to regarding the whole Abri Island disaster as little more than a plot to keep me from marrying him. The deaths of my nephew and James and all those people paled into insignificance alongside my overwhelming desire to marry Robin. I think I saw it as the only way to close the chapter. I still had just about enough decency left to be ashamed of myself – but only just.

Our sex life eventually restored itself, thank God, beginning with the night after Robin had finished giving evidence to the enquiry. At last he sought the release I had so longed for. And it was as sensational as ever. In fact Robin was, if anything, more urgent, even more animal, and I knew I was even more demanding than I had been before. All those months without his touch, without the feel of him inside me, had been almost impossible to bear. Making love with him again after so long gave me the only complete relief from torment, apart from sleep when I could manage it, that there had been since the disaster.

I sought escapism, I had had enough of grim reality. Getting married fitted into the agenda. It may seem daft to ever regard marriage as that, but after what Robin and I had been through anything that might bring some happiness, even if fleetingly, was at least something to take my mind off all the rest of it. And at that time I somehow thought of marrying Robin as much in those terms as I did as a permanent commitment. Whatever my reasoning, I had no other aim in life.

Robin, however, never once mentioned the possibility of rearranging our marriage. It was as if the disaster had wiped it out of his consciousness. Or maybe he associated a wedding too firmly with what had happened. I wanted to talk to him about it, but it was some weeks into the enquiry before I dared bring up the subject. Robin just stared at me long and hard. It was a long time before he spoke.

‘You still want to marry me then?'

It was so unlike him. The question must be rhetorical surely. Robin Davey never had self-doubt, not even now after all that had happened.

‘Of course, I do,' I said. And I added what was the undeniable truth. ‘More than ever. I am just so afraid that you don't want to any more.'

He smiled. To-die-for as usual. But his eyes were tired and there was something in them I could not read. However, perhaps there was always something in his eyes I could not read.

‘It's not that, Rose. It's the ceremony itself. I'm not sure that I could face it. So many terrible memories . . .'

So that
was
it. I spoke quickly now, the words tumbling out.

‘I know, I do know,' I said. ‘But it doesn't have to be like that. We could marry abroad, in a wonderful city, Venice or somewhere, or on a Caribbean beach. I have been thinking about it. It would have to be very different. Just us, far away from here . . .'

‘You certainly have been thinking about it, haven't you?' he said, still smiling, gently teasing me, as he had once done so often.

He reached for me then, and I opened up for him as I always did, like I never quite had with anyone else. Within the private world of his embrace all was well. My desire for him welled up within me as ever. And when he spoke he said exactly what I wanted to hear, almost the way it used to be, almost how it had been before.

‘My darling, I love you to distraction,' he whispered into my ear, and his tongue tantalised me even as he spoke. ‘I could never survive all this without you. I want nothing more than to marry you, and yes, I want it more than ever too. ‘We'll do it as soon as the enquiry is over.'

I glowed inside. The enquiry was not going to affect us, in spite of what I had seen as the open hostility of its chairman towards Robin. I was suddenly as determined about that as I was in my resolve to marry the man whose arms were around me, whose mouth was now seeking mine. Whatever the enquiry eventually decided, I willed it to have nothing whatsoever to do with the future of Mr and Mrs Robin Davey.

The Abri Island disaster enquiry sat for a total of 320 hours during which its chairman Lord Justice Symons heard accounts from 111 witnesses including a number of expert witnesses. He studied 2900 pages of transcript containing more than a million words and received almost 1000 letters from individuals and organisations.