For Death Comes Softly (32 page)

‘It might still all be a load of nonsense, like you said.' I was clutching at straws and I knew it.

Julia sighed again. ‘Yes, Rose, it might. But I can't get it out of my head. I tried to forget all about it after you told me you and Robin were married. But I couldn't.'

I tried desperately to think. ‘Look, surely when the Abri Island disaster happened Cole and his wife would also have put two and two together.'

‘I don't know the answer to that, Rose. Maybe they didn't want to get involved.'

‘What, when so many people had died?'

‘Particularly then,' said Julia wearily. ‘Anyway, the way the story was told to me, Marjorie Cole was so caught up with her marriage and her own petty jealousies that it may have been quite possible that she genuinely didn't connect the Abri disaster with Natasha's drowning. Where Natasha died meant nothing to her, she just revelled in the fact that her rival was no more.'

That hit home. I had reacted in a rather similar way for totally different reasons.

I had one last point. ‘If Jeremy Cole is such an expert on the dangers of old mines why wasn't he called in to give evidence at the Abri enquiry?'

‘I'm ahead of you,' said Julia. ‘I've done a bit of phoning around. Apparently he was the first academic expert approached but he suggested another man, based at Exeter University, whom he claimed was better qualified because he had specialist knowledge of West Country mining.'

I wasn't sure whether that might be significant or not. I remained silent.

‘Look, Rose,' Julia continued after a pause. ‘I'm so glad you called. I didn't know what to do after you walked out of lunch yesterday. You see, whatever lies behind this I really think it should be put into the hands of the police. It needs to be investigated.'

‘I am the police,' I interrupted lamely.

Julia sighed again. ‘Rose, I'm so sorry about this, but you're being ridiculous again. Forty-four people died when those mines fell in on Abri. Natasha's death remains a mystery. If I'm right and she did suspect the island was unsafe and if she did tell Robin that she suspected it, at the very least they would have had an almighty row, wouldn't they? If it wasn't all so serious I would be telling my editor, not Todd Mallett or anybody else till my paper ran the story. But this is too horrendous for playing newspapers. Too many people were killed. I know you. Now I've told you, you won't be happy until you know the truth, either. It has to be a police matter.'

‘Julia, can we hold off until I have talked to Robin?' I asked plaintively.

‘I think that's the last thing you should do, to be perfectly honest,' said Julia sharply.

‘Look, I cannot believe that Robin would have deliberately put all those people's lives at risk. I don't believe it. He'd never do that. They were his people. His family, his islanders. And you can't be also suggesting that he murdered Natasha surely?'

‘Rose,' Julia's voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘I remember you confiding in me that you once had your own suspicions about her death. How you couldn't understand her allowing herself to be dropped off at the Pencil by a young man she knew only too well suffered epileptic trances. Remember?'

‘That was before I really got to know Robin, to realise the kind of man he is.'

‘Rose, are you truly sure you know the kind of man he is? You seem mesmerised by him. Blinded to reality. You have done ever since you first slept with him . . .'

I was fully aware that she was telling the truth. But I still wasn't ready for it.

‘I'm not mesmerised by him, honestly,' I insisted. ‘Just let me talk to him before you do anything. I will know if he is guilty of anything. I'll know if he lies to me, I'm quite sure of it . . .'

I was still in an emotional state. The thought of anything intruding on my newly rediscovered happiness with Robin, let alone something as ominous as this, was too much for me. I started to sob as I pleaded with her to back off.

Julia was my very best friend in all the world. She loved me. She gave in.

‘You've got twenty-four hours,' she said.

That evening I confronted Robin as soon as he returned home. He listened quietly as I related all that Julia had told me. I waited, wondering what on earth he was going to say.

He looked very grim.

‘So you see fit to question me on the grounds of dinner-party gossip, do you, Rose?' he queried eventually. And in a very reasonable tone.

I didn't reply. Put like that I felt almost ashamed.

‘Spell it out, Rose,' he went on. ‘What exactly do you think this piece of rubbish means?'

‘Maybe it means that Natasha had found out something about Abri's mines,' I said. ‘And if she had, well she would have told you, wouldn't she?'

‘Rose, Natasha was not an expert on anything. She fucked a geologist, that's all. It didn't make her one.'

I had to persist now. ‘No, but if you have a relationship with someone you do learn something about their work. At least you pick up an interest.'

‘Really,' he replied coldly. ‘What do I know about your work, exactly, I wonder?'

‘I don't even do The Job any more,' I remarked obliquely.

‘No, and there's a reason for that, isn't there? You are on extended sick leave because you have been emotionally disturbed by all that you have been through. You're still disturbed, Rose, you must be to even consider what I suspect you are thinking. Your judgement is way off beam, it really is.

‘We were on Abri for our wedding. You know what I told the enquiry, and you have to believe it, surely. Would I have ever set foot on the place again, let alone let you and all our families and friends do so, if I did not think it was safe?'

I shook my head. I desperately wanted to believe him, but I had so many doubts and fears.

‘Maybe you had kidded yourself into believing that it was safe,' I said. ‘After all those mine shafts had been there for 150 years, why should they suddenly collapse?'

Robin looked at me in amazement.

‘I never thought you would doubt me, Rose,' he said.

I studied him carefully, this beautiful man I had married and was so in love with. He seemed so sad.

‘I just want you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth,' I said.

He sighed. ‘There is no truth other than what you already know. Do you really think I would have taken any notice of anything Natasha might have said, just because she was the mistress of a geologist? If Natasha knew anything about mining and geology she didn't share it with me, but then she wouldn't, would she? It seems pretty damn likely from what you have told me that she may have been still seeing her geologist after she and I got together. And I'll tell you what, Rose, if you care any more, that's something I'd never do. I've never cheated on anyone in my life.'

And there was the rub. I believed that absolutely. Robin had a strict moral code. It was not in his nature to cheat. I accepted that about him without question, and yet I could at the same time question that he may be capable of other far greater immoralities. Of real evil. I was as confused as ever.

He started to speak again. ‘There is no new truth, Rose. I still don't know how Tash died nor why she went off in the boat with Jason. I just don't know.'

‘What if she didn't go with Jason,' I blurted out, suddenly putting voice to the grim thought that had lurked somewhere in my mind from the very beginning. ‘What if you took her out there to the Pencil and dropped her off to look at the dolphins. She'd have trusted you to return, wouldn't she?'

He stared at me for maybe thirty seconds without speaking. Then he started to cry. I had seen this big powerful man weep before, but I was as moved as I had been that first time, when, after his mother was stricken by her stroke, he had cried in my arms. But then, after all the death and destruction we had witnessed together, I had been relieved to see him give in finally to his emotions, and I had not been the cause of his weeping. This was different.

‘I can't believe you think I would be capable of such a thing,' Robin said, and his voice came out in a kind of anguished wail through the tears.

I couldn't help it. I went to him and took him in my arms. I told him I was sorry, that I loved him, that of course I didn't believe he was capable of . . . capable of . . . Even then I had been unable to use the right words.

His tears eased. The inevitable happened. Within minutes we were in bed and my body took over my brain. The sheer physical joy that we brought each other was beyond anything I had ever really thought possible. I told myself it was simply not possible for this man who could make the world so beautiful to be a part of anything ugly.

Early the next morning we were woken by the telephone. It was Peter Mellor. Richard Jeffries had confessed to the murder of his son Stephen and had admitted also to consistently sexually abusing him. I felt my abdominal muscles contract sickeningly, as if I had been kicked viciously in the belly.

Apparently forensic had worked miracles with poor Stephen's body which, like some of the victims of the Fred West murders in Gloucester, was in better condition than might have been expected having been preserved by the type of soil in which it lay. Evidence had been found – including bits of hair and hair root, torn from Richard Jeffries' head, jammed behind the remains of the boy's fingernails – which had ultimately been enough to enable officers interrogating the man finally, and only after a long struggle, to break him.

‘I thought you'd like to know before it's announced publicly, boss,' said Mellor. ‘I knew you'd be gutted. He'll be charged today.'

‘Thank you, Peter,' I said quietly and put the receiver down.

So Richard Jeffries had been guilty all along. My judgement had been flawed. Worst still, that wasn't really it. I had always had doubts at the bottom of my mind about Jeffries, but I had not listened to them properly. I had gone with the sway, taken the course of least resistance. I knew I had worked by the book, that on paper the investigation I had headed could not be faulted. That made no difference. I couldn't get over the idea that a boy was dead who might well have been alive if I had done my job properly. I tortured myself with the ever-present suspicion that had I not been so preoccupied with my personal life, I would have been more thorough, more relentless in the investigations. I looked back at Robin, still lying half-asleep beside me in the bed, his fair hair tousled, the covers only half over his splendid body, and I shuddered. I just prayed that my judgement of him would never turn out to have been so desperately wrong.

Later that morning I rang Julia.

‘I've confronted Robin and I believe absolutely that he had no part in Natasha's death and no idea of the dangers of the old mine workings,' I blurted out confidently. ‘And I really don't know how I could have let you or anyone else make me doubt him.'

Julia sighed. ‘Rose, it's not just men who sometimes only have brains in their pants,' she said.

‘Julia, you don't understand . . .' I began.

‘I think I do, Rose, only too well,' she interrupted tetchily.

‘Julia, you're talking about my husband, not some casual pick-up,' I remonstrated.

‘I know, I'm sorry,' she said, although she didn't sound it.

‘Please listen,' I persisted. ‘If you had heard Robin yesterday, seen him, talked to him, you would have believed him too, I'm sure of it.'

My old friend remained unconvinced.

‘I somehow doubt it, but, Rose, it's not a question of believing or disbelieving Robin,' she said. ‘For your sake, for the sake of all those people who died and their friends and relatives, if there is a way of actually proving that he is or isn't telling the truth, then it should be taken.'

She had contacted Jeremy Cole, she confessed, and arranged to interview him for her paper – allegedly about his latest TV show.

‘I knew the job would come in handy for something useful one of these days,' she said. And she agreed that she would take matters no further, and certainly not attempt to contact the police, until after the interview. We had at least a brief reprieve. I phoned Robin to tell him.

‘Nobody could prove anything anyway,' he said, which didn't do a lot to reassure me.

Twenty

Two days later Robin left for Ireland on a business trip and I took him to Bristol Temple Meads railway station to catch the late train up to Fishguard and then across to Rosslare. Robin preferred to travel at night if he could. He slept easily on boats and trains and liked the idea of making a journey while he did so. He said that way you didn't waste your days.

Relations were fairly strained between us. I assured him that he had set my mind at rest, and even apologised for questioning him in the way that I had. He appeared to take it well. Certainly calmly. Typical Robin.

When I stopped the car outside the station he leaned across to kiss me gently on the lips. It felt so good, as always. Warm and caring with the promise of so much more.

‘I cannot bear to think that you don't trust me,' he said suddenly.

‘I have told you I'm sorry,' I replied obliquely.

He sat there in the passenger seat with his hand on the door handle and stared at me. I realised I had to find something more to say.

‘Robin, Abri haunts me,' I said. ‘I'll never get over what happened, and I just can't stop thinking about it and going over it again and again in my mind.'

‘How do you think it is for me?' he asked quietly.

‘I know. And I really am sorry about doubting you. I just get so mixed up . . .' And that, God knows, was the truth. I truly was so dreadfully sorry, and so dreadfully mixed up.