‘Secret, important and dangerous,’ Slider said, with an inward groan. ‘What did you think it was?’
‘Well, I couldn’t imagine, and we argued back and forth a bit, but he was adamant he wouldn’t tell me about it, and in the end I had to trust him, because I knew he’d never do anything wrong, and if I was going to marry him – well, I had to, didn’t I? I had the feeling that he was in the secret service, because he hinted there were foreign connections – and after all, what else is that secret? But he never would tell me, not from that day to this.’ Tears filled her eyes suddenly as she stubbed her mental toe on the fact that he was dead, something that had subsided in her mind while she talked to them. But she blinked the tears back hard, and got out a handkerchief and blew her nose with a determined honk. Slider was impressed by her self-control. There was more to this ordinary woman than met the eye.
‘So you got married?’ Slider prompted.
‘In May, at the register office. He’d bought this house already and had it done up, and in September when my notice at the Norwich and Norfolk was up, we moved into it. And that first day he gave me the deeds, and said he’d had it made over to me, as my wedding present, so that whatever happened I’d have somewhere to live.’
‘Whatever happened?’ Slider queried. ‘He was worried, then?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Actually, I don’t think he was worried then. He said the job could be dangerous, but I don’t think he really thought about that side of it. He seemed to be enjoying it. He was happy whenever I saw him. High-spirited, even. Sometimes he was tired, but he never seemed to be bothered by his job. He always said it was wonderful to be home, and he complained he wished he could see more of me, but that was the only thing he complained about. Until about a year ago.’
‘And what changed then?’ Slider asked.
‘Well,’ she said, considering. ‘I suppose looking back it might have been coming on for a while before that, but it was about a year ago I really started to notice it. He was quieter, thoughtful, as if he had something on his mind that was worrying him. Sometimes he’d arrive and he’d hardly have a thing to say. He’d sit staring at nothing for ages, or he’d go for a long walk on his own. If I tackled him about it he’d say nothing was wrong and try to snap out of it, but I knew. And then he started talking about what would happen if he died. He said he was having his will made up, to make sure I got everything. He brought a copy of it down one day and told me to keep it safe. That would be about last July. But it was only for about the last month or six weeks that he’s been really worried.’
‘In what way?’
‘Really jumpy. Anxious the whole time. Hardly speaking to me. Jumping out of his skin if the phone rang. He said that his job was coming to an end and there could be danger in it. That the people he’d been working with might decide it would be safer if he couldn’t talk. He told me he was afraid for me, too, and that I mustn’t talk to anyone about him. Well, I didn’t anyway, I never had, but he was extra insistent. He said if anything happened to him I’d be taken care of, but I’d have to lie low for a while and not let on to anyone about our relationship. He even gave me extra money to tide me over in case he suddenly disappeared. It had me worried, I can tell you. You’d need to have seen him to know how tense he was. But still I never thought anything would happen. You don’t, do you? Not until it does. And when I read that paragraph in the paper, I thought that the people who were after him were playing a trick, maybe to flush out his contacts or his colleagues or whatever. But then when he didn’t come down this week, and I didn’t hear from him, I started to think maybe something had happened. And then – and then you arrived.’
It took her some determined swallowing and nose work this time to regain her composure. Slider said, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. But I have to ask you, have you any idea at all who these people were that he was afraid of? Or what sort of work he was involved in?’
She shook her head, emerging from the handkerchief with a red nose and a look of exhaustion. ‘None at all. He always kept that side of things from me, and I never asked because I knew that was the way he wanted it. He was too gentle and kind to be a secret agent, that’s what I always thought, but he must have been tough underneath it all to have done a job like that. And of course I was important to him, because it was only with me he could show the other side of himself, the gentle side. But in the end it got to him – the double life. That’s what I think. I’m afraid in the end he was so worn down with it that he made a mistake, and they got him. I can’t account for it otherwise.’
Slider could not make head nor tail of this. David Rogers, a secret service agent? Was it possible? If he was, he was the Niven James Bond rather than the Connery or Craig. But he came up against the problem that if he had been, the investigation would have been taken away from them straight away. Six had its own way of dealing with these things. No, no, whatever was going on, it wasn’t that. Secret and dangerous Rogers’s job might have been, but the man who romanced Cat Aude and Angela Fraser wasn’t doing important work for the country. He had been doing something that paid him handsomely in cash, and that was not the MI6 way. But on one thing he agreed with Helen Aldous – he had eventually made a mistake of some kind, and they had got him.
He asked, hoping for a new direction, ‘Do you know anything about Windhover?’
‘The Windhover?’ she said. ‘David’s boat, do you mean? It’s moored down at the Yacht Club.’
Slider blinked. ‘His boat is called the Windhover?’
She nodded. ‘Isn’t that what you meant? He loved that boat. He really, really loved it. That’s why he chose Southwold for us to live, because that’s where he was keeping it. That was his one recreation – fishing. Lots of consultants play golf but he hated the game, and he never cared about skiing or shooting or any of those things. But the one thing he never missed when he came down was his night fishing on the Windhover.’
‘He went night fishing?’ Slider said, puzzled.
‘He said it was the only real sport – sea fishing at night. Any other fishing was kids’ stuff to him. He was passionate about it. I didn’t begrudge him. I mean, we had little enough time together, but a man needs his hobby, and he worked so hard the rest of the time. He’d come down whenever he could get away, sometimes of a Tuesday, sometimes weekends, but whatever else happened he was always here on a Wednesday and he’d go out every Wednesday night in the Windhover. Then Thursday morning he was off straight from the harbour, so I never got to see his catch, but he said he was always lucky, always got something. He gave it away to whoever was in the harbour at the time. Well, he’d no use for raw fish in his sort of life – who’d have cooked it for him?’
Who indeed, Slider thought. Not one of his other women, that was for sure.
‘Did you never want to go with him?’ Atherton asked.
‘I’m not keen on boats,’ she said. ‘I could get seasick crossing a bridge. I did go with him once, though. We’d not long been married, and he begged me to come with him because we had so little time together, he didn’t want to waste it.’
Didn’t occur to him not to go, thought Atherton. Atta boy!