The flat was brand new and I had nothing to sell any more. My share of the proceeds from the bungalow, the sale of which had been finalised every bit as quickly and efficiently as Simon had promised, was stashed in the bank ready and waiting, so the deal was quickly done.
I had taken none of our shared furniture from the bungalow, just a few personal things like books and paintings. As I had told Simon when we finally decided to make the break, I didn’t want anything to remind me of the past. I wanted a fresh start.
When the purchase was completed at the beginning of May I took a week’s leave to settle into my new place and was surprised to find how much I enjoyed it. Anyone who has ever lived in a dazed limbo after the break-up of a long-term relationship will know how easy it is to sink into uncaring squalor, how hard it is to drag yourself out of it, and what a joy it is to finally succeed in so doing. I had lived my childhood and most of my adult life in a decent well-run attractive home, even if I had usually had all too little to do with ensuring it stayed that way, and hadn’t fully realised just how bad an effect several months of police section houses followed by that dreadful bedsit would have on me.
Conversely I had not been prepared for the almost instant lift in spirits which my smart new apartment gave me. The kitchen was all stainless steel, and had a dining area reminiscent of an American diner, more stainless steel, a built-in glass-topped table, and shiny dark red tiles. The bedroom and living room, which was the biggest room and really quite well-proportioned, had the kind of polished wooden floors I had always lusted after, which were common to so many of these dockland flats.
I bought a big squashy sofa for the living room, covered in a wonderfully impractical cream fabric, and a leather swivel-based chair which doubled as an office chair and stood before the smart black ash-finished desk which effectively hid my computer when not in use. The only other furnishings in the room were some bookshelves and a chunky oblong coffee table made of Cornish granite. The bedroom held just a simple double divan bed piled high with cushions and two bedside tables in addition to the mirror-fronted fitted wardrobe ranged along the entire stretch of one wall which easily housed all my clothes.
After almost four days spent shopping and arranging everything to my liking, I sat one evening with my feet up enjoying a gin and tonic, feeling reasonably content for the first time in ages. I told myself that surely even I could manage to keep this place fit for human habitation, and my general sense of well-being was further enhanced when I switched on my newly purchased state-of-the-art TV, the remote control for which I had finally mastered, and learned courtesy of the local HTV news that the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary’s investigations into the death of Natasha Felks had been dropped.
I was relieved, chiefly because of my own involvement — senior police officers like being caught up in a suspicious death even less than anybody else — but I also have to admit that Robin Davey did enter my thoughts.
I didn’t contact Todd Mallett again, keeping my resolution to become no further involved with the case than was absolutely necessary. But I knew that wasn’t the end of the matter, unfortunately. There would still be the inquest. And indeed, soon after returning to the shop after my week’s leave I got a note from the coroner’s officer at Barnstaple telling me that the inquest on Natasha Felks would take place on the 1st of June at the Castle Centre, Castle Street, Barnstaple, and I would be required to attend personally to give evidence. I wasn’t surprised, although I had vaguely hoped that the coroner might accept my evidence being read in my absence, but I could have done without it — not least because the whole silly saga of my Abri Island adventure would now become public knowledge.
The 1st of June turned out to be a bright sunny day and very hot. It seemed that everything connected with this case, Natasha’s fatal excursion to the Pencil, and my own ill-judged trip, happened in remarkably good weather. It’s extraordinary to think of the difference one casual action can make to our lives. If I had turned down Jason’s offer of a boat-ride I would not have been about to appear as witness in a coroner’s court, and I may even have left Abri Island without ever having met Robin Davey.
I reflected on this as I headed down the M5 in perfect driving conditions except for the apparently obligatory contraflow — a moveable feast along this stretch of almost permanently under-repair motorway. On this occasion each lane slowed virtually to a stand-still somewhere around the turn-off to my old home town of Weston-super-Mare. Thanks to this, a certain amount of seasonal traffic already, and an accident on the treacherous three-laned North Devon link road out of Tiverton, the journey from Bristol to Barnstaple took me just over two and a half hours, considerably longer than my February trip to see Todd Mallett. Fortunately, for once in my life I had allowed plenty of time.
I parked in the police station car park and walked the couple of hundred yards or so along the busy main road which led to the Castle Centre, which was, as is common practice for inquests, merely a room hired for the occasion. An alleyway led into the Centre which I knew to be more usually the home of various evening classes and community groups. I entered through its slightly awkward double doors and was glad that I was early. There were only a handful of people already there but I was still paranoid enough to think they were all staring at me as I walked in. Inside I quickly found myself a wooden chair at one end of the back row. The floor was covered with incongruously bright pink linoleum tiles and notice boards on the walls carried the assorted announcements pinned to them by the Centre’s other users.
I had been warned about the North Devon coroner, a solicitor called Martin Storey OBE. He insisted that the OBE be used at all times, I had been told — not actually when you addressed him in court but almost — and he was a man who never missed the opportunity of making the most of his position. He was a lay preacher, and apparently his addresses from the coroner’s bench were inclined to turn into sermons. He used his office to make statements on all manner of things he thought were amiss in the world, often linked only spuriously with the case in hand — something that is actually against regulations and which most coroners frown upon — and if he were about to hold forth on a topic dear to his heart he would often tip off the press in advance.
He had only recently taken over from a well-respected and long-serving coroner in North Devon, who had once gone on record as saying that it was his ambition to conclude his tenure without ever gracing the pages of the News of the World — quite unlike his successor whose almost weekly aim seemed to be to do just that. I had been told it was generally believed that Martin Storey OBE would not last long. However he remained the man currently in control and that was just my luck because he was particularly hot on police incompetence, apparently — even though traditionally coroners work very closely with the police and indeed in North Devon the coroner’s office is actually in Barnstaple nick and the coroner’s officer, not unusually, is a former police officer. I gathered that even Storey, if he had something particularly scathing to say, would at least let any police officers know if he intended to tear a strip off them. I had had no such warning.
However, nothing I heard about Mr Martin Storey, a grey world-weary looking man who didn’t look as if he smiled much, filled me with any optimism about how he might be expected to react to my behaviour. He did, however, grant my request to sit through the proceedings — I was a witness but not one considered crucial to the outcome.