I held out as long as I could, but somewhere around mid-morning that day I closed my office door and used my mobile to call Julia on hers. Well, I had to tell someone, and I certainly wasn’t going to confide in any of those bastards at the nick. As Julia was a journalist, and a bloody good one, it might seem like a contradiction of terms to say that I had never known her break a confidence. However she said that was why she kept the contacts and got the stories.
‘Guess what I did last night?’ I asked her.
‘Shagged that Robin Davey rotten,’ Julia replied without drawing a breath. I said we could read each other’s minds, didn’t I?
‘How did you guess that?’ I nonetheless questioned her.
‘Not a guess,’ she said. ‘It was only ever going to be a matter of time.’
‘Really?’ I remarked enquiringly, trying to sound cool. After all she hadn’t even known that I had seen him again since the inquest.
‘Yes, really. And there’s no fiancée to worry about any more...’
‘Julia, that’s outrageous,’ I said, not wanting to share even with her that I had been thinking the same thing myself from the moment Robin’s letter had arrived.
She giggled infectiously. ‘How many out of ten, anyway?’ she asked.
I gave in, and made a little humming sound as if carefully considering my reply.
‘Oh, about twenty,’ I said eventually.
The giggle turned into gleeful laughter.
Eight
Now I really couldn’t put Robin Davey out of my mind. And for the best part of the next month we both did as little as possible except have passionate sex at every opportunity.
Robin still had his island to run, of course, and I already knew that was a demanding task. But he continued to spend more time on the mainland than was usual, because of his various business dealings he told me. He confided in me that Abri was loosing more money than ever and it was becoming increasingly important that he found some substantial new finance. I also hoped that he occasionally invented an excuse to be in Bristol so that he could be with me. And every night we spent together intensified my desire for that to be so.
The spectre of Natasha did not entirely leave us. Once I found him studying a snapshot of her that he must still have kept in his wallet and the pain in his eyes was all too clear. But then, I was learning that he was deeply passionate, and I would not have wanted him to be the kind of man able to readily forget.
‘I will never forget her,’ he told me one night as I lay in his arms. ‘Any more than I will my wife or child. But you have made me believe there might still be something else for me, Rose. Another new start...’
His hands began to explore me again. Neither of us could get enough of each other. Our lovemaking overtook our pasts, overwhelmed our present, and would, I knew, shape any future we might have together.
We were still at the stage where the sex was getting better and better when the bombshell struck. Robin was at my flat early one morning when he phoned the island to pick up his messages. I saw the muscles of his face stiffen. He looked strained and uneasy when he replaced the receiver and didn’t answer at first when I asked him what was wrong.
‘Apparently I have to call Superintendent Mallett,’ he said eventually, and I could tell that he was trying to sound cool and unconcerned and not succeeding very well.
I felt the need to reassure him.
‘Just routine I expect, clearing up the loose ends,’ I told him, vaguely aware that was a fairly standard police response.
‘I expect so,’ he murmured. ‘Something about some new evidence, and needing to talk to me again.’
‘Todd Mallett has a reputation for never giving up,’ I remarked, more to myself than to him.
He glanced at me sharply. Then he gave a wry smile.
‘It’ll be nothing,’ he said. ‘I just sometimes wonder if I’m ever going to be allowed to live my life again.’
I left for the nick soon after seven and Robin said he would call Todd later in the morning from my flat. Obscurely, and a little disloyally, I felt glad that I had had the 1471 call back facility removed from my home telephone line. I didn’t particularly want any of my colleagues, and certainly not Todd Mallett, to know where Robin Davey was ringing from. Not yet anyway.
Robin didn’t call me on my mobile during the day, as he had already got into the habit of doing, and I resisted the temptation to try to call him. In any case I had quite enough to occupy my mind playing political games with Titmuss the Terrible who seemed determined to keep me on a back burner for as long as possible.
Mainly because of this I had nothing to keep me late at the office any more. I left Portishead shortly after 6 p.m., and when I got home found the flat in darkness. I switched on the lights in the living room first, and was startled to see Robin sitting quite still in my leather swivel chair. I wondered how long he had been there, alone in the dark.
‘Please tell me,’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
At first I feared he was not even going to answer me. It seemed a very long time before he spoke.
‘It’s all started again, Rose, they’ve reopened enquiries into Natasha’s death.’
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘There must be a reason.’
He nodded. ‘It’s bizarre,’ he said. ‘Quite bizarre.’
Again I waited. Eventually he continued.
‘It appears that Natasha carved my name into the Pencil while she was trapped out there... or so they say...’ his voice trailed away.
‘But who found it, and how do they know Natasha did it?’ The questions tumbled out.
Robin glared at me. ‘You’re the cop — how the hell am I supposed to know the answers to stuff like that?’ he snapped. ‘All I do know is that whatever they have found and whatever lies behind it they reckon it’s enough to start raking over the whole bloody thing again.’
He looked tired and strained.
‘Can’t think how they didn’t spot it to begin with, then it would all be over by now,’ he said. ‘Right after Tash died, they sent a load of those Scenes of Crime people over in all that fancy gear they wear, for goodness’ sake.’
I shrugged. ‘People think missing evidence and mistakes like that don’t happen any more with modern methods,’ I told him. ‘But of course they do. I once worked on a case where the SOCOs managed to miss a suicide note.’
On a good day that may have made him smile. Not today. I went to him and put an arm around him in a bid to give him comfort, but to no avail. He shook himself free.
‘They want to interview me again,’ he said glumly. ‘I’m to go to Barnstaple tomorrow.’
That night was the first night we had ever spent together when we didn’t make love. And I don’t think either of us slept more than an hour or two either. In the morning I went through the pretence of making some breakfast which we didn’t eat. Robin was very quiet. Perhaps neither of us knew what to say to each other.
‘I’ll fly back to Abri direct from Barnstaple,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ve been away too long again already.’
He reached into his pocket and took out the key to my flat, which I was already in the habit of giving him when he was in town, and put it on the kitchen worktop.
Robin travelled to and from the island by helicopter, and I knew there was a field just outside the North Devon town which passed for a heliport. I understood his need to return to Abri but I was suddenly afraid to let him go, certainly without being able at least to talk to him after his interview at Barnstaple nick.