‘Couldn’t you come back here tonight and then fly on to the island tomorrow?’ I asked, trying not to sound too intense about it.
‘That doesn’t make much sense, Rose,’ he began. ‘It’s a longer journey and besides...’
He was looking at me in a curious sort of way as his voice just tailed off. With one hand he touched my hair, which, as I had yet to force it into some sort of submission, was even more of an unruly ball of fluff than usual.
‘Of course,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll see you back here tonight.’
And it was at that moment that I first thought that perhaps he loved me, although he had yet to tell me so.
We both left the flat just before eight. Me to go to work, Robin to drive to Barnstaple for the interview — yet another interview, as he described it.
The day seemed to last for ever. It was the end of July now, and the hot sticky weather which had begun in June continued. Portishead was supposed to be air conditioned but the heat was such that I felt drained and uncomfortable. I found it extremely difficult to concentrate on the report on abuse of handicapped children which I was still compiling. Every time my phone rang I hoped it would be Robin with some news. He didn’t call. And somehow I resisted the temptation to phone Todd Mallett or any of my Devon and Cornwall Constabulary contacts. When I arrived back at the flat I was relieved for more reasons than one to see that at least the lights were on.
Robin was in the kitchen preparing a salad. A couple of juicy looking salmon steaks sat on the grill pan ready to cook. Like everyone else in my life Robin had already learned that it was probably best if he did the cooking.
He turned and smiled as I walked in. He still looked tired and strained, but he seemed and sounded curiously determined when he spoke.
‘I’m not going to let this get me down, Rose,’ he said. ‘We have too much together, you and I. I’m not going to let it be spoiled.’
I went to him and wrapped my arms around him as I had tried to do the previous night and this time he did not reject me. He leaned towards me and kissed the top of my head. Then he tipped my face towards him and his lips found mine. He tasted as good as ever. The kiss was warm, loving, reassuring — and as full of the sensuality and sexual promise that I had grown to expect.
After a few seconds he drew away, and rubbed the tip of one finger lightly along the line of my mouth.
‘Later,’ he said, with a big big smile. ‘First, let’s have a drink. There’s some champagne in the fridge.’
We took our glasses into the sitting room and sat side by side on the cream sofa.
‘Always remember, Rose, when in doubt drink champagne,’ he instructed, and used the tip of his tongue, chilled by the cold drink, to lightly tantalise my lips. For a moment I thought maybe everything was going to be all right again after all. But it quickly became apparent when Robin began to tell me what he had learned that day and what had happened to him at Barnstaple Police Station, that his good humour was more than a little forced.
‘I was interviewed for over two hours, then asked to wait, then interviewed again, over and over, the same thing, Rose,’ he said. ‘It was as if they were trying to trip me up, or maybe break me.’
‘Robin, just explain to me exactly what they’ve got,’ I said.
‘This bloody carving. Tash always carried a small penknife on her. It was still in her pocket when they found her body, apparently. And they’ve checked it out. That was the knife used to carve my name in the rock... just where she would have been clinging to it before she couldn’t hang on any longer.’
He hesitated slightly over the last few words. It may have been the light but his tan seemed to have faded dramatically. His face looked almost white.
‘But that doesn’t prove anything, Robin,’ I told him.
He looked at me, and I could hear the anguish in his voice when he spoke again. ‘I know. But it seems it’s enough for them to start a whole new investigation, to rake up the whole nightmare. That’s what I find so hard to cope with, having to relive it all. They kept going on about a new witness. Wouldn’t tell me more. I thought they were trying to frighten me, perhaps.’
He looked away, ran a hand across his forehead.
‘I don’t know any more Rose, don’t know what to think. I thought it was all over, I really did.’
I wasn’t sure what else to say to him. It was difficult to find the right words, impossible maybe.
‘Would you like me to grill the salmon?’ I asked eventually.
He stood up quickly. ‘Don’t you dare go near it,’ he commanded. ‘Things aren’t that desperate yet.’
Even at a time like this he could make me laugh. He really was a magical man.
I was, however, very uneasy. The guilt I felt concerning Natasha Felks, and not least over my shameless sense of relief that she was tidily out of the way, niggled at me. Ever since the night Robin and I had first made love I knew that I had been behaving like an ostrich. I had simply put the whole horrible business of Natasha out of my mind, dismissing it as just something in the past. I had chosen to ignore the suspicious aspects of the woman’s death. Now it was all back again.
There was, however, no way I could make myself stop seeing Robin. That was not something I even considered — and seeing was a very polite way of putting it. The physical side of our relationship overshadowed everything else at work and at home. Some days it felt as if that was all I lived for, perhaps all that either of us lived for.
My workload was lighter than it had ever been. I could toss off the various reports, most of them meaningless, which Titmuss was now firmly in the habit of landing on my desk — in order to keep me away from real police work I had no doubt — with one hand tied behind my back. I had not joined the police force to shuffle bits of paper about and I had never been quite so dissatisfied with the job. I even used to sometimes sneak home for an extended lunch-break when Robin was in Bristol, and more often than not we would end up making love. I had never before allowed sex or matters of the heart to interfere in any way with my career. My ambition had always taken precedence — until Robin came into my life since when the job had on some occasions ceased to matter at all.
It was perhaps ironic that we were in bed one early September afternoon in the throws of particularly imaginative sex, certain as ever to make me forget all sense or reason, when my mobile phone rang and I received another bit of news which shocked me rigid.
Young Stephen Jeffries had disappeared.
Nine
I began to wonder what sort of judge of character I was. Could I be wrong about Stephen Jeffries’ father? And, if so, what about the man I loved? Both men were such plausible characters in their very different ways. It was unlike me not to be sure of myself. But I really wasn’t any more.
Certainly, as far as Richard Jeffries was concerned I knew that I had turned my back on my instinctive gut reaction to the man and listened only to logic. Young Stephen was now missing and the implications were all too obvious. Police history is littered with cases of persistent child abuse when the abuser has gone too far, or maybe simply become afraid that the child will tell, and the result has been a murder investigation.
I knew all too well that it was my pronouncement at the Information Sharing Meeting in March, that we had no grounds to continue a police investigation, which had realistically dismissed any possibility of Stephen Jeffries being taken into care or even being kept on the At Risk register. I also knew that the final decision had been made responsibly by a body of experienced experts, that the weight of responsibility did not lie solely on my shoulders, and that the investigation I had headed had been properly and thoroughly executed. None of that made me feel any better.