I was aware that Mellor shared my sense of having failed the boy, although I didn’t see why he should. Just like Robin had said about Natasha’s death — any responsibility was mine, and mine alone, I reckoned.
‘I was the one who insisted that we had no grounds to remove Stephen and his sister from their home,’ I reminded Peter. ‘Even you thought they at least should be kept on the At Risk register.’
He shrugged. ‘Boss, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we still have nothing concrete against the father and certainly no reason to doubt the mother. For all we know whatever has happened to Stephen may have happened even if we had gone so far as to remove him from his parents.’
I gave a little involuntary snort.
‘Peter, I wish you’d stop telling me that — I know you are trying to be comforting, but please don’t insult the remains of my intelligence,’ I said. ‘Even if Richard Jeffries himself is in the clear, and I just wish I could believe it, I reckon it’s pretty damn unlikely that whoever got to Stephen at the family home would have done so if the boy had been in care.’
Mellor downed the remains of his Scotch in one. He’d had enough of me, and you couldn’t really blame him.
‘Don’t take too much on yourself, boss,’ he warned, something else he was not saying for the first time, as he finally set off home.
And maybe that was part of my problem. Maybe my preoccupation with the Stephen Jeffries case had affected my judgement all round. Perhaps I wouldn’t have even thought of doing what I did if I had been in a calmer and more rational frame of mind. Certainly I was not in a very relaxed state when I travelled to Abri with Robin at the beginning of February for what was to be his final weekend before the Japanese took over. And neither was he.
I was relieved to be away from the job for a bit, but Abri, in turmoil over its future, was far from its old comforting self.
Inevitably Robin was not as attentive as usual. I didn’t actually mind that at all, and was not in the least offended. I understood that his concerns for Abri were such that they were the dominant factor in his thinking at the moment. But his preoccupation with the island gave me time on my own there to wander around and remember more than I really wanted to.
So it was that I came to be standing alone on the Sunday morning looking out to the Pencil, trying as usual not to think about Stephen Jeffries or Natasha Felks — even though it was almost exactly a year since her death — when I spotted the unmistakable skinny frame of Jason Tucker’s father Frank down on the shingly beach. It was a calm day but the weather had been stormy the previous week and he was gathering driftwood and loading it into the small wooden boat I had seen used before for the purpose. There was far too little natural timber on Abri, not much beyond a few scrubby sycamores, for it to be chopped down for fires, and the easiest way to collect driftwood from all round the coast was to use a boat and bring it back to Home Bay where it could be loaded into the Land Rover.
On a whim I slithered my way down the slope and hailed Frank. It was the first time I had encountered him alone since he had come to apologise for Jason having abandoned me on the Pencil. He did not look particularly pleased to see me, which I suppose was not surprising. One way and another I had not exactly brought him good fortune. His son had been sectioned, as the Coroner had recommended after Natasha’s death, and was in a secure mental hospital, and I had always had a sneaking feeling that the people of Abri partly blamed me, the new outside influence, for Robin’s decision to lease their island home.
I took my courage in both hands and asked him about Jason’s welfare.
He looked at me as if I was a complete fool. This time there was none of the faltering humility about him which had been evident when he had been summoned to Highpoint to apologise to me along with his son.
‘The boy’s locked up,’ he said bluntly. ‘’E barely knows if it be Winter or Summer, and ’im one you could never keep within four walls. Ow do you think he be?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and I was. I still had this quite irrational feeling that Jason had not been treated right.
He shrugged and softened a little. ‘It’s not as if ’e’s a bad boy,’ he said.
I touched him on the shoulder. ‘I know. But Natasha Felks died, and I nearly died. Nobody knew quite what he might do next, and neither did Jason.’
Frank looked at me sadly. ‘After ’e left you out there he promised me ’e’d never take anyone out in thigee boat again,’ he said. ‘I never knowed him to break a promise. Never.’
I studied him. ‘What are you saying?’ I asked. ‘Do you really believe Jason didn’t do it?’
He replied quickly. ‘Us’ll never know now, will us,’ he said.
Suddenly I became very sure of something. ‘It was you who made the anonymous call to the police in Barnstaple, wasn’t it, Frank?’
Frank’s gaze did not falter. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever lived in a tied house, miss, have ’ee? That’s what our homes be, you see. There’s not the same freedom other folk ’ave.’ He paused. ‘Course, ’tis all gone for nothing now. All of it.’
‘Frank, if you really were with Jason the day Natasha died, then why on earth haven’t you told the police that on the record.’
‘Ah,’ said Frank. ‘But what if I wasn’t with ’e?’
‘You’re talking in riddles,’ I said.
‘No, I ain’t,’ he replied. ‘What if I knowed my boy didn’t do it, but I could never prove it. I couldn’t tell ’ee where he was that afternoon, you never knowed with young Jason, he’d wander off on his own for hours on end, ’e would. And ’e was always out in thigee boat. Wasn’t ‘sposed to be, but yer couldn’t stop him. Well, us didn’t try to, to tell truth, long as ’e didn’t take nobody with ’im. ’E went out in the boat that day, ’e went fishing, brought mackerel back. Even ’e remembered that. Said so in court didn’t ’e?’
‘Frank, you went out to the Pencil and you found Robin’s name carved there, something the police had missed, and you called Barnstaple and told them, didn’t you?’
‘I ain’t saying no more. It’s over. The island’s dead ’n all, now, far as I can see. ‘Twas different before, there was summat to make sacrifices for.’
‘A son is one hell of a sacrifice, Frank.’
He was no longer looking at me. ‘I couldn’t prove nothing, ‘twas only ever what I felt, like.’
‘And what do you feel, Frank, really feel, tell me,’ I demanded.
He was not a big man, but he seemed to hoist himself very upright.
‘Only that I don’t reckon my boy did it, but I can’t prove nothing. So there’s no bleddy point to it, is there.’ He turned his back and strode off towards his boat, his sinewy arms still full of driftwood.
I looked out at the Pencil. Suddenly I found myself calling after him.
‘Will you take me out to the Pencil, Frank,’ I asked him. ‘Just to see for myself...’
My voice tailed off. I hadn’t planned it. The whole thing happened as if I were on some kind of automatic pilot and, as I made the request, I realised I was not even sure of my motives. Part of the reason was to bury my own demons. But, to be honest, there was something else now. I realised, and of all people I should know, that parents hardly ever did think their sons and daughters were responsible for a crime or a dreadful accident. But what Frank Tucker had said, or half-said, had disturbed me. He had not confirmed it but I was quite sure that he had deliberately stirred the whole thing up again and tried to shift suspicion back on to Robin. Certainly he had at first seemed to indicate that the only reason he hadn’t spoken out properly was because he feared for his home and a way of life that was all that he knew for himself and his family. But Robin was no longer the protector of that way of life, in Frank’s eyes, and bitterness and a feeling of betrayal certainly came into his behaviour now — if Robin were not in the process of leasing Abri, I doubt if Frank would have been even as forthcoming as he was to me. But he still had nothing constructive to add really. He was basically too honest a man to go on the record with a false alibi for his son. He had just wanted the investigation reopened in the hope that the police might turn up something more than he had. They hadn’t. But I was reminded again that there was so much we didn’t know about Natasha’s death and everything we did know was circumstantial, little more than glorified guesswork. I wanted to see the Pencil again for myself, to see if it would somehow reveal the truth to me.