‘I persuaded Eddie to take me over in the chopper,’ he said. ‘We landed on the north side which is quite safe. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d only fret.’
‘Damn right,’ I said, and waited for him to continue, which he did at once, his enthusiasm bubbling over, the words pouring out of him.
‘I had a meeting with AKEKO this morning, and I offered them the only hope there is of getting any return for their investment. They neither like nor trust me, but they are businessmen. They listened. You see I do not believe that the damage to Abri is irretrievable. We could either fill up or excavate the remaining tunnels. I am sure the place could be made safe — at a cost. There were mine shafts, many more than we knew about, right under the village, the church, and the site of the new hotel. The building activity and all those people at our wedding were the last straw for Abri, we certainly know that, and the structure of the place just collapsed, but we could build another village somewhere where there aren’t any tunnels.’
‘I got the impression from the enquiry report that the tunnels were everywhere,’ I said lamely.
‘Not quite,’ said Robin. ‘It can be done, I’m sure of it, and AKEKO have the funds. They just need convincing that they won’t be putting good money after bad. I have offered to re-invest most of what they paid me for the lease as a gesture of good faith.’
‘But you could lose everything, Robin,’ I said.
He looked angry for a moment. ‘This isn’t about money, Rose,’ he said quite sternly. ‘It’s about my island.’
I studied him carefully. His cheeks were slightly flushed. There was a gleam in his eyes. Abri would always belong to Robin Davey, and he to it. Even after all that had happened.
‘Surely you’ll never be allowed to rebuild, will you, Robin?’ I asked. ‘Even if it were possible I don’t see you getting planning permission. Isn’t there a bloody great crack across the island?’
Robin was really impatient now. ‘We can landscape it,’ he snapped.
I stared at him in astonishment. Forty-four people had been killed on his blessed island and he was talking about landscaping the crack in the earth which had swallowed them up.
‘It could be a kind of memorial,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘It could even become a tourist attraction. People find that sort of thing fascinating. They flocked to Lynton and Lynmouth after the terrible floods in the 1950s. And look at all the Diana memorials — millions visit them.’
I was completely speechless. We were sitting in armchairs facing each other. He got up, came and kneeled on the carpet before me.
‘Rose, what’s wrong?’ he asked, and I was amazed that he did not know how I felt.
‘It just doesn’t seem right, that’s all,’ I stumbled eventually.
He took both my hands in his.
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong with wanting to rebuild? You didn’t expect them not to rebuild the freeways after the LA earthquake, did you? If Abri were a town instead of an island, you would expect it to be rebuilt, wouldn’t you? What’s the difference?’
There really were no more words. I supposed that in some ways he was right. It was just that I couldn’t bear even to think about Abri and he was patently still possessed by the place. I knew he loved me deeply, but I suspected even I was nothing to him compared with his island. And if he was disappointed with my reaction to his news, it certainly didn’t stop him babbling on.
‘AKEKO have agreed to at least arrange to send an engineering team in,’ he continued just as eagerly as before. ‘It’s a start, anyway, I’m quite sure the practical problems can be overcome...’
I let his words wash over me. His excitement merely reminded me of the depth of his obsession with Abri Island.
On top of what Julia had told me that day, I found myself seriously unnerved.
The next morning, immediately after a still-ebullient Robin had left for the office, I called Julia.
I didn’t mess about. She was, after all, my oldest and best friend.
‘Sorry I went off in a huff,’ I said.
‘Oh, Rose, I probably shouldn’t have said anything,’ she replied. ‘Just dinner-party gossip. A juicy story like that gets told everywhere, and sometimes it’s quite apocryphal. Means bugger all, probably.’
‘You don’t believe that,’ I said, and I heard her give a little sigh.
‘To be honest, I don’t know what to believe, Rose,’ she said, unconsciously echoing my sister.
‘Look, Todd Mallett and his team are sure to have known about the Jeremy Cole angle and checked it out,’ I told her. I knew I was lying to myself and I guessed what her response would be.
‘Nothing about Natasha Felks having possibly had a special reason to be interested in old mines or at least having a strong connection with a mining expert, let alone one as well-known as Cole, came out either at her inquest or the Abri enquiry did it?’ Julia asked.
It was a rhetorical question to which we both knew the answer.
‘I can’t believe Todd wouldn’t have found out about it though...’ My voice tailed off. I was beginning to realise that I wasn’t being very convincing, to myself, let alone to Julia.
‘Why on earth should the police have found out about it?’ Julia sounded exasperated. ‘Natasha Felks was having an affair with a married man, and an eminent one in the public eye at that. The three in a bed story may have been common gossip at the Beeb, but it is the kind of tale people wouldn’t know whether to believe or just take as a good yarn, and Natasha’s name wasn’t generally known. It was an absolute freak that I stumbled across it and put two and two together.’
‘It might still all be a load of nonsense, like you said.’ I was clutching at straws and I knew it.
Julia sighed again. ‘Yes, Rose, it might. But I can’t get it out of my head. I tried to forget all about it after you told me you and Robin were married. But I couldn’t.’
I tried desperately to think. ‘Look, surely when the Abri Island disaster happened Cole and his wife would also have put two and two together.’
‘I don’t know the answer to that, Rose. Maybe they didn’t want to get involved.’
‘What, when so many people had died?’
‘Particularly then,’ said Julia wearily. ‘Anyway, the way the story was told to me, Marjorie Cole was so caught up with her marriage and her own petty jealousies that it may have been quite possible that she genuinely didn’t connect the Abri disaster with Natasha’s drowning. Where Natasha died meant nothing to her, she just revelled in the fact that her rival was no more.’
That hit home. I had reacted in a rather similar way for totally different reasons.
I had one last point. ‘If Jeremy Cole is such an expert on the dangers of old mines why wasn’t he called in to give evidence at the Abri enquiry?’
‘I’m ahead of you,’ said Julia. ‘I’ve done a bit of phoning around. Apparently he was the first academic expert approached but he suggested another man, based at Exeter University, whom he claimed was better qualified because he had specialist knowledge of West Country mining.’
I wasn’t sure whether that might be significant or not. I remained silent.
‘Look, Rose,’ Julia continued after a pause. ‘I’m so glad you called. I didn’t know what to do after you walked out of lunch yesterday. You see, whatever lies behind this I really think it should be put into the hands of the police. It needs to be investigated.’
‘I am the police,’ I interrupted lamely.
Julia sighed again. ‘Rose, I’m so sorry about this, but you’re being ridiculous again. Forty-four people died when those mines fell in on Abri. Natasha’s death remains a mystery. If I’m right and she did suspect the island was unsafe and if she did tell Robin that she suspected it, at the very least they would have had an almighty row, wouldn’t they? If it wasn’t all so serious I would be telling my editor, not Todd Mallett or anybody else till my paper ran the story. But this is too horrendous for playing newspapers. Too many people were killed. I know you. Now I’ve told you, you won’t be happy until you know the truth, either. It has to be a police matter.’