‘Julia, can we hold off until I have talked to Robin?’ I asked plaintively.
‘I think that’s the last thing you should do, to be perfectly honest,’ said Julia sharply.
‘Look, I cannot believe that Robin would have deliberately put all those people’s lives at risk. I don’t believe it. He’d never do that. They were his people. His family, his islanders. And you can’t be also suggesting that he murdered Natasha surely?’
‘Rose,’ Julia’s voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘I remember you confiding in me that you once had your own suspicions about her death. How you couldn’t understand her allowing herself to be dropped off at the Pencil by a young man she knew only too well suffered epileptic trances. Remember?’
‘That was before I really got to know Robin, to realise the kind of man he is.’
‘Rose, are you truly sure you know the kind of man he is? You seem mesmerised by him. Blinded to reality. You have done ever since you first slept with him...’
I was fully aware that she was telling the truth. But I still wasn’t ready for it.
‘I’m not mesmerised by him, honestly,’ I insisted. ‘Just let me talk to him before you do anything. I will know if he is guilty of anything. I’ll know if he lies to me, I’m quite sure of it...’
I was still in an emotional state. The thought of anything intruding on my newly rediscovered happiness with Robin, let alone something as ominous as this, was too much for me. I started to sob as I pleaded with her to back off.
Julia was my very best friend in all the world. She loved me. She gave in.
‘You’ve got twenty-four hours,’ she said.
That evening I confronted Robin as soon as he returned home. He listened quietly as I related all that Julia had told me. I waited, wondering what on earth he was going to say.
He looked very grim.
‘So you see fit to question me on the grounds of dinner-party gossip, do you, Rose?’ he queried eventually. And in a very reasonable tone.
I didn’t reply. Put like that I felt almost ashamed.
‘Spell it out, Rose,’ he went on. ‘What exactly do you think this piece of rubbish means?’
‘Maybe it means that Natasha had found out something about Abri’s mines,’ I said. ‘And if she had, well she would have told you, wouldn’t she?’
‘Rose, Natasha was not an expert on anything. She fucked a geologist, that’s all. It didn’t make her one.’
I had to persist now. ‘No, but if you have a relationship with someone you do learn something about their work. At least you pick up an interest.’
‘Really,’ he replied coldly. ‘What do I know about your work, exactly, I wonder?’
‘I don’t even do The Job any more,’ I remarked obliquely.
‘No, and there’s a reason for that, isn’t there? You are on extended sick leave because you have been emotionally disturbed by all that you have been through. You’re still disturbed, Rose, you must be to even consider what I suspect you are thinking. Your judgement is way off beam, it really is.
‘We were on Abri for our wedding. You know what I told the enquiry, and you have to believe it, surely. Would I have ever set foot on the place again, let alone let you and all our families and friends do so, if I did not think it was safe?’
I shook my head. I desperately wanted to believe him, but I had so many doubts and fears.
‘Maybe you had kidded yourself into believing that it was safe,’ I said. ‘After all those mine shafts had been there for 150 years, why should they suddenly collapse?’
Robin looked at me in amazement.
‘I never thought you would doubt me, Rose,’ he said.
I studied him carefully, this beautiful man I had married and was so in love with. He seemed so sad.
‘I just want you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘There is no truth other than what you already know. Do you really think I would have taken any notice of anything Natasha might have said, just because she was the mistress of a geologist? If Natasha knew anything about mining and geology she didn’t share it with me, but then she wouldn’t, would she? It seems pretty damn likely from what you have told me that she may have been still seeing her geologist after she and I got together. And I’ll tell you what, Rose, if you care any more, that’s something I’d never do. I’ve never cheated on anyone in my life.’
And there was the rub. I believed that absolutely. Robin had a strict moral code. It was not in his nature to cheat. I accepted that about him without question, and yet I could at the same time question that he may be capable of other far greater immoralities. Of real evil. I was as confused as ever.
He started to speak again. ‘There is no new truth, Rose. I still don’t know how Tash died nor why she went off in the boat with Jason. I just don’t know.’
‘What if she didn’t go with Jason,’ I blurted out, suddenly putting voice to the grim thought that had lurked somewhere in my mind from the very beginning. ‘What if you took her out there to the Pencil and dropped her off to look at the dolphins. She’d have trusted you to return, wouldn’t she?’
He stared at me for maybe thirty seconds without speaking. Then he started to cry. I had seen this big powerful man weep before, but I was as moved as I had been that first time, when, after his mother was stricken by her stroke, he had cried in my arms. But then, after all the death and destruction we had witnessed together, I had been relieved to see him give in finally to his emotions, and I had not been the cause of his weeping. This was different.
‘I can’t believe you think I would be capable of such a thing,’ Robin said, and his voice came out in a kind of anguished wail through the tears.
I couldn’t help it. I went to him and took him in my arms. I told him I was sorry, that I loved him, that of course I didn’t believe he was capable of... capable of... Even then I had been unable to use the right words.
His tears eased. The inevitable happened. Within minutes we were in bed and my body took over my brain. The sheer physical joy that we brought each other was beyond anything I had ever really thought possible. I told myself it was simply not possible for this man who could make the world so beautiful to be a part of anything ugly.
Early the next morning we were woken by the telephone. It was Peter Mellor. Richard Jeffries had confessed to the murder of his son Stephen and had admitted also to consistently sexually abusing him. I felt my abdominal muscles contract sickeningly, as if I had been kicked viciously in the belly.
Apparently forensic had worked miracles with poor Stephen’s body which, like some of the victims of the Fred West murders in Gloucester, was in better condition than might have been expected having been preserved by the type of soil in which it lay. Evidence had been found — including bits of hair and hair root, torn from Richard Jeffries’ head, jammed behind the remains of the boy’s fingernails — which had ultimately been enough to enable officers interrogating the man finally, and only after a long struggle, to break him.
‘I thought you’d like to know before it’s announced publicly, boss,’ said Mellor. ‘I knew you’d be gutted. He’ll be charged today.’
‘Thank you, Peter,’ I said quietly and put the receiver down.
So Richard Jeffries had been guilty all along. My judgement had been flawed. Worst still, that wasn’t really it. I had always had doubts at the bottom of my mind about Jeffries, but I had not listened to them properly. I had gone with the sway, taken the course of least resistance. I knew I had worked by the book, that on paper the investigation I had headed could not be faulted. That made no difference. I couldn’t get over the idea that a boy was dead who might well have been alive if I had done my job properly. I tortured myself with the ever-present suspicion that had I not been so preoccupied with my personal life, I would have been more thorough, more relentless in the investigations. I looked back at Robin, still lying half-asleep beside me in the bed, his fair hair tousled, the covers only half over his splendid body, and I shuddered. I just prayed that my judgement of him would never turn out to have been so desperately wrong.