‘Robin doesn’t miss trains. Anyway, I took him to the station. He had plenty of time.’
‘Did you see him get on the train?’
‘Well no,’ I said. ‘But he must have done, I’m sure of it. And he certainly wasn’t at home when I got back. The place was in darkness and all locked up. The phone was ringing. I had a struggle to get into the house to answer it in time...’ A terrible thought overwhelmed me. ‘Oh Julia, I left the back door open, I was in such a hurry... it was you on the phone...’
Julia looked as shocked as I was, but her voice sounded quite steady when she spoke again.
‘So if he returned home just after you he could have overheard our conversation?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, feeling absolutely desolate.
‘Try to remember, wouldn’t you have heard him come in?’
I shook my head. There was no point in lying, even to myself.
‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘I was so intent on what you were telling me about the letter and everything. Unless he had made a noise or called out, he could have stood in the hallway outside the kitchen door and I wouldn’t have known he was there. And if he’d come back by taxi it would have dropped him in the road at the front and I wouldn’t have heard that either...’
I just hated what I was saying, but I carried on.
‘Then I went straight to bed and drank the best part of a bottle of whisky and went to sleep.’
Julia was squinting with the effort of concentration. I suspected that her head was really hurting. With one had she tugged gently at a clump of newly sprouting red hair
‘Could he have slipped out of the house later on without you knowing, do you think?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid he could. You know how big our house is and how thick the walls are — and I was out for the count.’
We looked at each other. Was I finally going to have to admit everything to myself, finally going to have to give Robin up? I still desperately wanted to put him in the clear.
‘Look, Todd’s team checked that Robin was on the Rosslare ferry passenger list...’ I began.
Julia interrupted me. ‘Yes, but did they check that he actually boarded?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
‘OK. So how did he get to Ireland on schedule the next morning?’ I asked. Almost before I had finished speaking I heard myself answer my own question. ‘An early flight from Heathrow. Oh my God, Julia. He would still have had time to get to London, and all night to... to...’ I couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t put it into words.
For a minute or so we were both silent, sitting together looking down at the key as if willing it to speak to us, or maybe just to disappear. Suddenly it hit me.
Hastily I scrabbled in my shoulder bag for my key ring. With foreboding I sorted out the key to Highpoint, Robin’s house on Abri, which he had given me the night he proposed, and lay it on the table next to the other key. I hardly needed to look. I knew.
‘They match,’ cried Julia, shooting me a puzzled look.
I nodded. ‘It’s Robin’s,’ I said quietly. ‘I suddenly remembered that the lock to Highpoint was a Banham.’
There was a searing pain behind my eyes. Was it all true then? Everything I had feared and so wanted to disprove.
Julia reached out and grasped my hand. She was still so far from well, and I didn’t know how she could be so strong after all she had been through.
‘Hold on, old love,’ she said. ‘Let’s work out exactly what this means.’
I shut my eyes wishing I could make it all go away. But that wasn’t possible any more. I knew that my ostrich days were finally and irrevocably over. I forced my eyes open again. The lids felt heavy. The pain was still there. Fleetingly I wondered how the ache in my head compared with Julia’s, and I suspected that hers would make mine pale into insignificance. Again I wondered how she managed to function so well.
‘It can only mean that Robin took your key off the hook and replaced it with his own,’ I said haltingly. ‘Presumably so that if I checked, which I did, I would think yours was still there.’
Julia’s grip tightened. ‘But if so, why didn’t he replace it later with the real key to my flat? You know... after... afterwards.’ She stumbled over the last bit, finding it as difficult as I did to put the terrible suspicion into words.
I looked at her blankly. ‘I don’t know,’ I said lamely. ‘Maybe he thought that key would never be used again. Maybe he just forgot...’
‘I can’t imagine Robin ever forgetting anything,’ responded Julia. And she managed a wry smile.
‘I have to know,’ I whispered. ‘I have to know for sure.’
Julia nodded. When she spoke again she sounded quite businesslike.
‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think we should jump to any conclusions until we have more proof.’
‘How?’ I asked mournfully.
Julia’s frown deepened. Then she slapped the table top with her free hand.
‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you do a check on passengers flying out of Heathrow to Ireland on the morning after my fire?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But surely he wouldn’t have checked in under his own name.’
‘Robin travels to Ireland regularly, doesn’t he?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, there are family connections and he is involved in several property deals there.’
‘Then he would know that although travel between Ireland and the UK is officially passport-free, the airlines frequently ask either for passports or some sort of identification,’ said Julia thoughtfully. ‘They’re still pretty security conscious. If Robin flew out of Heathrow that morning I don’t think he would have risked a false name. He could all too easily have just ended up drawing attention to himself. I think he would have used his real name. He wouldn’t have expected anyone to check the passenger list. After all, he would appear to have arrived in Ireland as scheduled by train and boat. He had an alibi. You took him to the railway station, for goodness’ sake. Look, if it hadn’t been for the key we wouldn’t be doing this now, would we?’
Without responding I went to the telephone and called the police at Heathrow. I knew one officer serving there and I asked for him by name. I had to do this under the old pals act — a straightforward approach would have set alarm bells clattering. I doubted there was a bobby in the country who didn’t know about DCI Rose Piper, Robin Davey and the Abri Island disaster.
My mate was off duty until the following day.
‘Now what?’ I asked Julia.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘We ought to carry on as normal until we know for certain. But that means you driving back to Bristol later this afternoon, as arranged. And, well,’ she paused, then continued bluntly, ‘I don’t like the idea of you going back to the man, I really don’t.’
‘I’m going to have to, aren’t I?’
She half-nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ she murmured eventually.
I told her I’d be fine. Strangely enough, I still wasn’t afraid of Robin. But I was afraid of having to face him, of having to pretend that everything was normal.
If Robin and I had been alone together that evening I am not sure that I would have been able to pull it off. The dinner with the AKEKO chairman made it just about possible. Indeed Robin and the Japanese businessman seemed to have so much to talk about that I was mercifully required to make very little conversation. There was the familiar glint in Robin’s eye when talking about Abri, and the plans to rebuild, to which AKEKO were undoubtedly now every bit as committed as he was. Robin’s continued obsession with the island had concerned me enough even before I had learned all that I had that day, and, with the offending key tucked carefully in a corner of my handbag, it was a struggle for me to keep up any semblance of normality. However, if Robin noticed anything amiss, he said nothing, except to remark casually on the way home that I had been unusually quiet.