For Death Comes Softly (15 page)

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.

‘We've got to accept we were wrong, boss,' said Peter Mellor. ‘Maybe we should have pushed for those children to be taken away from their parents. Certainly it looks like we shouldn't have closed the investigation.'

‘Do you think I'm not aware of that, Peter,' I snapped. I shouldn't have spoken to him like that, but my nerves were shot to pieces on this one. I feared the worst and I really didn't want the death of a nine-year-old handicapped boy on my conscience.

Mellor flinched. I kicked myself.

‘Sorry Peter,' I muttered.

He nodded imperceptibly, and then, professional as ever, merely continued with what he had been going to say in the first place.

‘It's not cut and dried, though, boss,' he said. ‘Claudia Smith was almost certainly right that something was going on concerning Stephen Jeffries. But even assuming the likelihood of persistent sexual abuse, there is still no evidence yet that Richard Jeffries was involved.'

I sighed involuntarily. I was unconvinced. ‘But as the boy's father he would have had more access than anyone else,' I said. ‘Particularly in the case of a Down's Syndrome child, who is physically and mentally less able to move around and to mix than other children.'

‘Well, yes, boss,' Mellor replied, thorough in his thinking as in everything else. ‘I'm just saying that even now we shouldn't rush to prejudge Jeffries, that's all. He may still be innocent.'

‘I wish I could believe that,' I said.

It was early in the morning of the day after Stephen Jeffries had been reported missing. Mellor and I were sitting in the incident room at the new Kingswood Major Crime Investigation Centre, which had finally taken the place of the old portacabin complex at Staple Hill. We were waiting for Richard Jeffries to be brought in. Somewhat to my surprise, in view of my present poor relationship with Titmuss, I had been asked to head the missing-child investigation. Apparently the general feeling was that I had learned too much about the Jeffries case not to make my services invaluable as Senior Investigating Officer.

I at once appointed my old friend Inspector Phyllis Jordan, the best organiser in the business, as my office manager and got to work. A missing-child investigation is mounted on the same scale as a murder enquiry. And although it was not the kind of investigation anyone would relish, and I had more cause than most to be disturbed by it, I was also aware of a buzz of adrenaline. After all, this was what I did. This was what I was good at, given half a chance. And I set to work with gusto, organising and guiding my troops.

I had all the facilities of Kingswood at my disposal, including state-of-the-art computer equipment, most notably HOLMES TWO, the latest version of the Home Office Large Major Enquiry Systems, an advanced computer network on line to other police forces throughout the country, and was expecting to have a total of fifty or sixty officers working for me. A team of two sergeants and two detective constables had the previous day already thoroughly grilled both Dr and Mrs Jeffries at their home.

I decided the time had come to bring the pair of them in again for formal recorded interviews. I planned to conduct the interview with Richard Jeffries myself along with a detective constable, while at the same time Mellor and a woman detective constable would interview Elizabeth Jeffries. We could later check for any way, however apparently minor, in which their stories contradicted each other. And I hoped that the knowledge both Mellor and I already had of Richard Jeffries in particular might help us pin him down.

It was only just after 5.00 a.m., and Mellor and I were hitting the black coffee in a big way, trying to sharpen the last vestiges of our wits. We had sent a uniformed team in a squad car to pick up Jeffries and his wife. The choice of such an ungodly hour was quite deliberate. Shock tactics sometimes bring results.

Elizabeth Jeffries certainly appeared to be shocked when she arrived at the station. She had lost the somewhat arrogant aggression I had earlier been aware of. Her eyes were puffy and swollen, but her hair was combed, she was neatly dressed in a sweater and slacks of nicely blending shades of pale beige and, although her distress was quite apparent, she seemed in control. I watched her retreating back as Mellor led her along the corridor to an interview room. She walked with a straight spine, her head held high. I considered, not for the first time that she was undoubtedly stronger than her husband.

Indeed Dr Jeffries looked like a broken man. He was gaunt, unshaven and dishevelled. His grey sweater was grubby and his trousers were crumpled. He sat opposite me in a second interview room, slumped in his chair, the expression on his face one of listless incomprehension.

The uniformed police constables who had collected him had told me that he had been fully clothed when he answered his front door.

‘Would you go to bed if your son had disappeared?' he asked.

I studied him closely as we talked. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin pale and blotchy. He had obviously been crying. Everything about him indicated a man driven to distraction by the loss of his child, nothing indicated guilt.

Again and again we made him go over the logistics of his son's disappearance. The story never varied in the smallest detail. It was devastatingly simple.

‘When Liz went in to his bedroom to wake him for school Stevie was not there. It looked as if he had just jumped out of bed and gone somewhere. There were clothes missing too. His favourite Thomas The Tank Engine sweat shirt, a pair of jeans, his best trainers.

‘I was making tea in the kitchen. Liz came rushing in. She was trying not to panic, but she was terribly anxious, of course. Together we searched the house and garden. I said I would go off and look for him, and that she should stay at home in case he came back. Then I called the surgery and told them I wouldn't be in.'

‘But you didn't call the police?'

‘Not straight away. No. It wasn't the first time Stephen had wandered off. We tried to stop him doing it, of course, but we didn't ever seem able to convince him that he might be in any danger wandering around on his own. He is quite well-known locally and often neighbours and nearby shopkeepers have brought him home. He enjoys attention, sees these solo outings as little adventures, I think.'

Jeffries paused for several seconds, and his voice was trembling noticeably when he continued. There were tears in his eyes.

‘He has a very trusting nature, you see. Down's Syndrome children do.'

‘Had you ever got up in the morning and found Stephen missing before?' I asked.

‘No. Previously he has just gone off on his own during the day when our backs have been turned.'

‘So if this was so different, why weren't you worried?'

‘I told you, Inspector, we were worried. Of course we were worried. Just not frantic, that's all, not at first . . .' His voice trailed off.

‘And then? At what stage did you call the police?'

‘It was just after midday. I'd been all over the neighbourhood. Nobody had seen or heard of him. By then we were getting frantic . . .'

‘But you still thought Stephen had wandered off on his own.'

‘I didn't know what to think any more. But there was no reason to suspect anything else.'

‘How did you think he would have got out of your house in the night or early morning on his own?'

‘It's just a normal house, not a jail. There's a Yale lock and a bolt on the front door. Stephen is quite capable of dealing with those. He has an extra chromosome. He's not an idiot.'

I sat back in my chair and stared at the man as I had done so often now. In spite of his weariness and distress, both of which I was quite sure were genuine, he continued to function surprisingly well. At first sight he seemed to be broken – and yet he remained impressively articulate. Was he too articulate, I wondered, not for the first time.

‘What if someone took him out of your house, took him away? Is that what you now believe may have happened?' I asked.

‘I keep thinking about that. I don't know. There's no sign of anyone having broken in as far as I could see. Your men have been all over the house already, haven't they? What have they found? Why won't anyone tell me anything?'

‘Dr Jeffries, all we want to do is find your son,' I told him coldly. ‘Perhaps it is you who has something you should tell me.'

It was Richard Jeffries turn then to stare at me – long and hard. His lower lip trembled.