For Death Comes Softly (23 page)

I thought that might be a bit optimistic, but things did seem to be going better than may have been expected. The plans for the new luxury hotel complex, which was hopefully to change the fortunes of Abri, had been proven to be surprisingly sensitive to the spirit of the place and in sympathy with the surroundings. Even those among the islanders determined to find fault with everything had, to Robin's delight and relief, been grudgingly approving. But, of course, although they would have liked things to carry on just as they were for ever, they must have realised that could not be possible. Abri had to earn its living, to prosper in order to survive, just like any business and any community. Robin was right about that. Planning permission had gone through swiftly, work had already begun on the site, and AKEKO, true to its word, had hired a number of islanders to help with the building.

We had taken over all the existing holiday accommodation for the weekend of the wedding and were to be given the run of the place. Robin was well pleased.

Meanwhile, our relationship seemed to go from strength to strength. And I had been around long enough to experience, in spite of my physical euphoria, a certain sense of relief when I began to realise that we really did get on every bit as well out of bed as in. That one dreadful row on Pencil Beach had yet to be repeated, and I hoped it never would be.

I even eventually faced up to the inevitable and invited my mother to meet Robin. I warned him thoroughly about the horrors of the Hyacinth Bucket of Weston-super-Mare, but he seemed completely untroubled by the prospect of meeting her. I had been dreading it and had put it off for an almost indecently long period after having reluctantly confided to her that I was remarrying – which I had also put off for as long as possible. It wasn't that I feared her reaction. Predictably she had been absolutely delighted. I was after all marrying a Davey, and in North Devon the family really were regarded as being close to royalty. Indeed this was probably the first time in my entire life I had done anything that pleased her. My mother had the sensitivity of a Rottweiler – nay less, Rottweilers can be quite endearing. She had no problems at all with Robin's past, indeed if she knew about the mysterious death of his former fiancée she did not seem even to consider it worth a mention. And it certainly did not worry her that I was remarrying fairly hastily after a divorce. Mother had never liked Simon, and I had always considered it a tribute to my first husband's judgement of character that he had been unable to spend more than an hour or so in the same room as her and remain civil.

My mother had been christened Harriet and had always been known as Hat until a few years ago when she had suddenly announced that she would henceforth be known as Harrie. God knows what silly magazine she had been reading. It really was hard to imagine anything much more ridiculous than a short middle-aged woman, running slightly to fat, hairdo like the Queen's, with a penchant for flowing multi-coloured polyester, calling herself Harrie.

Mother always overdressed. And she did not disappoint when she arrived for dinner at the flat. Robin had offered to cook for her, and I reckoned that would at least be marginally less embarrassing than taking her to a restaurant.

She was wearing a particularly gaudy polyester creation, too much jewellery and spangled spectacles. The very sight of her made me groan inside. And her mouth turned firmly down at the corners when she took in my jeans and tee shirt, which I am afraid I had chosen to wear quite deliberately. Childish, I suppose. Robin, however, emerged from the bedroom wearing one his smartest suits, shirt and tie. He really was a creep, and I whispered as much in his ear as he ushered a now-beaming mother into the sitting room.

‘Not much point in inviting her here and then upsetting her, is there?' he hissed back with a smug smile. I slapped him playfully on the backside. He was right, of course. I resolved to try to be polite to my mother for a whole evening.

It was not easy.

‘Wonder how long it will be before you destroy this place, then, Rose,' she remarked, looking snootily around my still remarkably uncluttered flat which I had managed to keep her out of until now.

I smiled through gritted teeth. The meal was a success. Mother raved over Robin's home-made mushroom soup followed by grilled Dover soles. Well, there wasn't much harm even I could have done putting a sole under the grill, I thought to myself grumpily.

Predictably Robin charmed my mother rotten. There was one moment, though, which confounded even him.

‘Have you got a pen, dear?' asked mother, later on in the evening while Robin was out of the room. She often attempted to put on a really posh voice and usually ended up sounding plain peculiar.

I passed her a biro.

‘No dear, a pen for my blouse,' replied mother.

Just as I was working this out Robin returned.

‘Could
you
please find me a pen, Robin?' mother asked, in a rather exasperated way, as if I was thick, or something.

‘Of course,' responded Robin, reaching in the breast pocket of his jacket for the Monte Blanc he invariably carried there.

‘Oh no, dear, a pen for my blouse,' said mother again. ‘I seem to have lost a button . . .'

I swear this is a true story. How could anyone ever make it up?

Robin looked at me and I looked at Robin. We both started to giggle. Mother treated us to a puzzled frown. Robin pulled himself together first. Maybe it was his public school training. With wonderful control he straightened his features and adroitly changed the subject.

The rest of the evening was without notable incident and mother had to leave fairly early to drive back to Weston-super-Mare, which by then was as much of a relief to Robin as it was to me, I suspected.

For some days afterwards we each found ourselves asking at regular intervals if the other had a pen, before collapsing in hoots of merriment.

In general the weeks leading up to our wedding passed smoothly, at home if not in the job. Robin really was so kind and thoughtful and so understanding. He never seemed to mind the hours I put in at work, just said that it made our time together all the more precious. Certainly the joy of loving him became everything to me, whereas previously, and I suppose I have to admit that Simon had been quite right about it, when push came to shove my job had always come first.

However a couple of weeks before the wedding I sensed Robin back away from me a little. I already knew that he was capable of black moods, yet I suppose most of us are. Life can seem pretty impossible sometimes. But if Robin was unhappy, I was learning, then he withdrew into himself, falling fretfully silent. I would have much preferred the occasional outburst of temper, anything that involved some kind of communication.

Over the space of a few days the periods of morose silence grew longer and longer and I found that I sorely missed the easy companionship which was usually so much a feature of our time together. I sensed that the intelligent thing to do was to leave him alone, let him live through whatever was bugging him, but naturally I could not resist confronting him, and in fact he responded better than I might have expected.

‘Robin, what is it?' I asked directly at the end of an entire evening together when he had seemed not to want to talk to me at all. ‘Are you having second thoughts? Do you have doubts now about marrying me? Is that it?'

He looked astonished. ‘Is that what you've been thinking?' he asked incredulously.

I shrugged. ‘To be honest, Robin, I haven't known what to think.'

When he spoke again his voice was intense, his manner quite forceful. ‘Good God, Rose, possibly the one thing in the world I have no doubts about at all is you and my feelings for you.'

‘Well what
is
wrong then?' I persisted.

He sighed. Suddenly and unusually he looked his forty-five years, and very tired indeed.

‘You have to realise the wrench it has been for me to hand Abri over to strangers,' he said. ‘Sometimes it all gets too much. I feel that I can't just live for a time twenty-five years hence when I might get it back, you were right about that. I may not even be alive . . .'

His voice tailed away. I studied him anxiously. There was real pain in his eyes. I thought he must be near to tears.

‘I've left so much behind, Rose,' he said. ‘And then there's so much I wish I could leave behind. So much death and sorrow.'

I could feel my own tears welling up. ‘Oh Robin, I just can't bear to see you hurting,' I blurted out.

He managed a small sad smile.

‘I'm sorry, Rose,' he responded. ‘It's just that I come with rather a lot of baggage, I'm afraid.'

‘I just want you to be happy, want us to be happy, that's all,' I told him a bit pathetically. But this man had such control over my emotions, over my whole being. If he was unhappy, then so was I. He reached out for me and touched my cheek.

‘I try very hard not to think about the past, and most of the time with you I barely have to try at all. Just now and again I can't help remembering.'

I took his hand in mine and kissed his fingers, breathing in the smell of him just as I always did when I was close to him.

‘I'll try not to be such a terrible moody sod, too,' he said. ‘I will be happy, Rose. We will be happy. I promise you.'

Then he smiled the to-die-for smile. I had been in love with my ex-husband Simon. Things may have gone badly pear-shaped in the end, but there was no doubt that I had been deeply in love with him for many years. Never before Robin Davey had a man been able to turn me into a blancmange.

A couple of days later Todd Mallett called in to my office. It was the first time we had spoken since he had balled me out on the phone for not telling him about me and Robin. He seemed to have forgiven me, though.

‘It's that nasty con job you guys have been working on,' he said conversationally, and I guessed he was referring to the moody builders who had been operating right across our district for months and whose unpleasant speciality was tricking old ladies out of their life's savings. ‘Think they've been at it in North Devon now, just had a meeting with your team to touch base. Thought I'd look in on you.'

‘I see,' I said non-committedly, wondering what he really wanted.

‘Reckoned you might be interested in this.' He put a file on my desk. ‘It's a case of suspected child abuse our boys have just started to look into. It could help you to compare notes with the Stephen Jeffries case.'

I opened the file and looked at it briefly. The case concerned an eleven-year-old girl who had allegedly been molested by a youth club leader. At a glance I could see no possible relevance to whatever had happened to Stephen Jeffries, and knowing how sharp Todd Mallett was I suspected that he was pretty damn sure of that too.

‘Thank you,' was all that I said, and I smiled at him brightly. I had a vague feeling I may have guessed what the true purpose of this visit was and I was damned if I was going to help the bugger.

‘Right,' said Todd, and he shifted uneasily from one foot to another, his face slightly flushed. Clever yes, smooth no, that was Todd Mallett.

‘Something I can do for you,' I said eventually.

‘No, no, no,' he said in an effusive sort of way. Then eventually, and so casually his manner just had to be forced, he came to what I am sure had been the point of his visit in the first place.

‘The big day approaches, then,' he said in tones of rather forced jollity, I thought.

I nodded.

‘Quite a wedding it's going to be, I hear,' he went on.

‘We hope so,' I said.

‘Yes, of course.' He hesitated then eventually blurted out what I had no doubt he had come to say. ‘Be careful, Rose, won't you? There's still a lot about Robin Davey we've never got to the bottom of, you know.'

I was angry, although I tried not to show it. My husband-to-be was a fine man whose entire life had been beyond reproach until the drowning of Natasha Felks off his island – and what seemed to me now to have been a concerted campaign to link him with her death had failed dismally. At that moment I could not understand how anyone could continue to doubt Robin. His behaviour towards the Abri islanders, whom he seemed to me to have considered above his personal interests throughout the saga of leasing the island further demonstrated the kind of man he was. Robin had high standards and unshakeable principles. As my wedding approached I had come to regard him as possibly the most admirable human being I had ever known. I loved him, I loved his family, and I resented anyone who dared question him and all that I believed that he stood for.

‘That's because there's nothing to get to the bottom of, sir,' I said in level tones.

‘I hope you're right, Rose,' Todd responded, and he didn't look embarrassed any more now that he had taken the plunge – just intent on saying his piece. ‘You are a senior police officer and you could find yourself in an impossible situation one of these fine days, that's what I'm afraid of.'

‘You've nothing to be afraid of any more than I have, sir,' I said, and I could no longer keep the edge out of my voice. ‘I know all too well that Robin has been the subject of an investigation and I also know that investigation failed to incriminate him in any way, as it was sure to, and is now closed. Isn't that right, sir?'

‘Yes, Rose, that's quite right,' Mallett replied. He was a man who knew when he was getting nowhere. He smiled at me enigmatically, turned on his heel and walked towards the door where he paused and looked back over his shoulder. He was no longer smiling.

‘Just take care, Rose, that's all,' he said. ‘We are all very fond of you, you know.' He left then, shutting my door behind him.