For Death Comes Softly

Twelve

I will never be able to quite explain what it was that made me want to go out to the Pencil again. It made no sense really. Robin’s and my future seemed to be assured, and I fell a little more in love with him every day. How could anyone suspect a man as caring and morally upstanding as Robin of anything remotely underhand, let alone a violent crime?

In the weeks which followed his revelation to me about the plan to lease Abri, our relationship grew ever stronger. I managed a couple of days off for Christmas, which we spent quietly together on Abri. It was the happiest Christmas I had enjoyed in a long time, and while we were there we set our wedding day for the 7th of April, which would be almost eighteen months after our fateful first meeting on the island. So much had already happened since then, and so much that I would have preferred not to have happened. In some ways it seemed to Robin and I that much longer had passed, although we had only been lovers for less than ten months, and yet we suspected that to many, at least to my family and friends, we were moving far too fast. I would have been happy to wait. Robin would not hear of it.

‘Neither of us are exactly in the first flush of youth, Rose,’ he said. ‘We have decided we want to be together, so let’s go for it. We have nothing to wait for. I want you to be my wife and the mother of my children.’

When we were together I clung to his body desperately through the nights and when we were apart and I was working I drew my strength from the memory of his arms wound tightly around me. Unfortunately finalising the Japanese deal kept him away on Abri more throughout January than previously, but the agreement was signed and sealed quicker than I had expected — within less than a couple of months of his telling me about it. Robin was as pleased as possible under the circumstances.

‘The consortium is ideal,’ he enthused. ‘Money to burn and they love the idea of the island more or less as it is, of conserving its history. I actually think the development they’re planning is something I’d like to have done myself if I’d had the money to invest. And they do genuinely believe that keeping Abri as a working community with its farm and its fishermen and all the rest will add to its attraction, thank God. Anyway they are prepared to guarantee homes for the islanders for their lifetime, just as I had hoped.’

What did not go quite so well was reassuring the sixty-seven islanders about their future. It was important to Robin that they not only accepted what he was doing but approved, that they believed he was not abandoning them and appreciated that he was taking the course of action he had decided upon for their good as well as his own. Predictably, I suppose, this caused problems. The islanders were not convinced. In fact they were horrified, Robin confessed to me. People rarely welcome change, and the people of Abri were particularly unfamiliar with the process. Their lifestyle had changed very little in generations.

One morning, early, when Robin called me from Abri all his usual ebullience seemed to be alluding him. ‘They think I’ve let them down,’ he said. ‘Whatever I say, however I put it, that’s the way they see it. I am the Davey who is walking away.’

I asked him then if he was still sure he wanted to go ahead with the deal. ‘Don’t wait until it’s too late and then regret it for the next twenty-five years,’ I said.

His sigh came down the line loud and clear.

‘I have no choice, Rose,’ he said glumly. ‘As it stands the whole thing is such a mess. It can’t go on. There are all kinds of complications that I haven’t explained to you, after all you have your own worries. But trust me in this, the deal has to go ahead if any of us are to survive.’

I was already becoming used to his confident positive approach to life. I hated to hear him sound defeated.

‘I love you,’ was all I could think of to say. A bit lame perhaps, but I was beginning to realise, to my great joy, that he was every bit as besotted with me as I was with him.

‘I know you do,’ he said, and his voice cracked a little. ‘Sometimes that really is all there is.’

It was a wrench to eventually put the phone down. I wanted to hold him close, to comfort him, to take him to bed and listen for his little grunts of pleasure. I missed him so much when we were apart. And the job did not make life any easier. The pressures of the Stephen Jeffries case were continuing to mount. The boy had been missing for more than four months. Realistically none of us expected ever to see him alive again. Robin was not the only one overcome with a sense of failure.

That evening, after yet another day of no progress, I really did not feel like going home alone to the TV and a frozen pizza. Instead I insisted on dragging Peter Mellor over to the Green Dragon for a pint. He was not exactly enthusiastic which was hardly surprising. All we ever talked about nowadays was Stephen Jeffries, and true to form we both sank into melancholy as we went over and over again all the nuances of the case. The big problem was that we were not moving forwards in any direction. There was no evidence of anything, really.

After a couple of morosely dispatched pints of bitter we moved on to large whiskies, more unusual for Mellor than for me — particularly as we were both driving, something about which Mellor, at any rate, was usually quite meticulous.

‘We just keep going around in circles, boss,’ he said. He looked worn out. He was putting in almost the same kind of hours as me. I was not the only one the case had got to.

‘I just can’t get that little lad out of my head,’ Peter Mellor continued. ‘I mean, he was so trusting and loving. And now... well, God knows what’s happened to him.’

I was aware that Mellor shared my sense of having failed the boy, although I didn’t see why he should. Just like Robin had said about Natasha’s death — any responsibility was mine, and mine alone, I reckoned.

‘I was the one who insisted that we had no grounds to remove Stephen and his sister from their home,’ I reminded Peter. ‘Even you thought they at least should be kept on the At Risk register.’

He shrugged. ‘Boss, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we still have nothing concrete against the father and certainly no reason to doubt the mother. For all we know whatever has happened to Stephen may have happened even if we had gone so far as to remove him from his parents.’

I gave a little involuntary snort.

‘Peter, I wish you’d stop telling me that — I know you are trying to be comforting, but please don’t insult the remains of my intelligence,’ I said. ‘Even if Richard Jeffries himself is in the clear, and I just wish I could believe it, I reckon it’s pretty damn unlikely that whoever got to Stephen at the family home would have done so if the boy had been in care.’

Mellor downed the remains of his Scotch in one. He’d had enough of me, and you couldn’t really blame him.

‘Don’t take too much on yourself, boss,’ he warned, something else he was not saying for the first time, as he finally set off home.

And maybe that was part of my problem. Maybe my preoccupation with the Stephen Jeffries case had affected my judgement all round. Perhaps I wouldn’t have even thought of doing what I did if I had been in a calmer and more rational frame of mind. Certainly I was not in a very relaxed state when I travelled to Abri with Robin at the beginning of February for what was to be his final weekend before the Japanese took over. And neither was he.

I was relieved to be away from the job for a bit, but Abri, in turmoil over its future, was far from its old comforting self.

Inevitably Robin was not as attentive as usual. I didn’t actually mind that at all, and was not in the least offended. I understood that his concerns for Abri were such that they were the dominant factor in his thinking at the moment. But his preoccupation with the island gave me time on my own there to wander around and remember more than I really wanted to.

So it was that I came to be standing alone on the Sunday morning looking out to the Pencil, trying as usual not to think about Stephen Jeffries or Natasha Felks — even though it was almost exactly a year since her death — when I spotted the unmistakable skinny frame of Jason Tucker’s father Frank down on the shingly beach. It was a calm day but the weather had been stormy the previous week and he was gathering driftwood and loading it into the small wooden boat I had seen used before for the purpose. There was far too little natural timber on Abri, not much beyond a few scrubby sycamores, for it to be chopped down for fires, and the easiest way to collect driftwood from all round the coast was to use a boat and bring it back to Home Bay where it could be loaded into the Land Rover.

On a whim I slithered my way down the slope and hailed Frank. It was the first time I had encountered him alone since he had come to apologise for Jason having abandoned me on the Pencil. He did not look particularly pleased to see me, which I suppose was not surprising. One way and another I had not exactly brought him good fortune. His son had been sectioned, as the Coroner had recommended after Natasha’s death, and was in a secure mental hospital, and I had always had a sneaking feeling that the people of Abri partly blamed me, the new outside influence, for Robin’s decision to lease their island home.

I took my courage in both hands and asked him about Jason’s welfare.

He looked at me as if I was a complete fool. This time there was none of the faltering humility about him which had been evident when he had been summoned to Highpoint to apologise to me along with his son.

‘The boy’s locked up,’ he said bluntly. ‘’E barely knows if it be Winter or Summer, and ’im one you could never keep within four walls. Ow do you think he be?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and I was. I still had this quite irrational feeling that Jason had not been treated right.

He shrugged and softened a little. ‘It’s not as if ’e’s a bad boy,’ he said.

I touched him on the shoulder. ‘I know. But Natasha Felks died, and I nearly died. Nobody knew quite what he might do next, and neither did Jason.’

Frank looked at me sadly. ‘After ’e left you out there he promised me ’e’d never take anyone out in thigee boat again,’ he said. ‘I never knowed him to break a promise. Never.’

I studied him. ‘What are you saying?’ I asked. ‘Do you really believe Jason didn’t do it?’

He replied quickly. ‘Us’ll never know now, will us,’ he said.

Suddenly I became very sure of something. ‘It was you who made the anonymous call to the police in Barnstaple, wasn’t it, Frank?’

Frank’s gaze did not falter. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever lived in a tied house, miss, have ’ee? That’s what our homes be, you see. There’s not the same freedom other folk ’ave.’ He paused. ‘Course, ’tis all gone for nothing now. All of it.’

‘Frank, if you really were with Jason the day Natasha died, then why on earth haven’t you told the police that on the record.’

‘Ah,’ said Frank. ‘But what if I wasn’t with ’e?’

‘You’re talking in riddles,’ I said.

‘No, I ain’t,’ he replied. ‘What if I knowed my boy didn’t do it, but I could never prove it. I couldn’t tell ’ee where he was that afternoon, you never knowed with young Jason, he’d wander off on his own for hours on end, ’e would. And ’e was always out in thigee boat. Wasn’t ‘sposed to be, but yer couldn’t stop him. Well, us didn’t try to, to tell truth, long as ’e didn’t take nobody with ’im. ’E went out in the boat that day, ’e went fishing, brought mackerel back. Even ’e remembered that. Said so in court didn’t ’e?’

‘Frank, you went out to the Pencil and you found Robin’s name carved there, something the police had missed, and you called Barnstaple and told them, didn’t you?’

‘I ain’t saying no more. It’s over. The island’s dead ’n all, now, far as I can see. ‘Twas different before, there was summat to make sacrifices for.’

‘A son is one hell of a sacrifice, Frank.’

He was no longer looking at me. ‘I couldn’t prove nothing, ‘twas only ever what I felt, like.’

‘And what do you feel, Frank, really feel, tell me,’ I demanded.

He was not a big man, but he seemed to hoist himself very upright.

‘Only that I don’t reckon my boy did it, but I can’t prove nothing. So there’s no bleddy point to it, is there.’ He turned his back and strode off towards his boat, his sinewy arms still full of driftwood.

I looked out at the Pencil. Suddenly I found myself calling after him.

‘Will you take me out to the Pencil, Frank,’ I asked him. ‘Just to see for myself...’

My voice tailed off. I hadn’t planned it. The whole thing happened as if I were on some kind of automatic pilot and, as I made the request, I realised I was not even sure of my motives. Part of the reason was to bury my own demons. But, to be honest, there was something else now. I realised, and of all people I should know, that parents hardly ever did think their sons and daughters were responsible for a crime or a dreadful accident. But what Frank Tucker had said, or half-said, had disturbed me. He had not confirmed it but I was quite sure that he had deliberately stirred the whole thing up again and tried to shift suspicion back on to Robin. Certainly he had at first seemed to indicate that the only reason he hadn’t spoken out properly was because he feared for his home and a way of life that was all that he knew for himself and his family. But Robin was no longer the protector of that way of life, in Frank’s eyes, and bitterness and a feeling of betrayal certainly came into his behaviour now — if Robin were not in the process of leasing Abri, I doubt if Frank would have been even as forthcoming as he was to me. But he still had nothing constructive to add really. He was basically too honest a man to go on the record with a false alibi for his son. He had just wanted the investigation reopened in the hope that the police might turn up something more than he had. They hadn’t. But I was reminded again that there was so much we didn’t know about Natasha’s death and everything we did know was circumstantial, little more than glorified guesswork. I wanted to see the Pencil again for myself, to see if it would somehow reveal the truth to me.

Frank regarded me coolly. ‘I don’t reckon Mr Robin would be too ‘appy about that,’ he said in a level voice.

‘Well, maybe he needn’t know about it,’ I said.

‘What,’ countered Frank. ‘On this island?’ He gave a wry chuckle.

It was my turn to shrug. ‘If there are any problems I’ll carry the can,’ I said.

‘Hmph,’ he responded. For a moment or too he stared at the flat water. If anything the sea was even calmer than it had been on the November day when Jason had abandoned me on the rock. Certainly Frank couldn’t use weather conditions as an excuse, even though we were at the height of winter.

‘Don’t suppose it makes much bleddy odds anyway,’ he said eventually. ‘’E’s not the boss for much longer, is ’e?’

Abruptly he turned away from me again, covered the short distance to the boat in a couple of easy strides, dumped the driftwood into the bow, and began to push the little vessel out into the water.

‘C’mon then,’ he called over his shoulder.

The nearer we got to the Pencil the more I regretted my impetuous behaviour. And once again it was mostly my determination not to be seen to back down which made me force myself to go through with it.

I could clearly hear the thump of my heart in my chest as Frank held the little boat steady before the Pencil’s precarious channel, waiting for that seventh wave to take us in over the rocky outcrop. My mouth felt dry. I swallowed moisturelessly.

Frank had tipped up the outboard and had the oar ready to guide the boat into just the right position, just as his son had done on my previous fateful visit to the phallic rock.

He was studying the water carefully, but at the last moment he turned to look at me, and he would have had to be blind not to see how tense I was.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘You know I’ll ’ave to take ’er out again and come back for ’ee, don’t ’ee? Just like always. There’s no choice ’bout that.’

I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak.

‘Right then.’

Deftly he positioned the little craft on the crest of a wave, steered her bow just right into the channel and then used his oar to fend off to the right as we surfed alongside the Pencil’s only landing place by the ledge where I had spent all those terrified hours. Frank was very assured, but then, I remembered, so had been his son.

He lopped the mooring line around the same rock outcrop which I recalled so well and prepared to help me clamber up onto the ledge. I swallowed hard and forced myself forwards and upwards.

‘I’ll be just a few yards out, and I’ll be looking out for ’ee,’ he called as he turned the boat to catch the outward roll of a wave.

I waved as confidently as I could, and stood for a moment watching him depart and wondering what on earth I thought I was playing at. The water lapped against the rock a yard or so below my feet, and I forced myself not to think about the last time. Not to panic.

I busied myself with what I suppose had always been the subconscious purpose of my return to the Pencil. I began to methodically check out the rock, looking for anything which might in any way help to solve the mystery of Natasha’s death. If it was a mystery. Stupid of me really, I suppose, to think that I would find anything when the entire might of the Devon and Cornwall’s Scenes of Crime team had already been at work — although they had missed the carving of Robin’s name on their first visit, I reminded myself. It was predictable that to begin with all I gained was a nasty bruise on the head when I jerked upright at just the wrong moment as I crawled through the tunnel to the far side of the Pencil.

The view was as spectacular as ever, even without either dolphins or seals. Why is it that great beauty and great tragedy seem so often to be intrinsically linked?

When I re-emerged on the ledge which doubled as the rough and ready landing stage I was relieved, in spite of knowing really that there could be no doubt this time, to see that Frank Tucker was still hovering just twenty yards or so away. And as he turned his boat around and began to manoeuvre the little craft in to me, I looked up at the rock face to where I knew the carving must be.

It should not have been a shock to see it but it was. Robin’s name looked so stark and accusing there. And the carving, in an outcrop of softer slate running in a generous fault through the hard granite of the Pencil, was higher up the rock than I had expected, a good three or four feet above the top of the tunnel entrance. I could imagine all too clearly how absolutely desperate for survival Natasha must have been to have managed to climb so far up a sheer rock face, and I shivered at the vivid picture which suddenly presented itself to me.

The letters were roughly scratched but unmistakably formed the name Robin — although the N at the end was not completed. Had Natasha fallen into the sea, numb with cold and fear, unable to hang on any more, before she could finish it, I wondered. The thought made me shiver all the more.

I remembered all too clearly what Todd Mallett had asked. Would the last act of a young woman in fear of her life really be to scratch her lover’s name on a cliff face? Would she really waste her precious last energy on doing that unless she were trying to say something?

The very bleakness of it was shocking. If I had been looking for some kind of solace I had found anything but. I fervently wished I had not asked Frank to bring me out here. And I wished it all the more when we returned to Abri.

Robin was waiting on Pencil Beach when we returned. Frank had been going to take me straight back to Home Bay, but as we motored into the lee of the island the figure of Robin, waving furiously, dominated our view, demanded our swift presence, and could not be ignored.

He waded out towards the dinghy. His face was like thunder. At first he did not even look at me.

‘Frank, I thought I told you never, never, to take visitors out to the Pencil again,’ he shouted.

‘Robin, it was my fault,’ I interrupted, perhaps unwisely. ‘I asked Frank to take me...’

Robin ignored me. In any case Frank seemed quite unconcerned. He no longer looked at Robin in the warm respectful way that I had observed when I first saw them together.

‘Didn’t think ’er was a visitor, exactly,’ he said.

Robin glowered at him but said no more. Instead he turned his attentions to me.

‘C’mon,’ he snapped, and he reached forward, grabbed my arm and half-lifted me out of the little boat. I landed with a plop in about a foot of icy sea water and would have fallen forward were his grip on my arm not so tight. But as we waded ashore I was uncertain really whether he was dragging me or helping me.

‘You go on back to the landing beach, Frank,’ he called over his shoulder.

Frank made no reply. I suspected by now that he had nothing more to say to the man I was to marry.

Robin waited until the little boat had disappeared around the headline before he vented his fury on me. The Daveys, even in moments of high dudgeon, were not the kind of people who rowed in front of the servants, which to me was the way Robin had always seemed to have regarded the tenants of Abri, even though his great affection for them was without question. I had little time, however, to reflect on the curiosities of life in a feudal community. I had never seen Robin so angry. He was almost hysterical.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you were up to?’ he stormed.

I tried to calm him, but my heart was in my mouth. I was shivering too, which wasn’t surprising as my jeans were now soaked to the knees and my trainers were sodden. Robin’s own feet and legs were also wet through, but he didn’t seem even to have noticed, and he certainly hadn’t been interested in keeping me dry.

‘Robin, I just wanted to go back to the place, I can’t explain why exactly...’

‘Can’t you? What did you think you were going to find out there for God’s sake?’

‘Well, nothing, nothing of course. I just wanted to go back there, conquer my fears, maybe...’

‘Rubbish!’ he snarled. And he stepped forward, eyes blazing, his arms hanging loose by his sides. For a terrible moment I thought he was going to hit me. He didn’t, of course. It wasn’t in his nature or his breeding to hit a woman, but I doubted he had ever been much closer. ‘Don’t you know how I feel about that damn rock?’ he continued. ‘The one good thing about leasing Abri is that I won’t have to see the bloody thing every day of my working life. How could you go out there like that?’

‘Robin, I’m so sorry,’ I said. And I was. This was our first row and I wasn’t enjoying it. I was used only to tenderness from him, understanding, and, of course, passion. I couldn’t bear him to be ranting and raving at me like that. Julia always maintained that the first row in a relationship was even more important than the first sex. That was when you really began to learn the truth about a lover, she said.

He backed away, shoulders slumped, not shouting at me any more. It was as if the storm had blown itself wearily out.

I could see the familiar pain in his eyes, only thinly masked by his anger, and was ashamed of myself for what I had done. Indeed, what had I thought I was going to find on the Pencil? And why had I had the need to go there again. I really had to put the past behind me. I was going to marry this man. I loved him, and love calls for total trust.

Suddenly all I wanted to do was to comfort him, to reassure him — and to reassure myself too, I suppose.

I went to him, my feet squelching on the shingles, and wrapped my arms around him. ‘I love you so much,’ I whispered. ‘We mustn’t fight. Wouldn’t you rather make love? Let’s go back, shall we?’

I suppose it was a pretty crass approach. It was just that our lovemaking was always so good, and I thought, if I thought at all, that it was the one thing sure to put things right between us.

I felt Robin stiffen, and he pushed me quite violently away.

‘I do have a heart and a brain as well as a cock you know,’ he said. He was no longer shouting. His voice was very cold.

I flinched from him. I could feel the colour rising in my cheeks. I swallowed hard, fighting back the tears.

He watched me for a moment. Then his face began to soften. As suddenly as the mood had come over him it went away.

This time he came to me and reached out for me. I couldn’t stop myself crying then. He wiped my tears with the back of one hand and the words of apology poured from him.

‘I never want to hurt you, Rose, never,’ he whispered fervently. ‘I was just so afraid of losing you. I know it’s stupid, but when I realised you had gone to the Pencil, I was so frightened. I couldn’t bear any more tragedy, I really couldn’t.’

He began to kiss my eyes, licking the tears off my face. My love and desire for him overwhelmed me. In spite of his earlier words I could feel how much he wanted me again. He began to hold me so tightly that my breath came in short sharp gasps.

He walked me backwards up the beach until we were inside a small shallow cave in the cliff side which I had not even known was there. His face was no longer dark with anger but with desire. He pulled at my clothes and his own. I had stopped crying. My heart was soaring again. I lay down on the sandy floor of the cave and he lowered himself on top of me. I was still shivering with the cold and wet, but I knew he would warm me, make me glow. We remained half-clothed, yet somehow he contrived to be inside me almost at once. It was quick and vital and so very sweet. When we had finished we fell back from each other panting, and I found that I was smiling again.

‘Was that your brain in action then?’ I asked innocently.

‘Bitch!’ he said, but his voice was gentle and his eyes were dancing. He kissed me long and slow.

‘You are the love of my life,’ he said.

I felt the tears pricking again, but so differently from before.