For Death Comes Softly

Thirteen

The next morning, the day Robin finally handed Abri over to the Japanese, brought weather that was much more typical for January on the island. It was wet and windy, and the wind was so strong that it was blowing the rain almost horizontal.

I had taken an extra day off in order to be there with Robin, and although it had been the last thing I had wanted to do — I had known it wasn’t going to be much fun and more importantly I had troubles of my own professionally, the pressures at work seemed to be growing greater every day — I realised that he needed me there.

A few islanders turned up at the helicopter pad and they stood quietly in a huddle, as if trying to protect each other from the weather and goodness knows what else, as Robin tried not all that effectively to sparkle and radiate confidence. It was a sad day and everyone knew it. Robin more than anyone, if the truth be known.

‘I’m not really leaving Abri you know,’ he said rather unconvincingly. ‘I’ll be to and fro all the time, just like always.’

But it wouldn’t be just like always, and we all knew it. Robin would no longer be managing the island. He had handed over control completely. When he visited Highpoint it would be as a guest, no different to any other guest on the island. I wasn’t even sure how much time he was going to want to spend on Abri under those conditions.

Frank Tucker was conspicuous by his absence. Mrs Cotley, whom Robin was maintaining as his housekeeper to keep Highpoint running smoothly in his absence, was there; and for once her mood almost certainly matched the grimness of her appearance. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she would never allow herself to be seen to weep in public.

Robin gave her a big warm hug.

‘We’ll miss you, Mr Robin,’ she muttered, and as far as I was aware it was the only nice thing anybody said to him that day.

‘I keep telling you, I’ll be back all the time Mrs C,’ he responded.

‘You know what I mean,’ she said.

He did, of course. And so did I.

He proceeded to shake hands with everyone who had gathered there. His face was very pale in spite of his forced brightness. I understood absolutely that the worst thing for him was the knowledge that the people of Abri continued to think that he had deserted them in spite of all his efforts to convince them otherwise — and indeed, as I saw it, his genuine determination to ensure their futures as much as his own. Robin had not signed the island over to the highest bidder, I knew, but to the one he thought would be best for Abri.

We clambered aboard the chopper and there was none of the usual banter between Robin and pilot Eddie Brown, who, with his natural awareness and sensitivity, merely concentrated on his job.

Robin remained morosely silent throughout the flight back to Bristol, and barely bothered even to say goodbye to Eddie, who winked at me reassuringly when I glanced uneasily back at him over my shoulder as we walked away from the aircraft.

We were in the process of buying the Clifton house which Robin had told me about — I had loved it every bit as much as he had, which had somehow been predictable, although it was far grander than any place I had ever expected to become my home — but the sale had yet to be completed. For the time being we continued to live in my apartment, and with Robin now about to be there virtually full-time the place was not going to be nearly big enough. Fortunately Robin was confident that the deal on our new house would soon be finalised so that we could complete the work we wanted to do on the place in time for our April wedding, and, when we arrived back from Abri that day, I began to hope with particular fervour that would prove to be the case.

Robin went straight into the living room, flopped down on the sofa and switched on the TV. The flat felt smaller than ever, and his morose presence seemed to fill its every corner.

‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ I asked lamely after watching him for half an hour or so during which he did not speak once.

He looked at me as if I was mad and shook his head. I made one or two further desolate attempts at conversation which he more or less ignored. He was apparently intent on spending the entire afternoon in front of the TV, surfing mindlessly through the satellite channels. I was disappointed because we had flown back from Abri quite early in the morning and I was free for the rest of the day, not due to return to my duties at Kingswood until Tuesday morning. Stephen Jeffries was still missing. We continued to make little or no progress. The case continued to torment me and I was beginning to realise that the only way I could stop myself from becoming dangerously obsessive was to take breaks occasionally. But this had not been the kind of break I needed. It had proven to be every bit as stressful as the job — at least when I was working I knew exactly what was going on and wasn’t fretting about not being at the helm. In addition, as I never had nearly enough time to spend alone with Robin, a wasted minute seemed tragic, and this day, it appeared, was to be wasted entirely.

I finally gave up on my attempts to jolly him out of his ill humour and instead tried to read, but I found it even harder than usual to settle into a book. His mood wrapped itself around me like a blanket of black fog.

Sometime around seven o’clock I made a final attempt at resurrecting at least a part of the day.

‘Do you fancy going out to dinner?’ I enquired without a great deal of optimism.

At least this time he bothered to reply properly.

‘I’m sorry, Rose, I just don’t feel like being with people, and I don’t feel like talking either, not even to you,’ he said.

He then returned his attentions to the TV set and I took myself off to fetch a take-away curry without wasting any energy asking him what he would like. I could have phoned for something but I felt like a brief change of scene. Not that things had improved any by the time I returned. The curry was not a success. Robin ate hardly anything, and even I had very little appetite.

When, at about eleven, I said I was going to go to bed, Robin barely looked up from the TV screen.

‘I’ll be there in a bit,’ he said distractedly, but in fact he stayed just where he was for some hours more. Although distressed by his distress, I managed to fall into a fitful sleep from which he woke me at almost 3 a.m. when he climbed into bed beside me. He only woke me by accident though. There was no question that night of his reaching out for me to make love. Instead he lay uneasily beside me, and his restlessness made it virtually impossible for me to get any more sleep, so it was rather irritating that he was dead to the world and appeared so absolutely at peace when I left for the nick at 7.30.

He called me around mid-morning on my mobile.

‘Hallo, darling, sorry I was out for the count when you left this morning,’ he said cheerily. He sounded quite his usual bouncy self. ‘’Fraid I was a bit of a misery guts yesterday,’ he continued.

‘I do understand Robin,’ I said. I did too. The island had always meant so much to him and his family, and for so long.

‘I know you do, darling, and that is one of the many reasons why I love you to distraction,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ I muttered obliquely. Well, although I was alone in my office, walls have ears in police stations.

‘I’m calling from the new office,’ he continued animatedly. ‘Bob’s already got a couple of great deals on the table, and now that I’m fully on board we’ll really get cracking.’

He seemed to be right back to normal. Bob was an old school friend Robin had set himself up in partnership with. The two of them had capital to play with and Robin had told me that he was confident that they would make a lot of money in the property business. Certainly Robin was a natural wheeler and dealer. That was how he had single-handedly managed to keep the dinosaur of Abri afloat, so to speak, for as long as he had, in a world where it really had no place. It was typical of him to be already planning his future — our future. The large amount of capital already paid in advance on the leasing of Abri was such that he probably need not have worked at anything for the rest of his life, but that would not have suited Robin. And I did know how serious he was about rebuilding his family heritage. His dream now was to live long enough to have Abri handed back to him as a financially viable proposition to be handed on to future generations of Daveys, and to have made a new fortune himself to go with it. That kind of thinking was second nature to him.

I was, however, surprised at the speed with which he seemed to have recovered from the trauma of the previous day. I took a short break from the mound of paperwork on my desk to make myself some coffee. As I drank it I leaned back in my chair, put my feet on my desk and contemplated this extraordinary man I was going to marry.

I felt that I was very lucky. And I wondered why anything about Robin Davey surprised me any more.

Robin had made an arrangement with AKEKO that the Davey family would continue to have certain rights on the island throughout the leasing. These included the right to marry and to be buried there. So Robin and I were to marry, both of us for the second time, in Abri Island’s church, built in the 1890s on the edge of Abri village by Robin’s great-grandfather. To say I was daunted by this was a major understatement.

I had thought it unlikely that, as a divorcee, I would even be allowed to marry there, and secretly, had half-hoped that would prove to be the case. Robin would have none of it. A church wedding on Abri was expected for him. If there were any problems the Davey family fixed them. They were good at fixing things. All the Daveys had always been married on Abri, and indeed Robin had already been married there once. He was a sensitive man, and he had shown some concern about that.

‘Are you sure it doesn’t bother you, Rose?’ he asked.

‘No, that doesn’t bother me,’ I had replied quite honestly. ‘Your first wedding was twenty years ago, and that’s a very long time. It was another life for you then, and I was just a kid. We didn’t know each other existed. It really doesn’t worry me at all.’

He had been pleased. ‘I’m glad you feel like that,’ he said. ‘I know it will make the family happy.’

I took his hand. ‘I tell you what does bother me a bit,’ I admitted. ‘Coping with a Davey family wedding and all the baggage it brings with it. The tradition of it. I feel a bit like I’m marrying a royal.’

He laughed. ‘You are, my dear,’ he said mockingly. ‘A prince of a man, that’s me.’ And then he reassured me that I had nothing to worry about. ‘Mother, James, and I will deal with everything,’ he said soothingly. ‘All you have to do is to turn up.’

Of course that unnerved me all the more. I was accustomed to making my own decisions and being in charge of my own life. I wasn’t at all used to being carried along by events. But that was just what happened, of course. Robin’s boundless energy, his unshakeable belief in himself, and in us, was overwhelming. What Robin wanted I went along with. I’d never have thought I would do that with any man. It was different with Robin. Life was different. I was different.

Robin’s younger brother James would be best man. My sister Clem and her eight-year-old daughter, Ruth, the bridesmaids. The plans for our wedding seemed to just present themselves. Most of the decisions were made for me, even down to the food and drink which should be served at the wedding breakfast — dressed Cornish crab, smoked bacon with the local seaweed dish laver, Torridge salmon, and Devon cider as well as the more traditional champagne.

I took an afternoon off and drove over to Northgate to talk things over with Maude and James. It was a pleasantly warm March day and Maude, wearing something lacy and flowing and completely impractical which looked quite sensational, was collecting eggs from the free-range hens which wandered aimlessly about the yard.

‘I’ve baked some scones,’ she said. ‘James is coming over. Let’s have tea.’

The scones were mouth-watering. Another of Maude’s many talents, it appeared. She and James continued to display the same ease of manner which had made my first visit to Northgate so relaxed.

Maude had the knack of organising you without appearing to do so. In spite of her size there was nothing remotely domineering about her. She just carried you along in her wake. And James, so laid back he might fall over, continued to give the impression that he’d rather be in his barn with his paints, but joined in the wedding talk with decent enthusiasm.

The guest list, which I thought was a terrifyingly long one, seemed to comprise about 200 or so Davey family and friends — plus, of course, all the Abri islanders — and about fifty of mine. There was quite an extended Davey family it seemed, of distant cousins and aged aunts and uncles, who must not be left out.

My dress had already been ordered from an old art school friend of James who had gone on to be a top designer. Maude was to travel to London with me for the final fitting.

‘Bloody good excuse,’ she said, her vowels even more flatly Yorkshire than usual. ‘I’ve not had lunch at the Savoy for donkey’s years.’

I had never had lunch at the Savoy. But I was willing to give it a try.

As the days passed I began to get used to being swept along with the Davey tide, and even grew rather to like it. Certainly there were far fewer demands on my time than you would expect with a wedding on this scale to plan, which continued to make it possible for me to give my job first priority.

Eventually there was a development in the Stephen Jeffries case, although not a very conclusive one. Elizabeth Jeffries suddenly walked out on her husband, taking their daughter with her. Their so-solid marriage, which had in a way hindered even our initial inquiries into the abuse allegation, had collapsed.

‘She must know something,’ I told Peter Mellor impulsively. ‘I reckon she knows Richard Jeffries killed their son.’

Mellor shrugged. Ever reasonable. Ever rational. ‘Marriages often break down under this kind of strain, boss. You know that. It doesn’t necessarily indicate guilt.’

‘Well then, let’s do our best to find out whether it does or not,’ I countered.

We switched the thrust of our investigation on to Elizabeth Jeffries. We interviewed her all over again at her mother’s home where she was now living with her daughter, and then more formally at Kingswood. We gave her a thorough going over, but we got nowhere. There was none of the old cool arrogance about her. In fact she didn’t seem to be functioning properly at all. She was almost zombie-like. But if she had cause to believe that her husband was guilty of murder, she still wasn’t telling. All she said was that she had moved out because she could not cope with the deep depression into which Richard Jeffries had descended since Stephen’s disappearance, and that by taking her daughter to her granny she had hoped to reintroduce some semblance of normality into little Anna’s life.

It was hard to believe that the most obsessive middle-class dedication to keeping up appearances could lead a mother to go as far as protecting a man she knew had killed her child — even if that man was her husband. The truth was that I didn’t know what to do next. The case was fast turning into one of the unhappiest I had ever been involved with, and I feared we were never to get to the bottom of the mystery. About the only way I could imagine moving constructively forward was to find the boy’s body, and God knows I didn’t want that.

I remained unhappily preoccupied, and it was really rather wonderful to at least know that I was about to enjoy a dream wedding to a man I was madly in love with and that I barely had to lift a finger. Our wedding day would be just two months after the island had been leased, by which time Robin hoped that the islanders would be becoming a little more used to the new order of things.

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.

I thought he had a bloody cheek and I had absolutely no intention of letting his meddling spoil my happiness. I muttered a few mild obscenities to myself, picked up the file he had left on my desk and dumped it straight in my too-difficult drawer, so sure was I that I would have no use for it.

It was arranged that I would take a week’s leave for my wedding and a brief honeymoon in the South of France. Chief Superintendent Titmuss decided to take over as SIO of the Stephen Jeffries’ case himself while I was away, which I found highly disconcerting, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Titmuss uttered the mandatory good wishes when I left the office on the eve of my wedding, and, to his credit I grudgingly admitted to myself, if he shared Todd Mallett’s misgivings about the man I was marrying, he gave no sign of it.

That night I endured the traditional hen party. The girls were mainly colleagues in The Job and, of course, sister Clem and my dear old mate Julia. I was aware of the mixed feelings of many of them. I was marrying a man I had only been with for just over nine months and whose former fiancée had died in mysterious circumstances not long before. But Robin had a high profile in more ways than one. I was moving into another world. I was marrying into the kind of old family of which I had previously had little or no experience. I was leaving my independence behind. There was no question about that. I didn’t know whether it would be possible for me to continue my police career — in spite of Robin’s apparent concern that I did so. The truly crazy thing was that I didn’t even care. As long as I became Mrs Robin Davey the next day I didn’t care about anything.

And, of course, as we drank vast quantities of pretend champagne in a thoroughly disreputable night club into which I was quite sure no police officer should ever venture, nobody mentioned any question mark which might still hang over my intended. The files on the death of Natasha Felks lay hidden in the depths of the Devon and Cornwell Constabulary’s computer system — and at that moment I had no doubt at all that was where they would stay.