For Death Comes Softly

Twenty

Two days later Robin left for Ireland on a business trip and I took him to Bristol Temple Meads railway station to catch the late train up to Fishguard and then across to Rosslare. Robin preferred to travel at night if he could. He slept easily on boats and trains and liked the idea of making a journey while he did so. He said that way you didn’t waste your days.

Relations were fairly strained between us. I assured him that he had set my mind at rest, and even apologised for questioning him in the way that I had. He appeared to take it well. Certainly calmly. Typical Robin.

When I stopped the car outside the station he leaned across to kiss me gently on the lips. It felt so good, as always. Warm and caring with the promise of so much more.

‘I cannot bear to think that you don’t trust me,’ he said suddenly.

‘I have told you I’m sorry,’ I replied obliquely.

He sat there in the passenger seat with his hand on the door handle and stared at me. I realised I had to find something more to say.

‘Robin, Abri haunts me,’ I said. ‘I’ll never get over what happened, and I just can’t stop thinking about it and going over it again and again in my mind.’

‘How do you think it is for me?’ he asked quietly.

‘I know. And I really am sorry about doubting you. I just get so mixed up...’ And that, God knows, was the truth. I truly was so dreadfully sorry, and so dreadfully mixed up.

‘Shhhh,’ he said, as if he were soothing a small child. And then he kissed me again. I melted in his arms as usual and felt, just for a moment, a return of the old closeness. ‘I have to have all of you, Rose,’ he whispered.

I knew what he meant.

‘You do have all of me,’ I told him.

‘Do I?’ he asked, and he wasn’t comforting me any more. I could hear the strain in his voice and knew how much he needed comfort and reassurance from me, but I did not know what more to say. He waited a few seconds, then picked up his bag from the rear seat, got out of the car and set off across the wide pavement to the station entrance. He did not look back.

I wanted to run after him, but I told myself we both needed a bit of space. I would hear from Julia soon, she would have learned the whole thing was a big mistake and Robin and I could just get on with our lives at last. I felt as if I was being torn apart. Half of me admonished the other half for even needing confirmation of that. I should trust my husband irrevocably, regardless of tittle-tattle from London — but the truth was that, much as I wished I could, I didn’t.

On the way home I stopped off briefly at the off-licence at the end of our road. I needed some mineral water and I decided to treat myself to a rather extravagant sleeping potion — a bottle of eighteen-year-old The Macallan in the hope that it might help me fall quickly asleep. Since Julia’s call I had barely slept at all. And even a drunken stupor is preferable to lying restlessly awake all night.

I parked in the driveway alongside our big Victorian house, picked up my carrier bag of goodies from the passenger seat and headed for the back door, which both Robin and I used most of the time. As I fumbled with the lock I could hear the telephone ringing inside the house, which of course turned all my fingers to butter. As soon as I had eventually successfully gained entry, I dashed straight for the phone in the kitchen, leaving the carrier bag by the open back door.

It was the call I had hoped for and yet feared.

‘Hi,’ said Julia. And there was something in the tone of her voice just in that one word which filled me with dread. ‘I’ve got a letter you should see,’ she told me bluntly.

The news she had for me was just what I hadn’t wanted to hear.

‘I was with Jeremy Cole for a good two hours or so, eventually I simply came straight out with the true reason for my visit. It was extraordinary. He just caved in. It can happen some times when you take people by surprise. That’s why journalists doorstep...’

‘Julia, tell me what Cole said,’ I interrupted. I could sense a reluctance in her, as if she knew how much what she had to say was going to hurt, and I heard her take a deep breath.

‘Apparently he and Natasha had remained on quite good terms right up until her death, and he admitted that she had actually contacted him and told him that she was studying the history of Abri Island and was fascinated by the gold-mining industry that had gone on there in Victorian times. He said that she had always seemed very interested in his work when they were together, and that had probably sparked her off. Then he went and fetched this letter which Natasha had written him in which she asked him if they could meet and if he would look at some maps she had of the Abri mining network and give her his opinion...’

‘Julia, for goodness’ sake,’ I interrupted. ‘AKEKO had their own team of experts pouring over those maps. Even after the event the enquiry agreed that the Abri maps gave no cause for concern, because they didn’t tell the whole picture.’

‘I’m sorry Rose, there’s more than that,’ Julia replied. ‘Natasha remarked in the letter how beautifully drawn and detailed the maps were and what good condition they were in considering their age. She actually gave the date of the latest of them as being 1862.’

I could feel my heart pounding.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. Robin handed over all the maps in existence. The latest was 1850, not 1862...’ I ran out of words.

‘Exactly,’ said Julia. ‘And here we have Natasha Felks talking about a map twelve years later than that.’

‘She must just have made a mistake.’ I was still fighting reality.

‘A very precise one, don’t you think,’ remarked Julia mildly.

‘But it doesn’t really prove anything, does it, I mean, it’s just a letter, you haven’t got the maps, have you?’

I think I had begun to try Julia’s patience by then. She sounded quite exasperated when she replied.

‘No, Rose, I do have the letter but I haven’t got the maps. Neither did Jeremy Cole ever see them, he arranged to meet Natasha but she died two days before they were due to do so.’

She paused for a moment, waiting, I knew, for the implications of that bit to sink in fully, then she continued.

‘I think it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever see those maps again. I think they’ve been destroyed, don’t you?’

I took in great gulps of fresh air, trying to calm myself, seeking for straws to clutch.

‘Julia, if he had possible evidence like this why didn’t Cole come forward at the enquiry, or even at Natasha’s inquest?’

‘Well, he claims not to have considered the significance until I confronted him. I think that was probably true originally when Natasha died. He didn’t know what was going on with Abri, he hadn’t seen the maps, and he had no reason to suspect anything other than a tragic accident. But by the time of the disaster he’d put it together, I’m sure of it. He had his own reasons for not wanting to get involved, not wanting to wash his dirty linen in public, as he put it. But once the disaster had happened it was a lot more than facing a load of publicity over an extramarital affair. Imagine the scandal if Sir Jeremy Blessed Cole had been seen to have had any kind of foreknowledge. He justified it to himself that it was too late after the event, he couldn’t bring back the dead, and simply kept stum.’

‘So why did he suddenly open up to you then?’ I asked.

‘A niggling conscience, perhaps,’ said Julia with a certain edge. ‘Some people still do have them you know. I think he might be secretly ashamed of himself. And I took him by surprise.’

I had nothing further to say. After another short pause Julia started to speak again.

‘Look Rose, we both know how Robin feels about Abri Island. And we know what happened to Natasha Felks. If complete maps of the mining operations had been available to AKEKO they would never have done a deal, and more than likely the whole island would have been evacuated then. Robin would have lost it.’

I interrupted her forcefully. ‘Julia stop,’ I said. ‘I just can’t take it in. You’re just surmising things, terrible things, and I cannot listen to it, I really can’t.’

This time Julia interrupted me, but her voice was very gentle.

‘Darling Rose, I know it’s your husband I’m talking about, but neither of us can ignore this, can we? I’m not sure how much it means or exactly what, but I am quite sure it’s enough for the police to want to reopen their investigation. One of us should go to Todd Mallett. Shall I, or do you want to? He’s your mate.’

‘I wouldn’t say he’s my mate, exactly,’ I said, gratefully grasping the opportunity to go off at a tangent.

‘OK, shall I do it then?’ Julia asked, sounding very patient.

Crazily I still played for time.

‘Can I see the letter first?’ I asked.

Julia sighed. ‘Come up on an early morning train,’ she said. ‘To tell the truth, I’d rather you stayed with me till this is all sorted out anyway.’

I was about to hang up when a final thought occurred to me.

‘Blurting out more than you mean to a journalist is one thing, but I’m surprised Cole gave you the letter,’ I said.

‘He didn’t, I nicked it,’ confessed Julia without a trace of compunction. ‘I handed him back an empty envelope. I am an old tabloid hack you know...’

In any other circumstances I would have had to laugh. As it was, I felt that I would probably never laugh again as long as I lived.

On autopilot I wandered out of the kitchen into the rear lobby area, picked up the bag containing the Macallan and the mineral water, both of which I intended to take to bed with me, and closed and locked the back door. The only way I could get through the night was to do my best to stop myself thinking, I reckoned. The house felt huge, and very cold. I shivered as, still functioning automatically, I walked along the passageway to the front hall to ensure that the main door was locked and secure, as I did every night before I went to bed. Then I headed for oblivion.

I drank the greater part of my bottle, swiftly and quite deliberately, and it did at least have the required anaesthetic effect. I also had a damned good weep into my pillow, which seemed to help a bit. Anyway, eventually I fell into a deep if troubled sleep until the alarm woke me just before 6 a.m.

I brushed my teeth vigorously in a vain attempt to rid my mouth of the fuzziness the whisky had left me with, showered quickly, dressed in the clothes I had taken off the night before, and set off for Temple Meads station to catch the seven o’clock to Paddington. I felt as if I were operating in a kind of daze. I planned to call Julia, not known for being an early riser, from the train at a slightly more respectable hour to tell her I was on my way.

I was just about to turn into the station car park when I heard the news on the car radio.

‘A major fire broke out last night in a luxury London apartment block. The mystery blaze was believed to have started in the flat of well-known journalist Julia Jones, who was critically injured. Several other residents suffered shock and minor injuries...’

I felt quite faint. My dull hangover headache turned into a raging searing pain. I thought my head was going to burst open. I made myself think. I turned the car around and drove home. First I called Julia’s office and managed to raise the news desk night watchman, on duty till the first of the day shift would arrive some time after eight. He told me that Julia was in the Charing Cross Hospital suffering from a fractured skull and a dislocated shoulder, and he had already acquired a pretty full picture of what had happened.

The blaze had broken out suddenly in her home apparently, and was believed to have been caused by some kind of gas leak. Julia’s flat was on the fourth floor of a luxury tower block overlooking the Thames. If she hadn’t been something of an action girl she would have died because it seemed that she was trapped in her bedroom by the blaze. But Julia was surprisingly fit and agile for a hard-drinking hack. At the beginning of the year she had gone on one of those Outward Bound courses for jaded executives which are getting to be all the rage, and she had told me then that she’d taken a liking to rock climbing. Apparently she had calmly opened her bedroom window, clambered out, and attempted to climb down the outside of the building. According to witnesses she had nearly made it too, but just two storeys from safety she had missed a foothold and fallen to the ground.

My hand was shaking when I replaced the receiver and I had difficulty controlling my breathing. But my brain was beginning to function with an almost clinical efficiency. I think my police training may have been clicking in at last.

My next call was to the Charing Cross Hospital. When I had convinced the hospital that not only was I a DCI, but also a close friend, I was reassured that she would almost certainly live. However, she had not recovered consciousness since her fall and was undergoing brain surgery as we spoke.

Brain surgery. The very idea made me cringe.

‘But...’ I stumbled. ‘Can you be sure she’ll be all right?’ I desperately sought the right words. ‘I mean, what condition will she be in after the operation?’

‘It’s too early to say,’ said the nursing sister who had agreed to give me what information she could.

I pushed the point, and made myself be blunt. ‘Look, is Julia likely to suffer long-term brain damage?’ I asked.

There was a pause. ‘Your friend has a serious head injury and is having brain surgery,’ said the sister eventually. ‘Of course, that may be a possibility. We just don’t know yet...’

I was shaking even more by the time I made the next call. Before I could change my mind I dialled the number of Barnstaple Police Station, and asked to speak to Superintendent Todd Mallett. It was just on eight o’clock and I was hoping that Todd was at his desk as early as I knew to be his habit. But when he picked up his extension I was unsure whether I was glad or not to have reached him.

I gave him a brief summary of events and he suggested that we should meet at once. He reckoned the time had come for another formal interview and I couldn’t argue with him about that. I did say I was not prepared to travel west all the way to Barnstaple because I desperately wanted to go to London to see Julia. For a moment I thought Todd was going to insist, but ultimately he relented and we agreed to meet at the nick in Tiverton.

Within little more than an hour and a half I was sitting in an interview room facing Todd, his regular sidekick, Detective Sergeant Pitt, who had interviewed Robin after Natasha had died, and a double tape recorder. The two men interrogated me thoroughly, questioning me repeatedly, in the way in which I had myself done with witnesses and suspects so many times. It was a new experience to be on the receiving end. But what had happened to Julia had gone through me like a cheese wire. Certainly I had no intention of prevaricating any more. I told Todd and Sergeant Pitt, whose manner indicated quite clearly how unimpressed he was with a senior officer who had got herself into such deep waters, everything that Julia had told me, all my doubts about Robin and all my fears.

When I had finished Todd sat silently for half a minute or so, tapping the end of a biro on the wooden desk between us. Momentarily I wondered if he was going to say, ‘Told you so’, and I was grateful that he didn’t, although it was beginning to appear as if he might have every right.

‘Where is Robin supposed to be, exactly?’ he asked eventually.

I gave him the address and telephone number, a number I had not dared ring myself, of the hotel just outside Waterford which Robin had told me would be his base.

Todd glanced at Sergeant Pitt, who jotted down the details, then he stood up, and put a big hand on my shoulder.

‘Go to your friend, Rose,’ he said quite softly. ‘Try not to have any contact with your husband until I have spoken to you again. Just concentrate on your friend and leave everything else to us. OK?’

I nodded, and took my leave. But it wasn’t OK, of course. Not at all. I feared that my final nightmare was about to be realised.

It was just before noon when I left Tiverton Police Station and I drove straight to the Charing Cross Hospital. Normally I used the train for trips to London, as indeed I had intended to do earlier that morning, but Charing Cross was the right side of town coming in from the west, and at least if I stayed in the car I did not have to face people and could have some time alone. I even switched off my mobile phone, not just to avoid Robin but also because I did not want to speak to anyone at all.

I stopped just once on the way for petrol and strong coffee — I couldn’t face food which was rare indeed for me — and started searching for a parking space at Charing Cross bang on 3.30 in the afternoon. The drive up had been remarkably trouble free, no hold-ups and, even though it was December, the weather was dry and bright, excellent driving conditions. Although I should have been beginning to tire, a combination of that and the adrenaline flowing through my veins meant that I had yet to feel weary. I parked eventually and half-ran into the hospital.

Julia, I quickly learned, had come out of surgery several hours earlier, but remained deeply unconscious. It was still too early to predict her level of recovery. Her mother Rachel, who still lived in our home town of Weston-super-Mare, and her brother Ronald, both of whom I knew well, were already at the hospital and looked strained and upset. They were touchingly pleased to see me and I felt, although perhaps I was being unduly hard on myself, like some kind of Judas. Certainly I could not begin to tell them anything of my fears about what had happened to Julia and how I could be involved, however unwittingly. Keeping silent added to my tension and distress.

The three of us were invited to take a peek at Julia in intensive care and although we had been warned of her condition it was still a terrible shock. Julia lay with tubes sticking out everywhere, her face, particularly around the eyes, was badly swollen and discoloured and her head was swathed in bandages. I could barely recognise my dear old friend. Rachel and Ronald both had a bit of a weep, and I didn’t blame them. For myself, I think I was past crying.

That night the hospital found a bed for Rachel. Ronald, who did something or other in the city and was married with a young family, returned to his home not far away in Chiswick, and I booked myself into a nearby hotel. In the morning when I returned to the hospital I was at least cheered to learn that Julia was coming round, and overjoyed to be told soon afterwards that the prognosis was perhaps surprisingly good. The surgeons now thought there was an excellent chance that she would make a full recovery eventually.

Julia drifted in and out of consciousness throughout the day during which her mother, brother and I took it in turns to sit anxiously by her bedside.

I checked my messages at home and on my mobile every couple of hours, waiting for Todd to call. All I picked up was message after message from Robin in Ireland which I ignored — if indeed he were in Ireland, I thought with my now customary disloyalty. I wasn’t slavishly following Todd Mallett’s instructions, I just would not have known what to say to Robin. There was a distinct note of anxiety in his later messages, but merely about my welfare. If he knew what had happened to Julia — either from first-hand knowledge, which of course was my dread, or had learned of it in some other way — he said nothing in any of his messages.

Eventually in the early evening Todd did call and I got back to him at once.

Typically, I thought, the first thing he did was to enquire about Julia’s welfare.

‘We’ll be up to see her as soon as the docs give us the say-so,’ he said.

I knew that Julia’s ability to remember was going to be crucial, but it only became apparent just how crucial when Todd related to me the progress he and his team had made in their investigation. Or lack of progress almost, it seemed. But that could be very good news for me, I thought, in the state of confusion which now passed for my normal frame of mind.

If the Natasha Felks letter had been in Julia’s flat, it, along with almost everything else, had been completely destroyed. The London Fire Brigade had already discovered that a gas burner had been left turned slightly on in the kitchen and they suspected there may have been a candle alight on the dining-room table. The gas had gradually filled the room and burst into flame.

‘Simple but effective way of doing someone in,’ said Todd.

I gulped.

‘Only thing is there’s no sign of any forced entry. The flat was securely locked. It seems incredibly careless but to the fire brigade it looks as if your mate quite simply went to bed and fell asleep leaving the candle burning and a gas tap not properly turned off. Nothing yet to prove anything different anyway.’

Todd hadn’t wasted any time. He had sent a team to interview Jeremy Cole who claimed that the letter from Natasha Felks which Julia had described to me in such detail, had never existed. The interview with Julia, which he at least admitted had taken place, had been totally about his new TV show, he said, and Natasha Felks had not even been mentioned.

‘Problem is he already knew about Julia Jones and that her flat had been virtually destroyed,’ said Todd. ‘Heard it on the news like you did, so we couldn’t bluff him. And, while not exactly denying it, he played down his relationship with Natasha, couldn’t even remember her ever writing him letters, and so on.

‘I reckon he had one brief moment of humanity or even guilt when Julia confronted him and probably regretted it immediately. What’s happened now is a reprieve for him if you ask me. He certainly doesn’t want to face the music in public. All that matters to him is his career and his public standing, and he’s quite capable of looking you in the eye and lying through his teeth if it will save his bacon.’

‘But Robin couldn’t have known Cole was going to deny everything,’ I ventured.

‘Desperate men take desperate risks,’ said Todd obliquely. ‘Robin Davey had damn all to lose. And he would have had a fair idea that the letter Julia had acquired was the only halfways hard evidence of anything. Trouble is I still can’t prove a thing. Robin is in Ireland by the way — we confirmed that he was on the Rosslare ferry passenger list and he arrived on schedule at his hotel in time for breakfast yesterday. We haven’t approached him yet, I was hoping to have something more solid to chuck at him, but I’m having somebody check out his movements over there.’

An alibi as well. Could I begin to hope again that Robin was in the clear? This time I really had to know. Julia was the only remaining hope, and I just prayed that she would make a fast and complete recovery, and that her memory of the events leading up to her accident, which was what I so wanted it to have been, would return just as swiftly.

I spent another night at my hotel and in the morning was astonished and delighted to discover that Julia, although very sleepy, was more or less fully conscious and able to talk and even hold a limited conversation. I knew from professional experience how quickly recovery can be made from successful brain surgery — but seeing it happen to someone you love is different. Her rate of recovery seemed like a miracle to me.

She remained distant and confused even during her most awake moments that day, but Julia was returning to us, at least partially, and it seemed like the only good news I had had in a very long time.

‘Can you remember what happened?’ I asked her during one of my periods alone with her — far more quickly, no doubt, than I should have done, and certainly long before Todd’s team were going to be allowed to formally interview her.

Julia looked at me blankly through her poor bruised eyes and raised one shaky hand tentatively to her bandaged head. Obliquely it occurred to me that her lovely red hair had almost certainly been shaved off. She wouldn’t like that.

When she spoke her voice seemed to come from a long way away, and her words were slurred.

‘God, my head aches,’ she said.

‘I’m not surprised,’ I responded, and reached out to hold her hand. I did love her. It was so terrible to see her like this, and not to know, in spite of the optimism of the medical team, if she would ever really be the old Julia again.

She managed a smile, albeit a wan one. She had never been short on courage had Julia.

‘Can you remember what happened?’ I asked again.

The blank look returned. Fleetingly it occurred to me that she may not even know who I was, let alone anything else, and I didn’t like the thought of that at all.

She tried to shake her head then winced painfully.

‘Nothing at all,’ I continued to question.

She was still fiddling with the bandages around her head. I wondered if I should try to stop her, or at least tell somebody what she was doing.

‘Did I crash the car?’ she asked.

Although it was not the answer that I had hoped for, I was pleased that she could already be so logical. It had to be encouraging, surely, that she had considered her injured head and then come up with perhaps the most likely cause of all. I considered if a little prompting might help jog her memory.

‘There was a fire,’ I said.

The blank look returned.

‘In my car?’ she asked shakily.

I shook my head. ‘In your flat. A gas leak. The fire brigade think you may have left a candle burning and not turned one of the burners on your cooker off properly.’

Her expression was one of complete bewilderment. ‘Is that what I did?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, Julia, I was hoping you would be able to tell me. I mean do you remember going to bed on the night of the accident?’

She barely reacted. ‘The accident?’ she repeated hesitatingly. ‘When was that, then?’ She sounded weary and she kept opening and shutting her eyes.

I could see that she was thoroughly confused and in some pain and that I was upsetting her. Her memory or lack of it was so vitally important that I could not stop myself from continuing with one last track of questioning.

‘Julia can you remember what you took from Sir Jeremy Cole?’

She licked her lips as if she was thirsty. ‘W’who?’ she stumbled.

It was the answer I had been dreading. I backed off then.

Julia, it seemed clear, could not remember anything about the candle or the gas, she could not remember going to bed that fateful night. She could not even remember having interviewed Cole, let alone taking away that vital Natasha Felks letter. And it was highly unlikely, as far as I could gather, that her memory of any of these events would ever return.