For Death Comes Softly (14 page)

I was startled. I suppose because he looked so fit and well and it had all been so long ago I hadn't even thought of that. He read my mind and managed another small smile.

‘No, I didn't get it,' he said. ‘Had all the tests and that was a nightmare too, but I eventually was given the all clear. God knows how I escaped. There were times when I half wished . . .'

I spoke before he could finish the sentence. I didn't want to hear what I was sure he was going to say.

‘Don't,' I instructed firmly. ‘Don't even think it.'

He grinned then, and straightened in his chair.

‘Not thinking is how I cope, actually,' he said. ‘And I don't want to even speak about any of it any more, to be honest. I want to look forward not back. That's the only way I know to survive now.'

He shrugged his big shoulders as if trying to shrug off his memories. His deep blue eyes were very serious again. Yet very gentle. It had been just five months since Natasha had died. Could he really put her out of his mind like that, I wondered, as well as all that had gone before. But, shamelessly, by the time I heard him suggest that we leave, all I could really think about was how good it would be to have him hold me close.

He took me home in a taxi this time, and he paid off the driver making no pretence of keeping the cab waiting. I think we both knew what was going to happen. But once again I did not get the chance to invite him in for coffee. He invited himself. And if he hadn't done so, and followed me straight into the lift, I think I'd probably have dragged him into it. To hell with decorum and playing hard to get and being sensible. I didn't think I had ever wanted anyone so much in my life – not even Simon.

We got as far as the living room. That was pretty good. The hallway would have done as far as I was concerned. I had never been quite so eager. Talking to Robin Davey the way I had at San Carlos had already created a rare intimacy between us, as far as I was concerned anyway. And I had been more or less celibate for what seemed like for ever. There had been only the handful of one-night stands that hadn't really counted since Simon. This one was going to count, I was damn sure of that somehow. And I was right.

Robin half pushed me onto the sofa. He dropped to his knees before me and lowered his head. As a rule I could put up with several days of that, but somehow with him I couldn't wait. There was suddenly a sense of desperation about it. I was consumed by my need for him. I found a strength I did not know I had. I pulled him on top of me and nearly ripped his trousers off. When he was inside me I came almost at once, and that's not like me at all either. As I came I started to cry. When all my emotions and the height of physical sensation get mixed up and explode at once I'm inclined to do that, but I hadn't since Simon. That first time with Robin was just spectacular. My desire for him was on many levels, and it was a bonus that he turned out to be something of a superstud. The urgent somewhat scrambled coupling on my new cream sofa was merely the start of an imaginative sex session lasting well into the early hours, and I hadn't realised just how much I had needed a night like that.

There was more of course. It was the closeness I felt for the man, the emotional bond I believed to be already between us, which had heightened my physical responses to him, every bit as much as his considerable sexual prowess. By the time I stepped rather weakly under my state-of-the-art American power shower in the morning I was aware that my feelings for him were probably already more intense in every way than anything I had known before – even though I was still trying not to admit that to myself.

I held out as long as I could, but somewhere around mid-morning that day I closed my office door and used my mobile to call Julia on hers. Well, I had to tell someone, and I certainly wasn't going to confide in any of those bastards at the nick. As Julia was a journalist, and a bloody good one, it might seem like a contradiction of terms to say that I had never known her break a confidence. However she said that was why she kept the contacts and got the stories.

‘Guess what I did last night?' I asked her.

‘Shagged that Robin Davey rotten,' Julia replied without drawing a breath. I said we could read each other's minds, didn't I?

‘How did you guess that?' I nonetheless questioned her.

‘Not a guess,' she said. ‘It was only ever going to be a matter of time.'

‘Really?' I remarked enquiringly, trying to sound cool. After all she hadn't even known that I had seen him again since the inquest.

‘Yes, really. And there's no fiancée to worry about any more . . .'

‘Julia, that's outrageous,' I said, not wanting to share even with her that I had been thinking the same thing myself from the moment Robin's letter had arrived.

She giggled infectiously. ‘How many out of ten, anyway?' she asked.

I gave in, and made a little humming sound as if carefully considering my reply.

‘Oh, about twenty,' I said eventually.

The giggle turned into gleeful laughter.

Eight

Now I really couldn't put Robin Davey out of my mind. And for the best part of the next month we both did as little as possible except have passionate sex at every opportunity.

Robin still had his island to run, of course, and I already knew that was a demanding task. But he continued to spend more time on the mainland than was usual, because of his various business dealings he told me. He confided in me that Abri was loosing more money than ever and it was becoming increasingly important that he found some substantial new finance. I also hoped that he occasionally invented an excuse to be in Bristol so that he could be with me. And every night we spent together intensified my desire for that to be so.

The spectre of Natasha did not entirely leave us. Once I found him studying a snapshot of her that he must still have kept in his wallet and the pain in his eyes was all too clear. But then, I was learning that he was deeply passionate, and I would not have wanted him to be the kind of man able to readily forget.

‘I will never forget her,' he told me one night as I lay in his arms. ‘Any more than I will my wife or child. But you have made me believe there might still be something else for me, Rose. Another new start . . .'

His hands began to explore me again. Neither of us could get enough of each other. Our lovemaking overtook our pasts, overwhelmed our present, and would, I knew, shape any future we might have together.

We were still at the stage where the sex was getting better and better when the bombshell struck. Robin was at my flat early one morning when he phoned the island to pick up his messages. I saw the muscles of his face stiffen. He looked strained and uneasy when he replaced the receiver and didn't answer at first when I asked him what was wrong.

‘Apparently I have to call Superintendent Mallett,' he said eventually, and I could tell that he was trying to sound cool and unconcerned and not succeeding very well.

I felt the need to reassure him.

‘Just routine I expect, clearing up the loose ends,' I told him, vaguely aware that was a fairly standard police response.

‘I expect so,' he murmured. ‘Something about some new evidence, and needing to talk to me again.'

‘Todd Mallett has a reputation for never giving up,' I remarked, more to myself than to him.

He glanced at me sharply. Then he gave a wry smile.

‘It'll be nothing,' he said. ‘I just sometimes wonder if I'm ever going to be allowed to live my life again.'

I left for the nick soon after seven and Robin said he would call Todd later in the morning from my flat. Obscurely, and a little disloyally, I felt glad that I had had the 1471 call back facility removed from my home telephone line. I didn't particularly want any of my colleagues, and certainly not Todd Mallett, to know where Robin Davey was ringing from. Not yet anyway.

Robin didn't call me on my mobile during the day, as he had already got into the habit of doing, and I resisted the temptation to try to call him. In any case I had quite enough to occupy my mind playing political games with Titmuss the Terrible who seemed determined to keep me on a back burner for as long as possible.

Mainly because of this I had nothing to keep me late at the office any more. I left Portishead shortly after 6 p.m., and when I got home found the flat in darkness. I switched on the lights in the living room first, and was startled to see Robin sitting quite still in my leather swivel chair. I wondered how long he had been there, alone in the dark.

‘Please tell me,' I asked. ‘What's wrong?'

At first I feared he was not even going to answer me. It seemed a very long time before he spoke.

‘It's all started again, Rose, they've reopened enquiries into Natasha's death.'

‘But why?' I asked. ‘There must be a reason.'

He nodded. ‘It's bizarre,' he said. ‘Quite bizarre.'

Again I waited. Eventually he continued.

‘It appears that Natasha carved my name into the Pencil while she was trapped out there . . . or so they say . . .' his voice trailed away.

‘But who found it, and how do they know Natasha did it?' The questions tumbled out.

Robin glared at me. ‘You're the cop – how the hell am I supposed to know the answers to stuff like that?' he snapped. ‘All I do know is that whatever they have found and whatever lies behind it they reckon it's enough to start raking over the whole bloody thing again.'

He looked tired and strained.

‘Can't think how they didn't spot it to begin with, then it would all be over by now,' he said. ‘Right after Tash died, they sent a load of those Scenes of Crime people over in all that fancy gear they wear, for goodness' sake.'

I shrugged. ‘People think missing evidence and mistakes like that don't happen any more with modern methods,' I told him. ‘But of course they do. I once worked on a case where the SOCOs managed to miss a suicide note.'

On a good day that may have made him smile. Not today. I went to him and put an arm around him in a bid to give him comfort, but to no avail. He shook himself free.

‘They want to interview me again,' he said glumly. ‘I'm to go to Barnstaple tomorrow.'

That night was the first night we had ever spent together when we didn't make love. And I don't think either of us slept more than an hour or two either. In the morning I went through the pretence of making some breakfast which we didn't eat. Robin was very quiet. Perhaps neither of us knew what to say to each other.

‘I'll fly back to Abri direct from Barnstaple,' he said eventually. ‘I've been away too long again already.'

He reached into his pocket and took out the key to my flat, which I was already in the habit of giving him when he was in town, and put it on the kitchen worktop.

Robin travelled to and from the island by helicopter, and I knew there was a field just outside the North Devon town which passed for a heliport. I understood his need to return to Abri but I was suddenly afraid to let him go, certainly without being able at least to talk to him after his interview at Barnstaple nick.

‘Couldn't you come back here tonight and then fly on to the island tomorrow?' I asked, trying not to sound too intense about it.

‘That doesn't make much sense, Rose,' he began. ‘It's a longer journey and besides . . .'

He was looking at me in a curious sort of way as his voice just tailed off. With one hand he touched my hair, which, as I had yet to force it into some sort of submission, was even more of an unruly ball of fluff than usual.

‘Of course,' he said abruptly. ‘I'll see you back here tonight.'

And it was at that moment that I first thought that perhaps he loved me, although he had yet to tell me so.

We both left the flat just before eight. Me to go to work, Robin to drive to Barnstaple for the interview – yet another interview, as he described it.

The day seemed to last for ever. It was the end of July now, and the hot sticky weather which had begun in June continued. Portishead was supposed to be air conditioned but the heat was such that I felt drained and uncomfortable. I found it extremely difficult to concentrate on the report on abuse of handicapped children which I was still compiling. Every time my phone rang I hoped it would be Robin with some news. He didn't call. And somehow I resisted the temptation to phone Todd Mallett or any of my Devon and Cornwall Constabulary contacts. When I arrived back at the flat I was relieved for more reasons than one to see that at least the lights were on.

Robin was in the kitchen preparing a salad. A couple of juicy looking salmon steaks sat on the grill pan ready to cook. Like everyone else in my life Robin had already learned that it was probably best if he did the cooking.

He turned and smiled as I walked in. He still looked tired and strained, but he seemed and sounded curiously determined when he spoke.

‘I'm not going to let this get me down, Rose,' he said. ‘We have too much together, you and I. I'm not going to let it be spoiled.'

I went to him and wrapped my arms around him as I had tried to do the previous night and this time he did not reject me. He leaned towards me and kissed the top of my head. Then he tipped my face towards him and his lips found mine. He tasted as good as ever. The kiss was warm, loving, reassuring – and as full of the sensuality and sexual promise that I had grown to expect.

After a few seconds he drew away, and rubbed the tip of one finger lightly along the line of my mouth.

‘Later,' he said, with a big big smile. ‘First, let's have a drink. There's some champagne in the fridge.'