The uniformed police constables who had collected him had told me that he had been fully clothed when he answered his front door.
‘Would you go to bed if your son had disappeared?’ he asked.
I studied him closely as we talked. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin pale and blotchy. He had obviously been crying. Everything about him indicated a man driven to distraction by the loss of his child, nothing indicated guilt.
Again and again we made him go over the logistics of his son’s disappearance. The story never varied in the smallest detail. It was devastatingly simple.
‘When Liz went in to his bedroom to wake him for school Stevie was not there. It looked as if he had just jumped out of bed and gone somewhere. There were clothes missing too. His favourite Thomas The Tank Engine sweat shirt, a pair of jeans, his best trainers.
‘I was making tea in the kitchen. Liz came rushing in. She was trying not to panic, but she was terribly anxious, of course. Together we searched the house and garden. I said I would go off and look for him, and that she should stay at home in case he came back. Then I called the surgery and told them I wouldn’t be in.’
‘But you didn’t call the police?’
‘Not straight away. No. It wasn’t the first time Stephen had wandered off. We tried to stop him doing it, of course, but we didn’t ever seem able to convince him that he might be in any danger wandering around on his own. He is quite well-known locally and often neighbours and nearby shopkeepers have brought him home. He enjoys attention, sees these solo outings as little adventures, I think.’
Jeffries paused for several seconds, and his voice was trembling noticeably when he continued. There were tears in his eyes.
‘He has a very trusting nature, you see. Down’s Syndrome children do.’
‘Had you ever got up in the morning and found Stephen missing before?’ I asked.
‘No. Previously he has just gone off on his own during the day when our backs have been turned.’
‘So if this was so different, why weren’t you worried?’
‘I told you, Inspector, we were worried. Of course we were worried. Just not frantic, that’s all, not at first . . .’ His voice trailed off.
‘And then? At what stage did you call the police?’
‘It was just after midday. I’d been all over the neighbourhood. Nobody had seen or heard of him. By then we were getting frantic . . .’
‘But you still thought Stephen had wandered off on his own.’
‘I didn’t know what to think any more. But there was no reason to suspect anything else.’
‘How did you think he would have got out of your house in the night or early morning on his own?’
‘It’s just a normal house, not a jail. There’s a Yale lock and a bolt on the front door. Stephen is quite capable of dealing with those. He has an extra chromosome. He’s not an idiot.’
I sat back in my chair and stared at the man as I had done so often now. In spite of his weariness and distress, both of which I was quite sure were genuine, he continued to function surprisingly well. At first sight he seemed to be broken – and yet he remained impressively articulate. Was he too articulate, I wondered, not for the first time.
‘What if someone took him out of your house, took him away? Is that what you now believe may have happened?’ I asked.
‘I keep thinking about that. I don’t know. There’s no sign of anyone having broken in as far as I could see. Your men have been all over the house already, haven’t they? What have they found? Why won’t anyone tell me anything?’
‘Dr Jeffries, all we want to do is find your son,’ I told him coldly. ‘Perhaps it is you who has something you should tell me.’
It was Richard Jeffries turn then to stare at me – long and hard. His lower lip trembled.
‘Detective Chief Inspector, I knew from the moment that Stevie disappeared that I would be a suspect again. The number one suspect, I suppose. After all those other allegations I suppose that is inevitable. I don’t know if you can imagine what I have gone through in the last few weeks, all the whispers and pointed fingers. You don’t really think people didn’t know I was being investigated and what for, do you? I’m a doctor, that makes it really juicy.’
The trembling lip curled into a fairly ineffective half sneer. Then he fixed an earnest gaze on me.
‘I have been losing patients by the truckload every day since this nightmare began last November,’ he said. ‘But I haven’t cared about anything except my children, keeping them safe and keeping them with me. Nothing else has mattered. Now my son is gone and I don’t know where and I know I am going to be accused again of hurting him. I would not harm him for the world – I would rather cut off both my hands.’
He held his hands out before him as if to prove the point then he bowed his head and started to cry.
I watched him for several seconds. His emotion could surely be nothing but genuine. If Richard Jeffries was guilty of harming his son then he was putting on some act.
The same thing could be said about Robin, I thought, and was immediately ashamed of myself because it was vital that I concentrated 100 per cent on the disappearance of Stephen Jeffries. Yet in-between running the major operation of finding a missing child my thoughts kept turning to Robin and what the new turn of events in the Natasha Felks case really meant.
I mentally chastised myself for allowing my mind to wander, and after we finally sent Richard Jeffries and his wife home, settled down to listen to the tape of the interview with Mrs Jeffries. We checked and double-checked for any discrepancies, however small. There were none. The evidence of both parents matched in every detail. And, just like her husband, even in the face of persistent and repetitive questioning Mrs Jeffries never changed her story one iota.
When I had finished listening to the tape I sent it to be transcribed and spent the rest of the afternoon ensuring that the operations room I had set up was running smoothly, making sure that all the manpower available to me was being properly and effectively utilised. Nothing stirs up the emotions more than a case involving a child, and never is the level of press and public interest greater. I had my work cut out to ensure that everything possible was being done, and all of it correctly. Several teams had been sent out on door-to-door enquiries, taking statements, and I arranged for local reservoirs to be dragged and divers sent down. Nearby woods, empty buildings, anywhere a child might hide or be hidden, were to be searched meticulously.
I was quite obsessive about every aspect of the operation, and I intended to drive every officer involved in the case to the limit. Probably because I feared I might in some way be to blame for whatever may have happened to Stephen Jeffries, I was brutally determined that no further mistakes would now be made. I stayed at Kingswood until gone midnight, and became so absorbed in what I was doing that, for once, I did not think about Robin at all.
I wanted to solve this case quickly more than any I had ever headed before – and I wanted desperately to find the boy alive and well – and I was familiar enough with the basic rule of missing children cases. As every hour passes so the prognosis worsens.
I kept my head down and my mind on the job and off Robin, who had thankfully returned to Abri, for two more days before I gave in. I told myself that I really needed to know exactly what progress the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary were making. So I submitted to temptation and called Todd Mallett.
I hoped that in view of my own Abri Island experience and the roasting I had received from the coroner that Todd would not be surprised by my continued interest in the case and would put it down to understandable curiosity. I had no intention of revealing that I had even seen Robin Davey again, let alone fallen into bed and undoubtedly heavily in love with him. Indeed I had so far kept that secret from everyone at work and even from friends and family except Julia and my sister Clem, both of whom I trusted absolutely.
What Todd had to say to me made me further disturbed.
‘Everything points to
Robin Davey,’ he said. ‘Except there’s no hard evidence and apparently nobody in the world apart from me and my lads think there would be a chance he would murder anyone.’
My heart did a quick somersault. This was the first time I had actually heard the word murder used.
‘So you still suspect him?’
‘Too damn right,’ said Todd Mallett. ‘Back to basics, isn’t it? Nine murders out of ten are domestics. But I can’t find a decent motive for this one. Davey and Natasha Felks weren’t yet married. There was no long-term tension. Everyone we have talked to regarded them as the perfect couple. Find me a motive and I might stand a chance of getting the bastard.’
‘I heard on the grapevine that you had new evidence,’ I probed.
‘Really?’ he replied questioningly. But I knew he wouldn’t be surprised. Police forces thrive on gossip. I decided to go for broke.
‘Something about the dead woman having carved Robin Davey’s name on the Pencil.’
There seemed to be a bit of a pause before Todd spoke again, but I may have imagined it. Certainly he appeared happy enough to discuss the matter with me – after all I was another senior police officer, a colleague, although I was well aware his attitude would have been rather different had he known of my relationship with Robin. But he didn’t know.
‘About the last thing she did,’ said Todd eventually. ‘She carved the name while clinging to that damned rock, holding on for her life. Doesn’t bear thinking about does it.’
I shuddered. The picture he conjured up was all too vivid to me.
‘But why wasn’t the carving found before?’ I asked.
‘It was quite high up, twelve feet or so above the ledge they land the boat against, and way above normal eye level,’ Todd explained. ‘She must have climbed up to try to escape the tide. It should have been spotted before, of course, but the investigation into Natasha Felks’ death has never actually been a murder enquiry, and the SOCOs may not have been quite as thorough as they should have been.’
‘So how was the carving eventually found?’
‘We had a phone call from Abri. The caller told us about it and also that he knew for a fact that Jason Tucker had not taken the boat out at all that day, that he’d been with him all along.’
I felt my breath catching my throat. So that was the new witness Todd had referred to when he interviewed Robin.
‘Who was the caller?’ I asked, not really expecting him to tell me. But I was surprised by the answer.
‘I don’t know,’ said Todd Mallett. ‘He wouldn’t give his name, assuming it was a man. To be honest we couldn’t even tell that for certain. Whoever it was seemed to be talking through a handkerchief or something.’
‘But some anonymous caller isn’t a witness!’ I blurted out.
‘Witness?’ queried Todd. ‘Who said anything about a witness?’
I tried to recover myself. It was Robin, of course, who had mentioned a new witness.
‘Well, I just thought, I mean if there really was someone who was with Jason Tucker that day, well that would be quite a witness.’
Todd gave a short dry laugh. ‘Wouldn’t it just,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to make of it to be honest. Why would a genuine witness not be prepared to give his name, and why did he not come forward before?’
‘I presume you couldn’t trace the number.’
‘That wasn’t the problem,’ said Todd. ‘Dead easy that bit was. We were even able to 1471 it. The call came from the phone box on Abri behind The Tavern. The only phone box on Abri. Any one of the sixty-seven Abri islanders could have made it – or a visitor, for that matter, I suppose. The box is tucked away, and nobody had a clue who may have been using it that day. Or so they said. We were able to rule out about twenty of the locals for various reasons, but we have not been able to narrow it down nearly enough. So that only left forty-seven, plus the ten guests staying on the island and thirty-odd day trippers who visited that day, some of whom we haven’t been able to trace at all.’ This time his laugh was sarcastic. ‘Easy,’ he said.
There was only one thing remaining that I wanted to ask. ‘The carving of Robin Davey’s name – what do you reckon it proves then?’
‘I don’t reckon it proves anything, unfortunately,’ said Todd. ‘But if I thought I were about to die there would only be one person’s name I would want to carve in stone for posterity. How about you?’
I didn’t reply.
‘It wouldn’t be your lover, would it?’ he went on. ‘But it might well be your murderer.’
‘Is that really what you think, sir?’ I asked, striving to keep my voice normal.
I called him ‘sir’ because police protocol dies hard, but I always thought of him as Todd, a rough and ready sort of guy, a genuine old-fashioned copper. Honest. Solid. Reliable. His opinion counted for a lot, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like his reply. I didn’t, either.
‘Damn right,’ he said. ‘Too smooth by half, that Robin Davey. Don’t trust him as far as I can see him.’
The first bit I had to allow that he was right about. Robin was certainly smooth. The rest of it I just did not believe. I could not believe it. Simple as that. After all I couldn’t help the way I felt about the bloody man.
The day after that conversation Todd phoned me back and this time he was furious. He managed to sound a bit like Titmuss actually.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were having a relationship with Robin Davey?’ he stormed.
I didn’t quite know how to answer. He took my silence for the admission of rather shamefaced guilt which it was, and bollocked me rigid.
I made a half-hearted attempt to back off from Robin, using pressure at work as an excuse for not being able to see him as much, suggesting that he take the opportunity to spend more time on Abri and less at my flat. I was not very successful. He bombarded me with phone calls and letters, and I missed him dreadfully. We had been apart for only two weeks, although it felt like longer, when he phoned to say he had to be in Bristol again for more financial meetings, and, of course, I could not wait then to be with him. My need for him was absolute already, and in any case I believed that he was an innocent man caught up in a chain of terrible events. I had to believe that.
It wasn’t long before he was spending just as much time with me as before the case had been reopened – dodging miraculously between Bristol and Abri and all his responsibilities there. Somehow or other our life together returned to a kind of normality, and was, in fact, all that kept me sane as the Stephen Jeffries case dragged on relentlessly. We failed to find Stephen nor any worthwhile clue as to his whereabouts, dead or alive.
Eventually there was some good news in my life. The Natasha Felks case was dropped again, within less than a couple of months of it being reopened. I suppose that was inevitable. Whatever Robin’s carved name indicated, it certainly proved nothing, as Todd Mallett had known only too well. I was relieved and so was Robin.
We drank more champagne and raised a toast to the future, to our future, he said.
‘And let’s hope this really is the end of the whole dreadful business,’ he whispered into my ear as he took me in his arms. My body instantly melted into his.
However my mind was still not put totally at rest, but I tried not to show Robin how much I had been unnerved by being confronted with the whole Natasha Felks scenario all over again. And in any case, when he was happy I found his happiness infectious. It washed over me and engulfed me. Rather shamefully once more, I soon found that I was shutting Natasha Felks’ death out again. I still don’t know whether I did that deliberately, or whether it was simply the only way I could survive and continue my affair with Robin.
One thing was certain. I knew now that I was not able to call a halt to it. It was the most compulsive thing that had ever happened to me.
Ten
One evening I got home from work early. I had been at my Kingswood desk since just after six in the morning. The case was weighing heavily on me. T
welve hours later, by 6.00 p.m., I could barely see straight. Peter Mellor came in to my office and propped himself on my desk.
‘There is a team here, you know boss,’ he remarked quietly. ‘You can’t do it on your own. That only happens in storybooks.’
I managed a smile.
‘I guess I’m a bit more involved than usual,’ I said. ‘Can’t get over the feeling I may have condemned that boy to his death.’
I knew that was melodrama. After all, I had written a report on this kind of thing, hadn’t I? I knew that the way I was feeling about Stephen Jeffries and what may have happened to him was the classic over-reaction of a beleaguered CPT officer. But knowing all of that didn’t help much. I rubbed my eyes with one clenched fist. They were stinging. I felt a bit dizzy. My face was hot.
Peter Mellor stood up.
‘Boss, you’re a copper, not God Almighty,’ he said.
This time my smile was not so forced.
‘Go home, why don’t you,’ he went on. ‘You’ve been here since dawn. Take an evening off. Get a good night’s sleep. You’re no good to anyone in this state.’
‘Thank you for your confidence, Peter,’ I said rather more sarcastically than I had intended. But I knew he was right.
I picked up the phone and called Robin, who seemed to be spending more and more time at my flat, to tell him the good news. I would be home in time for dinner for the first time in days.
Robin met me at the door. He was wearing washed-out pale blue jeans and a tee shirt. No socks or shoes. His eyes shone. He caught hold of me quite roughly and pushed me against the wall. I could feel that he already had an erection. He began to pull at my clothes. His hands were everywhere, pushing the skirt of my working suit upwards, pulling my tights and pants down, until very quickly his fingers were inside me. His mouth was tight over mine, his tongue almost down my throat. I could barely breath, yet I could feel my troubles floating away. At that time in my life sex with Robin sometimes seemed to be about the only really worthwhile thing there was.
For Death Comes Softly Page 12
