down.
The door to the Portakabin was padlocked. I had one of Adam’s several keys. I unlocked the door and let myself in. Adam’s office was the smaller of the two rooms. He’d angled the prefab so one side faced south, and the sun was streaming in through the window. Like this, midday, the place felt warm and snug and cosy.
I sank onto the battered leather sofa Adam had treasured so much and looked round. Nothing, of course, had changed. The jigsaw of big airways maps that covered one wall. The framed colour shots from various airshows. Adam’s Fleet Air Arm squadron badge, mounted on a wooden shield. The exquisitely painted Tiger Moth he’d assembled from an Airfix kit, dangling on a length of cotton, inch-perfect over his desk.
I got up and circled the office, tidying a pile of aviation magazines, retrieving a parachute from a hook on the coatstand, moving Adam’s mountain bike so I could get at the stuff that cluttered his bookcase. Every job I started was freighted with memories and in the end I gave up, collapsing into the swivel chair behind his desk, wondering whether I really had the strength to go through his unopened mail. I decided against it, pulling open one of the drawers instead. There was a litter of bills and receipts inside, paperwork I knew I had to tackle, and I was still sorting them into separate piles when I found the photo.
It showed a girl on a beach. She had long black curly hair, and a full mouth, and she was wearing a wetsuit rolled down to her waist. The bikini top couldn’t have been briefer. She had a beautiful body, deeply suntanned, and the expression on her face - fond, eager, mischievous - told me more than I wanted to know. Behind her, in the water, windsurfers stitched back and forth across a pretty bay.
I turned the photo over. The little office felt suddenly as cold as a tomb. For you, my darling, went the big, loopy handwriting. From all of me.
Chapter five
Amongst the calls waiting for me at Mapledurcombe were a couple of messages from the local police. The last time I’d had any contact with them was the afternoon they’d phoned with the news about Adam’s disappearance but I didn’t recognise the name on the ansaphone. A Detective Constable Perry wanted to have a word with me.
I sat at Adam’s desk, trying to resist the urge to take yet another look at the photo I’d brought back from his office at the airfield. Already, the girl on the beach had come to obsess me. In ways I still find difficult to describe, coming across this tatty little snap, with its adolescent message, was an even bigger shock than the news of Adam’s death. Everything I’d assumed, everything I’d loved, treasured, taken for granted, had turned - almost literally - to sand.
DC Perry drove over from Newport. He was a youngish detective with a shapeless black raincoat, bloodshot eyes and a heavy cold. We talked over tea in the kitchen. When I asked him why he’d come, he gave me a pretty vague answer about the circumstances surrounding Adam’s death. When I asked him what - exactly - those circumstances might be, he became even more evasive. Finally, after he’d wolfed the second scone, I managed to pin him down.
‘ Is it to do with his insurance policy?’
‘ Why do you say that, Mrs Bruce?’
‘ My accountant tells me there might be a problem.’
‘ What kind of problem?’
I tire easily when I’m upset. This particular afternoon, I was exhausted. I stopped circling the kitchen and sank into the chair across the table from Perry, looking him in the eye.
‘ My husband’s been dead three days,’ I told him. ‘It hasn’t been easy trying to cope. Why don’t you just tell me what you want?’
Perry had already offered his condolences, a formal, rather passionless expression of regret, but I’d put this down to the fact that he’d known neither of us. Now, it occurred to me that there might be rather more to this visit than met the eye.
‘ You’re right about the
The door to the Portakabin was padlocked. I had one of Adam’s several keys. I unlocked the door and let myself in. Adam’s office was the smaller of the two rooms. He’d angled the prefab so one side faced south, and the sun was streaming in through the window. Like this, midday, the place felt warm and snug and cosy.
I sank onto the battered leather sofa Adam had treasured so much and looked round. Nothing, of course, had changed. The jigsaw of big airways maps that covered one wall. The framed colour shots from various airshows. Adam’s Fleet Air Arm squadron badge, mounted on a wooden shield. The exquisitely painted Tiger Moth he’d assembled from an Airfix kit, dangling on a length of cotton, inch-perfect over his desk.
I got up and circled the office, tidying a pile of aviation magazines, retrieving a parachute from a hook on the coatstand, moving Adam’s mountain bike so I could get at the stuff that cluttered his bookcase. Every job I started was freighted with memories and in the end I gave up, collapsing into the swivel chair behind his desk, wondering whether I really had the strength to go through his unopened mail. I decided against it, pulling open one of the drawers instead. There was a litter of bills and receipts inside, paperwork I knew I had to tackle, and I was still sorting them into separate piles when I found the photo.
It showed a girl on a beach. She had long black curly hair, and a full mouth, and she was wearing a wetsuit rolled down to her waist. The bikini top couldn’t have been briefer. She had a beautiful body, deeply suntanned, and the expression on her face - fond, eager, mischievous - told me more than I wanted to know. Behind her, in the water, windsurfers stitched back and forth across a pretty bay.
I turned the photo over. The little office felt suddenly as cold as a tomb. For you, my darling, went the big, loopy handwriting. From all of me.
Chapter five
Amongst the calls waiting for me at Mapledurcombe were a couple of messages from the local police. The last time I’d had any contact with them was the afternoon they’d phoned with the news about Adam’s disappearance but I didn’t recognise the name on the ansaphone. A Detective Constable Perry wanted to have a word with me.
I sat at Adam’s desk, trying to resist the urge to take yet another look at the photo I’d brought back from his office at the airfield. Already, the girl on the beach had come to obsess me. In ways I still find difficult to describe, coming across this tatty little snap, with its adolescent message, was an even bigger shock than the news of Adam’s death. Everything I’d assumed, everything I’d loved, treasured, taken for granted, had turned - almost literally - to sand.
DC Perry drove over from Newport. He was a youngish detective with a shapeless black raincoat, bloodshot eyes and a heavy cold. We talked over tea in the kitchen. When I asked him why he’d come, he gave me a pretty vague answer about the circumstances surrounding Adam’s death. When I asked him what - exactly - those circumstances might be, he became even more evasive. Finally, after he’d wolfed the second scone, I managed to pin him down.
‘ Is it to do with his insurance policy?’
‘ Why do you say that, Mrs Bruce?’
‘ My accountant tells me there might be a problem.’
‘ What kind of problem?’
I tire easily when I’m upset. This particular afternoon, I was exhausted. I stopped circling the kitchen and sank into the chair across the table from Perry, looking him in the eye.
‘ My husband’s been dead three days,’ I told him. ‘It hasn’t been easy trying to cope. Why don’t you just tell me what you want?’
Perry had already offered his condolences, a formal, rather passionless expression of regret, but I’d put this down to the fact that he’d known neither of us. Now, it occurred to me that there might be rather more to this visit than met the eye.
‘ You’re right about the
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