‘Even after all these years, it is your daughter and Nikki’s sister in there and I don’t know how I could expect any different. It’s still a terrible shock and time doesn’t change that.’

Nikki has touched gold with this one and I thank God for it, Fleur thought.

‘Would it have been better never to know?’ Fleur seemed to be talking to herself. ‘Or is it better to be confronted by the evidence of my child’s death after all this time…You see, I dread…if they can tell, somehow, how she died. Jack, I’m sorry, I’ve had it. I’ll have to go to bed.’

Jack leapt up. ‘Of course. No worries. You look all in.’

Fleur’s face was ashen and drawn and she seemed very small. Her dark hair, flecked with grey, was clipped up in the way Nikki sometimes clipped hers, elegantly with a tortoiseshell clip.

‘Good night. I hope…Try and sleep. I’ll keep an eye on Nikki.’

Fleur smiled. ‘I know you will. ‘I’m so glad she’s got you, Jack. Good night.’

In her room, Fleur, trembling, pulled a nightdress over her head, climbed under the mosquito net and slid between cool cotton sheets.

She slept for minutes at a time but kept waking, her mind throwing up images and memories she would rather had remained buried.

If only she could have that time again; change the sequence of those long, dark days that led resolutely from one tragedy to the next.

TWENTY

James Mohktar shook hands with the English detective who had flown out from London. He had brought a short stack of files dating back twenty odd years. Gordon Blythe was about to retire but had been a young military policeman at the time of the disappearance of the small army child in 1976.

He had no illusions as to why he had been spared to resurrect this old case. By the time he returned to London he would only have a few months to do. He had been let out to graze.

‘Detective Inspector Gordon Blythe,’ he said, shaking Mohktar’s hand.

‘Apa khabar? How are you, Inspector? I hope your accommodation is satisfactory and you have recovered from your journey?’ Mohktar asked politely, glancing at the older man’s tired face.

‘It’ll take a day or two for that,’ Inspector Blythe said. ‘But it helped having a night in Singapore.’

James Mohktar had expected to be recalled to Singapore himself, but Inspector Teddy Chan had agreed to leave him in Port Dickson as he had established a rapport with the family. He also came from the area and was familiar with the families of some of the locals who had been questioned at that time. He would be useful to Inspector Blythe.

Mohktar doubted he would be able to help as he had only been a police cadet in 1976, but the disappearance of a European child had shocked this small state at the time and people did remember it.

He had moved Fleur, Nikki and Jack to a different location at the quieter end of the beach, purposely, to protect them from any press intrusion. He had managed to prevent them seeing the local papers, which once the DNA had been formally established were free with opinions as to what might have happened all those years ago. They also offered various gory theories about child trafficking and what sort of person might have perpetrated the crime. Some of the papers had also published the names of local men who had been questioned but released at the time.