‘Yes,’ Fleur said. ‘I do.’ She looked down at her glass.

‘When you arrived this evening, Nikki was asking me if I could bear to know the truth about how Saffie died. I don’t think she can bear it and I’m not sure she should know in her present condition, Inspector, even if she finds out later on.’

‘That’s why I’m here.’ He met her eyes and smiled. ‘I think we’ve just about gone a full circle.’

Fleur smiled back. ‘So it seems. Would you like another beer, Inspector?’

Blythe shook his head. He could hear voices as Mohktar and the daughter came up from the beach. He said quietly, for it had to be said if he was going to make any headway on this inquiry, and he was secretly convinced the answer lay in the small, closed army community of that time, ‘Mrs Campbell, did you know that about eighty per cent of murders are committed by people known to their victims and their families?’

TWENTY-FOUR

I sat on the rocks at the far corner of the beach. The sea was still and phosphorescent. I remembered the wonder of seeing those dancing silver lights sparkling on the surface of the sea as a child, my fingers in my father’s large hand.

The water lapped gently in front of me and I listened to the night sounds, the constant blanket noise of cicadas, the faint screech of monkeys up in the trees on the promontory. The beach was almost deserted, people elsewhere eating and drinking. Some young Malays bent over a fishing boat, sorting a net. They had torches and their voices came to me over the air.

From the nearest house came the sounds of pots and pans and high Chinese voices. The air was heavy and velvet, trapped in the heat that remained long after the sun had gone. The night was like being cocooned in a familiar soft, suffocating blanket. It seemed that if I closed my eyes I could be a child again, lulled to sleep by far-off jungle sounds, by Ah Heng’s music and the drone of insects directly below our window.

I thought of Jack. The man I would not marry; whose child I was carrying. Where would he be now? In the clouds above Auckland? Nearly home. Home seemed at this moment like some remote planet I might never reach again. As if I had been plunged into the past and might be unable to return to what I once had.

On my year out travelling I had deliberately avoided revisiting the Middle East, Singapore, and Malaysia. I had headed for the Antipodes. I was afraid of all this; these familiar and longed-for smells and sounds of my childhood; the essence of those first years of my life, sensations that stay with children forever.

The feeling of loss caught at me, sharp and lonely, the memory of the blessed, endless golden days I had then, in the safety of army quarters with my happy, laughing dad. Real life as a family; two parents of your own, untouched by tragedy, not singled out forever because of a double sorrow that scarred your soul like a birthmark.