SOMETHING in Mark had changed overnight.  This morning, arriving early at his house, Ana saw an efficient bureaucrat at the kitchen table, a cup of tea and a notebook in front of him; a man used to dealing with difficult situations in an orderly way. The Mark of yesterday, with his pain on display, was gone, for the time being at least. He had put his feelings to one side and expected others to do the same. There were tasks to complete. 

 

“Good morning, you two, thanks for coming over so early.  I want to get started on making a list, you know, of papers to find, people to notify and so on.”

 

Jonathan appeared, adopting a similar business-like manner and Ana decided to follow his lead.

 

“The first job is to look through Sarah’s papers,” Mark began then his mask slipped as he told them of Sarah’s lack of family. “It’s rather beastly that her sad history will become public knowledge now. How she would hate that.”

 

“It need not become public” Daniel reassured him “Depending on how she died. The police will need to know the basics of her life, I expect, but I don’t see why it’s anyone else’s business. When Lynette and I split up there was so much gossip about us, for me ever to enjoy hearing tittle-tattle about anyone again.”

 

At which point Lynette came into the kitchen, greeting Ana and Daniel warmly but saying little. Mark soon returned from the office, telling them there were only files of joint affairs in the filing cabinets, all in perfect order, as he expected from Sarah. Her desk had nothing important in it; only their engagement diary and handwritten notes about books, which he guessed were for discussion with a book group.  

 

“We each have our own computer,” he said “She has a laptop, and mine is an old desktop, but the thing is, I don’t know her passwords, and the wretched laptop won’t open to any of the passwords I can think of.  I can’t find the small notebook she used to carry; it’s not in her bag, and I had a feeling she had written the passwords in the notebook. What should I do?. If I keep on trying passwords unsuccessfully, I could lock up her whole system.”
 

“This is where you come in, Dan,” said Lynette. “your ability to open systems that are password-protected is legendary, one of the reasons why companies pay you a fortune.”  

 

Was it? Did they? Ana realised that she had only a sketchy knowledge of Daniel’s work with computers. He told her he earned a reasonable income and as she had her savings from her time at the European Commission she was not worried about their finances for the immediate future. But, still, a fortune? She must ask him more. Not now, though. She would park that thought in her to do list.

Daniel went back with Mark into his study.

 

Ana walked into the garden to answer a call from Mayte, who confirmed that the autopsy had been carried out and the completed report from Alicante would be emailed to the Guardia Civil in the next hour or so.

 

She told Ana that Manuel Camps had agreed that Mark might make his statement at home. 

 

“We understand that your friends Señora Smith and Señor Locke are staying with Señor Harris, and that you and Daniel are there, so we would like to record all the statements there, but of course we must speak to each person separately. Can you arrange that?”

Relieved that Mark would not need to endure a trip to the Guardia Civil offices she agreed to act as interpreter.  

 

 “And the others, Mayte, The Guys and Hepworths? Do you want me to interpret for them also?”  Mayte said she would appreciate Ana's help there too. She asked Ana where would be best to interview Kevin Somerset and Ana suggested that he might come to the Guys’ house; less intimidating than a police station, and then she could interpret for him too.  

 

When she told Daniel what she planned, he looked worried. “We are talking hours of interpretation on personal subjects. Are you sure you want to do this, darling? There are plenty of interpreters around, and everyone, with the possible exception of Kevin Somerset, can well afford to pay.”

 

“I know cariño, and you are right, it probably will be exhausting. But I’m involved now, and so I will do this for our friends if they want me to.” She decided to ring Anton, whose article she was translating, and tell him she could not work for two days or so.

 

Mayte had mentioned on the phone that police were searching through trees and bushes around the cliff top paths as Sarah’s waterproof purse, containing her phone and keys, was still missing. Ana wondered if the police would search Mark’s house and garden.  She decided to say nothing until the police arrived. There was enough stress around already.

 

Mark returned and as the police were not due to arrive for an hour Daniel suggested they look at Sarah’s laptop and her desk in the study, which had an external hard drive and several memory sticks on the top. Ana guessed that the other desk, diagonally opposite, with a view out to the garden, terrace and pool must be Mark’s. His desk was nearly as tidy as hers, with piles of paper that looked as if they had recently been placed there. Shelves of neatly arranged books filled one wall of the room, with two filing cabinets standing side-by-side on another.

 

It looked like the office of a well-organised bureaucrat, shared with his efficient secretary. Perhaps that was what it was. Hadn’t Daniel told her that Sarah had worked as Mark’s civil service secretary before they married? 

 

“I thought I knew Sarah’s passwords,” Mark said, opening the lid of the laptop, connecting it to a power supply on the wall, “but I have tried all the ones I knew, and others I could think of. Suppose I lock the system down - I’ve already tried five different words for the main system?.” 

 

He told them he hadn’t opened the laptop since the time six months earlier Sarah had been away in Devon, for her mother’s funeral. Then Sarah had wanted addresses from the laptop and the system had opened straightaway; no name needed, no password. She must, Mark said, have changed everything since then.

 

She saw Mark was finding this difficult, so she suggested that the two of them go to the kitchen for coffee, leaving Daniel to work on his own. “I know better than to interrupt this man when he is in his milieu.”

 

Daniel looked relieved “I’ll give you a shout as soon as I find anything.”

 

In the kitchen, Ana talked to Mark about the police and what they might ask him. He was in a very difficult position; the spouse of a person whose death was unexplained. And as far as anyone knew, he was the last person to see Sarah alive, although there were no witnesses to confirm this.  
 

He asked her if the police would search the house, would look through Sarah’s computer if Daniel was able to enter the system.

“As far as I know, Mark, this morning they will want to interview you. Mayte told me they want to take statements from everyone who saw Sarah, including me and Daniel. From what I gathered, they will type up these statements, and give everyone a copy to read before they sign them."

​

She would help with the statements, but a lot would depend on the result of the autopsy. The police might need to carry out further enquiries unless Sarah’s death could be established as accidental in which case that would mean the end of police involvement. 
 

“It’s all so beastly, Mark, I don’t know how you are coping so well, but you are. We will get through this together, you know. We will just have to hold each other up.” 

 

Jonathan, who had been silent until now, seemed on the verge of breaking down, nearly as upset as Mark. Now she understood what happened in his life, Ana realised he might feel he was reliving his own traumas. The possibility that Sarah killed herself would remind him of the suicide of his lover, Philip, who threw himself under a train rather than face the onset of full-blown AIDS. 

Daniel told her that Jonathan explained that he did not want the tragedy to define him. He didn’t want people to see him as “that gay guy whose lover killed himself because he had AIDS”; Daniel heard the story long before Ana came on the scene,  " I know Jonathan would have told you himself when he was ready. You know he thinks a lot of you, "

 

Now the tragedy of Sarah’s death changed everything and Ana was glad she knew.  No wonder he was emotional, who wouldn’t be? Did he believe Sarah took her own life? Ana did not see Sarah as the type to kill herself, she believed she was a survivor.  After all, what happened to her in India was awful but she recovered and made a new life here. Or had she? Perhaps she never got over Mark’s betrayal.

 

If only they had talked together. But Ana knew well from her own past experience that “what ifs” solved nothing,

 

She realised the only outcome which could bring any kind of peace to everyone, especially Mark, was that Sarah had died accidentally. My prayer for today, Ana thought, is that Sarah fell from the cliff into the sea while walking to meet Kevin Somerset. And that the police will discover evidence for this quickly.  

 

Daniel put his head around the kitchen door “Mark, I have opened  all the files now, and there’s a lot of stuff  stored on those memory sticks in the tray.”  At a quick glance, he said, and he didn’t want to read anything private, it might be better to leave looking over the files until after the police had left. He suggested taking Sarah’s laptop home with him to work on and to make a list of the files on the hard disk and the memory sticks. “When I know what the files are about,  we can decide what to do next”.

 

Mark’s mouth tightened as he listened and Ana wondered if he had an idea what Daniel would discover. Moments later they heard a police car draw up; through the window they saw Jonathan go outside to greet the police force, Mayte, Luis and Manuel Camps,  and lead them into the house.