A Deep Deceit (26 page)

We spoke very little about Carl or any of what had happened. Unlike the oppressive Mrs Jackson, Mariette did not try to push me into talking about it and I found I just didn't want to. There wasn't a lot to say, really. All I wanted to do was get through the time before I could see him, meet him face-to-face and ask him to tell me the truth. And the wine certainly helped with that. Mariette swiftly opened the second bottle and by the time we were halfway through it I was beginning to forget about time entirely. I was not used to so much alcohol. I had never thought about it before, but when Carl and I occasionally shared a bottle of wine he always drank the greater part of it.

That evening was my first experience of the therapy of a good relaxed friendship mingled with plenty of alcohol. It was just what I had needed and Mariette, bless her, had instinctively realised it.

Typically, she offered to drive me to Penzance in the morning, but did not press the point when I declined. I told her she had a job to go to, one she enjoyed, that she'd already done enough for me and I could get the train. She did not argue, but instead conjured up yet another of her seemingly endless stories of adventure in love – or in her case perhaps lust was more accurate. This one centred around one of the fitness instructors at the gym she had recently started attending, his cycling shorts and whether or not he stuffed a sock down his lunchbox which, amazingly enough, she had yet to know for certain but felt sure she would be able to reveal from first-hand experience shortly.

Mindless chit-chat may not seem much of a solace to a woman whose life has just fallen apart, but sometimes it's not a bad diversion. By the time we had reached the cheese and fruit stage Mariette actually had me laughing. Quite an achievement in the circumstances.

Mariette, bless her, played nursemaid and insisted on ensuring I was safely tucked up in bed before she left. Almost immediately, and perhaps unsurprisingly after all I had drunk, I sank mercifully into oblivion again.

But I woke not long after four, the wine having done its best before losing its power over me, and tossed and turned for another hour and a half before giving in to wakefulness, getting up and making tea. My head was a bit fuzzy but I did not feel nearly as bad as I probably deserved to. In fact, I was definitely considerably stronger than I had been the previous day.

Just as I was leaving the house to catch the 7.30 train, having located the spare key in its usual place tucked under the edge of the carpet, Will arrived. I opened the front door and he was standing on the doorstep with one hand raised as if about to knock. It was a clumsy meeting. We almost bumped into each other.

He spoke first. ‘I went to the hospital last night, I didn't know you'd left . . .'

‘I'm sorry,' I said, not really meaning it. I wasn't much concerned with anyone except me and Carl right then. ‘I should have let you know . . .'

‘No. No. Of course not. It's just that I've got something for you, the rest of what I owe you . . .'

He produced one of those familiar brown envelopes. As ever, the practicalities of life were eluding me. I had not given money matters a thought, beyond being able to get myself to Exeter to see Carl. The sight of the brown envelope concentrated my mind. I realised suddenly how welcome it was. Presumably soon there would be rent to pay and other bills.

I took the envelope from him and studied it almost curiously.

‘There's just over £500, I've had a really good run,' he said. ‘Sold two of his big abstracts and another couple of the little watercolours as well.'

He sounded almost eager.

‘Thank you,' I said, stuffing the envelope in my pocket. There was not time to tuck away the cash in its usual hiding place. And in any case it was a matter of habit not to allow visitors, rare as they had always been, to become aware of our secret cellar.

I was still hovering in the doorway and Will remained on the doorstep directly in front of me. He made no attempt to move. I stepped forward, pulling the door shut behind me and only then, with great reluctance it seemed, did he shift back out of the way.

As I was locking the door he began to talk again. ‘I just wondered if I could do anything to help. There must be something . . .'

Yes, there was. I wanted him out of the way, so that I could get to Carl. ‘No, Will, there isn't,' I said. ‘Now please, you're just going to have to excuse me.' I spoke a little more curtly than I had meant to, but I was in a hurry.

Will looked quite crestfallen. ‘Oh, yes, of course,' he muttered in a bleak sort of way.

I had neither time nor inclination to worry about his sensibilities.

He still did not move and I simply sidled my way round him.

‘Goodbye, then,' he said.

I think I called a goodbye or something similar to him over my shoulder but, to be honest, I can't really remember.

I was intent upon my journey, hurrying, even though I didn't need to, as I rounded the corner at the end of our alleyway and began to make my way down the hill towards Porthminster and the railway station, leaving Will still hovering outside Rose Cottage.

Luckily the train was punctual and I arrived in the centre of Penzance half an hour or so later with plenty of time to have a cup of coffee on my way to the police station.

DC Carter was older than I had expected. He had a pleasant enough manner but somehow gave me the impression that he was not terribly well prepared about Carl's case.

He was small for a policeman, with hair so dark that I wondered if it were dyed. He had a crumpled look about him and bore a more than fleeting resemblance to the American TV detective Columbo. However, the resemblance stopped sharply at physical appearance. Ray Carter showed no sign whatsoever of Columbo's intelligence.

He kept me waiting for several minutes, sitting on a plastic chair in the reception area of the modern purpose-built police station which was nothing special but something of a palace compared with St Ives, before taking me to his first-floor office.

There he shuffled papers on his desk and did his best to tell me as little as possible.

‘As you know, your husband has been charged with abducting you and he will be committed for trial here at Penzance,' he recited unhelpfully. ‘We haven't got a date fixed yet, but in any case the committal will be just a formality. You won't need to be there.'

I hadn't thought that far ahead. A trial – me giving evidence against Carl. It didn't seem possible. In spite of everything I still wasn't sure that was what I wanted, or even that I could cope with it. I suppose I was still hoping that when I saw Carl he would put things right, just as he had always done, that he would in some way be able to tell me it was all one big mistake.

‘I'm not sure that I want to go ahead with it. Maybe I should withdraw the charge. Can I do that?' I was still feeling far from my best. I stumbled over my words in confusion.

‘No, you can't, Mrs Peters,' he said. Everybody still called me that, even though it had turned out to be a much greater lie than I had ever suspected.

‘Your husband is accused of a criminal offence. The crown is prosecuting him, not you.'

Carter's voice was weary. He was certainly a very different prospect from either Rob Partridge or DS Perry. I didn't think I was going to get very far with him, but I tried. ‘What about the American charge?' I asked. ‘I need you to tell me about what Carl did over there, about his daughter and him being wanted for manslaughter.'

Carter sighed and rubbed the back of one hand across his forehead. ‘You know about that, do you? And I bet I know who gave you all the inside info, too.'

‘The whole of St Ives knows about it as far as I can gather,' I countered, finding just a little bit of spirit.

Carter managed a tight-lipped smile. ‘I expect they do, too. Look, I doubt very much that I can tell you any more than you know already. He's a wanted man in America all right and that means the American government can apply for a warrant for extradition. That's really as much as I can say until we know exactly what is going to happen.'

He didn't actually use the phrase ‘it's more than my job's worth' but you knew that was what he meant. Ray Carter was the kind of policeman who went strictly by the book.

I made one or two more attempts to extract information from him, but eventually gave up. In any case I didn't have a lot of time to spare. I wanted to catch the 10.04 train to Exeter to see Carl.

As I got up to leave I said softly, more to myself than anything else: ‘I didn't even know he had a daughter . . .'

Ray Carter's face softened. ‘C'mon, I'll run you down to the station. I know you're off to the prison. It's all fixed, by the way.'

Rob Partridge was probably right. Just because he had probably neither shown any initiative nor taken any kind of risk in his whole life didn't mean DC Carter wasn't a nice man.

The main railway line out of Penzance runs through the heart of Cornwall and then, after Plymouth, meanders along the South Devon coast via Dawlish Warren. Much of the scenery along this tortuous route is quite spectacular, but I wasn't in the mood for sightseeing. I just wished the bloody train would go a bit faster. You can travel the 200-plus miles from Exeter to London in two hours and eight minutes by train. Exeter is only just over 100 miles from Penzance, yet the rail journey takes an extraordinary three hours. That's Devon and Cornwall for you, I thought glumly as we finally chugged into the old county town.

My ticket, the cheapest going, had cost twenty-six pounds. I had less than ten pounds of Will's original forty left. Grateful, suddenly, for his last-minute visit and the brown envelope tucked snugly in my pocket, I took a taxi from St David's Station to the County Prison, a forbidding Victorian building prominently situated high on a hill overlooking the rest of the city. It was a chilling sight and I dreaded to think of Carl locked up inside. For a history enthusiast like myself it was all too easy to imagine a gallows set up before the enormous double gates and a crowd, baying for blood, gathered for a public execution.

Between them, PC Partridge and DC Carter had made all the promised arrangements. I was expected and I gained entry easily enough. I was searched and asked if I had brought anything to give to Carl. I hadn't. To be honest I hadn't even thought about it. I was taken to a room in which other prisoners were already seated at tables talking to visitors.

I sat down as instructed and waited. A drawn and haggard-looking man was led into the room. It was Carl. I know it sounds crazy, but the change in him in such a short time was so dramatic that I barely recognised him. He looked broken.

In spite of everything I felt the tears come to my eyes. I was torn between my belief in the love we had shared and the awful things Carl had apparently done in his life, things that I still found hard to believe. He had held me prisoner, there was certainly no doubt about that, and in such conditions that I had nearly died of pneumonia. I tried to harden my heart against him, but I still could not equate all that I had discovered about Carl with the gentle, loving man I thought I had known so well and the feelings I had had for him for so many years.

He seemed to shuffle rather than walk. He wasn't the same Carl at all. He couldn't have lost any substantial weight in a fortnight, surely, but I thought he was thinner than when I had last seen him, gaunt almost. There was a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth, which I had not noticed before. Maybe it had not been there. And yet, when he looked at me, his face lit up the way it always did.

He walked straight up to me and wrapped his arms round me. ‘God, I'm glad to see you, Suzanne,' he said.

The prisoner officer standing nearby let him hold me and kiss me for a moment before he stepped forward and gestured for both of us to sit down opposite each other, separated by a table.

Carl leaned forward and grasped my hands. ‘I've missed you so much, sweetheart.'

It was weird, almost surreal. He was behaving practically as if the kidnap had never happened. His expression was full of the love and kindness to which I had always been accustomed. But if he knew of how ill I had been he gave no indication of it. And the memory of being kept captive by him in that terrible hut, of being tied to my bed, was too vivid for me to be won over that easily.

‘Why did you do it, Carl?' I asked quietly.

At first he looked puzzled. ‘I'd never have h-hurt you, not you,' he said haltingly.

I stared at him. That was no answer.

‘Why did you do it?' I asked again and this time I could hear the anger in my own voice.

‘I wanted to protect you, to look after you, that's all.'

I withdrew my hands from his. Suddenly I didn't want him touching me. ‘Oh, not that again, Carl,' I said sharply.

He recoiled from me as if I had hit him. Then he seemed to recover himself and carried on speaking as if he had not been interrupted at all. ‘You see, you are so d-different, you were always d-different. You understood. You wanted me to look after you. You needed me to protect you, didn't you?'

The words were all too familiar, much the same as he had used while he had been keeping me a prisoner. The nervous stammer was familiar too. I did not reply.

‘Didn't you?' he asked again.

He was right, of course. I had wanted that. I nodded slightly.

‘Yes, of course you did. We were made for each other, weren't we? If only I had found you first everything would have been all right, for both of us.'

I wasn't getting anywhere. I decided to concentrate on what I really wanted to know. ‘Carl, you let me believe I had killed my husband. You showed me that knife covered with blood. And you knew I hadn't killed Robert, didn't you?'