A Deep Deceit (31 page)

We had to drive past at first because Carter could not find a parking space. Rob waved in a resigned sort of way. Eventually the detective managed to park, several hundred yards up the hill. He and WPC Braintree walked on either side of me as we made our way back down to the alleyway.

‘No sign of him, then?' remarked Carter, rather unnecessarily, I thought.

Surely not even Rob Partridge would have remained standing around like a spare one if he had spotted the man who appeared suddenly to have become the most wanted criminal in England – well, the west of England, anyway.

Rob shook his head.

‘Right,' said Carter. ‘Time to search the place.'

Rob spread his hands in front of him. ‘He's not in there, Ray. There's only one way in, and I've been here ever since I got the alert. He couldn't have arrived before me . . .'

I knew, of course, that you could get in over Mrs Jenkins's wall at the back, but I couldn't be bothered to mention it. In any case, Carl would still have had to go through Mrs Jenkins's front gate and make his way along the path between the two houses to get into her back garden, which was, apart from the climbable wall into our place, completely surrounded by other tall buildings.

Carter grunted. ‘I'm doing this one by the book, Rob,' he said. ‘Six months I've got to go. Six flaming months. If anything goes wrong with this can of worms I'm not going to be carrying it.'

I thought I knew what he meant. Rob grinned amiably. WPC Braintree remained silent. She didn't say a lot. For a fleeting moment I thought I half caught her rolling her eyes to heaven. If she had done so neither Carter nor Partridge spotted it.

‘Stay watching, Rob,' said Carter. The orange-haired policeman shrugged indifferently. He had always seemed like the kind of man who would prefer to be told what to do rather than have to make decisions.

I used my key to unlock the front door and led the way inside the cottage. If I had any doubts at all that Carl might have sneaked his way past the police guard outside – however dubious it might be – I knew straight away that it hadn't happened. He wasn't there. He hadn't been there. Difficult to explain how I was so sure, but this was my house and he was my man. I knew.

Carter didn't think Carl was there either, I suspected, but he went through the motions. By the book, like he said.

WPC Braintree was despatched upstairs. Carter looked carefully around the dining room and made something of a show of peering under the table. I pulled one of the chairs back from the old table and sat down to wait. It wouldn't take long to search Rose Cottage, that was for certain.

Carter began to head for the kitchen. Just in time I remembered that I had not replaced the flagstone. ‘Careful,' I warned. ‘The cellar's open.'

‘What's down there anyway?' he asked.

I explained about the old forgotten cellar, which Carl and I had discovered and which we used as a store-room.

‘Right, better have a gander, then.' I could see him through the kitchen door bending over looking down into the hole in the floor. ‘Can't see a darned thing; pitch black down there. Gotta torch?' he called.

I joined him in the kitchen, picked up the torch, still sitting quite obviously where I had left it on the worktop as it happened, and passed it to him. He climbed down the ladder and shone it meticulously into every corner. Completely unnecessary. It was, after all, very small and all that was left in it were the few discarded bits and pieces from Carl's studio and our old Christmas decorations. Clearly, there was nowhere for anyone to hide.

After emerging up the ladder, he made his way out into the backyard, He asked for a key to Carl's studio, which I gave him even though you could actually see into it well enough from outside through the big windows that ran along its entire length.

Eventually he seemed satisfied and WPC Braintree had by then come down from upstairs to announce, predictably, that there was no one up there either, nor anything of any interest.

‘Right,' said DC Carter. ‘I don't think you should stay here, Mrs Peters.'

‘Why ever not?' I asked.

Carter sighed. ‘Because your husband is a dangerous man. He has already held you in captivity. He could well be intending to harm you.'

I still could not get my head around it. I listened in amazement.

‘Have you anywhere you could go?' asked WPC Braintree.

I could only think of one place: poor Mariette and her mother. They really didn't deserve to be lumbered with me again and in any case I wasn't at all sure that was what I wanted, either. ‘I'd much rather stay here,' I said. ‘I'm sure Carl won't hurt me. Anyway, I doubt he'll even try to come back to the cottage. He must know that you'd be looking here . . .'

‘Mrs Peters, if there's one thing I've learned in thirty years of policing it is that birds always come home to roost.' DC Carter sounded weary.

‘Pardon?' I said.

Carter sighed again. ‘People escape, build a new identity, all of that, but they can't shrug off the past.' He was echoing Rob Partridge and, whatever my reservations about both policemen, I had to accept that they presumably had some experience of the situation I had suddenly found myself in. I had none.

Carter was still talking. ‘. . . You put people on witness protection schemes, resettle them with a new name, new history, new home, the lot. All they want to do is go back where they came from. They know it's bloody dangerous but they don't seem able to stop themselves. You'd be surprised how often they take themselves off back to their old stamping grounds. Happens all the time.'

‘Look, I'll be fine . . .' I suddenly longed to be alone.

‘Mrs Peters, I don't think you quite understand. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. I can't take responsibility for your safety if you stay here.'

It was my turn to sigh. ‘All right, all right,' I said.

‘Now, is there someone you'd like to call?'

I nodded dumbly. He passed me his mobile phone. I called Mariette.

She had been in the library all day and had not heard the news. ‘I just don't believe it, Suzanne,' she exclaimed. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Of course I'm all right,' I said. ‘It's just that the police won't let me stay here. They think Carl's dangerous. It's nonsense, of course . . .'

‘I don't think it's nonsense,' said Mariette. ‘He
is
dangerous. He kidnapped you, tied you up and drugged you, for God's sake. He killed his own daughter, didn't he?'

Why did everybody have to keep telling me these things? Did they think I didn't know?

‘Of course you must come to us. I'll call Mum, and I'll meet you there.' Mariette hung up before I could make polite noises about not having to leave work early for me.

‘Right,' said Carter. ‘Pack what you want, only be quick.'

I nodded glumly.

‘I'll close that trapdoor up for you,' he added.

I began to climb the stairs and could hear him in the kitchen dragging the ladder up from the cellar.

Then his mobile telephone rang.

‘Right,' he said. His favourite word, it seemed. I heard his footsteps clumping through the dining room. ‘Sorry, Mrs Peters, we've got to go right away,' he shouted up the stairs. ‘Can't wait for you to pack any more.'

I had got as far as picking up a small bag and throwing my nightclothes into it. Obediently I trotted downstairs carrying just that. ‘What's happened?' I asked.

Carter and WPC Braintree had gone into a huddle in a corner of the dining room. They ignored me at first.

‘Tell me, for goodness' sake,' I shouted. I knew that I sounded hysterical, I was beginning to feel hysterical.

Carter turned to face me. ‘Mrs Peters, please . . . calm down.'

‘Just tell me what's going on, then I'll calm down.'

Carter appeared to decide to take the route of least resistance. Something that came fairly naturally to him, I reckoned.

‘It's your husband. A lorry driver reckons he picked him up and took him to Plymouth, just before we got the roadblocks set up. Must have moved damned fast. Trucker reported it to Plymouth nick when he heard the news and Carl's description on the radio . . .'

They drove me down the hill to Mariette's house in Fore Street. All along the way I pleaded with them to take me to Plymouth.

DC Carter had had about enough of me, I think. ‘What earthly good would that do?'

‘If Carl's there I'd find him, I know I would,' I said, although I knew I was being ridiculous.

Brenda Powell was waiting for us. She must have been looking out of the window because she opened the front door as soon as our car drew to a halt outside her house. Why did I never seem to be allowed to make my own choices, I wondered, and was immediately ashamed of myself because both she and her daughter had been so kind to me.

Carter did not budge from the driver's seat when I got out of the car. Neither did he shut down the engine. Carol Braintree, who had been sitting in the back, quickly clambered out and installed herself in the front passenger seat as soon as I vacated it.

‘C'mon, my luvver,' said Mariette's mum. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms round me. Not for the first time I wondered what it must be like to have a mother like Brenda Powell. I had been loved, no question of that, but I was only just beginning to realise that both the people who had loved me so much, Gran and Carl, had also wanted to control me. Did Mrs Powell want to control her daughter, or even me? I didn't think so. I was just finding any kind of concern for my well-being oppressive.

‘Don't worry, I'll look after her,' Mrs Powell called after the two police officers, who seemed to consider their duty done as far as I was concerned, and had already roared off up the hill before Mariette's mum and I had even begun to retreat inside the house.

‘Please let me know what happens,' I shouted at the top of my voice. But I doubt they even heard me.

When Mariette came home from the library I told her the whole sorry story. About Will. Everything. She listened carefully. ‘It doesn't alter what Carl did to you in the end, though, or what he did in America, does it?' she said eventually.

‘I s-suppose not,' I agreed falteringly.

‘And now he's done a runner,' she added. ‘I think he's barking, that's what I think.'

I didn't know how to argue with that. Although in my heart it still didn't add up, still didn't equate with the Carl I knew.

‘Look, you've told me yourself it's over with Carl,' she went on. ‘What you need to do now is build yourself a new life.'

‘You can't go back to that house until they catch the devil, that's for certain,' Mrs Powell volunteered.

I would have laughed if I had had any sense of humour left. I was having difficulty regarding Carl as a fugitive at all, let alone as some kind of devil.

Sometimes in the morning things seem better. The morning after Carl's escape everything seemed worse.

I had to face up to a few things. Carl was on the run. Maybe Mrs Powell was right, maybe he was a devil, perhaps in a way every bit as much of a monster as Robert Foster. And maybe I had to accept that before I could move forward, which I had to do somehow or other.

Mariette's mother walked with me to Rose Cottage so that I could pick up some things, which I had not been given time to do the previous day. I didn't really want to go. The cottage was beginning to represent too many bad things. My life there with Carl just seemed like a lie now. And it was also where Will Jones had confessed that he too had deceived me.

Rob Partridge was no longer propping up the wall on the corner to Rose Lane, but another officer – one I didn't recognise, just as conspicuously obvious in spite of his unremarkable casual clothing – was on duty.

He stepped forward as we were unlocking the door and I had to explain who we were and what we were doing there.

He glanced into the cottage over my shoulder. You could feel the silent emptiness of the place. ‘I'll be right outside if you want me,' he said.

I thanked him, but I could not imagine what Brenda Powell or I could possibly want him for.

There was a coldness about the cottage that I had not noticed before. Also the way that Carl and I had lived – turning the upstairs room into a bed-sitting room because of the view, lighting the dingy dining room only with candles so that you could not see the ugliness of it, shutting ourselves off, except in the most superficial ways, from the outside world – now seemed like an absurdity.

I climbed the stairs with reluctance and began to sort out enough clothes to keep me going for as long as Mariette and her mother would have me. Downstairs I could hear Mrs Powell bustling about. She had volunteered to clear the fridge and make sure nothing perishable was left in the kitchen. I didn't care, really, but she was that sort of person. I could hear her muttering to herself.

After a bit she called out to me. ‘Suzanne, will you come down and give me a hand with this flagstone out yer. One of us is going to fall down that hole in a minute.'

I thought for a moment whether there was anything else I wanted to retrieve from the cellar before we sealed it up, but I knew there wasn't. In any case, I really didn't want to go down there again. Together we tried to manoeuvre the stone until Brenda Powell gave a little cry and stood up straight clutching her back.

‘Don't hurt yourself,' I said. ‘Let me try on my own. I know there's an easy way to do this. I've seen Carl do it often enough.'