A Deep Deceit (34 page)

I took the Piccadilly Line back to Hammersmith, from there caught a bus across Hammersmith Bridge to the Sheen Road, and hopped off quite close to the other old Victorian building, which had figured so largely in my life: the one that had been Carl's home when I first met him.

This time I did not hover around outside as I had done at the manse. I walked straight up to the front door and rang the bell to flat three, the one that had once been Carl's. There was no reply. I rang the bell beneath.

A big man, wearing grubby trousers held up by a wide belt, eventually came to the door. He seemed to be short-sighted. He leaned forward and peered at me. His breath smelled. ‘Yes?' he enquired.

‘I'm looking for Carl Peters, he used to live here,' I said.

‘He did indeed,' replied the man in a weary sort of voice.

‘I wondered if he'd been back . . .' My voice tailed off. It sounded a strange sort of query even to me.

‘No, unfortunately,' said the man, leaning even closer. ‘He left owing me rent. Years ago, now, but I still wouldn't mind finding Carl Peters myself.'

Ah. I began to retreat, thanking him for his time.

‘Wait, who are you?'

‘Nobody, just an old friend, I haven't seen him in years either . . .'

I hurried away. I didn't want to get involved with this unsavoury-looking landlord who somehow didn't quite match the large, doubtless very valuable property he appeared to own. He called after me again. I half ran down the road, looking over my shoulder. He didn't follow. Anyway, with his bulk it didn't seem likely that he would be able to move very fast.

Safely out of sight I found a bus stop and waited for a bus that would take me into Richmond. There I picked up a taxi – a rare extravagance for me, but I believed I could afford those kinds of extravagances now. I asked the driver to take me to the car park by the Isabella Garden and to pick me up two hours later. It was still quite early in the afternoon, not quite three, and I had plenty of time before I needed to make my way back to Paddington to catch the last train to Cornwall at 6.35. I walked down the rough path to the Isabella, through the iron gates and into the gardens. There could not have been a much greater contrast to the bleakness of the grey winter day when I had first met Carl. This was a beautifully sunny afternoon during early June and the Isabella was ablaze with colour. The late azaleas and rhododendrons and all the other shrubs of spring and early summer were in full bloom, and the scent of them alone was quite overwhelming.

My heart soared as it always had done in the Isabella at this special time of year. Indeed, until I reached the secluded corner where I had so fatefully encountered Carl I felt almost happy. But as I sat on the same old fallen tree trunk, suddenly it hit me. More of the trunk had crumbled away and the moss covering it was much thicker than before, I fancied, but it was so familiar and so special to me. I half imagined I could feel Carl's presence. I kept expecting him to step out from behind a bush and comfort me again, to tell me how sorry he was about all that had happened, to tell me, as he had done so often, how all he wanted was to look after me.

Being protected was not what I wanted any more, but I did want to see Carl again. I couldn't help myself. I wanted to hear the full story in his words and I wasn't going to settle for less. Not again.

The two hours passed very quickly and it was a wrench to drag myself away, both from the beauty of the Isabella on a sunny June day, and from the crazy feeling that if I waited there long enough Carl would appear. Maybe a part of me really had expected him to be waiting for me to turn up at the Isabella, just like he had all those years before.

But it wasn't to be. I had been kidding myself. I plodded up the path to the car park where my taxi was already waiting and asked the driver to take me to Richmond station where I took the underground again, and easily made it to Paddington with half an hour to spare. I remembered I was hungry and I was also beginning to feel very tired. I nipped into the station buffet and ordered myself an all-day breakfast, my second of the day, it occurred to me only later, then, full of comfort food, I dozed through much of the journey home. But my every waking moment was overtaken with the riddle of where Carl had gone.

I went over everything again and again in my mind and got nowhere. I made a mental list of things I could do. I ought to get myself a passport. I had no way of knowing where Carl might be, but I wanted to be ready to follow the slightest lead. Maybe he had somehow got himself to the States, maybe he had gone back to his past as DC Carter suspected. If so I would go there. I would seek him out.

Meanwhile I would put advertisements in all the major newspapers asking him to contact me, telling him I wanted to see him. I had seen those sad pleas so often, begging missing persons to come home or get in touch, and never imagined myself searching for someone in this way. I told myself that surely he wouldn't ignore me if he knew I was looking for him. I wasn't sure of anything except that I had to find Carl.

It occurred to me that my desire to find him could become as obsessive as had been his desire to keep me.

Nineteen

The train trundled into Penzance at half past midnight. Mariette was waiting at the station for me as she had promised, in spite of the hour.

Robert Foster's money, I assured her, was all mine.

‘How about a celebration, then?' she enquired typically. Never one to miss out on a party, was Mariette.

I grinned. ‘When I find Carl,' I said.

She shook her head doubtfully. ‘I still think you're better off without him.'

‘You may be right,' I admitted. ‘I just feel I can't even decide that until I've seen him again, talked to him . . .'

‘But where do you start looking?'

I told her I had already started, that I'd checked out Carl's old flat in Sheen. ‘I kind of believe what DC Carter says, about people on the run having the urge to go back, to go home, or whatever passes for it . . .'

‘From what you've told me about him I can't imagine DC Carter ever being right about anything,' said Mariette tetchily.

I shrugged. ‘I just have this feeling that something will tell me where I should go to look for Carl, and that if I ever get close to him, I'll know.' I paused. ‘I'd like to get a passport as quickly as possible.'

Mariette was a very practical person. Her reply did not surprise me. ‘There's a man who comes in to the library who knows someone in the Passport Office,' she said. ‘He sorted things out when Mum was going on holiday to Tenerife once and discovered at the last moment that her passport had run out. I'll get on to him.'

‘You're a marvel, Mariette,' I said. And to me she was. Nothing ever seemed to be problem to her.

‘But why do you want one so fast anyway? You're not going to run away too, are you?'

I grinned. ‘I don't think so,' I replied. ‘I may want to go to America to find Carl, though. Maybe he has found his way back there, that's what DC Carter thinks.'

‘Man doesn't have a clue, if you ask me. First of all he thought Carl would come to you, didn't he? He hasn't done. Yet. Maybe he still will. Shouldn't you just stay where you are, wait here?'

‘I'm not sure I can,' I said. ‘I feel I have to do something. In any case, if Carl were planning to come back to St Ives to find me I reckon he would already have done so. I imagine that he feels rejected by me. I made it quite clear that I wanted nothing more to do with him when I saw him in jail and then I didn't answer his letter . . .'

My voice caught in my throat.

‘You really are sure you want to find him, aren't you,' muttered Mariette resignedly.

I assured her I was.

She sighed. ‘Men,' she said. ‘Nothing but trouble.'

‘Is that why you have nothing to do with them?' I asked sweetly.

‘Maybe that's what it will come to.'

‘And pigs might fly,' I replied.

‘As a matter of fact there are days when I just can't wait to get old and past it.'

I could only grin. There she was, radiating vitality as usual, perfect skin, shiny black hair, a woman born to drive men mad if they weren't already.

But my mind was still on more serious matters. ‘Mariette,' I said hesitantly, after a short pause. ‘If I did decide to go to America . . . would you come with me? . . . I mean, I'm not sure I could manage on my own and I have the money to pay for both of us . . . and we could try to make a holiday of it . . .'

I wasn't sure there was actually much chance of that in my frame of mind, but if Mariette suspected as much she did not let on. ‘I thought you'd never ask,' she said.

Over the next couple of weeks we prepared for our trip. I took myself off to Penzance to buy some much needed new clothes. This time I travelled alone and I bought garments that suited me, not Mariette, fond as I had become of her. Carl had probably been right about the tarty orange suit episode. I had attempted to turn myself into somebody I wasn't. That was another thing that was never going to happen again.

We also had to sort out passports and tickets, and car hire. Yet another of Mariette's many friends, who lived in London, obtained a copy of my birth certificate. I decided that my passport would be in my maiden name. It was simplest and in any case I no longer desired to be either Mrs Foster or Mrs Peters.

I became Jane Adams again, the name I was christened with. At least, according to my brand new passport I did.

Mariette was pensive as she fingered the pristine document. ‘You know, you're still Suzanne to me. I can't imagine calling you anything else . . .'

I smiled. ‘That's all right,' I said. ‘I guess I'm still Suzanne to myself too.'

Official documents were one thing, but I could never really be Jane again, not inside my head. Too much had happened. And, in fact, the memory of the night when Carl had given me my new name, although tainted by the lies we had lived, remained too vivid. I could not easily discard my name, even though I had thrown away Carl's records and CDs of the Cohen song from which it had been taken. And, to be honest, I was already beginning to regret that.

Before we left for America I made a final call to DS Perry to make sure that there was no further news of Carl. She had earlier supplied me with all the information she had from the Florida police about Carl and the death of his daughter, including the name of the man who had been the investigating officer at Key Largo when he had been charged with manslaughter.

‘I don't know exactly what you're expecting to find over there, but don't build your hopes up, will you?' Julie Perry cautioned.

‘I'm expecting nothing but you know what I'm hoping for, I'm hoping I might find Carl, or at least discover more about him,' I said.

‘As long as you don't end up wishing you hadn't . . .'

She didn't seem quite to finish the sentence, but I thought I knew what she meant.

Mariette and I flew out of Heathrow en route to Miami just fifteen days after my journey to Hounslow. I had a suitcase full of new clothes, a chequebook, a Barclays Premier gold card and, of course, a passport. I thought that was pretty good going. And I must confess that even in my distress my new-found independence gave me considerable satisfaction. In spite of my extraordinarily sheltered past I found that I took to it with surprising ease – although I realised I would not have managed such a big trip so effortlessly without Mariette. Her only previous trip to the States had been a package tour to Disneyworld at Orlando, but she seemed totally confident that this prepared her for almost anything America could throw at her. Nothing much fazed Mariette.

Any notions I had about transatlantic travel being glamorous were well and truly scotched by nine hours in Virgin economy class. I am not particularly tall, about five foot six, but I felt as if I had been wedged in to my seat with a shoehorn. By the time we reached our destination the circulation in my legs seemed to have disappeared and I couldn't help thinking about the newspaper articles I had read claiming that being cramped on aircraft can cause blood clots and kill.

‘If we were animals,' remarked Mariette crustily, ‘there would be animal rights protesters, waving bloody great banners, waiting for us on the tarmac.' I managed half a smile.

As we battled our way through Immigration I became increasingly glad that we'd decided not to go further than the airport Hilton that night. I had heard about jet lag but nothing had prepared me for it. I had never been so tired in my life.

We had a huge room in the Hilton overlooking a runway – almost on top of one, it seemed – and yet we could hear very little aircraft noise through the triple glazing. We both crashed out instantly and woke very early with the morning light. Then we sorted out our prebooked hire car – something the Americans called a compact. It seemed like a limousine to me, but then about the sum total of my previous motoring experience had consisted of travelling around in Carl's elderly van, which we had never quite afforded to change and every year had nursed painstakingly through its MOT.

Mariette had to do all the driving but the distances we expected to travel were not great – Key West, our furthest destination at the southernmost tip of the Keys, being less than 200 miles from the airport – and she said she was quite looking forward to it. We were on our way before 8 a.m.

Refreshed by sleep and in bright sunshine we navigated ourselves out of Miami without too much difficulty and headed down Highway 1 to Key Largo where Mariette, using an already much thumbed tourist guide, had booked us into a little bayside motel called Neptune's Hideaway.