Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

Suddenly the demons had retreated a little again. I was beginning to realise that they would probably never leave me, but the world did not look as bleak as it had the previous day.

‘Are you feeling any better?’ he asked.

I told him I was and even managed a wan smile.

‘I will find out who is doing this,’ he said. ‘And I will stop it.’

I believed him because I always believed him. Carl had never let me down in the whole of our life together.

He made me boiled eggs and toasted soldiers from good local bread spread thickly with Cornish butter, and I sat up in bed and ate.

‘Do you feel strong enough to talk about it?’ he asked, pouring me a second mug of coffee.

I nodded.

Together we tried to think of anyone who could have sent us the letter. There was no one we could realistically suspect, certainly nobody from our new life together. We never got close enough to anybody for them to learn much about us, let alone to discover the past.

Mariette was the nearest I had to a friend, but even she was only barely a friend. You share your life with your true friends, and I couldn’t do that.

Nonetheless Carl asked me if I was sure about Mariette.

I shrugged. ‘What’s to be sure of?’ I asked. ‘I like her company. I like listening to her stories. But she knows nothing about us.’

‘She told you she was jealous of us, of you. People do strange things out of jealousy.’

‘Oh, she wasn’t serious. Mariette has men like other people have hot dinners. She has nothing to be jealous of.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Carl again. ‘From what you’ve told me, Mariette’s love life consists of a series of one-night stands. I think she has a lot to be jealous of us about.’ He touched my hand gently.

I shrugged again. ‘In any case, I’ve never told her anything about our lives before we came here,’ I said.

Carl nodded. ‘Well, all right, I suppose it couldn’t be her, really.’

I shook my head. ‘Anyway, she’s too nice,’ I said.

‘People can have more than one side to them,’ muttered Carl.

‘You don’t,’ I said.

‘Yes I do,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that you bring out the best in me.’

I smiled. ‘In any case, it just can’t be Mariette,’ I insisted.

‘No, I suppose not,’ Carl agreed. ‘But who, then?’

‘Let’s list the people we know.’

It wasn’t a very long list: Will at the gallery, our neighbours, our local fishmonger who for some reason looked after us particularly well, the boss of our favourite restaurant, a couple of local shopkeepers, the dreaded Fenella and the others we knew vaguely from the pub scene.

‘That old hag Fenella is capable of anything, I reckon,’ said Carl with feeling.

But we both knew the truth well enough. Apart from any other considerations, everyone on our rather pathetic list had one thing in common: they knew absolutely nothing about Carl and me and our past. They had no motive that we could possibly imagine and no knowledge to harm us with.

‘It has to be someone from before, that’s the only logical answer,’ said Carl.

I shrugged again. ‘But there isn’t anybody, is there?’

When we came to live in St Ives, Carl and I had discarded our old lives like a pair of worn-out shoes. For so long now there had just been each other. There was nobody left from the past, not for either of us. There could not be.

We were sitting together at the table in our single downstairs room. Carl walked to the window, which looked into the narrow alleyway outside. Only the upstairs room, that bit higher up, had the wonderful sea view over the rooftops.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said softly, almost as if he was talking to himself. I was not used to uncertainty in Carl. He always seemed so strong.

‘The police?’ I suggested tentatively.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

I shook my head. The last thing either of us wanted to do was to answer a load of questions from the police.

We were both silent for a moment, then Carl turned away from the window. He sat down beside me again and put his arm round me. I could tell that his moment of indecision was over. He seemed right back to his normal strong self. ‘It’s you and me, girl,’ he said in his lovely slow drawl. ‘You and me against the world. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it always will be – which is just fine by me. We don’t need anyone else, not now, not ever.’

He kissed me and I managed a smile.

‘C’mon,’ he instructed suddenly. ‘Let’s conduct our own investigation.’

He led me down the hill through the town to the Logan Gallery.

‘For goodness’ sake, Carl, you don’t suspect Will, do you?’ I asked.

Carl shook his head. ‘He knows everybody, doesn’t he? We need all the help we can get.’

I understood what Carl was up to. He wanted to do something, however potentially fruitless, rather than just sit around waiting for another letter, heaven forbid, to arrive.

Will greeted me with the usual bear-hug. I pushed him away more abruptly than normal and noticed a fleeting expression of hurt surprise in his eyes, but he quickly recovered and offered us coffee. Carl had no time for it that day. He didn’t mess about. He produced the letter at once and handed it to the gallery boss.

Will glanced at it quickly. He looked absolutely shocked and appeared to be momentarily rendered speechless.

‘Any ideas? Somebody scratched the same sort of stuff on the van, as well,’ Carl explained.

Will just shook his head. ‘Why have you shown me this? What does it mean?’ he enquired.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what it means, but it’s upset Suzanne terribly and it’s not doing me a great deal of good either,’ replied Carl.

Will nodded. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said.

‘Look, Will, I have to find out who’s doing this.’

‘Have you been to the police?’

Carl shook his head. ‘I reckon I should be able to sort it out. Look at the postmark. Penzance. It’s somebody local.’

Will studied the letter and the envelope. ‘Words cut out of a newspaper. I thought that only happened on TV,’ he remarked.

‘That’s what Carl said,’ I told him.

‘It’s got to be somebody with a screw loose,’ said Carl.

Will gave a short laugh. ‘That’s half the artistic community of St Ives,’ he said.

Carl reached out for the letter. Will put his hand on my arm.

‘Try not to fret, Suzanne,’ he said. ‘I hate to think of you being upset.’

I smiled wanly.

Carl put the letter back in his jacket pocket. ‘Well, if you think of anything – or anyone – give us a shout,’ he said.

‘I can’t imagine who it could be,’ responded Will. ‘I know you get all sorts of petty jealousies in a town like this, particularly among the artists, but I’ve never heard of anything like this before. What could the writer possibly know, anyway?’

Carl shrugged. Neither of us had any more to say.

I thanked Will and steered Carl towards the door. As an afterthought I turned back to Will. ‘Do you want to come to supper at the weekend?’ I asked.

Will was one of the few people we entertained. Apart from enjoying his company, it was the nearest Carl and I would ever get to networking, but we didn’t often formally invite him. Usually he just sort of turned up on the doorstep and we did our best to entertain him for a couple of hours.

Will’s face brightened at once. ‘Love to.’

Outside the gallery I took Carl’s hand. ‘C’mon, let’s go home,’ I said.

Carl shook his head. ‘I want to go to the Sloop, ask around,’ he told me.

‘Are you sure, Carl?’ I asked him. ‘It’s a dangerous thing to do, you know.’