Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

She smiled reassuringly. I had not expected that kind of response either. ‘Pretty grim in here, isn’t it?’ she remarked conversationally. ‘We can do a bit better if you’d like to come upstairs.’

She escorted me to a second interview room, which at least had a window and was also equipped with a double tape-recorder. She then asked if I would like coffee and departed to fetch it herself, returning with two mugs and a pocket full of sugar packets. ‘Instant, I’m afraid,’ she said, smiling apologetically. ‘But it’s better than nothing.’

She leaned back in her chair, stirred sugar into her coffee and even took the time to indulge in a little bit of small talk about the weather and how splendid St Ives could be out of season, before encouraging me to get to the point of my visit.

I think we were partly waiting to be joined by another officer. I was horrified when Rob Partridge walked in and I think he was a bit shocked to see me sitting there.

Rob sat down without comment and I didn’t say anything either. I could have done without the presence of anyone I knew or who knew me, even as slight and casual as was my acquaintance with PC Partridge, but I supposed such things were inescapable in a small town and it wasn’t going to make any difference at all in the long run.

DS Perry switched on the tape-recorder and began to ask me questions. Gradually it had all become rather formal and I struggled to control my nerves, which were jangling madly, but Julie Perry was quietly sympathetic in her approach and not at all what I had imagined. Not that I was very clear what I had imagined, if anything. Apart from Rob, who had never seemed to count until that moment, I had never even met a police officer before.

‘Why don’t you tell me the whole story, beginning at the beginning,’ she advised.

That was easier said than done, of course. It was a long time since I had put any of it into words. Carl and I never talked about it any more, you see. I am not sure that we ever did talk about it, really. Not after the day it happened. There had not been much to say, not after what we had done.

I believed I had as many good reasons as anybody had ever had to kill a man. None the less I was a murderer, something I’d never been able to come to terms with. Something I had never wanted to even think about, let alone discuss.

I didn’t even know quite where the beginning was. DS Perry was sitting opposite me across a small table and she studied me appraisingly. I could feel the panic rising in me. The room was not particularly warm but little beads of sweat were forming on my forehead and my armpits felt sticky. ‘I had to come because of the threats,’ I said. ‘Somebody else knows what I did. I just want to tell the truth now, to get it over with...’

Rob Partridge remained silent. He had yet to say a word.

DS Perry stood up and walked across to the window, standing with her back to me as if she were looking out of it into the street below. ‘Take your time,’ she said.

I struggled for control, overcome with the enormity of what I was about to do.

All I could do, I reckoned, was to try to tell it the way I relived it again and again inside my head, sometimes during the day and sometimes at night within the awfulness of my dreams.

And I did so, as calmly and clearly as I could manage.

I woke that terrible morning as I so often had after Robert had attacked me, cowering afraid in some corner of the house to which I had crept once his rage was spent. On this occasion I was in the bathroom, curled up on the bath mat. My body ached and throbbed as usual. Sometimes in the deep silence of the night or of early morning I could hear Robert snoring, as he often did when he slumped into a drunken stupor. This time I heard nothing except the birds singing outside. I glanced through the window. It was already daylight. A fine drizzle was falling and there must have been a light breeze. I could see that the branches of the big old chestnut tree, which was as tall as our house, were swaying gently. The leaves were just beginning to turn the colours of autumn. It seemed strange that these things could be as normal when I was somehow starkly aware that nothing else was. I had a severe headache. Gingerly I touched my forehead with one hand. There was a bump on it the size of a hen’s egg. With equal caution I stretched myself. I felt so sore. I pushed aside the towel I had used to cover myself and as I did so saw with horror that it was covered with bloodstains. I looked at my hands. There was blood on them. I was naked beneath the towel. There were smears of blood all over my body. My heart lurched. I pulled myself to my feet and peered anxiously at the bathroom mirror. There was blood on my face.

I could feel the panic rising inside me. I examined myself to see where the blood might have come from. I was battered and bruised as usual, but I did not seem to be cut.

I unlocked the bathroom door, which I had locked in a pathetic attempt to keep Robert out should he have furiously pursued me as he sometimes did, made my way along the landing and went into the bedroom I shared with Robert. The heavy dark curtains at the window were drawn close. I could just see the shape of him lying in bed and he seemed to be deeply asleep. Certainly he was not moving. Cautiously I crept across the room and pulled back a curtain, just a little way – enough to allow in a narrow shaft of morning light.

Then I turned round.

Robert lay in a sodden mess of congealed blood. The pillow and the duvet were drenched in it. For just a few seconds I was frozen to the spot, the horror of it too great to take in. I made myself approach the bed and pull back the covers.

Robert’s body was a mass of blood. I forced myself to look at his face. Blood had stuck to it like thick paint. His eyes were wide open, accusing, his mouth gaped and was full of thick blood.

I didn’t scream. I don’t think my throat would have functioned. Fear, panic, horror, all overwhelmed me. I stepped back from the bed and made my way backwards, still facing the bed and the dreadful corpse that lay in it, until I reached the door. I did not want to look at Robert any more, but I could not tear my eyes away. Only when I had retreated on to the landing and closed the bedroom door behind me, shutting out the terrible image, did I turn round. Then I began to run, throwing myself down the stairs two and three at a time. For once, and in spite of the shock and horror of it, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I hurried into the kitchen and used the phone there to call Carl.

It was before seven. He answered sleepily.

‘Carl, thank God,’ I said.

He recognised my voice, of course. But I knew how strange I must sound. ‘Please, Carl, please, come over here, come quickly. Please.’

I wasn’t crying. I didn’t have the energy for that. I felt totally drained and I knew that I must have sounded it.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong, honey? Whatever is wrong?’

I wouldn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Not over the phone. I couldn’t find the words for what had happened, for what I had done. I have always thought that he probably half guessed.

Carl knew where I lived well enough, he had often dropped me and my bicycle off close by, although of course he had never been to the house. He was with me within thirty minutes. I was sitting in one of the upright chairs at the kitchen table, still naked, still covered with blood when I heard the doorbell ring. I stumbled out into the hallway. I didn’t even check that it was Carl outside before I opened the door and afterwards I often wondered what would have happened had it been someone else.

He looked at me in silence for what seemed like an endless stretch of time, before he seemed able to react. I heard him draw in his breath in a shocked gasp. Then he pushed me back into the hall, stepped swiftly inside the house himself and closed the front door behind us.