Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

I let him help me outside and down the alleyway to where the van was parked in the street leading steeply down to the harbour. We were just pulling away when Detective Sergeant Perry arrived.

She was slowing down, obviously looking for a parking space, when she spotted us and flashed her lights. Carl said ‘Damn!’ loudly. He didn’t stop the van.

I looked at him, startled. He just hit the accelerator and carried on driving, swerving around the policewoman’s car. I hadn’t wanted him to do that. Whatever the police had to say I felt I was ready for it, even if Carl didn’t agree.

I turned and peered out of the back window. DS Perry’s car was facing the wrong way. I wondered if she would try to turn and follow us, but she did not seem to be attempting to do so.

‘I want to talk to her, Carl,’ I said. ‘Please go back.’

He shook his head and carried on driving, swinging the car around the twisting streets of St Ives.

‘Carl, I need to hear what she has found out,’ I said. ‘I want to know what the police have discovered about Robert. I have to.’

‘You know already,’ he said abruptly. ‘And I expect they know now, too.’

I really didn’t understand any of it.

‘They’re bound to know the truth by now,’ he muttered.

‘I’m beginning to wonder if I do.’

‘How can you not?’ asked Carl. ‘You were there. You were responsible, and me too, for what we did afterwards.’

He looked frightened and I had never seen Carl afraid before. That had always been my prerogative.

‘Whatever the truth, we can’t keep running, Carl,’ I insisted. ‘I don’t want to run any more...’

He took one hand off the steering wheel and put it on my knee. ‘Honey,’ he said. ‘What choice do we have? What choice have we ever had?’

I started to argue with him. I had virtually never argued with him before. Not seriously, anyway. ‘The choice is to go back to the police station, carry through what I’ve begun...’

‘No,’ he interrupted. His voice very sharp.

‘You’re wrong, Carl, I’m sure of it. This has to end, for both of us.’

I could see that he didn’t like me speaking out like this, making a stand against him. He shot a glance at me sideways. He really did look angry now.

But when he spoke again he was my usual kind, gentle Carl. ‘I only ever want to do the best for you. You trust me, don’t you?’

I nodded. Of course I trusted him.

‘I don’t want you to be forced into anything, that’s all,’ he went on. ‘Just do it my way one more time, just for a bit...’

The sun was still shining and my head still felt muzzy. We were on the open road now, the B road which wends its way along the north coast via Zennor and St Just towards Land’s End. It twists and turns its way through miles of scrubby moorland. Even the main highway, the A30, is of such a low standard right down in the foot of Cornwall that the locals always said it would not have been given A status anywhere else in the UK. Carl and I had a record at home, that we’d bought second-hand from a market, of West Country folk singer Cyril Tawney singing ‘Second-hand City’, a song about Plymouth, which contains the line ‘hanging on to England like Lucifer’s tail’ – and Plymouth wasn’t even quite in Cornwall. We passed a great many familiar places and sights we had learned about from books and then explored in the van and on foot. The beautiful cliff-edge home of the painter Patrick Heron, one of Carl’s heroes, the remains of old tin mines, flocks of rough sheep, occasional ponies. I descended into a kind of trance again, only half aware.

I didn’t have the strength to argue with Carl any more. It was very warm in the van, and eventually I found the muzziness inside my head overwhelming me and I drifted off into a fitful dozing sleep.

I was woken when the vehicle began to bump and swerve. I opened my eyes and could see that we were on a narrow, winding, uneven track leading straight through a rough moor-land area.

It looked vaguely familiar. Then I realised that just off the track was a small tucked-away bluebell wood, which Carl and I had discovered in the early days of exploring the countryside around our home and had since visited several times. It was April. There would still be bluebells in bloom.

‘Are we going for a walk, Carl?’ I asked, feeling even more bewildered.

He smiled tightly. ‘Not exactly,’ he answered.

In fact we drove right past the entrance to the wood. I had not previously been so far along the track. It became progressively more uneven, until it was barely any kind of thoroughfare at all, just an expanse of rocky outcrop and mud.

‘Where are we going?’ I enquired. I wasn’t alarmed, just tired.

‘You’ll see,’ he replied.

Eventually we came across a deserted old shed alongside a disused quarry, which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Carl drove straight into the quarry down a precariously steep slope and parked the van in the middle of a covert of tangled scrubby bushes. And he did so in such a way that I felt sure it was not the first time he had been to this place. He climbed out from the driver’s seat, walked around to the passenger side and helped me out. I still felt woozy and leaned on him heavily as he assisted me up the steep incline to the shed, which was granite-built and quite solid-looking in spite of its obvious state of neglect. Its windows were boarded up, a heavy wooden door, firmly shut, to one side. The place did not look as if anyone had been near it in years.

‘Come on, we’ll be safe here,’ said Carl. ‘Nobody will find us.’

I glanced back down into the quarry where we had left the van. It was totally concealed. I tried one more time to reason with Carl. ‘But why, Carl?’ I asked. ‘I want to be found. Honestly I do. I keep telling you, I don’t want to hide for the rest of my life...’

‘Trust me, honey,’ he answered. ‘Like you’ve always done. It won’t be for ever, just till I can find out exactly what the police know.’

He produced a key and unlocked the big, rusty-looking padlock, which was attached to the heavy wooden door. The lock turned surprisingly smoothly and the door opened easily, although it looked as if it had been wedged shut and unused for years. Obliquely I thought that both lock and hinges must have been oiled quite recently.

I glanced at Carl in surprise.

‘I stumbled across this place by accident one day,’ he said. ‘The padlock was in place, but it wasn’t locked. I went to that old ironmonger’s in Penzance to get a key for it, oiled it and put it back on. All I had to do was make sure that I kept the shed looking the same from the outside as it has done since it was abandoned God knows how many years ago. But inside – well, see for yourself.’

We were still standing in the doorway. Carl took a torch out of his pocket and shone it inside, steering me into the shed and closing the door behind us. I could see two camp beds, a Primus stove, a Calor gas heater, a couple of straight-backed wooden chairs and an old table. There was a new-looking sleeping bag on each bed. My eyes questioned him.

‘I had to have somewhere for us to go, for us to hide, just in case,’ he said. ‘Particularly after the threats started...’

‘You’ve been planning this...’ I began and knew that the shock was clear in my voice.

‘I hoped we’d never need it,’ he said quickly.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about it, show me the place, ask me what I thought?’

I was quite disturbed by what was happening.

‘I didn’t want to worry you more than you were already, with the letters and everything,’ he said.

‘Carl, I’m worried about being here.’

‘Don’t be,’ he instructed. ‘It won’t be for long, I promise. Everything will be just fine.’