Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

I made one or two more attempts to extract information from him, but eventually gave up. In any case I didn’t have a lot of time to spare. I wanted to catch the 10.04 train to Exeter to see Carl.

As I got up to leave I said softly, more to myself than anything else: ‘I didn’t even know he had a daughter...’

Ray Carter’s face softened. ‘C’mon, I’ll run you down to the station. I know you’re off to the prison. It’s all fixed, by the way.’

Rob Partridge was probably right. Just because he had probably neither shown any initiative nor taken any kind of risk in his whole life didn’t mean DC Carter wasn’t a nice man.

The main railway line out of Penzance runs through the heart of Cornwall and then, after Plymouth, meanders along the South Devon coast via Dawlish Warren. Much of the scenery along this tortuous route is quite spectacular, but I wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing. I just wished the bloody train would go a bit faster. You can travel the 200-plus miles from Exeter to London in two hours and eight minutes by train. Exeter is only just over 100 miles from Penzance, yet the rail journey takes an extraordinary three hours. That’s Devon and Cornwall for you, I thought glumly as we finally chugged into the old county town.

My ticket, the cheapest going, had cost twenty-six pounds. I had less than ten pounds of Will’s original forty left. Grateful, suddenly, for his last-minute visit and the brown envelope tucked snugly in my pocket, I took a taxi from St David’s Station to the County Prison, a forbidding Victorian building prominently situated high on a hill overlooking the rest of the city. It was a chilling sight and I dreaded to think of Carl locked up inside. For a history enthusiast like myself it was all too easy to imagine a gallows set up before the enormous double gates and a crowd, baying for blood, gathered for a public execution.

Between them, PC Partridge and DC Carter had made all the promised arrangements. I was expected and I gained entry easily enough. I was searched and asked if I had brought anything to give to Carl. I hadn’t. To be honest I hadn’t even thought about it. I was taken to a room in which other prisoners were already seated at tables talking to visitors.

I sat down as instructed and waited. A drawn and haggard-looking man was led into the room. It was Carl. I know it sounds crazy, but the change in him in such a short time was so dramatic that I barely recognised him. He looked broken.

In spite of everything I felt the tears come to my eyes. I was torn between my belief in the love we had shared and the awful things Carl had apparently done in his life, things that I still found hard to believe. He had held me prisoner, there was certainly no doubt about that, and in such conditions that I had nearly died of pneumonia. I tried to harden my heart against him, but I still could not equate all that I had discovered about Carl with the gentle, loving man I thought I had known so well and the feelings I had had for him for so many years.

He seemed to shuffle rather than walk. He wasn’t the same Carl at all. He couldn’t have lost any substantial weight in a fortnight, surely, but I thought he was thinner than when I had last seen him, gaunt almost. There was a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth, which I had not noticed before. Maybe it had not been there. And yet, when he looked at me, his face lit up the way it always did.

He walked straight up to me and wrapped his arms round me. ‘God, I’m glad to see you, Suzanne,’ he said.

The prisoner officer standing nearby let him hold me and kiss me for a moment before he stepped forward and gestured for both of us to sit down opposite each other, separated by a table.

Carl leaned forward and grasped my hands. ‘I’ve missed you so much, sweetheart.’

It was weird, almost surreal. He was behaving practically as if the kidnap had never happened. His expression was full of the love and kindness to which I had always been accustomed. But if he knew of how ill I had been he gave no indication of it. And the memory of being kept captive by him in that terrible hut, of being tied to my bed, was too vivid for me to be won over that easily.

‘Why did you do it, Carl?’ I asked quietly.

At first he looked puzzled. ‘I’d never have h-hurt you, not you,’ he said haltingly.

I stared at him. That was no answer.

‘Why did you do it?’ I asked again and this time I could hear the anger in my own voice.

‘I wanted to protect you, to look after you, that’s all.’

I withdrew my hands from his. Suddenly I didn’t want him touching me. ‘Oh, not that again, Carl,’ I said sharply.

He recoiled from me as if I had hit him. Then he seemed to recover himself and carried on speaking as if he had not been interrupted at all. ‘You see, you are so d-different, you were always d-different. You understood. You wanted me to look after you. You needed me to protect you, didn’t you?’

The words were all too familiar, much the same as he had used while he had been keeping me a prisoner. The nervous stammer was familiar too. I did not reply.

‘Didn’t you?’ he asked again.

He was right, of course. I had wanted that. I nodded slightly.

‘Yes, of course you did. We were made for each other, weren’t we? If only I had found you first everything would have been all right, for both of us.’

I wasn’t getting anywhere. I decided to concentrate on what I really wanted to know. ‘Carl, you let me believe I had killed my husband. You showed me that knife covered with blood. And you knew I hadn’t killed Robert, didn’t you?’

He stared at me. ‘You did kill him,’ he said.

‘No, Carl, I didn’t. Nobody killed him. He died of sclerosis of the liver. There was blood, but you must have seen that he hadn’t been stabbed.’

‘He had been stabbed.’

‘Carl, don’t be so stubborn. You must have seen that...’

‘Must I? Then why didn’t you?’

Was it my imagination or was there a sly note in his voice.

‘Carl, I had been badly beaten, I was in shock. You were perfectly calm.’ I could still remember vividly how calm he had been, unnaturally so perhaps.

He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I showed you the knife, you saw it, you saw the blood on it.’

‘Carl, that knife was never used on Robert,’ I continued. ‘For all I know you may even have put the blood on the blade.’

His face turned even paler. ‘You’d b-believe that of me?’

I didn’t reply. I wasn’t going to fall for emotional blackmail, not any more.

‘I’d never do anything to hurt you,’ he said again. It seemed about all he had to say.

‘You have hurt me, Carl, you’ve hurt me beyond measure.’

‘I wanted to hide you away, that’s all...’ he whispered, the same mindless babbling, it seemed to me. ‘I wanted you always to be mine. I had to keep you safe. Maybe I can explain. There are things I should tell you, if I can find the words after all this time...’

‘I’m sure there are,’ I said, still feeling angry. ‘What happened in America, Carl? You’re wanted on a manslaughter charge. Is it true that you killed your daughter?’

‘Is that what they told you?’

I nodded.

‘Then you know, you know what happened.’

I shook my head. ‘Carl, I want to hear it from you. I wasn’t even aware that you had a daughter, remember?’

He smiled bleakly. ‘I haven’t,’ he said in a dead tone of voice. Then he was silent.

‘Carl, just tell me what happened. Please.’

In spite of everything I still wanted him to say there had been a dreadful mistake.

He looked up and I could see the pain in his eyes. ‘I wanted our d-dream to last for ever. I just c-couldn’t bear it to end. But I knew it was going to. I could feel it h-happening all over again. The one I loved most, the one I most wanted to protect. It was going to go wrong again and I c-c-couldn’t let it. You must see that?’