Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

‘Carl Peters, he’s appearing in the Magistrates Court today. He’s been in jail in Exeter. If I could just see him for a few minutes...’

I saw the startled expression on the young constable’s face. ‘But, but, that’s...’ He stopped speaking abruptly, as if suddenly aware that he was about to give away something he shouldn’t. At that moment I knew with devastating clarity who had escaped that morning from Penwith Magistrates Court.

‘Oh, my God,’ I said. ‘It’s Carl, isn’t it, Carl who has gone...’

‘I really can’t say, madam,’ said the constable, his head swivelling in all directions as if he were desperately seeking rescue from a situation he had no idea how to handle. ‘But I think maybe I should get someone to talk to you...’

An expression of some relief crossed his youthful features as he half turned away from me and, still with a hand on my arm, called to a uniformed sergeant walking across the car park. The sergeant came over. The constable released his grip on my arm, asked if I would wait a moment, and he and the sergeant went into a huddle.

I could only catch the odd word.

‘Mrs Peters...’ ‘Here to see her husband...’ and finally, from the sergeant: ‘... fetch DC Carter.’

The sergeant asked me to wait just a moment and made it clear he was not going to engage in any further conversation. I protested fruitlessly while the constable retreated in the direction of the court room, but fortunately reappeared swiftly with a harassed-looking DC Carter.

‘Mrs Peters,’ said Carter in a voice even wearier than the one he had adopted the first time I met him. ‘I wonder if you’d mind coming across to the station with me. I think you and I had better have a chat.’

It seemed that Carl had been transported from Exeter along with several other prisoners by the private security agency now employed by the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

‘But how on earth did he get away?’ I stuttered. ‘Carl wouldn’t know how to plan an escape. He’s no jail breaker.’

‘Don’t bloody need to be nowadays,’ muttered DC Carter grumpily. ‘Grasped his opportunity, didn’t he. Over the road waiting to be called, realised there wasn’t a lot to keep him there. So off he trots...’

Carter looked as depressed as I felt but not at all surprised. We were talking in his first-floor office. He rummaged in a trouser pocket and produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’ he enquired. I shook my head. He nodded his. ‘Horrible filthy habit,’ he said just as grumpily. ‘Bloody private security,’ he went on. ‘Ever since Centurion took over transporting prisoners it’s been bloody chaos.’

His vocabulary might have been limited but he was being much more communicative than previously and even in the state I was in I noticed that he was being uncharacteristically indiscreet. He was angry, I could see. I did not speak. I did not want to break the spell.

‘Half the time there’s no police presence at all over there on court days,’ he said, gesturing vaguely through the window in the direction of St John’s Hall. ‘Everything’s about saving bloody money, isn’t it? And Centurion operate on minimum staff. We’ve had people being given custodial sentences and asked to wait at the back of the court till a security officer can be found to cart them off somewhere. They just bloody walk out, don’t they? Bloody madness.’ He shook his head woefully. ‘Six months I’ve got left of my thirty years, then I’m on my toes. And now this has happened. I’m supposed to be winding down gently, I am. Some bloody hopes...’

His mood had its uses. But I was beginning to have had enough. ‘Is Sergeant Perry back in Cornwall yet?’ I asked hopefully.

‘No such bloody luck.’

We both felt the same about that, then.

‘Look. I still can’t understand how Carl got away. He was already in custody, wasn’t he? Surely he would have been in a cell.’

‘Yeah.’ Carter spat out the word. ‘In a cell with the bloody key left in the lock. Stupid bastards deny it, of course, but this isn’t the first time. All Johnny has to do is put his hand through the hatch in the door, turn the key, then leg it up the steps out into the car park. There’s only a Yale lock on that outer door. Dead easy. ‘E’s away and those buggers from Centurion don’t even know it, dozy lot of bastards...’

DS Carter took a long, slow drag on his cigarette. Maybe the nicotine jerked his brain into action. ‘Right Mrs Peters, now you know,’ he said, trying, although not succeeding very well, to sound brisk and efficient. ‘And it’s me supposed to be doing the interviewing. So let’s have some answers from you, shall we?’

I only wished I had some answers to give.

‘Have you any idea where your husband might have gone?’

I shook my head. I did not even know why he had run. Surely he couldn’t think he would get away for good. But if he hadn’t planned it, just grasped an unexpected opportunity in the way DC Carter had described, well, that did make a kind of sense. After all, I knew only too well that it was in Carl’s nature to run away from things, to try to hide rather than to face reality.

‘Might he be trying to find you?’ Carter asked.

I thought about it. I considered it quite likely. I had not had any contact with him since that one visit at Exeter. I had not answered his only letter and that would have hurt him deeply. He knew that I had lost all trust in him and for a time had believed him capable of almost anything. Yet I did not doubt that Carl would still love me, still want me. That was the kind of man he was.

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘I just don’t know. I’m stunned, you see. Whatever I expected it wasn’t this. Never this. I didn’t even imagine someone like Carl could escape...’

I was indeed bewildered.

‘Why did you want to see him so desperately today, anyway?’ Carter’s voice was sharper now and it made me concentrate, or at least attempt to focus properly upon the events of the day.

‘I found out that Carl wasn’t behind any of the threats. It changes things. I’m not sure quite how much, but I need to know...’ I heard my own voice trailing off.

‘What threats?’ asked DC Carter.

In spite, or maybe because, of my distress I was suddenly irritated. It had been like this ever since DS Perry had been shipped off to Plymouth. Carter had never appeared to get to grips with the case. I suppose the whole thing had already seemed like a mere formality to him. All he had to do was tie the final knots. It was rather more than that to me and, of course, to Carl. Maybe if Carter had had his finger properly on the pulse, things would not have gone as far as they had. I had no real reason for thinking that, I just didn’t know what to think any more.

‘The threatening letters we received, the damage to our van, the writing on our door,’ I recited as patiently as I could manage.

He looked blank.

This time I could not keep the irritation out of my voice. ‘Horrible messages which frightened me so much I went to the police. It was what started everything. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a kidnap charge against Carl...’

‘Oh yes, I remember,’ said Carter, but I wasn’t sure whether he did or not. ‘He’d still be wanted on a manslaughter charge in the States, though, wouldn’t he?’

My patience was running out. ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ I snapped, although I knew what I was saying could not be true.

‘And the man did kidnap you and drug you. Whatever brought it about, he had the capacity to do that. Nothing alters that.’

He was right, of course. But the fact remained that if Will Jones hadn’t launched his hate campaign against us it was highly possible that none of this would have happened. Perhaps Carl and I would still be living our quiet, contented, obsessively close lives in Rose Cottage. Is that what I wished for? I had come to believe that Carl had deceived me terribly throughout our time together, but maybe that wasn’t so, after all. Not entirely, anyway. I wasn’t sure of anything except that I was desperate to know the whole truth. I had changed in the last few weeks. I didn’t want to be an ostrich any more. I didn’t want to hide my head, or any other part of me, come to that, in the sand for the rest of my life.