Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

I shook my head. ‘Rob Partridge told me his version, but he just said that Carl had killed his daughter. With drugs, I’m sure that’s what he said. And DC Carter wouldn’t tell me anything. Said there could be an extradition warrant...’

My voiced tailed off. I was still stunned, unable quite to take in the enormity of what I was learning.

‘Bloody typical,’ responded DS Perry. She sounded exasperated, partly at herself I somehow thought. ‘An extradition warrant for a motoring charge, albeit manslaughter, when we already had him banged up for abduction. I don’t think so.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, Suzanne,’ she repeated. ‘I knew I should have stayed in touch, kept my eye on the ball. It’s not easy, though, when you get plunged into a murder. Every minute in the day...’

I interrupted her then. My brain had started to work. I leaned forward in my chair. ‘Please tell me everything,’ I asked. ‘Please.’

‘Yes, of course. Everything I know, anyway. You are obviously aware that Carl is really Harry Mendleson from Florida and that his troubles with the law started when his wife threatened to leave him?’

I nodded.

‘He’s an exceptionally possessive, protective man, isn’t he?’ she went on. ‘He likes to keep the people he loves very close, too close sometimes. But you know that...’

I nodded again. I knew that all too well.

‘Well, he overdid it, didn’t he? Makes a habit of that, it seems. Wife couldn’t take it. Told him she was leaving and taking the child with her. I understand there was another man involved. There was a terrific row. Carl locked all the doors of the house and told her he wasn’t going to let her go. The wife was on Valium – not surprising, really. While they were fighting the child got into the bathroom and took some of her mother’s pills. She was only five, she was frightened, wanted attention, I suppose, wanted her parents to stop rowing. Didn’t know what she was doing. Who can tell? Anyway, when the child collapsed Mendleson and his wife realised what had happened, bundled her in the car and took off for the hospital.’

That was very different from the way it had been put to me, from what I had imagined had happened. ‘I thought he had deliberately drugged them both, and that the child had overdosed. I’m sure that’s what Rob Partridge told me.’

Julie Perry grunted. ‘No doubt he did. The man deliberately drugged you, so if Partridge had heard of the drug involvement in the previous case, which obviously he had, that meant he’d done it before too. Standard police thinking, villains running true to form. Standard for the PC Partridges of this world, anyway. He wouldn’t have checked it out, it wasn’t his case, just passed it on as if it were gospel.’

She paused. Her turn to have said something she shouldn’t, perhaps.

‘The girl overdosed all right,’ she continued with a small sigh. ‘But there was no question of Mendleson being responsible for that. He was ultimately responsible for her death, but it was actually a tragic accident. He panicked and took off, driving like a lunatic. Just a block or so away from the hospital he crashed his car. Turned off the main drag too fast and rolled the thing. He and his wife escaped virtually unscathed, they were belted in the front, but they’d laid the little girl down on the back seat. She was killed outright. And it wasn’t pretty. She was decapitated.’

I shivered. An horrific picture had instantly presented itself. Then I thought about my one visit to Carl following his arrest. ‘But he told me he killed her. I asked him. “Is it true that you killed your daughter?” He said yes. That’s all. None of the rest of it. Only yes.’

DS Perry nodded. ‘That’s how he sees it, I suppose. And, indeed, he did kill her in a way. But not deliberately – he was trying to save her.’

‘So why didn’t he explain? I accused him of drugging his wife and child. He denied it, yet in such a way that I didn’t believe him – couldn’t believe him. He barely protested. He seemed to accept everything I said to him. He just went along with it. Why, oh why?’

The words came tumbling out.

Julie Perry shrugged but did not attempt to answer. How could she? I suppose I knew the answer, though, even then: ‘If you have stopped believing in me, Suzanne, there’s no point in anything any more,’ he had told me.

I sank into one of my trances after DS Perry left. She had absolutely staggered me. I might be rich. Or at least solvent. That would have been enough to bowl me over. But what she had told me about Carl changed everything. First of all I had discovered that he had not sent me the threatening letters, then that he had not intended to harm his daughter, indeed not tried to harm her at all and certainly not forced drugs on either the child or her mother.

Where did that leave him? Where did that leave us? I wasn’t sure. I was beginning to think again that perhaps he wasn’t really such an evil man after all, that maybe my initial judgement of him had not been so far off the mark.

I reminded myself that he had been so intent on keeping me under his control that he had held me a prisoner against my will. For all those years I had believed that I had killed my husband. I still had no way of knowing whether or not Carl had been aware that I had not done so. I could hardly credit that he would have deceived me so cruelly for so long. But there was no doubt that the life of hiding apparently forced upon us suited Carl only too well. I had been totally dependent on him, and that, of course, was exactly how he liked it.

At best, Carl was a sick man, only I had never known that. At worst? I didn’t know whether I could ever forgive him, but I did know that I wanted to find him, to confront him with my new knowledge and demand that he talk to me properly about his past. I felt I could not get on with my life, with or without Carl, until I had done so. I would search for him all over the world if necessary.

The money I had apparently inherited suddenly took on a whole new importance. Money climbed mountains, I was beginning to learn that. I had never travelled anywhere on my own. I had never been out of the UK. I had never been in an aircraft in my life. I had no passport. If I had money then none of this was an obstacle.

I glanced at my watch. It was two in the afternoon. I rushed to the telephone and called Hall, Fisher and Partners in Hounslow. James Fisher was out at lunch. I left a message asking him to call me back. It was almost three thirty before he did so, by which time I was pacing the floor again.

He confirmed that I was the sole beneficiary of Robert Foster’s will.

‘Am I really?’ I asked unnecessarily.

‘You sound surprised, Mrs Foster.’

It was a very long time since anybody had called me that.

‘In view of the way he treated me, yes, I am a bit.’ I couldn’t help but tell the truth.

‘I have heard something of that from the police. They did investigate your disappearance at the time, you know. A number of people, neighbours and even one or two of his congregation, suspected that Foster had been beating you.’

‘But nobody did anything about it.’

‘No. And when you disappeared after his death it didn’t really make sense to anyone. I know now what happened more or less, of course. Extraordinary story.’

‘Yes.’

Fisher’s telephone manner was relaxed and friendly. He spoke softly, with just the trace of a Scottish accent. He was very chatty, but he hadn’t told me what I wanted to know yet.

‘How much money is there?’ I asked bluntly.

‘It’s around £130,000.’

I drew in my breath quickly. To me that was a fortune. ‘When can I have it?’