Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

‘You’ll have access to your money within a couple of days, Mrs Foster,’ he said, after giving me a copy of Robert’s will and asking me to sign various pieces of paperwork.

It occurred to me that I had never even had a bank account. I didn’t think this would be a problem – not with £130,000 behind me.

I thanked him and left. I knew what I wanted to do with the remainder of my day: bury some more ghosts and begin my search for Carl.

I took the Piccadilly Line back to Hammersmith, from there caught a bus across Hammersmith Bridge to the Sheen Road, and hopped off quite close to the other old Victorian building, which had figured so largely in my life: the one that had been Carl’s home when I first met him.

This time I did not hover around outside as I had done at the manse. I walked straight up to the front door and rang the bell to flat three, the one that had once been Carl’s. There was no reply. I rang the bell beneath.

A big man, wearing grubby trousers held up by a wide belt, eventually came to the door. He seemed to be short-sighted. He leaned forward and peered at me. His breath smelled. ‘Yes?’ he enquired.

‘I’m looking for Carl Peters, he used to live here,’ I said.

‘He did indeed,’ replied the man in a weary sort of voice.

‘I wondered if he’d been back...’ My voice tailed off. It sounded a strange sort of query even to me.

‘No, unfortunately,’ said the man, leaning even closer. ‘He left owing me rent. Years ago, now, but I still wouldn’t mind finding Carl Peters myself.’

Ah. I began to retreat, thanking him for his time.

‘Wait, who are you?’

‘Nobody, just an old friend, I haven’t seen him in years either...’

I hurried away. I didn’t want to get involved with this unsavoury-looking landlord who somehow didn’t quite match the large, doubtless very valuable property he appeared to own. He called after me again. I half ran down the road, looking over my shoulder. He didn’t follow. Anyway, with his bulk it didn’t seem likely that he would be able to move very fast.

Safely out of sight I found a bus stop and waited for a bus that would take me into Richmond. There I picked up a taxi – a rare extravagance for me, but I believed I could afford those kinds of extravagances now. I asked the driver to take me to the car park by the Isabella Garden and to pick me up two hours later. It was still quite early in the afternoon, not quite three, and I had plenty of time before I needed to make my way back to Paddington to catch the last train to Cornwall at 6.35. I walked down the rough path to the Isabella, through the iron gates and into the gardens. There could not have been a much greater contrast to the bleakness of the grey winter day when I had first met Carl. This was a beautifully sunny afternoon during early June and the Isabella was ablaze with colour. The late azaleas and rhododendrons and all the other shrubs of spring and early summer were in full bloom, and the scent of them alone was quite overwhelming.

My heart soared as it always had done in the Isabella at this special time of year. Indeed, until I reached the secluded corner where I had so fatefully encountered Carl I felt almost happy. But as I sat on the same old fallen tree trunk, suddenly it hit me. More of the trunk had crumbled away and the moss covering it was much thicker than before, I fancied, but it was so familiar and so special to me. I half imagined I could feel Carl’s presence. I kept expecting him to step out from behind a bush and comfort me again, to tell me how sorry he was about all that had happened, to tell me, as he had done so often, how all he wanted was to look after me.

Being protected was not what I wanted any more, but I did want to see Carl again. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to hear the full story in his words and I wasn’t going to settle for less. Not again.

The two hours passed very quickly and it was a wrench to drag myself away, both from the beauty of the Isabella on a sunny June day, and from the crazy feeling that if I waited there long enough Carl would appear. Maybe a part of me really had expected him to be waiting for me to turn up at the Isabella, just like he had all those years before.

But it wasn’t to be. I had been kidding myself. I plodded up the path to the car park where my taxi was already waiting and asked the driver to take me to Richmond station where I took the underground again, and easily made it to Paddington with half an hour to spare. I remembered I was hungry and I was also beginning to feel very tired. I nipped into the station buffet and ordered myself an all-day breakfast, my second of the day, it occurred to me only later, then, full of comfort food, I dozed through much of the journey home. But my every waking moment was overtaken with the riddle of where Carl had gone.

I went over everything again and again in my mind and got nowhere. I made a mental list of things I could do. I ought to get myself a passport. I had no way of knowing where Carl might be, but I wanted to be ready to follow the slightest lead. Maybe he had somehow got himself to the States, maybe he had gone back to his past as DC Carter suspected. If so I would go there. I would seek him out.

Meanwhile I would put advertisements in all the major newspapers asking him to contact me, telling him I wanted to see him. I had seen those sad pleas so often, begging missing persons to come home or get in touch, and never imagined myself searching for someone in this way. I told myself that surely he wouldn’t ignore me if he knew I was looking for him. I wasn’t sure of anything except that I had to find Carl.

It occurred to me that my desire to find him could become as obsessive as had been his desire to keep me.

The train trundled into Penzance at half past midnight. Mariette was waiting at the station for me as she had promised, in spite of the hour.

Robert Foster’s money, I assured her, was all mine.

‘How about a celebration, then?’ she enquired typically. Never one to miss out on a party, was Mariette.

I grinned. ‘When I find Carl,’ I said.

She shook her head doubtfully. ‘I still think you’re better off without him.’

‘You may be right,’ I admitted. ‘I just feel I can’t even decide that until I’ve seen him again, talked to him...’

‘But where do you start looking?’

I told her I had already started, that I’d checked out Carl’s old flat in Sheen. ‘I kind of believe what DC Carter says, about people on the run having the urge to go back, to go home, or whatever passes for it...’

‘From what you’ve told me about him I can’t imagine DC Carter ever being right about anything,’ said Mariette tetchily.

I shrugged. ‘I just have this feeling that something will tell me where I should go to look for Carl, and that if I ever get close to him, I’ll know.’ I paused. ‘I’d like to get a passport as quickly as possible.’

Mariette was a very practical person. Her reply did not surprise me. ‘There’s a man who comes in to the library who knows someone in the Passport Office,’ she said. ‘He sorted things out when Mum was going on holiday to Tenerife once and discovered at the last moment that her passport had run out. I’ll get on to him.’

‘You’re a marvel, Mariette,’ I said. And to me she was. Nothing ever seemed to be problem to her.

‘But why do you want one so fast anyway? You’re not going to run away too, are you?’

I grinned. ‘I don’t think so,’ I replied. ‘I may want to go to America to find Carl, though. Maybe he has found his way back there, that’s what DC Carter thinks.’

‘Man doesn’t have a clue, if you ask me. First of all he thought Carl would come to you, didn’t he? He hasn’t done. Yet. Maybe he still will. Shouldn’t you just stay where you are, wait here?’