Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

I must be getting tougher, I thought, because the confrontation with Will had not disturbed me nearly as much as it once would have done. I was more outraged than upset that he had chosen to move into the little cottage that had been my home with Carl.

I had no doubt his motivation was all part of his obsession with me and this was further indication that it was far from over. But I felt strangely confident that I could deal with it now. I had seen the shock with which he responded to my outburst and had a feeling he had realised that not only was I no longer a pushover but neither any more was I the Suzanne he claimed to have such strong feelings for. Maybe he would leave me alone. If he didn’t then I would simply report him to DS Perry and insist that this time she took formal action. He had already been cautioned once, I had been informed, when I had first told DC Carter who had been persecuting Carl and me. The law was getting harder on stalkers and quite right too. I knew well enough the damage they could do.

Still tired, in spite of my lazy day, I went to bed early and felt much brighter and more alert when I woke on Monday morning. I made an instant decision that I would no longer take the long route to work. I would walk straight past Rose Cottage whenever it suited me. I certainly was not prepared to avoid anywhere in town in order not to meet up with Will Jones.

Feeling quite sprightly and rejuvenated, I began the walk down the hill to the archive centre almost light-heartedly. It was a lot easier going down than climbing back up, for one thing.

As I approached Rose Cottage I noticed there was a uniformed policeman standing outside. My first thought was that I hadn’t even reported Will Jones yet. Then I became aware of quite a buzz of activity around the cottage. On the corner I could see DS Perry’s car and beyond that a police squad car. As I approached, out through the front door stepped a man clad from head to toe in a white paper suit. And through the open door opened, I fancied I got a whiff of the bad drain smell Will Jones had complained of.

Suddenly it hit me – I knew. My legs started to move of their own volition and I practically threw myself past the sentry policeman into the front room of Rose Cottage. He made a desultory attempt to stop me but, propelled by the horror of my awful realisation, I was too quick for him.

I heard myself scream ‘Carl, Carl’ as I headed for the little kitchen, which I could see was the centre of activity.

DS Perry was standing in the doorway. ‘Suzanne don’t,’ she cried, alarm in her eyes.

I pushed past her too. My desolation gave me both power and purpose.

I charged by another white-suited character. The flagstone trapdoor to the little cellar was cast aside as I had somehow known it would be. Just as I reached it somebody grabbed me in a kind of rugby tackle around the legs but I flung myself on to my belly, half taking whoever it was with me, so that I could see clearly down into the cellar. In fact, I allowed virtually the whole of my top half to drop through the trap. The rest of me would have followed were it not for the grip on my legs.

The cellar was brightly lit by police arc lamps. My face was just a couple of feet away from the alarmed upturned features of another paper suit, this time a woman. She was on her knees examining something spreadeagled on the floor. The stench was awful here. The something on the floor took form. It was a man. A man with virtually no face. The man with no face of my nightmares, except I knew with devastating clarity who this was. And it was not anyone who had ever wanted to hurt me, just to protect me. The decay of his flesh, the puffy black nothingness of him did not detract from my instant recognition.

‘Carl, Carl, Carl,’ I screamed at the top of my voice. I was quite hysterical. Utterly beyond reason. Terrible grief, total horror overwhelmed me.

I felt myself being half pulled, half dragged up out of the hole in the ground away from the putrid remains of the only man I had ever loved. I was half carried into the dining room and helped into a chair. DS Perry was beside me making soothing noises. My eyes were blinded with tears. I brushed them aside as best I could with the back of my hand and tried to focus on her. All I could see, lurking behind her, white-faced, was Will Jones.

The madness came over me once more, and with it came the power and the purpose. I threw myself forward again, hurtling at him. ‘You murdering bastard,’ I screamed. ‘You filthy, murdering scum. You killed him. You killed Carl.’

This time strong arms were quickly round me, restraining me, but not before I had managed to reach out with one hand and rake my fingernails down Will Jones’s cheek. The blood spurted instantly from a row of slashes in his flesh. Will cowered away from me and let out a little whimper like an injured puppy dog.

DS Perry was on one side of me and DC Carter on the other. But I couldn’t stop myself struggling. I wanted somebody to pay for Carl’s death. And I was quite certain that Will Jones must have been responsible. He wanted me for himself, after all.

DS Perry began to talk to me very clearly and slowly, staring directly into my eyes, her hands cupping my face. ‘Look at me, Suzanne, and listen,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Will Jones. He didn’t kill Carl.’ She spoke quietly but with authority.

I tried to calm myself.

‘Just tell me,’ I whispered hoarsely, my anger, all my energy, spent. ‘Tell me who did?’

Julie Perry continued to stare into my eyes. ‘Look, we’ve only just found him. We have a lot of checking to do. But, well, we don’t think anybody killed him.’

I shook my head in an attempt to clear the fog that seemed to have engulfed it. I didn’t say anything, merely looked at her enquiringly, more than that, pleadingly.

‘There’s a letter he managed to write while he was down there,’ she went on. ‘I’ll give it to you as soon as forensic have finished with it. I think you might find it comforting. It’s for you...’

I interrupted her. ‘Suicide,’ I cried. ‘Oh no, oh no.’

Had Carl really taken his own life, here in the little house where we had been so happy? If so, then I had to accept that my rejection of him must have been at least partly responsible.

‘No, not that either...’ she began, then paused.

Briefly I was relieved. But only briefly. Carl was still dead.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Please go on. What happened? How did he die?’

‘The letter makes it clear that Carl came back here, just as everyone originally thought he would, looking for you. We think he climbed in through the kitchen window, probably the very night after he escaped from the court at Penzance. The cellar was open, wasn’t it? DC Carter remembers leaving it that way. Perhaps Carl tripped over the flagstone cover. Maybe he dropped straight in. Either way, we know that he fell into the hole, hit his head, and knocked himself unconscious and broke both his ankles – the doctor’s already been able to tell us his ankles are broken and that’s why he couldn’t get himself out of the place.’

She gestured vaguely at the woman in the white paper suit now standing at the back of the room. An awful realisation was beginning to take form inside my head.

‘Then someone put the flagstone back,’ Julie Perry continued. ‘He’s been there ever since. The place is pretty well sealed when its covered in, which is why no smell got out for so long. But he probably died of dehydration. It only takes a few days. It was just a terrible accident, Suzanne...’

She was still talking, but I wasn’t listening any longer. I wasn’t hysterical any more either. I felt very cold and very alone.

‘He must have been lying down there when I put the flagstone back,’ I heard myself whisper. ‘I did it. I shut him in there.