A Deep Deceit

Fourteen

I had to see him. And I had to know the worst.

You could not share all that I had shared with Carl and not want to see a man who you thought you had known so well, yet whom perhaps you hadn’t known at all.

I discharged myself from hospital early the next morning. Nobody had phoned me back from the police, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I somehow felt sure that if I could just get myself to St Ives police station I could sort everything out. I walked to Penzance railway station and caught the next train back to the little seaside town where Carl and I had been so happy for so long. At St Ives I made my way along the beach to the harbour, breathing in the sea air, taking strength from its fresh saltiness, before turning into the town and up through the network of steep streets to the hidden-away police station. I arrived there just after 9 a.m., out of breath and wondering if I had done a bit too much walking, but determined to get some answers. I was hoping, of course, that DS Perry would be back from wherever she had been over the two previous days. At least she seemed to have some idea what was going on. But even to be able to see Rob Partridge would be a result. I craved some kind of familiarity.

It seemed a lifetime had passed since, resolved to rid myself of my long-carried burden, I had first approached the ugly, dirty white building

The desk clerk greeted me with his customary lack of enthusiasm. Did they only have one clerk, or was I just lucky, I wondered glumly. He was, however, a little more communicative than in the past. He told me that DS Perry was in Plymouth and would be there for some time. Apparently there had been a particularly unpleasant murder of a young girl. That was why she hadn’t responded to my phone calls.

I was still feeling very poorly and becoming aware that maybe I should have stayed in hospital at least another couple of days, and this news about DS Perry was yet another blow. I had barely known her but I somehow had more confidence in her than any of the other officers I had encountered. Not surprising, perhaps, when the only other one I had had much to do with was Rob Partridge.

‘I’ll see if I can find someone else to help you,’ the clerk offered and disappeared into the back office in a disconcertingly familiar way.

I could hear him talking into a telephone, but I wasn’t optimistic. A murder. Yes, I supposed that was more important than a kidnapping, if that is what it really had been.

The inner door opened just as I was reconciling myself to another fruitless wait. Rob Partridge, in uniform but without his helmet, greeted me with an uncertain smile, and ushered me into the bleak little ground-floor interview room. ‘I just called you at the hospital,’ he said. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday.’

‘Look, I want to see my husband,’ I said. ‘I want to see Carl.’ For the first time in almost seven years I was somehow starkly aware that Carl wasn’t my husband. But old habits die hard.

‘He’s on remand in Exeter,’ said Rob Partridge. ‘Surely you knew that?’

I didn’t. I knew absolutely nothing about police or court procedure and little more about the case I was actively involved in. I had been more or less semi-conscious in hospital for two weeks. I didn’t have a clue what had happened to Carl following his arrest and my admission to the hospital. In a simplistic way I suppose I expected him to be locked in a cell somewhere in the bowels of St Ives police station.

‘I thought he would be here,’ I murmured lamely.

Rob shook his head. ‘This is a small district police station,’ he told me. ‘We don’t keep prisoners here. You can visit him at the Devon County Prison at Exeter whenever you like, just about. As he’s on remand you have pretty free access.’

The Devon County Prison. I repeated it inside my head. The very sound of the words was chilling.

‘But I need to talk to somebody first. DS Perry mentioned something that happened in America. I need to know what’s going on before I see him,’ I mumbled.

Partridge and I were both standing in the interview room. He gestured me to one chair and, sitting down in the other, took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up. He offered me one, which I declined, then he drew deeply on his own. The windowless little room filled with smoke. I hoped I wouldn’t start coughing again. My chest still hurt.

‘We searched your cottage after we arrested Carl,’ he began. ‘Standard procedure when you’ve arrested somebody on a serious charge. We found some photographs and an out-of-date American passport in another name. His picture, though. It was pretty simple to check out with the States. Your Carl was really called Harry Mendleson and he had good reason to be using a false name all right. Seems he makes a habit of trying to abduct his wives.’

I waited. I felt very cold. Rob Partridge smiled almost triumphantly, only to me it looked more like a leer. He was another one who could never resist showing off superior knowledge. Something made me think he shouldn’t be telling me all this, but he seemed to be in full flight.

‘Only the last time it all went badly wrong. His wife was going to leave him. He wouldn’t have it. Tried to prevent her getting away. Drugs were involved that time too. Apparently there was a kid, a daughter, who died of an overdose. Only five or six, she was, too. He’s wanted on a manslaughter charge...’

I was shocked to the core. It seemed unreal. Carl was wanted on a manslaughter charge? He had drugged his daughter? Killed her? I hadn’t even known he’d had a daughter. I began to shake again. I didn’t know whether it was the impact of the news I had just heard or the residue of my illness. A bit of both probably. ‘What happened?’ I cried. ‘I can’t believe he killed his own daughter. How? Why? Please tell me.’

Rob Partridge looked uncomfortable at my reaction, as if he regretted telling me all that he had. He ran a hand through his spiky orange hair. ‘Look, I don’t know the details, it’s not even my case. I only know as much as I do because I was involved in the arrest and then the search. It’s CID. Detective Sergeant Perry was in charge, you know that.’

I nodded. ‘But she’s not here,’ I said lamely.

‘No, the case has been handed over to DC Carter in Penzance. That’s who you should be talking to now.’

I wasn’t giving up that easily. ‘The photographs, the old passport. Where did you find them? I’ve never seen them. Carl and I didn’t hide things from each other...’

‘He hid that lot all right. We found them in the box he keeps his paints and brushes in. There’s a false compartment at the bottom.’

Yes, I thought morosely, that made a dreadful kind of sense. I never touched Carl’s paints and brushes, never went near his special mahogany box because he was so fussy about his painting equipment.

Partridge had begun to speak again, once more parading his superior knowledge. ‘That’s the thing about people living under a false identity,’ he said in a self-important tone of voice. ‘Getting the new identity is no problem. A doddle, that is, if you know how. The old Day of the Jackal trick still works. You just take a name and birth date off the gravestone of someone about the same age as yourself, apply for a new birth certificate and bingo. Everything else you need is easy once you’ve got a birth certificate. The problem people have is walking away from the past. They nearly always keep something, just like Carl did. It’s not being able to let go of the past that catches ’em out.’ He paused. ‘The photographs were of the daughter he killed,’ Partridge continued conversationally. ‘Typical, that, really...’

Suddenly it was all too much for me. I could barely take in what he was saying. Tears were welling up in my eyes and I couldn’t hold them back. I began to sob quietly.

Rob Partridge didn’t seem to know what to do then. His air of self-importance vanished abruptly. ‘Look, don’t upset yourself. I’ll see if I can get DC Carter on the phone,’ he said, in a manner that suggested that the detective would be able to solve all my problems. He took his mobile from his pocket and punched in a number. Maybe it was just that Rob Partridge knew his way around a police station or maybe he was luckier than me. Most people were, I was beginning to think. Either way, he seemed to get through to the Penzance CID man straight away.

‘DC Carter can see you at Penzance police station at nine o’clock tomorrow morning,’ he told me after a brief conversation, still holding the telephone to his ear, with one hand over the mouthpiece.

‘In Penzance?’ I repeated through my snuffles. ‘But I want to see Carl and he’s in Exeter.’

‘You can pick up the main-line train from there, straight on to Exeter. We’ll fix it with the prison,’ said Partridge.

I couldn’t think straight and I was so used to doing what people told me to, falling in with what others said, that I meekly nodded my agreement. Tomorrow morning seemed a long way away, but I was still feeling distinctly unwell. I hoped that I might perhaps be stronger both mentally and physically by then and, in any case, I certainly did not have the energy at that moment to demand an earlier meeting.

Partridge spoke into the receiver again, relaying my assent. Then he showed me the door. ‘Ray Carter’ll see you right,’ he promised. ‘Good man, Ray.’

But I knew all he was really doing was getting rid of me.

By then, however, I didn’t mind very much. The tight feeling in my chest was quite extreme and I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. I was suddenly quite glad that I didn’t have to rush off to Penzance or Exeter, or anywhere at all.

I left the station and set off up the hill towards Rose Cottage. The climb seemed steeper than ever before. I was wheezing by the time I reached the cottage and it wasn’t until I was standing outside the now dark-blue front door that I remembered I didn’t have a key.

For a moment or two I dithered miserably. Then I recalled that Carl climbed over the wall of the cottage next door into our backyard when we had locked ourselves out once, and we had never got around to fixing the dodgy kitchen window.

The next-door cottage had access into its own small garden through a little gate at the front and a narrow alleyway between the two houses. I had my hand on the gate, ready to open it, before I thought that I had better not do so without knocking on the front door first. In any case, although I vaguely remembered Carl vaulting over the wall easily enough, I didn’t think I could manage it without a ladder or something similar.

Our neighbour Mrs Jackson’s wide smile of welcome turned into an expression of surprised uncertainty when she saw me standing there. ‘Suzanne!’ she exclaimed, her eyes widening and her mouth remaining slackly open as if I had grown antennae.

I smiled weakly.

Her face softened. She was a kind woman, Mrs Jackson, albeit prone to verbal diarrhoea. ‘Oh, come in, come in,’ she urged. I allowed myself to be ushered into her cosy kitchen.

I could see that she didn’t know quite what to say next, very unusual for Mrs Jackson. Seeking, perhaps, words of reassurance what she eventually came up with was: ‘Oh my God, Suzanne, you look terrible.’

‘I expect I do. I’ve had pneumonia,’ I told her flatly.

‘I know, my dear, I’ve heard all about it and what he did to you, I can’t believe it you know, not your lovely Carl, just can’t believe it, and him a murderer too, and his own daughter...’

I couldn’t believe it either. It seemed the whole town knew about the allegations against Carl and had done so long before I did. I summoned up the energy to interrupt Mrs Jackson’s babbling. ‘Manslaughter,’ I said.

‘Pardon?’ Mrs Jackson looked startled again. It was an expression that somehow suited her plump-cheeked face rather well.

‘Manslaughter,’ I repeated. ‘He’s wanted in the States on a manslaughter charge. As far as I know...’

I was aware of my last few words tailing off pathetically.

They were quite enough to set Mrs J. off again: ‘No, of course, you wouldn’t know. Nice young girl like you, you’d never live with a murderer. I said the same to Mr Nichols in the butcher’s, only yesterday I said. “Fancy an innocent young girl like her taken in by a man like that,” I said. And him not even using his own name, pretending to be somebody else. Defies belief it does...’

Suddenly I realised that I couldn’t take any more of this. ‘Mrs Jackson,’ I interrupted surprisingly firmly. ‘I’m afraid I’m locked out of the house. I wondered if I could borrow your ladder and climb over the garden wall.’

‘Of course you can, my dear. Still haven’t fixed that kitchen window, aye?’ She didn’t wait for me to respond. ‘Good thing, apparently. The police have been, I expect you know that, but they had a key.’

They would have used Carl’s key, I assumed. I should have thought of that when I was in the police station, I reflected. I turned my attention back to the present.

Mrs Jackson was still talking. ‘Anyway, m’dear, ’course you can go in over my wall, but first I want you to sit down with me and have a nice cup of tea. Goodness knows you look as if you could do with one. Then tell me all about it. Helps to talk, you know, that’s what they say...’

The very idea filled me with almost as much horror as had any of the events of the last week. ‘I’m sorry Mrs J.,’ I interrupted quickly. ‘I really do feel lousy. I just want to get indoors and go to bed, please.’

She nodded understandingly, the kind of woman whose gravestone would bear the legend ‘she meant well’, I had often thought, and it would be absolutely the truth. She did mean well, excruciatingly so. ‘Of course, my dear.’

She found the ladder and together we propped it against the dividing wall, which was about seven foot high. Mrs Jackson expressed concern about my ability to climb up it safely, and, to be honest, I felt so weak that I wasn’t too sure myself. I managed OK, though, and at the top I hung on with my hands and arms, dangled my feet and legs down the other side, and dropped the two or three feet, landing safely in our little cobbled backyard.

‘I’m fine, Mrs J.,’ I called back in answer to her anxious enquiries. ‘Yes, I’m sure I can get through the window. Yes, I’ll yell if I need anything.’

I pushed the kitchen window and it opened immediately – the catch had been broken ever since we moved in. I propped a couple of breeze blocks beneath it to help give me a leg up and wriggled through on to the worktop without incident.

It was so strange to be in our little home again. In spite of the police search the place looked much the same as it had on the fateful morning when Carl had bundled me into the van and carried me off to his dreadful hideaway. And that didn’t seem right. In the downstairs room I straightened a picture on a wall and replaced a vase, which had been moved from its usual place, and that was about it. I felt in some strange way that the cottage should look different now, now that everything had changed. It didn’t. It felt different, though.

Rose Cottage had always seemed so cosy and safe. On that day it felt cold and empty. No Carl. No Carl and Suzanne. That was over, I felt in my bones. The silence in the cottage was deafening. I had always thought that was a daft expression, but suddenly it made sense. You have to experience it to understand. It comes, I think, from being somewhere that has lost all the life it once had, the life that gives it its reason for being. A once grand theatre that has been closed down, a school playground during the holidays, a ruined old building, a forgotten, overgrown garden – these are all places where you can be deafened by silence. I suppose there can be a certain romantic melancholy to it. In Rose Cottage such a silence was simply unbearable.

I rushed upstairs and switched on the radio, which turned out be tuned to Classic FM, just as I had left it. The bed was as I had left it too, the duvet and pillows untidily strewn across it, waiting to be returned to its daytime sofa mode. Carl and I had always been quite meticulous about folding up our bed. It seemed strange to come back to the room and find it like this, numbing, almost.

I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t yet eleven o’clock. I had twenty-two hours to wait before I would learn the worst at Penzance police station and be able to travel on to Exeter to see Carl. I thought maybe I should eat and drink something, although I wasn’t remotely hungry. I hadn’t eaten since nibbling at an uninspiring hospital supper the previous evening and I realised that I should at least attempt to build up my strength. Shivering slightly, I wandered down to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure whether the cottage was particularly chilly or if it was me. I thought a cup of tea might indeed help, as long as it wasn’t accompanied by Mrs Jackson, and had boiled the kettle before it dawned on me that there wouldn’t be any milk. I opened the fridge door and there was one half-empty bottle there. I picked it up and shook it gently. As I had expected, the milk did not move. When I attempted to pour it down the sink I had to prod at it with the handle of a wooden spoon to make it disappear and the sour smell spread instantly throughout the entire cottage. I made the tea and began to drink it black. Then I dug around for anything edible. Carl and I had no deep freeze and normally bought fresh food almost every day. About all I could find that wasn’t thoroughly disgusting were a few not too soggy digestive biscuits in a tin. They would have to do. I certainly had neither the inclination nor the energy to go shopping.

I nibbled at a biscuit without much interest and made myself sip the tea. It was no good. I just couldn’t be bothered. My chest and head really hurt now. I was beginning to wonder how big a mistake I had made in leaving hospital prematurely. Maybe sleep would help, if anything could.

I dragged myself upstairs, switched on the electric fire to full blast, then half fell on to the bed and buried myself in the duvet.

Almost at once I was overwhelmed by oblivion.

The next thing to enter my consciousness was the sound of a loud banging on the front door. ‘Carl,’ I thought at once as I sat up groggily. I was wet with sweat. The room now felt stiflingly hot.

It was a second or two before the remains of my brain told me that my first reaction was wrong. He was locked up in the Devon County Prison at Exeter. It could not be Carl.

Anxiously I clambered out of bed, still fully clothed, and hurried down the stairs, eager to see who was outside, but afraid.

I am not really sure who or what I feared at that instant, but it was both a relief and a surprise to see Mariette standing in the alleyway clutching two bulging supermarket carrier bags.

‘I phoned the hospital to see how you were. They said you’d discharged yourself. I would have come to pick you up. You should have called...’

I nodded apologetically. It had not occurred to me to call Mariette or anyone else. Without Carl I considered myself to be quite alone.

‘I’ve brought some shopping,’ explained Mariette unnecessarily, lifting her carrier bags a couple of inches towards me. ‘Come on, then, aren’t you going to invite me in.’

I stood aside and she bustled past me. She had never been in our house before although I had been to hers several times. Carl and I had not encouraged visitors, except Will with his cheques.

I watched Mariette take in the small, dark dining room and the way Carl and I had tried to brighten it with pictures and candles.

‘Shall I put all this in the kitchen?’ she enquired and was halfway through the kitchen door before I had chance to reply.

I followed her meekly. She at once opened the fridge. There was nothing inside at all except a few dubious-looking jars of unknown vintage.

‘Thought so,’ announced Mariette triumphantly. ‘You look like you could do with this lot.’

She waved a hand at her bags of groceries and began to unpack while I just stood there watching.

‘What time is it?’ I asked vaguely.

‘Just gone five,’ said Mariette. ‘I managed to get away early.’

Five in the afternoon. I had slept for nearly six hours. As I began to wake up more I thought that maybe I did feel a little better. Well enough, anyway, to take some notice at least of the provisions Mariette was piling on the worktop. There were all the basics – milk, bread, butter, cheese and eggs, and there was also pasta, chicken, mushrooms, an assortment of other vegetables, some fruit and two bottles of wine – one white and one red.

‘We’ll start with this,’ said Marietta, lightly touching the bottle of white and sounding quite masterful. ‘It’s cold. Where’s the corkscrew?’

I gestured to the cutlery drawer. I was pretty sure there was a corkscrew there even though I could hardly remember when it had last been used. Carl and I only drank wine at home at Christmas, or maybe on our birthdays if we couldn’t afford to go out for a celebration meal. Mariette had the bottle open in no time and even found two glasses without asking me where to look. I felt rooted to the spot, completely unable to contribute.

‘Right then, let’s get stuck in,’ she said, in a tone of voice that indicated that she would countenance no argument.

Clutching bottle and glasses, she headed for the chairs around the dining-room table.

‘No, let’s go upstairs,’ I said, coming to life again just a little bit.

She followed me up the rickety staircase and let out a gasp of admiration as she saw the view across the bay from our picture window. The room really was very hot, though.

‘No wonder you’re sweating,’ said Mariette, gesturing towards the glowing electric fire. ‘It is the end of April you know, and we are in Cornwall.’

She should have been in that dreadful old damp hut with me, I thought, but she was right about the temperature.

Hastily I switched off the fire and began the familiar transformation of bed into sofa. Mariette put down the bottle and glasses on the little table by the window and came to help me, glancing back over her shoulder as if reluctant to turn away from the view.

The lights were just starting to go on in the town below. The effect was rather wonderful. We were so far above the harbour, which you could glimpse only over and through the convoluted shapes of dozens of rooftops. I always thought it had an unreality about it, particularly at night, like a kind of toy town.

‘Stunning room,’ said Mariette.

‘Yes, Carl and I more or less live up here,’ I agreed quickly and without thinking. ‘Lived, I should say,’ I added more quietly.

Mariette put a hand on my arm, but didn’t say anything.

‘You know what he’s supposed to have done in America, don’t you?’ I said. ‘You know about the manslaughter charge?’

She nodded. ‘I heard some garbled account, but I’d hoped maybe it was just a rumour...’ She didn’t finish the sentence.

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m afraid it’s true. At least that’s what the police say. I’ll know when I see him, I’m sure of that.’

I was too. I told her how I planned to go to Exeter in the morning, after seeing DC Carter.

‘Good, that’s exactly what you should do,’ she said. Then she poured the wine while, almost automatically, I folded up the duvet and sheet.

‘Let’s get drunk.’ She passed me a brimming glass.

I took a deep drink and thought she could turn out to be an exceptionally good friend.

When we had more or less polished off the bottle Mariette announced that she was cooking me supper. I protested weakly and she ignored me, which was probably all for the best because my head was already beginning to spin a little, the combined effect, no doubt, of half a bottle of wine and not having eaten all day.

‘If you don’t eat you’re really going to get ill,’ she said.

‘I have really been ill.’

‘And now you’re going to get better,’ she told me, again in a tone of voice with which I was not inclined to argue.

She busied herself in the kitchen and I laid the table and lit the candles. She poked her head through the door and mumbled approvingly. ‘Amazing what candlelight hides, isn’t it,’ she remarked.

‘Thanks very much,’ I said.

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ she added cheerily.

She turned out to be what Gran would have referred to as an excellent plain cook; perfectly grilled chicken, well seasoned and enlivened with just a little garlic and rosemary, was accompanied by potatoes sautéed with onions and crisply cooked green beans. She was quick too, carrying in a tray laden with food in what seemed like no time at all.

We spoke very little about Carl or any of what had happened. Unlike the oppressive Mrs Jackson, Mariette did not try to push me into talking about it and I found I just didn’t want to. There wasn’t a lot to say, really. All I wanted to do was get through the time before I could see him, meet him face-to-face and ask him to tell me the truth. And the wine certainly helped with that. Mariette swiftly opened the second bottle and by the time we were halfway through it I was beginning to forget about time entirely. I was not used to so much alcohol. I had never thought about it before, but when Carl and I occasionally shared a bottle of wine he always drank the greater part of it.

That evening was my first experience of the therapy of a good relaxed friendship mingled with plenty of alcohol. It was just what I had needed and Mariette, bless her, had instinctively realised it.

Typically, she offered to drive me to Penzance in the morning, but did not press the point when I declined. I told her she had a job to go to, one she enjoyed, that she’d already done enough for me and I could get the train. She did not argue, but instead conjured up yet another of her seemingly endless stories of adventure in love – or in her case perhaps lust was more accurate. This one centred around one of the fitness instructors at the gym she had recently started attending, his cycling shorts and whether or not he stuffed a sock down his lunchbox which, amazingly enough, she had yet to know for certain but felt sure she would be able to reveal from first-hand experience shortly.

Mindless chit-chat may not seem much of a solace to a woman whose life has just fallen apart, but sometimes it’s not a bad diversion. By the time we had reached the cheese and fruit stage Mariette actually had me laughing. Quite an achievement in the circumstances.

Mariette, bless her, played nursemaid and insisted on ensuring I was safely tucked up in bed before she left. Almost immediately, and perhaps unsurprisingly after all I had drunk, I sank mercifully into oblivion again.

But I woke not long after four, the wine having done its best before losing its power over me, and tossed and turned for another hour and a half before giving in to wakefulness, getting up and making tea. My head was a bit fuzzy but I did not feel nearly as bad as I probably deserved to. In fact, I was definitely considerably stronger than I had been the previous day.

Just as I was leaving the house to catch the 7.30 train, having located the spare key in its usual place tucked under the edge of the carpet, Will arrived. I opened the front door and he was standing on the doorstep with one hand raised as if about to knock. It was a clumsy meeting. We almost bumped into each other.

He spoke first. ‘I went to the hospital last night, I didn’t know you’d left...’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not really meaning it. I wasn’t much concerned with anyone except me and Carl right then. ‘I should have let you know...’

‘No. No. Of course not. It’s just that I’ve got something for you, the rest of what I owe you...’

He produced one of those familiar brown envelopes. As ever, the practicalities of life were eluding me. I had not given money matters a thought, beyond being able to get myself to Exeter to see Carl. The sight of the brown envelope concentrated my mind. I realised suddenly how welcome it was. Presumably soon there would be rent to pay and other bills.

I took the envelope from him and studied it almost curiously.

‘There’s just over £500, I’ve had a really good run,’ he said. ‘Sold two of his big abstracts and another couple of the little watercolours as well.’

He sounded almost eager.

‘Thank you,’ I said, stuffing the envelope in my pocket. There was not time to tuck away the cash in its usual hiding place. And in any case it was a matter of habit not to allow visitors, rare as they had always been, to become aware of our secret cellar.

I was still hovering in the doorway and Will remained on the doorstep directly in front of me. He made no attempt to move. I stepped forward, pulling the door shut behind me and only then, with great reluctance it seemed, did he shift back out of the way.

As I was locking the door he began to talk again. ‘I just wondered if I could do anything to help. There must be something...’

Yes, there was. I wanted him out of the way, so that I could get to Carl. ‘No, Will, there isn’t,’ I said. ‘Now please, you’re just going to have to excuse me.’ I spoke a little more curtly than I had meant to, but I was in a hurry.

Will looked quite crestfallen. ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ he muttered in a bleak sort of way.

I had neither time nor inclination to worry about his sensibilities.

He still did not move and I simply sidled my way round him.

‘Goodbye, then,’ he said.

I think I called a goodbye or something similar to him over my shoulder but, to be honest, I can’t really remember.

I was intent upon my journey, hurrying, even though I didn’t need to, as I rounded the corner at the end of our alleyway and began to make my way down the hill towards Porthminster and the railway station, leaving Will still hovering outside Rose Cottage.

Luckily the train was punctual and I arrived in the centre of Penzance half an hour or so later with plenty of time to have a cup of coffee on my way to the police station.

DC Carter was older than I had expected. He had a pleasant enough manner but somehow gave me the impression that he was not terribly well prepared about Carl’s case.

He was small for a policeman, with hair so dark that I wondered if it were dyed. He had a crumpled look about him and bore a more than fleeting resemblance to the American TV detective Columbo. However, the resemblance stopped sharply at physical appearance. Ray Carter showed no sign whatsoever of Columbo’s intelligence.

He kept me waiting for several minutes, sitting on a plastic chair in the reception area of the modern purpose-built police station which was nothing special but something of a palace compared with St Ives, before taking me to his first-floor office.

There he shuffled papers on his desk and did his best to tell me as little as possible.

‘As you know, your husband has been charged with abducting you and he will be committed for trial here at Penzance,’ he recited unhelpfully. ‘We haven’t got a date fixed yet, but in any case the committal will be just a formality. You won’t need to be there.’

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. A trial – me giving evidence against Carl. It didn’t seem possible. In spite of everything I still wasn’t sure that was what I wanted, or even that I could cope with it. I suppose I was still hoping that when I saw Carl he would put things right, just as he had always done, that he would in some way be able to tell me it was all one big mistake.

‘I’m not sure that I want to go ahead with it. Maybe I should withdraw the charge. Can I do that?’ I was still feeling far from my best. I stumbled over my words in confusion.

‘No, you can’t, Mrs Peters,’ he said. Everybody still called me that, even though it had turned out to be a much greater lie than I had ever suspected.

‘Your husband is accused of a criminal offence. The crown is prosecuting him, not you.’

Carter’s voice was weary. He was certainly a very different prospect from either Rob Partridge or DS Perry. I didn’t think I was going to get very far with him, but I tried. ‘What about the American charge?’ I asked. ‘I need you to tell me about what Carl did over there, about his daughter and him being wanted for manslaughter.’

Carter sighed and rubbed the back of one hand across his forehead. ‘You know about that, do you? And I bet I know who gave you all the inside info, too.’

‘The whole of St Ives knows about it as far as I can gather,’ I countered, finding just a little bit of spirit.

Carter managed a tight-lipped smile. ‘I expect they do, too. Look, I doubt very much that I can tell you any more than you know already. He’s a wanted man in America all right and that means the American government can apply for a warrant for extradition. That’s really as much as I can say until we know exactly what is going to happen.’

He didn’t actually use the phrase ‘it’s more than my job’s worth’ but you knew that was what he meant. Ray Carter was the kind of policeman who went strictly by the book.

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?’

I didn’t see anything at all. He was babbling and talking gibberish as far as I was concerned. And he was stammering badly by then. ‘Of course I do,’ I lied. ‘Just tell me, I have to know, did you kill your daughter?’ I kept on staring at him. Silent. Waiting.

‘Oh yes, I k-killed her, I killed her all right,’ he said eventually. His voice was very soft.

I swallowed hard, fighting to keep control. ‘Tell me what happened.’

He was looking into the middle distance now, unseeing, unaware I thought, even of where he was. ‘My wife never understood, you see. I d-did everything for her. I was so proud when she had our child. I worked hard. She wanted for nothing. But it wasn’t enough. She always had to have other people around and she shouldn’t have n-needed them, that’s how the problems started...’ There were tears in his eyes.

‘What happened, Carl?’ I asked. ‘You must tell me.’

‘She said she was leaving me and taking our daughter with her.’ He sounded so strange, slightly hysterical almost. ‘She said she’d had enough of being shut away with me. That she wanted to live. That she couldn’t bear to be with me any more.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, I c-couldn’t let her go, could I? I couldn’t lose them. They w-were everything to me. Like you. To begin with I thought she was like you, but she wasn’t.’ His eyes opened wide as if he was surprised by what he was saying. ‘I just wanted her to stay, wanted them both to stay...’ He put his head in his hands.

‘So you used drugs, didn’t you, Carl? Drugs to subdue your own family, to keep them with you, just like you tried to do with me.’

He raised his head slightly. He had started to cry. Tears trickled down his face. ‘What do you th-think I am, Suzanne?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know any more, Carl. I really don’t.’

‘If you have stopped believing in me, Suzanne, there is no point in anything any more,’ he said flatly.

‘Carl, you drugged me, the woman you are supposed to love more than anything.’

He reached across the table in an attempt to grasp my hands again. I pulled away from him.

‘I do love you and I didn’t drug you, Suzanne, not really. It was just something to make you sleep.’

That was what he had told me in the dreadful hut. It wasn’t the way I saw it, nor the police. Suddenly my anger overwhelmed me. ‘Is that what you gave them, your wife and five-year-old child, for God’s sake? Just something to make them sleep? I’m sick of your lies, Carl. Even your name is a bloody lie. Tell me, Carl, tell me the truth, damn you, you bastard,’ I virtually screamed at him.

Carl more or less cowered in his chair. I don’t suppose I had ever yelled at him before. I had certainly never sworn at him like that, not in all our years together. Several other prisoners and their visitors turned to look at us. One of the prison officers took a step forward as if considering intervening, but he retreated again.

Carl merely stared at me in shocked silence.

When I spoke again I managed to do so in a more or less normal tone: ‘Just tell me. Did your daughter overdose on drugs you had given her, is that true?’

‘The drugs were for her mother, not her.’ Carl’s voice seemed to come from a long way away.

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ I snapped at him. ‘You didn’t mean to drug your child, only her mother, is that it? For God’s sake, just tell me, Carl, did your daughter overdose?’

‘Oh yes,’ he moaned, still cowering in his chair. ‘She overdosed...’

‘And she died,’ I said flatly.

‘Yes, she died,’ he repeated. He was sobbing quite loudly by then. ‘I killed her. That’s what you came here to hear, isn’t it. It’s true. It was all my fault. And I’ve never f-forgiven myself, never... I couldn’t let it happen again, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t lose you as well.’

I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. Somehow I had expected Carl to deny it, to have some kind of an explanation. Even after what he had done to me I could not really believe that he had killed his own child. Now I had to. He had told me so himself. He was still babbling on. It was a kind of torture to listen to him.

He put his head in his hands. ‘I c-couldn’t let them leave me. As long as I kept them close to me they would have been safe, you see. I just wanted to keep everyone s-safe, all of them, like I did you...’

‘Safe from what, Carl?’

Abruptly he stopped crying and stared at me, as if uncomprehending. ‘I guess I’m pretty mixed up, but...’

I’d had enough. I certainly didn’t want any more of his excuses. I had heard all I wanted to hear. ‘No, Carl,’ I told him firmly. ‘I’m not going to listen to any more of this.’ I stood up. ‘I will never forgive you,’ I said. ‘And I never want to see you again as long as I live.’

I turned my back on him and headed for the door. I heard him cry out in anguish but I didn’t look round. I half ran out of the room and the tears were running down my face.

I wasn’t crying for Carl. And at that moment I could already feel my love for him turning to hate. I was crying for my own lost life, for all those years he had stolen from me.