A Deep Deceit

Sixteen

I remained crouched on the edge of the sofa bed, crying, for several minutes after Will had gone. Then very suddenly I realised what I must do next. I had to see Carl. I had to tell him what Will had been doing to us. Will’s confession changed so much. Carl had not been responsible for any of the threats, not sent the letters. And, just maybe, neither had he deliberately deceived me all those years about the way Robert had died. I had to tell Carl that I had done him a big injustice. This time I had to get to the bottom of it all.

I jumped to my feet, grabbed my coat, shoved all my money in my pocket and headed down to the town. I stopped at the first call box on the way to phone Penzance police station and for once got almost straight through to the police officer I wanted to speak to. ‘I want to see my husband,’ I told DC Carter. ‘Can you arrange it for me?’

‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘He’s on remand and you can visit more or less when you like, we’ve already told you that. When do you want to go?’

‘Today – as soon as I can.’ I planned to catch the next train out of St Ives and then pick up the first available Intercity Service at either St Erth or Penzance.

‘Ah, that is a problem,’ said Carter. ‘He’s due to appear at the Magistrates Court in Penzance this afternoon. It’s his committal...’

‘Penzance!’ Just half an hour or so’s journey by train. Maybe I didn’t need to travel all the way to Exeter after all. ‘I’ll come to Penzance, then...’

‘Whoa,’ said DC Carter. ‘Hang on a minute. He’s only being brought in for committal proceedings. It’s a formality. He won’t be allowed visitors here. Then straight back to Exeter. You won’t be able to see him.’

I wasn’t really listening. If Carl was going to be in Penzance later that day then so was I. I barely said goodbye to DC Carter, who was still chuntering away at the other end of the line when I hung up. I ran most of the way to the little station out at Porthminster Beach. I wasn’t sure of the train times and was terrified of just missing one, and then maybe just missing Carl.

In the end I had to wait half an hour for the next train. It was a very lovely day and the first part of the track runs right along the coast but I was too distracted to admire the beauty of the Cornish countryside. By the time I got to Penzance I could hardly contain myself. It wasn’t far from the station to St John’s Hall, the old Victorian building opposite the police station which I knew housed Penwith Magistrates Court, but this time I didn’t walk. I felt as if I couldn’t afford to waste a minute so, my financial considerations of earlier that day now paling into insignificance, I took a taxi.

As soon as I came close to St John’s Hall I realised something was amiss. There seemed to be police everywhere. The traffic slowed to a halt, and I jumped out of the cab and paid off the driver. A patrol car, lights flashing, and siren in full song, came out of the police station yard so fast as I crossed the road towards the court that I only narrowly avoided being run over.

Both the entrances to St John’s Hall, which had once been home to Penzance Assizes and the old hanging judges, were cordoned off and uniformed constables stood on sentry duty.

I kept walking, desperate to see Carl and trying to look as if I was in some way involved in official business, even though I hardly looked the part in my jeans and sweater. I had no success. I was stopped at once by one of the policemen sentries. ‘I am afraid you can’t go in, madam,’ he said.

‘I have to,’ was all I could manage.

‘Sorry, madam,’ replied the officer in tones that brooked no dissent. ‘We have an escaped prisoner situation and nobody is allowed to enter or leave the vicinity.’

‘But I have to see my husband,’ I insisted, hardly hearing what he was saying, just aware that he was preventing me from fulfilling my purpose.

I half tried to push past him.

He put a restraining hand on my arm and positioned himself more solidly in front of me.

‘Well, you can’t go in there to see him, that’s for certain. Who is your husband anyway?’

‘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.

‘So, these letters and the rest of it, do you know who was responsible?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, who was it?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied and in a way it didn’t. Carl was not responsible, which was all that mattered.

‘Whoever did so has almost certainly committed an offence and could be prosecuted for harassment,’ continued DC Carter in a flat monotone.

I knew that and I didn’t want it to happen. There would be another trial. I would have to give evidence. I was afraid of Will, after all that he had said and done, but I told myself that he was no longer a threat and that reporting him to the police could make him more of a danger rather than less.

‘More importantly, maybe Carl will go after him,’ DS Carter went on.

It seemed extraordinary to hear Carl described in these terms. In spite of everything it just wasn’t the way I saw him. ‘Carl doesn’t even know who did it.’

‘Indeed, and it must be driving him mad not knowing, mustn’t it. Not knowing who destroyed his life. Perhaps he is trying to find out right now and what will he do when he does, I wonder?’ Carter’s words were ominous.

I was startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The man you call your husband is a kidnapper, wanted in America on a manslaughter charge, Mrs Peters. What the hell do you think I mean?’

I just stared at him. I knew all of that was true, but I still just could not relate any of it to the gentle man I had shared my life with, the man who had rescued me from another kind of hell. I had lived with violence. I knew it inside out. Carl didn’t fit the bill and yet his record did. I gave in to the pressure. ‘Will Jones,’ I said. ‘He runs the Logan Gallery in St Ives.’

Carter then questioned me for a few minutes about why Will had made the threats, what they had said, what they meant and how many there had been. Some of it was old ground, some of it wasn’t. I told him everything I could.

Eventually the detective constable nodded in a vaguely approving way. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere at last. I’ll send a team round straight away, as much for the sad bastard’s own safety as anything else.’

Again the chilling inference.

‘Right, now what to do about you,’ said Carter, thumping the table. ‘It’s back to St Ives, I reckon.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll go home, I’ll get the train...’

Maybe Carl would try to contact me. After what Carter had said I didn’t know whether I hoped he would or not. My emotions were so mixed now.

‘You’re joking,’ said Carter. ‘He could be waiting for you. I’ll drive you over. He’s not there yet, we know that much. Uniform are already watching the place. Just give me one moment.’

He left me alone in his office for no more than a couple of minutes before returning with a uniformed woman constable whom he introduced as WPC Carol Braintree. ‘She’s coming with us,’ he said. By the book, I assumed. I felt as if I was getting to know DC Carter,

As he led the way through the station towards the front reception I became very aware that all around was the bustle of a major manhunt. The terrible reality of it was only just beginning to hit me. Carter briefly opened a door of a room where a number of police officers were manning phones, studying wall charts and checking information on computers.

‘Taking Mrs Peters back, boss,’ he shouted to an officer wearing a uniform that even to my inexperienced eye indicated a very senior rank.

There was a brief exchange concerning whether or not Rose Cottage had yet been searched.

‘He can’t be there, boss, but we’ll check the place out now just to make sure,’ said Carter.

I heard mention of roadblocks and railway checks. I tried to focus on the wall chart at the far end of the room. I wasn’t given long enough.

‘Right, c’mon then,’ said Carter, propelling me along. WPC Braintree kept very close to me as if she suspected that at any moment I might try to join Carl on the run. I looked back over my shoulder at the bustling room. It seemed extraordinary that Carl was the cause of all that activity.

Carter smiled grimly. ‘We’re closing off Cornwall,’ he said. ‘He won’t get far, your Carl. It’s one of the advantages of being stuck on the end of England. One road and one railway line, and that’s about your lot. We can shut the county down just like that...’ He snapped his fingers. I couldn’t believe any of it was happening.

In the car – Carter’s own private vehicle, I thought – the radio came on as he switched on the ignition. Within minutes there was a news bulletin. ‘A man has escaped from police custody in Penzance’ I heard. There followed a brief description of Carl and what he had been charged with, and then the words which perhaps hit me harder than anything at all. ‘Police advise that this man is dangerous and on no account should be approached. If you see anyone answering to his description contact any police station...’