A Deep Deceit (18 page)

One way and another it was almost mid afternoon before we clambered back aboard the van and embarked irrevocably on our Great Escape. I remember that I did not even ask Carl where we were going. I didn't care as long as it was away from my past and my terrible crime. I was vaguely aware, as we ploughed through the slow moving traffic of the Sheen Road, down through Mortlake, over Chiswick Bridge, along a short stretch of the A4 and on to the M4, that we must be heading west.

‘We're going to Cornwall,' Carl announced. ‘St Ives. It's the place for a painter. Don't worry, honey. As long as I have my paints I can provide for us.'

Of course I hadn't given the practical side of what we were doing a thought. I had never had to think about that sort of thing, not even with Robert. The drizzling rain continued through most of our journey and even though it was warm in the van I sat shivering by Carl's side all the way to Cornwall.

We stopped once at a motorway service station just outside Exeter to get petrol and Carl tried to persuade me to have something to eat. I couldn't face food.

Soon after we passed into Cornwall the van slew violently to the left. Carl regained control only with difficulty and we slowed to an ungainly halt by the roadside. The offside rear tyre had burst.

In order to change the wheel we had to take almost everything out of the back of the van. Strangely enough, the sheer physical effort involved made me feel a little better. Carl was not the most mechanically minded man in the world, but eventually he managed to complete the task – I was no help, that was for certain, I couldn't even drive let alone change a wheel – and we trundled on our way again.

The old van was not capable of any high speed and so it was that we did not reach St Ives until almost midnight. The rain stopped just before we entered the town, and the night was clear and moonlit by then. I remember being captivated by the little seaside resort right from the start. Carl drove straight to the waterside and we parked illegally alongside the old sea wall, reasoning that nobody would bother us at that time of night. We clambered gratefully out of the van, leaned against the wall and gazed out to sea. The silence was devastating and the water, reflecting the moonlight, had seemed so still. I sensed that peace was within my grasp at last.

‘My Lady of the Harbour . . .' I could still hear Carl's words . . .

‘And that was nearly seven years ago?' queried Sergeant Perry, somewhere in the distance. Her voice almost startled me. I had gone into a kind of trance. I seemed to have a habit of doing this, come to think of it. I suppose all that stuff about us travelling to St Ives was irrelevant, really. It had just carried on naturally for me, part of my dreadful story.

I nodded.

‘A long time to carry such a thing around with you,' she said.

I nodded again.

Six and a half years of hiding, I thought. Six and a half years of fear. I had been so happy with Carl, but the past had always lurked and now, despite my uncertainty about what might happen next, I did feel that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I hoped Carl wouldn't be too angry with me, but suddenly there had been no choice.

I took a deep breath, returning sharply inside my head to the present. Carl would be frantic with worry. I rarely went out alone at all, except to the library, and never without telling him where I was going and when I would be back. I had been gone for over two hours.

I didn't know what would happen to me, but I suppose I expected to be arrested. ‘Could somebody contact my husband,' I asked.

‘We already have,' said DS Perry.

I could only imagine how shocked he must have been. But I was still sure I had done the right thing.

The DS suggested that I wait a moment while her colleagues completed some enquiries they were making and she left me alone with a stunned-looking Rob Partridge. After a couple of minutes a uniformed constable came in and told Rob he was wanted on the phone. Rob retreated with obvious relief and the constable positioned himself by the door like a sentry. I assumed that DS Perry and the others were checking up on me and my story.

I wondered what prison would be like. From the moment I decided to make my confession I had been in no doubt whatsoever that I would go to jail. I saw no alternative. I didn't relish the prospect, but I doubted it could be any worse than what I had endured with the man I had eventually killed.

I just hoped that Carl would not feel too betrayed, and that one day he and I would have a future and would be able to live a normal life. Throughout whatever came before that it would be the dream of a future with Carl that would keep me going.

I was beginning to become aware that normality was something I had never experienced.

Ten

The biggest shock was still to come.

‘Why don't you go home now and someone will call round to see you in a day or two,' said Sergeant Perry when she eventually returned.

I looked at her in amazement. ‘You can't just be letting me go, surely,' I said. ‘I murdered my husband; I killed Robert Foster.'

‘I don't think so,' she replied.

I couldn't believe my ears. ‘But I did!'

‘We have done quite a bit of checking already; we've been on to the Metropolitan Police and they have no record at all of the murder you have reported,' she continued calmly.

I was staggered. ‘W-What does that mean?' I stammered.

‘I think it means you couldn't have killed your husband,' she said quietly.

‘But I did,' I responded. ‘I stabbed him to death. I can still see the blood. He was lying dead in a pool of blood . . .'

‘Mrs Peters, we have been round to see your present husband. I told you that. He's here now, waiting for you. And he's very upset. He has explained to us all about your terrible nightmares . . .'

‘This is not a nightmare, it happened!' I said. I was suddenly very angry. Anger was new to me. Fear and pain I understood well enough, but not anger.

‘Mrs Peters,' the sergeant went on patiently, ‘the Reverend Robert Foster was not murdered.'

‘B-But he's dead, isn't he?' I cried.

‘I believe so,' said the sergeant. ‘But I don't know the details. We will look into it more, of course. However, I see no reason to detain you.'

‘How did he die then, if I didn't stab him? How?'

‘We don't know yet. The Met are looking into it and will be sending us a full report.'

‘So how can you be sure that he wasn't murdered? He was. He was. With my kitchen knife.'

I realised I probably sounded absurd. I could hear the note of hysteria in my voice. Surely never had anyone tried harder to get themselves arrested on a murder charge.

‘There was never a murder investigation, that's how we know,' continued the sergeant. ‘Surely there would have been if a man had been found stabbed? That can hardly be natural causes, can it? You must see that.'

I saw all right. DS Perry was barely concentrating on me at all any more. I suspected she just thought I was one of those people unable to differentiate between what was real and what was not.

She could be forgiven, I suppose. My head was reeling. I could feel a dull ache beginning in my temples. ‘What about all the threats, those awful letters I got and the paint daubed on our front door?' I asked.

She nodded. ‘We'll look into that too. You thought you were being threatened because somebody knew you had killed your husband. Well, it seems that cannot be so. Can you think of anything else that might lie behind these anonymous threats?'

I shook my head numbly. I really didn't know what was going on any more.

‘Well, let's take it a step at a time then, shall we, Mrs Peters?' said the sergeant, quite incomprehensibly I thought.

The hysteria took a grip of me for a moment or two.

‘It's not Mrs Peters,' I yelled at her. ‘I'm still Mrs Foster. I'm not married to Carl. We couldn't possibly have got married, we would have been found out. It's not even Suzanne. I had to take a new name because of what I'd done. I've been living a lie . . .'

‘It's not an offence to change your name, women commonly use the name of a man they live with but have not married. I assumed you preferred to be called Mrs Peters.' The sergeant sighed. ‘Look, we will get back to you, you can rely on that. Meanwhile go home, get some rest . . .'

She just wanted to be rid of me, I suspected. Everyone thought I was weak, even the police. Too weak and confused to be a murderer apparently.

She led me into the interview room in the reception area where I had first been installed. Carl was waiting there, sitting on one of the plain wooden chairs. His eyes were red-rimmed. The strain was also apparent in the tight little lines round his mouth. But if he was angry with me he didn't show it.

His eyes lit up when I walked in, the way they always did when he saw me, and he even managed half a smile as he stood up and wrapped an arm rather awkwardly round me, just as he had on that fateful morning so long ago.

‘You can take her home now, Mr Peters,' said the sergeant, carefully not calling me by any name at all.

Carl did not need a second bidding. ‘Let's go, honey,' he muttered, and bundled me outside.

When we were in the car park he gently turned me to face him. ‘My darling,' he said. ‘Why on earth did you go to the police? Haven't I told you often enough that I will look after you. It's dangerous for us to involve anyone in our lives, you know that – let alone the police.'

‘But . . . but they said there was no murder,' I stuttered. ‘I don't understand . . .'

‘They'll f-f-find out the truth eventually, they're b-bound too,' he hissed through clenched teeth, the strain of it all making him stammer.

I shuddered. Just a while ago I had been so sure of myself – nervous to the point of being afraid, but quite certain I was doing the right thing. Now I didn't even know what the right thing was any more. DS Perry had made it fairly clear that she thought I was a raving nutter. The front desk clerk had seemed to assume that even before I'd really got going with my story. They certainly appeared to believe, just like Carl and my gran, that I was congenitally unable to cope with the practicalities of life, to sort anything out for myself.

‘Don't worry, honey, just don't worry about anything,' soothed Carl as he steered me through the narrow streets back to Rose Cottage. Sometimes he really did behave as if I were stupid. How could I possibly not worry, for goodness' sake?

Then, as bad luck would have it, we saw the rear end of Fenella Austen disappearing round the corner by the library. I had been hoping that Carl wouldn't notice her, neither of us needed any further agitation, but of course he did. I felt him stiffen beside me and he muttered something under his breath, so softly that I couldn't quite catch the words. I could guess, though. Carl still distrusted Fenella.

‘Carl, you know she can't be the one, there's no logic to thinking that,' I said quietly.

‘Somebody sent those letters and plastered paint over our door. Somebody had a go at our van, tried to drive us out of our minds.'

‘Yes, and we don't have a clue who it was, not a clue.'

His arm was still across my shoulders and he drew me closer to him. ‘I suppose you're right,' he muttered eventually.

‘You know I'm right,' I replied.

He gave a kind of grumpy snort. ‘I just know that without the threats none of this would have happened. You felt beleaguered, hunted. That's why you went to the police.'

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘But I think I might have wanted to do that eventually anyway. I did tell you, try to warn you about how I feel. I'm tired of hiding, Carl, sick of it.'

‘So you haven't been happy with me all these years; you've been living a lie, have you?' he enquired abruptly in a flat voice and removed his arm from my shoulder.

‘Of course I've been happy with you,' I cried. And that was the truth, for certain. ‘We've both been living a kind of lie, but not with each other, never that.'

He put his arm round me again and kissed my cheek. ‘There you are, then,' he said. ‘If it hadn't been for those goddamned letters and all the other stuff we'd still be happy. Wouldn't we?'

I had to agree, reluctantly. ‘In a way we would, I suppose,' I said. ‘But there has to be more to life than what we have allowed ourselves . . .'

‘Of course we would still have been happy,' interrupted Carl heartily, as if he hadn't been listening to me at all. ‘That's all that changed it. I just wish I really did know who sent them. There'd be another murder then.'

He set me thinking again. ‘But the police say there wasn't one in the first place . . .' I began.

‘You're confused. They'll find out, they're bound to find out.'

We were almost at the cottage by then, the funny little house that had been our haven for so long.

‘It'll be all right, Suzanne, it's just got to be,' he whispered into my ear as he unlocked our front door.

Inside the house I could not settle.

Carl busied himself in the kitchen cooking supper, but everything seemed different. I had known that what I did that afternoon would change our lives irrevocably, but what had actually happened was nothing like anything I had imagined.

I had foreseen being charged with murder, being arrested and locked up at once in a police cell. It had never occurred to me that I might be told there had been no crime committed and sent home. I just couldn't get my head around it and, for once, Carl wasn't helping.