The Cruellest Game

Ten

It was several minutes more before they actually left my property. I watched the tail lights of the patrol car fade as it proceeded up the lane, the two officers inside extremely pleased, I suspected, to be leaving the madwoman behind.

I checked the time on the hall clock. It was nearly five. No point in going back to bed. In any case there was absolutely no chance of my getting back to sleep.

First of all I walked all round the house again, scrutinizing each room, just in case there was anything else missing that I hadn’t noticed before, and to check if, upon closer examination, I could see any signs of disturbance. There wasn’t and I couldn’t.

Florrie followed me eagerly. We ended up in the kitchen. I beefed up the Aga, made myself a cup of tea and pulled the old leather armchair closer to the stove, relishing the warmth.

Florrie lay half across my feet. I chastised her mildly for being such a useless dog. But was she really that useless or had she known and loved the intruder? That made me start to really think. To ask myself more questions.

Was I absolutely sure that I had heard someone downstairs? Answer: yes.

Could I possibly have been mistaken? Could the police be right about me? Could I have turned into the madwoman, deluded by grief, they obviously thought me to be. Answer: no, no and no.

In that case who could possibly have been in the house? Who could have effected entry without leaving any telltale signs? Who had keys? Who would Florrie welcome most into the house apart from me?

The answer to all of those questions seemed to be Robert. But he was at work on a North Sea oil rig. And this time I knew which one because I’d asked him, and made a mental note of it. But was he and did I?

I now knew that my husband was a very convincing liar. Just because he’d told me he was returning to Jocelyn did not necessarily mean that was the case.

I was still shaky and I had a headache. I needed to calm down and sort out my muddled thoughts. I switched on the TV to distract myself, hopping from channel to channel and not staying tuned to any of them long enough to really take in what they were broadcasting. Nothing could distract me. I switched the thing off.

My mind was whizzing around in circles, but I always reached the same conclusion.

The intruder had to be Robert. Surely. I had no idea why he would pretend, knowing that I was now aware of his long-time subterfuge, to be on a North Sea platform when he wasn’t. And I had no idea why he would turn up surreptitiously in the middle of the night, at what was still his own home after all, and apparently take two such disparate articles away with him. The camcorder, yes, I supposed. It had a lot of footage of Robbie and me, in happier times, and even some of Robert too. I hadn’t been able to bear to look at it. Not yet anyway, but I could understand Robert wanting it and maybe just picking it up when he saw it lying on the sideboard, not least because he had always so disliked being featured on any kind of film. And now I knew why that had been, too. But why on earth would he want my iPod? He had one of his own. He always said it was music that kept him sane on the rigs, particularly when the weather kicked up and the men were confined to their quarters.

I wondered if either of us was sane any more.

Could Robert have been trying to frighten me? Surely the one thing I still believed about my husband was that he loved me, and had never deliberately set out to hurt me.

But I could not think who else would have broken into my house and behaved so strangely. Indeed, I could not think who else would have been able to. After all, there was no sign of a break-in and, as I’d told the police, nobody but Robert and I had keys.

I tried to think logically. First of all I needed to ascertain for certain whether or not Robert was in the North Sea.

That shouldn’t be difficult, but it would be simplest to wait until nine o’clock or thereabouts, and time passed very slowly. Almost as the grandfather clock struck in the hall I dialled the direct line of Amaco’s human resources department in Aberdeen.

I put on a Scottish accent just in case I ended up speaking to someone I had spoken to before, and told the young man who answered that I was Rob Anderton’s wife and that my husband had recently been home on compassionate leave following the death of our son. The young man seemed at least vaguely familiar with what had happened and expressed his condolences.

‘Look. I need to speak to my husband urgently. Can you help? Please. I’m desperate.’ As I did the first time I called, I allowed a note of hysteria to creep into my voice. Once again, given the circumstances, that wasn’t difficult.

The young man responded almost without hesitation. ‘Yes, of course, Mrs Anderton. I can patch you through on our VoIP line directly to Jocelyn. It isn’t usual company policy, but under these tragic circumstances I’m sure we can bend the rules.’

I thanked him and waited.

After a minute or two another, older male voice, just a bit fainter, came on the line.

‘Hello, Mrs Anderton, you’re through to the manager’s office on Jocelyn. We’ve sent someone to fetch your husband. It shouldn’t take long. Just hold on.’

I held on. Until eventually I heard Robert’s voice. ‘Darling, what is it? Are you all right? Has something else happened?’

I didn’t reply. Instead I hung up on him. I still had no wish to speak to the man. But now I knew that he was on Jocelyn for certain. As far as that was concerned he had been telling the truth. Or his version of it. And certainly he could not have been the intruder.

I made myself more tea. This was crazy. Maybe the police were right after all. Had I been having a nightmare, and had the noises I was so certain that I’d heard downstairs just been part of it?

Yet I was still sure of myself, really, and quite sure about the disappearance of my iPod and Robbie’s camcorder. But I could make absolutely no sense of the events of the night before, and certainly nobody else was going to believe me.

My mobile rang then, and I saw Robert’s Skype number flash up. I let the call go to 121, but I did listen to his message: ‘Marion, you must tell me what’s going on. Why did you call me here through the office? And why didn’t you speak to me? If you don’t pick up, I shall come home.’

That’s what I’d been afraid of. Whatever happened, I couldn’t face that. I hurried to the study, jacked up our computer and used Skype to call him back. He was waiting online as I’d expected him to be. He answered very quickly.

‘It’s OK, I just wanted to know exactly where you were,’ I told him without prevarication.

‘You mean, you were checking up on me?’ He had the nerve to sound rather indignant.

‘I suppose I was, yes. And can you blame me?’

He changed his tone at once.

‘No, I suppose I can’t, can I? But, look, I do so worry about you. I want to put everything right. I could easily get more leave again, you know—’

‘No, Robert, let’s just try to do what we normally do. We’re used to time apart. Let’s do what we’re used to. And maybe we can get through this somehow.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Yes, of course, yes.’

There had been such hope in his voice that I felt almost guilty when I so easily lied in my reply. But all that mattered really was keeping him at bay. I knew I couldn’t cope with having him home, and I certainly couldn’t cope with how he would react if he knew about the night-time intruder.

After I’d extricated myself from the call I did something I’d been meaning to do ever since Robert had confessed to also being Rob Anderton. I searched the house from top to bottom looking for any paperwork in the name of Anderton, or any reference at all to a Rob Anderton, or to a lottery win or a bank account showing an appropriate balance. I found absolutely nothing. Robert had covered his tracks well, it seemed. But then, he had been my husband, if not absolutely legally, for sixteen years without ever raising my suspicions.

Frustrated and fed up, I made a snap decision. If I was going to hang on to what remained of my sanity, I had to give myself something else to think about other than the terrible chain of events that had engulfed me.

I called the headmistress’s office at Okehampton College and when I was put through to Mrs Rowlands told her I was ready to come back to work.

She expressed concern and mild surprise, asking: ‘Are you quite sure?’

But when I said I was, I thought I caught a sigh of relief.

‘We certainly need you,’ she continued. ‘It’s black Monday here. Some sort of autumn flu bug seems to have hit the staffroom. I have three people off sick today, including our new, regular part time English teacher. I don’t suppose you could work every morning for a bit?’

‘I certainly can,’ I replied. And I felt mildly cheered for the first time since Robbie’s death.

It was always good to feel needed. And I had to do something. I’d spent enough time sitting around an empty house all day torturing myself.

‘Can you start tomorrow?’ Mrs Rowlands asked.

‘I certainly can,’ I repeated.

Later that afternoon I briefly called everyone I knew — that small list again: my dad, Gladys, Bella, the Farleys — to tell them about my return to teaching. I hoped it might stop them fussing over me and, most of all, lessen the danger of any of them turning up on my doorstep uninvited. My calls to Dad and Gladys were both diverted to answer services, which suited me fine. I knew it was wrong of me in view of Dad being Dad and Gladys having been so kind, but I didn’t really want to talk to either of them. Ellen, Tom’s wife, answered the Farley phone, and I kept that call as short as I politely could. Bella also answered her mobile straight away. But it was she, after welcoming my news, who cut the call short.

‘We’re just walking back from school, had to go to one of those parent — teacher meetings,’ she said. ‘But why don’t we try to get together next weekend? Take the dogs to the beach perhaps? And if there’s anything I can do to help...’

I then emailed Robert for the same reason. I was still afraid that he might take emergency leave again, and if he knew I was back at work, full-time in fact, and apparently doing my best to return to normality, he would hopefully be less likely to do so.

Of course, nothing could take my mind off losing Robbie. Even though there can be few activities more diverting than trying to ram the wonders of English literature into the wandering minds of a class of thirteen-year-olds. However, Robbie’s presence and the grim reality of his death were with me all the time.

One of my pupils, who I knew lived on the outskirts of Okehampton, was called Conor Shaw, and even though Shaw was not an uncommon name it seemed quite natural for me to ask if he was related to Sue Shaw.

‘She’s my sister, miss,’ said the boy.

‘But she goes to Kelly,’ I blurted out stupidly, already knowing the response I would provoke. Like us, I didn’t expect the Shaws would have been able to pay the full fee for a place at Kelly, and certainly not for two children.

‘Got a swimming scholarship didn’t she, like your Robbie,’ he said, then coloured up. ‘Sorry, miss, I didn’t mean to...’

They all knew so much more about my family now, with Robbie having died in such a public way, his bright young face all over the papers, than they ever had before.

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s fine, Conor.’

It wasn’t, of course, and never would be. But after a couple of days back at school I knew I was beginning to function almost normally again. You didn’t get much choice when you were teaching. And I was well aware I wasn’t properly up to speed, my previous regular one day a week having kept me only barely in touch with the curriculum, so I had to work all the harder.

Small things still threw me. I was just arriving at the beginning of my third morning back when I saw Conor Shaw emerge from an elderly Range Rover. The driver was a red-headed man I assumed must be his father, his and Sue’s. I approached the vehicle, and the man wound down his window.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m Marion Anderson, Conor’s English teacher.’

The man smiled a greeting. ‘Michael Shaw, his dad,’ he responded easily.

‘I’m also Robbie Anderson’s mum,’ I said.

The smile faded at once.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Michael Shaw, sounding and looking anything but. ‘Unfortunately I’m in a hurry. Must go, I’m afraid.’

With that he started the engine of the Range Rover, slammed his foot on the accelerator, and took off at a considerably greater speed than was ever encouraged outside Okehampton College.

I’d only been able to see Michael Shaw through his car window. He had a broad, quite highly coloured face and looked as if he would be a big man when stood up. I remember what Sue Shaw had said on the day of the funeral. ‘Dad will kill me.’

I wondered, watching the dust settle after his sudden departure in the big four-wheel-drive, if the man had a temper. And if so, just how bad it was.

I thought I would like to at least try to talk to both Michael Shaw and his daughter again one day soon. But not yet.

I still did not believe my son had killed himself, and I still wanted to find out the whole truth about his death. I also doubted that I yet knew the whole truth about the husband who had deceived me for so long.

But I’d put all of that almost deliberately on hold by returning to teaching. I felt that I needed to heal myself before I could proceed further with anything else. And my wounds were deep.

However, by the end of the working week, and of my fourth day back at Okehampton College, I felt pleasantly weary and certainly more in control than I had since Robbie’s death. I’d stayed on in Okehampton for a Friday pub lunch with a couple of the other teachers, and almost enjoyed myself. On the way home I called Bella to see if she would like to set a time for that dog walk she had suggested over the coming weekend. There was no reply so I surprised myself somewhat by leaving a message which, while far from cheery, was at least fairly bright and positive.

But this very slightly better frame of mind was not to last for long. I arrived at Highrise to find Florrie running loose in the yard and the front door standing wide open.

Hesitantly, I approached the old house. My heart felt like Big Ben booming away within my chest. I was full of foreboding, but I just had to step inside.

The grandfather clock Robert had always been so proud of lay on its side on the flagstoned floor in the hall. Its lovely glass face had been smashed and its mechanism, its core, ripped from its casing.

The sitting-room door was open and I could see that the chairs and settees had been turned on their sides and the TV screen smashed. There was also a horrible smell in the house. It was all too familiar. The same smell which had greeted me when I’d found Robbie’s body. The sour stench of human excrement.

I took a step back outside again. I could not enter any further. Not alone. I was afraid of what other terrible damage I might discover. But more than that, I was afraid of who might still be there.

I called the police at once on my mobile. I’d told myself I’d never trouble the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary again. This was different. I had no choice. And in any case, this time they could hardly conclude that I’d imagined what had happened, surely.

I loaded Florrie into the back of the car to keep her out of the way, and then sat in the vehicle myself, waiting, in a kind of trance, until a police patrol car arrived. The two uniformed officers who stepped out of it were regrettably familiar. They were the same young men who had been sent round when I’d reported my night-time intruder the previous Sunday.

Apparently I was on their beat.

It was the same routine too. PC Bickerton waited with me outside Highrise while PC Jacobs checked the place out. This time, though, it was several minutes before he returned, and when he did he looked shocked.

‘Mrs Anderson, you may not want to go back into your house today,’ he began. ‘It’s a bit of a mess. Is there anyone you can stay with? Anywhere we can take you?’

I shook my head vehemently. ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is my home, I want to see what’s happened to it.’

He hesitated just for a second. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But you’d better prepare yourself. It’s not very nice, not very nice at all.’

We walked up the steps to the front door together. PC Bickerton checked the lock and the bolt, just as he had before.

‘Nothing wrong here,’ he said. ‘No sign of forced entry at all at the front. What about the windows and the back door? Did you notice any signs of tampering when you were inside, Jim?’

Jacobs shook his head.

Bickerton leaned forward, studying the lock on the front door more closely.

‘Doesn’t look like you’ve had this changed, Mrs Anderson,’ he remarked. ‘Nor the other two, at the back and on the garden gate, I suppose?’

I agreed that I hadn’t had any of the three locks replaced. I saw the two officers exchange glances.

‘Bit surprised you didn’t do so after the other night,’ Bickerton continued quite casually.

I supposed that was surprising. And I couldn’t explain it really. Except that after I’d ascertained that Robert really was in the North Sea and made the decision to start teaching again I’d just tried to put everything else out of my mind. Maybe even to make myself believe I had imagined that intruder. Crazily, perhaps, I hadn’t even seriously considered any kind of repetition.

I pushed past PC Bickerton into the hall. Again, the first thing I saw was the poor broken clock.

I paused and turned to face the policemen.

‘You’re sure there... there’s nobody i-in there, are you?’ I asked falteringly.

PC Jacobs gave a little tight-lipped smile he presumably thought was reassuring. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said.

Highrise was a wreck. Every room had been rubbished. The sitting room, in spite of the human excrement which had been smeared over the soft furnishings, the carpet, and the walls, was not the worst. Robbie’s room, at the top of the house, was the most affected. All his beautiful oak furniture had been attacked with an axe. The desk he and his father had been so proud of was little more than firewood.

In the kitchen, just about every piece of crockery I possessed had been smashed. And all my glasses. The best stuff, displayed on a Welsh dresser, had been swept onto the flagstoned floor, and every shelf and cupboard seemed to have been emptied. There were no longer any bottles in the kitchen wine rack. They had been smashed too, their contents forming predominantly red puddles. The room smelt of alcohol, and we had to pick our way carefully through fragments of china and glass.

The fridge-freezer that I so loved, one of those big American ones, had been disconnected and its doors left open. Ice cream was already dripping onto the floor. The table and all the chairs had been overturned. Predictably, the screen of the TV, even though it was fixed high on one wall so that it could be seen from every part of the room, had been shattered.

There was so much damage I couldn’t take it all in properly. Everything that had been free-standing, including almost all of my kitchen utensils and electric items like the toaster, appeared to have been swept violently to the floor. Only the microwave and the espresso machine, which were built into the units, seemed to have survived. I also registered that the Aga was still burning. There wasn’t much you could do to an Aga, however vicious you were. And suddenly I realized how cold I was. I supposed it had been cold waiting in the stationary car in the yard, although I hadn’t really noticed. It could also have been shock again. The leather armchair had been knocked onto its side. I hauled it upright, moved it as close as possible to the big iron stove, and sat down.

PC Bickerton asked if I wanted a cup of tea. He was being quite sympathetic. I thanked him but declined. I reckoned he’d only want to load it with sugar.

‘A glass of water,’ he persisted.

I shook my head. I didn’t feel I could swallow anything. Not even water. Anyway, I wondered, looking down at the floor covered in pieces of china and glass, whether it would be possible to find an unbroken glass or mug anywhere among the terrible mess.

PC Bickerton lifted another chair from the floor and stood it upright opposite me. ‘Do you think anything has been taken from the house this time?’ he asked.

‘It’s hard to tell,’ I said, glancing around me at what was left of my home.

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ he agreed. ‘In any case, burglars do trash places, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Never.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think, Mrs Anderson,’ he said. ‘Are you aware of anyone with a grudge against you or your husband?’

‘No,’ I said, realizing as I spoke that as I hadn’t even known my husband’s real name until three weeks ago, I might not be in a position to say who could have a grudge against him. But I didn’t want to involve the police in that side of my life. Not yet, anyway.

There was a crunching noise as PC Jacobs, who had been making his own examination of the house while PC Bickerton seemed to have been delegated to looking after me, appeared in the kitchen, striding confidently over the mess on the floor in his heavy police-issue boots. I wondered vaguely about the wisdom of trampling in such a fashion on what was presumably evidence. But I supposed he knew what he was doing.

‘I wonder if you’d mind coming upstairs with me again to your son’s room, Mrs Anderson?’ he asked. In spite of his courtesy I was aware somehow that he did not seem anything like as sympathetic as PC Bickerton.

‘Of course,’ I said.

I stood up, and followed him upstairs, PC Bickerton behind me. The old prints and paintings which lined the walls of the staircase and landing, mostly gathered by Robbie and me at car boot sales and the like, had been torn down, their glass and even, in some cases, their frames, smashed.

Once that alone would have been enough to reduce me to tears. Now the trashing of my home seemed to be just another in the series of blows I was enduring, and I had no tears left.

PC Jacobs led the way into Robbie’s room and pointed to an object lying on the floor, curiously intact amidst the dreadful mess of his smashed belongings.

It was Robbie’s camcorder. I was surprised I’d failed to notice it when I’d first entered his room earlier. But I suppose I just hadn’t been functioning properly. The two officers presumably hadn’t noticed it, either, first time round, and they also knew about the missing camcorder. But then, they’d probably been concentrating on my reactions, not to mention making sure I didn’t collapse in a heap. Or else the camcorder hadn’t been there earlier. Perhaps PC Jacobs had planted it.

I realized, as the thought presented itself, that this was beyond paranoid. It made absolutely no sense for me now to be the victim of a police set-up, on top of everything else. That was pure fantasy land. Worthy of Robert himself, I reflected wryly.

I glanced at PC Jacobs. He nodded sagely.

‘Do you recognize that camera, Mrs Anderson?’ he asked.

I agreed that I did, and confirmed that it was Robbie’s.

‘The one you told us was definitely missing?’ he enquired.

I affirmed that it was.

‘Stolen by the intruder you thought was in your house last week?’ he persisted.

I found a bit of spirit.

‘I didn’t think there was an intruder,’ I said. ‘There was an intruder. And Robbie’s camcorder was taken. It must have been. This is the first time I’ve seen it since before that night. And what about my iPod? That’s still missing.’

‘Is it, Mrs Anderson?’ Jacobs asked, continuing to speak without giving me chance to reply. ‘An iPod is rather a small object. Don’t you think it may turn up?’

Suddenly I felt totally defeated.

‘I have no idea,’ I said.

‘Neither have I, Mrs Anderson,’ he replied. PC Jacobs sounded sad more than anything else. He tugged at the collar of his uniform shirt as if it were causing him discomfort.

We made our way back to the kitchen. My head was in a total daze. PC Bickerton hovered, and PC Jacobs said he would check the outbuildings.

After a bit Jacobs returned holding by the blade a large axe, the one we used to chop our firewood.

‘I think we’d better get this off to forensics,’ he said, looking straight at me.

Suddenly I was furious. And it gave me my fight back. This idiot now seemed to think I had trashed my own house. And he wasn’t making much of a secret of it.

‘Are you accusing me of something here?’ I demanded as forcefully as I could manage.

Jacobs backed off a little. ‘Certainly not, madam,’ he said. ‘Just pursuing our inquiries.’

‘Do you really think I would do this to my own home?’ I asked, throwing both my arms in the air, gesturing towards the wreckage all around me. ‘Do you really think anyone would? Do you?’

PC Jacobs shrugged. ‘I think you’ve been under a great deal of stress, Mrs Anderson...’ he began.

‘Not that hoary old chestnut again,’ I interrupted. ‘I can’t believe that’s all you can come up with.’

PC Jacobs glanced pointedly down at the axe he was holding. My axe.

‘If you’re going to look for my fingerprints on that, of course you’re going to find them, you bloody fool,’ I stormed at him. ‘My husband is away from home more than half the time. Who do you think chops the wood round here?’