The Cruellest Game

Eleven

I suppose swearing at a police officer is never an especially good idea. PC Jacobs told me stonily that he would overlook my expletives under the circumstances. I knew I had been pretty stupid, however it’s quite bad enough having your home destroyed without being accused of doing it yourself. As near as dammit, anyway.

Particularly after what I’d already been through.

I remained silent as he left the house. I didn’t really trust myself to speak to the man.

‘But you do really have to get help, Mrs Anderson,’ he told me, over his shoulder, for what felt like the umpteenth time.

PC Bickerton held back a little. I didn’t think he was quite so certain that I was mad enough to have wrecked the place.

‘If you call the station tomorrow, they’ll give you a crime number,’ he said.

I looked at him blankly.

‘Also, we will be checking your property for fingerprints, Mrs Anderson, and asking to take yours for purposes of elimination,’ he went on. ‘But as nobody has been hurt it’s not top priority—’

‘So when is it likely to happen?’ I interrupted.

‘Could be two to three weeks. Possibly more—’

‘And what exactly will be the point of it then?’ I interrupted again.

He shrugged. I noticed he was carrying at arm’s length a transparent plastic evidence bag with a dark brown substance in it which I suspected had been removed from my sitting room, presumably as a DNA sample. They were going to do some checking, then, it seemed.

‘Don’t you also need a DNA sample from me for the purposes of elimination?’ I went on.

‘Well, yes, perhaps you could pop into the station sometime. I’ll get someone to call you with an appointment.’

‘As long as you’re taking me seriously.’

PC Bickerton shuffled his feet.

‘Look, are you sure you want to stay here tonight, Mrs Anderson?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘Yes. Anyway, I have nowhere else to go.’

‘There must be somewhere,’ he persisted.

I shook my head. ‘No, but it makes no difference. This is where I live and I’m staying here. Nobody is driving me out.’

‘Well, you really shouldn’t be here alone, you know. What if something else happened?’

‘I thought you and PC Jacobs believed I’d done all this myself?’

Bickerton didn’t respond to that.

‘I could probably get a PCSO over.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A Police Community Support Officer.’

I could think of little I would like less than the company of some sort of assistant policeman.

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

Bickerton shook his head sorrowfully.

‘Well, Jim and I are on duty till the early hours, so we’ll keep an eye.’

I was actually rather grateful for that, but I certainly wasn’t going to show it.

As a child and a young woman I’d had a reputation for being stubborn. My dad used to say that I might have been small in stature but I had a big heart and a strong will. During all those years of my apparently idyllic existence with Robert and our son I’d had no reason to take a stand about anything much, and I suppose I’d become a fairly benign sort of person.

But that evening, amid the wreckage of my home and of my life, I could feel that indigenous stubbornness returning.

And I remembered my road to Damascus moment on the moors the previous weekend. There was no longer any question of me attempting to escape, by any means at all, including suicide, from the desperate crazy world I now appeared to inhabit. I was not going to be beaten. Somehow or other I was going to find out what was going on. I needed to know who could hate me and Robert so much that they would embark on a vicious campaign to further destroy lives that were already broken, probably beyond repair.

First I had to protect myself. And I didn’t need PC Bickerton to remind me not to repeat the mistake I had made after the first break-in at Highrise. I needed to get my locks changed. Fast. I called an emergency twenty-four-hour locksmith company in Exeter. Rather to my surprise, they agreed to have someone at Highrise within a couple of hours. Apparently coming to the rescue of panicking householders really was their speciality.

While I waited for one of their employees to arrive I went out to the car to fetch Florrie. And as I led her along the hallway I remembered I hadn’t yet fed her. I left her outside the kitchen door, aware of how much she could damage herself walking amidst all the debris inside, piled some tinned food into her bowl, thankfully made of stainless steel or I imagine that would have been smashed too, and carried it out into the hall for her.

Then, unwilling to face the horrors of even beginning to clear up the desecrated house that night, I sat on the bottom of the stairs cuddled up with Florrie until the locksmith arrived, actually only just over an hour later. He was a cheerful-looking chap, who told me his name was Billy, but his face registered a kind of bewildered embarrassment when confronted with the state of Highrise. Billy said little as he crunched about over broken furniture, shattered glass and smashed crockery, but he worked fast, taking little more than an hour and a half to change all three of my locks.

After Billy left I realized I was still quite numb with the shock of what had been done to Highrise. And all this on top of Robbie’s horrible death. I didn’t dare dwell on any of it. Not that night. What I needed was oblivion.

Automatically I began to lead Florrie to the kitchen, then I realized that I could not leave her there overnight amidst layers of broken glass and crockery. Indeed, it was a miracle she hadn’t cut her paws already.

‘You’re going to have to sleep upstairs with me tonight, girl,’ I told her. She wagged her tail gleefully. I swear that dog understood every word I said.

I also realized that while I had fed Florrie I had eaten nothing myself. But I still had no interest in food. Drink was a different matter. I stepped across the hall, wriggled my way through the little door leading to Robert’s wine store in the cellar, which had mercifully and miraculously escaped the attention of whoever had destroyed so much of the house — presumably they just hadn’t found it — and selected two of his finest and most expensive French reds.

I found a bottle opener among the wreckage of the kitchen and uncorked them both. Then, after checking the back door was locked and all the windows downstairs firmly closed, I carried the wine upstairs to the guest bedroom I had been using. The bedclothes, along with my beloved pink Turnbull & Asser pyjamas, had been pulled off the bed and tossed carelessly around the room, but otherwise the bed was undamaged and, most thankfully of all, unsoiled.

I undressed, picked up my pyjamas from the floor and put them on. The door to the en-suite shower room stood open and I could see that the tooth mug which lived there remained intact in its wall bracket. I collected it and filled it to the brim with red wine. I pulled the bedding back on the bed and climbed in.

Florrie, hardly believing her luck, jumped up straight away, snuggled close and lay her head on the empty pillow beside me. Robert would have been horrified. It had been so much more his decision, rather than mine, that she be confined to her bed in the kitchen at night. I’d never thought about it before but her warm furry presence was extremely comforting, and from now on one of many changes I intended was that Florrie should have bedroom privileges. Regardless of the hairy residue she would leave behind.

I stroked her head, picked up the tooth mug, downed its contents in almost one swallow, filled it again and emptied it just as swiftly. Even at that moment it gave me a kind of perverted pleasure to dispose of Robert’s best wine in such a manner because I knew how it would have offended him.

The third mug finished off the first bottle and I drank it more slowly, washing down two zolpidem as I did so. Then, after a moment’s thought, I swallowed another pill just to make sure.

For the first time since Robbie’s death the only emotion I felt was anger, perhaps because I had no other emotion left. But I did need to block out the world. I was, of course, extremely anxious about being alone in Highrise in spite of the new locks and in spite of my show of bravado to PC Bickerton. The next day I planned to make it even more difficult for whoever it was to enter my property again. Meanwhile I just wanted to sink into enough of a stupor to get me through the night. And I did. After drinking slightly more than half of the second bottle, I slept soundly until about six o’clock the following morning.

Florrie, her head resting on my chest, seemed to have been waiting for me to open my eyes. She wagged her tail and licked my face.

My mouth felt uncomfortably dry and I had a dull headache. A hangover presumably. It was so long since I’d had one of those I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. This one, it had to be admitted, was well deserved. But at least I’d found the oblivion I had both sought and so badly needed, and I did now feel, in a strange way, able to begin to face the chaos that surrounded me.

I dressed in the jeans and sweater I now kept in the guest room and, remembering the debris all over the kitchen, dug out a pair of old trainers from the cupboard on the landing. Then I led Florrie downstairs, letting her out of the front door as I did not want to risk taking her into the kitchen again until I’d cleared up a bit.

I found a mug which was chipped and had lost most of its handle, and made myself tea. While Florrie was still outside pottering about I retrieved a spade from the garden shed, and a brush from the cupboard in the hall. I began sweeping up the debris that covered the kitchen floor and shovelling it into heavy-duty bin bags. I piled these outside the back door.

I switched the big fridge back on and replaced any food that could be retrieved from the mess. Like packets of bacon that had been frozen, now defrosted but surely come to no harm in such a brief period, packaged sliced bread, a tub or two of butter, packets of cheese and so on.

The rest of it, including the smashed remains of a box of half a dozen eggs (I was thankful that at least there were no more), I binned. I used my vacuum cleaner, which fortunately was one of those that dealt with liquid, to suck up the worst of the mess left by broken eggs and spilt milk and wine. Then I let Florrie back into the house, gave her a handful of her breakfast biscuits and checked my watch. It was still only just gone seven o’clock. Too early to begin the phone calls I wanted to make.

In spite of everything my stomach reminded me that I was hungry. I’d eaten nothing since a school lunch of dubious merit the previous day. And a lot had happened since then.

I opened a packet of bacon, and lay five rashers across the base of one of my selection of iron frying pans, something else more or less impervious to any sort of damage. When the bacon started to frizzle up I moved it to the side of the pan and added two slices of bread. After both bacon and bread were cooked to my satisfaction — I liked my bacon very crispy and the bread too — I let the pan cool a little then ate directly from it. But then, I didn’t have a lot of choice. It seemed that there wasn’t an unbroken plate in the kitchen.

By the time I’d finished, and made and drank a couple of double espressos, thankful at least that the built-in espresso machine had escaped the wrecker’s attention, it was approaching eight o’clock, and certainly an hour that would be considered respectable by Tom Farley, to whom Saturdays I knew were just another working day.

Our number one local handyman was an unflappable sort of chap invariably willing to take on almost any job. Above all, he drove a large white van. Even Robert had liked and respected Tom, and sometimes, I’d thought, actually quite enjoyed his company when Tom had helped him with work on the house. On the very rare occasions when we took a few days’ holiday — Robert always said there wasn’t a better place in the world than Highrise so why would he want to go away? — it was to Tom we gave a key to the house so that he could keep an eye on the place and water the indoor plants. I couldn’t help reflecting a moment on those days. In the summer we would occasionally rent a little coastguard’s cottage virtually on the beach just outside Padstow in Cornwall, walk for miles along the cliffs, barbecue fresh fish, and bathe in the sea when the weather allowed. We never went abroad. Of course, I knew why now, didn’t I? Robert’s passport would almost certainly be in the name of Rob Anderton, wouldn’t it? I suddenly realized I had never seen his passport and didn’t even know if he had one. He really had been so duplicitous and I, it now seemed, had been so ridiculously trusting.

I shook myself out of my reverie and dialled Tom’s number.

There was a distinct note of sympathy in his voice when I told him who was calling.

‘What can I do for you, Mrs Anderson?’ he asked.

I’d noticed that Tom had been at Robbie’s funeral. He and his wife had briefly paid their respects as Robert and I had left the cemetery, awkwardly muttering condolences, though I didn’t remember seeing either of them at the pub afterwards. But Tom worked all hours. He’d probably had a job to do.

I explained that Robert had returned to work, that our house had been wrecked by a person or persons unknown, and that I needed help to clear up the mess, take irreparable items away and so on.

He wondered what the world was coming to, asked who on earth would do something like that to a woman in my situation, and said that under the circumstances he’d come round that very afternoon.

‘I’ve got a job on this morning I can’t put off,’ he said. ‘But I should be able to make it about one. And I’ll ’ave our Eddie with me. Good as a man now, that lad.’

I thanked him, ended the call, and removed my iPad from my schoolbag, grateful that I was in the habit of taking it to school with me or it would surely have been destroyed or stolen. I knew I might be closing the stable door after the horse had bolted, and in a way rather hoped that I was, but I’d already decided that I wanted more security if I was going to stay at Highrise. I looked up burglar alarm companies which supplied systems linked to some kind of security service — an unconnected bell, however strident, would be no use at all, alerting only the birds and the beasts of the moors to any intrusion. I called the most likely looking one, Top Alarm Security, based in Exeter, hoping fervently that they operated on a Saturday. They did. I told them I needed my case to be treated as an emergency. They offered to send an advisor to give me an estimate later that day. I told them I just needed some sort of alarm system to be fitted straight away, and I would accept whatever their standard charges were. They warned there would be an extra charge for Saturday, and they might not be able to complete a full installation. Ultimately we agreed that two of their engineers would arrive at 4 p.m., thus giving the Farleys and me time to clear up the worst of the mess.

Then I decided to have one last crack at convincing the police that I was a victim of crime, not a perpetrator of senseless destruction as I thought they believed.

I called DS Jarvis to tell him what had been going on. I quite expected, however, to be patched through to Heavitree Road again, and was mildly surprised when the detective sergeant himself answered almost at once. I got the impression, though, that he had been expecting another call and had not looked at his phone’s display panel before answering. But he seemed quite pleasant and helpful. At first anyway.

‘Yes, I do know about it,’ he said when I began to explain the events of the previous night.

‘It is the second incident,’ I persisted.

‘I know that too,’ he said.

‘Right. So is anyone actually doing anything about it?’

‘Of course, Mrs Anderson. Inquiries are proceeding, and we are doing all we can.’

‘But the two policemen who came round yesterday gave every impression that they thought I imagined the first break-in, then trashed my house myself,’ I said. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

There was a pause.

‘I’m really not aware of that, Mrs Anderson,’ he answered patiently. ‘This force takes all incidents of burglary and damage to property very seriously indeed...’

There was another pause.

‘Look, hold on a minute will you.’

I could vaguely hear him talking to someone else. When he returned he did not sound quite so patient.

‘Look, Mrs Anderson, we have two officers investigating the incidents you have reported,’ he said. ‘It’s their case, not mine now. I really cannot help you any further and—’

‘Please listen to me,’ I said. ‘Something is going on that I don’t understand. It’s not burglary, that’s for certain. Hardly anything’s been taken. It’s some sort of attack on me, and maybe my husband too. And I feel sure it must be connected to Robbie’s death. I don’t know how, but it just must be. Robbie’s death is your case, isn’t it? And you told me to call you any time.’

DS Jarvis sighed.

‘Actually, to be honest, Mrs Anderson, we are, of course, awaiting the inquest and the coroner’s verdict, but we feel it is unlikely that we can take your son’s case any further,’ he said. ‘As for the other matter, the two incidents at your home, as I told you, our inquiries are proceeding and we are doing all that we can.’

He sounded weary. And no longer that interested.

‘I don’t believe that,’ I said angrily. ‘At the very least, and whatever you say, I don’t think I am being taken seriously.’

‘Of course you are being taken seriously, Mrs Anderson. But I have seen the reports of your two suspected break-ins and we do have to look at all possible scenarios—’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ I interrupted again. ‘You don’t believe me either, do you? I’m the victim here, for God’s sake.’

‘Mrs Anderson, I can assure you that no conclusions whatsoever will be drawn until our inquiries have been completed,’ he said. ‘Look, we do understand how upset you must be.’

‘You have no idea how upset I am,’ I replied. ‘First my son dies, having apparently taken his own life — which I will never accept, by the way — then I hear intruders in my house while I’m in bed at night, and then my home is wrecked, my belongings trashed, excrement smeared over the walls, the floors, and the furniture—’

It was DS Jarvis’s turn to interrupt me. ‘Mrs Anderson, I’m really sorry, I have assured you that everything possible is being done, and I really do have to end this call now. The entire force is at full stretch because of the Luke Macintyre abduction, as I’m sure you can understand.’

I was bewildered. Who the heck was Luke Macintyre and what did that have to do with me and my Robbie?

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

‘Then you must be just about the only person in the country who doesn’t.’ He rather spat that at me, then added: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Anderson, I didn’t mean to be short. It’s pretty obvious you wouldn’t have been taking much interest in news of the outside world lately. When you do catch up I know you will appreciate why I’m not able to give you the time either of us might like right now.’

He ended the call without waiting for a response.

Straight away I looked around for the remote control to switch on the TV. Only then did I remember its shattered screen. I headed for the study. There was, I was pretty sure, an old-fashioned portable, with a built-in video player, stowed away at the back of the big cupboard in the corner. We’d kept it just in case. It was still there. I pulled it out, carried it into the kitchen and connected it to our Sky box, intact on its purpose-built shelf tucked under a kitchen cabinet. The TV was analogue, of course, but I believed that it would still work with the Sky system. I was right. I tuned into Sky News.

The main item, topping each bulletin and repeated again and again, was the story of a three-year-old boy, Luke Macintyre, who had been abducted from the front garden of his Exeter home. He had now been missing for almost two days.

There was footage of his distraught parents. His tearful mother explained that she’d been with the little boy in the garden, playing ball with him, until she’d run inside the house to answer the phone.

‘I suppose I expected Luke to follow me, he follows me everywhere, only this time he didn’t. I was only a minute or two, just a couple of minutes. But when I went outside again he was gone. The garden gate was ajar, I thought he’d trotted off down the road, I went after him straight away. He’d disappeared, just disappeared...’

She could not continue. Her husband led her away and DS Jarvis made the usual sort of police statement calling for anyone who might know anything about Luke Macintyre’s whereabouts to come forward.

I found myself quite mesmerized. I knew how those parents felt, of course. They feared losing their son, their only child it transpired, just as I had lost my only child. The only real difference was that they still had hope. Hope that their little boy would be found alive and well.

I could understand, however, that in some ways that almost made the whole thing worse. The desperation in the eyes of little Luke’s parents had been terrible to see.

It cut me to the quick. Oh God, I thought. The whole world is falling apart.

For a moment I lost my determination not to be beaten. The strength I had somehow managed to find, the will to clear up Highrise and even to begin to rebuild my life yet again, and my resolve to find out the truth about all that had happened evaporated.

I felt totally alone in the world. Abandoned. But was I? There was still Robert, wasn’t there? Maybe he really was all I had left. And maybe I could not get through this without him, after all. I reached for the phone to send him a message, to share with him all that had happened, to ask him to come home to comfort me. To look after me. And he would come at once. I knew that.

Then I snatched back my hand. The Robert I wanted by my side no longer existed. Indeed, the terrible truth was that he had never really existed.

I slumped to the floor amid the wreckage of my home and the wreckage of my life. I wrapped my arms around my knees and sobbed my heart out.