The Cruellest Game

Sixteen

Later that morning, at the more respectable hour of 10 a.m., Gladys Ponsonby Smythe turned up. In spite of the horrors of that dawn visit I remained determined to keep my resolution to find out the whole truth about all that had happened in my life, and the importance of maintaining my strength was pretty obvious. I knew that I had to at least try to eat properly. I also needed to slow up and calm down. I wasn’t going to get anywhere rushing around like a headless chicken. If I didn’t watch it, I was going to end up in prison for a very long time for an offence I hadn’t committed. So I was in the kitchen making myself eat boiled eggs and toasted soldiers when she knocked on the door.

‘Do you realize there are photographers wielding cameras with giant lenses at the top of your drive?’ Gladys asked.

I confirmed that I did.

‘Well, they should be moved on. Do you want me to call the police?’

I shook my head, glad that she knew nothing of my dawn visit from Mrs Macintyre, accompanied by a duo of so-called journalists. I didn’t think I could have coped with Gladys’s reaction to that.

‘Apparently, if they are not actually on my property, there is nothing I can do about it,’ I said. ‘And the police don’t seem to be my biggest fans right now either. The more pressure I’m put under the better as far as they’re concerned, I reckon.’

‘Well, we’ll see about that,’ said Gladys. ‘How’s Marti Smith shaping up?’

‘She seems great,’ I said. ‘But it’s early days. I’m waiting to hear from her about what happens next.’

‘Right.’

Gladys seemed, unusually for her, unsure of exactly what to do or say.

I offered her tea or coffee, saw her glance switch to my mercifully undamaged espresso machine, and remembered that she’d never been properly inside Highrise before. Even in its reduced circumstances the old house remained impressive.

‘I’d love a cappuccino, chuck,’ she said.

‘Of course.’

She watched me make the coffee, a double espresso for me, and took a first appreciative sip of her cappuccino before speaking again.

‘I really came to see if there was anything I could do to help,’ she said. ‘Not to drink your coffee. But this is a treat, I must say.’

She took another sip. She may not have bothered with or, for all I knew, been able to afford too many of the niceties of life at home, but she appreciated them all right when abroad, it seemed. I studied her thoughtfully. There could be no more casual dismissals of the few people who were prepared to help me.

‘Well, there is something,’ I said. ‘The police still have my car and they don’t seem in any hurry to return it. Florrie’s in police kennels somewhere. I don’t even know yet what I have to do to get her back, but she’s sure to need to be collected. If you could do that, it would be really great. I miss her.’

‘Of course I can do that. In fact, just leave the whole thing to me. I’ll call the police and check out the form, then I’ll pick her up for you as soon as possible.’

Gladys looked delighted to have been asked to perform a task, and I already knew she would do it with speed and efficiency.

‘Anything else, luvvie?’ she asked. ‘Do you need any shopping done?’

I shook my head.

‘I’m all right for a bit. Not hungry anyway.’

I gestured at the empty eggshells on my plate.

‘Had to really force these down,’ I said.

Gladys took another sip of her coffee. ‘So you’ve no idea how long the police will keep your car?’

I shook my head again. ‘At least until they’ve decided whether or not they’re going to charge me, I should imagine.’

Gladys grunted. ‘Bloody fools,’ she said. ‘Well, you have to have wheels, don’t you, living out here?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘Do you have a plan?’

Marti Smith was proved right yet again. The vicar’s wife was totally practical. Far more intent on ensuring life carried on as it should than gathering in souls.

‘Not really. I suppose I thought I’d wait a day or so to see what happened, then rent a car if I need to.’

‘You don’t want to do that, chuck,’ she told me firmly. ‘Costs a fortune and you might need every penny you have if the police carry on playing their bloody stupid game.’

She glanced around the kitchen and through the windows providing sweeping views across the garden, towards and beyond the old stable which had been the purveyor of so much grief for me, then out over the moors.

‘Owning this house alone will prevent you getting legal aid,’ she continued.

I hadn’t thought about that. Money had never seemed to be a problem for Robert and me. And Robert had already seemed to indicate that he would be willing to pay my legal fees. But, of course, everyone knew that these fees could be crippling. I also realized that I actually had no idea how our family finances stood. Robert had handled everything. I did now know, however, that my husband was not a highly paid engineering executive in the oil industry, but a glorified labourer, and it was sixteen years previously that he had won the lottery, since when we had lived lavishly in an expensive house and wanted for nothing, and our son’s school fees, albeit aided by his swimming scholarship, had been a substantial and largely unexpected expense over the last few years.

‘What about Robert?’ Gladys asked suddenly. ‘Hasn’t he come home yet? You’re going to need as much help as you can get, and surely that’s what husbands are for. Where is the man?’

I pulled a face. ‘He came yesterday evening,’ I said. ‘Just as Marti and I arrived here. I’m afraid I told him to go away.’

‘Oh dear.’ She looked genuinely distressed for me. And I realized she expected an explanation. After all, absolutely nobody knew the truth about the rift between Robert and me.

‘We’ve been under such stress since Robbie’s death,’ I said. ‘It’s my fault really, I just want to be on my own.’

‘I see,’ she said, looking as if she did anything but see.

‘I expect it will all blow over,’ I lied. ‘But at the moment I’m pretty much on my own. I don’t even know where Robert is.’

‘I see,’ she repeated, then went again into that practical mode in which she was at her most impressive.

‘Right. First things first. Wheels will have to be down to me then. Just let me think about it and have a word round the village. I have an idea already. I’ll get back to you later today.’

She left straight away, enlivened by her new sense of purpose. One shouldn’t mock the Gladys Ponsonby Smythes of this world, I’d come to realize. She really did want to help, and when given the opportunity was extremely effective.

I made myself another double espresso after she’d left and did some more thinking.

I tried to call Sue Shaw again. I had no mobile, of course, but fortunately her number, scribbled on that petrol receipt, was pinned to the cork noticeboard on the wall in the kitchen by the house phone. I thanked the God I’d never believed in for my long-time Luddite habit. But Robbie’s girlfriend wasn’t answering her phone. Of course, her father could still have control of it.

I considered for a moment calling the landline at the Shaw family home, which I knew from my Internet search was listed on directory enquiries. But while I was still thinking about this the house phone rang and Sue’s number flashed onto the screen. I answered eagerly. Unfortunately the caller turned out to be her father.

‘I’m sorry about this, Mrs Anderson, but I’m going to have to ask you to stop calling my daughter,’ he said. ‘She was having a bad enough time dealing with the way your son died and then losing the baby before all this other stuff. I’m sorry, but I really don’t want her speaking to you. So please don’t call again.’

His manner was courteous and his voice level-pitched, but I suspected at once that it was an effort for him to maintain control.

‘I–I only wanted to talk about Robbie,’ I stumbled. ‘I know we both miss him and—’

‘It’s a bit late for that, Mrs Anderson,’ responded Michael Shaw sharply, his underlying anger quickly getting the better of him. ‘Not only did you come to my home uninvited and bully my daughter, but it seems you set the cops on me, not only over how your son died but also over the abduction of that child. Are you out of your mind?’

I mumbled something wimpish. So Jarvis and his team had conducted further inquiries as promised. At the very least it would seem that they had interviewed Michael Shaw. Only at the moment, that did not appear to be helping my case very much.

‘What the hell were you thinking of?’ Shaw continued, and he was shouting at me now. ‘Do you think I’m as barking mad as you are, is that it? Do you think I’d go around snatching innocent children in order to get some sort of perverted revenge on you and your precious son? Don’t you fret, Mrs Anderson, anything I want to do or say to you I’ll do it direct, only I’m probably too decent a bloke to give you what you really fucking well deserve. You’re quite crazy enough to have taken that child, I’m dammed sure of that, and I hope the police throw the fucking book at you. I hope they lock you up and lose the fucking key...’

Luke Macintyre’s mother had already given me much the same message in much the same language. I couldn’t listen to any more of it. In any case there was little point. I ended the call and took a deep, deep breath. I asked myself what else I could expect. Of course Michael Shaw was furious. He would be furious whether or not he was responsible in any way for Robbie’s death or Luke Macintyre’s abduction. But the latter did seem unlikely, I had to admit. And either way, it seemed clear that the Shaw family were now totally off the radar to me. I had to sort out the whole ghastly mess for myself.

Firstly there were a couple of other phone calls I wanted to make. I never had made that walk on the beach with Bella nor offered an explanation for not doing so. Not, I realized, that I would really need to do that. Bella could hardly have missed the level of media coverage my arrest had attracted. Whether or not she had tried to call me since hearing the news was unknown since the police still had my mobile phone and I hadn’t ever given her the Highrise landline number.

I remembered how kind she had been to me on the night of Robbie’s death. If anything, I had been plunged into even deeper despair by subsequent events than I had been then. And Bella, for whatever reason, had been the person who gave me some sort of comfort at the start of this dreadful nightmare I was now living. Maybe she really was the nearest thing I had to a friend. Gladys had been kind, too. More than kind. And wonderfully practical and helpful. But she didn’t hit the spot the way Bella did.

I so much wanted to call Bella. But, during our first meeting on Exmouth beach, which now seemed so very long ago, I’d plumbed her number straight into my detained mobile, and I had no other record of it. I tried directory enquiries to see if I could get a landline number for her, but I had no proper address, and a not particularly helpful operator could find no listing.

I called Dad again as I’d promised. He still sounded terribly upset, probably not least because I again turned down his offer to drive to Highrise to look after me.

I checked my watch. It was now 11 a.m. I decided that if I hadn’t heard from Gladys by two o’clock, I would get a taxi into Okehampton, go to the bank again, draw every last penny out of my joint account with Robert and hire a car regardless.

However, not long after noon I heard two vehicles pull into the yard. I opened the front door and looked out. Gladys was driving one of them. I saw that she had Florrie in the back.

She coasted to a halt, stepped out of her car into the yard and, smiling broadly, opened one of the rear doors releasing my dog. Florrie demolished the distance between us in one bound then covered me with licks. And hair, of course. None the less, I cuddled her close.

‘However did you manage to get her here so quickly?’ I asked, while thanking Gladys profusely.

The vicar’s wife tapped the side of her prominent nose. ‘Not what you know, but who you know, flower,’ she said.

Meanwhile a man I couldn’t quite place, but whose face looked vaguely familiar, stepped out of the second vehicle, a small, not very new Ford.

Gladys introduced him as Bert Jameson, churchwarden at St Andrew’s. The man shook my hand with surprising warmth, I thought, under the circumstances.

‘This is Bert’s boy’s car,’ Gladys continued. ‘’Fraid young Charlie likes to put his foot down a bit too much and he’s got himself into a spot of bother. Too many points on his licence. Off the road for six months. He and his dad say you’re welcome to borrow the car as long as you pay the extra for the insurance. Sorry it’s not quite the class of motor you’re used to.’

‘Oh, Gladys, Bert, thank you so very much,’ I said with genuine gratitude. ‘It looks like a limo to me, I can tell you.’

I invited them in, offering them both coffee.

‘The espresso machine’s on standby,’ I told Gladys.

‘Alas, we can’t,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a wedding tomorrow morning, and Bert and I have to finish preparing the church.’

I was shamefully rather pleased, even though they were doing me the most enormous favour. I didn’t feel up to polite chit-chat. And I reckoned Gladys realized that, understanding so much more about human nature than I’d given her credit for.

Anyway, I wanted to get out of the house that no longer felt like my home. And I decided that as I couldn’t phone Bella I might try to pay her a visit. She’d referred to walking home from Bodley School, which narrowed down the territory considerably. As much for something to do as anything else, I thought I would just drive around the area for a bit and see if I could spot her car.

I wrapped a silk scarf around my head and put on a pair of clear glass spectacles, which we’d once been given as part of an advertising campaign by a company promoting designer frames, as some sort of elementary disguise and protection. I thought I could at least prevent any lurking snappers getting a halfway decent shot of me, and also hopefully avoid the sort of public recognition that might lead to another incident like the one outside Heavitree Road Police Station when that rotten orange had been thrown.

I bundled Florrie into the back of Charlie Jameson’s elderly Ford, which started at the second attempt, and I trundled up the lane. Flash bulbs half blinded me as I turned left heading towards the Exeter road, past two camera-wielding young men.

The rain was freezing again. The wind bitter off the moors. The two photographers were muffled in big scarves and waterproof gear. Their faces were white and pinched and they looked freezing too. Which pleased me considerably, and was certainly about the only thing that day likely to bring me any pleasure.

I stopped at a petrol station to fill up the tank and bought a packet of boiled sweets. I was pleased that I knew my way to Bodley School as the little Ford had no sat nav.

I drove past the end of the road where I’d once lived, in the little studio flat in a big old Victorian house where Robert and I had first become lovers, and on through Exwick towards Bodley School. I turned onto the leafy street of neat little 1930s semis, very like the Shaws’ home in Okehampton, which led directly to Bodley, the street in which I’d somehow assumed Bella would be likely to live. I was hoping to see her car parked outside one of the houses.

I didn’t, so I carried on driving, ultimately turning onto the road which ran into the dreaded Bridge Estate, a place we teachers at Bodley, to our shame perhaps, had more or less regarded as a no-go area. I noticed that this road was called Riverview Avenue, and wondered if there could be a more unsuitable name. I was pretty sure I hadn’t even known the name of the road when I’d taught at Bodley all those years ago. Yet I was conscious of something niggling at me about Riverview Avenue, a significance which lurked somewhere in the back of my mind that I couldn’t quite pull forward.

Looking around me, I was aware that the River Exe could not be far away, but there was certainly no view of it. Neither did there appear to be a single tree along this ‘avenue’, which became more and more grim as I drove deeper into the Bridge Estate.

Hardly any of the little front gardens looked as if anyone ever paid them any attention. Several of the houses had broken windows. The garages, built in blocks on one side of the avenue, were covered in graffiti.

In the West Country we are spoiled when it comes to places to live and everything, I suppose, is relative. Gladys, ever full of surprises, and hardened by inner-city Liverpool, probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But I was shocked. I hadn’t realized the Bridge Estate was as bad as this. And I wondered if it had deteriorated since my time teaching close by.

I was even more shocked to spot Bella’s Toyota Corolla on the hardstand in front of number 5 Riverview Avenue, right in the most undesirable heart of the estate. A group of rather frightening-looking young men in hoodies were lounging by the row of dilapidated garages opposite, openly smoking suspiciously large and droopy-looking cigarettes.

I coasted past and parked at what I hoped would be just the right distance to give me a decent view of the house without being spotted by anybody going in or out. It was one of the most unkempt in the road. A broken bicycle and an old mattress lay strewn across the little front garden. Two or three tubs bearing dried-out conifers were the only sign of an ill-fated, obviously long ago, attempt at any sort of gardening. The windows were filthy and it looked as if the curtains hanging inside were ragged and dirty.

I couldn’t somehow associate this at all with the woman I’d thought I was beginning to get to know, the woman who had seemed so organized and almost professionally kind, like the nurse she’d told me she’d once been, on the night of Robbie’s death. Then I had a thought. The car on the hardstand was the right make and colour, of course, but Bella might not be the only person living within walking distance of Bodley School to own such a vehicle. I peered at it more closely. I remembered noticing some time ago that the rear wing on the driver’s side of Bella’s car had been quite badly dented and the end of the bumper which wrapped partially round the wing twisted upwards at an angle. I always noticed damage to cars. Of course, she could have had it repaired. But apparently not. This vehicle had the same distinctive amendment. It had to be Bella’s car. And this had to be her house.

I reflected on my own beautiful home and the impression it must have made on Bella, something which I hadn’t given a thought to before. But then, I hadn’t expected the contrast to be quite as great. Everything in my life must have looked so perfect and enviable to Bella.

I just couldn’t quite bring myself to go and knock on the door, with its peeling yellow paint and the number slightly askew. Instead I sat there looking at the place, thankful all over again for the little old Ford which was now a bonus in more ways than one. My Lexus would have stood out like Joan Collins on a Saga holiday. The Ford fitted in perfectly. Even so, the hoodies paid me rather more attention than I would have liked. I suppose it was because I was a stranger in a strange car in what may have been a rough area but was probably also a tight community. I felt very uncomfortable, but I still sat there for about half an hour just watching, really, though I wasn’t sure for what, unless it was for further confirmation that this was Bella’s house because I still couldn’t quite believe it.

Making myself ignore the attentions of the hoodies, who walked by once or twice staring at me long and hard, I wound down the driver’s window. I could hear a dog barking, from within number 5, I was sure. Was it Flash’s bark? I couldn’t be certain, but if not then the barking dog was certainly the same sort of size as Flash.

I glanced across at the garage marked number 5. The flip-up-and-over door stood half open and, in common with most of the others in the row, did not look as if it would shut properly, let alone lock. All the same, I guessed that most of the residents garaged their cars at night if only in the belief that by putting their vehicles out of sight they would lessen temptation to would-be vandals.

Then my attention was drawn to a drumming sound above my head. To my alarm I realized that one of the hoodies was walking past nonchalantly running his fingertips along the Ford’s roof. I nearly swallowed one of my boiled sweets whole. Florrie, always a good traveller, was contentedly curled up on the back seat, but she did manage a noise vaguely resembling a growl, and I was pathetically glad of her presence even though I knew what a big softy she was.

It seemed crazy, but I realized I could be putting myself in danger by just sitting in a parked vehicle on that road. In spite of the Toyota outside and the barking dog I could actually see no sign of inhabitation at number 5. And anyway I no longer had any wish to visit Bella. I really couldn’t.

I turned the key in the Ford’s ignition. It started on the fourth attempt just as I was beginning to get anxious and the hoodies were beginning to look even more interested.

Visiting Bella had in any case been little more than a displacement activity. There was so much I intended to do. So much I needed to do. So many crazy thoughts running through my head. I drove straight to an Internet cafe I’d passed earlier on the road out of Exeter. I now had no computer of any kind at home, and I wanted to check Robert out again, as Anderton and Anderson. Just as I’d done before my arrest, using the iPad I so wished the police had not taken from me.

The results were, of course, exactly the same as before. However, I was perhaps a different person from the woman who had first checked out her husband in this way. I’d been desperate then but was even more so now. I’d been arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of a child for a start, and that just didn’t seem believable. But it had happened all right, and I couldn’t help thinking that it was in some way linked to the death of my son and the discoveries I had made about Robert. I studied carefully the names and addresses of, in particular, all the Devon ‘Andertons’, looking for any sort of clue, anything that might mean something to me now which hadn’t before. It was quite an exercise.

When I’d finished I ordered a second coffee. I needed to sit and think for a bit, to assimilate and evaluate the information I had accumulated. After half an hour or so, still pondering my day’s activities, I made my way to a mobile phone shop I’d noticed just a block or so away and bought myself a pay-as-you-go phone.Then I drove home via Exeter Waitrose, which, unfortunately from my point of view, stands almost adjacent to Heavitree Road Police Station. I stocked up on provisions other than bacon and eggs and whisky, thinking as I did so that I might soon have to shop somewhere more cheaply. I was too late to catch the bank in Okehampton and empty the joint account as I had earlier planned, but I had transport now and in any case I didn’t suppose it mattered much. Unless I could find a way of proving my innocence, any financial difficulties I might face would soon be irrelevant. I would be in jail.

And one thing had become very clear. There was someone out there determined to ensure that I was going to jail.