The Cruellest Game

Twenty

The following afternoon DS Jarvis phoned to say that Robert had been charged with the murder of his wife. His legal wife.

‘We’re just about to release a press statement. I didn’t want you to see it on the news,’ he said.

Bizarrely, I reflected on his new-found sensitivity before the enormity of his words hit me. It had been obvious this might happen since my first conversation with Jarvis and Price three days earlier. None the less, I found myself totally shocked. I was standing by the kitchen table. I sat down with a bump.

Nothing that Robert had said had given any indication he was likely to confess to killing his wife. Indeed, he had still been half protesting her innocence of any wrongdoing and insistent that she was not involved in Robbie’s death.

‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘Everybody seemed so sure Brenda Anderton’s death was an accident.’

‘That was when we had no reason to believe anyone may have wanted to kill her,’ said Jarvis. ‘The kind of woman she appeared to be, a married mother going about her business, did not suggest there was anything suspicious about her death. So the investigation proceeded on that basis. But after what you told us, about your husband’s double life and Brenda Anderton’s stalking of you and your son, we had the car re-examined by forensics. And we called in your husband for interview and subsequently arrested and charged him.’

‘Has he admitted it then?’ I asked.

‘Look, I can’t go into details,’ he said. ‘But let’s just say we have found evidence to indicate that this was no accident. We know the car had been tampered with, and in such a way that it could only have been done by someone with expert knowledge. And we already know from you that he is an accomplished motor mechanic.’

It had all happened so fast. I had been aware of the effect of what I had earlier told the police. I had seen the reactions of Jarvis and Price. Yet I was shocked rigid. My mouth felt dry. I had no words.

The months leading up to Robert’s trial at Exeter Crown Court in March the following year passed in a kind of limbo. I was barely able to even think about my shattered life, let alone attempt to rebuild it.

My car and all the rest of my personal possessions, including everything that had been detained at Heavitree Road Police Station, were returned to me. So was the hard drive of Robbie’s Mac, no longer any good to me, and his phone, which I eagerly checked out.

There were records of the call Sue Shaw had told me she’d made to Robbie on the day he died, and of several attempts he’d made to call her back. He’d also sent her a text — We must talk — making no specific reference to the immense news Sue had given him. If he had mentioned her pregnancy, presumably the police would have picked up on it. Even taking into account the lack of any real interest that they’d displayed at the time, I thought wryly.

I also heard from DS Jarvis that DNA extracted from the sample of excrement removed from Highrise matched that of Brenda Anderton.

‘We can’t try a dead woman,’ he said. ‘I just thought you’d like to know.’

I thanked him. But I’d known that anyway, of course.

I pretty much locked myself away inside Highrise. Actually, I didn’t have a lot of choice. The financial problems I had half expected kicked in just before Christmas, a couple of weeks after Robert’s arrest.

The first indication came when I tried to pay for one of my regular Waitrose shops with my American Express card and it was declined. My Barclaycard was also declined. But my Barclays Connect card, my debit card linked to the joint account in Robert’s and my name, was, however, and much to my relief, accepted.

I had gone into denial about my finances — I’d known full well that I should make enquiries into my financial situation and I had done nothing about it. In the distant-seeming days when all had apparently been well with my family, I had known little or nothing about our financial affairs except that our household bills were paid by direct debit or standing order from our Barclays joint account. The statements for this account arrived at Highrise regularly and I sometimes gave them a cursory glance, if Robert was not at home, before putting them into a drawer of the desk in the study to await his return.

I knew that Robert had another Barclays account solely in his name into which his Amaco salary was paid. Robbie’s school fees and other larger or irregular expenditures, like the purchase of a new car, were paid for directly out of this account, from which a substantial monthly amount was transferred to our joint account. It was the way Robert had liked to handle things, and I’d had no reason to question him.

Robert had always been vague about his Amaco salary, but had indicated that it was into six figures annually, and that level of income would have been necessary to fund our lifestyle. He’d said the precise amount varied according to the hours he put in, and also whether or not bonuses were paid. Again, I never pressed him because we always appeared to have more than enough for our needs. It now seemed obvious, however, that the bulk of the transferred sums must have come from his lottery win. Certainly no rigger would be likely to earn that sort of money and, unknown to me, Robert had been supporting a second family.

I drove home far too fast, rushed into the sitting room, and removed all the remaining joint account bank statements from the desk drawer. The most recent had arrived since Robert’s arrest and I’d not even opened it. I tore the envelope apart. It showed an overdraft of £1,615 and 10p. And I had never seen the account overdrawn before.

I checked the ‘money in’ column. During November and so far in December there had been no transfer at all from the R. Anderson account. Then I checked the ‘money out’ column. There were no payments to either Barclaycard or American Express, and it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t think any such payment had ever been made from this account. I could only assume that our credit card bills had been paid from Robert’s sole account, or even from some other one I knew nothing about, and that this account was no longer in funds.

It suddenly struck me that I had never seen a statement for the R. Anderson account. I rifled through every drawer in the desk, and had another quick look anywhere in the house that it seemed likely the statements might be kept. But I knew I would find nothing. After all, I had searched thoroughly enough already, looking for anything in the name of Rob Anderton and any paperwork connected to Robert’s lottery win. I found myself wondering about that too, suddenly. Had he really won the lottery? The money to fund us, his second family, must have come from somewhere. But perhaps he’d robbed a bank. That thought was not a serious one. At first. But when I considered it further, well, who could guess what R. Anderton/Anderson might have been capable of doing in order to live out his lie?

Robert and I were Barclays Premier customers. That meant, unusually in the modern age, that we had access to a personal bank manager for whom we had a mobile phone number. I remembered that his details were also stored in the office desk drawer along with the joint account statements. I found the necessary paperwork and dialled the number, for the first time ever. After all, Robert dealt with all that kind of thing. I was connected to a recorded message, but at least it had been recorded by the man himself, one George Lindsay. I left my name and number. Rather to my surprise, less than a couple of hours later, he returned my call.

I asked him the current balance of our joint account and was told it was now £2,540 and 32p overdrawn.

‘But you have an overdraft limit of £5,000,’ he said.

Yes, I thought, and it looks like that is all I now have.

‘I wonder if you could also give me the balance of my husband’s sole account,’ I said.

There was a brief silence before George Lindsay replied.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Anderson. As your name is not on that account I am not able to give you that information.’

I thought fast. Faster than I had for some time.

‘Mr Lindsay, I’m sure you must be aware, are you not, of my circumstances, of all that has happened to my family, and that my husband is in prison awaiting trial?’

‘Well, yes, of course I am, and I am very sorry for your—’

‘Yes, Mr Lindsay,’ I interrupted. ‘Of course you are, it’s been all over the media, hasn’t it? So, therefore, if I were to ask you to indicate if it was likely to be possible for any moneys to be transferred from that R. Anderson account into our joint account in the near future, could you not do so?’

There was a slightly longer silence this time before George Lindsay spoke again. He spoke with a distinct North Devon accent, something I always found reassuring, probably for no other reason than having been brought up there.

‘I think I can do that, Mrs Anderson,’ he said. ‘And no, it is not likely to be possible. Certainly not for as long as your husband remains in prison and unable to deal with his affairs.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lindsay,’ I said. ‘I have just one other question. Will that overdraft limit still be honoured?’

‘I see no reason why not,’ said George Lindsay, whom I was quite sure could see any number of reasons why not.

Thank God for that, I thought. And thank God too, I reckoned, for George Lindsay. I hadn’t known that banks still employed human beings. His days had to be numbered, surely.

I realized what I should do next was contact Robert in prison. But I had no wish to, even though he had given every indication of wishing to stay in close contact. I’d already received several letters from him, which I hadn’t opened, and there had even been phone calls I’d left to the answer machine, deleting the messages before even listening to them. In any case I suspected that he would be unable to help even if he wanted to. It was pretty clear that, with devastating timing, his money had run out.

Of course, if Brenda had not discovered his double life and so cruelly set about destroying part of it, it was possible that Robert would have found a way around his financial problems, a way of carrying on with his extraordinary deception. After all, he had proved himself to have the most inventive of minds, that was sure.

I called Mrs Rowlands and asked her about the possibility of returning to my teaching work. She told me she was sorry but she’d actually just hired another full-time staff member, long overdue, she said. She’d been friendly enough and expressed what I thought was genuine concern about my predicament, and I expected it was probably true about the new full-time teacher. But I somehow doubted she would have wanted me back anyway. In addition to having a husband who never really was my husband awaiting prosecution for murder, I had been arrested on suspicion of the abduction and attempted murder of a child. Not something any headmistress would want her school associated with if she could avoid it. All charges against me may have been dropped, but such matters are never forgotten. Mud sticks, and Dartmoor mud sticks particularly well, I’d told Gladys Ponsonby Smythe. It was the truth.

Ultimately I reckoned the best thing for me to do was to try to live on that joint account overdraft until Robert’s trial. I realized I was merely putting off the inevitable, and sooner or later the financial mess I was in would have to be dealt with along with everything else. But there was a case for at least waiting until I knew what was going to happen to Robert. That was what I told myself anyway.

Having made that decision, I turned Highrise into a kind of Hitler’s Bunker, in which I existed in a trance-like state, cut off as much as possible from the outside world.

I could no longer afford to heat the place properly, so I more or less lived in the kitchen, feeding the Aga from the vast store of logs Robert and Robbie had amassed before the nightmare began. Not only had we regularly culled the abundant sycamores and ash on our land, but there was also that old oak that Robert had acquired and behind a pile of which I had found little Luke Macintyre naked and half dead. Only I tried not to think about that any more.

Anyway, this long-burning, non-spitting stuff was supposed to be our best wood, to be burned only in the inglenook in the sitting room. But during those few months waiting for Robert’s trial I burned ‘best wood’ in the range along with whatever else came to hand, every morning loading logs into a wheelbarrow and pushing it straight into the kitchen.

I couldn’t afford to buy the malt whisky I had been numbing my senses with since Robbie’s death, but that, I was forced to admit, might not have been such a bad thing. And there was plenty of wine in Robert’s wine store. Enough to last one person several months, I thought, even at the rate I seemed to be going through it.

I spent much of each day huddled up in the big old leather armchair pulled close to the stove, Florrie half straddling my lap. Sometimes I watched TV on the little portable I had set up the day after Highrise had been trashed, and sometimes I tried to read. But I didn’t seem able to take much in.

I dreamed of Robbie sometimes. And of Robert too, though I didn’t want to. Occasionally I thought about sex with him. It was hard to so abruptly lose a good sex life. And also to know that, whatever happened, you would never want to have sex with that person again. I even fantasized about sex with some anonymous fit young man, as a kind of ultimate diversion. But there wasn’t much chance of that as long as I remained in the back of beyond. In any case, I was far from ready for a new lover.

I could not stop myself reliving the past, the good and the bad, wondering if things really had been as good as I’d thought, and just how I had managed to remain so unsuspecting for so long. I remembered driving Robert to and from the local airports. I imagine Brenda had done the same. Presumably sometimes I had dropped Robert off, assuming that he was flying to Aberdeen, only for him to have been picked up by Brenda. And the other way round. And surely that had involved risk of discovery. But Robert had never let me go into the terminal, even when I picked him up, in order to avoid the hassle and unnecessary expense of parking, he’d said. At each airport he’d found a tucked-away place for me to park and wait. Just as he had for Brenda, I assumed. And, in any case, I guess that after sixteen years of getting away with an extraordinary deception you must begin to believe you will never be found out. I certainly had never come close to finding him out until Robbie died. I felt such a fool. And sometimes almost as angry with myself as with Robert.

As winter deepened and the nights grew bitingly cold I moved the smallest of the two sitting-room sofas into the kitchen and even slept there through the hours of darkness.

Gladys and Tom Farley were regular visitors, although, perhaps to my shame, I rarely invited them in. They brought boxes of food and provisions which apparently the entire village contributed to. I had no idea how they knew that I had money problems on top of everything else — perhaps my living only in the kitchen had been a clue — but they certainly seemed to have guessed it and I was deeply touched by their kindness. However, I could not cope with their company and was always somewhat relieved once they had left.

Florrie was my greatest comfort. She never left my side, and everything about her indicated, to me at least, that she somehow understood the depth of my misery. I know every dog owner says this, but I honestly believe it to be true.

Christmas came and went, and I might not have noticed it were it not for my little band of supporters. Gladys brought me a special box of Christmas goodies: chocolates, nuts, a pudding, some mince pies, clotted cream, and an oven-ready pheasant.

‘Even a turkey crown’s too big for one,’ she’d said in her businesslike way.

She’d begged me to join the Reverend Gerald and her for lunch at the vicarage, promising: ‘You needn’t worry, luvvie, it won’t be a religious affair. Once the morning service is over Gerry and I just get stuck in to eating and drinking far too much like everyone else. And if you feel like you want to contribute something, I did hear that husband of yours kept rather a good wine cellar...’

I managed a smile for, I thought, the first time since Robert’s arrest. But I declined the invitation none the less.

‘I’m just no kind of company,’ I said. ‘And I’d honestly rather be alone, Christmas Day or not, until this is all over.’

I sent her on her way clutching a couple of bottles of Robert’s finest claret as a seasonal gift, which I hoped would make me seem slightly less ungracious.

Tom Farley stopped by with a tiny beautifully iced Christmas cake, made by his wife, he said, and he too invited me to Christmas dinner.

‘The missus says you’d be ever so welcome and to tell you all men are bastards,’ he recited deadpan.

I managed my second smile in a long time. But I turned him down as gently as I could, gave him some wine too, and sent my love and thanks to his wife.

‘Tell her she’s dead right,’ I said. ‘And when all this is over and I feel more up to it I’ll pop round one day for a cup of tea and we can discuss the matter further.’

He went off chuckling. At least I’d managed not to offend him.

Dad, of course, also invited me for Christmas.

‘Or I could come to you, maid,’ he said.

But this time I think he really did understand my reasons for wanting to be alone. Or maybe at heart he didn’t really want to have to cope with me. Either way, he made little protest when I declined.

He called me on Christmas morning before setting off to spend the day with one of his dart-player pals from the pub. I’d known he wouldn’t have to be alone. Dad was far too popular in his village for that.

We wished each other Happy Christmas, like you do, which seemed rather surreal under the circumstances. In my case, anyway.

Then I set about obediently roasting the pheasant Gladys had given me, along with accompanying roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts for which I’d foraged in the sorry remains of our vegetable garden. I made gravy and even bread sauce. I found an unopened — and unbroken — jar of redcurrant jelly at the back of a cupboard and ladled some into a silver dish. I put the pudding on to steam and scooped the cream into another silver dish. I selected a bottle of the St Emilion Grand Cru 2000, which I knew had been a favourite of Robert’s, and opened it early to let it breathe. I laid the kitchen table with our best cutlery and one silver goblet. Then I cut the pheasant in half with my poultry shears, placing one half on an anonymous new white plate, and surrounding it with vegetables. I poured gravy over it and added a generous dollop of bread sauce.

I set my plate on the table, poured some of the wine, and stepped back to admire my handiwork. It looked great. I knew the pheasant was moist and tender from the way it had sliced open; the roast potatoes were golden and crunchy-looking; the sprouts just right, still firm and crisp. I liked my food. Well, once upon a time I’d liked my food. I stepped forward to take my single place, almost eagerly at first.

And then it hit me. My single place. The previous Christmas my entire little family had been happy and together for the celebration, it being Robert’s turn for Christmas leave. Or so he’d told me. We’d set the table in the formal dining room as we always did on special occasions, with the best cutlery, of course, but also the crystal glasses and the wonderful old dinner service now smashed to bits by his mad first wife.

We’d begun the festive day as usual, with coffee and croissants followed by a glass of champagne. Robert had been in fine humour and had thoroughly embarrassed Robbie with an energetic rendition of Tom Jones’s ‘Sex Bomb’, directed at me. He’d had to appease our son with a glass of Buck’s Fizz. Then, in front of a blazing fire in the sitting room, we’d opened our presents, which had been stacked beneath the tall Christmas tree in the bay window.

As usual in the good old days I’d roasted a goose, which I’d served the traditional English way: with apple sauce and sage and onion stuffing. Robert carved the goose at the table. We all agreed it was much more interesting than turkey, tucked in accordingly, and when we’d finished marvelled at just how much of it we’d managed to put away, accompanied, of course, by copious quantities of carefully chosen claret.

Last year I’d made the pudding myself a couple of months in advance, and we’d all stirred it for luck. We’d had brandy butter as well as clotted cream and finished off the champagne. Then we’d pretty much dozed away the rest of the day in front of the fire in the sitting room, with the TV switched on but its content only fleetingly entering our sated consciousnesses.

I could see it all so clearly inside my head, almost as if it were yesterday rather than a whole year ago. There I was, so secure in the company of my family, cosseted, I thought, by the love of a wonderful husband, excited by all that the future might hold for a clever, attractive son.

That woman, without a real worry in the world, no longer appeared to have been me at all. Last Christmas now seemed almost like some wicked practical joke. Indeed, my whole life with my husband and my poor dead son seemed like a wicked practical joke.

The tears I’d tried so hard to keep away were pricking again. The big house, which I had always thought to be the most wonderful home in the world, filled with warmth and love, felt cold and empty. I felt cold and empty. These were feelings that had begun the day Robbie died and I feared they would never leave me.

I picked up the plate of food I had so carefully prepared and emptied the lot into the bin. Then I threw the horrid white dish, somehow such a stark reminder of all that I had lost, human and mineral, into the sink with such force that it broke in half. Another wanton piece of destruction in a life already ruined.

I felt sick. I just couldn’t eat a thing. I drank the St Emilion, though. And then I opened a second bottle, desperately seeking oblivion again, my only hope of any rest.