The Cruellest Game (19 page)

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?’

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.