The Cruellest Game (26 page)

My head felt as if it might explode.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ I cried. ‘But it happened. Somebody put that child in my stable. And somebody broke into my house and then trashed the
place.’

DS Jarvis sighed. ‘Right. So, apart from this Michael Shaw, do you have any thoughts about anyone else who might be responsible?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Just someone with some sort of enormous grudge against me, I suppose. And against my husband probably.’

‘Really, Mrs Anderson? Don’t you think that’s just a little self-obsessed? Never mind Michael Shaw, do you really think it’s likely that any third party snatched that
defenceless child, maltreated him, stripped him naked, bound him hand and foot, and left him in a freezing stable to get at you?’

I met Jarvis’s gaze as steadily as I could then looked away. I had no answer. Put like that I had to admit it didn’t sound very likely.

‘And where is your husband?’ Jarvis went on.

‘He’s away working. On an oil rig in the North Sea.’

‘Are you quite sure of that?’

I stared at him. I supposed I was still sure of it, wasn’t I?

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘He seems to spend an awful lot of time on oil rigs,’ responded Jarvis.

‘Well, it is his job,’ I snapped. Thinking as I did so that I would never be absolutely certain what Robert was doing ever again.

It occurred to me that this might be the moment to tell Jarvis about Robert, about his having lived a lie for so long, and about my sham of a marriage. I decided against it. I wasn’t ready
yet. And in any case it seemed obvious that anything I told the police at the moment was just likely to be used as further evidence against me. Further evidence that I was off my rocker.

‘I suggest you call your husband and get him home, Mrs Anderson, because I think you’re going to need him,’ Jarvis continued.

‘No, I don’t want him here,’ I responded, offering no explanation.

‘That’s your choice. You may wish to call a solicitor then.’

‘I don’t need a solicitor, either,’ I said. ‘I am totally innocent of everything you are suggesting. I would never hurt a child, for God’s sake. I’m innocent.
So I don’t need a solicitor.’

‘Again, that is your choice, Mrs Anderson.’

Jarvis seemed to stand a little straighter, his expression becoming sterner, and when he spoke again his voice was louder, his delivery more pronounced.

‘Marion Anderson, I am arresting you on suspicion of the abduction and attempted murder of Luke Macintyre,’ he declared. ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your
defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

I thought my knees were going to give way. Certainly my legs buckled involuntarily. It was the pretty woman PCSO who moved quickly to my side and lent support to my elbow. I very nearly went
down. She proved to be a lot stronger than she looked.

I don’t know what I had expected after finding the missing Luke Macintyre. And the arrival of the police. But it wasn’t this. Never this.

It was gone five o’clock before we left Highrise. They took me to Exeter in the back of a patrol car, sandwiched between PC Jacobs and the woman PCSO. The rain was
falling steadily again and darkness had already descended on this appropriately dismal November day.

The bells of Blackstone parish church were ringing, presumably to summon evensong, and as we swished our way through the village I saw Gladys Ponsonby Smythe approaching the church, her ample
figure clearly illuminated by the lamp which stood alongside the old lychgate. She was wrapped in a shiny green oilskin cape and carrying an armful of autumnal flowers. She had to step back to
avoid our spray, and naturally took a good long look at the passing police car. I was pretty sure the lamp provided enough light for her to have spotted that I was inside it.

Our eyes seemed to meet and her mouth dropped open in shock.

At Heavitree Road Police Station I was escorted through the back door to the custody suite, and checked in by the custody sergeant, a sallow-faced man with a hangdog expression. I had to
relinquish my personal effects, primarily my handbag which I’d grabbed as I left Highrise, and which contained my wallet, my make-up, my hairbrush and, of course, my mobile phone. I even had
to hand over my watch. I was then taken into a cubicle by a woman PC and told to remove my clothes, including my underwear, which were placed in a plastic sack. Afterwards I was given a white paper
suit to wear. Then I was photographed and my fingerprints taken. A swab of saliva was extracted from inside my mouth on a disposable spatula in order for my DNA to be obtained.

Processing, the police called it. And it should have been the most humiliating experience of my life, but I was past caring.

The interrogation started as soon as all these procedures had been completed. They call them interviews nowadays, of course. But it felt like an interrogation to me.

I was formally offered legal assistance. I had the right to free independent advice from a duty solicitor, I was told. I declined again. I still had this silly idea in my head that because I was
innocent I didn’t need any help.

I was questioned by DS Jarvis, and a second detective, new to me, who announced himself, for the interview room video, as Detective Constable John Price. The two men went over the same ground
again and again. Once more I was asked how little Luke Macintyre came to be found in my old stable. Once more I said that I had no idea.

Jarvis listed the evidence against me.

‘We confidently expect your DNA to be all over the child,’ he said at one point.

‘Well, of course,’ I said. ‘I picked the boy up, didn’t I? Would you have expected me to leave him just lying there outside, in the state he was in, on a day like this? I
was carrying him into the house, into the warm, when your two PCs came along.’

Jarvis grunted. ‘We have a team checking out your house and your car right now,’ he said. ‘If there is any trace of the child in either, we will find it. So why don’t you
just stop wasting time, and tell us what happened?’

‘Look, Constable Bickerton carried little Luke into my kitchen. He and I wrapped him in my towels, warmed him with my hot-water bottles. Of course there are going to be forensic traces of
him in my home. There shouldn’t be in my car. And if there is anything, then it’s been planted. Just like the child himself.’

Even in the state I was in I realized that the evidence they had against me could only be circumstantial. But it was pretty damning all right. And, also, I had no idea what else might turn up.
What else this unknown perpetrator who was trying to frame me for this awful crime might have done to further incriminate me.

I was interviewed, on and off, throughout the evening and into the night, for a period stretching over five or six hours, I thought, but I ultimately began to more or less lose track of time. I
didn’t doubt that care was taken to ensure the necessary breaks demanded by all the rules and formalities of British police procedure, and I was periodically offered tea or coffee and brought
food that I couldn’t eat. It was, none the less, absolutely gruelling. Which was no doubt the intention. They worked on me in shifts. After Jarvis and Price, the uniformed boys I already
knew, Bickerton and Jacobs, had a go. Then Price returned with PC Janet Cox, the woman officer who had tried to give the impression of being my friend when she’d come to Highrise on the day
of Robbie’s death. She was certainly no longer making any attempt to do that. In fact, she was quite spiky in her approach, and I was rather glad that her stint didn’t last long. After
what seemed like a relatively short session she was replaced by Jarvis again.

I, of course, had no one to take a shift for me. And when they eventually told me that the interviews were to be suspended, but I was to be held in police custody overnight and they were taking
me to a cell, I felt only relief. Although I was concerned about Florrie. I was told she had already been taken to police kennels. She wouldn’t like that, but at least she was safe, I
thought. Which was more than I felt myself to be.

However, cells had beds, didn’t they? And I so wanted to lie down. I was totally exhausted. But, of course, I had no idea what it was like to be locked in a cell. I’d never broken a
law, except the occasional speed limit, in my entire life. Being locked up in a police cell, however, turned out to be the biggest shock of all. After being arrested in the first place that is.

The woman PC who had earlier overseen the removal of my clothes led me to the cell block and into a bleak little room, around eight foot by six, with grubby creamish walls, old graffiti half
scrubbed out, and a bare concrete floor. The room was illuminated starkly by one bright light in the middle of the ceiling. The only furniture was a thin plastic-covered mattress laid on a concrete
platform. I was handed a single blanket. No pillow. In case I was tempted to suffocate myself? I had no idea.

A lavatory pan with no seat stood in a recessed area directly opposite the cell door which, of course, had a viewing panel built into it. The recessed area had no door. Privacy, I supposed, was
one of the first privileges you lost when you found yourself in police custody.

The cell smelt strongly of powerful disinfectant, and I could not prevent myself imagining fleetingly what might have been cleaned up. And how recently.

I sat down, almost involuntarily, on the concrete and plastic bed just as the steel door was slammed shut and I was locked in alone. I was aware, for a moment or two, of a pair of eyes studying
me through the viewing panel. Then that was also slammed shut and I heard the unmistakable sound of my escort’s footsteps retreating.

It wasn’t cold in the cell, but I pulled the thin blanket tightly around me and rolled myself into a foetal position.

I did not weep. I think I was in too great a state of shock for tears. Neither did I sleep. Except perhaps for just an hour or two before dawn, or thereabouts, when I was awakened by the arrival
of a breakfast of scrambled egg, which tasted like sawdust, accompanied by two anaemic sausages. I’d thought I was hungry, having eaten nothing since breakfast the previous day, but I
couldn’t eat it. Apparently all custody units nowadays have stores of instant meals which are microwaved to order. Gone are the days of bacon sandwiches and the like brought to prisoners at
police stations either from the canteen or the cafe round the corner. Not that I was at all sure I’d have been able to stomach even a bacon sandwich.

I had no watch so I had little idea really how long I remained in the cell before being escorted from the cell block back to the interview room by a young male PC. But we passed beneath a clock
on a corridor wall which told me the time was 8.05 a.m.

‘Have to take the scenic route this morning. We’ve sprung a leak, got plumbers all over the shop,’ said the PC.

We passed right by the front office, from which I could hear, in spite of the early hour, the unmistakably familiar strident tones of Gladys Ponsonby Smith. She was demanding from the front
office clerk to see the officer in charge of my case.

‘I can’t believe you have kept Mrs Anderson here overnight like this. I’m sure you have no grounds. I want to see her. Now. Somebody needs to make sure she has a solicitor
present – that’s her right, as you know – and I need to talk to her so will you please—’

She stopped abruptly as she caught sight of me shuffling glumly along on the other side of the pass door.

‘Marion, Marion,’ she cried. ‘Don’t you worry, flower. Gerry has an excellent lawyer friend in Bristol. She’ll sort this out for you. We’ve called her
already. She’s in court this morning but she’ll be here as soon as she can.’

‘Th-thank you,’ I stumbled.

Having spent just the one ghastly night in a police cell I was not about to protest again that I didn’t need or want a solicitor.

‘Yes, well, we haven’t spent all our working lives in Blackstone, you know,’ Gladys continued cheerily. ‘I’m a Scouser, me. And a parish in inner-city Liverpool was
an eye-opener, I can tell you. Spent half me time bailing out the congregation . . .’

I struggled to find a response. But in any case I was being hustled along by my escort.

However, Gladys was never easily deterred.

‘Shall I contact your husband for you?’ she asked. ‘I understand he’s away again—’

‘No, no,’ I interrupted loudly, finding my voice and shouting over my shoulder. ‘I don’t want him here. I don’t want him.’

Gladys looked momentarily puzzled.

‘That’s enough, madam,’ said the front office clerk wearily. ‘We do have procedures to follow, you know—’

‘Exactly, and I’m here to make sure you do just that,’ boomed Gladys.

Those strident tones followed me down the corridor as she continued to berate the man. ‘What kind of procedure is it to keep a woman in custody without a solicitor or anyone at all to
advise her, I’d like to know?’

‘I can assure you, madam, that Mrs Anderson has been correctly advised of her rights and offered legal assistance, which I understand she turned down—’

‘That’s not the point,’ interrupted Gladys fierily. ‘She’s not somebody who’s used to this sort of thing, for goodness’ sake. And actually I don’t
believe any of you could really think Mrs Anderson was responsible for the abduction of that child. The whole thing is ridiculous . . .’

Her voice faded as I was escorted further along the corridor to the same sparsely furnished interview room in which I had been questioned the previous evening.

The next interrogation was the most gruelling. This time DS Jarvis was accompanied by PC Janet Cox. I came to the conclusion that the girl must be angling for promotion. There was no longer a
hint of the friendly neighbourhood cop I had first met. She was brusque and unforgiving.

‘If you really have no explanation for that child being found on your property, then we shall ultimately have no choice but to charge you,’ she informed me.

‘You must do what you must do,’ I told her resignedly. ‘I’d never seen the little boy in my life until I found him in our stable.’