The Cruellest Game (33 page)

Robert’s eyes closed, then opened again, rapidly, several times. His head rocked on his shoulders. He looked as if he might pass out. I knew this must all have occurred to him. How could
it not have? But from his reaction I wondered if he honestly still didn’t believe it.

‘No,’ he said forcefully.

I was right. Obviously the man was capable of remaining just as much in denial as his wife had been.

‘No. Don’t blame Brenda. She wouldn’t have done that. She was not a bad woman. She was a good woman. A Christian. A churchgoer . . .’

Of course she had been, I thought. And neither had there been anything wrong with Gladys Ponsonby Smythe’s memory.

‘You too, it seems, you hypocrite,’ I interrupted. ‘You did sing in that church choir, obviously.’

He shot me a trapped look. I didn’t push the point. It was irrelevant anyway.

‘Since when did you believe going to church prevents people committing evil?’ I asked. ‘Or maybe your opinions about religion were lies too. Brenda did it, Robert, how can you
doubt it? One way or another, she killed our boy.’

‘No, no!’ he cried, his voice high pitched, verging on the hysterical. ‘She couldn’t have done that. I’m to blame. It’s all my stupid greedy arrogant fault.
How could I have thought that I would get away with my idiotic double life without some terrible disaster sooner or later?’

His lower lip dropped, leaving his mouth gaping half open. His eyes, staring at me now, were full of tears. His hands were trembling. And still he was kidding himself about so much.

I wondered again how I could have lived with Robert for so long without realizing how intrinsically weak he was.

‘You fool,’ I said. ‘You pathetic bloody fool.’

His eyes remained fixed on me, pleading again, though I wasn’t sure for what. Sympathy? Understanding? Or just for me to still love him. That would be it, of course. He was desperate for
me to still love him. It was all he had left.

I didn’t, though. I really didn’t love him at all now. I had already admitted to myself how I felt about him. Now I just wanted to tell him, to hurt him as much as I could. I
didn’t think I would ever be able to hurt him as much as he had hurt me, but I could try.

‘Yes, Robert,’ I said. ‘It is all your fault. You are to blame for our son’s death. And I hate you for it. I hate you with all my heart.’

He recoiled from me, leaning back in his chair as if I had hit him.

I could see what a terrible blow I had delivered with those words. And I’m afraid I felt the nearest sensation to real pleasure that I’d experienced since the nightmare began.

He left shortly afterwards. I assumed he was once again staying in that grim house he’d shared with his first wife, his real wife. The house I had so nearly visited.

Robert had wondered, with some alarm, I’d thought, what might have happened if I’d knocked on the door and been invited in. If Robert had been there, then the game, his wicked game,
would have been up, of course. At once. But if not, the woman I’d known as Bella would surely have feared that I would quickly become aware of the strange and cruel deception she had so
effectively accomplished, or even that I was already aware of it. And I believed her to have been capable of terrible things. So just what might she have done?

The thought made me shiver. DC Jarvis’s business card remained pinned to the kitchen noticeboard, though his manner towards me made it seem unlikely that I would ever want to call him
again. What I had heard that morning changed everything. I called his mobile.

Rather to my surprise, again, he answered straight away. I was almost taken aback, and uncertain where to begin. But surely he had to listen now.

I started by telling him about the story in the
Express & Echo
, and how it had made me realize immediately that my husband must have been leading an extraordinary double life. I
explained that Brenda Anderton had been known to me as Bella Clooney, and that she had insinuated her way into my life, the life of our little family.

‘I feel sure she’s been responsible for everything that’s happened to me: the night-time intruder, the trashing of the house, probably even the kidnapping of that poor little
boy,’ I went on. ‘And I also believe she was involved somehow in Robbie’s suicide. I don’t know how, and Robert still claims she couldn’t have been,
but—’

‘Mrs Anderson, is your husband with you?’ Jarvis interrupted.

‘The man I thought was my husband, you mean,’ I remarked unnecessarily.

‘Please, Mrs Anderson. Is he with you?’

‘No. I called him when I saw the story in the paper and he came right over. I made him tell me everything, though knowing what I now do about him it’s anybody’s guess whether
he did or not . . .’

‘But he’s not with you now?’

‘No. He left about ten minutes ago. I called you more or less straight after he’d gone.’

‘Right. Stay in your house, Mrs Anderson. Lock the doors and do not let anyone in, except me and DC Price. We’ll be right over.’

It seemed Jarvis had listened to me for once. I couldn’t resist a jibe.

‘So you are taking me seriously at last, are you, Detective Sergeant?’ I asked.

He did not rise to the bait.

‘Please, Mrs Anderson, do exactly as I have told you,’ he said. ‘You could be in real danger.’

We ended the call. I considered his parting remark. I’d kind of assumed that any danger I might be in had departed with the death of Brenda Anderton. DS Jarvis obviously did not think so.
Other than her there was surely only Robert who might, for whatever crazy reason, want to harm me. I believed that Robert still loved me. In as much as he ever had, I reflected grimly. Could a man
who really loved a woman deceive her the way he had me? I had no answer to that. I only knew that I could not have behaved that way to someone I loved. Even the practicalities of it would have been
beyond me. There was no way I could have successfully maintained such a deception while appearing to share my life with someone in the way Robert had.

DS Jarvis and DC Price arrived forty-five minutes later. They had wasted no time in getting to me. Indeed, they roared into the yard at Highrise with lights flashing and the
siren attached to the roof of their silver saloon car still wailing, which I thought might not have been totally necessary.

While waiting for them I’d lit the fire in the sitting room. I don’t know why, really. In my other, now so distant seeming life we lit the fire frequently in winter and always on the
rare occasions that we had visitors. Maybe some part of my subconscious was still seeking normality. Not that there was anything, surely, that could be regarded as remotely normal in the company of
two police detectives wishing to question you about the double life of your bigamous husband and the death of his other wife.

The fire was blazing by the time I led the two men into the now so rarely used room. They each sat in one of the big armchairs on either side of the grand old fireplace, Price leaning forward,
in that way open fires invariably invite, to warm his hands. I sat very upright, perched on the edge of one end of the smaller of the two sofas. I almost didn’t want to be comfortable.

Jarvis was serious and thoughtful, displaying a side of him I hadn’t seen before. His questioning was meticulous and incisive. His manner towards me had changed significantly. It occurred
to me that he’d previously been so sure that I was an unhinged woman responsible for the crimes she claimed had been committed against her, and therefore also for the kidnap of Luke
Macintyre, that he hadn’t really considered any alternative. Nor, probably, had he overseen a satisfactorily thorough investigation. I wondered if that was what he was thinking himself, and
if he now regretted it.

He asked me to go over again what I had told him on the phone, occasionally prompting me for more detail, or clarification of a certain point, but otherwise listening carefully and quietly.

Only when I had pretty much finished did he begin to ask more questions of his own. The first was an obvious one.

‘I wonder, Mrs Anderson, if you have any idea how Brenda or Bella found out about you and Robbie? How did she first discover that her husband had another family and was leading a double
life?’

I was ready with the answer. I stood up and walked across to the little Victorian Davenport desk which stood by the window, lifted its lid and removed from it a photograph of Robert and Robbie
which I’d put there, when the Farleys and I were clearing up the house, largely because I could not bear to look at it any more. It was one of the few Robert had ever allowed of either me or
our son with him, and the last one ever taken, on a beautiful evening in the garden at the end of the previous summer. Their faces, glowing in amber light, beamed at me from within a simple wooden
frame. Father and son, so unmistakably father and son. The shrubs and trees which formed a backdrop already displayed more than a hint of autumn colour. Sycamores, that much maligned species of
tree, lined much of the perimeter of our garden, and their angular leaves had just begun to turn. There was winter jasmine in bud. Autumn crocuses sprouted purple, white and yellow. Ours was a
garden for all seasons. I held the photograph still and studied it for just a few seconds. We had been so happy then, hadn’t we? Surely we had. Now all I felt as I looked at my two men
together was the pain of what was to come.

I handed the photograph to DS Jarvis. There was no glass within its frame, of course. That had been smashed into smithereens when the photo had been swept to the floor in the wanton destruction
wreaked on the day Bella/Brenda – and there now could surely be no doubt that it had been her – entered my home and trashed the place.

The policeman looked down at the image then up at me.

‘Wow!’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I responded. ‘They could be clones, couldn’t they?’

‘They’re quite remarkably alike, that’s for certain,’ said DS Jarvis, as he passed the photograph to DC Price.

I felt the enormity of my loss hit me again. My special men. Gone for ever. Both of them. Robert was still alive. But really he may as well not be, as far as I was concerned anyway.

‘So you think that casual meeting of dog walkers on Exmouth beach wasn’t really that at all? You think Brenda Anderton arranged it, in order to begin to get to know you, to get close
to you and your son?’

I shook my head.

‘No. When we met on the beach I honestly don’t believe she had any idea either I or Robbie existed. Any more than I had any idea about her. Robert was too clever for both of us as
far as that was concerned.’

‘Then do you believe it was pure coincidence that you both decided to walk your dogs on Exmouth beach on the same day and at the same time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it something you often did?’

‘No. Nor her, I shouldn’t think. Robbie and I were only there because we’d had to go shopping in Exeter and Brenda didn’t have the sort of lifestyle that gave her a lot
of leisure time, that’s for sure.’

‘So, it was just chance, catastrophic chance as it turned out?’

Jarvis sounded doubtful.

‘Yes.’ I said. ‘Coincidences do happen, you know, Detective Sergeant.’

‘Indeed,’ said Jarvis. ‘They’re just not something detectives are very fond of. But it seems you are probably right about this one. So exactly what happened on the
beach?’

‘From the moment Bella – I mean Brenda – spotted Robbie, I reckon she just had to approach us, to find out who he was. Robert said she told him that, in as much as you can
believe a word Robert says about anything. But I believe absolutely that she would have been suspicious straight away. More than that – shocked, I should imagine. I mean the resemblance is so
striking. It would have been a total Boris Becker moment, wouldn’t it? You couldn’t really doubt Robbie’s parentage for a minute.’ I paused, reflecting briefly again on a
wonderful young life now lost for ever.

‘We used to joke about it. Robert, Robbie and me. Robert always said he’d been going to ask me to have a DNA test when I claimed to have got pregnant the very first night we were
together, but as soon Robbie was born he’d realized there was no point.’ I paused again.

‘How did Brenda make the approach?’ asked Jarvis.

‘She threw her dog’s ball straight at us, deliberately I now realize, contriving a minor incident if you like, making it seem perfectly natural to start a conversation with me.
It’s what dog walkers do. And, of course, I was totally and blissfully unaware of any hidden agenda.’

‘You think she already had an agenda.’

‘Well, she would have known about Robbie, just known, at once. I feel sure of it. And, understandably, she wanted to talk to me, to find out exactly what was going on. I don’t think
she would even have considered to begin with that Robert had married me. That he had built another family, and managed to lead a double life, to keep two families going for so long, each without
any knowledge of the existence of the other.’

‘I still can’t quite understand how he got away with it,’ said Jarvis.

‘Robert was a master of deception, no doubt about that,’ I said. ‘But luck must have been with him, mustn’t it? His two families didn’t live that far apart. We
didn’t go to Exeter often – and Robert never did, come to think of it – but Robbie and I had been shopping there that very day we finally met Brenda. A chance meeting could,
surely, have happened long before it did.’

‘So Brenda Anderton questioned you, did she? About your son, your husband, and so on?’

‘Well, yes, looking back that was exactly what she did. But she was very gentle about it, made it seem like normal conversation. I don’t expect it took her long, though, to know she
was dead right about Robbie’s parentage. And it would have been apparent that I was married to my son’s father.’ I realized what I had said and added: ‘Or thought I
was.’

‘The level of Robert’s deception would have quickly become clear to Brenda, then,’ mused Jarvis.

‘Yes, which I’ve no doubt was as much of a shock to her as it was, eventually, to me.’