Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

Then I did remember something. I thought it through before I spoke. Yes. I was sure of it. Robbie’s camcorder had stood on the sideboard, just where he’d left it, ever since his death. I’d not had the heart to move it, somehow. It too was missing.

I told the two officers that.

They did not look impressed.

‘Are you sure your son mightn’t have put it somewhere else?’ asked PC Jacobs.

‘Constable, it’s been there on the sideboard ever since Robbie died.’

‘Well, could you have moved it, put it somewhere you don’t recall?’

I closed my eyes and opened them again. They really did think I’d lost the plot.

‘I haven’t been able to touch it,’ I said. ‘Have you any idea what it is like to lose your only child?’

PC Jacobs stared straight ahead, not attempting to respond. PC Bickerton, shuffling uneasily from foot to foot, shook his head slightly.

I stopped, realizing I was only making things worse, confirming the impression they already had of me as a middle-aged mother overcome with grief who had no idea what she was doing, nor what was happening to her.

‘Look, I would remember if I’d moved it,’ I said, making my voice as calm as I could.

‘Of course you would, Mrs Anderson,’ said PC Jacobs soothingly. Or was there a note of carefully veiled sarcasm there somewhere? I wondered.

He rather pointedly took a note of the items I had said were missing, laboriously naming them aloud as he wrote them down.

‘Caaam-corder, iPooood.’

I watched in silence.

‘I think we’ve done all we can for the moment,’ said PC Jacobs, when he’d finished his note-taking. ‘It’s curious that there is no sign of any break-in. And your front door was still bolted on the inside when we arrived, wasn’t it?’

I agreed that it was.

‘Not the back door, though,’ I said.

‘But it was securely locked,’ said PC Jacobs.

‘And so was the garden gate,’ interjected Bickerton.

‘Well, you could climb over that,’ I said.

Bickerton half smiled. ‘Yes, but not without some difficulty and a deal of noise, I shouldn’t think,’ he said.

‘Does anyone else have keys to your property, Mrs Anderson?’ asked PC Jacobs.

I shook my head. ‘Only my husband, and he’s on an oil rig in the North Sea.’

PC Jacobs looked even more sceptical. PC Bickerton seemed to be trying hard to be understanding and behave appropriately, but was not succeeding very well. I was pretty sure both officers genuinely sympathized with my predicament. They also without doubt considered me, that night at any rate, to be neurotic and unreliable. I felt quite numb with humiliation and frustration.

‘Well, perhaps you should change your locks just to be on the safe side,’ said PC Bickerton.

I nodded. All I wanted now was for the two officers to go and leave me alone.

‘To put your mind at rest and to make absolutely sure, we’ll take a look round the yard and your outbuildings on our way out,’ PC Bickerton continued. ‘And if you have any further cause for concern, do feel free to call again.’

It was my turn to look at him as if I thought he was quite mad.

At that moment I felt I would rather take my chances with a mad axe-man at large in my bedroom than ever again call the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

It was several minutes more before they actually left my property. I watched the tail lights of the patrol car fade as it proceeded up the lane, the two officers inside extremely pleased, I suspected, to be leaving the madwoman behind.

I checked the time on the hall clock. It was nearly five. No point in going back to bed. In any case there was absolutely no chance of my getting back to sleep.

First of all I walked all round the house again, scrutinizing each room, just in case there was anything else missing that I hadn’t noticed before, and to check if, upon closer examination, I could see any signs of disturbance. There wasn’t and I couldn’t.

Florrie followed me eagerly. We ended up in the kitchen. I beefed up the Aga, made myself a cup of tea and pulled the old leather armchair closer to the stove, relishing the warmth.

Florrie lay half across my feet. I chastised her mildly for being such a useless dog. But was she really that useless or had she known and loved the intruder? That made me start to really think. To ask myself more questions.

Was I absolutely sure that I had heard someone downstairs? Answer: yes.

Could I possibly have been mistaken? Could the police be right about me? Could I have turned into the madwoman, deluded by grief, they obviously thought me to be. Answer: no, no and no.

In that case who could possibly have been in the house? Who could have effected entry without leaving any telltale signs? Who had keys? Who would Florrie welcome most into the house apart from me?

The answer to all of those questions seemed to be Robert. But he was at work on a North Sea oil rig. And this time I knew which one because I’d asked him, and made a mental note of it. But was he and did I?

I now knew that my husband was a very convincing liar. Just because he’d told me he was returning to Jocelyn did not necessarily mean that was the case.

I was still shaky and I had a headache. I needed to calm down and sort out my muddled thoughts. I switched on the TV to distract myself, hopping from channel to channel and not staying tuned to any of them long enough to really take in what they were broadcasting. Nothing could distract me. I switched the thing off.

My mind was whizzing around in circles, but I always reached the same conclusion.

The intruder had to be Robert. Surely. I had no idea why he would pretend, knowing that I was now aware of his long-time subterfuge, to be on a North Sea platform when he wasn’t. And I had no idea why he would turn up surreptitiously in the middle of the night, at what was still his own home after all, and apparently take two such disparate articles away with him. The camcorder, yes, I supposed. It had a lot of footage of Robbie and me, in happier times, and even some of Robert too. I hadn’t been able to bear to look at it. Not yet anyway, but I could understand Robert wanting it and maybe just picking it up when he saw it lying on the sideboard, not least because he had always so disliked being featured on any kind of film. And now I knew why that had been, too. But why on earth would he want my iPod? He had one of his own. He always said it was music that kept him sane on the rigs, particularly when the weather kicked up and the men were confined to their quarters.

I wondered if either of us was sane any more.

Could Robert have been trying to frighten me? Surely the one thing I still believed about my husband was that he loved me, and had never deliberately set out to hurt me.

But I could not think who else would have broken into my house and behaved so strangely. Indeed, I could not think who else would have been able to. After all, there was no sign of a break-in and, as I’d told the police, nobody but Robert and I had keys.

I tried to think logically. First of all I needed to ascertain for certain whether or not Robert was in the North Sea.

That shouldn’t be difficult, but it would be simplest to wait until nine o’clock or thereabouts, and time passed very slowly. Almost as the grandfather clock struck in the hall I dialled the direct line of Amaco’s human resources department in Aberdeen.

I put on a Scottish accent just in case I ended up speaking to someone I had spoken to before, and told the young man who answered that I was Rob Anderton’s wife and that my husband had recently been home on compassionate leave following the death of our son. The young man seemed at least vaguely familiar with what had happened and expressed his condolences.