Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

‘I don’t believe that,’ I said angrily. ‘At the very least, and whatever you say, I don’t think I am being taken seriously.’

‘Of course you are being taken seriously, Mrs Anderson. But I have seen the reports of your two suspected break-ins and we do have to look at all possible scenarios—’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ I interrupted again. ‘You don’t believe me either, do you? I’m the victim here, for God’s sake.’

‘Mrs Anderson, I can assure you that no conclusions whatsoever will be drawn until our inquiries have been completed,’ he said. ‘Look, we do understand how upset you must be.’

‘You have no idea how upset I am,’ I replied. ‘First my son dies, having apparently taken his own life — which I will never accept, by the way — then I hear intruders in my house while I’m in bed at night, and then my home is wrecked, my belongings trashed, excrement smeared over the walls, the floors, and the furniture—’

It was DS Jarvis’s turn to interrupt me. ‘Mrs Anderson, I’m really sorry, I have assured you that everything possible is being done, and I really do have to end this call now. The entire force is at full stretch because of the Luke Macintyre abduction, as I’m sure you can understand.’

I was bewildered. Who the heck was Luke Macintyre and what did that have to do with me and my Robbie?

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

‘Then you must be just about the only person in the country who doesn’t.’ He rather spat that at me, then added: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Anderson, I didn’t mean to be short. It’s pretty obvious you wouldn’t have been taking much interest in news of the outside world lately. When you do catch up I know you will appreciate why I’m not able to give you the time either of us might like right now.’

He ended the call without waiting for a response.

Straight away I looked around for the remote control to switch on the TV. Only then did I remember its shattered screen. I headed for the study. There was, I was pretty sure, an old-fashioned portable, with a built-in video player, stowed away at the back of the big cupboard in the corner. We’d kept it just in case. It was still there. I pulled it out, carried it into the kitchen and connected it to our Sky box, intact on its purpose-built shelf tucked under a kitchen cabinet. The TV was analogue, of course, but I believed that it would still work with the Sky system. I was right. I tuned into Sky News.

The main item, topping each bulletin and repeated again and again, was the story of a three-year-old boy, Luke Macintyre, who had been abducted from the front garden of his Exeter home. He had now been missing for almost two days.

There was footage of his distraught parents. His tearful mother explained that she’d been with the little boy in the garden, playing ball with him, until she’d run inside the house to answer the phone.

‘I suppose I expected Luke to follow me, he follows me everywhere, only this time he didn’t. I was only a minute or two, just a couple of minutes. But when I went outside again he was gone. The garden gate was ajar, I thought he’d trotted off down the road, I went after him straight away. He’d disappeared, just disappeared...’

She could not continue. Her husband led her away and DS Jarvis made the usual sort of police statement calling for anyone who might know anything about Luke Macintyre’s whereabouts to come forward.

I found myself quite mesmerized. I knew how those parents felt, of course. They feared losing their son, their only child it transpired, just as I had lost my only child. The only real difference was that they still had hope. Hope that their little boy would be found alive and well.

I could understand, however, that in some ways that almost made the whole thing worse. The desperation in the eyes of little Luke’s parents had been terrible to see.

It cut me to the quick. Oh God, I thought. The whole world is falling apart.

For a moment I lost my determination not to be beaten. The strength I had somehow managed to find, the will to clear up Highrise and even to begin to rebuild my life yet again, and my resolve to find out the truth about all that had happened evaporated.

I felt totally alone in the world. Abandoned. But was I? There was still Robert, wasn’t there? Maybe he really was all I had left. And maybe I could not get through this without him, after all. I reached for the phone to send him a message, to share with him all that had happened, to ask him to come home to comfort me. To look after me. And he would come at once. I knew that.

Then I snatched back my hand. The Robert I wanted by my side no longer existed. Indeed, the terrible truth was that he had never really existed.

I slumped to the floor amid the wreckage of my home and the wreckage of my life. I wrapped my arms around my knees and sobbed my heart out.

Bizarrely, I was saved from myself by Tom Farley. He arrived a good two hours before the time he had given me, just before eleven o’clock. When I heard the doorbell ring I almost didn’t respond, and may not have done so had he not shouted through the letter box.

‘It’s me, Mrs Anderson,’ he called, obviously quite certain that I would know who ‘me’ was, and I did, of course. Tom had an unmistakably resonant voice, rich in its broad Devon vowels.

‘I managed to get away early, couldn’t leave ’ee in the state you be in, could I?’

‘Oh, Tom, you’re a saint,’ I called back, fighting to keep my voice steady and wiping away my tears with the back of one hand. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

I picked myself up from the floor, quickly splashed my face with cold water from the sink, blew my nose in a piece of kitchen paper, did my best to straighten my hair and my apparel, and hurried along the hallway to let him in.

I knew I must look almost as much of a wreck as my house. But Tom made no mention of my appearance. He was a good practical Devon man, just the person, I felt sure, to bring order back to Highrise. But not all that hot, probably, on coping with an overly emotional woman in a state of significant distress. If I wanted his help, and by God I did, I was just going to have to pull myself together again. And that was, of course, probably the very best thing for me.

As I opened the door the first thing Tom saw was our smashed grandfather clock lying in shattered pieces on the flagstoned floor.

‘Oh, my good Lord,’ he said. ‘Now, who on earth would do that to such a lovely thing?’

‘I have no idea,’ I told him. ‘But I intend to find out.’

And as I spoke I realized I did still intend to do just that. My emotions were all over the place. But I would not weaken again. I must not weaken again. There would be no more sobbing and breaking down. That was not helping anything or anybody — not Robbie and his desecrated memory, and certainly not me.

And if the police weren’t going to offer any assistance, then somehow or other I had to get on with it alone. They may think that the case of the missing child completely overshadowed all else, but dreadful though that was, I had lost my child too. And I was damned well going to find out why.

However, first I had to work with Tom to restore at least some order to Highrise. The house could not be lived in as it was.

‘Our Eddie’s finishing t’other job,’ Tom told me. ‘Missus’ll bring him up dinner time.’

Tom had been a manual worker of some sort all his life and had ended up with shoulders so wide he was almost as broad as he was long. His face, beneath still abundant white hair, had been well weathered by Dartmoor and could only have been the face of a countryman. He was able to lift large pieces of furniture alone and with animal grace. When Tom was about you knew you were in safe hands.