Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

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.