Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

It seemed crazy, but I realized I could be putting myself in danger by just sitting in a parked vehicle on that road. In spite of the Toyota outside and the barking dog I could actually see no sign of inhabitation at number 5. And anyway I no longer had any wish to visit Bella. I really couldn’t.

I turned the key in the Ford’s ignition. It started on the fourth attempt just as I was beginning to get anxious and the hoodies were beginning to look even more interested.

Visiting Bella had in any case been little more than a displacement activity. There was so much I intended to do. So much I needed to do. So many crazy thoughts running through my head. I drove straight to an Internet cafe I’d passed earlier on the road out of Exeter. I now had no computer of any kind at home, and I wanted to check Robert out again, as Anderton and Anderson. Just as I’d done before my arrest, using the iPad I so wished the police had not taken from me.

The results were, of course, exactly the same as before. However, I was perhaps a different person from the woman who had first checked out her husband in this way. I’d been desperate then but was even more so now. I’d been arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of a child for a start, and that just didn’t seem believable. But it had happened all right, and I couldn’t help thinking that it was in some way linked to the death of my son and the discoveries I had made about Robert. I studied carefully the names and addresses of, in particular, all the Devon ‘Andertons’, looking for any sort of clue, anything that might mean something to me now which hadn’t before. It was quite an exercise.

When I’d finished I ordered a second coffee. I needed to sit and think for a bit, to assimilate and evaluate the information I had accumulated. After half an hour or so, still pondering my day’s activities, I made my way to a mobile phone shop I’d noticed just a block or so away and bought myself a pay-as-you-go phone.Then I drove home via Exeter Waitrose, which, unfortunately from my point of view, stands almost adjacent to Heavitree Road Police Station. I stocked up on provisions other than bacon and eggs and whisky, thinking as I did so that I might soon have to shop somewhere more cheaply. I was too late to catch the bank in Okehampton and empty the joint account as I had earlier planned, but I had transport now and in any case I didn’t suppose it mattered much. Unless I could find a way of proving my innocence, any financial difficulties I might face would soon be irrelevant. I would be in jail.

And one thing had become very clear. There was someone out there determined to ensure that I was going to jail.

A couple of days later Robert called to say that he was returning to the North Sea. He might as well go and earn some money, he said, as I obviously wanted nothing to do with him.

He told me he was calling from Aberdeen airport, and I could clearly hear airport noises and announcements, even the odd Scottish accent, in the background, which I am sure had been his intention. Just in case I thought he was lying again, I suppose. I didn’t ask him where he had been for the three days since I’d turned him away from Highrise. That was irrelevant now. I politely thanked him for telling me. I wanted no more quarrels. They were irrelevant now too.

I had to concentrate on building my strength and learning to deal with all that was happening. I had various plans in my head, but I had to proceed with care. I was already on police bail after all.

I suppose it was almost masochistic of me to buy the newspapers, local and national, every day but I could not resist. In any case I needed to know what was going on and what was being said.

In spite of the dawn offensive on my home by Mrs Macintyre and her insistent press escort, the story of which ran in only one newspaper, presumably the one that had stage-managed the operation, there was not as much coverage of my case as I would have expected. Certainly not as much as there would probably have been before the debacle which had followed the death of Joanna Yeates. But there was enough to upset me quite badly on most days.

I found nothing, however, anything like as sensational as, six days after my release on police bail, a front-page report in the local evening paper, the Express & Echo , which was not actually directly connected with my case.

A Mrs Brenda Anderton, aged forty-four, had been killed in a tragic motor accident. Her vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, had been in a head-on collision with a milk tanker on the A377 near Mrs Anderton’s Bridge Estate home. An eyewitness said that the car had been travelling at speed before appearing to fly out of control and hurtle onto the wrong side of the road. The police were currently investigating the possibility of mechanical failure. Corollas were among the models recently recalled worldwide by Toyota due to a much-publicized problem with sticking accelerators. The driver of the milk tanker had escaped with minor injuries.

A picture of the dead woman was spread across two columns. And I recognized her at once.

Indeed, I knew her quite well. But I knew her as Mrs Bella Clooney.

There was no doubt about it, even though the report described the woman as having two daughters aged twenty-seven and eleven, rather than a son and daughter aged eleven and twelve, and named her dog, which had apparently died with her in the accident, as Splash, not Flash.

I read the piece through two or three times to make sure of it all. Then I decided to contact Robert at once, while still parked in the car park of the supermarket where I’d bought the newspaper. He had even more explaining to do.

My hands were trembling so much that I had difficulty in punching his number into my new mobile. He might have been out of range in the North Sea, of course, but I suspected not. I was right. He answered his phone straight away. He sounded upset and rather peculiar, which was probably only to be expected under the circumstances, even without the added element of Brenda Anderton’s sudden death. But there was another note in his voice too — the glum resignation, perhaps, of someone who suspected that the extraordinary game he had played for so long was finally at an end.

‘You’ve heard the news, I presume?’ I began flatly.

‘What news?’ he responded. Perhaps I had underestimated him. Could he really still be trying to play his cruel game? I reckoned it was more likely that his disingenuousness was just an automatic reaction. The habit of sixteen years must be hard to break.

‘I have a copy of the Express & Echo here and I’ve just read the front-page story of a woman called Brenda Anderton who has died suddenly in a motor accident,’ I recited as calmly as I could. ‘I recognized her picture, of course, but then, you would expect me to, wouldn’t you?’

There was a brief silence.

‘I see,’ he said eventually.

‘You’d better come to Highrise as soon as you can, hadn’t you?’ I continued. ‘I think we have rather a lot to talk about.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he replied. And this time he did sound beaten.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Exeter. They told me...’ He paused. ‘I, uh, heard last night,’ he continued rather obliquely. ‘I just got back.’

I was pretty sure he was telling the truth for once. Not just because of that somewhat contrived airport call, but also, as I’d already turned him out of our home, there was little point, surely, in him lying to me now.

‘Right. So it won’t take you long, will it?’

He mumbled his agreement. I started the engine of the little Ford, which this time obliged at the first attempt, and drove straight back to Highrise where I unpacked the small amount of shopping I’d picked up and fed Florrie her favourite treat — a couple of the disgusting-smelling tripe sticks I’d bought for her. Then I made myself a coffee and sat down at the kitchen table to drink it, with the newspaper spread out in front of me.