Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

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.