Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

‘I don’t know,’ I stumbled. ‘He told me he couldn’t believe she would ever do anything like that. Even if you accepted the other things she really must have done, the kidnap, and the house trashing and so on, he couldn’t believe she would have deliberately brought about Robbie’s death. At least that’s what he said. Of course, I have finally learned not to accept as truth anything he says, really.’

Jarvis nodded. ‘So let’s say he suspected her, nothing more than that. And he must have, surely. What do you think he might have done?’

It was pretty clear where he was leading. I didn’t know quite what to say.

‘What do you think Robert may have been capable of?’ Jarvis persisted.

I took a few seconds before I answered.

‘He worshipped Robbie,’ I said. ‘I think, I honestly think, that he could have been capable of anything, anything at all.’

DS Jarvis, again accompanied by DC Price, returned to Highrise the very next day just before 5 p.m. They gave me no advance warning so I entertained them in the kitchen, but this time I did offer them some refreshment, something I had omitted to do the previous afternoon.

I made them the cappuccinos they requested and piled shortbread biscuits onto a plate while they began to tell me of the considerable progress which had been made in the last twenty-four hours or so.

It seemed that Brenda Anderton’s home had been searched from top to bottom by Scenes of Crime Officers and substantial evidence found indicating that Luke Macintyre had been there.

‘There were fingerprints and bits of hair and other DNA evidence that we’re pretty sure will prove to have come from the boy, though we have to wait for the DNA results,’ Jarvis told me. ‘Same in the woman’s car. Seems clear she snatched him from his garden and then kept him at her own home before bringing him here in an attempt to frame you. Just as you thought.’

He paused. I didn’t say anything. All I felt was relief. This surely proved that I had nothing whatsoever to do with Luke Macintyre’s abduction.

‘And we found his clothes in her dirty washing basket,’ Jarvis went on. ‘It’s bizarre. She’d made no attempt to conceal them, just put them there with her own and her daughter’s clothes as if he were one of the family and she was preparing to do his washing. Her husband, Robert, like you said, was almost certainly at the house he shared with Brenda after you sent him away until going back to the North Sea. He could have found them—’

I interrupted, half smiling in spite of everything. ‘Not Robert,’ I said. ‘He always had strict ideas about the demarcation between a man’s job and a woman’s. He didn’t do washing.’

Jarvis inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘It kind of indicates that she at first may have treated Luke almost like one of her family. Although we now know she gave the child drugs, presumably to keep him quiet and docile, every sign in the house shows that she was looking after Luke reasonably well. And yet then she apparently left him more or less naked in your shed on a freezing cold day. Doesn’t make any sense.’

I shrugged. ‘Of course it doesn’t make any sense. The woman had a terrible hereditary disease which seriously affects mental health and on top of that she discovered her husband had bigamously married another woman, leading a privileged life with her and fathering a healthy child, something she could never have. I thought you believed that people can simply be mad, DS Jarvis? I think Brenda Anderton was driven mad.’

DS Jarvis ignored the jibe, if it even registered, and spoke quietly. ‘Yes, I think that probably is about the sum of it,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t excuse what she’s done, though,’ I said. ‘Not to that poor little boy or to me.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Jarvis. ‘I just regret that she is no longer with us to stand trial. We might have found out the truth about all kinds of things.’

I nodded.

‘And how is Luke Macintyre? Is he going to be all right?’

‘Looks like it, thankfully. We’re told he’s recovering well. Physically, at any rate. There are psychological implications, of course, even though he’s so young.’

‘And what about me, Detective Sergeant? Do I still have to stand trial?’

Jarvis shook his head. ‘That’s really what I came to see you about, Mrs Anderson. Obviously no charges will be made against you and you are therefore released unconditionally from police bail. There’s some paperwork, just a formality...’

I felt the relief wash over me. It was like a warm bath, cleansing and restoring, when you feel dirty and vaguely unwell.

‘Thank God,’ I said.

DS Jarvis looked down at his coffee cup, while fiddling with the cuff on one of his jacket sleeves. I remembered him doing exactly the same on the night Robbie had died. Obviously something of a nervous tick when he didn’t feel entirely comfortable.

‘I’m only sorry we got it all so wrong,’ he said.

I glanced at him in surprise, and so, I thought, did DC Price. I somehow didn’t think Jarvis was a man who would often apologize for anything.

I had previously been furious with the detective sergeant, and the police in general. They hadn’t listened, not any of them really, and they had made little or no effort to move beyond their original crass assumptions. In my opinion they had not appeared to even attempt to conduct anything resembling a proper investigation.

But I saw no point in being anything other than conciliatory. Not at this stage. I was hoping they might reveal far more about their inquiries, not just concerning the abduction of Luke Macintyre and the break-ins at Highrise, which directly affected me, but also Brenda Anderton’s death. And most importantly of all, I wanted them to investigate Robbie’s death properly, and was even hoping they may already have begun to do so.

‘I can see how it must have looked,’ I said mildly.

‘Yes, well, I suppose we just have to move on,’ muttered Jarvis ambiguously, still fiddling with his sleeve.

He emptied his coffee cup and brushed the froth from his upper lip, resembling fleetingly rather more the gawky schoolboy I suspected he would once have been than a hard-nosed detective.

‘There’s something you may like to know,’ Jarvis continued, just a tad tentatively, as if he weren’t sure whether he should share it with me but was going to anyway. ‘We have CCTV footage of Brenda Anderton’s car travelling through the speed-restricted roadworks area of the A30 on the morning of your son’s death. She took the Blackstone turning, and definitely could have been heading for Highrise. In fact, the coincidence seems too great for her to have been going anywhere else.’

I gasped.

‘It looks like she could well have been involved. Your son was at an impressionable age and his circumstances made him highly vulnerable. We can only assume that you are probably right, Mrs Anderson, and that Brenda deliberately revealed to Robbie the truth about his father in, doubtless, the most blunt and unpleasant manner. That could perhaps have been enough to push him to do something he never otherwise would have contemplated, to take his own life...’

I just stared at him. I was afraid I might break down and weep again, for the first time in days. Jarvis continued to speak.

‘The problem is, Mrs Anderson, now Brenda Anderton is also dead, I fear we will never be able to prove it.’

My mind was buzzing. ‘That CCTV footage is good enough for me,’ I said. ‘I feel I now know what happened. What is it judges tell juries? They must reach a verdict beyond any reasonable doubt. I know what happened, all right, beyond any reasonable doubt.’