The Cruellest Game (42 page)

‘I should say,’ responded Pam. ‘You must know the old adage. There’s not a guilty prisoner in any jail in all the land.’

I ended the call and thanked her. I certainly wasn’t going to share with her what I intended to do next. I called Marti Smith, my solicitor, and asked if she could advise me on the
technicalities of arranging to visit Robert. I knew that as he was no longer on remand I would need a visiting order which had to be approved by him, not that, from the tone of his letters, I
thought there would be a problem with that.

‘And there’s something else I need you to do for me first, some paperwork I need you to deal with,’ I told Marti.

Less than two weeks later I found myself on my way to Exeter Prison, the imposing Victorian-built penitentiary situated quite centrally in the lovely old county town. I was not looking forward
to seeing Robert again, and in such a place, but it had to be done.

I passed through security, enduring the indignity of a body search, which brought back unwelcome memories of my own brush with the law. The prison officer who searched my bag removed the sheaf
of paperwork I had with me and glanced at me curiously.

I explained that these were legal papers I needed Robert to sign.

‘Did you know you could have arranged a legal visit in a private room with your solicitor present?’ he enquired.

I nodded. ‘I didn’t want to make it too formal,’ I said.

The officer removed my pen from my bag and then replaced it.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But if your husband agrees to sign, then I’d like you to indicate that to us before handing him a pen. For your own safety and his.’

I agreed, wondering at this new world where even a pen could be regarded as some kind of weapon. Although maybe the officer was watching his back as much as anything else, because Robert had
presumably already had plenty of access to a pen in order to write to me, before and after his conviction.

He was waiting at a small table in a big room, along with a number of other prisoners already with visitors. He looked as if he may have put on even more weight. His complexion was now quite
unhealthily pallid, and he seemed to be sweating. His hair was still short and, I thought, perhaps just beginning at last to turn grey at the temples. He stood up and half smiled as I walked
towards him and for one awful moment I was afraid he was going to lean across the table and attempt to kiss me. But I think he saw the expression on my face. Anyway, he sat down again smartly. I
sat down opposite him.

He spoke first.

‘I can’t tell you what it means to me that you’ve come here,’ he said. ‘When I was told that you’d applied for a visiting order it was the first good news
I’d had in months—’

I interrupted him then. There was no point in stringing him along.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Robert,’ I told him coldly. ‘I have come to see you for one reason and one reason only. I need your cooperation. It appears we have run out of
funds and I no longer have any income at all. I have to sell Highrise and I can’t do it without you. Not easily anyway.’

I slammed the necessary paperwork down on the table.

There had definitely been hope in his eyes when I’d walked into that room. I saw it fade as I spoke.

‘Not Highrise?’ It was a question rather than a statement.

I nodded. ‘I have no choice. We have no choice.’

With resignation, and without saying anything else, he looked down and began to read the papers before him.

‘You maintain ownership of one half of the property,’ I told him. ‘This document just gives me the right to dispose of the place and its contents as I see fit. Your share will
be put in trust for you until your release.’

He glanced up at me.

‘Do you think that makes any difference to me?’ he asked. ‘Now?’

I shrugged. ‘I just wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to take anything from you. I don’t want to take anything from you. I don’t want to touch anything of yours ever
again.’

I spat out the last words in spite of knowing I shouldn’t. After all, I was there to persuade Robert to do my bidding, not to vent my latent fury on him for its own sake.

He did not reply. Instead he looked down again at the papers on the table. I noticed that his hands were trembling. I waited.

I’d thought about asking Marti Smith to approach him. Or, as I assumed would be the correct procedure, to ask for the approach to be made by Robert’s solicitor. But I’d known I
would stand a better chance of getting what I wanted in the least problematic way if I went to visit Robert and asked him directly. It was an uncomfortable thing to do. But I had been fairly
confident of the feelings he still held towards me. And of his tremendous sense of guilt. And actually I still was. In spite of my outburst.

Eventually, after what seemed like a very long time, he looked up at me again.

‘Is this what you really want, Marion?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But think of the memories? Do you really want to leave Highrise? I mean, maybe I will appeal successfully. There is nothing standing in the way of us having a life together now. Perhaps
we could rebuild our life? Is that out of the question, Marion?’

For a moment or two I was speechless. Then it was like the waters breaking, as words and thoughts I had barely voiced even to myself poured out of me.

‘Do you ever listen to yourself, Robert?’ I stormed at him. ‘You’re crazy. Mad. Crazy. Do you honestly think any woman in her right mind could countenance a future with a
man who’s done to her what you’ve done to me? Our son is dead because of you. We don’t have a home. We certainly don’t have the slimmest hope of any life together ever. Even
if I were stupid enough to consider such a thing, neither of us have the means to keep Highrise going. How could you have thought that your lottery money was going to last for ever? It was a
miracle you kept all those ridiculous balls in the air for as long as you did. I have a mountain of bills to pay. I have no money even to refill the oil tank. It may be April but every room in the
house is still freezing except the kitchen and that’s where I’ve existed all winter. Since your arrest I’ve barely been able to feed myself, or the fucking dog. And I
wouldn’t have been able to do so at all without the generosity of the vicar’s wife, of all people, and others in the village, the neighbours you never wanted anything to do with.
You’re a fucking maniac, Robert. A total fucking maniac and I was too blind to see it. Our poor fucking son had to die before I could see it. Then I saw it all right. Now I fucking see it. So
just sign these fucking papers, will you, and then that will be the end of everything . . .’

I stopped abruptly, suddenly aware both of my use of language and that my voice had risen until I was shouting at virtually the top of it. The room around us had fallen almost silent. The same
prison officer who had earlier searched my bag was walking purposefully towards us. He stopped walking when I stopped shouting.

Robert merely stared at me. His eyes blank and yet filled with pain. His jaw slack. I wondered if he really was crazy. I thought he must be to have done what he did. Sometimes I wondered if I
too were crazy. Driven that way by this madman before me.

I glanced towards the prison officer and made a show of taking my pen from my bag. The officer stepped forwards, again. Watchful. I placed the pen on the table alongside the legal papers.
Without another word Robert picked it up and signed in each of the places Marti Smith had marked.

That was it. He had with those few signatures given me the right to sell Highrise, to walk away from the place and from him for ever.

I half snatched the papers from him, shuffling them into some sort of order as I stood up, swung round and prepared to leave. Then he spoke once more.

‘Will you come and visit again?’ he asked, almost plaintively. ‘Will you? If only to tell me how you’ve got on, and if you’ve sold the place?’

I could barely believe my ears. I turned round to look at him one last time. His eyes were pleading. His lips were trembling as well as his hands. I didn’t give a damn.

‘Your solicitor can do that,’ I said, my voice deliberately expressionless. ‘I never want to see you again as long as I live.’

I began to walk across the visiting room to the exit. As I did so I could hear a kind of strangled wail. It hardly sounded like Robert, more like the anguished cry of a wild animal. But I knew
it was him.

I did not look back.

When I arrived home, or rather to the place I now thought of as having once been my home, I took the signed papers from my bag and flipped through. I felt no sense of triumph.
This really did mark the end of it all. The end of an era. The end of a lifetime. I felt mostly sorrow. But I also experienced perhaps just a glimmer of hope for some kind of future, something I
knew I had now denied Robert even more than Exeter Crown Court had.

I did want to start again, if it were to prove to be possible. I would never stop grieving for Robbie. But I was damned if I was going to grieve for his father too, and let that man destroy
whatever might be left for me.

I called an estate agent that very afternoon in order to put Highrise on the market. And I called Marti Smith to tell her Robert had signed. Then I set about giving the place a massive spring
clean and generally making it as presentable as I could in order to sell. The next day I planned to tidy the garden, particularly at the front, where visitors first arrived at the property. I
needed to get out fast, I really did. And I was prepared to do anything necessary in order for that to happen, including ensuring that the price was right.

Ultimately, and thankfully, the old house sold surprisingly easily. Or perhaps not that surprisingly. I put it on the market for more than £50,000 less than the price suggested by our
major local estate agent, and ultimately agreed to sell for almost £100,000 less than his estimate. Ironically, it was Robert who had always said, when I’d gone to car boot sales or
markets, that everything has a price, and everything will sell at the right price.

I was more readily prepared to accept a low offer for Highrise because the prospective buyer was, unusually, neither in a chain nor in need of a mortgage. I just wanted to get out of the place
as quickly as possible, and he just wanted to move himself and his family in as quickly as possible.

At around the same time the inquest into Robbie’s death was eventually held in the North Devon market town of Barnstaple. It was a curious affair. I attended with my father. Dad had
offered to accompany me, and for the first time since the nightmare had begun I did not turn him away.

I wasn’t required to give evidence and did not have to be at the hearing. But I wanted, indeed, needed to be there to witness the final chapter in my son’s tragic story,

The coroner for Exeter and Greater Devon, Dr Elspeth Hunt, had been supplied with written reports from the ambulance service and from the Scenes of Crime Officers. DS Jarvis was the principal
witness.

He briefly outlined how he had been called to Highrise on the night of Robbie’s death and had found my son hanging from a beam in his room.

‘My first reaction and that of the paramedics and other police officers called to the scene was that this was a case of tragic suicide,’ said Jarvis. ‘However, subsequent
events have led us to believe that there was probably a third party involved.’

‘Indeed, Mr Jarvis,’ agreed the coroner. ‘And the involvement of this third party is something that has recently become a matter of record in another court, has it
not?’

‘Yes, madam. However, the third party concerned is deceased and we are unable to take our investigations into the death of Robbie Anderson any further.’

‘So I understand. You are speaking of Mrs Brenda Anderton, are you not, whose husband, Robbie Anderson’s father, was recently convicted of her murder?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘And you were quite right, Mr Jarvis, to be reticent about naming a person who can neither answer the allegations made against her nor be brought to trial. However, I think it is important
for this court, the sole task of which is to ascertain the cause of Robbie Anderson’s death, to be able to place on record that all known aspects of this case have been considered.’

‘Yes, madam,’ said DS Jarvis again.

‘And so, also for the record, Mr Jarvis, can you confirm that no other person is being investigated regarding the death of Robbie Anderson?’

‘I can, madam. In fact, our investigation into the young man’s death has now been closed.’

Within just over an hour the coroner announced her verdict on the ending of fifteen years of bright and promising life.

‘Under the complex circumstances of this case, and because there is insufficient evidence to come to any other conclusion, I am delivering an open verdict,’ said Dr Hunt.

I had been ready for that, of course. DS Jarvis had already indicated that there could really be no other ruling, and both he and my solicitor, Marti Smith, had explained the legal situation to
me.

The coroner then went on to offer her sympathy to Robbie’s family.

‘I can only imagine what this fine young man’s parents have been through following his tragic death,’ she said. ‘This really is the kind of case I would like never to
come my way again.’

She did not mention further that one half of Robbie’s parentage was in prison. As I left the court, my arm through Dad’s, I did feel hurt that in the annals of law the circumstances
of my son’s death would never be fully explained nor recorded.

None the less, I also, finally, felt a sense of closure.

The sale of Highrise was completed in mid-June, just over six weeks after my accepting the buyer’s offer. Everything went extremely smoothly. But I suppose it does when
you’re damned near giving a house away.

I didn’t care. In fact, I didn’t give a damn. I just wanted to leave the place and never see it again. And I would still have enough money to begin to rebuild my life. I didn’t
know how long it might take me, or even if ultimately I would find the will to do so, but I was going to give it a good try.