The Cruellest Game (7 page)

Perhaps he was the sort of boy who kept his true feelings bottled up to such an extent that he quite simply could not cope with them any more. I hadn’t thought he was like that, but I no
longer knew. I didn’t know anything. That was the trouble. Perhaps he’d had concerns, worries, fears that he’d never shared with us or his diary. With anyone.

And perhaps these had driven our Robbie to such a point of despair that he’d felt that he could not carry on.

Could that be? It kind of had to be. I still could not accept it.

I sat there for a while, elbows on Robbie’s desk, my chin resting in my hands, staring out of the window. It had become pretty much completely light outside by then. Or as light as it was
probably ever going to get that morning. Appropriately, somehow, dawn had broken dull and wet, in sharp contrast to the previous day. The night must have clouded over eventually. It was drizzling
and there was thick mist over the moors. Actually, you couldn’t even see the moors. They were concealed by a dense grey curtain. This was typical November weather. On Dartmoor anyway.

I felt close to Robbie sitting in his room like that. I thought back over his all too brief life. Robbie had been born prematurely twenty-nine weeks into my pregnancy. For several weeks he was
in an incubator fighting for survival and at first we were told his chances were not good. Fearing that we were going to lose him made him all the more special. That and the fact that complications
during the birth meant I would have no more children.

But that didn’t matter one jot, because Robbie, a little fighter, got through it all, grew into the fine young man we were so proud of, and from the beginning was more than enough for his
father and me.

He had been all either of us wanted. He’d meant absolutely everything to us both. And now he was gone.

I had no idea how much time passed before I heard noises from below. Robert was moving around down there. I heard him go into the bathroom.

I stood up, preparing to go downstairs. Before doing so, and now that Robert was awake, I decided to move the desk back to its rightful place by the chimney breast. It was somehow important to
me that everything in the room was once again as it should be.

I grasped one end of the desk with both hands and dragged it across the room, finally pushing it, with some difficulty, to fit flush again in its corner.

Standing back to check that it was correctly in position, I noticed the floor. There were two crooked grooves in the highly polished wood clearly marking the path the desk had taken when I
pushed it back. The floorboards were ancient, but when Robert had refurbished Robbie’s room he’d put a finish on the floor which had produced a wonderful deep glow that looked as if it
had evolved with age rather than out of a bottle, but had turned out to be rather more fragile than he’d expected. I remembered him telling Robbie to take care, and how the two of them had
attached little patches of green felt to the legs of Robbie’s chair. The desk however, had not been designed to ever be moved, and no such protective measures had been taken.

I stared at the floor, slowly taking in the significance of what had just happened. There were no other noticeable marks on the floorboards. Just those I had caused by dragging the desk back to
its place. No other marks at all.

I ran down the stairs to Robert, making my feet throb badly again. I shouted out to him before I even got to the bedroom, eager to share my discovery. The door to the en-suite bathroom was open.
Robert was standing naked at the basin, his mouth full of toothpaste. His hair was wet. He’d obviously showered, and he’d shaved off his stubbly beard. Funny how the routine of life
goes on even on such a day. Although his distress showed clearly in his eyes, he looked like my Robert again and not so very different from how he’d been when we’d first met. His face,
long and narrow with angular cheekbones, was a bit more lined and leathery and not quite so pale, down to all those years of exposure to North Sea air probably, but his hair had yet to show any
trace of grey and he was still in quite good shape.

‘Robert, Robert, there was someone there with Robbie when he died,’ I cried. ‘I’m sure of it. I don’t think he did kill himself, I really don’t.’

As I said the words they brought me relief. It seemed crazy, but I realized I would prefer my son to have been murdered rather than to have taken his own life. It was totally selfish and all to
do with guilt, I assumed.

While Robert rinsed the toothpaste from his mouth I explained what had just happened in the room upstairs. How I’d moved the desk on my own, leaving nasty jagged grooves on the polished
floor and how these were the only marks on the floor.

‘Don’t you see, Robert, don’t you see? The only way that desk could have been moved to the middle of the room in the first place without marking the floor would have been if
two people had carried it, one lifting each end. Robbie couldn’t have carried it on his own. You made it out of solid oak. It would have been far too heavy for him. Anyway, you wouldn’t
try to lift it, would you? Not if you were going to . . . going to . . .’ I didn’t want to say it.

‘No, if he’d been on his own he’d have dragged the desk across the room,’ I went on. ‘Just like I did.’

Robert wiped his mouth with a towel.

‘But he was always very careful with that floor,’ he ventured tentatively.

‘Not when he was planning to kill himself, surely,’ I blurted out finally. And saying it hurt me terribly again, physically as well as mentally.

‘I don’t know, Marion. I just don’t know. What alternative could there be? Anyway, he was alone here, wasn’t he? While you were at work. Who would have come here? And who
could possibly have wanted to harm our Robbie?’

Robert had said the last words in a very distracted sort of way. I could see he was still having difficulty taking anything much in. Or else he was just trying to blot everything out. Or maybe a
bit of both.

‘I’m going to call the police,’ I said. ‘This changes everything. I’m sure of it.’

‘It’s only just gone half past seven,’ said Robert. As if that mattered a damn.

‘Since when have the police worked office hours?’ I enquired.

‘Look, you’re clutching at straws, Marion,’ Robert persisted.

‘Am I? There aren’t any straws to clutch. Our son is dead.’

‘I know. But it’s the guilt, isn’t it? Don’t you see? I understand exactly how you feel. I told you. I feel so guilty. If our boy killed himself, we must be responsible.
Surely? Me mostly. It was me who created this life we have here. Me who cut us off so much from the rest of the world. I reckon that’s what he couldn’t take.’

He was right about the guilt, but I hadn’t invented the marks on the floor. I was just about to tell him so, when I noticed that tears were rolling down Robert’s cheeks.

My heart melted. I went to his side. How could I ever doubt him, or anything about him?

‘You created a wonderful life for us, Robert,’ I said. ‘Robbie thought it was wonderful too. I’ve just been reading his diary. Our boy didn’t kill himself.
I’m absolutely certain of it. The police have to listen to me. And I’m going to make them. I promise you that.’

I found the business card DS Jarvis had given me. It was in the pocket of the jacket I’d been wearing the previous day, which now lay in the middle of our bedroom floor
tangled up with the rest of my clothes and Robert’s. It seemed the detective sergeant was stationed at Exeter’s Heavitree Road Police Station.

I dialled the mobile number he’d written on the back.

While I was doing so Robert dressed quickly in jeans and a clean shirt and went downstairs. I loved him dearly, but he’d disappointed me by being so apparently unimpressed by what I
considered to be my big discovery, and he seemed to have no wish even to listen to any conversation I might have with the police.

As it turned out there wasn’t much of a conversation to listen to.

I had been vaguely reassured and perhaps a bit impressed to find that Jarvis had supplied me with the number of his mobile phone. I was not so impressed to be patched straight through to a duty
officer at Heavitree Road.

He said DS Jarvis was not immediately contactable and all he could do was take a message. Unless he could help at all.

‘Perhaps you would like to tell me what you are calling DS Jarvis about, madam?’ he enquired.

‘No, thank you,’ I said. I knew about duty officers who answered calls to police stations nowadays. They weren’t even police officers any more.

‘Just ask him to call Marion Anderson as soon as he can, will you?’ I said. ‘He has my number, I think. But I’ll leave it again.’

I followed Robert downstairs, still wearing my dressing gown.

Vaguely I wondered why he’d been in such a hurry to dress, on the day after our son had died.

I went into the kitchen, expecting him to be making tea. That was our usual routine. He was the morning tea-maker when he was at home. Though my first cup was normally brought to me in bed.

But Robert wasn’t in the kitchen at all. The Aga was still alight – I could feel the heat from it. However, the big old kettle, almost always simmering away on top when Robert was at
home, was not in place. Robbie and I were inclined not to bother with it. That day it seemed Robert hadn’t bothered either. I touched the electric kettle gingerly. It hadn’t even been
switched on. But then, this was no normal day. Why on earth should either of us be following any kind of normal routine?

I heard a noise in the hall, and called out.

‘Robert? Are you there, Robert?’

He didn’t reply. I stepped into the long passageway. I could see Robert standing by the front door. He was now wearing outdoor shoes and a waterproof jacket over his jeans and shirt. His
hand was on the door handle.

‘Are you going out?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Uh, yes. There’s something I have to do.’

‘What? Today? Now?’ I studied him. The way he was standing. The slightly sheepish manner. He seemed unwilling to look me directly in the eye.

‘Were you going out without even telling me?’ I asked incredulously.

I thought his face, not as ashen as it had been when he returned home but still on the pale side, coloured slightly.

‘No, no, of course not. I was just waiting for you to come down.’

I didn’t think he was telling the truth.

‘Where on earth are you going? What is it you have to do on this morning of all mornings?’

‘I have to take the hire car back.’

‘What? Won’t they pick it up from here? Anyway, does it matter if we keep it another day?’

He stood silently for a moment looking at me.

‘I have to go out,’ he said. ‘I have to be on my own—’

‘But you’ve only just got back. I need you with me. Here. In our home.’

‘You must understand. I just have to have a few hours on my own. And this way I’ll be able to leave you our car in case you want to get out too. I can drop the rental in Okehampton
later and get a cab home . . .’

‘But why don’t I come with you? Follow you in our vehicle. Then I can give you a lift straight back.’

‘Look, I thought I might take a walk up over the moors to Meldon Reservoir, or maybe Yes Tor. I need to clear my head.’

‘Robert, you’d drown.’ I gestured out through the hall window. The rain was still pouring down. ‘It’ll be blowing a gale up there, too. What are you thinking of?
And where are your heavy-duty waterproofs, and your boots?’

I knew where they were well enough. In the boot room by the back door. We were standing at the front door. Robert was in no way dressed for a tramp over the moors, not even on a much better day
than this.

Suddenly he yelled at me.

‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ His voice was not only loud but very Scottish again. He sounded furious. He’d never spoken to me so roughly before.

I took an involuntary step backwards.

‘I have to go out, Marion,’ he continued in the same loud and angry tone of voice. ‘And I have to be on my own. Just trust me, will you, woman?’

I thought I was going to break down and cry again. He saw it in me, I think. His manner softened as swiftly as it had become so harsh.

‘I’ll be back in a few hours, Marion. I promise. I just need a bit of time to myself, that’s all.’

He reached out and touched me on one shoulder. I half waited for the kiss. We never parted, Robert and I, even for a few hours, without kissing. No kiss came. Instead he swung around and left
the house.

I found myself shuffling backwards until my heels hit the staircase, jarring my burned feet, and then I just sat down. I was shocked to the core yet again. The death of a son could make any man
or woman behave strangely and in a totally out of character way, I told myself. None the less, I was further traumatized by Robert’s behaviour.

After a while I hoisted myself up off the stairs and wandered distractedly into the kitchen. I switched on the kettle but never quite got round to making myself the tea I had half planned. I
just sat down at the table, my back to the door, in the same chair I’d been using when Robert had arrived at one in the morning, unexpected in every way. Neither looking nor sounding like the
husband I so loved. And now he had walked away from me, when I needed him most.

I began to wonder again what it meant. One half of my brain and certainly my heart told me that it meant nothing at all. Robert was a terribly bereaved father. I couldn’t expect him to
behave logically. I couldn’t expect him to be his usual self. No doubt I was not my usual self, either. The other half began to relive the events of the last twenty-four hours. To dissect
them meticulously. And even to look further back into our shared past.

I thought about the Amaco emergency number he had given me being unobtainable.

The piece of card upon which he had written it all those years ago was still on the kitchen table in front of me, alongside the discarded shopping list upon which PC Cox had scribbled the main
number of the Amaco head office in Aberdeen after she’d got it from directory enquiries.