The Cruellest Game (2 page)

Meanwhile Florrie pushed her wet nose against my leg and gazed at me imploringly. She had me exactly where she wanted me, that dog. Obediently, I emptied the best part of a tin of dog meat into
her bowl along with some dried mixer.

Then I flicked the switch on the kettle to make tea, and began to unpack my shopping. But I was still battling with that inexplicable and overwhelming sense of unease. I walked to the bottom of
the stairs and called up at the top of my voice.

‘I’m back, Robbie. Cup o’ tea?’

Still no reply.

I put one foot on the first stair and was just about to run up to the top of the house. That was what I wanted to do. But I didn’t. Instead I told myself to pull myself together. I was
just being silly. Extremely silly.

The kettle would have boiled by now. I went back into the kitchen and made two steaming mugs of strong English Breakfast. I didn’t finish unpacking the shopping, though, nor did I put any
of it away. I was, by now, in too much of a hurry. None the less, I kept telling myself I would soon be drinking my tea while sitting in the old cane rocking chair in Robbie’s room, quietly
watching him at work until he was ready to come down for his supper.

I quite often did that. He never seemed to mind. From what I gathered from the few other mothers I spoke to, most boys of his age would hate it. But Robbie was different. Our relationship was
different. And, after all, I never interrupted. I just sat in silence, unless he spoke to me first, looking out over the view of the moors or maybe thumbing through one of his biking or swimming
magazines.

There was a sharp angle on the landing from which a second narrower staircase led up to Robbie’s room. Florrie had finished her dinner and was now able to take an interest in matters other
than filling her belly. She came tearing up the stairs after me and pushed past just as I was trying to manoeuvre the awkward angle. I spilt some of the tea, a generous slug of which slurped out of
both mugs, and swore under my breath.

I’d been trying to climb the stairs too quickly, of course, considering that I was clutching mugs, which, with the benefit of hindsight, I probably should not have filled to the brim.

It might have been irrational, but I remained so anxious to reach Robbie’s room, to see him there in his familiar surroundings, to watch him turn and smile at me, warm and welcoming, the
way he always did, that I hadn’t been able to help hurrying.

Once more I told myself to pull myself together, and slowed to a more sensible pace as I climbed the last few stairs.

The door to Robbie’s room was open just a foot or so, probably pushed ajar by Florrie whom I could hear whimpering on the other side. Later I came to believe that somewhere in my
subconscious I registered that the sound she was making was not her normal ‘pleased to see you’ noise. But, to be honest, I don’t really know whether I did or not.

I usually knocked before entering Robbie’s room. Even though I knew I was always welcome, even though there were no locks on any doors in our house, not even the bathrooms. Nobody had ever
shown me much respect when I was fifteen, as far as I could remember, but I tried to treat Robbie with respect as well as love and all the other mother stuff.

I could not, however, knock while carrying two mugs.

Instead I called out.

‘Tea’s up, Robbie. Hands full. I’m coming in. OK?’

I pushed the door with one foot, aware as I did so that my son had still not replied. There hadn’t been a sound from him since the moment I had entered the house. The house I’d felt
so sure was empty. The house which still felt empty of any other human occupation.

The door swung easily wide open on its well-oiled hinges. Everything in our house was well maintained. Robert saw to that.

I took just one step into the spacious attic room with its high vaulted ceiling and ancient blackened beams.

I am not a tall woman. The first thing I saw was Robbie’s feet. He was wearing the trainers I had given him for his birthday the previous May. They were black Adidas Originals with a
narrow red and white trim. At first I think I looked only at the trainers, before allowing my gaze to travel upwards.

My son was suspended from the central beam stretching across the room, his back towards the mullioned windows which presented such a spectacular view of the countryside beyond, his face, his
poor distorted face, directly towards me.

Florrie sat below him, staring up. She was still whimpering and now I could quite clearly detect a note of distress. Also, perhaps, of fear.

Robbie was hanging from a rope tied around his neck. Bizarrely, I recognized it as one of the lengths of extra-strong nylon cord, startlingly yellow and shiny, which we had bought, along with
all manner of other new equipment, when he and his father had taken off on their bicycles for a few days’ camping on the moors during the summer holidays.

The cord had embedded itself deeply into the flesh beneath Robbie’s chin, and two puffy circular ridges of skin had risen around it. His face was already swollen and had turned an
unnatural greyish purple and his tongue lolled obscenely from his mouth. His eyes, his lovely pale-blue eyes, were wide open, bulging only slightly and staring straight at me.

There was an unpleasant smell in the room. I recognised what it was at once, and registered, in a distracted sort of way, that Robbie must have lost control of his bowels.

Behind him his computer, his treasured iMac, lay on the floor, the glass of the screen shattered into pointed shards, as if it had been swept carelessly and with some violence from the desk.
That desk, so lovingly constructed by his father, must have been moved across the room. It was now positioned directly behind the spot where Robbie was hanging.

It seemed logical that Robbie had stood on the desk, in order to attach the rope to the beam and to his neck, and had then jumped off. His head was at an acute angle, almost resting on one
shoulder. I knew at once that his neck was broken. This was somehow quite abundantly clear even to a woman like me who had never before witnessed anything remotely like it.

Indeed, I took in the whole terrible scene in a matter of seconds, absorbing it, at first, in a curiously clinical fashion.

The implication of what it actually meant took some seconds more. The fact that my beautiful boy hung dead before me was, perhaps, almost too much for me to grasp.

When the brutal reality finally hit me my whole body slumped into a state of muscular collapse. My fists, clutching the two mugs of tea, involuntarily opened. The mugs fell to the wooden boarded
floor, smashing into many pieces. Scalding tea gushed onto my feet, burning my instep and toes through the felt material of my slippers.

I could hear myself screaming, though. Not from pain, but out of pure unadulterated desolation. Florrie ran right through my legs and raced down the stairs at even greater speed than she had
ascended. She could not possibly have understood what she was witnessing but was suddenly quite desperate to get away.

I just screamed and screamed and screamed.

My life, my world, was over. Hanging from a beam which I knew had once formed part of the hull of a ship that had sailed to America, attached by a length of rope which had anchored a tent
against the winds of Dartmoor, swaying grotesquely in the cross-draught caused by my opening a door opposite windows already flung asunder to the unlikely mellowness of a sunny autumn day.

My boy was dead.

I have no idea how long it took me to stop screaming. When I did, I used Robbie’s iPhone to dial 999. It too had fallen onto the floor, and lay there alongside his broken
computer. I had to reach past him to get it, and in so doing I brushed against his body, making it sway a little more. My hand touched his deathly cold one. I felt sick.

I tried to bend down to pick up the phone but my legs gave way. I was kneeling when I made the call. Later, that always seemed appropriate somehow.

My voice when I spoke to the emergency services sounded as if it belonged to someone else.

‘Ambulance,’ I said, ‘I need an ambulance. It’s my son. Please. Come quickly, quickly . . .’

And yet I knew there was no need for speed. I was already aware that Robbie was beyond help.

I continued to kneel as I waited for them to come. I wanted to leave that room. And I wanted to cut my son down from that obscene hanging position.

I couldn’t do so. The emergency services operator had told me not to touch anything, but I didn’t care about that. I just didn’t have the strength to move. Barely a muscle. I
closed my eyes. I could not look at Robbie’s body. It was almost as if by shutting out the image of him I thought I could make the whole thing go away. But even with my eyes shut I could
still see him hanging there.

I was aware now of burning pains in both my feet where the hot tea had landed. I didn’t care about that either. It really didn’t matter. Nothing mattered much. In fact, I doubted
anything would ever matter much again.

However, there was something I knew I had to find the strength to do.

I had to contact Robbie’s father. I had to give Robert the terrible news and I had to do so swiftly, even though I knew he would be destroyed by it. Perhaps more than I already had been.
If that were possible.

I couldn’t phone Robert when he was on a rig – there were no mobile signals – but all the Amaco platforms had Wi-Fi. Robert and I spoke frequently on a Skype video link, his
laptop to our computer in the office downstairs, or sometimes my iPad. And if I needed to get in touch with him unexpectedly, the routine was that I sent an email and he called me as soon as he
could, either on my mobile or our home number, via Skype.

Ironically, Robert was actually due home at the weekend, two days later. Meanwhile, I had little choice but to email him. I was still holding Robbie’s phone in one hand. I hesitated for
just a moment or two, trying to find the right words, which was, of course, impossible. I could not tell the man his son was dead by email. Instead I settled for tapping out a brief message asking
him to call me urgently and giving no further information.

An ambulance crew arrived within about half an hour, I think. I heard them knocking on the front door and calling out. I did not move from my crouched position on the floor. I still
couldn’t do so. Without any response from me the crew entered the house. I hadn’t locked the front door; we rarely did until bedtime. I could hear their footsteps on the stairs. I had
been asked on the phone where in the house my son was. The crew must have been given that information. They climbed straight up to Robbie’s room and found me there, half kneeling, half lying
by then, on the floor at my son’s feet.

I was vaguely aware of reassuring voices and someone putting a blanket around my shoulders. Strong arms helped me upright and I was led, limping as the pain from my feet began to hit me, out of
the room. I complied meekly, but I think I cried out as I looked again at Robbie’s body. I’m not sure.

Two police officers, a man in plain clothes and a uniformed woman constable, turned up just as we reached the bottom of the stairs. I was by then leaning quite heavily on the shoulder of a small
female paramedic, who’d told me she was called Sally and I wasn’t to worry about anything. Whatever on earth that meant.

I hadn’t asked for the police when I made my emergency call, but apparently they always attend a sudden death. Particularly of such a young person.

I vaguely heard Sally the paramedic tell them, yes, the boy was dead all right. And the body was upstairs. Then the male officer muttering about the SOCOs being on their way. Better get
everything checked out before moving the body, just in case, he said.

I knew what ‘SOCOs’ were, of course. Didn’t everybody nowadays? Scenes of Crime Officers. Brought in to collect and evaluate forensic evidence. But why were they needed here?
Surely Robbie’s death was suicide. A hanging like that always is, isn’t it? Even in my state of total shock I’d just assumed my son had killed himself, although, in my wildest
imaginings, I could think of absolutely no reason why he would have done such a thing. But I’d read about unexplained suicides among young people. They seemed frighteningly common. Anyway, I
wasn’t thinking straight. Far from it. But, perhaps surprisingly, I was just beginning again to at least think.

‘What’s going on?’ I heard myself ask. ‘Why are you bringing the Scenes of Crime people in? You don’t think a crime has been committed here, do you? Surely we know
how my son died, don’t we? Don’t we . . .’

I knew I was babbling. The man in plain clothes interrupted me quite kindly.

‘Just routine, madam,’ he said. He introduced himself then as Detective Sergeant Paul Jarvis.

‘I’ll be in charge of this case,’ he went on, shocking me all over again somehow by referring to the death of my only son as a case.

Then he gestured to the uniformed woman officer. ‘This here is PC Janet Cox, and you must be Mrs Anderson. Is that right?’

I nodded. He murmured something I didn’t quite catch to PC Cox.

‘Look, Mrs Anderson, you must have had the most terrible shock,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go into the kitchen? Make a nice cup of tea?’

If my brain had been functioning more sharply I would have shouted out that I didn’t want a nice cup of tea. Indeed, I couldn’t imagine there being anything nice in my life ever
again. Or anything that I’d ever want, come to that.

But I had no fight left.

Sally the paramedic told PC Cox she really should do something about my burned feet, they could turn quite nasty if they weren’t given some attention. So the three of us went into the
kitchen where I sat at the big old scrubbed pine table in the middle of the room, as instructed. Sally crouched by my side and removed, as carefully as she could, my slippers and beneath them the
black pop socks which I almost always wore on school days. In spite of her obvious care shreds of skin came away with the socks. Sally made soothing noises, told me to sit as still as possible, and
that she was off to the ambulance parked outside to fetch the right dressings. Then she left the room. Meanwhile PC Cox busied herself filling the kettle, finding mugs, milk and tea bags.