The Cruellest Game (41 page)

‘Yes. They must have been, I suppose.’

‘You suppose, Mr Parsons? Surely you must now accept beyond any reasonable doubt that the damage to the vehicle’s accelerator cable was not caused by mechanical failure?’

‘Well, yes,’ Parsons agreed with obvious reluctance, looking more uncomfortable than ever.

‘And so you must therefore accept that the cable threads were cut by someone wishing to harm Mrs Brenda Anderton, do you not?’

John Parsons glanced pleadingly at the judge, who in turn fixed a disapproving look on Pam Cotton.

‘The witness cannot possibly be in a position to answer that question, Mrs Cotton,’ he said.

‘Of course not, My Lord, I do apologize,’ the barrister responded, again looking almost anything but apologetic.

‘No further questions,’ she added, once more taking her seat.

Ultimately the cases for both prosecution and defence, including the opening and closing statements of both barristers, took eleven days to complete. On the twelfth day Sir Charles Montague sent
the jury to deliberate their verdict.

They took less than four hours. And their decision was unanimous, the foreman told the court. Guilty. Robert had been found unanimously guilty of murdering his first and only legal wife.

Still protesting his innocence, the man I had once so loved, the husband who had never really been mine, was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation from the judge that he serve a
minimum of fifteen years.

As I left the court, hurrying past the press gathered on the forecourt, I did experience a certain sense of satisfaction. The woman directly responsible for my son’s death was herself
dead, and the man I now held indirectly responsible for the entire tragedy had been jailed for life for her murder.

They had both got no less than they deserved and I felt no compassion for either of them. Not any more. It wasn’t enough, of course, because nothing could bring my beloved Robbie back.

But at least a kind of justice had been achieved.

I retreated into Highrise again, into what had once been the comforting womb provided by my beautiful home. Although this time only for a few days. I had already planned what I
would do if Robert was convicted, in theory anyway, but I did not yet know if it would be possible.

I remained devastated by all that had happened and would for the rest of my life. However, in a way, I had done my grieving. For my son, for the life I had once lived, and indeed for the man I
had once loved. In order to survive I had to move on, at least to the best of my ability. And if I were to have any chance of doing so, I could not stay at Highrise long term. Not only did I no
longer have the money or the will to maintain the place, but the home I’d once thought so perfect was now just a constant reminder of the sham of my marriage and the tragic loss of my son.
Although, of course, I really needed no reminder.

I also had to remember that I was not yet quite forty. I would celebrate my fortieth birthday later that year – to use the accepted term, even though I felt as if no celebration of any
kind would ever be part of my life again. Unless I were to follow in the footsteps of my dearest boy, I could reasonably expect to live another thirty, even forty years. And I had already rejected
suicide. That would be the ultimate defeat. I wasn’t going to allow my supposed husband and his wicked wife to defeat me in anything. Not any more. Robert’s shocking courtroom
revelation of how Brenda had used our son like some worthless puppet in order to execute the worst possible revenge on his father and me had made me even more determined about that. To me, Brenda
Anderton was quite simply a murderer, every bit as much as was Robert, who had now paid the proper price for her actions. I wasn’t going to allow myself to become another of her victims.

But, somewhat bizarrely, I needed Robert’s help before I could move on.

Once the trial was over I finally opened the letters he had sent me. It seemed strange to take them from the back of the kitchen cupboard, into which I had flung them immediately upon receipt so
that they would be out of sight, and to know that I was touching what he had touched. It would once have been unthinkable for me to have left unseen any word at all from this man. But I had done so
for months. And there they all were. Twenty of them. Every one had remained unread and unanswered, but he hadn’t given up writing them.

I checked the dates of the postmarks as best I could and ripped open the first, which he had sent me right after he was arrested. Its content was predictable. This was a letter full of guilt and
remorse concerning his double life and the way in which he had bigamously married me, and his grief and even greater sense of guilt over Robbie’s death. It also protested his innocence of any
involvement in Brenda’s death. He had written:

I tossed the letter angrily to one side. I was surprised that I could still feel this level of anger towards Robert, but I most certainly did. The letter just emphasized to me the fantasy world
in which, I now knew, he had always existed. Ever since he’d met me anyway.

For a start, he had never married me. He’d committed bigamy with me. How could he, even in the wildest imaginings of his twisted mind, have thought that I could bear to visit him, let
alone want to? Finally, what on earth did he mean by his plea to be allowed to ‘try to explain’? How could anyone, even plausibly ingenuous Robert, explain away what he had done? The
calculated callous way in which he had conducted his double life over such a long period, and the terrible consequences of his actions, could never be explained. Not to me anyway.

The contents of the letter were exactly what I had expected, which is why I hadn’t opened it or any of the others. I was fairly certain the rest of them would be merely more of the same,
but I opened them just in case, and glanced quickly through.

One of the quite early letters contained information about our financial situation. Robert said he wanted me to have access to what funds remained. He told me that the lottery money had been
kept in an off-shore savings account and included the account details and his access code. He also gave me the access codes for his R. Anderson account and an R. Anderton account I didn’t
know about. The address for all three accounts was the same – 240a Airport Road, Bristol – and meant nothing to me. This certainly explained why no incriminating correspondence
concerning any of these accounts arrived either at Highrise or, presumably, at the Exeter property he’d shared with Brenda. But did Robert have yet another home, I wondered? The man really
was a box of tricks.

I kicked myself for not having opened any of the letters earlier as this information may have made life easier for me. Then I read on. He explained that 240a Airport Road, presumably
conveniently situated close to the airport he regularly flew in and out of, was just an accommodation address, saying: ‘It probably wouldn’t be possible to open a bank account with an
accommodation address nowadays. But sixteen years ago, and with a little creativity, you could do it.’

Well, he could do it, anyway, I thought wryly. And I could only imagine just how ‘creative’ he had been. Then I got to the important bit.

I tossed the letter to one side. He didn’t want to face reality. He was sorry. Nothing new there then. And how dare he in any way blame our poor dead son for anything. Robbie
wouldn’t have minded if his father had said he couldn’t afford to send him to Kelly. He would have understood. He had been that kind of boy.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t known before the alleged amount of Robert’s lottery win. I’d not even bothered to ask him. After all, by the time I’d learned about it
I’d been pretty sure there wouldn’t be much of it left. I thought about our lifestyle for a moment. Robert must have spent several thousand pounds every year on fine wine alone. Looking
back, it had become almost an obsession, and I knew that some of the bottles he’d acquired had cost over £100 each. Our cars were always luxury models bought new as Robert said he
didn’t want either of us driving vehicles that may have been misused by someone else. Our latest, the top of the range Lexus hybrid with all its extras, had cost over £50,000. Then
there was the upkeep of Highrise, not to mention its initial purchase. Even without the fall in interest rates it seemed to me rather more surprising that the cash had lasted as long as it did than
that it had now run out.

Another letter asked if I would try to visit his daughter, Janey, who was in local authority care and had apparently been placed with a foster family. Not for the first time I marvelled at the
man’s cheek. There was no question of my visiting Janey. While, of course, I felt dreadfully sorry for the poor child, an innocent caught up in all of this, I could not get involved with her
in even the most spurious of ways. I was still having enough trouble coming to terms with my own situation.

The most recently received letter had been written soon after Robert’s conviction. He had been returned to Exeter, a local prison which took male prisoners on remand from all over Devon
and Cornwall, but was now awaiting transfer. He might even be sent to Dartmoor, he said, if he was considered low risk enough for a category C establishment. The irony of him possibly being locked
up in the middle of the moor he’d so loved to roam, often with our poor dead son, was not lost on me.

Predictably the bulk of the letter was another outpouring of self-pity, full of his despair at the prospect of spending fifteen years in prison: ‘without you being there for me. Locked up
in some dreadful place and I now know that my life is over, and that is made all the worse by the knowledge that I brought this all about myself.’

Yes
, I thought,
and our son’s life is over because of you too
.

He still maintained, however, that he was innocent of the murder of his wife Brenda. That he had been wrongly convicted. He wrote:

I skimmed over most of the rest of it. Just more of the same. Yet again he begged me to visit: ‘It would mean everything to me. I don’t expect you to love me any more, but just to
know that you didn’t totally hate me would give me some will to live, and to fight on to prove my innocence.’

I bundled up all the letters again and put them back in the cupboard.

Then I considered what to do next. I found that I rather wanted to speak to Pam Cotton. She hadn’t been at all what I had expected in a barrister, not out of court anyway. After
Robert’s conviction she and my solicitor Marti Smith had insisted on taking me for a drink in a pub near the court. For them I think it had been something of a celebration at getting the
right result. For me it had been more of wake really. Pam had been kind to me, her star witness as she referred to me. Albeit after quite a few drinks had been consumed, she had even given me her
mobile number and told me not to be afraid to call if there was ever anything she could help me with. I called. And she answered straight away.

I cut to the chase.

‘I-I just wanted to ask you . . . Robert has never admitted that he killed Brenda; do you believe there is any chance at all that he might be innocent?’

‘No chance at all,’ replied the barrister at once. ‘Guilty as hell. And rightly found to be so by twelve people of average ignorance.’

‘What?’

‘Herbert Spencer’s definition of a jury,’ she said. And she chuckled.

I didn’t. I wasn’t in the mood for any sort of attempt at humour.

‘But wouldn’t you have expected him to confess, to confess in court?’ I continued. ‘I mean after breaking down the way he did and revealing all that stuff that Brenda had
told him?’

I could hear a sort of harrumphing sound down the phone. ‘No chance of that, either,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at the bar for almost twelve years and I’ve never yet
experienced a Perry Mason moment. They never confess. The evidence Robert gave about Brenda is about as good as it gets. But all he told the court was what she’d said she had done. Even
though he seemed to more or less break down he still wouldn’t admit what he had done. And that’s par for the course.’

‘I see,’ I said, but I still felt, and I suppose sounded, uncomfortable.

‘What’s brought this on, Marion?’ Pam asked. ‘You’re not still carrying a torch for the man, are you?’

In spite of myself I managed a hollow laugh. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I certainly am not. It’s just that, well, he’s been sending me letters I’ve not opened. Until now.
And even in the last one, which only arrived yesterday, he’s still protesting his innocence. I mean, is that normal?’