Devil's Game

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ he asked, waving at a compact blue car parked almost out of sight beneath the trees and partially obscured by bushes. His companion shrugged and jumped down from the cab and sauntered over to the car, which turned out to be an elderly Astra. He was followed by the driver, who was lighting up a cigarette and sucking in the smoke gratefully.

  ‘No one here,’ his mate said, peering through the misted windscreen. ‘Someone left their coat.’ A dark-coloured item lay crumpled on the front passenger seat as if it had been discarded in a hurry. He tried the passenger door and looked surprised when it swung open.

  ‘Careless beggar,’ he said, peering into the interior. ‘Gone for a walk, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Bloody funny place to come rambling,’ the driver said, glancing round the clearing and the almost impenetrable ranks of trees which enclosed it. ‘Any road, it’s nowt to do wi’us. If they’ve not come back when we finish up this afternoon we’ll report it in.’ He paused for a moment and looked at the ground more closely. ‘There’ve been a few cars up here since last week,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Look at them tyre tracks. Summat funny’s been going off.’

  ‘Darren said he thought cars were coming up here at night,’ his partner said. ‘Noticed it a few times, he said. I’ve not seen owt missen, but then rain washes out tracks pretty fast.’

  ‘You’d not think they’d come all this way for a bit of nooky. Even in my day we made do with the edge of Broadley Moor and most of t’kids seem to be happy with a bloody car park these days. They don’t care who sees them at it.’

  ‘At it like bloody rabbits, teenagers today,’ said his companion, a small grey-haired man, with a sour look. ‘We’d best get a shift on. We’ll be up here all day, else. And there’s no overtime to be had, you can bet on that, no bloody fear.’

  The two men returned to the trailer and set about their day’s work, casting only an occasional glance at the apparently abandoned blue car. Only when they left the clearing with their last trailer load of logs did they mention it again.

  ‘I’ll drop you off, and tell Gordon about it when I get back to t’yard,’ the driver said. ‘It’s a bit odd, that.’ But when he had unloaded and completed his paperwork, Gordon has already gone home, and he promised himself he would report it the following morning. If he remembered.

  Laura was glad to be out of the office. She had made another call to the only number she had for David Murgatroyd’s business enterprises and had met a brick wall for the fourth time. Mr Murgatroyd did not give interviews, she was told by a press officer. Mr Murgatroyd’s interests were private. There were no public companies and so no public information. There would be no change in that position however many times she approached them.

  Irritated, she had reported her failure back to Ted Grant and got his reluctant acquiescence to a trip out of town to attempt to discover where the mysterious would-be benefactor of Sutton Park School had quite possibly started his life.

  Now, with the weight of Ted’s hostility off her shoulders, she determined to forget her private worries and enjoy the trip up the valley of the Maze towards Eckersley where, just beyond the gargantuan and monstrously ugly building society offices which dominated the small town, a monument to the Yorkshire tradition of thrift and canny investment, she turned off the main road and headed up into the steep hills above the river.

  The small village of Sibden lay a mile or so from, and five hundred feet above Eckersley, in a narrow wooded valley where a beck tumbled vigorously down from the moors to the river below. A cluster of stone cottages huddled around a pub and beyond that a high stone wall commenced on the left-hand side of the narrow lane. Laura continued slowly up the hill alongside the wall, until it was broken by a solid stone archway and high wrought-iron gates, firmly closed and, she could see even from the car, with an electronic keypad to one side and under surveillance from CCTV. There was no indication what or who lay beyond the gates, and nothing to be seen through them except a well-kept gravel drive which disappeared into rhododendron shrubberies and trees. She guessed that this must be Sibden House, the former home of David Murgatroyd senior, and still quite possibly, given the level of security, of the man she assumed to be his son.

  She pulled off the road and into the entrance and got out of the car. Whoever lived here, she thought, neither wanted nor expected casual callers. In fact, as she looked at the high stone wall more closely, they seemed quite determined to deter them. The wall was topped with several strands of vicious-looking razor wire.

  Without much optimism, she pressed the bell push at the top of the keypad and was quite surprised when a male voice asked her who she was and what she wanted. She introduced herself and was rewarded with a prolonged silence. Then the voice came back sharply.

  ‘Sir David Murgatroyd is not in residence,’ it said. ‘And he does not give interviews to the Press. Please take this as a final answer.’

  Laura made to protest but the intercom had been switched off at the other end and she was left fuming, with a chill wind whipping round her making her glad she had put her jacket in the car. She reversed out of the entrance in front of the forbidding gates and drove slowly back to the village and found a parking space outside the Leg of Mutton, a dilapidated-looking public house with a few mildewed picnic tables at the front and only a glimmer of light inside to indicate that it might possibly be open to the passing traveller in search of a drink and a bite of lunch. No gastropub here, she thought wryly, and guessed it would not be long before an establishment like this either closed or was transformed into something a bit more stylish. The door creaked as she opened it and she found herself in a shabby barroom, with beer-stained tables, and no other human presence in sight. She stood at the bar for a moment, uncertain how to attract attention but eventually a middle-aged man, with a beer belly hanging over his jeans, slouched from the murky regions at the back and scowled at her.

  ‘We’ve nowt to eat,’ he said. ‘Delivery’s not turned up this morning.’

  ‘I’ll have a drink then,’ Laura said quickly. ‘Can you do me a Bloody Mary?’

  The publican looked startled, as if this was something he had seldom concocted, but turned to the vodka optic accurately enough and shuffled through the soft drinks until he found a can of tomato juice so dusty that it looked as if it had sat on his shelves untouched for years rather than months. Laura decided against asking for ice, in case it turned out to be an unwarranted provocation.

  She paid for the drink and leant on the bar to take a sip.

  ‘I’ve just been up to Sibden House,’ she confided. ‘I wanted to see David Murgatroyd but they say he’s not there very often.’ The publican stared at her stony-faced, his small blue eyes betraying not a scintilla of interest.

  ‘Oh aye?’ he said.

  ‘Do you know him? Mr Murgatroyd? Or Sir David, as he is now.’

  ‘Nobody knows him. He’s never there, is he?’

  ‘Doesn’t do much for the village, then?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Why would he? Most o’t’old village has gone, any road. It’s all weekend cottages now. Come for that new golf course Joe Emmet has opened on what should be good grazing land. Bring their food with ’em from Marks and bloody Spencers, they do, and bugger off back to Leeds first thing Monday morning. Never set foot in here.’ Laura thought that the landlord’s complaint might be better justified if he made more effort himself to smarten the place up and attract customers, but she said nothing, sipping her drink slowly.

  ‘So does Sir David come for weekends, then? Is this just his country pad?’ For some reason her last question unlocked the publican’s tongue.

  ‘I don’t know what it is,’ he said, looking even more surly, but evidently provoked by some anger which Laura did not comprehend. ‘It were left empty for long enough after his father died, my mother said. This one were only a little lad then and he got sent away to school when his mam topped herself. You know about that, do you?’

  Laura nodded non-com
mittally.

  ‘It were only about ten years back young Murgatroyd turned up again and did the old place up. It had gone to rack and ruin by then, but brass were no object. He brought in big contractors from outside. No work for t’locals, was there? And like a bloody fortress when he’d finished. Alarms, cameras, the full bloody monty. And even now we never see him. I don’t know what he’s got hidden away in there, that needs all that security. But they say he’s a millionaire now so maybe t’place is stuffed full o’gold bullion. You can bet your life he pays no tax on it, if it is. They don’t, do they? It’s poor sods like us who get screwed while folk like him get all the breaks.’

  ‘You won’t remember his father, I don’t suppose?’

  ‘My Mam spoke highly of him.’

  ‘Is she…?’ Laura probed.

  ‘Passed on, didn’t she? Last year.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Laura said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ the publican said with finality. ‘She had a stroke. Couldn’t bloody speak for three years and we got no help wi’her to speak of. It were a blessing when she went.’ That was another path Laura did not wish to tread, so she simply nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Is there anyone left in the village who might remember the older Murgatroyd, this one’s father?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘You could try old Fred Betts. He were a gardener and I think he worked up there way back. But he’s in an old folks’ home now, so I don’t know how much he’ll remember. He may have gone ga-ga, for all I know.’

  ‘Which home?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Old Royd, down in Eckersley, on t’road up to Broadley over t’moor. You can’t miss it. They say on a bad day you can smell it from half a mile off.’

  Laura took a deep breath and pushed her drink away. She had not wanted it in the first place and now she knew she could not take another sip without gagging. She turned towards the door without a word and left the bar, hoping she never had to set foot in the place again. If the landlord was typical of Sibden, she thought, it was no wonder that the weekend visitors had as little as possible to do with the pub. The place exuded decay and rancour and she wondered how far the Murgatroyds, son and possibly father, were responsible for that.

  She drove thoughtfully back into Eckersley, joined the old main road and turned off over the bridge that crossed the bypass to climb the steep hill up the opposite side of the valley, towards Broadley and the open moorland which lay between Eckersley and its more elevated neighbour. Before the suburban bungalows gave out and the cattle grids signalled the approach of the sheep-friendly open road, she pulled into the car park of Old Royd Nursing Home. The place had been the subject of a scandal not so long ago, she recalled, when the owners had been accused of sedating some of their residents in the interests of a quiet life for the staff. It was under new and, she hoped, better management now. The door was answered by a young woman in a blue overall who seemed surprised when she asked to see Fred Betts.

  ‘He’s likely asleep,’ she said. ‘He does a lot of sleeping, does Fred.’ It was an unwise comment, Laura thought, in view of the place’s history, but the girl was young enough perhaps not to know what had gone on a few years previously. She was led down a long corridor which, in spite of the publican’s comments, smelt fresh enough – in fact somewhat over-disinfected – but that was undoubtedly better than the alternative, and when her guide knocked on one of the doors she was answered by a voice which sounded unexpectedly vigorous.

  ‘You’ve got a visitor, Fred,’ the girl said, and left Laura in the doorway to face a small, wrinkled man muffled up in blankets in his wheelchair, who gave little sign of life beyond his eyes, which were bright blue and piercingly alert.

  ‘I thought it might be my daughter,’ Fred Betts said sharply. ‘But I expect she’s too busy.’

  Laura smiled, knowing that she could not make up for a daughter, though at least she might break the monotony of life in a home for a while. She explained who she was and why she was here and saw the old man’s eyes become distant as he considered events which he could probably remember more clearly than he could recall what had happened yesterday.

  ‘He were all right, were old Murgatroyd,’ he said at length. ‘A fair boss and a fair man, but obsessed with his work. Never enough time for people was his trouble and it did for him in the end. Not that I’m saying he deserved what happened to him, mind. No one deserved that.’

  ‘I’m writing about his son,’ Laura said. ‘But it’s very hard to make any contact. The house is locked up and he doesn’t give interviews, apparently.’

  ‘He were always a close one, the lad, even as a babby. Never said much. And after his mother died he were sent away to school. And then his dad passed on an’all, died of a broken heart, they reckoned – and I don’t think young David ever came back to Sibden after that. I never saw him, any road. The staff were laid off soon after the old man went, and the house was just abandoned. The gardens turned to a jungle. It were a crying shame after all the work that went into them previous. A terrible waste.’

  ‘What happened to his mother exactly?’ Laura asked.

  ‘She were a lovely lady. A bit nervy, like, even in t’beginning. She near jumped out of her skin one day when I came up on her unexpected, like, in the gardens. And she were left alone a lot in that big place. Old Murgatroyd had his ambitions and he were away a lot. But she never got over t’second baby. A little girl, it were. Jennifer. The lad were about six or seven by then, and the housekeeper said he doted on t’baby. But his mother never recovered. She went a bit funny. And one night she took the little lass, and just walked into t’reservoir on Broadley Moor with her. They found them the next morning, the baby’s hands tangled up in her hair, they said. Lovely red hair she had, a bit like yours. Both drowned. Ten months old, the baby girl were. What did she ever do to hurt anyone?’ Even after all those years, the old man’s eyes filled with tears. ‘A crying shame, it were,’ he said.

  ‘I read the inquest report,’ Laura said. ‘But the boy? He must have been devastated.’

  ‘He got sent off to boarding school as soon as he were old enough – if you think eight’s old enough. His father never had much time for him, and after that he were more interested in burying himself in his political work than looking after his lad. By the time the boy were fourteen or so, the old man were dead any road. Left the lad a small fortune, but there’d been little love lost. When he came home for t’holidays he used to mooch around the house and garden on his own most o’t’ time. Came chattering to us working in t’garden, as if we had time to listen. Never brought friends back and he had no friends local, like. Not so far as I could see, any road. A lonely lad in a lonely, sad house. Like his mother were a lonely wife. I don’t think old Murgatroyd meant any harm. He never saw it coming with his wife, that’s for sure, but other folk did.’

  Laura drove back to Bradfield slowly and headed straight home. She was not sure that Michael Thackeray would keep his promise to come back early, but she planned a meal which would survive until he eventually arrived. Then, she thought apprehensively, they really must talk. Soon it would become obvious that the worry that had oppressed her for the last few weeks had become a certainty, and she had absolutely no confidence that he would greet the news that he might be about to become a father again with anything other than horror. And with the tragic story of David Murgatroyd’s loss of his wife and baby daughter fresh in her mind, Laura was only too aware of why that might be so.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DS Kevin Mower had no doubt about the mood his boss was in when he went into his office the next morning. Difficult would have been the most charitable adjective he could ever conjure up for Thackeray after all the years he had worked for him, which did not mean that Mower did not have respect and even affection for the older man, but these were feelings he had learnt to keep to himself. And this morning the atmosphere resembled one of those days when a threatening sky seems to press down on the world and lightning can be seen flickering on
the horizon.

  ‘Guv,’ he said tentatively, closing the door behind him. ‘You’ve seen the reports on this missing woman?’

  ‘Why wasn’t I told about this yesterday?’ Thackeray said. ‘It seems to have been obvious enough to the young copper who interviewed the husband that something serious was up.’

  ‘Well, she told her sergeant that, but he didn’t agree, played it down, so it didn’t go in her written report. There was absolutely no evidence that Karen Bastable hadn’t left home of her own free will. They filed a misper report and circulated the car number. When I spoke to him he was still a bit dismissive of PC Mirza’s worries. She told him Bastable was a racist bastard and he’s obviously got up her nose. That may be why he discounted her concerns.’

  ‘Do you know PC Mirza?’ Thackeray asked.

  ‘I’ve met her actually,’ Mower said. ‘She was with “Omar” Sharif at a race relations course at HQ a couple of months ago.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘She seemed a sharp cookie,’ Mower conceded. ‘Sharif seemed to rate her too. Reckoned she’d do well.’

  ‘Right. So talk to her before you go and see Bastable. Get her take on the situation. If this woman’s car’s been found ten miles from home and a couple of miles into Bently Forest, which is not exactly a spot you’d go for a picnic at this time of year, it casts a whole new light on her disappearance. And if I’ve got to persuade Jack Longley to start a major search in that sort of terrain, I’m going to need all the facts at my disposal. What time did the forestry workers report this?’

  ‘The message came in at about 8.30 this morning from their foreman. But they actually saw the car yesterday morning parked in the clearing where they were working. Apparently they just thought someone was walking in the woods but when no one had come back by the end of the day they decided to report it to the foreman, but he’d gone home, so they did the same. They only mentioned it this morning when they went in to work.’