Devil's Game

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Over here, sir,’ he said to Thackeray, and led the way to an area of brambles and rough scrub on the far side of the clearing.

  ‘There are tyre tracks here, a bit apart from the rest. Not very clear because they’re mainly on the grass, see?’ He indicated where a vehicle had crushed the vegetation. ‘And then here, look, someone’s been standing right here. Maybe more than one person. We thought maybe they were watching what was going on, a grandstand view, as it were.’

  ‘Any chance of a tyre print?’ Thackeray asked.

  ‘I doubt it, but I’ve asked forensics to take a look. You never know. A vehicle might have left some other trace in this sort of terrain. It’s not where I’d risk the family car, let alone anything more upmarket. You’d be bound to scratch the paintwork.’

  ‘So that’s it, is it?’ Thackeray asked, irritated at having been tempted to come so far for so little.

  ‘Not quite, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘Whoever parked up here got out of the car and left some footprints, which are quite a lot clearer than anything else we’ve found. Over here.’

  He led the two detectives to a spot overlooking the rest of the clearing but where a couple of bushes provided a screen. A patch of damp ground was carefully cordoned off and a white-suited forensics officer was crouching on the ground.

  ‘Anything useful?’ Thackeray asked. The young woman looked up.

  ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘Someone stood here for quite some time. The prints are quite deep and didn’t get too damaged by the rain because of the overhanging vegetation. And they were made by a man, not a woman, judging by the shoe size. About a ten, I’d say. I should be able to get a good cast. And this is quite clearly someone wearing shoes, not the ubiquitous trainers that a thousand people are wearing within a square mile. Shoes last longer, wear in particular ways, are much more individual, in other words. If you can match the cast to a shoe, you’ve a good chance of identifying who stood here.’

  ‘And the shoes will have got muddy,’ Mower ventured.

  ‘That too. I’ll take samples of the ground and the vegetation.’

  Thackeray nodded and glanced at Mower.

  ‘So what do you make of it?’ he asked. ‘You get a large group of people up here intent on public sex. And someone keeping out of sight and watching them. Was he standing here wondering whether to join in? Or was he a voyeur who was satisfied simply by watching other people? Or was he a predator who wanted to keep his car out of sight before picking up his victim and driving away with her?’

  ‘We need to push Charlene and the boyfriend some more,’ Mower said. ‘They’re our only link to what was going on. They may have noticed a car being parked away from the main circle on previous occasions. Or seen someone joining in, apparently arriving on foot, which would be a bit unusual, to say the least. Until we find someone who was here this week, we’ll have to rely on what they can recall happened on a regular basis and what, if anything, seemed unusual.’

  ‘The other possibility, of course, is that it was the husband spying on Karen, trying to find out exactly what she was up to before intervening,’ Thackeray said.

  ‘Except, as far as we know, he had no transport, guv,’ Mower objected. ‘She’d taken the family car.’

  ‘Transport’s not difficult to get hold of if you really try,’ Thackeray said. ‘I think at the very least we’ll have a look at Terry Bastable’s footwear. He may think he’s washed the mud off, but you can bet your life that if he was up here, there’ll be traces forensics can find. Clothing too. If he’s been in amongst this thick vegetation, there’ll be traces of that on his clothing as well.’

  ‘He won’t be very pleased if we go round raiding his wardrobe,’ Mower said with a small grin. ‘He took offence when we looked at Karen’s stuff. I’ll get the heavy mob to do it, I think.’

  ‘Straight away,’ Thackeray said. ‘Before it occurs to him to get rid of anything incriminating.’

  Laura kept her head down as Ted Grant made one of his regular sorties round the newsroom, peering over reporters’ shoulders and generally making them uneasy even if he offered no overt comment on what they were writing. When he got to Bob Baker’s desk, where the crime reporter was pounding his keyboard as if his life depended on it, Grant made a close study of what he was writing.

  ‘So, do you still think the husband did it?’ he asked at length. Baker glanced round and shrugged.

  ‘I took a turn round Greenwood Close, after the press conference. That’s where they live. There weren’t many neighbours about, all out at work, of course. But I did have a chat with one woman who reckoned that the Bastable marriage was on the rocks when I told her Karen had gone AWOL. She lives opposite and said she’d heard shouting at all hours. Her husband went and banged on the door once when the noise got too bad. Got a mouthful from Terry for his pains. All sorts of threats, she said. She reckoned Terry’s a violent bastard and she wouldn’t be surprised what he’d done. Either he’s done Karen in or she’s scarpered for her own good, she reckoned. Of course, she didn’t want to be named, but I reckon I can get some of it in as neighbours’ speculation, that sort of thing.’

  ‘She’s no idea whether she had a boyfriend on the side?’ Grant asked.

  ‘No sign of anyone that she’d seen,’ Baker said. ‘But I might go back later, when they’re all home from work, and see what else I can dig up.’

  ‘Good lad,’ Grant said and turned towards Laura, who had been listening unashamedly to this exchange.

  ‘And you, miss?’ Grant said, obviously irritated. ‘Have you tracked down our mysterious Sir David Murgatroyd yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Laura admitted. ‘I’ve made contact with his PA, but he doesn’t hold out much hope of an interview. Says he hates personal publicity.’

  ‘Well, let’s come at the beggar another way,’ Grant said. ‘Go to one of the other schools he’s taken over, why don’t you. Isn’t there one in Leeds? The budget will run to that. See what they think of him over there, how it’s working out in practice. You may find it’s the best thing since sliced bread for all I know. These objectors in Bradfield may all be closet commies, rent-a-mob, green weirdos, who knows what? Get the facts, girl, and then we’ll see where we are, shall we? Don’t hang about. I don’t pay you to sit around playing solitaire on your bloody computer all day.’

  ‘Right,’ Laura said, smiling faintly at the jibe, and flicked back to her notes to find the names of the other schools David Murgatroyd had sponsored. The head teacher of the nearest academy was very willing to see her the next morning to give her a tour of his empire, but she reckoned that it would be useful to get more than one view of a new academy, so she rang her grandmother to see if the campaign in Bradfield had any unofficial contact with the Murgatroyd Academy in Leeds.

  ‘Talk to the union secretary,’ Joyce said. ‘She’ll fill you in.’ And she gave her a name and a number. ‘You haven’t forgotten I’m off to Portugal in the morning to see your mum and dad, have you?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK getting to the airport?’ Laura asked, feeling guilty because she had completely forgotten.

  ‘All fixed,’ Joyce said. ‘Taxi at six-thirty.’

  ‘So have a wonderful holiday,’ Laura said. ‘And all my love to them both.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll pass on all the news. Take care, pet.’

  Laura called her grandmother’s contact and made an appointment to meet her next morning in a coffee bar close to the school.

  ‘If they catch me talking to the press, I’ll be for the chop,’ the union rep said. ‘Strictly against the rules, that is.’

  ‘Tomorrow at eleven, then,’ Laura said cheerfully, knowing from experience that the more people were forbidden from airing their grievances to the press, the more willing many of them were to do it.

  ‘I’ll slip out in my free period. And hope no one sees me. It’s like Alcatraz round here.’ Laura hung up and decided to call it a day. There was something she had to resolve and she needed to get
home in good time today to do it.

  Less than an hour later, Laura gazed at the blue line on the testing kit without much surprise but with a sense of foreboding which almost overwhelmed her. She had been sure for several weeks that she was pregnant, but had been putting off the moment of truth, which she knew would present Michael Thackeray with a decision that he desperately did not want to take. She guessed it would make or break their relationship and she blamed herself bitterly, knowing that it was her own carelessness that had led to this. Thackeray was the last man in the world who would be pushed, or bounced, into something he did not want to do, she thought, and although he had made quite a different promise not long ago, she was sure that he still did not want to become a father again.

  Laura groaned, and pushed the testing kit back into its packet, took it into the kitchen and buried it at the bottom of the rubbish bin. But she knew that the dilemma she faced would not be so easily disposed of. She glanced at her watch. It was six-thirty and Thackeray had not called to say that he would be late, as he often did, so she began desultorily preparing a meal. The efforts she used to make to persuade her partner to take an interest in cooking had run into the sand when it became obvious that she was always home long before he was. He had also, she realised sadly, resisted most of her efforts to persuade him to shift from his preferred diet of meat and two veg. She took chops out of the fridge; she would have hers with a salad and she would cook chips for him. She should, she thought, feel elated at the thought of the new life inside her, a life she passionately wanted to bring into being, but instead she felt deeply depressed and on the edge of panic.

  On an impulse, she called her friend Vicky Mendelson.

  ‘Are you at home tonight?’ she asked. Vicky sounded surprised.

  ‘David’s out at some dinner,’ she said. ‘I was going to wash my hair once the kids are asleep.’ Laura and Vicky had been at university in Bradfield together, but once her first baby arrived, Vicky had opted to be a stay-at-home mother with no apparent regrets about the legal career she had abandoned. Laura half envied and half despised her choice, but unequivocally adored her three young children.

  ‘I’ll come round later,’ she said. ‘I need to talk.’ She hoped Vicky might be able to put what was happening to her into perspective before she broke the news to Michael.

  She heard Thackeray’s key in the lock as she was peeling potatoes and he came up behind her and kissed the back of her neck.

  ‘I saw you at the press conference,’ he said. ‘You’re not writing about it, are you?’

  ‘No, that’s Bob Baker’s territory,’ Laura said. ‘You’ll no doubt get some lurid speculation on the front page in the morning.’

  ‘It’ll be even more lurid when he finds out where we think she went that night,’ Thackeray said. Laura turned towards him, intrigued.

  ‘And where was that, Chief Inspector?’ she asked. ‘Strictly off the record, of course.’ She listened, astonished, as Thackeray explained briefly why they thought Karen Bastable had driven to Bently Forest.

  ‘That’s a bit over the top. I knew things like that went on, but I thought it was just kids in car parks.’

  ‘This seems to be much more organised than that,’ Thackeray said. ‘But I doubt very much that anyone will be rushing forward to tell us about it. God knows what they got up to up there. If she’s dead, the whole thing is going to be very messy.’

  ‘And you think she’s dead?’

  ‘Why would she abandon her car miles from anywhere unless she’s come to some harm? We have to go through the motions with her husband appealing to her to get in touch, but privately I think it’s a waste of time.’

  ‘I didn’t warm to Terry Bastable,’ Laura said.

  ‘I don’t think anyone warms to Terry Bastable,’ Thackeray said, thinking of Nasreem Mirza’s furious reaction to the man. ‘He’s a racist thug, by all accounts. But that doesn’t mean he necessarily murdered his wife, whatever your feminist instincts tell you.’

  ‘You know I’m a bit off violent husbands, after the last one I met,’ Laura muttered, turning away quickly as she realised she had said too much. She busied herself serving their meal.

  ‘I’m going over to see Vicky later,’ she said eventually. ‘Is that OK with you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Thackeray said, chomping happily on his supper. ‘Give her my love.’

  * * *

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Vicky Mendelson asked bluntly, after settling Laura down with a cup of coffee in her sitting room later that evening. ‘You look dreadful.’

  ‘There’s nothing like an honest friend to improve morale,’ Laura said wryly.

  ‘Is it Michael? Is he messing you about again? Sometimes I feel really guilty about introducing you to that bloody man.’

  ‘I’m still crazy about him,’ Laura confessed, with a faint smile that lit up her wan face.

  ‘So, what then?’ Vicky persisted.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ Laura said. Vicky relaxed and hugged Laura to her.

  ‘That’s marvellous,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you pleased? I thought it was what you wanted. You have such a silly grin on your face every time you see Naomi, I thought you were terminally broody.’

  She stopped suddenly, seeing the tears in Laura’s eyes.

  ‘Michael doesn’t want it,’ Vicky said, the excitement draining out of her as she suddenly realised her friend’s predicament.

  ‘I haven’t told him yet,’ Laura said, her voice dull. ‘He said a while ago we’d go for it, but then…’ She shrugged dispiritedly. ‘Silence. He’s never mentioned it again.’

  ‘So how…?’ Vicky ventured.

  ‘An accident. I didn’t do it on purpose. I missed a couple of pills. But he won’t believe that, will he? He’ll think it was deliberate and I don’t know how he’ll react. Oh God, Vicky, I don’t know what to do.’

  Vicky leant back on the sofa and put an arm around Laura, as she let the tears come.

  ‘I didn’t want it to be like this,’ Vicky said gently. ‘And I’m sure you didn’t. I wanted us to celebrate when you decided to have a child. I wanted you to be as happy as I was when we had ours. I was over the moon with every one of them.’

  ‘I remember,’ Laura said. ‘I was jealous, even though I wasn’t ready then.’

  ‘But you are now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Laura admitted. ‘I want this baby, desperately. I’m ready, but I want to keep Michael as well, and I just don’t know how he’s going to react.’

  Vicky sighed.

  ‘He really ought not to put you in this situation,’ she said. ‘Are you afraid he’ll pressure you into getting rid of it?’

  ‘No, no, not that,’ Laura said vehemently. ‘He may say he’s not, but he’s a Catholic through and through. I told him I’d had a termination – you remember? …when we were students? – and he was really shocked. I’m just scared of his reaction when I tell him, and I’m going to have to tell him soon. If I start getting sick, he’ll guess anyway. He’s not a fool. But he’ll think I’m trying to blackmail him into marrying me. He’ll think dreadful things. And he’ll leave me for good. I know he will. If he believes he can’t cope, he’ll just go.’ Laura looked away from Vicky but her friend could still feel her shuddering as she struggled to hold back her tears.

  ‘He’s a fool if he reacts like that,’ Vicky said.

  ‘You don’t know everything that happened when he and his wife lost the baby. I’ve never told you the half of it,’ Laura muttered. ‘He’s terrified of making himself that vulnerable again.’

  ‘Then if you want this baby, and he really can’t cope with it, you have to choose,’ Vicky said.

  ‘I can’t,’ Laura cried.

  ‘You can,’ Vicky said. ‘I know it’s desperate, but you can if you have to. You’re strong and independent and you can do what’s right. It’s not the end of the world these days to bring a child up on your own. And David and I will always be here for you. But I think you’re be
ing too pessimistic. It won’t come to that, I’m sure it won’t. I’m sure when you tell him what’s happened, and how much you want the baby, he’ll come round. He won’t abandon his own child. And if he does, then he’s not the man I think he is, or the man you should be committing yourself to. He’s not good enough for you.’

  ‘You make it sound so simple,’ Laura said.

  Vicky got up and went over to a side table and poured two glasses of gin and tonic.

  ‘We’ll drink to your baby,’ she said. ‘He or she will be loved and wanted by you and that’s a lot more than some babies can expect. Congratulations, Laura, I’m delighted for you. I really am.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The phone rang on DCI Thackeray’s desk the next morning just as he was about to summon Kevin Mower to give him an update on the Karen Bastable case. He realised straight away that the news from the forensics lab took them a significant step forward, and he walked down to the main CID office himself to share it.

  ‘Karen Bastable’s mobile phone,’ he said, taking Mower unawares.

  ‘Guv?’ he said. ‘It was in her car, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was, and forensics have been analysing it. They’ve not come up with any useful leads from the phone book or from the text messages: family and female friends, a few unregistered pay phones we’ll never trace, all innocuous stuff. It’s the photographs which are much more interesting. I’ve never seen the point of phones that take photographs myself, but it looks as if we should be thankful some people like to record their every move.’

  ‘She took pictures in the forest?’ Mower asked, feeling the surge of excitement that always came with a breakthrough.’

  ‘They’re emailing them to us,’ Thackeray said. ‘Can you get them up on your computer?’ Mower turned to his screen and pressed a few keys, smiling slightly to himself. Thackeray was just old enough not to have grown up with computers as an everyday fact of life, and still stumbled occasionally with new technology. Within seconds, Mower had a folder of photographs on his screen and began to bring them up individually.