Devil's Game

by Patricia Hall

  ‘But this implies that the school will proselytise in a way that the law does not really allow, if you use public money,’ Laura said. ‘And one that will make it very difficult for parents who don’t share your beliefs to send their children to your schools. It means your schools inevitably choose the families they want, rather than the other way round.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Murgatroyd said. ‘We find families of all religions – and sometimes of none – appreciate the firm discipline and moral teaching that we offer. If they are willing to abide by our rules, they are all welcome.’

  ‘But if the students themselves find that difficult, you throw them out?’ Laura pressed.

  ‘If they won’t follow our rules, we will suspend them, yes. Any good school will do that.’

  ‘So although your schools are supposed to be offering something better for young people who come from deprived backgrounds, if they prove too difficult, they’re kicked out? That’s not really solving their problems, is it?’

  ‘It’s a pity in many ways that this scheme only deals with older children. What I would really like to do is have them from five, or even from nursery-school age. Then I think we could make an even more significant difference. We would reach them before the temptations of sex and drugs and violence get anywhere near them.’

  ‘And if their parents are drug addicts? Or father’s in prison? Or mother’s on the game?’ Laura asked sceptically. ‘Or the parents themselves are little more than children? You know the problems on some of the worst housing estates.’

  ‘I do, and that’s why I think a boarding school for such children would be good,’ Murgatroyd said. ‘In the long term, that is something I would like to pursue. I’ve been in tentative talks with the Government about that. I see no reason why boarding education should be restricted to families who can pay fees. There are other children who could benefit, from a much younger age.’

  ‘Give me the child before he’s seven? You almost sound like a Jesuit.’

  ‘I think that sort of approach has a lot to recommend it.’ The intense eyes were colder now, and it was obvious to Laura that Murgatroyd was beginning to regret his decision to see her. He clearly was not used to being challenged in any way and found her questions irritating.

  ‘You didn’t say whether you had children of your own or not,’ she said.

  An expression flashed across Murgatroyd’s face which she could not interpret.

  ‘No children,’ he said. ‘I’ve never married.’ Laura wondered if that meant that he observed his own draconian precepts on chastity but she did not have the nerve to ask that question. Murgatroyd’s eyes were fixed on hers again now, still with that slightly unnerving intensity.

  ‘You haven’t really given me very much for the personal part of my profile of you,’ she said, throwing caution to the wind. ‘You’ve obviously pursued a very single-minded course in business and, I suspect, in your private life. Do you think that what happened in your own childhood has inspired you – or even driven you – in the direction you’ve taken?’

  Murgatroyd picked up his drink and took a gulp, his eyes turning opaque.

  ‘There are a lot of things which have happened in my life that I wish had never happened,’ he said. ‘But contrary to modern expectations, I don’t find that baring my breast to all and sundry – sharing my pain, as they say – helps me at all. Quite the reverse. I prefer the past to remain firmly where it is, in the past. So I think, Miss Ackroyd, we should call it a day now. When I get back to Yorkshire I would be very happy to show you Sibden House, if you think that will help with your article. I’ll give you a call, if I may.’

  Murgatroyd got to his feet and Laura had no choice but to follow suit, feeling oddly that she had been sized up in some way and not necessarily found wanting, in spite of his brusque dismissal. She suspected that very few people were ever invited to Sibden House.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It would help to meet again, if it can be fairly soon.’ On his own home turf, where he had lived with his parents, she was sure that she could tease out some more personal revelations from this deeply reticent man. But for now, they shook hands formally, and Murgatroyd turned back to the stairs, leaving Laura to make her way back to the car. It was a long way to come, she thought, for not very much. She would have to do better next time or Ted Grant would pull the plug on the whole investigation, and that would be a pity.

  * * *

  Thackeray was still in his office long after most of his detectives had gone home. He had not bothered to switch on the lights as the dusk closed in and the room was illuminated only by the flicker of headlights as the traffic swung around the town hall square a couple of stories below, cutting across the hanging fug of tobacco smoke with which he regularly filled his office, in defiance of the rules. What he really wanted, he thought, as he lit up a fresh cigarette, was a drink, and that was the one thing he knew he must not have. If he went down that path he feared that he would never come back this time. It would be the end of his career, and the end of his relationship with Laura, and although he might live with the former he knew he could not survive life on his own.

  And yet, he thought, for the first time in more than a decade there were now three people in this equation, and every time he thought about that possibility the panic took his breath away and he lurched back to the day that still haunted him, when he had found his baby son dead in his bath and his wife sprawled on the bed like a rag doll, mouth open, unconscious, almost asking him to put a pillow over her face and end her life as well. He had been tempted. He had never denied that, to himself at least, but in the end, blinded by tears and almost unable to speak, he had called the ambulance and she had survived, though only in a sort of half-life which had lasted years. The catastrophe had almost killed him then, and would always torment him, and he still could not see a way to open himself to that terrifying vulnerability again.

  He jumped as someone opened the door and peered into the room. Kevin Mower looked startled to find him there in the gloom and switched on the light to find his boss blinking in the sudden illumination.

  ‘Are you OK, guv?’ he asked. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Thackeray said, though he knew he sounded far from it. ‘I thought you’d gone, too.’

  He tried to jerk his mind back to the murder investigation, on which progress was still painfully slow. If they didn’t make some sort of a breakthrough soon, he thought, the powers that be would call in some outsider to review progress and that was a humiliation he did not want to put himself and his team through.

  ‘Are we all set for tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘I was just downstairs finalising everything with uniform. We’ve enough people and vans to bring anyone who turned up for their little orgy back down here for questioning,’ Mower said. ‘I was just wondering how far we let them go before we jump them. Psychologically speaking, it might be a good idea to let them get their kit off. Being arrested in your underwear is always humiliating.’ He grinned wickedly at Thackeray, who shook his head in distaste.

  ‘Stop them in their cars as they arrive,’ he said. ‘If this has leaked out and we get the press up there, we don’t want to be accused of anything ourselves. Keep it cool and clinical. They can hardly claim to be out for a ramble through the woods at that time of night in the pitch dark, can they? Hopefully we’ll be able to match enough of them, or their cars, to the photographs on Karen’s camera to persuade them that it’s useless to deny having been there before. But remember: they’re being invited to the station to help us with our inquiries. They’re witnesses, not suspects, until we tell the bastards differently.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ Mower said soothingly. He was surprised at Thackeray’s vehemence. He did not often give vent to his puritanism so openly, especially not to Mower, whose own lifestyle was distinctly more cavalier. Something, he thought, and it had to be Laura Ackroyd, was getting to him big time.

  When Mower had closed the door beh
ind him, Thackeray stood up and put on his coat. But then he sat down at his desk again, unsure where to go. As he gazed unseeingly at the papers on his desk, wondering whether to try to bury himself in work again, his mobile rang and he was not entirely surprised to see that it was Vicky Mendelson calling.

  ‘Hello, Vicky,’ he said cautiously. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘You may not think so when I’ve finished with you,’ Vicky said, and Thackeray could hear the suppressed anger in her voice. There was a long pause before she went on. ‘You’ll probably complain that I’m interfering where I’ve no right to interfere, but someone has to. You’re putting Laura in an impossible position. And it is driving her crazy. Surely you, of all people, don’t want her to have a termination. She might think your relationship could survive that, but it wouldn’t, would it? It couldn’t. You’d hate yourself even more than you do now, and in the end she would hate you for pushing her into a corner and persuading her to get rid of a child she really, really wants. Come on, Michael. We’ve been friends a long time now. You can’t do this to Laura. You really can’t.’

  Thackeray sat in his chair feeling as if he had been kicked in the stomach. The phone was still clamped to his ear but he found it impossible to speak.

  ‘Are you still there, Michael?’ Vicky asked. He took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said.

  ‘Am I right?’

  ‘You’re right. Of course, you’re right. Which doesn’t mean anything. It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘If you love Laura, it’s as simple as that,’ Vicky said, more quietly. ‘This is your baby, too.’ Thackeray felt his jumbled emotions beginning to overwhelm him.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he mumbled, as if he had not been thinking about it night and day since Laura had broken the news to him. He cut the connection, buried his head in his arms on the desk and wept, as he had not done for a very long time, for what he had lost, and might lose again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Laura Ackroyd gazed at the front page of the next day’s Bradfield Gazette with a sick sense of disbelief. Above Bob Baker, the crime reporter’s sixteen-point byline, the headline shouted what looked like the end of head teacher Debbie Stapleton’s career in the town. ‘Academy hopeful’s gay love nest’, it said. ‘Parents object to gay head staying on in new school’.

  The story underneath this unsubtle denunciation claimed that a group of fundamentalist parents at Sutton Park School – some Christian and some Muslim – had discovered that Debbie was gay, and lived with her partner in a country cottage in the Dales. While other parents were campaigning against the academy plan, this group had set itself up to support David Murgatroyd’s scheme and more specifically to make sure that Debbie did not get the headship of the new school.

  Laura walked across the office and dropped the first edition on Bob Baker’s desk in front of him.

  ‘Where did you get hold of this nasty little bit of gossip then?’ she asked. Baker looked at her with a triumphant smirk on his face.

  ‘Can’t really claim credit for it,’ he said. ‘Fell into my lap, didn’t it? The parents group rang me up to fill me in. I’ve no idea how they found out, but it stands up. I went out to the cottage and chatted up the girlfriend.’

  ‘You don’t out her as well, do you?’ Laura asked, glancing down again at Bob’s story, which she had not finished reading to its conclusion.

  ‘No, no, she asked me not to and she’s not really relevant, is she? Though I dare say her name will come out in the end. But the parents aren’t bothered about her, are they? It’s the Stapleton woman’s job application that’s annoying them. Doesn’t fit the “ethos” of the new school, whatever an ethos is when it’s at home. What it comes down to is that they don’t like gays, full stop. It’s against their religion.’

  ‘It’s a lot of homophobic rubbish,’ Laura said angrily. ‘I thought we’d moved on from this nonsense. Isn’t it illegal now?’

  ‘Well, whether it’s illegal or not, this lot haven’t budged an inch, and that’s a good story, whichever way you look at it,’ Baker said. ‘The lawyer looked at my piece anyway. Ted insisted. But if they’re making a song and dance about it, that’s a story, whether you personally like their views or not. I sometimes wonder about you, Laura, I really do. You get too close to the people you’re writing about. It’s not a good idea. Anyway, you can talk to Ted about it if you like, but I can tell you for nothing, you won’t get far. He’s the one who decided to make it the front-page splash.’

  ‘He would,’ Laura said through gritted teeth. How much longer, she wondered, could she put up with Ted Grant’s misguided ambition to turn a local newspaper into a clone of the worst of the London red tops, where he had briefly and, his Bradfield colleagues suspected, unsuccessfully, worked years ago? She sighed. If it had not been for Michael Thackeray, she would have moved on from the Gazette long ago. And now? The prospect looked increasingly unlikely as her thoughts turned more and more insistently towards what she was beginning to think of as her child.

  She turned back to her desk and struggled to get to grips with her morning’s work. She kept going, sustained by several cups of strong coffee, until a decent time to slip out of the office for lunch, and took refuge in her car where she could talk on her mobile in privacy. When she got through to Sutton Park School she was put through to Debbie Stapleton without question.

  ‘I take it you’ve seen the Gazette?’ Laura said. ‘I’m sorry. I really am.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?’ Debbie shot back. ‘I thought I could trust you.’

  ‘You could…you can,’ Laura said. ‘You have to believe me. I had nothing to do with Bob Baker’s story. I didn’t even know it was going into the paper until I saw the first edition this morning.’

  There was a long silence at the other end, and Laura began to think the head teacher had cut the connection, until eventually she spoke again.

  ‘It’s too late now,’ she said. ‘My job’s down the tube, isn’t it? And my partner’s less than happy. She’s scared she’ll be splashed all over the front pages as well. Do you think the London papers will follow this up?’

  ‘They could do,’ Laura said. ‘You should be ready for them if they do. If they pick it up from the Gazette they’ll descend like a swarm of locusts, wanting quotes, pictures, what the parents think, what the neighbours think, the lot. If you and your partner can arrange to go away for a bit, I’d recommend it. It’s not much fun being at the centre of a paparazzi feeding frenzy.’

  ‘I thought this was the twenty-first century,’ Debbie said, the bitterness in her voice almost scalding Laura’s ear. ‘It feels more like a bloody witch-hunt in the thirteenth.’

  ‘Some of these religious nuts want us to go back to that,’ Laura said. ‘I really believe they do. I sometimes feel as if I’m having to refight battles that my grandmother thought she’d won. I’m sorry, Debbie, I really am. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Debbie said. ‘But I doubt it. It’s all right for you media people, isn’t it? You move in and move on. Those of us left in your wake have to put our lives back together as best we can.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Laura said softly.

  ‘So am I,’ Debbie said, and this time she did end the call, leaving Laura feeling deflated and weary in her car. She leant back and closed her eyes and wondered where this particular witch-hunt would end.

  By seven that evening, as darkness fell, three police vans and a dozen officers were concealed in Bently Forest waiting for the first of the doggers to arrive. The plan, Mower thought, was pretty foolproof. They would allow cars to enter the narrow track leading to the clearing before stopping them, to avoid any possibility that a panicked driver would try to get away. If anyone tried to reverse out, there was another police car on standby a little further up the road, which could be summoned quickly to block the track entrance to make sure that no one escaped. Mower was ver
y clear in his briefing that the DCI would not tolerate any fish wriggling out of this net, even if it meant arresting them as suspects for the murder of Karen Bastable if they refused to come to the station voluntarily. But he had little doubt that most of them would accept the voluntary option.

  By seven-thirty, the time Karen’s friend Charlene had assured them the doggers met during the dark nights of winter, the officers manning the ambush were becoming restless and ribald, and there was more than one suggestion that they should allow the doggers through and let them get on with whatever it was they wanted to get on with before accosting them in flagrante. It was not until ten to eight that the first headlights could be seen approaching through the trees and the sergeant in charge of the uniformed officers stationed himself in the middle of the track with a powerful torch to flag down the approaching car. A heavy four-by-four lumbered to a standstill and a fierce exchange followed before the driver consented to take one of the seats in the police van that would ferry him, and eventually twelve other men and a handful of women, to police headquarters. It was a couple of hours later that Mower dropped a list of names onto Thackeray’s desk, where the DCI had been anxiously waiting developments.

  ‘They all came more or less willingly in the end,’ Mower said. ‘And quite a haul it turned out we’d netted. One minister of religion, a couple of company directors and one senior councillor, all of them furious at being stopped, all of them claiming to be out for an innocent late-night drive until they realised that we already had most of their mates in the vans. Then they went very quiet. You could have heard a pin drop on the way back to HQ.’