Devil's Game

by Patricia Hall

  Laura studied the photograph carefully for a moment and then shook her head.

  ‘It could be, I suppose,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t be sure.’ She smiled faintly. ‘And I do know enough black people not to think they all look alike,’ she said. ‘But this is just a boy. Sanderson’s a grown man. There’s a slight resemblance, perhaps, but I couldn’t identify him from this.’

  ‘OK,’ Mower said, hiding his disappointment. ‘It was just a hunch.’

  ‘I didn’t think Michael allowed hunches,’ Laura said quietly. ‘Especially if they could be jumping to racist conclusions.’

  ‘The odd one gets through,’ Mower said.

  ‘Is this part of your murder investigation?’

  ‘Off the record, yes,’ Mower said. ‘But the whole thing looks as if it might blow up into a national investigation. It looks as if there are some other cases with similarities to Karen Bastable’s death. One in Peterborough, another in Swindon, one in Preston and a few other places.’

  ‘You mean a serial killer?’

  ‘Well, it’s only a possibility at the moment,’ Mower said. ‘It needs a lot more work on it yet. A well-travelled serial killer, if that’s what we decide is really going on, and that’s unusual. So don’t get too excited. It’s another hunch at the moment, if it’s anything. But don’t worry, the Gazette will be the first to know if we get anything definite.’

  ‘If you’re right, and Sanderson is your suspect, that list of yours sounds very like the list of places where Murgatroyd has set up his academies. That would put Sanderson in the right place, possibly even at the right time. I’ve no idea how long he’s been working for David Murgatroyd.’

  ‘That’s a long shot, but worth checking out,’ Mower said. ‘Enough to let us talk to him, anyway.’

  ‘Glad to have helped,’ Laura said. She finished her drink. ‘I’d better get back to work. I’ve a lot on.’ She hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Well, thanks for that,’ Mower said. ‘Don’t tell the boss that I was being indiscreet, will you?’ Mower drained his glass and was astonished when Laura glanced away, her eyes full of tears.

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ she said.

  ‘What is it, Laura?’ Mower said, putting a tentative hand over hers on the table. ‘You don’t look your usual blooming self. Have you split up or something?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Laura said. ‘At least I don’t think so. But it’s a close-run thing.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Mower said. ‘But I’m glad you told me. I might have put my foot right in it… If it’s any comfort, I don’t think the boss is a happy bunny, either. In fact, now I come to think of it, he’s seemed seriously distracted the last few days.’

  ‘So he bloody should be,’ Laura said, jumping to her feet, her face suddenly flaming. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t much help with your pictures, Kevin. It’s good to see you.’ And she swept out of the pub, copper hair flying, drawing admiring glances as she went.

  DCI Michael Thackeray was sitting at his desk, apparently staring into space, when DS Kevin Mower reported back.

  ‘I had a chat with Laura,’ he said tentatively. ‘She says the black guy in the Gazette’s picture is Murgatroyd’s PA, name of Winston Sanderson. And she doesn’t reckon he looks much like our mugshot from ten years back, I’m afraid, though he could have been in some of the places where there’ve been similar disappearances. I’ll check out his background, just in case. And bring him in for a chat, if I can find him. We really need to eliminate a few people from this inquiry. Not all the doggers can have had contact with Karen, but some of them must have done. We need to know who.’

  ‘Have you started asking them for voluntary DNA samples?’ Thackeray asked.

  ‘In hand, guv,’ Mower said. ‘Laura did say that she thought Sanderson was a Londoner, incidentally. That may mean something or nothing. And there’s an overlap between where Sanderson has been involved in setting up these new schools and our similar cases.’

  ‘Check it all out,’ Thackeray said irritably. ‘At this rate we’ll be getting another force coming in to review our progress and as far as I can see we’re getting nowhere.’

  ‘Guv,’ Mower said and turned to go back to the incident room and then half turned. ‘I thought Laura was looking very pale,’ he said. ‘Is she not well?’

  The sudden anger on Thackeray’s face took Mower by surprise. He knew he’d crossed a line that had been unspoken between them for years, but had hoped it would be taken for no more than friendly concern. But his boss did not erupt in the way Mower expected, though he looked for a second or two as if he might. Instead he ran his hand through his hair and shrugged with a weariness that made Mower think he should be inquiring about his health as well as Laura’s.

  ‘She’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘It’s just a winter bug. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Right,’ Mower said and turned away again to hide the disbelief in his eyes. He had seen Laura and the DCI at odds before, but this time, he thought as he left the office, it looked terminal.

  When the sergeant had gone, Thackeray resumed his agonised reverie. He must, he thought, have something constructive to say to Laura this evening when he kept his promise to go back to the flat. But when he faced himself squarely in his mind’s eye, he had to confess that he was no nearer to deciding what he wanted to do than he had been on the day she had told him that she was expecting a baby. The thought of another child filled him with joy, but the thought of making himself vulnerable to the loss of another child filled him with an even more overwhelming panic. He could still see no way of reconciling the two.

  Laura drove out of Bradfield feeling a slight sense of exhilaration. The call from Sir David Murgatroyd had come out of the blue.

  ‘I promised to invite you up to Sibden,’ he said. ‘I have a window this afternoon if you’d like to come. Tea and cakes, I suppose, would be appropriate, d’you think? I think my housekeeper could manage that. A small indulgence in recompense for being so elusive earlier on?’

  ‘But Winston Sanderson said…’ She did not hesitate to express her surprise at this unexpected turn of events. And after her chat with Sergeant Mower, she did not think she wanted to meet Sanderson face-to-face again so soon, although she had mentally discounted what seemed like farfetched police suspicions of Murgatroyd’s PA. To her mind, it could be a case of someone in CID seizing on any available black face, however blurred, that might fit the charge sheet. If she had been on normal speaking terms with Michael Thackeray, she thought, she might have remonstrated with him, but what drove her now was to prise out of Murgatroyd some sort of normal reaction to Debbie Stapleton’s suicide attempt. If the man was human at all, he must be blaming himself to some extent for that, although she had serious doubts about whether she could persuade him to admit it.

  ‘Winston? Oh, you don’t need to worry about Winston.’ Murgatroyd laughed. ‘He’s overprotective on occasion, as you know. Anyway, he’s away at the moment. He has to be in London for me today. Nanny need never know.’

  Laura had glanced at her watch.

  ‘Yes, that’s fine then,’ she said. ‘I could be with you in about half an hour? Is that OK?’ She grabbed her coat and her tape recorder, glanced towards Ted Grant’s office but could see that he was head-to-head with the marketing manager so thought better of interrupting him in what was obviously aggressive mid-flow, and left the office to drive the ten miles up the Maze valley to Murgatroyd’s home.

  The gates swung open smoothly, as did the front door when she rang the bell, and she found herself face-to-face again with David Murgatroyd in what was obviously his country gentleman mode, khaki drill trousers and a checked shirt, open at the neck, and a chunky, light blue sweater. He seemed much more relaxed than when they had last met in Sheffield and Laura guessed that might be because he felt less threatened on home turf. It might just be possible, she thought, to get him to open up about his own traumatic childhood here.

  ‘Come in, Laura. It’s good to se
e you again,’ he said, waving her through into the spacious sitting room where Winston Sanderson had taken her the last time she had come to Sibden House. ‘I’ll get us some tea in a minute. I’ll have to do it myself, I’m afraid. I’d quite forgotten my housekeeper was taking the afternoon off to go to a funeral. But I’m sure I can cope.’

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ Laura said. ‘This place must take a lot of staff to run.’

  ‘Especially the garden,’ Murgatroyd said. ‘Are you interested in gardens? The rain seems to have stopped so we could take a turn around later. But first let me make tea and we can continue where we left off in Sheffield. I felt a little – what should I say – dissatisfied with our discussion there.’

  ‘You gave me enough to complete my feature,’ Laura said. ‘Although I could still add a paragraph or two if you feel that there’s anything we haven’t dealt with. It’s not going in the paper until the beginning of next week. After all, the situation has changed now.’

  ‘In what way?’ Murgatroyd asked, his tone hardening slightly and the smile no longer quite reaching to his eyes.

  ‘You must have heard what happened to Debbie Stapleton,’ Laura said, seeing no reason to pull her punches with this man. ‘She’s still seriously ill in hospital. Surely you must feel some responsibility for that.’

  Murgatroyd was silent for a moment.

  ‘I would have thought you and your colleagues were much more to blame for her situation,’ he said. ‘It was the Gazette which put her personal life all over the front page.’

  ‘You were about to take away the job she loved,’ Laura objected. ‘It was that which caused the crisis in her life, I think.’

  ‘She was at liberty to apply for the new headship,’ Murgatroyd said, angry rather than defensive at Laura’s assault. ‘In fact, she did apply.’

  ‘But you didn’t shortlist her, presumably because of her sexuality. You wouldn’t have appointed a lesbian, would you, even without all this publicity? That wasn’t ever on.’

  Murgatroyd spread out his hands in surrender.

  ‘You’re right, of course. I wouldn’t have appointed her. You know the Christian position on homosexuality. She could never have run one of my academies.’

  ‘Not all Christians take that view,’ Laura objected.

  ‘The Bible is quite clear on the matter,’ Murgatroyd said, flatly. He gazed at Laura for a moment until she began to feel slightly uncomfortable, and then he relaxed again and smiled.

  ‘Let’s not get into an argument,’ he said. ‘I invited you up to show you the house and garden, not to argue about my local problems. I thought we’d finished with all that. I’ll make some tea and then show you round. Is that all right?’

  Laura shrugged resignedly. She was obviously not going to get anything more useful for her feature article so she might as well let this man with his abhorrent views give her his tour so that she could decently make her escape.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s have tea.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I don’t have a lot of time.’

  Murgatroyd got up and made his way to the door.

  ‘Did you inherit that red hair from your mother?’ he asked unexpectedly. Laura half turned in her chair, slightly thrown by this suddenly personal turn in the conversation. But she half smiled.

  ‘From my grandmother,’ she said. ‘It skipped a generation.’

  ‘Yes, it does that sometimes,’ Murgatroyd said, as he left the room, closing the door behind him. While he was away Laura got up and walked around the spacious sitting room, glancing at the bookcases, filled with leather-bound classics which did not look as if they had ever been opened, and studying the paintings – originals in oils which seemed slightly old-fashioned even to her untutored eye – almost as if the room had been designed to order quite recently to a template established in the 1950s rather than later. None of the furniture looked antique or even as if it had been handed down from parents to son. It was newish but Maples, not Habitat, good quality but traditional, as if the owner’s taste had been set in stone a generation or more before his time.

  Murgatroyd came back quite quickly, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and a plate of buttered scones.

  ‘Mrs Bateman left everything ready for us,’ he said. ‘She is, as they say, a treasure. Will you pour?’ Laura did as she was asked and sipped her tea thoughtfully. Murgatroyd had also fallen silent, although Laura was uncomfortably aware that those unusual blue and gold eyes were watching her with an intensity that she suddenly decided she did not like.

  ‘Did you refurbish the house completely when you came back to it?’ she asked, to break the spell.

  ‘Completely,’ he said. ‘I wanted a clean sheet.’

  ‘It must have held a lot of unpleasant memories for you after what happened to your mother,’ Laura ventured. Murgatroyd did not answer immediately. His face seemed to close down and age before her eyes, before he shook himself slightly and gave an impatient grunt almost of exasperation.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Murgatroyd said. ‘It was what happened to my baby sister that was important. She didn’t inherit my mother’s red hair either. It was what happened to her that I couldn’t forgive, what I’ve never forgiven.’ He stared intently into his teacup while Laura finished hers.

  ‘Shall we have our walk round the garden now?’ Murgatroyd asked, and somewhat brusquely handed Laura her jacket, which she had taken off and laid beside her on her chair. She put it on, deciding suddenly that she would go straight back to her car when she had taken a token walk round the grounds. For some reason she felt her confidence in the situation beginning to drain away. Murgatroyd suddenly seemed an oppressive presence and she wondered if he had sent the housekeeper away deliberately. For all his fervent claims to moral superiority, she decided she no longer trusted him.

  She followed his lead to the back of the house where he unlocked a door into a conservatory.

  ‘My mother had this built,’ he said. ‘One of the few good things she did in her life.’ The room had been closed up and was hot and stuffy, green blinds on the windows half down giving a dim, underwater light. Laura felt a slight wave of nausea, mixed with relief that feeling unwell might give her the excuse she needed to get away.

  ‘I was there, you know,’ Murgatroyd said over his shoulder and he moved between the potted plants towards the garden doors.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Murgatroyd stopped and turned back towards her.

  ‘I said I was there with my mother and sister when she walked into the lake. She left me in the car, but when I saw what was happening, I ran after them. I tried to get the baby off her. But she fell out of my mother’s arms and I couldn’t find her. I tried and tried but the water was too deep and too dark. I lost hold of her. They said later that she’d been tangled up in weeds below the surface.’

  ‘That must have been terrible for you,’ Laura said, fighting off a growing desire to throw up. ‘And your mother drowned too?’

  ‘She went in deeper and deeper. I swam out to her. I was a good swimmer even then. I made sure she drowned. It was what she wanted. And what she deserved. A life for a life, though I don’t think I thought quite like that then. I was only a child myself. But I knew with a passion that if Jennifer was dead I wanted my mother dead, too.’

  Laura gazed at Murgatroyd, her vision swimming, wondering if she was really hearing this man confess to matricide.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice sounding faraway. ‘I don’t feel very well.’

  ‘Sit down for a moment,’ Murgatroyd said, pulling up a wicker chair into which Laura sank gratefully.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’m pregnant. I’ll be all right in a minute.’ But as she gazed up at Murgatroyd’s piercing eyes, she knew that she wouldn’t. He stroked her hair tentatively as her eyes closed and darkness engulfed her.

  ‘Such beautiful hair,’ he whispered. ‘Such beautiful auburn hair.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


  Michael Thackeray was surprised to see no lights on in Laura’s flat when he pulled up outside at seven that evening. He had expected her to be at home waiting for him. He glanced at his mobile phone, but there were no messages, so he thumbed in Laura’s number, only to find that she did not answer her phone, which was unusual. Ted Grant expected his reporters to be on call 24/7, all part of his fantasy existence as a high-octane editor, and Thackeray experienced a twinge of anxiety as he listened to the voice message on Laura’s phone again, just to make sure.

  He let himself into the flat and it was obvious from the dirty breakfast dishes still stacked in the sink that Laura had not been home since she had left for work. Perhaps she was driving, he thought, and would be back any minute. He took off his coat, switched on the TV news, and tried to put the problems between the two of them out of his mind until she came home. But the screen took up only half of his mind, and as the minutes ticked by he became more and more concerned.

  Eventually he pulled out his phone again, and after failing to reach Laura, put a call through to the Mendelsons. Vicky picked up, sounding harassed, and he could hear a child crying in the background. Naomi Laura, he thought, close to panic, the sound threatening to pull him apart. He took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s Michael,’ he said quietly. ‘Sorry to bother you, but do you know where Laura is? Is she with you?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Vicky said, and hesitated, as if wanting to say more, but reluctant to commit herself. ‘Hasn’t she got her phone on?’

  ‘Of course not, or I wouldn’t be asking,’ Thackeray snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Vicky said, her voice faint and the sobbing child suddenly much closer to the receiver. ‘Sorry, David’s not home and Naomi’s not well. She’s got a bad cold.’

  ‘Has she told you how she’s feeling?’ Thackeray asked, desperate now.

  ‘About the baby, you mean? Yes, we’ve spoken about it.’ Vicky’s voice was becoming more chilly. ‘I thought you’d be delighted about that, both of you, I mean. But apparently not. I can’t understand that, Michael, to be honest.’