Devil's Game (20 page)

‘Maybe someone left in a hurry,’ Thackeray said. He resumed his nervous pacing up and down the tiled floor. ‘I can’t believe she would have come up here without telling anyone,’ he muttered, pulling out his mobile and thumbing in Laura’s number again. Somewhere not far away a telephone rang, and Thackeray glanced at Mower in wild surmise.

‘Find it,’ he snapped.

Mower opened the door into an extensive sitting room where the sound of the call instantly became louder, although when they glanced around they could see no sign of a phone. Eventually Mower walked across the room to a sofa and pulled a mobile out from underneath the brocade pelmet where it had been lying completely concealed. He handed it to Thackeray, his mouth dry.

‘It’s hers,’ Thackeray said, his voice cracking. ‘Look, so many missed calls, all mine. So where the hell is she?’

They went back into the hall and Thackeray strode out onto the steps at the front of the house, desperately scanning the rolling park and gardens for signs of anything to indicate that Laura might have been there, but within minutes a uniformed officer came running round the side of the house.

‘What sort of car did Miss Ackroyd drive, guv?’ he asked.

‘A black Golf,’ Thackeray snapped.

‘There’s one of those in the garage at the back. And we’ve found a locked door which looks as if it leads down into some sort of cellar or store. We thought you’d like to see before we smash the door down.’

Thackeray and Mower raced down the steps and around the side of the house where they found the officer in charge of the ram and another couple standing outside an unobtrusive door close to the garages.

‘OK,’ Thackeray said, his heart thumping as the door splintered and gave way.

‘Let me, guv,’ Mower said, pushing his way in front of his boss and going through the doorway first. But inside there seemed to be only a cluttered storeroom, and it was not until they began to search more closely they found that the junk half hid another locked door, where the ram-wielding officer performed his function yet again. Beyond were stone stairs leading down into pitch darkness. Thackeray himself found a light switch and they made their way down the stairs in single file into another room, empty apart from a tall shape in one corner which swung gently in the draught from the door. Taking a sharp breath, Mower crossed the room and took the weight as one of the uniformed officers tried to unhook a rope from a hook in the ceiling. When he succeeded, Mower carefully lowered the body of a man to the floor and turned it over onto its back.

‘Murgatroyd?’ he asked Thackeray.

‘I’ve never met him, but I guess so,’ Thackeray said, his mouth dry. ‘I’ve seen photographs.’

‘He’s been here some time,’ Mower said. ‘We don’t need to be heroic and try to drag him back to life. No chance.’

‘So where’s Laura?’ Thackeray said so quietly that Mower could barely hear him. Mower glanced around.

‘There’s another door,’ he said. ‘This is like one of those puzzles, boxes within boxes.’ He tried the next door and it swung open easily revealing an even smaller space with little
more than a bed and a table, where another immobile body lay. Thackeray pushed past the sergeant with a strangled cry as the light went on revealing Laura strapped to the bed, face ashen, eyes closed, with a dark pool of blood at her neck, dripping steadily onto the floor.

‘She’s alive, guv,’ Mower said, feeling for a pulse. ‘Just.’ He turned to the officers crowding in behind them.

‘Get a fucking ambulance!’ he yelled. ‘Quickly.’

Michael Thackeray sat beside Laura’s bed watching the steady drip making its way down the long plastic tube and into her hand, as he had for hours, long after the doctors had finished the blood transfusions which they hoped would save her. Prayers from long ago came unbidden into his head as he watched her immobile body under the hospital sheet, at first barely breathing. With memory beyond control, he recalled sitting by his mother’s bed as she slipped into final unconsciousness, leaving him bereft and his father embittered, after watching the slow ravages of MS take her, inch by inch, away from them. If that happened again, to another woman he loved, he could not bear to even contemplate the consequences for his own life.

Laura had not opened her eyes since they had found her in Murgatroyd’s cellar, although the doctors had been encouraging after they had treated her. The slash to her neck had nicked an artery, but she had been found in time, they said, the transfusions would do their work. And her breathing, he noticed at last, had perceptibly become more regular, until he had begun to tell himself that she was now sleeping more or less normally. She was still a deathly white, and he could barely bear to look at the dressing beneath her
ear or at her head, where her hair had been hacked away. The nurses had gently wiped away the smears of blood and brushed what was left over her bare scalp, but he felt the loss of her cloud of copper curls as much, if not more, than he knew she would when she saw herself again in a mirror.

He felt rather than heard someone behind him, and turned round to find an anxious-looking Kevin Mower hovering by the door to the private room they had given Laura.

‘How is she, guv?’ the sergeant asked quietly.

‘As well as can be expected,’ Thackeray said. ‘You know they never commit themselves.’

‘I came to give you a quick update…’

Thackeray got to his feet wearily and followed Mower out into the corridor.

‘There was another room beyond where we found Laura,’ Mower said. ‘Empty, but with a very patchy concrete floor. I’ve got them started on breaking up the floor and they’ve already found one body, not far down. It’s pretty obvious there’ll be more. Six, at a guess. It looks as if he took them back to Sibden, killed them in the room where we found Laura, and then buried them in the one beyond that. He could have gone on indefinitely, I guess, if he hadn’t attacked Karen Bastable before he got her indoors.’

‘Any theories about why he might have done that? What does that bastard Sanderson say now?’

‘Still says Murgatroyd was incoherent beside the body when he found him, but thinks he said something about her struggling free and he had to use the knife to stop her getting away. Presumably, once he’d started on her, he couldn’t stop, he was out of control, and killed her where she lay, instead of taking her indoors. If he hadn’t done that, we’d never have got
near him. He could have carried on indefinitely.’

‘You’ve charged Sanderson?’

‘Oh, yes, guv. He’ll go away for a very long time.’

‘He was nearly as warped as Murgatroyd himself,’ Thackeray said. ‘How could you cover up a crime like that and actually feel good about it?’

‘All part of God’s higher purpose, according to his latest statement,’ Mower said. ‘Some God.’

Thackeray glanced back into Laura’s room, and Mower put a hand on his arm.

‘Get back to Laura, guv,’ he said. ‘Everything’s under control back at base. I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Thanks, Kevin,’ Thackeray said. And to his joy, when he turned to take up his watch beside Laura’s bed, he found her green eyes were open and she was watching his approach with every appearance of relief.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

She shook her head slightly.

‘Tired,’ she said faintly. ‘Have I been asleep for long? I’m very tired.’

‘Quite long, yes,’ Thackeray said, his mouth dry. ‘But you’re all right now. You’re going to be all right.’ Laura nodded, and winced as she tried to move her neck.

‘And the baby?’ she whispered. ‘Is the baby all right?’

Thackeray nodded wordlessly.

‘They say the baby’s all right,’ he said. He took her hand, unable to speak, and she seemed happy to lie for a while with her eyes half shut.

‘Have you caught him?’ she whispered at last, almost as if she had been reviewing what had happened, and Thackeray wondered how much she actually remembered. He did not
want to push her back into the horror. There would be plenty of time for that later, much later, he thought.

‘We’ve got him,’ Thackeray said. ‘He won’t ever hurt anyone again.’

‘And Debbie? Is she all right? He did a vicious job on her as well, you know.’

‘She’s recovering,’ Thackeray said. He took her hand.

‘And with you? What made him stop short?’ he asked. ‘Have you any idea?’

‘It was the baby. He couldn’t kill the baby at the end,’ she said simply. ‘I reminded him of his mother, and the baby must have reminded him of his sister.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ Thackeray asked, astonished into asking one more question.

‘I told him,’ Laura said, with a crooked attempt at a smile. ‘I told him he couldn’t murder us both. That wouldn’t be right.’

‘That was very clever psychology,’ Thackeray said, kissing her hand. ‘The baby saved your life. You have no idea how good that makes me feel.’

‘Really?’ Laura whispered.

‘Really,’ he said. ‘For all three of us.’

P
ATRICIA
H
ALL
is the pen name of journalist Maureen O’Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire, which is where she chose to set her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray. She is married, with two grown-up sons, and now lives in Oxford.

Ackroyd & Thackeray series

Skeleton at the Feast

Deep Freeze

Death in Dark Waters

Dead Reckoning

False Witness

Death in a Far Country

By Death Divided

Devil’s Game

Other novels

The Masks of Darkness