Devil's Game (3 page)

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-committally.

‘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.

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.’

‘So we’ve already lost twenty-four hours?’ Thackeray said incredulously. ‘Don’t they carry mobile phones, these silly beggars?’ Mower shrugged.

‘If they do, they obviously didn’t think it was worth calling in. Incredible. Though to be fair, you’re lucky to get a decent signal in some of those remote areas.’

‘Did it rain up there last night? It was pouring down when I got home.’

‘I think it was pretty general. So forensics will have a hard time finding anything useful at the scene,’ Mower said.

‘Right. First things first. Get uniform to make sure the car is still up there, and cordon it off,’ Thackeray said. ‘We don’t want anyone putting muddy fingerprints all over it before we’ve had a thorough look. Then talk to PC Mirza before you go to see the husband. Take her with you if you like. She might be useful in spotting if he’s changed his story at all. There’s only two possibilities, if she drove to a remote spot like that. She’s either still up there, alive, or quite possibly dead. Or she left in someone else’s vehicle. Again, she could have gone off willingly with someone. Or perhaps not.’

‘Guv,’ Mower said.

Thackeray sat immobile for a long time after Mower had closed his office door behind him but his mind was not on the possible disappearance of Karen Bastable. He had not gone home early the previous evening, as he had promised Laura, and when he finally arrived he had found her already in bed reading.

‘Have you eaten?’ she had asked ungraciously, when he had pleaded pressure of work. But he had shaken his head, then slumped in a chair watching TV and not gone to bed himself until he had been sure she was asleep. He guessed that she wanted to talk about a commitment he had rashly made a few months before, a last desperate throw, he thought now, to keep Laura with him and one which he had come to regret.
Now life had returned to something more like normal, he realised how hard that commitment would be to keep, how much, in fact, it terrified him. However much Laura wanted a child, he did not think that he could possibly become a father again.

Sergeant Kevin Mower warmed to PC Nasreem Mirza. She described her interview with Terry Bastable with a glint of humour in her dark eyes.

‘You don’t let the racist bastards get you down, then?’ Mower asked.

‘You can’t, can you? They’d only think they were winning. It’s been worse since the London bombs, of course, but I’m not going to be blamed for what those idiots did.’

‘Do you want to come with me to talk to him again? You obviously weren’t happy with what he told you.’

‘It was more that there was something I thought he wasn’t telling me,’ Nasreem said. ‘I’ll certainly come if you want me to. If my sergeant’s happy.’

The sergeant was happy enough, but it was obvious that Terry Bastable was not when the two officers arrived on his doorstep.

‘Have you found her?’ he demanded as he reluctantly let them into the house, reserving his glare for the Asian PC and addressing himself entirely to Mower.

‘We’ve found her car, Mr Bastable, apparently abandoned, but there’s no sign of your wife, I’m afraid.’

Bastable threw himself onto the sofa and ran a hand across his forehead, as if to wipe something away.

‘I’ve not had a bloody wink of sleep,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t stop thinking about her, where the hell she might be.’

‘You’ve heard nothing, I take it?’ Mower asked. ‘You’d have called us…?’

‘Nowt,’ Bastable said. ‘She’s gone without a bloody word. She wouldn’t do that, would she? Not our Karen. Summat bad must have happened or she would have got in touch. The kids are up the wall…’

‘Have you any idea why she might have driven up to Bently, that big Forestry Commission plantation beyond Haworth?’ Mower asked.

‘I’ve no bloody idea,’ Bastable said. ‘I didn’t know there was a plantation beyond Haworth. I’ve never bleeding heard of it.’

‘Well, in view of the fact that her car was found abandoned in such a remote spot, we’ll have to start a search up there,’ Mower said carefully. ‘There’s still no firm evidence that anything untoward has happened to your wife, Mr Bastable, but it’s looking more likely than yesterday.’

‘I told this P—, this
officer
, that summat untoward had happened, didn’t I?’ Bastable spat back. ‘Karen would never have just gone off wi’out a word. Never.’

‘There is just one thing you could do at this stage to help us,’ Nasreem said calmly. ‘Would you let me have a look round the house, just to get an idea of what she was like, the sort of clothes she wore, that sort of thing?’ It was obvious from Bastable’s face that he wanted to say no, but he glanced at Mower’s implacable expression and thought better of it.

‘I suppose so,’ he said, addressing Mower again. ‘Though I’ve told
her
already.’ He scowled in Nasreem’s direction. ‘She’s taken nowt with her that I know of.’ PC Mirza glanced at Mower, who nodded, and she left the room to go upstairs. From below they could hear her moving quickly around the
bedroom above them, opening drawers and cupboards. Bastable sat forward, as if tensed to spring out of his chair. His hostility to Nasreem Mirza was palpable and Mower determined to warn her sergeant not to send her here on her own again.

‘Calm down, Mr Bastable,’ he said. ‘This is all just routine.’

‘Not for me, it’s bloody not,’ Bastable grunted.

‘So tell me some more about Karen. What about her friends?’ Mower asked. ‘Have you contacted anyone to ask if they know where she might have gone?’

Bastable glared at Mower for a long moment before he replied.

‘What friends?’ he asked. ‘You mean a boyfriend? You mean she might have a boyfriend?’ His colour rose and for a moment Mower thought that he might take a swing at him with one of his fiercely clenched fists.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Mower said quietly. ‘Though if you’ve any evidence…?’ He left the question hanging in a heavy silence. Bastable did not reply and gradually he sank back into his chair, deflated.

‘I meant her friends, girlfriends, workmates perhaps, or women she goes out with occasionally. Anyone she worked with who she might have talked to?’ Mower persisted. ‘She must have some women friends, surely.’

‘Girls’ nights out, you mean? She doesn’t do owt like that,’ Bastable said. ‘I don’t like gangs of women out to get pissed. That’s no way for a married woman to behave. Mind you…’ He stopped again. ‘Just recently, she’s been out a few times with Charlene.’

‘Who’s Charlene?’

‘I’ve not met her. She talks about someone called Charlene
at her work,’ Bastable said. ‘You’d have to ask at Shirley’s.’

‘Right, I’ll check her out,’ Mower promised. PC Mirza came back into the room and shook her head imperceptibly and the sergeant got to his feet.

‘We’ll launch a search around where the car was found, probably later today, Mr Bastable,’ he said. ‘But it’s an isolated spot and it’ll take some time. We’ll keep you in touch with what’s happening, and if there’s anything else that you think we should know, don’t hesitate to contact us, will you?’

Bastable had slumped in his chair now, his eyes closed.

‘She wouldn’t have gone of her own free will,’ he muttered. ‘Not Karen. Summat bad’s happened to her. I know it has.’

Back in the car, Mower glanced at Nasreem.

‘What did you think?’ he asked.

‘It all looked perfectly ordinary upstairs,’ she said. ‘Though she’s got a lot of sexy underwear, I will say that. A few things I’d never seen before. Must have come from one of those special shops. My parents would go potty if I came home with anything like that.’

‘Perhaps she and Terry have an exciting sex life,’ Mower said mildly. Nasreem shuddered slightly.

‘Rather her than me,’ she said.

‘Are you married?’ Mower asked tentatively.

‘No, I’m the despair of my parents’ life,’ Nasreem said, with a shrug. ‘It’s not as if they’re particularly religious. There was no nonsense about covering my head, or anything. And they were happy to support me at school and college and with my career. It’s just that at my age, most Muslim women are married with kids. It’s obvious they’d like grandchildren. They always do, don’t they, parents?’ She shrugged and glanced at Mower. ‘It’s just the problem of finding the right man. The
longer I’m independent, I guess, the harder it’s going to be.’

‘I know the feeling,’ Mower said, the image of the beautiful Indian girl he had once loved and then lost flashing briefly into his mind. He seldom thought about her these days. Their affair had been brief and had ended tragically. But that was as close as he had ever got to marriage, he thought, and he could not imagine that it would ever happen again.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and chase up Mrs Bastable’s friend, Charlene, and see if she knows anything about where she might have gone or who she might have been meeting.

Sutton Park School occupied a motley collection of dilapidated buildings on a steep hillside overlooking the centre of Bradfield. Its core, originally a boys’ secondary school, was a grim stone pile which in the expansionist Sixties had proved inadequate for its new mixed intake as a comprehensive school, and had been surrounded and almost overwhelmed by extensions and temporary classrooms. As Laura Ackroyd drove into the car park and reversed into a solitary slot marked for visitors, she pulled a wry face. She knew the temptation there must be here to accept a
multimillion
pound rebuilding programme and began to wonder why the governors and staff could possibly object to what they had to give up in return for becoming an academy. Could passing control to Sir David Murgatroyd be so dreadful that they would rather continue to live and work in this municipal slum? On the surface, it seemed like a small price to pay.

She locked her car and followed the notices which led her to a cramped reception area and then to the office of the head teacher, Debbie Stapleton, a smartly dressed plump woman
with a warm smile in spite of the lines of strain around her eyes.

‘Come in,’ the head teacher said warmly, holding out her hand. ‘Your grandmother said you would give us a fair hearing in the
Gazette
. We could certainly do with some support.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Laura said, accepting the chair Debbie waved her into and switching on her tape recorder. ‘Why have you been singled out to be an academy?’

Debbie waved a hand at the view from her window, where puddles of rainwater stood on flat roofs and scaffolding surrounded a dilapidated outcrop from the original stone building, although there were no workmen in sight.

‘The place is falling down,’ she said. ‘And we’ll get no money for rebuilding for years and years unless the council goes for academy status.’

‘That sounds a bit like blackmail,’ Laura said.

‘You said that, not me. I couldn’t possibly comment.’ Debbie Stapleton’s face relaxed into a smile. ‘I’m not allowed to.’

‘So what’s so bad about it?’

‘There are two objections, really,’ the headmistress said. ‘One of principle, the other specific to this school. In principle, I personally don’t think that control of schools should be taken away from the local community. The governors here are not political apparatchiks. They represent all the people who have a stake in the school, and the whole of the community we serve: local business, the minority ethnic groups, we even have the local vicar on board, plus parents, staff, students. That would all go. The governors would be appointed by the sponsor. But to be honest, if that were the 
only objection I don’t think I could carry the existing governors with me. They’d look at the plans for shiny new buildings, computers, laboratories and the rest and they’d go for it.’