Devil's Game (6 page)

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 being 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.’

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.

‘She took a chance keeping these on her phone,’ he said, as they looked at half a dozen blurred images of people wearing very little and engaged in activities that would not have seemed out of place in a porn movie. ‘Her husband might have got hold of them.’

‘Perhaps he’s as inept as I am with these things,’ Thackeray muttered. ‘But are any of the participants recognisable?’

‘Not really,’ Mower said. ‘One or two of them are wearing things across their faces, look – a scarf there, a mask, even. Wasn’t there a famous case once involving a man in a mask? People tried to identify him by his willy?’ He grinned but Thackeray did not respond and Mower turned back to the screen with a slight shrug and flicked through more images.

‘They’re all a bit blurred, guv,’ he said.

‘I can see that,’ Thackeray said, sounding tetchy. ‘Keep going.’

‘Mobiles don’t give you high-quality images, on the whole, especially if they’re being waved around pretty much at random like this one seems to have been,’ Mower explained. ‘Forensics may be able to enhance them a bit, but I doubt if any of these would stand up in court as a clear identification of anyone.’

‘Wait, look at that one again,’ Thackeray said. ‘There’s a couple of cars in the background. Ask them if they can get a
better image of the registration plates. We might pin someone down that way.’

‘Here’s a couple she’s taken of cars arriving,’ Mower said. ‘It’s almost as if she wanted a record of what was going on. Perhaps she didn’t feel very secure going up there on her own. These were all taken the night she disappeared, apparently. There’s nothing any further back, unless she’s downloaded them onto a computer.’

‘Did the Bastables have a computer in the house?’ Thackeray asked.

‘I don’t think so, guv, but I’ll check.’

‘And has someone picked up Bastable’s shoes and clothes?’

‘He wasn’t best pleased about that, apparently,’ Mower said. ‘They came away with his only pair of proper shoes – a well-polished black pair, apparently, no doubt for weddings and funerals – plus a bag full of trainers, and several pairs of muddy tracksuit bottoms and trousers. The shoe size is about right, apparently. He takes an eleven.’

‘So we’re in the hands of forensics?’

‘’Fraid so,’ Mower said. ‘I’ll print off these pictures and take them with me when I go to talk to Charlene and her boyfriend again. Maybe they’ll jog her memory a bit further. But I don’t hold out high hopes.’

‘The best bet is a car registration,’ Thackeray said. ‘So push the lab on that, will you?’

‘Right, guv,’ Mower said. ‘Will do.’

The Murgatroyd Academy glittered in the pale morning sunshine as Laura approached it by car the next morning. It lay on flat land at the top of a long, gentle gradient above Leeds town centre, offering a panoramic view of the city with its
domed town hall and sparkling modern blocks below. But its immediate surroundings were much more grim. Rows of tightly packed terrace houses had given way to more spacious
semi-detached
brick council houses, as she drove up the hill. But the signs of neglect and vandalism were the first thing which took the eye. Many of the gardens were overgrown and unkempt, here and there properties had been completely boarded up, and groups of teenagers hung about on street corners. The area was deeply depressing and in sharp contrast to the bustling, booming city below and to the new building that announced itself as the academy in letters a foot high on a board behind steel fencing and a firmly closed gate, which allowed passers-by only a glimpse of its glamorous modern facade.

Laura had never before visited a school with this level of security and she stopped outside the main gate and got out of her car. There was an answerphone system beside the gate and a notice which announced that entry was strictly by appointment only. Laura pushed the buzzer and when she explained who she was the gate swung silently open, reminding her of the similar security at Sibden House. David Murgatroyd’s obsession with all things high-tech obviously extended across the whole of his empire.

Once inside, she parked in one of the spaces designated for visitors and sat for a moment gazing in astonishment at the architectural wonders that lay beyond the concealing fences: plate glass and metal soared four storeys high, dwarfing the surrounding community, the main entrance led into a glass atrium which would have graced a five-star hotel, and beyond that the school itself, its playing fields and tennis courts, dozed surprisingly silently in the sunshine. Of students there was no overt sign.

She locked the car and made her way to reception, where a young woman was clearly waiting for her arrival.

‘The head will see you straight away,’ she said, shaking hands perfunctorily. ‘He has a short slot, as I think he explained. There’s a meeting of the management committee at eleven and Sir David is coming in for that.’

Laura’s pulse quickened. Perhaps at last she might get a glimpse of the elusive David Murgatroyd, even get a quick word with him. That was a bonus she had not been expecting on this trip to see exactly how one of his burgeoning chain of academies functioned, and she knew that Ted Grant would be pleased. But first there was the head teacher to see.

Gordon Masefield was an energetic man, small and plump but full of an almost childlike enthusiasm. He bounded across his office to meet Laura, shook her hand vigorously and offered her a chair, a cup of tea, which she declined, and a glossy prospectus, all within the space of thirty seconds.

‘I’m so glad to meet you,’ he said, as Laura glanced briefly at the photograph of Sir David Murgatroyd and Masefield himself that graced the first page of the brochure. ‘I’m sure we can help convince Bradfield that a school like this can only be an asset from which their young people can benefit enormously.’ Murgatroyd, Laura noted, was not at all as she had imagined him: he was obviously a tall man, dwarfing the head teacher in the photograph, and he seemed to be enjoying a well-preserved middle age, dark-haired, firm-jawed and not unattractive. Masefield, on the other hand, confident enough in person, was gazing up at his boss in the picture with an expression which could only be described as adoring. What was it, Laura wondered, that Murgatroyd did to ensure that men like Masefield, and his own assistant Sanderson,
extremely competent men themselves, ate out of his hand? Was this what people called charisma, and if so, was it entirely a good thing, she wondered?

She realised that she had not really been listening to Masefield, who was still talking fast and furiously.

‘I thought a quick tour of the academy first, and then we can deal with any questions you may still have at the end. Does that suit you, Miss Ackroyd?’

‘Yes, that will be fine,’ Laura said, and she obediently followed Masefield out of his office again. The tour was a whirlwind one, with Laura barely conscious of whom she was being introduced to, and what subjects were being taught in the rows of identical classrooms where ranks of neatly uniformed children stood up when the head opened the door in a way which recalled her own school days but which she knew was unusual in the current day and age. Here good order and industry were evidently imposed and she wondered quite how that worked in an area outside the school gates which was so obviously run-down and impoverished.

‘Can I speak to some of the students?’ Laura asked, after surveying a science class where young people in safety glasses experimented over flasks and Bunsen burners. ‘One or two of the sixth form, perhaps?’

‘That wouldn’t be possible without their parents’ permission,’ Masefield said blandly, waving her out of the lab and along yet another corridor. ‘Not that our parents are not uniquely supportive, of course, but I think press interviews would be an intrusion.’

‘It must be difficult to keep parents on board in an area like this, with all its social problems,’ Laura objected. ‘This is the
local school for the whole estate, I take it?’

‘Well, in theory it is, but we have the advantage of having five applicants for every place,’ Masefield said. ‘We don’t select on ability, of course; we’re a comprehensive school, after all, and we take all the talents, but we do expect our parents to support the school’s ethos.’

‘Which is?’

‘Oh, a Christian ethos, of course. We make no secret of that. Sir David runs his academies on biblical precepts. Everyone knows that. What they don’t seem to appreciate is how successful that is in educational terms.’

‘So who might not be welcome here?’ Laura pressed. ‘Muslims?’

‘No, no, we find Muslim parents very often appreciate our approach to discipline and morality. We have a number of Muslim students here. As we do West Indians from more traditional families. So far, they are doing very well. Very well indeed.’

‘But not the children of drug dealers?’ Laura asked evenly. ‘Or members of local gangs? Or single parents on benefits who can’t afford the school uniform?’

‘Their parents would be unlikely to be able to meet our expectations, I fear,’ Masefield said. ‘Some of the local children choose to go elsewhere.’ I bet they do, Laura thought, recognising the evidence here of what Bradfield parents feared would happen there: the price of a gleaming new school would be the exclusion of ‘difficult’ pupils to ensure that exam results looked good.

‘So what happens if a few of the less desirable students slip through the net?’ she asked, not disguising her scepticism.

‘We have a very firm policy on school rules. Three strikes
and you are out, basically, with no exceptions.’ Masefield’s expression had hardened now.

‘So you filter the children coming in, and then keep on filtering the difficult ones out again as they go up the school?’

‘We feel no particular obligation to families who find it impossible to commit to our objectives,’ Masefield said flatly. ‘We don’t apologise for making demands. That is the price of a successful education. It requires effort on both sides.’

Laura did not feel she could argue with that, but she wondered at a head teacher who saw no merit in going the extra mile for children who had no support from home, punishing them twice, in effect, for factors over which they had no control. Then she remembered the Bradfield head Debbie Stapleton’s other objection to David Murgatroyd’s approach to education.

‘And what about the curriculum, Mr Masefield? You mention biblical precepts. What does that amount to? Creationism in the science lessons?’

‘Intelligent design is a valid means of looking at the world,’ Masefield said, slightly defensively. ‘In many American schools that is completely accepted now.’

‘But not part of the National Curriculum here yet,’ Laura said mildly. ‘And what about sex education?’

‘Like all schools, the governors discuss this with parents. So far we have had no objections to our conservative approach, which is based on biblical precepts.’

‘No sex outside marriage?’

‘Precisely. Many of our girls are part of the silver-ring movement, promising to remain pure until marriage.’

‘You promote that?’ Laura asked.

‘One of our female staff members is very keen. She is responsible for sex education.’

‘So you’ve cracked the problem of teenage pregnancy?’ Masefield glanced away, suddenly embarrassed.

‘Not quite yet, it has to be said,’ he admitted.

‘So, tell me, what happens if one of your teenagers concludes that he or she is gay? What is the school’s reaction to that?’ Laura knew she was being provocative but Masefield’s bland certainties were beginning to annoy her.

‘It is not a lifestyle choice which we would in any way condone,’ Masefield said. ‘Our general view of sexual activity within marriage would obviously not include same-sex relationships. Fortunately, praise the Lord, it’s not a problem which we have met during the time we have been open.’ They had by now come full circle and were outside the head teacher’s office door where he consulted his watch ostentatiously.

‘I’m afraid that’s all I have time for today, Miss Ackroyd,’ he said. ‘I hope that has given you some idea of the sort of school we are running here. You will find the first set of GCSE examination results in the brochure I’ve given you. We were very pleased with them. They far outstrip anything which has been achieved in this area before. I’m sure, with Sir David’s sponsorship, Bradfield could be just as successful, just as quickly. You can reassure your readers of that.’

Dismissed like a naughty school pupil, Laura walked thoughtfully out through reception, but at the top of the steps she stopped and watched a sleek Jag manoeuvre through the electronic gates and park next to her own dusty VW Golf. Even before the door opened, she guessed that this was the school’s millionaire sponsor come to visit his
fiefdom like a viceroy his colony. Taking a deep breath, she waylaid Sir David Murgatroyd as he strode towards the front door.