Devil's Game Page 4

  ‘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.’

  ‘So what’s the second objection?’ Laura asked.

  ‘David Murgatroyd,’ Debbie said. ‘The second objection is personal. This is a multi-ethnic school. We take most of the Muslim children from around Aysgarth Lane. Plus most of the white children from the Heights, and quite a lot of black youngsters. They have all sorts of problems, but we’re beginning to make a success of it. They do well here. Exam results are improving. Discipline is improving. The inspectors are happy – or much happier than they were before I came, anyway. We don’t need Murgatroyd. He’s some sort of born-again Christian. He’s been accused in Parliament of forcing his views on the academies he’s already running. They’re imposing rigid regimes and throwing out anyone who won’t conform – children or staff. Where will our difficult kids go if they can’t come here? St Mark’s is very successful at filling its places with middle-class kids. Who’s going to look after the rest if we don’t?’

  ‘I’m trying to write a profile of David Murgatroyd, but he’s a very elusive man. I’ve not been able to get near him for an interview.’

  Debbie Stapleton laughed.

  ‘No one can get near him, according to my teachers’ union people. The closest anyone gets is to one of his bag carriers, a man called Winston Sanderson. He’s been to talk to our governors but they were less than impressed. Not because he’s black, which he is; Jamaican heritage, I think. People simply don’t like his uncompromising views, which presumably echo his boss’s. Intelligent design, no proper sex education, homophobic prejudice…you name it. Of course, we have some parents who’d go along with some of that, especially some of the Muslims, but we’ve succeeded here so far by emphasising tolerance of difference. You can’t realistically ban bullying because of the colour of someone’s skin and then let it rip if they have a different sexuality. Bullying is bullying, in my book, and we don’t put up with it here.’

  Laura was surprised at how passionate Debbie Stapleton suddenly became. She flushed and glanced away for a moment and Laura saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

  ‘I was bullied at school myself,’ she said quietly. ‘This man Murgatroyd stands for everything I hate.’

  Laura paused for a moment to let the headmistress compose herself.

  ‘Would you survive the change yourself, as head, I mean?’ Laura asked.

  Debbie shrugged. ‘I’d have to apply for my own job. I shouldn’t think my face would fit.’

  ‘Do you have any contact details for this man Sanderson? Maybe I can get to Murgatroyd through him.’

  ‘You could try,’ Debbie said. ‘He left me a mobile number. Apparently he travels a lot. Murgatroyd himself is based in London.’

  ‘He is a Yorkshireman, by birth anyway, apparently, and he has a house up here,’ Laura said. ‘He seems to have hung on to the family home in Sibden, but he wasn’t there when I went up to see if I could catch him.’

  ‘Right,’ Debbie said. ‘Mr Sanderson did say they stay there sometimes. In any case, David Murgatroyd is coming here in a week’s time. Sanderson said his boss would want to talk to the governors himself after they gave him quite a rough time at the last meeting. It’s scheduled for the 16th. You ought to be able to catch both of them then.’

  ‘Fine,’ Laura said. ‘I’ll certainly try to pin them down then if I can’t make contact before that, though my editor is pressing me for something sooner rather than later.’ She wrote down Sanderson’s mobile number carefully.

  ‘These people can’t career around the country taking over schools without explaining to people exactly what they have in mind for them, can they?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Debbie Stapleton said. ‘That seems to be exactly what David Murgatroyd is doing. And I don’t anticipate being here very long myself if he gets away with it at Sutton Park. As I said, I’m quite sure I’ll be the first to go.’ She gazed out of the window for a second, with a weary expression. ‘All that work here and that’s the thanks I get,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You must have succeeded Margaret Jackson as head,’ Laura said. ‘I met her when a boy was killed here some years ago. Did you know about that?’

  ‘Oh yes, that was one of the reasons my partner said I’d be a fool to take this on. But it was ancient history, r
eally, and it wasn’t anything to do with the kids here, was it? I think they were much more affected when Margaret died so soon after she left. That upset a lot of them.’

  ‘Yes, I knew she had cancer,’ Laura said. ‘It was a bad time for the school. They were lucky not to be closed down then, I think.’

  ‘They’ve been on the brink so long that I think the staff have got used to it. But we have made real progress in the last couple of years. That’s what’s so galling about this takeover bid. But people will be seduced by the promise of new buildings. You can see what a dump the place is. It may be blackmail, but it’ll probably work.’

  ‘Well, good luck,’ Laura said. ‘I’ll give you a call about the 16th if I haven’t succeeded in tracking Murgatroyd down before then.’

  Karen Bastable’s friend Charlene Brough was not at work when DS Kevin Mower and PC Nasreem Mirza went looking for her. She was off sick, according to her supervisor, who reluctantly provided an address for her on the other side of the Heights from where the Bastables themselves lived – a tightly packed warren of newly built houses with tiny gardens that had been intended for first-time buyers but which were almost all occupied now by families with young children, trapped there by the housing market.

  Mower knocked at the white PVC front door and glanced upstairs at the tightly curtained bedroom windows.

  ‘If she’s really sick, she could be asleep,’ he said. He knocked again and eventually the door was opened a crack by a woman in a black lacy negligee. She hesitated for a moment when Mower introduced himself before grudgingly easing the door open to let them in. She led them into an untidy living room and waved them into chairs before lighting a cigarette and drawing the smoke deep into her lungs. She was a small woman, pale and thin to the point of emaciation, with untidy blond hair still uncombed and smudges of black make-up around her eyes that only accentuated the deep hollows of tiredness.