Authors: Patricia Hall
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Is there anything else my client can help you with, Superintendent?’ the solicitor said, closing his own file with a snap of finality. Longley glanced at Thackeray who shook his head slightly.
‘Thank you for coming in, Sir David,’ Longley said and watched as Thackeray opened the door for them and summoned a passing constable to escort them out of the building.
‘Not much joy there, then,’ Longley said. Thackeray shrugged.
‘I’m not sure I believed him,’ he said. ‘But we’ll have to take his word for it for the moment.’
‘Keep me up to speed, Michael,’ Longley said. ‘I’m already getting hints from the top that there are complaints coming in from some of the men you brought in yesterday for further questioning. Not that I want that to stand in the way of your investigation in any way, but tread carefully with these people. They can’t all be guilty and some of them can make our life uncomfortable in one way or another.’
Thackeray looked at his boss for a moment without speaking.
‘I’ll take that in the spirit in which I’m sure it’s meant,’ he said, and walked out, closing the door very firmly behind him.
Sergeant Kevin Mower waylaid him on the way downstairs to his own office.
‘Has Murgatroyd gone, guv?’ he asked. He was clutching a sheaf of papers in his hand and looked as excited as his perpetually cool exterior ever allowed.
‘He says he doesn’t recall Green in any shape or form,’ Thackeray said.
‘Well, that could be bullshit,’ Mower said. ‘Take a look at this and see what you think.’
Thackeray waved Mower into his own office where the sergeant spread a photocopied sheet of newsprint onto the DCI’s desk, together with the artist’s impression of what Leroy Green might look like ten years after his police mugshot had been taken. The page, which had been taken, Thackeray noticed, from a copy of the
Bradfield Gazette
of a week previously, included a photograph of a group of people outside Sutton Park School, above a brief item on the academy plans over Laura Ackroyd’s byline.
‘So?’ he said, reading the caption underneath the photograph. This identified the head teacher, Debbie Stapleton, Sir David Murgatroyd and Councillor Peter Maxwell, all of whom he recognised. It had been taken as Murgatroyd arrived to make his first visit to the school after the local council gave provisional approval to the academy proposal, and there were half a dozen people clustered behind the main party, none of whom looked familiar to Thackeray.
‘Look here,’ Mower said, pointing to a blurred image at the very back of the group. ‘How like our computer impression is that?’ he asked.
Thackeray pulled the computer image from his own file and laid it close to the newspaper photograph where a solitary
dark face was half obscured by a figure in front of him. He glanced at Mower doubtfully.
‘There’s a resemblance, I suppose,’ he said cautiously. ‘Find out who he is. Don’t be fooled by the colour of his skin. It could be anyone, a teacher or a governor at the school, perhaps. There’s not necessarily any connection with our inquiry. But it’s certainly worth a couple of phone calls, one to Laura, if you must.’
‘I’ll get a digital image of the picture from the
Gazette
if I can and see if we can enhance it,’ Mower said. ‘The other thing you need to know is that we’ve got an interesting result from forensics. It’s very tentative as yet, but they think they’ve found DNA on the body itself that is not the same as the traces they’ve got from the fingerprints. In other words, they think at least two people have been in contact with the body. It’ll take a while to confirm – the traces from the fingerprints are minute, you know how it goes. But they thought we would want to bear it in mind.’
‘Good, we’ll bear it in mind,’ Thackeray said. ‘Then we can do some elimination. We’ve got too many people under suspicion at the moment. If we can persuade some of them to give us a sample voluntarily so they can rule themselves out, everyone will be a whole lot happier, including the super.’
‘Getting a bit close to the golf club, is it, guv?’Mower asked with a grin. ‘Or his cronies in the Clarendon bar?’
‘That thought’s unworthy of you, Kevin,’ Thackeray said, with a wry smile. ‘But I think it’s safe to say that if we offer some of our doggers a way of eliminating themselves from a murder inquiry, they’ll jump at it.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, guv,’ Mower said.
Back in the murder incident room, he did a quick check on
how far detectives had progressed with their various tasks. Ten minutes later DCI Thackeray came down to the incident room himself to conduct the day’s review of the progress in the case and to discover that a few more new elements had been thrown into the mix.
‘We may have got something significant from our trawl through misper records,’ Mower said. ‘We asked other forces if they had any missing women who had been involved in swingers or dogging groups and we’ve had a few possibles. Obviously it’s hit-and-miss. Not every investigating officer would have asked questions like that of grieving husbands or boyfriends. But there are half a dozen where questions were asked and which seem to bear some similarities to Karen Bastable’s disappearance. None of them has ever been seen or heard from again, and in a couple the male partner was suspected of unlawful killing for a time, but there were never any charges. We’ve asked all the areas involved to send us full details.’
‘So you think there’s possibly a serial killer out there who’s generally made a better job of hiding the bodies?’ Thackeray asked.
‘It looks like a possibility,’ Mower said. ‘But as to who it is, the only identification we have is still the fingerprint evidence from the plastic wrapping Karen was found in.’
‘Right,’ Thackeray agreed. ‘So our top priority has to be tracking down Leroy Green. Any progress there?’
‘Again, we’ve circulated other forces, and looked at all the databases, but without any positive response so far. There’s no record that he’s dead, but no other record of him, either, for the last nine years that we can trace. No driving licence or vehicle registrations, his NI number hasn’t been used, he’s not
come to police attention in any way, he hasn’t joined any of the services. He’s either gone abroad or very successfully gone underground.’
‘With a new identity, perhaps?’ Thackeray said.
‘That’s not easy for a lad of nineteen, twenty to organise,’ Mower objected.
‘Did he have a passport?’
‘Yes, issued when he was sixteen for a school trip. But it’s long expired and hasn’t been renewed,’ Mower said. ‘He could have gone abroad for a while, but he would need a passport to get back into the country, and we know he was here in Yorkshire just days ago. That wasn’t a blurred or partial print they found, it was a good clear image. There’s no doubt he was there when Karen’s body was parcelled up like that. He’s an accessory if not a killer.’
‘Anything else?’ Thackeray glanced around his assembled detectives who appeared to be in sombre mood.
‘I was looking at the Internet,’ Mohammed Sharif said. ‘There are sites run by various groups with unusual sexual preferences.’ The Asian DC’s deadpan delivery gave nothing away to indicate his personal views of such activities, but none of his colleagues had any doubt that he had found this particular inquiry profoundly troubling.
‘That includes doggers?’ Thackeray asked.
‘Yes, it does, though there’s nothing specific to this area, sir. But it might be somewhere someone who wanted to set up a group would start. I reckon the next step is to make contact with some of these other people – see if anyone knows anything.’
‘Absolutely right,’ Thackeray said. ‘If there are networks, our man may well be exploiting them to find new victims,
using the groups to make contact with women for his own purposes. Make that a priority, Omar.’
Sharif nodded.
‘And his purposes might be…’ Sharif hesitated. ‘He likes perverted sex, or he hates it?’
‘You never know with these psychos,’ Mower said. ‘What’s going on in their heads is a mystery and no psychologist I’ve ever come across has ever explained it adequately. Fortunately in this case we’ve got some good, strong forensic leads, so we don’t need to go delving into perverse motivation just yet. Just follow your Internet links, Omar, and see where they take you. OK, guv?’
Mower glanced at Thackeray for approval and received a brief nod. The sergeant knew that the DCI would not hesitate to call in a forensic psychologist if he thought it was necessary but, with only one body and strong leads to follow, that point had not yet come. Old-fashioned detective work looked as though it might yet get a result and, as the briefing ground to its inconclusive end, Kevin Mower and the rest of the team were clearly keen to get on with it.
‘His name’s Winston Sanderson, and he’s David Murgatroyd’s gofer, right-hand man, gatekeeper, whatever,’ Laura Ackroyd said, glancing again at the photograph she had printed off the
Gazette
’s database for Kevin Mower, who was sitting across a table in the Lamb that lunchtime. ‘From my point of view, the man’s a complete menace. He guards Murgatroyd like a
well-trained
Rottweiler. You’d think bloody Sir David was some sort of premier-league footballer, he’s that well protected.’
‘Perhaps he’s had some bad experiences with the tabloids. Not everyone is keen on this business of selling off state schools to dubious millionaires, after all, especially not the religious ones,’ Mower said, sipping his pint reflectively. He had been shocked, when Laura joined him, to see how pale and unwell she looked but he did not quite know how to broach the subject too directly.
‘Maybe,’ Laura said dubiously. ‘It looks as if tabloid culture’s claimed another victim in Debbie Stapleton. Did you hear about that?’ Mower nodded.
‘She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?’
‘I think so,’ Laura said. ‘She’s out of intensive care, though there’s various nasty little pieces appeared in the London papers which won’t make her feel any better when she reads them. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive Bob Baker for starting this all off.’
‘The man’s only fit for a tabloid himself. I don’t know why the
Gazette
puts up with him.’
‘Ted Grant not only puts up with him but encourages him, because at heart Ted’s a tabloid vulture himself,’ Laura said. ‘He’s never got over some brief stint he did on the
Globe
. Everything up here on a local rag is just a pale shadow of what he’d really like to get up to. But I can’t see him ever leaving. No one else would have him now. So we’re in for years of him getting more bitter and frustrated.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Mower said. ‘So Sanderson is Murgatroyd’s minder, protecting him from the likes of Bob Baker? Is that right?’
‘Seems to be. Though Sir David seems to be a little more open to my approaches. I have met him, with Sanderson’s reluctant approval.’
‘No doubt the result of your undoubted charms,’ Mower said. ‘But why do I get the impression that this man Murgatroyd is not bringing much except trouble to Bradfield?’
‘My feeling entirely, though I can’t take sides so openly in reporting it. But it’s difficult to see how the protesters are going to get their case over to the powers that be with the remotest chance of success, let alone win the battle. The council stands to gain too much from this academy scheme: a brand new school to replace a crumbling ruin and, if he keeps his promises, a whole lot of troublesome kids taken off their
hands. Councillor Peter Maxwell thinks it’s Christmas with bells on.’
Mower laughed and then thought better of it, burying his face in his glass again. Laura was doing no more than sip at her vodka and tonic, he noticed.
‘What?’ she said, quick to pick up on his hesitation.
‘Let’s just say that Councillor Maxwell has got a few other things on his mind just now that I couldn’t possibly tell a reporter about,’ he said. Laura gave him a sharp look.
‘And what, exactly, am I supposed to make of that?’ she asked.
‘Anyway, tell me what you know about this man Sanderson? Is he local?’ Mower knew he had gone too far, and shifted the subject sharply.
‘No, I don’t think so. He sounds like a Londoner. Though I can’t say he’s ever got very personal. He seems to think the sun shines out of David Murgatroyd, though. Gods’ gift, in Sanderson’s view.’
‘Can I show you something, strictly off the record?’ Mower asked carefully.
‘I suppose so, if it’ll help,’ Laura said.
Mower pulled the police mugshot of Leroy Green from his inside pocket and spread it out on the table.
‘D’you think that could have been Sanderson nine or ten years ago, when he was about nineteen, twenty?’
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 see 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.’