Devil's Game (19 page)

Blackness, nothing but blackness. Laura drifted back to consciousness, aware first of all that she could not see and, gradually, that neither could she move. She blinked a couple of times, to make sure that her eyes were actually open, but it did nothing to reveal anything but utter darkness. Only gradually, as she flexed her arms and legs, did she realise that she was tied down in some way to a flat surface, arms to her sides, ankles fastened together. She felt a tide of panic beginning to engulf her and she moaned slightly, but as she heard her own gasping breath she realised that at least she had not been gagged. But that fact, when she’d caught her breath, offered no comfort at all. If she had been left here to scream for help, all that implied was that no one could possibly hear her.

The silence was as profound as the darkness. Try as she might, she could hear absolutely nothing at all. There was no movement of air, although she gradually became aware of a sweet, slightly metallic smell which seemed familiar although she could not place it. As silent and dark as the grave, she thought, and another wave of panic swept over her, making her gasp and her heart thump uncontrollably, when she considered the possibility that she was actually in a coffin. But even though she could not reach out to feel the edges of her prison, she did not think she was anywhere as enclosed as that. The sense of suffocation which swept over her, she thought, was more in her own head than in any real inability
to breathe, and gradually she made herself take small, regular breaths again and she felt a chill as the sweat which had soaked her began to dry.

There was a sense of space, she told herself firmly, even without the evidence of her eyes to back it up, and wherever she was was cool but not bitterly cold. As far as she could tell she was still wearing the coat she had put on to go out into Murgatroyd’s garden and she was not physically uncomfortable, just immobile, and she knew that there must be a malign purpose behind that. She was being kept here for something, and when she allowed the thought of Karen Bastable’s fate to intrude, she moaned again.

She licked her lips and realised she was very thirsty. Whatever Murgatroyd had used to knock her out had left her mouth dry and furry. She wondered how long it took to die of thirst, and she wondered how long she had been here, immobile and unconscious – hours, days? She did not think it could be long as, apart from her dry throat, she was not particularly hungry or even uncomfortable. But at the back of her mind she knew that there was something she should remember and it remained tantalisingly just out of reach in the fog of her brain. She flexed her muscles again against whatever was tying her down, but there was no give anywhere, and even if she managed to wriggle a limb free, she did not know what she would do next. In the complete darkness, even trying to step off whatever she was fastened to would require a leap of faith she did not think she could summon up.

Michael must be looking for her by now, she thought. He would be at the flat, as arranged, wondering where she was. And then the crucial fact that she had not been able to recall 
filtered slowly back into her conscious mind. She had not told anyone where she was going, had she? She was bitterly sure she had not. Ted Grant had been busy and she had left the office without a word to anyone else. She groaned again. Michael might be looking for her but he had absolutely no idea where she had gone, and nor did anyone else. Murgatroyd had all the time in the world, she thought, to do whatever he wanted to do, and she had very little doubt what he intended.

She had no idea how long she lay there trying not to let her imagination run riot amongst the horrors she might be facing, or their inevitable conclusion, but despair was never far away, and when she finally heard a sudden sharp noise, she shrank into the hard surface beneath her, as if she could minimise herself in the teeth of whatever was to come. She recognised the click of a key in a lock, and a dim light as a door close to her head opened, and then she was dazzled by a much stronger light as a switch was pressed.

‘You’re awake. That’s good.’ She recognised David Murgatroyd’s voice although she had screwed her eyes shut against the glare and it was a minute before she could see him standing close to her at the side of what seemed to be a high bed. He said nothing, watching her with no obvious expression in his gold-flecked eyes. Then she realised that he was holding a knife in one hand and with a sick certainty she realised that the smell that had tantalised her with its familiarity was the meaty smell of a butcher’s shop.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she whispered, her eyes fixed on the shining blade of the heavy kitchen knife. ‘What have I ever done to you?’ She glanced around what turned out to be a small windowless room, which she guessed was a cellar.
Against a wall was a table with an array of tools and knives on it, and above a carefully arranged display of photographs which looked like blown-up family snapshots, some in black and white and some in colour. All of them featured a tall, beautiful young woman, with flaming red hair, sometimes with a small boy, sometimes with the boy and a young baby, and suddenly she understood where Murgatroyd’s claim that he had killed his mother had led him.

Murgatroyd seemed to spot the comprehension in her eyes.

‘She was a whore,’ he said flatly.

‘And Karen?’

‘Another whore. They all were, all those women.’

‘But I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’m not one of those women. I’m not a whore.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Murgatroyd countered and Laura swallowed hard, trying to control her trembling limbs as she realised that she was to become just one more in what must be a grisly sequence of killings. He turned away, selected a large pair of scissors from the table behind him and grabbed hold of her hair.

‘No,’ she said faintly, but he was not to be deterred as he pulled her copper curls in hanks away from her head and began to hack them off. And this, Laura thought with certainty, catching the manic look in his eyes, would just be one of the preliminaries. When he had finished, he gathered up the bundle of hair carefully and put it in a box under the table which seemed to be already full of a red-gold cloud.

‘But I’m not a whore,’ she said, with as much firmness as she could muster. ‘Whatever your mother did, or the rest of them, that’s not me. I am loved and wanted, and so is my baby. Are you going to kill us both just because of a casual
resemblance? Is that what God wants? Another innocent death like your sister’s? That can’t be right.’

Murgatroyd looked at her, his expression inscrutable, and then opened the scissors and held the sharp blades against her throat as she flinched and turned her head away so as not to let him see the fear in her eyes or the tears that slipped down her cheeks.

‘It’s a strange God who murders unborn babies,’ she whispered as she felt one of the blades slice into her neck.

And suddenly, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone, and she was in darkness again as the door closed behind him. She took a deep breath, sure that he soon would be back, and aware of a trickle of blood beginning to soak into her shirt collar. She might have shaken his resolve for a moment, she thought, but he would not dare let her live now that she could identify him. His only realistic choice was to continue what he had begun.

Michael Thackeray had hardly slept, and felt the gritty-eyed and fuzzy-brained results when he went back to police HQ the next morning. He had waited until after midnight for Laura, trying her phone at intervals and finally calling anyone he could think of who might know where she was, spreading anxiety he did not want to spread and to absolutely no avail. No one, friend or colleague, knew where she was heading after she left the
Gazette
’s offices the previous afternoon. Finally, exhausted, he had flung himself onto the bed fully clothed and slept fitfully until the first streaks of dawn woke him through the curtains Laura had carefully chosen for their bedroom. His first thought was Laura, but she still wasn’t answering her phone. He got up, swallowed a scalding black coffee and set off for work before seven.

To his surprise, he found Sergeant Kevin Mower already in the CID office, hunched in front of his computer screen.

‘I’ve firmed up these other disappearances,’ Mower said, over his shoulder. ‘Dates, places, circumstances and, as far as possible, sexual history. There are six that happened close to
Murgatroyd’s academies, all around the time that Sanderson would have had reason to be in the area concerned. All the places seem to have had some dogging activities going on at around the same time. There’s more than enough here to start questioning him about exactly when he was where. Then, I reckon we need to start looking at his computer. He had a laptop with him. If he accessed dogging sites, or even set them up himself, it’ll all be in there on the hard disk. As we said early on, it’s a brilliant way for a predator to pick up women in a totally anonymous environment where no one will want to come forward as a witness.’

Mower swung round towards the DCI and tried not to look as horrified as he felt when he took in his dishevelled, unshaven appearance.

‘Are you all right, guv?’ he asked. ‘You look as if you had a rough night.’

Thackeray’s first instinct was to rebuff this incursion into his private life but he was suddenly overwhelmed with immense weariness and knew he had to tell someone what was going on in his life or he would go mad.

‘Laura’s disappeared,’ he said. ‘I’ve hardly slept. I need to file a missing person report.’

‘Jesus,’ Mower said. ‘When did this happen?’

He listened without comment as Thackeray spelt out what had happened the previous day.

‘I thought she looked very stressed when I saw her the other day,’ was his only comment when the DCI had finished.

‘My fault,’ Thackeray said. ‘If she’s gone off somewhere voluntarily, it’s all my bloody fault, as usual. She’s pregnant. And I was giving her a hard time about it.’

‘And if she hasn’t gone voluntarily?’ Mower said sharply,
an appalling thought striking him. ‘Look at this, guv.’ He turned back to the computer and brought up a page of photographs of six women.

‘They all have red hair,’ he said quietly. ‘If that bastard Sanderson’s a serial killer, he picks out women with red hair. Maybe he had more reason than we imagined to be haring down the M1 with all his luggage in the boot of his car yesterday.’

Thackeray sat down at the desk next to Mower’s and buried his face in his hands. Mower glanced around the CID room, to make sure that they were still alone.

‘Let’s take this a step at a time, guv,’ he said. ‘Take your coat off and tidy up a bit and then go down to uniform and report her missing. There’s no reason to think she hasn’t just taken some time off to sort her head out.’

‘With her phone off?’ Thackeray asked, desperately trying to find a glimmer of hope somewhere.

‘Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you just now.’

Thackeray nodded gloomily, accepting the justice of that.

‘While you sort all that out, I’ll get Sanderson back up to an interview room and we can press him really hard this morning on all this other stuff. And ask him about Laura, just in case he’s broken the pattern. Which I don’t honestly think is very likely, guv. You know what these bastards are like. If they go out looking for tarts, amateur or professional, that’s generally what they find. And if that’s what’s happened to this lot, I can’t see that Laura could be at risk. Why should she be?’

‘You know she’s had some contact with Sanderson. She’s been chasing an interview with his boss for a week. She knows the bastard.’

‘Sure, we’ll push him then, won’t we? We’ve got enough
already to charge him with something on the basis of the fingerprint alone. We can afford to press him now on the rest. And ask him about Laura as well.’

Thackeray sighed heavily and ran a hand across his greying hair. Mower, he thought, had taken control and he half resented, half felt grateful for that.

‘I’ll see you downstairs in ten,’ he said.

Sanderson turned out to be much more subdued after his night in the cells. His face was drawn and there were dark circles under his eyes. Thackeray guessed that he had had as little sleep as he had had himself, and if he had been high on drugs the day before he certainly was not high now. But when they asked him again whether or not he wanted a solicitor he shook his head.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ he said dully. ‘I’ve told you what you wanted to know about Karen. You’ve got your confession. Why don’t you just charge me, for God’s sake? Let’s get it over with.’

‘Oh, I think we’ve only just begun, Mr Sanderson,’ Mower said, after acknowledging a nod from Thackeray. He put a bulging file of computer printouts on the desk in front of him. ‘Let’s start with Linda O’Hear, twenty-six years old, missing from her home in Peterborough since she vanished five years ago. Do you remember her?’

Sanderson stared at the two detectives with a blank expression.

‘I’ve never heard of her,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘How long have you worked with David Murgatroyd on his schools programme?’ Thackeray asked.

Sanderson shrugged.

‘Eight, nine years,’ he said. ‘He advertised the job just as I finished on his training scheme. I knew his name, of course, though I’d never met him again, after the church, that is, and thought it would be a laugh to work for him. I think he fancied a black PA. Reckoned it did something for his street cred. Not that he ever guessed how much street cred I actually had back in Notting Hill. It was only later that I got my head round the sort of man he really was. How much good he was doing, you know? And making no fuss about it. All that. I never planned to stay with him so long. It just happened. I was hooked. He became my religion.’

‘So you stayed, and if we asked you if you’ve ever been to Peterborough, or Swindon, or Leeds, or Derby or Oldham, you’d agree you had.’ Mower consulted his file ostentatiously.

‘I suppose,’ Sanderson said. ‘I generally go where the boss goes. What’s that got to do with Karen Bastable?’

‘So if we ask your boss where you were on which dates over the last few years, there’ll be a record somewhere?’

‘Yes, yes, you can ask him, but he’s away at the moment. He’s abroad.’

‘And we already know you’re familiar with Preston. You said you’d been there the day Karen disappeared,’ Mower pressed on.

‘Yeah, yeah, so what?’ Sanderson asked, looking genuinely bemused. Could he be that good an actor, Thackeray wondered?

‘So tell us all about the red-headed women you picked up at sex parties in those places, Leroy,’ Mower snapped. ‘Just like the party you claim you stumbled on accidentally in Bently Forest.’

‘What?’ Sanderson said, looking amazed now. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘There’s always a pattern to serial killings,’ Thackeray said. ‘It’s a great pity it sometimes takes a long time to emerge. But in this case, we’ve got there in the end. You’ve told us about Karen and how you picked her up at the dogging meeting. You’ve told us you cut her hair off because you hated redheads. So now tell us about the six other women who disappeared in similar circumstances, every one of them a redhead, every one of them a dogger. Linda O’Hear, Kelly Smith, Jan Wooldridge…do I need to go on?’

‘I’ve never heard of any of them,’ Sanderson said. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘We’ve started looking at your computer, Leroy,’ Mower said. ‘If you found those doggers’ parties online we’ll find a record of it, believe me. You’ve coughed to Karen’s killing. What’s the point of not telling us about the rest? You’re going down for life anyway. You must know that.’

‘What is this? What are you doing, trying to set me up, trying to clear your books or something? I don’t know anything about any women in these other places. I don’t know what happened with Karen. Somehow I lost it. I was out of control. I can’t even remember exactly, I told you that. But it was a one-off, believe me.’

‘Were you stoned, like you were last night?’ Mower pressed.

‘No, no, I don’t remember.’ Sanderson buried his face in his hands. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s all a blur.’

‘And now we have another redhead missing,’ Mower said. ‘Another young woman you’ve met. Where is Laura Ackroyd, Leroy? What have you done with her?’

‘The reporter woman who’s been pestering the boss? She’s missing?’ Suddenly Sanderson’s demeanour changed, he
looked suddenly sick and grey and began to tremble. To Mower’s alarm, Thackeray jumped to his feet and went around the table to take hold of Sanderson by the scruff of the neck, pulling his head back until their eyes were only inches apart.

‘Where is Laura, you bastard?’ he hissed. ‘Tell me what you’ve done with her.’

‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ Sanderson whispered, hardly able to speak as his collar cut into his windpipe. ‘I don’t believe this. It can’t be right.’

‘Steady, guv,’ Mower said. Thackeray released his grip but still stood over the prisoner, waiting for an answer. There were tears in Sanderson’s eyes now.

‘Tell us,’ Mower snapped. ‘Tell us everything.’

Sanderson slumped forward across the table and nodded but took a few seconds to find his voice again and when he spoke it was in a whisper.

‘I thought it was a one-off,’ he said.

‘Louder, for the tape,’ Thackeray snapped.

‘I thought it was a one-off,’ Sanderson said, slightly louder. ‘I found him with Karen…’

‘Who? Who did you find?’ Thackeray broke in again.

‘The boss, my boss. I got back and found him in the grounds at Sibden, at the side of the garage. She was dead and he was in a dreadful state, covered in blood, incoherent, kept rambling on that she was a whore and God hated whores… I got him indoors and put him under the shower and then into bed. Then I burnt his clothes and then got rid of the body, exactly as I told you. Wrapped it up and took it up onto the moors and buried it.’

‘You made yourself an accessory to a brutal murder, just
like that?’ Thackeray’s expression was incredulous.

‘It didn’t seem like that at the time. It seemed like a nightmare that wasn’t connected to real life. He never mentioned it again. It was as if it had never happened. Maybe he couldn’t remember. But I thought I could watch him, make sure it never happened again. I thought it was an isolated thing, a sudden madness. But then, when you started looking for me it looked as if it was coming too close to home, and I reckoned I could vanish if I got back to London. I’d done it once, I could do it again. And you’d go on looking for someone who didn’t exist. You’d assume I’d killed her and keep on looking for me, not bother with anyone else.’

‘You reckoned without motorway cameras,’ Mower snapped. ‘You were doing ninety-five.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Stupid mistake,’ Sanderson said. ‘So when they stopped me, I had a choice, didn’t I? Grass him up or let you go on thinking I did it. You had the fingerprint, after all. I did bury the body. And I wanted him to go on doing what he was doing, not killing, of course, not that, but he does so much good stuff. I wanted him to go on doing that. He’s a good man. It was a no-brainer, really.’

‘You decided to take the blame?’ Mower asked. ‘You’d do a life sentence for this bastard?’

‘You don’t understand,’ Sanderson said, with total accuracy as far as the two detectives were concerned. ‘You don’t know him. You don’t know how he changes people’s lives. And I didn’t know there were others,’ Sanderson whispered. ‘I truly didn’t know that.’

‘You said Murgatroyd’s away,’ Thackeray said. ‘Is that true? Could Laura have gone up to Sibden to see him?’

‘I’ve tried and tried to keep them apart. I knew he was
fascinated by redheads, but I never knew why.’

‘Is he away?’ Thackeray snapped.

‘No, he’s not away. He was at Sibden all day yesterday. He might have arranged to see her after I left, I suppose. I didn’t tell him I was taking off and not intending to come back. He doesn’t usually do that, make his own appointments, I mean, but he might have as it was her.’ He shrugged helplessly, his eyes full of horror as if he had only just begun to appreciate the depth of the pit he had fallen into. ‘Dear God,’ he said. ‘I hope he didn’t. He’s not safe, is he? He’s never going to be safe again.’

‘Come on,’ Thackeray said explosively to Mower. ‘Get this bastard back to the cells. We’ll find her, even if I have to take his house apart brick by bloody brick.’

The police arrived at Sibden House mob-handed: a transit van full of uniformed officers, two carloads of detectives. There was no response when they tried the keypad on the electronic gates and Thackeray waved to a burly constable with a ram to force the lock before they roared up the drive and decanted twenty officers onto the gravel drive in front of the portico. There was no sign of life anywhere along the sunlit sandstone facade and again no response to the bell or a repeated hammering on the solid wooden double doors, and again Thackeray authorised a forced entry. Leaving half a dozen men to search the grounds, the rest made their way into the echoing entrance hall, where Mower dispatched half of them to search the upstairs floors and the rest to explore downstairs. There was not a sound to be heard before heavy boots began to tramp around the premises, and no shout that might indicate that anyone
might have found anything of interest to the police.

‘It’s odd the alarm isn’t on,’ Mower said, glancing up at the flickering sensor in a corner of the hallway where they stood waiting for developments.