‘Is Sir David Murgatroyd at home?’ she asked. ‘He did ask me to contact him.’
‘He’s not here,’ Sanderson said, his voice brusque and clearly, on this occasion, not willing to unlock the gates. ‘And I don’t know when he will be. He was not best pleased to find demonstrators outside Sutton Park this afternoon. I spotted you there, too. That’s not the sort of publicity he wants when he’s trying to do people a favour.’
‘Well, if he won’t explain his motives it will be difficult to persuade people to his point of view,’ Laura said.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Sanderson said. ‘But he won’t give interviews. We’ve been through all this, Miss Ackroyd. You’re wasting your time here. I’ll talk to him about some sort of press release in the near future. That’s the best I can do for you.’
‘He said he’d talk to me, personally, when I bumped into him in Leeds,’ Laura persisted, though she guessed she was wasting her time.
‘He hasn’t mentioned it to me, and I keep his diary,’ Sanderson said, and cut the connection.
Was that the truth, she wondered as she turned the car round in the narrow lane and set off back down the hill again? As she turned onto the main Bradfield road, she saw a dark-coloured Jaguar making the turn up to Sibden and recognised David Murgatroyd’s car. If she had been just five minutes later, she thought angrily, she might have been able to waylay him at the gates to the house. Winston Sanderson was a liar, she thought, although whether it was on his boss’s or his own behalf was impossible to know.
Sergeant Kevin Mower knocked on Thackeray’s office door towards the end of the afternoon with a gleam in his eye. He found Thackeray wreathed in cigarette smoke as usual, in defiance of all the rules, and not apparently taking much interest in the piles of files on his desk.
‘I had an idea, guv,’ Mower said cautiously, not sure what sort of a reception he was about to get. Thackeray seemed visibly to haul himself out of whatever deep pit he had been visiting.
‘What was that?’
‘These meetings up in the woods,’ Mower said. ‘They’re arranged through the small ads in the Gazette, right? So why don’t we put an ad in ourselves, with a date. With a bit of luck, at least a few of them will turn up looking for fun and games and, hey presto, we’ve got our witnesses, if not our abductor.’
‘If we’re talking murder we’re hardly likely to get a result. A killer won’t be rushing back up there in a hurry.’
‘And whoever puts in the ad normally will know it’s a fake and likely won’t turn up,’Mower said. ‘But if they really don’t know each others’ identities it would be difficult for the organiser to stop it happening once the ad appeared.’
‘You’ll only get the people who are unaware that Karen went missing in that exact spot, and there can’t be many of them around,’ Thackeray objected.
‘Not everyone reads the Gazette, in spite of what Laura might think. And they won’t recognise Karen’s name either. All anonymous, Charlene said. And we’ve not released details of what she was doing up there yet. They may not connect her with their activities.’
‘It’s a long shot, but it might be worth a try,’ Thackeray conceded. ‘See what you can do to set it up in the morning. But check with Charlene to make sure you get the wording right, otherwise you’ll blow it.’
‘Right, guv,’ Mower said. ‘I’ll get off home then.’ But as Thackeray watched him go he knew it was not home which was putting that gleam in the sergeant’s eye. It had not escaped his notice that Mower had been unusually cheerful lately, nor much detective skill to work out why. He sighed, half wishing he could share his enthusiastic acceptance of no-strings involvement with the opposite sex, but knowing that he had been programmed too early and too thoroughly ever to go down that road. He piled the files on his desk into an untidy heap in his in tray and put on his coat. But when he had picked up his car and eased his way into the early evening rush in the town centre he turned north instead of south and took the road up the Maze valley towards Arnedale, the small market town where he had been at school, and not far from where his father had worked a small hill farm until ill health forced him into a frustrated and lonely retirement.
Thackeray did not often visit his father. It had never been a comfortable relationship, soured by Joe’s unforgiving puritanism and Thackeray’s own determination to go his own way and eventually abandon his father’s religion and the farm, which the old man had hoped he would take over when he retired. Even the slow decline of both their wives had brought no glimmer of fellow feeling. His mother’s descent into MS when he was still only a boy had killed Thackeray’s faith as surely as it eventually killed her, while his own wife’s mental illness and its consequences had drawn no sympathy from Joe, who blamed that family tragedy squarely and implacably on his son. Even so, Thackeray felt duty-bound to visit Joe in his retirement bungalow from time to time, and this evening, driven by the deep uneasiness in his relationship with Laura, which he knew had its roots in his own failed marriage, he felt drawn to Arnedale almost in spite of himself.
When he reached his father’s home, he almost drove past, recognising the car that was parked outside the bungalow at an odd angle, half on and half off the pavement. But then he shrugged resignedly. Perhaps, he thought, the presence of Father Francis Rafferty would ease the visit along, leaving less opportunity for father and son to tear open old wounds. In spite of having abandoned his church and his faith, Thackeray still regarded the old parish priest, who had known him since he was a child, as a friend, and a good one, who had unexpectedly stood by him with support and sympathy at a time when few in his family or in the town had offered anything but rancorous condemnation.
Joe must have seen Thackeray’s car pull up in front of the priest’s because he had the door open even before his son had closed the garden gate behind him, but there was little warmth in the old man’s eyes and Thackeray was shocked by how much he seemed to have physically shrunk since he had last seen him a few months before.
‘Nah then,’ Joe said, leading the way into his crowded living room, still stuffed with some of the heavy, old furniture he had brought from the farmhouse when it was finally sold. Rafferty stood up when the younger Thackeray came in and held out a hand in greeting.
‘I’m glad to see you, Michael,’ he said. ‘I heard you’d been having a rough time. A shooting, was it? You’ve made a full recovery?’
‘More or less,’ Thackeray said. ‘One of the risks of the job.’
‘Not quite what the papers said,’ Rafferty objected quietly.
‘They had their own take on it,’ Thackeray conceded. ‘But my bosses weren’t happy. I didn’t go by the book.’
‘You were always a chancer,’ Joe said, flinging himself down in his favourite chair by the meagre gas fire which had substituted inadequately for the massive stone fireplace in the farmhouse.
‘Not really,’ Thackeray responded, amused by his father’s gross misunderstanding of his nature, and Rafferty, who had also aged since he had last seen him, flashed him the sympathetic smile of a man who knew him better.
‘Have you married again, after going through all that for the young woman?’ the priest asked, aware, as he would be, that the death of Thackeray’s long-divorced wife had removed any obstacle a priest could raise to such a course.
‘Not yet,’ Thackeray said, and his frozen expression warned Rafferty off any pursuit of that topic. ‘So how have you been, Dad?’ he asked Joe, who scowled and pulled his thick woollen cardigan closer around him.
‘Much you care,’ he muttered, glancing at Rafferty, as if for approval. ‘I don’t see you from one month’s end t’bloody next.’
‘Come on, Joseph,’ the priest exclaimed. ‘You’ve got a host of people from the parish coming to take you out, taking you to Mass, bringing you meals. How can you complain? I’m here so much my housekeeper reckons she never sees me.’ But Rafferty’s joviality made no impression on Joe.
‘I once had a family
,’ Joe said, staring steadfastly at the fire.
The anger rose quickly in Thackeray’s throat at his father’s self-pity and the sudden sharp memory of the family he himself had lost, and he got up and went to the window where he choked back the bitterness of years. He felt, rather than heard, someone move to stand beside him.
‘Leave it, Michael,’ Rafferty said quietly. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’
‘He knows exactly what he’s saying,’ Thackeray said, moving blindly towards the door. ‘And how to twist the knife. I have to be going, Dad,’ he muttered, without looking back.
Rafferty followed him out and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘It gets no easier, does it, for either of you? I’m supposed to offer consolation, but I get nowhere with Joe. And you?’ He shrugged, looking desolate himself, beneath the halo of snowwhite hair. ‘Can you find no happiness with this young woman of yours, Michael? You’ve been together a long while now.’ Thackeray shrugged.
‘She wants a child,’ he said flatly. ‘And I can’t face it.’
‘Ah,’ Rafferty said. They stood for a moment side by side, gazing bleakly along the row of retirement bungalows which seemed to have provided no respite for Joe Thackeray, before the old priest put a gentle hand on Thackeray’s arm again. ‘You’re a brave man, Michael, from what I read about you in the newspapers, but that’s merely physical courage, a welcome thing but not enough. Maybe what you need now is a different sort of courage to put the past behind you and make a new start. I know you don’t believe it will do you a mite of good, but I’ll pray for you anyway. As I do for Joe, that he will learn forgiveness. I’ll pray that neither of you’s a lost cause.’
Thackeray turned to Rafferty and smiled.
‘You never give up,’ he said.
‘Why would I?’ Rafferty said, his brogue more pronounced. ‘The good Lord never gives up.’
Thackeray hardly remembered the drive home when he finally parked outside the flat he shared with Laura Ackroyd in a converted Victorian house. He sat for a moment clutching the steering wheel after he had switched the engine off as if it were some sort of lifebelt which could save him from drowning. He was aware that the lights were on in the flat and that Laura must be there, no doubt cooking a meal which would somehow bridge the gap between his ingrained country taste for simple food, which he had never cast off, and her more adventurous preferences. They were, he thought, an ill-matched couple and he doubted that they could remain a couple much longer.
He opened the front door and took off his coat before going to find Laura, as he expected in the kitchen, and felt cheered by the simple domesticity of the scene. He kissed the back of her neck, where her unruly copper hair escaped from a casual ponytail, and felt the stirrings of desire. He sensed her respond to his exploratory roaming hands, but she pulled away and turned to him, wooden spoon in hand, her eyes troubled.
‘Not now,’ she said, giving him a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘This will spoil. And I need to talk to you.’ She had been steeling herself for hours and was not to be put off now.
‘What is it?’ he asked, sniffing suspiciously at the garlicky aroma and peering at the conglomeration of vegetables she had been stirring in a large pan.
‘Ratatouille,’ she said. ‘Mixed veg, Mediterranean style, to go with the lamb cutlets. Compromise?’
‘Huh,’ he said, turning away with a smile. ‘More foreign muck.’ He poured a vodka and tonic for her and a tonic for himself, and went into the living room to watch the television news, but he switched the set off when she came in to join him.
‘So, why so serious?’ he asked as she sat down beside him, dodging his outstretched arm. She took a deep breath before she spoke.
‘I’ve something to tell you,’ she said, seeking some reassurance in his eyes but finding only sudden anxiety. ‘There’s no easy way to say it,’ she said, her voice jerky and slightly harsh. ‘I’m going to have a baby, Michael, and I hope you can be happy about it. I didn’t do it deliberately, in fact I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m pregnant.’
Thackeray shot to his feet as if he had been physically struck, and went to the window where the curtains were not yet drawn. He stood for a long time staring out into the gathering darkness where a solitary blackbird was singing its heart out in one of the still-dormant trees. He felt physically frozen and began to shiver uncontrollably, the almost constant pain in his back, where he had been shot over a year ago, beginning to stab. He was aware of Laura coming to stand close to him, but he pulled away from her and went to brace himself with his back to the door, his expression a mixture of bewilderment and outrage.
‘How?’ he asked. ‘How could you let that happen?’
‘I don’t know, honestly I don’t. I must have missed a pill. I just don’t know.’
Thackeray shook his head and closed his eyes briefly, and Laura watched him with tears filling her eyes.
‘Just tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking. If you can’t handle it…’ She paused, for a long moment, obviously hoping he would speak, and when he didn’t she shrugged and continued faintly. ‘Well, if you can’t handle it, I’ll have to decide what to do.’
Thackeray turned away without a word and went out of the room. Laura heard the outside door slam and, within seconds, Thackeray’s car start up in the street outside and drive away. She sat for a long time by the fireplace, gazing into space as the light faded, until a smell of burning brought her back to the world and she rushed into the kitchen to switch off the gas under the ruined meal. She cursed under her breath as she scraped the pans into the rubbish bin. Then she picked up her own coat and bag and left the flat.
Vicky Mendelson opened the door to Laura at the first ring on the bell, her face full of concern, and ushered her into the sitting room.
‘I’ve just chased the boys to bed,’ she said. ‘And David’s out, so it’s just us. Do you want a drink?’
Laura shook her head.
‘If I start drinking, I might not stop,’ she said.
‘Oh hell. So tell me what happened,’ Vicky demanded, so Laura did.
‘I think it’s all over,’ she said finally. ‘He won’t forgive me if I have the baby, and he certainly won’t forgive me if I don’t. It’s a lose-lose situation.’
‘The man’s impossible,’ Vicky said angrily. ‘I’m surprised you’ve stuck with him so long.’
‘When he nearly died last year, when he got shot, I realised I couldn’t live without him,’ Laura said. ‘So what can I do now? It’s my fault. I was careless, stupid even. When I found out, I thought I could persuade him to go along with it. But he wouldn’t even talk to me. Not a word…’ Laura wiped the tears from her eyes angrily. ‘This baby needs a father. I’m not sure I can bring it up on my own.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ Vicky said. ‘Lots of mothers do. But I think you’re writing Michael off too quickly. It must have been a shock to him. Give him time, and he’ll come round. Didn’t he say that he thought he could cope once?’
‘Once,’ Laura said bitterly. ‘But he soon seemed to lose heart, thought better of it, whatever.’
‘Oh Laura, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.’
‘He went off without a word. I’m so afraid he’ll do something desperate. He’s been so down lately, mainly because of the shooting last year, but I’m sure it’s partly to do with the fact that he knows I want a child.’
‘Not suicidal, surely?’ Vicky said, unable to hide her horror.
‘There are lots of ways to commit suicide,’ Laura said. ‘Michael once tried very hard with bottles of booze. I know that.’
‘You’ve no idea where he’s gone?’
‘He’s still got his own flat on Manchester Road. He’s always refused to sell it. He uses that as a bolt-hole sometimes.’
‘Do you want to go round there? Should we both go? David will be home soon, so I could leave the children with him.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Laura sai
d wearily. ‘He’d hate you getting involved.’
‘Of course,’ Vicky agreed. ‘It’s just that I feel I want to do something. He makes me so furious. This should be the start of the happiest time of your life – his too, for God’s sake – and look at the mess you’re both in. I feel guilty for ever having introduced you to each other.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Laura said with a faint smile, taking Vicky’s hand and squeezing it. ‘It’s not your fault. And as you say, lots of people bring children up on their own. If that’s what I have to do, then that’s what I’ll have to do. We have had some good times together, you know, in spite of everything. And this is Michael’s baby, mine and Michael’s, so perhaps he’ll decide that he can be a father again, somehow, when it arrives, if not before.’ She did not sound as if she was convincing herself and Vicky gave her a long hug.
‘Let’s hope so,’ she said. ‘So sod him, and start looking forward, why don’t you? Your life is about to change big time. You have absolutely no idea what you’re letting yourself in for.’
Michael Thackeray sat for a long time in his car watching the crowds of young people swirl around the town centre in cheerful groups, dodging in and out of pubs and clubs. It was still early and they had not yet reached the pitch where fights would break out and a handful of staggering girls would be sick in the gutter or fall down shrieking with laughter, half in and half out of their skimpy clothes and apparently never feeling the cold. What was wrong with him, he wondered, that he had never ever enjoyed life in that uninhibited way, never, even as a student in Oxford, with an apparently brilliant future in front of him, felt really carefree? There had always been this weight on his shoulders that he had once tried to lift with the help of the sort of temporary cheerfulness and eventual oblivion alcohol brought, but that had become a demon which destroyed his family and almost destroyed him as his brilliant future receded.
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