Authors: Patricia Hall
‘Not all Christians take that view,’ Laura objected.
‘The Bible is quite clear on the matter,’ Murgatroyd said, flatly. He gazed at Laura for a moment until she began to feel slightly uncomfortable, and then he relaxed again and smiled.
‘Let’s not get into an argument,’ he said. ‘I invited you up to show you the house and garden, not to argue about my local problems. I thought we’d finished with all that. I’ll make some tea and then show you round. Is that all right?’
Laura shrugged resignedly. She was obviously not going to get anything more useful for her feature article so she might as well let this man with his abhorrent views give her his tour so that she could decently make her escape.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s have tea.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I don’t have a lot of time.’
Murgatroyd got up and made his way to the door.
‘Did you inherit that red hair from your mother?’ he asked unexpectedly. Laura half turned in her chair, slightly thrown by this suddenly personal turn in the conversation. But she half smiled.
‘From my grandmother,’ she said. ‘It skipped a generation.’
‘Yes, it does that sometimes,’ Murgatroyd said, as he left the room, closing the door behind him. While he was away Laura got up and walked around the spacious sitting room, glancing at the bookcases, filled with leather-bound classics which did not look as if they had ever been opened, and studying the paintings – originals in oils which seemed slightly old-fashioned even to her untutored eye – almost as if the room had been designed to order quite recently to a template established in the 1950s rather than later. None of the
furniture looked antique or even as if it had been handed down from parents to son. It was newish but Maples, not Habitat, good quality but traditional, as if the owner’s taste had been set in stone a generation or more before his time.
Murgatroyd came back quite quickly, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and a plate of buttered scones.
‘Mrs Bateman left everything ready for us,’ he said. ‘She is, as they say, a treasure. Will you pour?’ Laura did as she was asked and sipped her tea thoughtfully. Murgatroyd had also fallen silent, although Laura was uncomfortably aware that those unusual blue and gold eyes were watching her with an intensity that she suddenly decided she did not like.
‘Did you refurbish the house completely when you came back to it?’ she asked, to break the spell.
‘Completely,’ he said. ‘I wanted a clean sheet.’
‘It must have held a lot of unpleasant memories for you after what happened to your mother,’ Laura ventured. Murgatroyd did not answer immediately. His face seemed to close down and age before her eyes, before he shook himself slightly and gave an impatient grunt almost of exasperation.
‘You don’t understand,’ Murgatroyd said. ‘It was what happened to my baby sister that was important. She didn’t inherit my mother’s red hair either. It was what happened to her that I couldn’t forgive, what I’ve never forgiven.’ He stared intently into his teacup while Laura finished hers.
‘Shall we have our walk round the garden now?’ Murgatroyd asked, and somewhat brusquely handed Laura her jacket, which she had taken off and laid beside her on her chair. She put it on, deciding suddenly that she would go straight back to her car when she had taken a token walk round the grounds. For some reason she felt her confidence in
the situation beginning to drain away. Murgatroyd suddenly seemed an oppressive presence and she wondered if he had sent the housekeeper away deliberately. For all his fervent claims to moral superiority, she decided she no longer trusted him.
She followed his lead to the back of the house where he unlocked a door into a conservatory.
‘My mother had this built,’ he said. ‘One of the few good things she did in her life.’ The room had been closed up and was hot and stuffy, green blinds on the windows half down giving a dim, underwater light. Laura felt a slight wave of nausea, mixed with relief that feeling unwell might give her the excuse she needed to get away.
‘I was there, you know,’ Murgatroyd said over his shoulder and he moved between the potted plants towards the garden doors.
‘I’m sorry?’
Murgatroyd stopped and turned back towards her.
‘I said I was there with my mother and sister when she walked into the lake. She left me in the car, but when I saw what was happening, I ran after them. I tried to get the baby off her. But she fell out of my mother’s arms and I couldn’t find her. I tried and tried but the water was too deep and too dark. I lost hold of her. They said later that she’d been tangled up in weeds below the surface.’
‘That must have been terrible for you,’ Laura said, fighting off a growing desire to throw up. ‘And your mother drowned too?’
‘She went in deeper and deeper. I swam out to her. I was a good swimmer even then. I made sure she drowned. It was what she wanted. And what she deserved. A life for a life,
though I don’t think I thought quite like that then. I was only a child myself. But I knew with a passion that if Jennifer was dead I wanted my mother dead, too.’
Laura gazed at Murgatroyd, her vision swimming, wondering if she was really hearing this man confess to matricide.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice sounding faraway. ‘I don’t feel very well.’
‘Sit down for a moment,’ Murgatroyd said, pulling up a wicker chair into which Laura sank gratefully.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’m pregnant. I’ll be all right in a minute.’ But as she gazed up at Murgatroyd’s piercing eyes, she knew that she wouldn’t. He stroked her hair tentatively as her eyes closed and darkness engulfed her.
‘Such beautiful hair,’ he whispered. ‘Such beautiful auburn hair.’
Michael Thackeray was surprised to see no lights on in Laura’s flat when he pulled up outside at seven that evening. He had expected her to be at home waiting for him. He glanced at his mobile phone, but there were no messages, so he thumbed in Laura’s number, only to find that she did not answer her phone, which was unusual. Ted Grant expected his reporters to be on call 24/7, all part of his fantasy existence as a high-octane editor, and Thackeray experienced a twinge of anxiety as he listened to the voice message on Laura’s phone again, just to make sure.
He let himself into the flat and it was obvious from the dirty breakfast dishes still stacked in the sink that Laura had not been home since she had left for work. Perhaps she was driving, he thought, and would be back any minute. He took off his coat, switched on the TV news, and tried to put the problems between the two of them out of his mind until she came home. But the screen took up only half of his mind, and as the minutes ticked by he became more and more concerned.
Eventually he pulled out his phone again, and after failing
to reach Laura, put a call through to the Mendelsons. Vicky picked up, sounding harassed, and he could hear a child crying in the background. Naomi Laura, he thought, close to panic, the sound threatening to pull him apart. He took a deep breath.
‘It’s Michael,’ he said quietly. ‘Sorry to bother you, but do you know where Laura is? Is she with you?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Vicky said, and hesitated, as if wanting to say more, but reluctant to commit herself. ‘Hasn’t she got her phone on?’
‘Of course not, or I wouldn’t be asking,’ Thackeray snapped.
‘I’m sorry,’ Vicky said, her voice faint and the sobbing child suddenly much closer to the receiver. ‘Sorry, David’s not home and Naomi’s not well. She’s got a bad cold.’
‘Has she told you how she’s feeling?’ Thackeray asked, desperate now.
‘About the baby, you mean? Yes, we’ve spoken about it.’ Vicky’s voice was becoming more chilly. ‘I thought you’d be delighted about that, both of you, I mean. But apparently not. I can’t understand that, Michael, to be honest.’
‘Has she told you what she’s going to do about it?’
‘A termination, you mean?’ Vicky asked sharply. ‘I don’t think she wants that.’
‘I just thought…she’s not come home…’
‘You thought she might be in hospital? Without telling you?’ Vicky sounded incredulous.
‘I just don’t know what to think. She said she’d be here, at the flat, tonight, so we could talk…’
‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ Vicky said. ‘I really am. But I don’t know where she is, or what she’s planning to do. I haven’t
seen her for a couple of days, and this is something you have to sort out between you. You know what I think. But I’m sure she wouldn’t have arranged anything drastic without a word.’
‘No, I’m sure she wouldn’t,’ Thackeray said, trying to sound confident and failing miserably. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I hope Naomi’s better soon.’ And he cut the connection abruptly. He did not have Joyce Ackroyd’s number in his phone so he looked it up in the phone book, not remembering until he had listened to the number ringing unanswered for several minutes that Laura’s grandmother was away on a visit to Laura’s parents in Portugal.
‘Damnation,’ he said, as he cut the connection again. He flung himself back onto the sofa and considered his options. He could call Ted Grant to ask whether Laura had been sent unexpectedly on some assignment. Mobile phone signals could be intermittent in the hills of Yorkshire and that might explain why she had failed to reach him to tell him she would be late. But to do that meant exposing himself and Laura to the no doubt intrusive inquiries of her boss. Or he could pull rank and ask his own colleagues to try to trace her which, as she was only a couple of hours late, would expose him to some derision down at the station and longer-term gossip about his private life. Or he could just wait. He glanced at his watch with a sigh. It was ten past eight. He went into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich and a cup of coffee, but he found it almost impossible to eat. He switched the TV on again and flicked from channel to channel in a vain attempt to find something that would occupy his mind but there was nothing there that remotely overcame his growing conviction that he had forced Laura into doing something desperate. He glanced towards the cupboard where Laura kept her drinks,
but he knew that if he set hands on her vodka he would empty the bottle and compound every problem that was already tormenting him. But as he gritted his teeth for a long wait, his mobile rang and he grabbed it with shaking hands, only to find that it was not Laura, but Sergeant Kevin Mower, at the other end. He could hardly bring himself to respond coherently, but what Mower was saying eventually got through to him, if dimly.
‘We picked up Sanderson heading down the M1, guv,’ Mower said. ‘Suitcases packed in the back of the car. He says he wants to make a statement. I thought you might like to come in.’
‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ Thackeray said, his mind jerking into full consciousness, in spite of himself, as if it had been whipped back to life. ‘I’ll be there.’
Winston Sanderson was sitting in an interview room with a uniformed constable in attendance when Thackeray and Mower came in. He glanced up at them with a half smile which looked almost rueful.
‘You took your time,’ he said. ‘I thought you were keen to get this case sorted.’
‘Has he been cautioned?’ Thackeray asked Mower, who nodded.
‘Says he doesn’t want a solicitor,’ Mower said.
‘Are you quite sure about that?’ Thackeray asked Sanderson.
‘Quite sure,’ Sanderson said, looking almost at ease in his bleak surroundings.
‘And you’ve volunteered to make a statement about the death of Karen Bastable?’
‘That’s right.’
Thackeray settled himself into one of the chairs opposite Sanderson and watched him closely while Mower switched on the tape recorder, slotted two tapes into it, and recorded the identities of those present.
‘Let’s get this quite clear,’ Thackeray said, when the sergeant had finished the preliminaries. ‘Do you confirm that, although you are known as Winston Sanderson, your real name is Leroy Jason Green, formerly of the Notting Hill area of London.’
‘That’s right,’ Sanderson said, again with a slight smile. ‘Seems I couldn’t get away from him after all.’
‘So what exactly do you want to tell us, Mr Green?’ Thackeray asked. ‘Take your time. And think carefully about what you are saying.’
‘My boss let on that you were looking for me. You even asked him if he knew Leroy. He had no idea, of course. He never made the connection when I turned up on one of his training schemes with a different name.’ He laughed this time, as if he had pulled off some particularly piquant practical joke. ‘But I remembered him from seeing him once or twice with the old Rev Steve at that church I went to for a while. I couldn’t believe it when he offered me a job. Anyway, I guessed I must have made some sort of mistake when he said you were looking for Leroy Green and somehow you’d linked Karen with some long-ago bad boy and his criminal record. Couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d been so careful. But there you go.’
Sanderson’s attitude set Thackeray’s teeth on edge when he remembered the mutilated body he had last seen on Amos Atherton’s table, tortured and mutilated into little more than
a slab of raw meat. How could this well-dressed, self-assured young man, with his easy charm, have turned into the sort of monster who was capable of that level of depravity? Thackeray had never quite believed in the possibility of a
real-life
Jekyll and Hyde but it seemed as if he might just possibly be facing exactly that.
‘You don’t deny that you concealed Karen Bastable’s body on Staveley Moor?’ Thackeray asked.
Sanderson shrugged, his face more serious now.
‘You obviously know I did, though I don’t know how you know. What was it? A fingerprint? I wore gloves but I think I took them off for a moment when I got some dirt in my eye. It was wild up there. Stupid mistake.’
‘So tell us everything that happened the night Karen disappeared,’ Thackeray said.
Sanderson leant back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment, as if rerunning a mental film of the events of that night.
‘I was driving up near the forest,’ he said. ‘I’d been over to Lancashire for the boss, to Preston—’
‘Preston?’ Mower broke in, recalling the painfully collated list of missing women who just might be this man’s other victims. ‘Why Preston?’
‘We have a new academy there,’ Sanderson said, with no sign that he regarded the place as of any particular significance. ‘Anyway, I decided to take the country route back, over the moors. When I started coming down it was dark but not very late and I noticed these cars going into the trees, one, two, three, after each other. I was curious, wasn’t I? I wondered where they were going. So I followed them. They parked up in a circle in a clearing, and I stopped just a
little way back to watch, just to see what they were doing. They ended up with quite a few cars there, in a big circle, and people got out, and then it got quite exciting.’
‘You mean sexually exciting?’ Thackeray asked.
Sanderson nodded with a little giggle.
‘You have to admit a no-holds-barred orgy’s a bit of a turnon. I’m not quite such a saint as my boss.’
‘So you joined in?’ Thackeray’s distaste was written all over his face and Mower could see the tension in his jaw and the clenched fists, which he had carefully hidden under the table.
‘Nah,’ Sanderson scoffed. ‘Not then. Later. Most of the guys made off pretty sharpish, but the girls stayed behind for a gossip. Like they do. Comparing notes, little slags. Karen was the last to leave. I stopped her before she got into her car and persuaded her to come with me for a bit more fun and games. She didn’t object. Quite liked the idea, I think. It’s not just a myth, you know.’
‘What isn’t?’ Thackeray asked sharply.
‘That some white women fancy black men,’ Sanderson said, almost as if talking to a five-year-old.
‘So, you picked her up. Where did you take her?’ Mower pressed.
‘I couldn’t really tell you,’ Sanderson said. ‘Just further back up onto the moors where I could park the car out of sight. I told her I was taking her to my place but that would never do. The boss wouldn’t put up with women visiting, would he? Not at his precious Sibden House. That place is sacred, a sort of mausoleum to his dead sister. Anyway we found somewhere quiet. But then she got a bit stroppy. Didn’t like some of the games I wanted to play. So I tied her up. And after that it’s all a bit of a blur. I came round lying beside her in the
heather, or what was left of her. So then I did go back to Sibden and got hold of some stuff to wrap the body in. Bin bags and that. I reckoned I needed to dump her much further away. I was just too close to home.’
‘You took her with you in the car to Sibden House?’ Thackeray snapped, but Sanderson shook his head.
‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘Not in the state she was in. I went back for her, wrapped her up, snug as a bug, and then drove as far as I could in the opposite direction to bury her. I was mortified when she turned up so quickly. I thought it would be months, years maybe, before she was found up there. Like those kids on Saddleworth Moor. I suppose the papers will call me another Ian Brady, but I’m obviously not as good at hiding bodies as he was.’
‘This is not a bloody beauty contest,’ Mower said suddenly, surprising himself with his fury and banging his hand on the table between them until it shook in spite of its legs being bolted to the floor. ‘You sick bastard.’
Sanderson shook slightly, though whether in amusement or fear it was difficult to tell. Thackeray put a restraining hand on Mower’s arm and waited until he had calmed down slightly.
‘And the weapons you used? You had those with you?’ Thackeray asked, his own voice like ice.
‘Old habits die hard. I had a knife.’ Sanderson shrugged. ‘I told you. I can’t remember the details. I must have lost it completely at some point.’
‘Can you recall why you cut off her hair?’ Thackeray asked.
Sanderson looked at him blankly for a moment and then laughed.
‘I really don’t like red hair,’ he said. ‘I’d have taken the
bottle-blond one for preference, but she went off in a car with her friend, didn’t she? Safety in numbers, they must have thought, I suppose. Dead right, as it turned out.’
‘And what did you do with Karen’s hair? It wasn’t with her body. Where did you hide it?’
‘It’s somewhere up on that blasted heath,’ he said. ‘Blown to the four winds I expect. What does it matter?’
‘Oh, it matters,’ Thackeray said. ‘We’ll take a break there, Mr Sanderson, as there are some other matters we want to talk to you about. Perhaps you can tell us where your car is. We’ll want that for forensic examination.’
Sanderson told them where to find his parked car, and they left him, subsiding now in his seat, swaying slightly with his eyes shut, apparently oblivious to the uniformed constable who came back into the interview room to watch over him.
‘What do you make of that guy, guv?’ Mower said. ‘Apart from the fact that he’s seriously stoned, I mean. All that giggling. The custody sergeant who booked him in should have spotted that.’
‘You think so?’ Thackeray asked sharply. ‘You should have mentioned it sooner. If he’s under the influence of drugs the whole interview’s worthless as it stands.’
‘I reckon the whole interview’s worthless anyway,’ Mower said. ‘He’s told us nothing about Bently Forest that he couldn’t have picked up from the press. And he conveniently can’t remember where or how he killed her. It’s cobblers, isn’t it, guv?’
‘But his fingerprint was on the plastic bag,’ Thackeray said. ‘We have that. So we have him. He’s involved.’
He suddenly spun on his heel and went back to the interview room where the PC looked up in surprise when the door opened again so soon.
‘I’ll resume our interview in the morning, Mr Sanderson,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, we can offer you a meal and a night in a cell until we’re ready for you again. See to it, Constable, will you, please?’