Devil's Game by Patricia Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

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, really, 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 takeoverbid. 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.
    ‘I’m sorry to bother you if you’re not well, Mrs Brough,’ Mower said. ‘But we’re becoming increasingly worried about your friend Karen Bastable.’
    At the mention of Karen’s name Charlene shuddered and flung herself down on a chair by the fireplace, drawing hard on her cigarette. But she said nothing.
    ‘Have you any idea why she might have taken her car up onto the hills and abandoned it in the middle of a forest?’ Mower asked, an edge of anger in his voice. He had seen many guilty men and women and he had no doubt that this woman sprawled in front of them, oblivious to the fact that her negligee had flopped open to reveal her bra and thong, was as guilty as hell.
    Charlene gazed at the glowing tip of her cigarette before stubbing it out and lighting another and belatedly pulling her wrap more closely around her as she began to shiver.
    ‘I should have gone with her,’ she said. ‘I should never have let her go on her own.’
    ‘Where