Devil's Game by Patricia Hall

did she go? And why?’ Mower asked.
    ‘You heard o’dogging?’ Charlene asked and Mower nodded impassively, although Nasreem looked startled.
    ‘That’s what it were. Karen and me got into it a few months back. People were meeting up there, in them woods, every couple of weeks. We always went together but last time I got close to a bloke and he wanted a bit more, wanted to see me again, so I didn’t go that night. I met him here instead.’ She glanced at the ceiling above their heads where sounds of movement could be heard.
    ‘He were here again last night. My husband drives a long-distance truck. He’s away a lot.’ Her explanation was matter-of-fact, as if that excused everything.
    ‘So Karen went on her own?’ Mower asked.
    ‘She must of, mustn’t she? She wouldn’t want to miss, I know that. She loved it.’ She noticed Nasreem’s appalled gazeand flushed slightly. ‘It were just a bit of fun,’ she said. ‘Just a bit of a laugh. Nowt serious.’
    ‘I’ll need a full statement, from you and your boyfriend,’ Mower said. He had no right to criticise with his record, he thought, but this industrial-scale adultery made him shudder. ‘I’d like you both to come down to the police station and give us all the details you can.’
    ‘There aren’t any details,’ Charlene said. ‘You never know who’s going to be there, who you’ll go with. No names, no details. As I said, just a bit of fun.’
    ‘Well, it may not have turned out so funny for Karen,’ Mower said. ‘I need to know whatever you know about the men who turned up there, what they looked like, what cars they were driving, anything else you can recall. And the same from your boyfriend, if that’s where you met him.’
    ‘Do you have to get him involved?’ Charlene asked, her reluctance obvious. ‘That’ll be the end of a beautiful friendship, that will.’
    ‘Karen could be dead,’ Mower said flatly. ‘I need you both to cooperate. Will you go and get dressed now, please, and tell him to do the same? If you don’t come with us voluntarily I won’t hesitate to arrest you both.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    Superintendent Jack Longley gazed at his DCI in disbelief.
    ‘This isn’t a joke, is it?’ he asked.
    Thackeray shook his head.
    ‘We’ve got chapter and verse from Karen Bastable’s workmate and the bloke she picked up on one of these dogging expeditions. Married man, of course, terrified we’ll shop him to his wife. Unusually, he arranged to see Charlene again after they first met up there in the woods. Generally the whole thing’s completely anonymous.’
    ‘I’m getting too old for this job, Michael,’ Longley said, his broad face crumpled with incomprehension. He ran a hand over his shining bald head. ‘I thought I’d heard it all, but this beggars belief. It’s like something out of ancient Rome. And in this climate! Where do they go when the weather’s bad, for God’s sake? They can’t have orgies up there in the middle of winter, surely.’
    ‘In the village hall if wet?’ Thackeray suggested mirthlessly. ‘I’m sure we’ll find out when we get hold of more of them and find out who does the organising. Charlene Brough said sheand Karen had only been up there half a dozen times previously and it had been fine weather every time. She thinks it’s been going on for a considerable time.’
    ‘So how do they arrange to meet, then?’ Longley asked sceptically. ‘Someone must be organising it.’
    ‘Box number in the Gazette . Simply a time and day,’ Thackeray said. ‘Signed Pan. Someone who’s had some sort of education, obviously. We’ve still got Charlene downstairs. I’ll get Mower to press her on how she got involved in the first place, if he hasn’t already. Someone must have told her about it.’
    ‘And there must be a record of who put the ad in? That’s a lead,’ Longley said, but Thackeray shook his head.
    ‘We already checked that out,’ he said. ‘Someone simply handed it in over the