Melissa Whitworth shook hands and said thank you to the woman who had just told her that she was having an affair with her husband.
The powerful floodlights lent the late October sky an intense ice-blue glow; the trees that ringed the sports ground were thrown into relief, black against the almost ethereal light, still and silent.
The scattering of vehicles belonging to Stansfield Town’s hardy, ever-optimistic, but limited support, were parked behind the still unfinished leisure complex in a small tarmacked area hidden from the main road by high, mist-enshrouded hedges. In the privacy of her car, Melissa blinked away tears. She was two weeks short of her thirty-third birthday; she checked herself in the mirror to see how she compared.
Her thin, oblong face was devoid of make-up save for what remained of the lipstick she had hurriedly applied before making her rendezvous; the cheeks were slightly pink, but only from the same anger that had prompted the tears. Her short brown hair was brushed back from her brow in a style that could withstand wind and weather and the office central heating. The woman she had just left was a make-up manufacturer’s dream come true, a hairdresser’s nest-egg incarnate, and ten years her junior.
Of course, she hadn’t known that she was talking to her lover’s wife; she had just been giving an interview to a local journalist. Melissa had always used a professional name, and the girl had no reason to suppose that she knew Simon from a hole in the ground. Melissa took the tape from her bag, and wrote the interviewee’s name on the label, as she had done with all the others.
Sharon Smith. It had intrigued Melissa when Sharon had replied to the ad that she had placed in the personal column, asking:
Are you the Other Woman? This newspaper is doing a series of articles on marriage and morals, and would like to hear from women whose men belong to someone else. Your contribution would be held in the strictest confidence, and nothing will appear in print which could in any way identify you or your partner.
It had been Melissa’s idea. Why should the woman’s page – recently retitled ‘Life’ – always be about fashion and cookery, she had asked. Women had other things on their minds at times. At first, the editor had hummed and hawed, uncertain about it on several fronts. It might be seen to be encouraging immorality; it would encourage all sorts of nuts to contact them (it had); it was a little risqué for a local paper – more your Sunday stuff, or a TV special – Melissa had worked for too long on women’s magazines, if you asked him; anonymity would have to be paramount – the paper might cover a large area, but in his opinion no area was too large for brawling women; it would have to be made absolutely clear that the paper was in no way condoning or condemning, merely examining the social manners and mores of the nineties … and so on, until he had talked himself into it.
The ad had appeared six weeks ago; to start with only the nuts had replied, but eventually a trickle of genuine replies had redeemed Melissa’s reputation in her editor’s eyes. By the time Sharon had responded, Melissa had been working on the wording for the next one: Are you the Wronged Wife? But her interview with Sharon had driven all thoughts of the series from her mind.
Sharon Smith. Melissa should, perhaps, have declared her interest, so to speak; Sharon might not know who she was, but she knew of Sharon. Simon had mentioned her, naturally, for she was his secretary, in the time-honoured fashion. But the universal enjoyment of a bit of gossip on which she was counting for the success of her series had made Melissa decide to see her. She was not, after all, a judge; she was more in the position of a priest. She would hear Sharon’s confession, and if it was raunchy enough, bizarre enough, or touching enough, it would appear in the paper in heavy disguise; if not, it wouldn’t. She would never have told Simon or anyone else.
But, as things turned out, Simon didn’t need to be told. Melissa pushed the tape into the cassette recorder again out of a masochistic desire to hear her say it again, and listened to the woman whose unsuspected influence over Simon explained so many of the things which had worried and bewildered her over the past few months.
To start with it had just been another interview, different only in that Sharon did not present herself, as the others had, as the helpless victim of a doomed love; in answer to Melissa’s standard query as to why a married man, she had spoken with a refreshing candour about the situation.
‘I give him what he needs, he gives me what I want.’
‘And what is it that he needs?’
The excitement. He says his life’s always been too safe. Too tame. It adds spice if you risk being caught.’
‘Don’t you worry about being caught?’
‘Me? Why should I? I’m not answerable to anyone.’
‘But his risk is real?’
Her own voice, still just interested because it was her job to be interested.
‘Oh, yes. He doesn’t want to lose what he’s got. It’s a bit like kids playing chicken. You have to be running a real risk. And you have to wait longer and longer each time before you run across the road. It’s like a drug, really.’
‘So … what’s in it for you? What is it that you want?’
‘Him.’
Sharon had smiled then. Melissa could see that smile again.
‘But he wants to hang on to his marriage?’
Melissa heard her own voice, so confident and glib, asking the right question at the right time, looking for the offbeat, the interesting answer, the piquant situation that would make a good column.
‘Oh, that’s all right. I prefer married men. Single men think they own you.’
The silence was Melissa’s now, hissing from the tape, as she had formulated her next question.
‘Love doesn’t come into it, then?’
He says he loves me.’
‘And how do you feel about him?’
Not a breath of wind stirred the still leaf-laden branches of the trees as the fog began to collect and gather and weave its way through the harvested fields with their regimented bales of corn, round the hedgerows, heavy with berries, rising up from the earth and the grass and the wide flat streets on the outskirts of Stansfield, insinuating itself through the semi-constructed buildings of the sports and leisure centre, to where Melissa sat reliving the moment, as though this time it might not happen.
‘I want him. And he needs me. He does have a problem with that. He wishes he didn’t need me. I think sometimes he hates me.’
‘Do you mean that? Sometimes he hates you?’
‘Hates the need, anyway.’
Melissa could see again the thoughtful look, then the brisk nod.
‘Hates me. Yes, sometimes. And himself. I don’t know which of us he hates more when he feels like that. He feels guilty, I suppose.’
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
She could see again Sharon’s shrug.
‘It gives him a high. And you come dawn off a high, don’t you? That’s when he feels guilty. But it doesn’t last.’
The conversation had been taking place in Melissa’s car; it was as though Sharon hadn’t left, as though she were still sitting there beside her. Melissa had asked her next standard question then.
‘Why did you reply to the advertisement?’
‘I just wanted to talk about it to someone. That’s the drawback with married men. I don’t like the secrecy. Not being able to mention him to your friends, or have him at the house.’
‘I wondered about that. When you agreed to this interview, you suggested that we meet here – does that mean you can’t have privacy at home?’
Melissa listened to the silence which had followed her question as the fog curled up at the car windows, like some silent creature trying to come in.
‘I live with my mother, and my sister.’
‘So where do you go for privacy?’
The office, usually.’
Melissa switched off the tape, the pain even sharper now than when Sharon had originally said it.
The office. Not his office, or my office. The office. The shared office. It explained everything that she had found so baffling and so hurtful about Simon’s attitude to her lately, all the things that had started going so disastrously wrong between them. And she felt foolish that it had never occurred to her, not once, not even after Sharon had answered the ad.
Sharon had said that she didn’t know who Simon hated more, her or himself. But Melissa knew where she stood. Especially now that she knew, having had time to get her breath back, exactly what Miss Smith had really done.
‘Yes, well,’ said Mac, acutely aware that his landlady was listening to every word. ‘ It can’t be helped.’
Donna apologised again, and he ran an embarrassed hand through thick but greying hair. ‘Yes, right,’ he said. ‘ Well, fine. I mean – don’t worry about it. See you.’
He hung up, his hand resting on the receiver. If she hadn’t wanted to come, why hadn’t she just said? Damn it, he’d only asked her out for the evening. Easy enough to say no thanks. Well, that was that. He had to go; it was work. He left just as his landlady came to enquire if everything was all right, and closed the door behind him, affecting not to have heard the question.
The dampness invaded his bones as he walked along the quiet side-street to the main road, but he checked his automatically raised arm as the taxi went past; he wanted to walk, despite the weather. The first woman he’d asked out for years, and she’d stood him up. Well – as good as. He’d forgotten how to ask a woman out, that was the problem. He should have taken her for a drink at lunch-time or something first. But damn it, it was only an invitation to the opening of the new leisure and sports centre – hardly a big seduction number. Anyway, lunch-hours weren’t long enough to go anywhere decent, not when you didn’t have a car.
Once, there had been a time when not having a car would have been like not having legs; he wouldn’t have known how to get from A to B without one. But now he was getting used to it; he rather liked walking. Even in the fog. Perhaps especially in the fog, which folded itself round him, secret and dark, and he could simply disappear.
The hum of conversation in the executive box was soothingly pleasant when Mac finally popped his head round the door, trying to be unobtrusive. It didn’t work.
‘Mr McDonald! Glad you made it. I’d just about given up on you – thought the weather had put you off.’ Parker snapped his fingers as the girl passed, and Mac was instantly offered hospitality. He took a soft drink, and tried to retire to a safe distance, but once again, it was not to be. He found himself being introduced to Lionel Evans, Parker’s solicitor, without whose firm’s tireless efforts there would apparently have been nothing to celebrate. There didn’t seem to Mac to be much to celebrate anyway; most of the complex still had to be begun, never mind finished.
‘This is Gil McDonald,’ Parker was saying. ‘‘We tried to get him to play for the All Stars tonight, but he decided the old legs weren’t up to it.’
Evans nodded, unable to shake hands since he was holding both a drink and a plate of food, a stocky figure with what had once been muscle but which was, in early middle-age, running to fat. A frame more suited to the boxing ring than the legal office, it seemed to Mac. He knew a little about Evans; his family had had a practice in the old village of Stansfield since the turn of the century, and the office from which its business had always been conducted was now a listed building. They seemed an odd choice of firm for the brash Mr Parker, but Mac supposed that it lent his operation some credibility that it might just otherwise have lacked.
Parker had been talking for some time; Mac thought that he had better pay attention, but it soon became clear that the sales-pitch was not meant for his ears. The Chronicle, for which Mac was covering the opening, had already gone into premature (in Mac’s opinion) raptures about Parker’s plans, and could really be of no further use to him. Parker’s soliloquy was for the ears of potential investors, who had been invited in force.
‘Oh, yes,’ Parker was saying. ‘I got some funny looks when I said I was developing this site. But it’s perfect. Central, easy access on A-roads – in a town that is beginning to thrive again, and right on the edge of real English countryside.’
Mac chewed and drank, and smiled and nodded. Parker was in his late thirties, a self-professed financial whizz-kid with a dubious past. His short, light-brown wavy hair was held in too-immaculate place with just a touch of hair gel; his skin was tanned, his teeth were white, his clothes had designer labels. If Evans looked like a boxer, which he had never been, Parker looked like a street-fighter, which he was, and sounded like nothing more than a market trader barking his wares. Most of his audience, however, were leaving, trying to beat the weather before it closed in.
‘And Stansfield Town will be playing League football next season, with any luck,’ Parker went on, with a nod over to the window overlooking the ground. ‘Once they’re in, the sky’s the limit. I believe very strongly in our national sport.’
He did indeed, thought Mac. When he had bought the Stansfield Town ground, the planning permission to develop it as a sports and leisure complex had been contingent on maintaining facilities for the football club, against which proviso Parker had fought tooth and nail, but lost.
The result was borrowed surroundings which would hardly have disgraced a First Division club, never mind one struggling to break free of the sort of league that suddenly pops up on football coupons at Cup Final time. The building they were in was so newly finished that he felt he had to be careful not to touch the paint. It was also the only entirely complete building on the site.
‘I’m doing some homework on tennis,’ Parker said. ‘A clay court or two would cost money, but if I could swing it, we could quite possibly get sponsorship for a pre-French open tourna—’ He broke off as a telephone rang, which was just as well, as Mac felt that even the most gullible of people with more money than sense would not have swallowed that one. One of his few remaining guests apologised in the smug way that portable telephone users do, and answered it.
‘See that?’ said Parker, nodding out of the window towards the floodlit pitch. ‘That’s an all-weather running track round that pitch. Athletics is big business these days. Not to mention doing laps for the sake of your health.’
Mac fancied his voice had risen a decibel or two so that the merchant banker’s friend on the other end of the line could hear what a good deal he was offering. But his unsubtle methods worked; he had already persuaded a great many people and businesses to invest millions in his much-touted dream of the future.
‘And that …’ He nodded over to the dark bulk of the other, semi-constructed building. ‘That is going to be a leisure centre with every facility you can think of, and more. When that’s open, they’ll be queuing up to get in. Bars and restaurants – a gymnasium, indoor tennis courts, basketball, squash – maybe even a shopping complex in time – you name it, I’ve got plans for it.’
‘Yes,’ said Lionel, his voice equally carrying. ‘ Simon showed me them. Very impressive.’ He turned to Mac. ‘Simon Whitworth,’ he said. ‘My partner – he really looks after Mr Parker’s business. I’m here for the beer, as they say.’
Mac smiled politely, and thought he had better move around before he actually fell asleep in the smoky atmosphere. He wandered over to the windows, which slid back to enable the executives to wander out into the elements and actually watch the football. He stepped through the open window, where the night air damply kept the temperature at a tolerable level in the room, and looked at the misty figures as they ran through churned-up mud, heard the shouts of the players, and the thud of the ball, watched moisture bead the rail round the balcony. If play moved to the far side of the pitch, he couldn’t see it at all. He didn’t want to see it anyway.
He went back inside, and wondered how soon he could escape. Parker was seeing some of his guests off; Evans was tucking into the buffet. Mac positioned himself in a darkened corner where air from the window could be breathed, and waited until he was pretty sure that no one was aware of his presence, then slipped away.
Parker returned, and Lionel Evans found himself being led to the open window. Together they went out on to the balcony, and the window was very firmly closed.
Lionel sighed inwardly. It was Simon who ostensibly looked after Parker’s dealings in the town; Parker’s business had been the sole reason for Lionel’s having taken on a partner. Parker really shouldn’t be seen conspiring in corners with him.
Simon had declined the invitation to the opening, and had worked late as usual. Lionel had left him dictating to Sharon, who was pleased to have the overtime, he supposed, though he would have thought that a girl of her age should have better things to do on a Friday night. Lionel had received a last-minute invitation, and was there because it had seemed like a pleasant way to spend an evening; he should have known that there was no such thing as a free lunch.
‘You know Sharon came here to speak to me?’ Parker asked.
Lionel frowned. ‘Sharon?’ he repeated, uncomprehendingly, feeling the vulnerable way one does when one’s thoughts are apparently read.
‘Sharon,’ repeated Parker. ‘Your secretary.’
‘I know who she is,’ said Lionel testily. It had been Parker who had recommended Sharon when Lionel’s previous secretary left. Why should a visit to her old boss be newsworthy?
‘She told me something that you ought to hear,’ said Parker.
The young man came into the office. ‘ You wanted me, sir?’ he asked, his round, almost child-like face belying the commendation for bravery that he had received. His fair hair was curly, and cut short, adding to the impression.
Chief Inspector Lloyd looked up from the report he was reading, and nodded briefly. ‘ Interested in conservation, are you, Detective Sergeant Finch?’ he asked, employing what Judy called his RSC Welsh.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Finch, a little uncertainly.
Lloyd wished he hadn’t thought of Judy. ‘Sit down,’ he said, with an extravagant sigh.
Judy Hill had been a previous sergeant of his; she was a detective inspector in B Division now, based at Malworth. She was also the woman with whom he shared his life and with whom he had shared his flat until six weeks and three days ago.
Finch swallowed a little, and sat down gingerly; rather as though he thought the chair might have a whoopee cushion on it.
‘Preservation of endangered species?’ he asked the youth. Detective sergeant, indeed. In his day you had to have had some service before they went about promoting you.
‘Sir,’ said Finch, his voice deeply suspicious.
‘Mm,’ said Lloyd. ‘I saw the catalogue.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Finch. ‘I didn’t think anyone would mind me bringing it in.’
‘My,’ said Lloyd. He didn’t mind what he brought in, even if it was a Christmas catalogue in October. He minded the language being misused.
‘Sorry?’
‘My bringing it in, Finch.’
The young man frowned. ‘You, sir?’ he said, then coloured. ‘Oh – I didn’t realise. I’ll take mine away.’
Lloyd unnecessarily smoothed down what was left of his dark, short hair, a gesture that those who knew him recognised only too well. ‘No,’ he said, with dangerously exaggerated patience, ‘I was—’ He broke off. ‘Forget it,’ he said wearily. ‘ In fact – let me see the catalogue some time – I’ll buy something from it. I’m very interested in endangered species.’
Finch looked puzzled. ‘ But if you’ve already got a catalogue—’
Lloyd jumped to his feet and leant over the desk. ‘ I don’t have a catalogue, Finch!’ he shouted, making the sergeant jump. ‘All right?’
‘Sir.’
Lloyd sat down again. ‘Endangered species,’ he said, his tone well-modulated once more. ‘ There’s a little creature that I’m very fond of. Tiny little thing. It’s tail’s longer than its body.’
Finch looked a touch desperate. ‘To be honest, sir, I don’t know too much about animals. I just …’ He cleared his throat. ‘ I just think we should hang on to the ones we’ve got, that’s all. Some sort of monkey, is it?’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘It performs two distinct and very useful functions,’ he said. ‘And yet it’s dying out.’
Finch nodded. ‘Habitat being destroyed?’ he suggested, hopefully.
‘Oh, yes.’ Lloyd stood up again, and walked over to the table on which he had piled baskets of files and street-maps and his in-tray, on the grounds that that way his desk looked tidier. He perched on the only available corner, and regarded Finch. ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘Its habitat’s being destroyed all right. Being eroded further and further every day – every minute of every day.’
The sergeant looked round, as though he thought someone might rescue him.
‘But that’s not the worst of it,’ continued Lloyd. ‘ Some well-meaning but ill-informed people pick them up and put them where they don’t belong at all.’
‘In zoos,’ Finch volunteered.
Lloyd beamed. ‘ Yes,’ he agreed, enthusiastically. ‘In zoos – very often in zoos. And …’ He leant over to his desk, and picked up the open file on the rapes, two in Malworth and one in Stansfield, on which Finch had prepared a report for the incident room which had been set up in Malworth. He reached into his inside pocket for the glasses that he had discovered, much to his chagrin, that he needed for small print. He didn’t need them for Finch’s large, clear hand, but he had been given a new prop, and that had taken a lot of the sting out of losing his twenty-twenty vision. He took them out of their pouch, cleaning them carefully before putting them on and glancing at the report.
‘In zoos,’ he repeated, with a sad shake of the head. He took off his glasses again and looked at Finch. ‘And cafés.’
Finch stared at him. ‘Cafés, sir?’ he repeated, his voice incredulous.
Lloyd’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t know why you look so astonished,’ he said. ‘You’re the one who puts them there.’
Finch’s eyes held something very like alarm.
‘I am very well aware, Finch,’ said Lloyd, ‘that you would infinitely prefer to be facing a crazed gunman, but this is part of your job too.’ Lloyd was almost enjoying himself, despite his dark mood.
He glanced down at the file again. ‘… ‘‘anywhere that young people can be expected to gather, especially cafe’s’’,’ he quoted, holding his glasses a few inches from the page like a magnifying glass. ‘ It’s called an apostrophe, Finch,’ he said. ‘And when you add an ‘‘s’’ to a word to make it plural, that is all you are doing. Even if the word ends in a vowel, though that does seem to be the bastard rule that has evolved amongst those who were never taught English grammar and punctuation. It is quite, quite wrong – believe me, Finch. It is wrong, and no amount of popular usage will ever make it right, because it conveys an entirely different meaning from the one that you are attempting to convey.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘And it can in no way substitute for an acute,’ Lloyd continued. ‘But that’s another matter. For the moment, it’s the rudiments of English punctuation with which I would like you to get to grips. I want you to find out exactly what functions the apostrophe performs for us, and I want you to use it correctly in your paperwork or not at all. I’d rather the poor thing died out altogether than it languished in words where it has no business to be. Off you go,’ he concluded, without drawing a breath.
Finch stood up, and walked to the door, doubtless raising his eyes to heaven for the benefit of the cleaner who was carrying a vacuum cleaner along the corridor to the interview rooms, if the sympathetic smile she gave as she looked up at him was anything to go by.
And that was another thing, thought Lloyd sourly. They were all too bloody tall these days. He stared at the door as it closed, feeling disgruntled and just a touch guilty. Why had he picked on young Finch? They all did it. But Finch was on night-shift and therefore still there because he had to be, and not because he didn’t want to go home. That was what had really annoyed him.
For the truth was that Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd’s life was not, for the moment, as he would choose it to be. He finished reading Finch’s report, put the top on his pen, closed the file, stretched, yawned, and looked with a lacklustre eye at the clock. He frowned as he heard the commotion outside his door, and went out into the corridor in time to see a bruised and bloody constable manhandle a man towards the cells. Perhaps his clock had stopped; he looked at his watch. No, it was just eight fifteen.
‘What’s this?’ he asked the desk sergeant. ‘Isn’t it a bit early for the Friday night round-up?’
Sergeant Woodford looked up from what he was writing. ‘Crowd trouble at the match,’ he said, his face totally expressionless. ‘ We’ve another one already down there.’
‘You arrested the entire crowd?’ He liked getting Jack Woodford going. He was a staunch supporter.
The sergeant would not take the bait. ‘ Near enough,’ he said. ‘But you know who that is, do you?’ he asked, jerking his head towards the disappearing miscreant.
Lloyd didn’t, and didn’t particularly want to know. ‘I thought this was a friendly,’ he said, not above making very old jokes when the occasion presented itself. ‘Who’s winning?’ he asked.
‘The match was abandoned on account of the fog.’
Lloyd groaned. ‘ Oh, God, it’s not foggy, is it? Tell me it’s not.’
‘A pea-souper. Haven’t seen one like it since the fifties.’
‘Don’t tell me – Stansfield were on the brink of clawing back the three-goal deficit when the ref abandoned the match, and both supporters staged a pitch invasion.’
‘No,’ he laughed. ‘ There were no goals – and there were two hundred-odd there, I’ll have you know. But it wasn’t the passion of the game this time, Lloyd. It was an older passion even than that.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘All over some woman,’ he said, a mock-warning in his voice. He was retiring later in the year, and had had a whole ten years more experience of life on this earth than Lloyd had had. This, he seemed to believe, conferred on him great wisdom. ‘More trouble than they’re worth, if you ask me.’
‘Don’t I know it?’ said Lloyd with feeling. ‘Is she the one in the cells?’
‘No – she was long gone. Just left the fellas fighting over her.’
Lloyd grinned. ‘Are you charging them?’ he asked.
‘Not Barnes, I shouldn’t think. They can hit each other if they want to as far as I’m concerned. Let him cool his heels and send him home. But Rambo there’ – he pointed in the direction that the constable and his prisoner had just walked – ‘that’s Jake Parker.’
Lloyd’s eyebrows shot up. ‘The bloke who bought the ground?’ he said. ‘ What is he – some sort of hooligan-in-residence ?’
‘Don’t ask me. But he’s going to get done for assaulting a police officer if I’ve got any say in the matter.’
‘Why on earth was he totting policemen?’
‘He says he didn’t know it was a policeman.’
Lloyd still looked wonderingly at Woodford. ‘Why was he hitting anyone?’ he asked.
‘From what I can gather, he was the one who was chatting up this girl – the other bloke objected, and the next thing the fists were flying. Or perhaps it was the other way round. No one seems too sure.’ He reached across to answer the phone as he spoke. ‘And Parker’s head flew into our lad’s face,’ he added. ‘Money. They think they can do what they like and get away with it, people like him. Stansfield Police,’ he said into the receiver, then held his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘He didn’t even go to public school,’ he said, with a grin. ‘ Or you’d understand the attitude.’
Lloyd laughed. ‘Have a nice night. I’m off.’
‘Hang on!’ called Jack. ‘It’s for you.’
‘I’ve gone,’ said Lloyd, in a stage whisper.
‘It’s Judy,’ said Jack, smugly. Jack, who had known Lloyd since he was fourteen years old, was now the only person at the station who knew for a fact, rather than for a rumour, what was what in the Lloyd-Hill saga.
Lloyd took the receiver. ‘Hello, stranger,’ he said.
She sighed. ‘Don’t be like that. Are you thinking of coming home at all tonight?’
Lloyd beamed. ‘Are you at my flat? Have you eaten?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘Good. Then don’t.’
‘I want my solicitor,’ said Jake.
Detective Sergeant Finch sighed, and looked at his watch. ‘I take it you have someone in mind?’ he said.
‘Whitworth. Simon Whitworth.’ Jake gave him the number, and the sergeant looked at his watch again. ‘He’ll come,’ said Jake. ‘My business is worth too much to him not to come.’
‘I’m not sure why you want a solicitor,’ said Finch, getting up. ‘You can walk out of here on police bail.’
Jake shook his head. ‘ I’m not being done for assaulting a police officer,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look good.’
Finch shrugged. ‘But he is a police officer, and you assaulted him,’ he said.
Jake looked up at him. God, he looked about twelve. Did that mean that he was getting old, at thirty-eight? He wondered how old Detective Sergeant Finch was. ‘ I didn’t know it was a cop,’ he said. ‘I was grabbed from behind, and did what came naturally.’
‘Head-butting people comes naturally to you, does it, Mr Parker?’
Jake smiled the smile that had got him out of scrapes when he was six, and still worked on occasion. Usually with women, but sometimes even with men. ‘I never claimed to be a saint,’ he said.
‘The sergeant is quite adamant that you should be charged with assaulting a police officer,’ said Finch.
Jake still smiled. ‘I know. But I think my solicitor might talk him out of it – you get him.’ He frowned. ‘Why are you dealing with this?’ he asked. ‘It’s not a CID thing.’
It was Finch who smiled this time. ‘You know all about the set-up, then?’
‘Spent more time behind bars than I have in wine bars, I can tell you that,’ said Jake.
‘I can believe it,’ said Finch. ‘Don’t panic – we’re just a bit short-handed. I volunteered.’ He went off, presumably to phone Whitworth. Jake sighed, and looked round the cell.
He hoped Whitworth hurried up and got him out of here.
Twenty-five to nine, said the green analogue clock on the dashboard. Simon Whitworth pulled into the verge, his heart sinking when he saw the lit window, and brought the car to a halt. Melissa was home, and there would be questions. She had said that she would be working this evening. He could have been home earlier, but he had caught up on the work that really did need doing before he left the office, on the grounds that that diluted the lies. He should have gone to Parker’s shindig at the club instead, and given himself an alibi.
He got but of the car, pointing the remote at it, and walked up the path, his thin face pinched with cold and tiredness and worry, his unbiddable hair falling over his forehead, being automatically pushed back. The sky was lit with the strange light projected by the new floodlights at the sports ground; it was just a mile away across the fields, and the fierce glow in the sky told them when a match was on. Tonight it was muted by the mist, and as he watched, the glow diminished, disappearing by swift degrees until the sky was black once more.
He unlocked the door, feeling wretched, wishing the lights hadn’t gone out like that, like some sort of heavenly reproof. For God’s sake, it was only the floodlights being switched off, he told himself angrily, but the darkness and the fog seemed to be claiming him. He could always say that he had been at the so-called opening, he supposed. But no – The Chronicle might be covering it, and she would find out that he’d lied. But working late was palling as excuses went, however true he tried to make it. The police station – he had been called to the police station, he would tell her. It was difficult to remember all the lies. Lying to Melissa, lying to Lionel. Lying to Sharon, even.
She wasn’t in. Simon frowned, and went upstairs to check. The house was empty, but she must have been home for the light to be on. And she was a checker; they could never leave the house even for five minutes without her checking gases and lights and windows. On a night like this – what could have taken her out again in such a hurry?
The cat, perhaps. He had gone to the vet at lunch-time to be shorn of his tomhood – poor creature, curled up happily on the passenger seat of Melissa’s car, quite unaware of what fate had in store for him. They had discovered Robeson’s love of travelling by accident; as a kitten, determined to win round a less than enthusiastic Simon, Robeson had spent weeks following him with a dog-like devotion which had extended one day to getting into the car with him. Simon had felt the first and fatal stirrings of proprietorial pride at being thus honoured, and had taken the cat for an experimental drive. By the time they had returned, Robeson had smugly reeled in his catch, and Simon was his for ever.
They weren’t due to pick him up until tomorrow, but perhaps they had done the operation sooner than expected. Or perhaps something had gone wrong, Simon thought, with a stab of alarm.
The phone interrupted this unhappy speculation.
‘Mr Whitworth?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Sergeant Woodford, Stansfield. We’ve got a Mr Parker in the cells – he was involved in an incident at the football ground, and may be charged with assaulting a police officer. He’s asked us to ring you.’
Simon listened to the dead-pan delivery with disbelief. ‘Jake Parker?’ he asked.
‘The same. Sorry to drag you out.’
Simon, who might have been expected to be irritated at being called out on such a night, smiled broadly. ‘ I’ll be there, Sergeant,’ he said.
‘So I can tell him you’re on your way?’ said Sergeant Woodford, with much relief.
‘You can, Sergeant. I’ll be there as soon as possible.’
The sergeant’s relief was nothing compared to Simon’s, as he backed the car out again, and plunged into the mist.
No lies. Just an economy of truth. God had sent him a real, live client. Jake Parker, involved in a punch-up during his opening party? In character, he was sure, but a funny night to show your real colours. Still, football seemed to do that to people.
God bless him, anyway
Half an hour after her phone call to the station, Judy was being presented with food, and a catalogue of complaints about the standard of English education in schools.
‘Are you going to spend all the time grumbling?’ she asked, as she surveyed the many Chinese dishes at her disposal, and selected a spare rib dripping with syrup.
‘I just wish one of them could spell, for God’s sake. Is that asking too much? What do they teach them at school, that’s what I’d like to know. Can’t multiply or divide without a calculator.’
Judy smiled. ‘Neither can you,’ she said.
‘That’s different. I know how, even if it’s not my forte. They don’t. And they can’t spell.’ He stabbed at a prawn ball with his fork. ‘Watch your sweater,’ he advised.
Judy put a hand under the treacherous rib to catch any drips. It was really a little too warm in Lloyd’s flat for the sweater, but he liked her in it. ‘ It’s not new, you know,’ she said.
‘You still don’t want to drip syrup on it.’
‘Not the sweater! The problem.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just after I started in the job, I had to deal with the applications for licence extensions. They were supposed to be addressed to the chief superintendent, but one firm of solicitors always addressed them to the chief inspector.’ She rescued some syrup that dribbled down her chin. ‘Anyway, one day I was in their offices, and I asked the typist why she addressed them to the chief inspector. She said it was because she couldn’t spell superintendent.’
Lloyd permitted himself a reluctant smile. ‘At least she knew she couldn’t spell superintendent,’ he said.
Judy knew that it wasn’t the prevailing standard of literacy that was really bothering him, but she kept up the pretence, listening to the moans about grammar and punctuation that she had heard a million times before, because the last thing she wanted was for him to get on to the real reason for his mild fit of depression.
That, she knew from experience, led to rows. Rows in which she was always the loser, always the guilty party. In the past, this had been true; she had been trying to string him along and keep her marriage going at the same time. But she could hardly be held responsible for a job where your bosses had the right to make you live where they wanted you to live.
But everything was always her fault. Lloyd was always right, always knew best. He had been analysing her and her motives for seventeen years, and she didn’t suppose he was going to stop now. Every time they had a row – if you could call the one-sided harangues rows – she was told precisely what was wrong with her, and how that could be remedied if she would just think about other people for a change. The fact that his words echoed uncomfortably closely those of her mother when she was in her teens, and Michael when their marriage finally hit the rocks, did nothing to make it easier to take.
So she would let him go on about people using commas instead of semicolons, because that was only an indirect criticism of her, and not one which gave her any sleepless nights.
‘Are you listening to a single word I’m saying?’ he demanded.
‘No,’ she said, with a grin, spooning fried rice on to her plate.
Fog hovered still and thick, flooding the football pitch like a phantom sea, blanketing the public playing fields beyond. Moisture beaded the mud-guard of the bike and the PVC of his gloves as Colin Drummond pushed up the visor and waited. Slowly, he drew off one glove, and without taking his eyes away from the car, he undid the strap and removed his helmet, running his bare hand through black, well-cut hair, his youthful, handsome face set and determined. He laid the helmet on the seat behind him, and slipped his hand into the glove again.
He had seen the fight, seen her walk away. He had watched her, and had gone to the bike and started it up, just as her back view became indistinguishable from the rest of the blotted-out landscape. His foot touching the ground now and then to keep the bike balanced, he had followed her as she walked down the hill. She may or may not have been aware of his presence; she didn’t turn round.
He had been undecided as to his next move. In the event, it had been decided for him, as a car had come past, its outline fuzzily visible as it pulled away. But then it had seemed to stop, the rear lights which he had expected to vanish within a hundred yards inexplicably remaining as two red splashes in the mist. Except that it hadn’t stopped; it had merely been moving at exactly the same pace as he had. Walking pace. Her pace.
He had frowned, increasing his speed slightly, to see what was going on. That was when he had seen the brake lights glare, then the door had opened and she had got in. The car had moved off, keeping to ten miles an hour as it had groped its way through the almost impenetrable fog, completing a tricky turn in the road to head back the way it had come. He knew its speed precisely, because he had followed, far enough back to be unnoticed.
Followed them right back to the football ground, deserted and in darkness. He had stopped, headlamp out, just at the entrance, as they drove to the farthest corner. He had wheeled the bike up on to the verge, behind the high hedge, as the car’s engine was cut, and the headlights extinguished. They had been there for almost ten minutes now; away, they thought, from prying eyes.
But hidden by the hedge, silent, and all but invisible in his black clothes, Colin watched them.