Driving gingerly through the outskirts of Malworth, Judy slowed down to a near-stop as she came up to a tableau of police car and motorbike on the dual carriageway, and signalled right to overtake them. That must have been the siren that she had heard, she thought, a little puzzled that the incident still seemed to be in progress. It had to have been well over an hour ago now. The bike wasn’t damaged, and neither was the rider.
She found herself, as she always did in these circumstances, feeling for the offender. She wondered if this was a basic flaw in her character – surely she should be sympathising with her colleagues, who had had to get out of their nice warm car to deal with him? But then, she thought with a sigh, there were apparently a great many flaws in her character.
She had left as Lloyd was getting into his stride. She had learned to do that, at least. Not to let the row get to a stage where Lloyd could and would do real damage. She had had to do one or two major repair jobs on her feelings in her time with Lloyd, and opening old wounds hurt more than first time round; he knew that, and when he was angry with her, he had no use for ethics. She had learned to live with that. The really worrying part was that she had believed they had put the promotion business behind them. Evidently not.
She shifted up a gear, and drove away from the hazy, street-lamp lit scene at the side of the road, deciding against seeing if her colleagues had a problem; quite frankly, she didn’t give a damn whether they had or not.
Melissa was at the hotel, just one of the sudden crop of buildings which had sprung up on land once owned by the now defunct Mitchell Engineering works, whose existence had brought the new town into being, and which had now vanished. She had a male companion; this was not altogether unpleasant, she had decided, after a much-needed intake of alcohol.
She had arrived at the hotel, disturbed by her near-miss with the motorbike, and had sat sipping a calming whisky and soda in the long lounge and dining-room, regulation pink and grey, and quite empty. She had had two more drinks before another customer entered.
He had grey hair, and a face that she recognised, but to which she had been unable to put a name. ‘I think the barman may have died,’ she had said. ‘I haven’t seen him for half an hour.’
‘Hello,’ he had said, smiling, holding out his hand in greeting. ‘It’s Melissa Fletcher, isn’t it?’
He had met her at The Chronicle; Fletcher was her pen-name. But she hadn’t had the faintest idea who he was.
‘Mac,’ he had said, and she had remembered then. He wrote a column for the Saturday edition.
He was a lot older than Simon, but not as old as the grey hair would suggest. He had blue eyes; she hadn’t noticed that when they had met before.
After some moments, the youth who looked too young to be serving behind a bar had almost sidled out, clearly finding two customers a bit on the hectic side.
Now, she was on her fourth drink. Mac drank soft drinks. They sat side by side on a wall seat, the huge leather bag in which she carried her tape-recorder and half the contents of her files between them, until Mac found its presence uncomfortable.
‘I’ll put it up here,’ he said, picking it up and sliding it on to a shelf above his head. He hadn’t expected the weight; the bag slipped a little, and as he righted it a loose tape slid out and fell to the floor. He stooped to pick it up, reading the label. ‘Sharon Smith?’ he asked. She felt her cheeks go pink, and he looked at her when she didn’t
answer.
She snatched the tape from him. ‘Just work,’ she said, standing
up and pushing it back into the bag. She sat down again, hoping
she hadn’t reacted too obviously.
Mac knelt one knee on the imitation pink velvet to push the
bag further back, and his hand rested lightly on her shoulder as
he righted himself again. ‘There we are,’ he said, sitting beside her.
‘So – what brings you out on a night like this?’
Melissa took a fortifying sip before she spoke. ‘ I was working
late,’ she said.
‘Winding down?’ He looked at her drink.
‘Something like that.’
He looked at her seriously. ‘Take it from one who knows,’ he
said. ‘Tiredness, whisky and cars don’t mix very well.’
‘I don’t intend driving any more tonight,’ she said.
He frowned, puzzled.
‘I’m staying here,’ she said.
‘I see.’ He made himself more comfortable, moving closer to her
as he did. ‘ You … you don’t live in Stansfield, then?’
She coloured slightly, and he noticed. ‘Yes – but I don’t fancy
driving in this.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘Won’t anyone be missing you?’ he
asked.
Melissa felt the flush grow deeper. ‘Why the third degree?’ she
snapped.
He held up his hands. ‘ Sorry.’
‘So – what’s your story? How come you’re here?’
He smiled. ‘I was covering the opening of the leisure centre,’ he
said. ‘I left early, and got lost. Finally worked out how to get home,
found myself passing a hostelry and came in.’ He looked at the
bitter lemon. ‘ I’ve broken most of my bad habits,’ he said. ‘But I
still can’t pass licensed premises.’
Melissa looked round at the empty tables and chairs, looking
like a low-budget film set before the actors have arrived. ‘It must be for the company,’ she said, startling herself. It was, in its way, a joke. She wouldn’t have thought that possible.
He smiled. ‘ The company’s all right from where I’m sitting,’ he said quietly, his eyes looking into hers.
‘And is no one missing you?’ she asked, her voice as low as his had been.
He shook his head. ‘No one’s missed me for years,’ he said.
Melissa sipped her drink. ‘Poor Mac,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘ They did once,’ he said. ‘I don’t blame them for giving up on me. I had.’
She glanced at the soft drink, and he nodded. ‘You weren’t a football fan in your teens, then?’ he said.
She shook her head, smiling a little at last. ‘You’re an ex-footballer?’ she asked.
‘Ex-footballer, ex-husband, ex-alcoholic and ex-convict,’ he said. ‘Or so my ex-wife likes to describe me.’
‘Ex-convict?’
He smiled. ‘Oh, yes. After spending the best part of ten years in an alcoholic stupor, I finally crashed the car through a shop window. I got six months, and I’m still disqualified from driving.’
Over the next few drinks, Melissa got a rundown on the rest. He had used his time in prison to resurrect his brain; he had dried out, he had got himself straight. He hadn’t looked at a betting slip or a woman or a glass of anything stronger than fruit juice since the day he’d come to in hospital with a nurse flitting past, two years ago. His wife had left him early in their marriage for an accountant, taking their then three-year-old son with her.
‘Do you see much of your son?’
She had hit a nerve. They lived in America now, and his son didn’t know who his real father was; Sandra, Mac’s ex-wife, had begged him to stay away. So far, he had. But maybe not for ever, he added. He’d soon be able to afford the fare.
She looked at him. ‘Do you think you should tell him who you are?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. Do you think I should?’
‘Me?’ she said, startled. She really didn’t need anyone else’s problems tonight. She had surprised herself by being able to make small talk, even, but she supposed that that was second nature now, after years of doing interviews.
‘I’d like to know.’
She shook her head. ‘But I’ve got nothing to do with it,’ she protested.
‘But you do all these articles on …’ He shrugged again. ‘I don’t know – moral dilemmas. That’s what this is, isn’t it?’
Melissa smiled a little sadly. ‘ I’ll say,’ she said. Then she looked at him. ‘You don’t sound much like an ex-footballer,’ she said.
His still-dark eyebrows rose very slightly. ‘You mean I’m not supposed to know words like ‘‘moral dilemma’’?’
She blushed, then rallied to her own defence. ‘You pretend not to know them,’ she said. ‘You had to hedge it round with ‘‘I don’t know’’ and ‘‘that’s what this is, isn’t it?’’
He smiled. ‘That’s a habit you get into if you think you’re cleverer than everyone else and you don’t want to admit it in case you get a hostile reaction,’ he said.
‘And were you cleverer than everyone else?’ she asked, her voice gentler than the question, a trick she had perfected over the years.
He sat back. ‘The blokes I played with,’ he said, his forefinger on his thumb as he began to count them off. ‘One of them’s the manager of a First Division side and has been for the past eight years. One of them’s the managing director of his own sporting goods business. One of them took a pub in the Cotswolds …’ He let his hands drop. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t.’
Her eyes held his.
‘But you’re clever,’ he added.
‘Am I?’
‘You were a university lecturer, according to the sports desk,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘For about five minutes’
‘Why The Chronicle?’ he asked. ‘I would have thought that the ladies’ page was slumming for someone like you.’
‘It pays quite well,’ she said. She didn’t argue with his definition of her activities; one reason for the pseudonym was so that her more academic acquaintances didn’t find out what she did for a living. ‘And I enjoy it,’ she said. She had enjoyed it. Until this evening.
His eyes went from hers to take in the rest of her. ‘You’re not anything like any of the other women I’ve known,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘No. They all wore lip-gloss and had their hair dyed.’
‘And because I don’t, you want my advice on what you should do about your son?’ she asked incredulously.
‘I’d like to know what you think,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
She considered that. ‘Does he know he has a real father somewhere?’ she asked.
‘Yes. They legally adopted him. I think he assumes he was in an orphanage.’
‘How old is he now?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Then it has to be between you and him,’ she said. ‘I’d be inclined to think that he has the right to know.’
‘Yes,’ said Mac. ‘But would he want to know?’
Melissa thought. ‘You could use a third party,’ she said. ‘A solicitor, or someone. He could write to him, letting him know that the possibility exists of meeting his real father. Then it would be up to him.’
Mac’s brow cleared a little. ‘I said you were clever,’ he said. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘What did you do once you’d decided to walk the straight and narrow?’ Melissa asked, changing the subject quickly before he could get round to asking her if she knew any solicitors.
‘I signed on as unemployed,’ he said. ‘And I did anything they gave me, anything I could find myself. All over the country.’ He smiled. ‘It was a good way to see the place – maybe I should write a book about it’
‘What sort of jobs?’
‘Labouring, gardening, washing windows, cars. I’ve been an ice-cream salesman, a courier – on a pushbike. I still don’t have my licence back.’
‘What brought you here?’
‘You have to be somewhere,’ said Mac. ‘I thought there might be work on the building sites, but there wasn’t. I got a job in a garage – I’m a sort of a salesman.’
Melissa sighed. Mac’s work record sounded very like a hair shirt to her. ‘ How did the column come about?’ she asked.
It turned out that the sports editor had taken his car in for its MOT, and had been startled to find an ex-international footballer in the showroom, when he had gone to drool over the new cars. Mac had persuaded him to let him put his name above a column.
‘He was as startled as you to discover that not only could I write my name, but I could write the column too,’ he said, teasing her.
It was being syndicated to a few local papers now, and some money was coming in. But he still worked for the garage.
He sat back again and looked at her. ‘So why have I just told you my life story?’ he asked.
She shrugged, and drained her glass, feeling pleasantly woozy and warm, despite everything. ‘I don’t wear lip-gloss,’ she said. ‘No,’ she relented, smiling at his offended look. ‘ I suppose it’s just talking to a stranger. It’s easier.’
‘You’re not a stranger though, are you?’ He leant over towards her, and tapped her knee lightly. ‘You’re adrift in an open boat too. I can tell.’
She made to stand, to go and get another round, but he caught her arm and gently pulled her back down, taking her empty glass.
‘It’s no answer, Melissa,’ he said. ‘Believe me.’
He released her, but there was a tension between them now that he had touched her. She hadn’t led a particularly sheltered life prior to Simon, but she had never picked up a man in a bar before. She could pick Mac up; that much was obvious.
She had toyed with the idea when he had first arrived, and it had seemed crazy. She barely knew the man. By the time she had finished her drink it had seemed an attractive idea, and now that she had downed her fourth, all she knew was that he was right. She was adrift in an open boat, and he could rescue her. He could put his arms round her and haul her into safe harbour for the night.
She wanted that more than anything, and set about getting it with the same single-mindedness as she had done everything else since meeting Sharon Smith. It didn’t take long; she did have another drink, despite Mac’s advice, then excused herself and went to the ladies to look at herself in the mirror. Her head felt a little detached from the rest of her, she conceded, but otherwise she was all right.
He stood up as she came back.
‘Bag,’ she said, leaning across him to reach up to the shelf.
‘Let me get it,’ he said, but it was too late; she had caught the bag but lost her footing as she tried a too-complicated balancing manoeuvre for her displaced centre of gravity. She fell against him so that all three of them landed on the pink velvet; him, Melissa and the bag.
‘Sorry,’ she said, giggling just a little tipsily as she lay sprawled on top of him. She felt his physical reaction as she moved, and smiled at him, disentangling herself slowly, as much for her own benefit as his. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.
He didn’t need to be asked twice.
Frances had come up to bed while Lionel was in the bath; he had made as little noise as possible as he got into bed beside her, though she could have slept through an air-raid. He wasn’t sure why he was taking such precautions anyway; if she did wake, there would still be no conversation, and no need to answer the questions that he could feel hanging over him. Questions that would be asked. Sooner or later.
Her heavy, rhythmic breathing filled the room, and he lay in the darkness, wide awake. He wasn’t convinced that he would ever sleep again, but the worry and the fatiguing drive home had worn him out, and his eyelids grew heavy.
They shot open again as the dream which had instantly invaded his unconscious mind became unbearable.
|
Swaths |
of mist hung round the hedgerows as Simon Whitworth home for the second time that evening. Melissa must be |
home this time; the light was on again. But of course, he remembered, he of the carefully contrived alibis had deliberately left it on, as it would have been if he had never been home. Which would, of course, be his story.
Their house was built at the top of a hill just on the town boundary, where built-up areas gave way to farmers’ fields with sheep grazing, and tiny villages. It was a solitary listed cottage which stood on the bypass, and with which Melissa had fallen in love when they had moved to the area. The view was non-existent tonight, he thought, as he looked at the soft cloak in which the town had wrapped itself.
The front door opened directly into the living-room with the open staircase on the left; she wasn’t home yet. There was an odd quality to the emptiness of the house; an abandoned feel. Simon felt like he had when the floodlights had gone out, and it was the house that was doing it to him. Without Melissa, without even Robeson, yelling for food and wrapping himself round his legs, it didn’t have much to offer. Where was Melissa? Had something happened to her?
He put the kettle on for coffee, chiding himself for being fanciful. She had said she was doing a late interview. Why in the world should he feel as though her absence were somehow sinister?
He had had no idea that Sharon had any involvement with Jake Parker; perhaps they were just passing the time of day. But why would that make this other man react like that? If that was how it had happened. And no matter how you looked at it, Sharon was at the football match. Why? And why hadn’t she told him? She had said she was meeting someone – why wouldn’t she have said that that was where she was going?
He made tea, and wished that Melissa would come home. He was worried about her. He glanced at the clock, a pool of dread forming in the pit of his stomach. He had been so relieved once again to find the house empty; it had given him a chance to think about what was happening without Melissa asking all the time what was wrong. But it was such a dreadful night; she could have had an accident. He could imagine the scorn with which he would be greeted if he were to start ringing hospitals, but it was really very late now.
He pulled the telephone towards him, and dialled the number of the police station.
‘Sergeant Woodford, please,’ he asked when he got through.
‘Who’s calling?’
‘Simon Whitworth.’ His hand gripped the receiver as he. waited for the call to be put through. If Melissa had had an accident, he’d—
‘Woodford.’
‘Ah … Sergeant Woodford. It’s … er … it’s Simon Whitworth here – I was in earlier to see Jake Parker?’
‘Yes, Mr Whitworth.’
‘Well … I hope this doesn’t sound too hysterical, but my wife – she did say she would be working late, but it’s almost half-past eleven now, and – that is, she works in Barton, you see. Well – she was interviewing someone, but I don’t know where that would be – it could have been anywhere in the county, really.’ He took a breath, aware that what he had just said probably hadn’t made any sense at all. ‘I wondered if you had had any accidents reported,’ he said.
‘I can check for you, Mr Whitworth,’ he said, his voice entirely calm. ‘ One moment.’
Simon’s foot tapped nervously on the floor as he waited once more, his ear cocked for the sound of a car engine that never came. Please Melissa, please. Don’t have had an accident.
‘The good news is that we have had no serious accidents reported,’ Sergeant Woodford’s reassuring voice said.
Her car could be in a ditch, unnoticed. She could be bleeding to death somewhere … Simon couldn’t bear it.
‘If you can tell me the make and number of your wife’s car, we’ll certainly keep an eye out for it,’ he went on.
Simon supplied the information, wondering in a detached way if they did that for everyone, or just for people with whom they happened to have a professional connection. He had a good relationship with the police, unlike some of his colleagues; his practice tended towards property and divorce, and he really only got involved in the criminal courts with people who had got themselves into a scrape, like Parker, rather than the persistent offenders, whose solicitors were seen as an evil insisted on by the law.
‘Try not to worry, Mr Whitworth. She may have stayed over in Barton, in view of the weather. It’s like this all over the east of England, they tell me.’
‘She would have phoned,’ said Simon. But then, he hadn’t been there, had he? He closed his eyes. Had he heard the phone ringing just as he got to the front door? It could have been. It could have been Melissa, trying to tell him where she was.
Please God let it have been Melissa, he thought, as he thanked the sergeant, and replaced the receiver.
Lloyd knew that he shouldn’t have said the things he had, but he had been angry.
She made him angry, therefore it was partly her fault. He had known Judy since she was twenty years old, which was when he had fallen for her; fallen in love almost instantly with an open, friendly face, shining dark hair and honest brown eyes, almost before they had even spoken to one another. Once they had, he had discovered the quick intelligence which had almost been buried under a lack of belief in herself; he liked to think that he had had a hand in bringing it out.
But she still hated change, hated having to adjust to new situations, and he knew what would happen. She had been in her new flat for almost two months, and it was turning into home. Even though she didn’t like it much. Even though she missed being with him. It was home, and the longer she lived there, the more used to it she would become, and it would be the devil’s own job to make her leave the damn place again, once she had dug herself in there.
Despite that, Lloyd hadn’t tried to put obstacles in her way – in fact, he had been a positive tower of strength; it wouldn’t be forever, he had assured her. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t see each other. And it would only be until the divorce, when their relationship could at last come out of the closet in which it had been uneasily and inconveniently concealed for the last two years. Not particularly well concealed, come to that; bits of it had invariably got caught in the door, and were visible to anyone who cared to look.
But as far as the top brass were concerned, she had shared with another policewoman until the move to Malworth, and in amongst her usual dread of the new, he fancied he had seen a hint of relief in Judy’s eyes that the deception was over. There would have been a hell of a stink if anyone had found out, so he could understand that, even though it had been her idea in the first place. He would never have suggested that she put herself in such an invidious position. It had been her idea, and then she had worried about it, all the time. He hadn’t complained about that either – in fact, he told himself, he had been entirely understanding about the whole thing.
The trouble was that the more he glowed with righteous indignation at her treatment of him, the less he understood just what she was supposed to have done. He was faced with the unwelcome thought that he might be being unreasonable.
Never. He poured himself a whisky and picked up his book. Never.
They would probably be charging him with reckless driving. They had given him a speeding ticket. They had examined every inch of the bike by torchlight, trying to find something wrong with it. They’d have been lucky. Colin spent hours on the bike; it gleamed with health. They had breathalysed him, and had been really disappointed when they had found out he hadn’t been drinking. His road tax, insurance and licence were all in order. He had been wearing his crash helmet.
They hadn’t liked that. They had wanted to be able to take the bike away from him. And when the radio had confirmed that he was the owner of the bike, they had liked it even less.
They had kept him there for an hour and a half, and then had had to settle for the ticket. But they hadn’t liked it.
‘You’re going to remember us,’ one of them had said.
Back at home at last, Colin bathed his face, and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Thank God his parents were away, though with their usual perversity, they were coming back tomorrow, rather than adding the weekend to their holiday, like everyone else. Colin looked at his own eyes burning back at him, and threw up in the basin.
He felt suddenly and desperately tired; he collapsed into a chair, and fell into an almost immediate and almost unconscious sleep.
Jake Parker let himself into the large bungalow which he rented from people who had gone to the States on a twelve-month exchange. It was much too large for one person, but it had the right image. Stansfield didn’t go in much for penthouse flats; which would have been rather more his style than the over-fussy architecture of the bungalow, not to mention its Laura Ashley interior. Still – it was all right for entertaining business acquaintances.
Bobbie liked it – not that she had been there that much. He preferred to keep her in the background – she didn’t quite fit in with the image he was trying to project. She shared a flat with another girl in Malworth, and lived on presents and promises of great things to come.
And they would come. Nothing was going to stand in his way. He’d made damn sure that he could distance himself from the whole thing – not so Lionel. And if push came to shove, he would have no hesitation in dropping Lionel right in it.
He pulled off his tie, and poured himself a drink. He was tired, after his exertions; his eye hurt. He looked at it in the mirror over the bar, and held the glass up in a grim, silent toast.
Out in the lobby there was a cigarette machine; Mac had given that up too, but he stuffed coins in and pulled out the first packet he came to, tearing off the cellophane as he glanced into the lounge. He longed to be back in bed with her, but she had wanted him to leave, and he wasn’t about to spoil things.
It had never been like that with any of the peroxide blondes with their tight skirts and sexy wiggles that more often than not were violations of the Trade Descriptions Act. Melissa wore old jeans and a shapeless sweater; that, he had discovered, was because she didn’t need to look sexy. She just was.
The lads on the sports desk didn’t know about her, did they? Melissa Fletcher, the one who hadn’t had the faintest idea who he was when he had been introduced to her at the paper, who hadn’t even remembered his name earlier on this evening, had just given him the best time he’d ever had.
He could have had anyone he wanted in the old days. And had. Models, film stars … falling at his feet, they’d been. But it was a funny old game, life. Stood up by Donna the dead-cert divorcee who was well past her sell-by date, only to be seduced by someone twelve years his junior who until now hadn’t known he existed. Perhaps it had been his personal charisma all along, and nothing to do with the fame and the money. Or perhaps Melissa Fletcher was a pushover, which seemed a touch more likely. He’d have to tell the sports desk to update their files.
He wondered if she did this all the time. A couple of reps had appeared since he had gone upstairs with Melissa; if he hadn’t bumped into her, it might have been one of them. Tough luck, lads, he thought. You don’t know what you missed.
She was on the skinny side, and the tall side – Mac had a preference for ladies a couple of inches shorter than he was, and, if anything, she was just a touch taller. Thinking about her made him want her again, despite the tendrils of ardour-damping fog wrapping themselves round him as he stepped out into the damp air. He could have gone on all night, and so could she. But she had asked him to leave.
The mist was patchy now; some spots were clear, and he could see the stars. But then he would find himself walking into its depths again. He drew out a cigarette, and put it between his lips, then automatically searched his pockets for non-existent matches. He swore, and pushed the useless comforter into his pocket.
He had gone up to her room with no great hopes; if anything, he had been depressed, having just given her the printable chapters of his less than successful life story. But his mumbled, would-be jokey fears that his lack of female companionship for the last few years might have blunted his technique – his declared celibacy was stretching a point, but his recent encounters had required no technique – and that his abused body might not have the attraction it had once had, had been allayed by her frankness about the whole thing, and had vanished altogether at the first electric touch of her skin on his.
He turned into the football ground, almost groping his way towards the railings, looking for the gap.
He had never met anyone like Melissa, far less gone to bed with her. He wouldn’t have, not in the old days, because she wasn’t beautiful; her features were too sharp, her face too long, her hair too short, her breasts too small, her body too angular. But the combination of intelligence and unashamed sensuality had knocked him sideways, and he was a happy man.
Life, he thought, could hold no more surprises, not after Melissa. Until his foot hit something soft and yielding, and he looked down.
Life had one more surprise up her sleeve.