‘You wanted me, sir?’
Merrill waved a hand to indicate that Judy should sit down. ‘How did you get on?’ he asked.
‘Officially, nothing happened to her,’ said Judy.
‘So I understand. And unofficially?’
‘She was his fourth victim. But she’s a dyed-blonde night-club hostess who titillates men for a living, and she’s emigrating or something soon, so she just isn’t about to go into the witness box to be pulled to pieces. I’m not so sure we should try to make her – she could be something of a liability.’
Merrill rubbed his eyes. ‘Anything new for us to go on?’
‘Only the location – the Jetty, this time. Exactly the same MO, same description. I’ve given the incident room what I got, but it won’t help much.’
They had to find him; it was as simple as that. Once they had a suspect, there would be no problem of identification. They had the physical evidence, the DNA fingerprint just waiting for a match. All they needed was the suspect, and there were a great many officers doing nothing but looking for him.
‘We’re going to have to go through the previous offenders again,’ said Merrill. He looked at her for a moment before speaking again. ‘What do you think of psychological profiling?’ he asked.
Judy shrugged a little. ‘Paying someone to tell you that he’s a loner with a chip on his shoulder seems a bit odd,’ she said. ‘But we’ve done a spot of amateur profiling. The lack of a pattern seems to indicate someone who doesn’t have to be anywhere in particular in the evenings, so he probably isn’t accountable to a wife. The times and the places suggest that he is definitely local, rather than someone who visits the area on business. The attacks all took place in the evening – he’s probably a nine to five man rather than unemployed or a shift-worker.’ She shrugged. ‘Professionals might be able to gather a lot more from what we’ve got than we can,’ she said. ‘To be fair to them.’
Merrill grunted. ‘Let’s do a thorough job on the previous offenders first,’ he said. ‘According to the computer, there are three most likely. I want to interview them again.’ He moved some papers about his desk. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Re Sharon Smith. This boy Drummond lives in Malworth … there’s his address. Can you get someone to make discreet enquiries about whether or not he left for this football match wearing a tie?’
Judy frowned. Why discreet? They’d been questioning him all day – there was nothing very discreet about that.
‘We don’t want it to look like harassment,’ explained Merrill, in answer to her frown. ‘ He has come back with something of a counter-charge against two Malworth officers, and the complaint has to be investigated, which does, as you will, I’m sure, understand, make the whole thing a little delicate.’
Merrill was all right, but more than a little pedantic. Besides, Judy still felt a little awkward about her greeting to him on the phone that morning. She wished he would get to the point and let her go away again.
‘He’s made a complaint against the officers who stopped him for the traffic offence, and that will of course have to—’
Judy interrupted him. ‘What sort of a complaint?’ she asked. She was a witness, though another police officer wasn’t much use in these circumstances.
Merrill rubbed his eyes, and flexed his back, and did other things to indicate that he had had a trying morning, and that the afternoon was turning out no better, with people asking him questions that they should know better than to ask, and that he wasn’t supposed to answer. Judy imagined he’d at least had some lunch, instead of a painful interview with a rape victim. And he must know her well enough by now to know that she wasn’t asking out of mere curiosity.
‘He says they worked him over,’ he said bluntly, once he had decided to answer her.
‘What?’ said Judy. ‘But I saw them. After they stopped him – some considerable time after, I think.’
Merrill stared at her. ‘ You saw them?’
‘Yes. I was on my way home.’
‘Did you stop?’
Judy felt a little guilty. ‘ No,’ she said. ‘I was tired, and—’
‘And you’d had a fight with your boyfriend?’ suggested Merrill, with a slight twinkle.
Judy blushed again. ‘Yes,’ she said. At least he didn’t know who her boyfriend was, she thought. She had to be thankful for small mercies.
‘So you didn’t get a good look at Drummond,’ said Merrill.
‘But I did,’ she said. ‘ I wasn’t going at any speed in the first place because of the fog. And I can assure you sir, that there was nothing at all wrong with Drummond when I saw him. Of course, he might be saying that it happened after that – but if he isn’t, then—’
Merrill looked hard at her. ‘Are you one hundred per cent certain about that?’ he asked, interrupting her. ‘ He had no facial injuries – he was having no difficulty walking?’
‘I’m quite sure. I actually looked at him carefully, because I’d heard the siren some time before, and I did think there might have been an accident. But he was fine – pacing up and down while they examined the bike. I know the complaint investigator will think it’s just police officers sticking together, but it’s the truth, I promise—’
‘No,’ said Merrill, interrupting her. ‘ He won’t think that.’ He sighed heavily. ‘ The officers concerned said in a written statement that Drummond was in that state when they stopped him,’ he said quietly, ‘and when asked how he had come by his injuries would give no explanation. That’s why Stansfield were so certain Drummond was their man,’ he said.
Oh no. Judy looked away from him.
‘It wasn’t a trap, Judy, believe me,’ he said. ‘I had no idea that you had seen them.’
She didn’t speak.
‘Out of my hands now,’ said Merrill. ‘I’ll send a report to the DCC. You’ll almost certainly be called as a witness in the disciplinary proceedings, I’m afraid. And any criminal proceedings which may result.’
Judy nodded. Giving evidence against fellow police officers. Life, at the moment, was a bitch and a half.
Merrill leant forward. ‘ See if the grapevine knows why these two had it in for Drummond,’ he said, almost to the blotter, almost as though he wasn’t speaking at all.
Judy wished Sandwell was there. He would have known already. She wished she had never got up. She wished she hadn’t had the row with Lloyd, because then she wouldn’t have been going along that road as early as she had been, and she wouldn’t have known what state Drummond was in when they stopped him.
And she wished, with all her heart, that she didn’t feel like that. They had no excuse for doing what they had done. A policeman losing his temper with a suspect was wrong, but understandable; two of them setting about a defenceless young man was quite another.
And yet she didn’t know for certain that she would have mentioned her trip home at all, had she known the whole story.
If anything, it had been even better. Again, Mac had felt a moment’s awkwardness when the bedroom door actually closed behind them, but Melissa’s total lack of coyness didn’t allow for awkward moments; she made him feel like superman, like Mad Mac again, diving for the low header and slotting it into goal. Running towards the fans, arms above his head, listening to the roar.
Mac threw his arm out of the bed, feeling for his jacket, and took out the cigarettes and Lloyd’s book of matches. The tape was still in his pocket; she hadn’t asked for it back.
‘Everything was fine. Really. We’ve been married for nine years, and we were happy. He fancied a move – he got the partnership here, and we found a cottage – oh, it’s right on the main road, but it’s beautiful. I couldn’t have been happier. I really couldn’t. For maybe a month,’ she added bitterly.
‘What happened then?’
Mac lit a cigarette, and wondered if he’d have to give up sex again in order to give up smoking. Why did you buy them? the sergeant had asked. Because he had been fed on a diet of movies in his formative years, and that was the only way the director could indicate what had taken place off-screen. Nowadays, it was the smoking that shocked people. He had needed a cigarette last night to complete the act, as he had always done. He hadn’t wanted to smoke after his recent loveless encounters; this was different. He smiled, reminded of an old joke. Do you smoke after intercourse? I don’t know, doctor, I’ve never looked.
‘I have to get back to work,’ she said. ‘It’s quarter past three.’
‘To find out all about Sharon?’
She was already dressing, as eager to put space between them as she had been before; she didn’t answer.
Mac reached over for his empty coffee cup, and dropped the cigarette into it. The smoke rose and spiralled in the air. ‘Maybe you’ll find out who killed her,’ he said. ‘What will you do then? Or does that depend on whether or not it was Simon?’
She looked a little surprised. ‘What?’
‘She said he hated her sometimes. You think he killed her, don’t you?’
Melissa smiled a little, and shook her head, but she didn’t actually deny it.
Mac got up after she had left, and looked out at the quiet street. He knew Sharon Smith. Oh, he’d never met that particular one, but they were all the same, her type. Some of them were his neighbours, with their semi-detached houses and semi-detached husbands. Coiffured hair, feminine, made up to the nines. And it was all for show. Sex was just power to them; in the days when he was watching couples have their postcoital cigarette, girls like Sharon would withhold their favours until you put a ring on their finger. These days, it was a little more subtle. The ring came afterwards. But it came. The problem in Sharon’s case was that Simon Whitworth already had a wife. All that stuff about preferring married men was rubbish; you could hear the lies. She preferred men with a bit of substance, a bit of money in the bank, maybe. And they tended to be married.
Simon’s choice had been simple; Melissa or Sharon. Sharon had been a bit on the side for Simon – a change, an adoring little distraction who told him how clever he was, and who had pulled a fast-one on him. So he’d made sure that Sharon couldn’t foul things up for him. Mac didn’t blame him in the least; Melissa was worth a hundred Sharons. A hundred Sandras. A hundred of any other woman he had ever met.
‘You can’t hang on to him now.’
Lloyd felt, and looked, mutinous. For no good reason, he had to admit. He knew he couldn’t hang on to him.
‘Lloyd – your case, such as it was, and you’re the one who thought it had to be strengthened, has just been blown away.’
‘Just because he seems to have told the truth about one thing, it doesn’t necessarily—’
‘Release him, Lloyd. His parents are still here, and I want them all to go before they think of anything else to accuse us of.’
Lloyd loathed two fellow officers whom he had never met. There was no reason to suppose that Sharon’s attacker would bear the marks of a struggle, but their behaviour had made certain that any such marks on Drummond had been well and truly disguised. In his opinion, that was no reason to cross Drummond off that list of names in the murder room.
‘Drummond knew her,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Or at the very least, he knows a lot more than he’s saying.’
‘You have no proof that Drummond ever set eyes on Sharon Smith before last night,’ Andrews said. ‘And you only thought that he might have been involved with her once you knew that he wasn’t the rapist.’
Lloyd hardly needed to be told all this.
Andrews sat back. ‘ Your case against him was influenced by your belief that he was the rapist, and he isn’t. In my opinion, that belief has slowed down both of these investigations. I suggest you leave the rapes to the rape inquiry, and conduct this murder inquiry in a more ordered and rather less inspired fashion.’
He was on the carpet. It wasn’t the first time, and he didn’t suppose it would be the last.
‘I still have to talk to Drummond, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve been given no description of this car he’s supposed to have seen, never mind who was driving—’
‘Because you were convinced he was lying! You didn’t ask, did you?’
‘No, sir.’ Lloyd still thought he was lying. That was why he wanted to hang on to him.
‘By all means continue to investigate his involvement – I’m not warning you off, for God’s sake! But it isn’t cut and dried, and it never was. Well have to hope that at least one of your two hundred witnesses saw something. Isn’t it time you were doing something about getting them in here?’
Lloyd was dismissed, and went back to the office, where he immediately phoned the path lab to beg Freddie to give him anything he could as soon as he could. Freddie told him that the post-mortem would be being done that afternoon, which was something.
Tom Finch sat at the other side of the desk, shaking his head.
Lloyd smiled as he replaced the receiver. ‘It is, as they say, a rum do,’ he said.
‘Rum? Whitworth’s wife was staying at an hotel a mile away from the sports ground. Whitworth’s partner was at a function in the sports ground. And Whitworth’s secretary gets herself murdered in the car park of the sports ground. Gil McDonald – who just happens to work with Mrs Whitworth – was at the bloody place twice, and just happens to find the body on his second visit.’ He drew a breath.
Lloyd still smiled.
‘Evans and Whitworth represent the owner of the ground at which all this was happening – he’s involved in a fight at the same time, and it’s Whitworth who turns up to bail him out! It’s ludicrous!’
‘What about Colin Drummond?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Well he’s not in the frame any more, is he? Not now that we know what really happened to him. He’s our best witness now.’
‘We don’t know what really happened to him,’ said Lloyd quickly. ‘Not officially.’
‘No, sir. But we do. So let’s not beat about the bush.’
Lloyd was beginning to like Finch more every day, but he disagreed profoundly with his snap decision. ‘I accept that we have to take rather more notice of his story now,’ he said. ‘But I still believe the whole business with the car is a figment of his imagination, and that he knows more about Sharon than he has so far told us. I agree that he’s our best witness – but perhaps for different reasons.’
Finch nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘ Sorry.’
‘But since we’re not beating about the bush, I’d like to know why two of our esteemed colleagues found it expedient to beat him up.’
Finch looked up. ‘Well, the word is that he’s a cocky little bastard,’ he said.
‘If we all took to beating everyone who answered that description, we’d never do anything else.’
He had got a glimpse of the cockiness when they released him. The fear of being beaten up again had gone, and the arrogance which suited him rather better than his humble act had returned. ‘See you in court,’ had been his parting shot.
Lloyd got up, and looked out at the view of the car park. Malworth did have much better scenery, he thought. Judy was lucky to work there. He felt badly about the row. And he felt badly about how he had spoken to Mrs Whitworth. The woman had got on his very exposed nerves, that was all. But then, all women were doing that at the moment, come to that.
He turned back to Finch, acutely grateful that he was male.
‘So you want background on the two who beat him up?’ Finch asked. ‘Unofficially?’
Finch had grown about ten years older since last night, Lloyd thought. They all had, he supposed. But the rigours of a murder investigation suited Finch. It had just given Lloyd a bad back. ‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘I’m not crossing Drummond off just because two barbarians chose to attack him and have made it impossible to say whether or not he had been in any sort of struggle before they got their hands on him.’ He looked at his watch. Half-past three. ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.
‘No. I’ve been running round like a blue-arsed fly all day.’
‘So have I. Let’s continue this discussion over whatever the canteen has to offer.’
Tom didn’t look too enthusiastic about a working lunch, or whatever it was called mid-afternoon, but he walked with Lloyd to the old building, and the canteen, where he had hamburgers piled with tomato sauce and mustard.
‘I don’t like Drummond’s story,’ Lloyd said. ‘It’s too pat. A car picked her up and conveniently took her back to the football ground. I ask you.’
Finch said something that Lloyd had to translate into English from hamburger.
‘All the others?’ he said, with a smile. ‘ What about them?’
Finch swallowed. ‘They were all there, sir. Or thereabouts.’
Lloyd looked disparagingly at his ham salad, and wished he’d had hamburgers too. But he was trying to keep the weight off that had developed a habit of creeping on. It was bad enough being bald, and feeling his back twinge every time he stood up. He didn’t have to be fat as well.
‘Evans, Mrs Whitworth, McDonald. And Whitworth was … I don’t know. Edgy, when I spoke to him.’
‘His wife had been missing all night and his secretary had been murdered,’ said Lloyd. ‘I don’t suppose you’d have been too sanguine in his shoes.’
‘But—’
‘What’s the alternative, Tom? A conspiracy? Parker starts a fight to keep the police busy while Mrs Whitworth dispatches Sharon? Mad Mac McDonald is deputed to find the body, and Whitworth comes and bails Parker out? Drummond was an innocent bystander?’
Tom didn’t look in the least chastened as he finished off his first hamburger and started on his second. ‘Why was Melissa Whitworth staying in an hotel when she was only a couple of miles from home?’ he asked.
Lloyd smiled again. ‘I could hazard a guess,’ he said. ‘But I won’t. She says that she didn’t fancy becoming a statistic on the bypass, even if it was only two miles. She’d already had one close shave with the traffic, and she didn’t want another.’
Finch looked sceptical, as well he might.
‘I did some checking up,’ said Lloyd. ‘She booked in at the hotel at about half-past nine, and about an hour after that was joined by someone answering McDonald’s description. They had a couple of drinks – the barman didn’t notice them leave the lounge, but he came out to serve two salesmen just after eleven, and they were gone.’
‘You think that Mad Mac was getting his leg over,’ said Finch, indistinctly.
‘Precisely. I wouldn’t have phrased it as inelegantly, but that is indeed what I think. What I don’t think is that she was giving him directions to where she’d left the body.’ He swallowed some tasteless salad. ‘He happened to know Mrs Whitworth, and he happened to find the body. And that’s probably the only coincidence we’ve got.’ He deliberately didn’t say why he was of this opinion; he wanted to see what the young man did about that.
Finch did nothing but eat his hamburger, so Lloyd ate his salad, then told him anyway.
‘Parker used to employ Sharon,’ he said. ‘And he became involved with her – he’s told us that. For whatever reason, Sharon went back to her mother’s, and Parker got her the job at his solicitors. It was his opening do – naturally, his solicitors were invited. And naturally, The Chronicle sent McDonald to cover it. Mrs Whitworth and McDonald have made a date, and they end up at the hotel – arriving separately to allay suspicion.’
Finch frowned, his mouth too full to allow him to voice his obvious objections, so Lloyd steamed ahead.
‘Meanwhile Sharon arrives at the ground – possibly she was actually with Barnes, or possibly she just chats him up.’
‘We can’t shake his story that she just asked him for the time,’ said Finch. ‘I left his statement on your desk.’
Lloyd put on his glasses and picked up the papers he had brought with him. He found the statement, in which Barnes maintained that Sharon had asked him the time, and before he could answer, Parker was pushing him away, and seemed to be about to set about Sharon. The gallant Mr Barnes had pulled Parker off, and the fight had begun.
Lloyd looked over his glasses at Finch, and grunted. ‘ Well,’ he said, ‘whatever she did, she needled Parker, as a result of which he finds himself in a police cell. Who else would he ring but Whitworth? He’s his solicitor.’
‘Why did he want a solicitor?’ asked Finch, having swallowed the last of his hamburger.
Lloyd sipped his cold tea. ‘Parker is a back-street thug who has made money,’ he said, ‘He likes having the power to snap his fingers and have Whitworth come running. That’s all.’
Finch wiped his hands on the paper napkin. ‘I’d be prepared to swear that Mrs Whitworth had no idea who McDonald was when I spoke to her this morning,’ he said.
Lloyd stood up. ‘I want to know exactly what Sharon Smith did between leaving the office and getting herself murdered. All we’ve got to go on is that she was at the football match, for some reason. There were two hundred other people there, so someone must have seen her. Her movements shouldn’t be that hard to trace.’ He finished his tea. ‘If she wasn’t the victim of a random killing, then someone wanted her dead. We have to find out why before we can find out who.’ He walked towards the door and turned back. ‘And I want to know what that key opens,’ he added.
Back in the office, he formulated an appeal to the football-loving public to come forward with any information they had, however insignificant it seemed. Finch had gone tearing off to confirm with Parker Lionel Evans’s account of his actions during the evening, giving himself indigestion at the very least, and probably storing up ulcer trouble while he was at it.
Lloyd took things at a rather easier pace. He wanted badly to see the results of the forensic examination of the buildings, and while he could not be said to want it, he needed the result of the post-mortem, which Freddie was doing even now. He had toyed with the idea of sending Finch, but the lad had been working himself ragged, and he thought that it would perhaps be less than fair. He would go himself.
The super was out of the office; Lloyd left the draft appeal on his desk, and went off to join Freddie at Barton Hospital morgue, a procedure which never did his temper much good at the best of times.
Still, he thought, brightening a little even as his steps took him towards the room, with its dreadful smell of antiseptic and other, nameless horrors, at least Freddie was also male. Even Kathy was on her honeymoon, as he was reminded when he saw Freddie prepare to dictate his findings to a cassette.
‘Lloyd,’ he said, not looking up before beginning his work.
Lloyd spent a lot of time not looking at anything; he could hear what was being dictated, but Freddie’s notes were largely incomprehensible to the layman, so he waited for the abridged version.
‘That’s that,’ said Freddie cheerfully, switching the machine off with his elbow and a great deal of difficulty. ‘She died from asphyxiation. Several contusions and abrasions, none very serious. Time of death is between three and six hours from when she was found, give or take an hour or so.’
Lloyd pulled a face. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
Freddie shrugged. ‘There’s a Nobel prize waiting for the man who can find a way of ascertaining the precise time of death,’ he said. ‘Temperature isn’t much of a guide in asphyxiation deaths, so the whole thing becomes even more of a lottery.’
‘OK,’ said Lloyd.
‘She was fit and healthy. She hadn’t eaten for some hours before death, and she hadn’t been drinking. She was less sexually experienced than you would expect for a woman of her age. These days, anyway,’ Freddie added.
Lloyd smiled. ‘ Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘single meant virgin – eh, Freddie?’
Freddie’s eyes widened. ‘Did it sound disapproving? I didn’t mean it to. I really meant the opposite.’
Lloyd was grimly pleased that the evidence was going some considerable way towards disproving Drummond’s story of her having it off with someone who picked her up in a car.
‘But she had had recent intercourse,’ said Freddie, with what seemed to Lloyd like malicious timing.
Lloyd sighed. ‘ How recent?’
Freddie smiled. ‘I don’t know, Lloyd, I wasn’t there. Recent enough for it still to be detectable. Half an hour before, say. I’ve taken samples for DNA.’
Time for another rethink on Drummond. Andrews’ unspoken warning about jumping to conclusions was, Lloyd grudgingly conceded, entirely justified, and his rap over the knuckles for dismissing the young man’s story was probably less than he deserved.
‘An observation,’ said Freddie, breaking into Lloyd’s morose thoughts.
‘Go on,’ said Lloyd, tiredly. Just a few more years until he could retire and let someone else take on the human race in its less lovable moments.
‘These days, more and more people are using condoms if they go in for casual sex. One wasn’t used in this instance, as you’ll have gathered.’
‘So – taken in conjunction with her below-average sexual experience, you think she in all probability actually had a steady relationship with whoever she was with?’
Freddie beamed at him. ‘ I don’t think anything. I have made an observation. I will go so far as to say that she possibly knew the person quite well. But you think what you like.’
Thanks, thought Lloyd sourly. The only person with whom he knew Sharon had had a relationship was the only one who couldn’t possibly have been in that car with her.
‘I think I want the result of Drummond’s blood test,’ he muttered.
‘It’s gone off to the lab, Lloyd. I can do no more than that,’ said Freddie. ‘It’ll be at least two weeks before we get the result.’
A line from an old song was running in Lloyd’s head, despite his efforts to ignore it. You can’t make love on a cycle, Michael, like you can in an automobile. So perhaps the car story was true. Another scenario began to present itself. He wasn’t alone in jumping to conclusions – Parker had admitted that he might have done. Sharon had gone to meet someone; whoever it was had failed to turn up, and she had checked the time, to make certain that she wasn’t early. Parker, seeing her speaking to Barnes, thought that he was the new boyfriend, and caused the trouble from which Sharon walked away. The person she had expected to meet at the match had arrived late, to find that the match had been abandoned. He had driven away from the ground, and had caught Sharon up. She had got into the car with him.
Why go back to the football ground? Well, he had known it would be deserted, and perhaps they didn’t have much choice about where they met. A married man? In any event, despite Parker’s apparent belief, Sharon had been far from promiscuous, according to Freddie. That had to make it relatively easy to find out who was in the car with her, surely? The thought brightened him a little.
But then there was Drummond. Watching all this. And reacting very strangely indeed. Lloyd couldn’t shake Drummond off, couldn’t cast him in the role of innocent bystander. If Finch found any connection at all between Drummond and Sharon, Drummond would be back in custody, complaint or no complaint.
‘Do you think she put up a fight when she was attacked?’ he asked.
‘Hard to say. She was strangled from behind – not much opportunity to fight back. She certainly struggled – some minor grazing and bruises, as I told you, so she might have left her mark on him.’ He smiled. ‘But then again, she might not have.’
‘Was she definitely killed where she was found?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Nothing to suggest otherwise, apart from the sawdust – which she could have picked up when she was alive, of course. She could have been killed in situ.’
He smiled again and Lloyd waited patiently for the punch line.
‘But then again, she needn’t have been,’ said Freddie.
Pathologists were such a comfort.
Melissa left Parker’s offices in Malworth, got into her car, and checked over the notes she had got on her investigation into Sharon Smith’s background. She had checked on Sharon’s school straight from Mac’s so that the editor didn’t find out just how long her lunch-hour had been.
The notes weren’t up to much. Sharon had left school at sixteen, having taken five CSEs and passed them, but she wasn’t what you would call academic. She had played games, but not to any particularly high standard. The woman was clearly having trouble remembering who she was, which was reasonable, given the seven-year gap since Sharon had left, but it was evident that Sharon had not made her mark on school life.
She had forced herself to ring Simon and get the details of her background. The police had been to see Simon too, of course. No, he had said, they hadn’t been too bad. He had tried to telephone her, but she had been at lunch.
Melissa thought again about her lunch-hour, and the high came back, just like before, despite the fact that her hand had been forced. It had been blackmail, but it had been therapeutic blackmail, if such a thing was possible.
The Parker Development offices were closed on a Saturday, and the security guard had never heard of Sharon. Mr Parker had been in earlier, but he had left.
Melissa drove through a misty Malworth, checking her watch. She mustn’t be late for the vet; she had to pick up Robeson. She was waiting to come out of a side street when she saw Detective Inspector Hill; she had seen a lot of her when she did the column on the aftermath of rape, in the wake of the recent attacks. She had been very helpful.
Melissa frowned as she watched the inspector take a note from under her windscreen, read it, then screw it up and throw it into one of the bins that adorned every other lamp-post in Malworth in its attempt to regain the Best Kept Town trophy. Then she tried to get into her car, but the key didn’t seem to work.
There was a hooting from behind, and Melissa, much to the annoyance of everyone around, cautiously changed lanes and turned right instead of left. She pulled up beside the inspector. ‘Can I help?’ she asked.
Detective Inspector Hill turned quickly, startled by her voice. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you. I … I can’t unlock the door.’
‘Have you tried the passenger door? The lock’s probably collapsed or something.’
She had seen Detective Inspector Hill very angry – angry enough to say things about the judicial system which Melissa had felt it prudent not to publish; she had seen her relaxed. She had seen her control a quite sizeable press conference. She had never seen her flustered.
‘I … yes. No – it’s silly. Someone’s superglued the locks.’ Her face was pink, her eyes bright. She tried to laugh it off without much success.
Melissa opened her passenger door. ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ she said.
She looked as though she was going to refuse, but she got in. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘ It’s kind of you.’
‘Can I give it to the news desk as a filler?’ asked Melissa. ‘Vandals strike at copcar?’
‘If you like.’
Melissa smiled. ‘Just a joke,’ she said. ‘ I won’t tell them if you don’t want me to. I’m not paid to give them news.’ She pulled back out into the traffic, occasioning more hoots. ‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘Oh – I live on the High Street. It’s not far.’
Melissa wondered about the note under the windscreen. If she was a newshound, she would drop off the inspector and come back and fish for it in that bin. But she wasn’t a newshound, and she had a cat to fetch from the vet’s. Besides, police officers were probably always having this sort of thing done to them by those whose lives they had made less comfortable.
She glanced at Detective Inspector Hill, who sat stiffly beside her, her cheeks still burning, her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead.
She didn’t suppose it always produced that reaction, though, she thought, and sneaked another look at her watch. Between five and six, the vet had said, and she didn’t have any spare time. Perhaps she could telephone Simon, get him to go to the vet. Or even come back after she’d taken Robeson home.
As the thought crossed her mind, she heard the hum and beat of the street-sweeper as it made its noisy way along the wide pavement, saw the driver get down and empty one of the bins into its trailer. He would obviously beat her to it, whatever she did.
Oh, well. She wasn’t a newshound anyway. She pulled up as instructed, outside a shop, and Detective Inspector Hill got out.
Few women could make her feel that she didn’t do enough with herself, as Lionel had observed when making a clumsy pass at her during her own house-warming party. She was very confident of her womanhood; girls like Sharon Smith didn’t make her question herself at all, unless they had just told her they were sleeping with her husband.
But Detective Inspector Hill could manage it, even when she was uncharacteristically agitated, without saying a word. She wore as little make-up as Melissa, and her hair was short and natural too. But she looked elegant and right; she was somehow dressed for early autumn, not in summer jeans and T-shirt and an old cardigan in case it got cold. Her skirt and jacket were autumn coloured; the crisp shirt was a perfect contrast, the shoes, even the bloody tights were right. She could have understood if Simon had wanted someone like her. Someone with a touch of class, someone who made more of herself without making herself a dressmaker’s dummy.
And now she was covered in cat hairs, which she was absently attempting to brush from her skirt. Melissa felt awful.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I had to take the cat to the vet yesterday afternoon – I’m just on my way to pick him up.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘And thanks. I’m sorry I wasn’t very good company.’ She looked a little ashamed. ‘ I believe Sharon Smith worked for your husband,’ she said. ‘ It must have been a shock for him.’
‘I expect it was,’ said Melissa, speaking before thinking. The bitterness was evident. But for once, the usually sharp Detective Inspector Hill hadn’t seemed to notice.
The fog was closing in again as Colin straightened up from his task, and looked out of the garage door. He stretched; the aching in his bones was wearing off now that he could relax.
He had checked the bike minutely, just in case it had been ‘accidentally’ scratched or otherwise abused when it was in police care, but it seemed to be all right. He was getting away from his parents, who had spent every minute since they had got home demanding to know what was going to happen.
How did he know? He had made an official complaint; that wouldn’t make him any more popular with the constabulary, but he had had no choice. After he had told him, the chief inspector had just looked at him; Colin had seen the disbelief, and the anger. Then he had terminated the interview, and left him with a uniformed sergeant and Constable Harris.
His mind had been prepared for all sorts of reprisals, but they had given him a complaints form to complete, and then he had been dumped back in the cell. It had seemed to have changed nothing, but something must have happened, because a little later he was being taken away by his parents, and the fear had at last left him. He was going to enjoy watching these two getting their comeuppance.
And Lloyd. Patronising him, calling him Colin all the time like that, so convinced that he was her boyfriend, for some reason. Why he thought that was a mystery to Colin. And he still didn’t believe him about the car.
‘Colin?’
Colin moved the powerful beam of the portable light in the direction of the voice, dazzling Chief Inspector Lloyd, who shaded his eyes.
‘Mr Drummond to you,’ said Colin.
‘I’d like to ask you some questions about the car you saw,’ he said, walking in further.
Colin still held the beam pointing at him. ‘ You believe me now, do you?’ he said.
‘I have my job to do,’ he said, lowering his hand as his eyes grew more accustomed to the bright light. ‘You weren’t telling the truth, and I knew you weren’t.’ He was blinking, but he didn’t put his hand back up.
‘I thought I might end up in hospital if I did,’ said Colin.
‘I can’t discuss that with you. But I need to know about that car – if you really saw one.’
Colin was on his own private territory. In the garage, with its faint, ever-present smell of oil and petrol, the stone floor on which the soles of his boots made a scraping sound when he walked, its shelves full of boxes of spark plugs and spares. In summer, the air was perfumed by the damp grass that clung to the mower; that had faded into the heavy autumn smell of newly oiled machinery, put away for the winter. Lloyd had no right. No right.
The beam cut past Lloyd, out into the fog. Colin put down the lamp, and the garage was lit again, distorted shadows on the walls, on the floor, on Lloyd’s face.
‘I just saw its rear lights,’ he said.
‘Did you get a glimpse of the colour – an impression of the size? Did you see any of the number?’
Colin shook his head, and the huge shadow on the wall moved with it.
‘You said you followed her – why did you do that?’
Colin picked up a rag and crouched down beside the bike, polishing the paintwork. Before, he had been too scared to think straight. But he wasn’t scared any more, not now that he was back where he belonged. He shrugged, the cloth moving slowly over the mudguard until it gleamed. ‘I just wanted to see she was all right,’ he said.
He looked up at Lloyd, and reached up for the lamp, bringing it down to his level. It made Lloyd look like a devil now, his features lit from underneath. He moved to address the petrol tank, polishing it with the same lazy stroking motion.
‘Why didn’t you just talk to her? Why follow her?’
Colin’s hand stopped. ‘ I didn’t know if she’d want me to talk to her,’ he said. ‘After what had happened. I wasn’t sure what to do. Then the car picked her up.’
‘Where?’
Colin smiled. Lloyd should have asked these questions a long time ago. He must have been chewed out. Sent round here to get told what he would have been told if he hadn’t been so convinced that Sharon had been his girlfriend.
‘Byford Road.’
‘Whereabouts in Byford Road?’
About halfway down towards the village.’
‘When?’
He thought about that. ‘About half eight, just after.’ He snapped off the light, and for a moment, the darkness seemed impenetrable. Then light from the fog-obscured early evening skies filtered in, and he could see Lloyd. ‘I’m finished in here,’ he said, walking out past him.
Lloyd came out, and Colin pulled down the door.
‘Why did you follow the car?’ he asked.
‘I thought she might be getting a lift home,’ said Colin. ‘I thought I could talk to her when she got out. But the car went back up to the football ground and parked.’
‘And she began to remove her clothing?’
Colin was turning away from him as he spoke; he checked the movement, and turned back with a smile. ‘Not then,’ he said. He walked towards the side door of the house, where the kitchen light gleamed in the misty twilight, through the glass of the door. The truth, lies. Colin smiled. Lloyd would never know which was which. Only he knew. ‘After they’d been there about ten minutes,’ he said. ‘So I left. Wasn’t much point in staying, was there?’
‘But you didn’t just leave, did you? You drove off without lights, at eighty miles an hour, in thick fog.’ Lloyd walked up to him.
‘And you want me to believe that what she was doing in the car didn’t bother you?’
‘I didn’t drive away from there like that. I just drove round for a while. Then I fancied going fast.’
Lloyd looked annoyed with himself. That pleased Colin.
‘So when did you actually leave the football ground?’
‘About nine,’ said Colin. ‘I reckon.’
‘And she was still in this car when you left?’
Colin opened the kitchen door. ‘Sod off,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of answering questions.’
Jake Parker’s eyes widened. ‘You’re the last person I expected,’ he said.
He had thought that it might be the police again, but he had not thought that he would find Lionel Evans offering himself up. He might have preferred Evans’s office, or better still, his car. But he was here now, and Jake wasn’t about to waste any time.
‘I had to come,’ said Lionel.
‘Did you?’ said Jake shortly, and walked into the living-room, where he lit a cigarette, doubtless ruining the Laura Ashley soft furnishings.
Lionel closed the door quietly and followed him in. ‘ Jake – you accused me of killing Sharon!’
Jake turned to face him. ‘So I did,’ he said.
‘You can’t believe that!’ Lionel was pale; his eyes were wide with fear.
‘What do you expect me to believe? I tell you that she came to see me – next thing she’s dead!’
Lionel was shaking his head. ‘No. No, you’re wrong, Jake. You’re wrong. I didn’t even see Sharon last night!’
‘What?’ Jake removed his cigarette from his mouth. ‘You were on the balcony with me, Lionel! If you’re going to lie, watch who you’re lying to.’
‘But … but I—’ Lionel sank down on the sofa, then looked up. ‘The police have got someone,’ he said. ‘It’s in tonight’s—’
‘What are you trying to tell me, Lionel? Someone else conveniently took it into his head to kill her? They pick up anyone remotely suspicious after a murder – that’s why they’ve got him. He had no motive – you did.’
Lionel looked bewildered. ‘Why shouldn’t I think it was you?’ he said. ‘ You had as much to lose as I did.’
Jake took a puff of the cigarette, and some pleasure in releasing smoke in the direction of the swathes over the curtains. ‘When we saw her,’ he said slowly, ‘I went to talk to her. She was talking to this guy as though nothing at all had happened, and I lost my rag – I grabbed her and pushed him away. I’d have knocked the little bitch’s head off if he hadn’t pulled me off her.’
Lionel blinked at him. ‘If … if you were that angry with her,’ he said, ‘ why aren’t the police questioning you?’
‘Because I got arrested for disturbing the peace,’ said Jake. ‘I was in a bloody cell all evening. But where were you?’
What colour Lionel had had left drained away. ‘Home,’ he said. ‘I went home.’
‘You panicked, and killed her, that’s what you did. And do you know what that means? That means I get some chief inspector here before breakfast wanting to know what my little difference of opinion with her was all about!’
‘What did you tell him?’ Lionel asked, alarmed.
Jake closed his eyes. ‘I made out I was jealous,’ he said. ‘I saw her chatting up a bloke, and I told the chief inspector that I was jealous. All right?’
‘But she wasn’t,’ said Lionel, still trying hard to hold on to the threads. Was she?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jake, with another sigh. ‘I didn’t ask.’
Lionel looked worried. ‘It would hardly have been like her,’ he said.
Jake snorted. ‘Who says it wasn’t like her? She wasn’t the goody two-shoes she made out, Lionel. Whitworth could tell you that.’
‘Simon?’ Lionel squeaked. Jake didn’t think his voice could move up any more registers.
‘Simon,’ he confirmed. ‘Didn’t you know?’
Lionel shook his head slowly, wonderingly. ‘ How do you know?’ he asked accusingly.
‘She told me.’ He sat down. ‘ They’ve been turning your office into a regular little love-nest, Lionel.’
It had been his own fault, Jake supposed, for sending her there in the first place, in what had been one of his few acts of selfless generosity. Evans had needed someone to look after the office, and she had wanted to work somewhere closer to home.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Lionel.
‘Oh, yes.’ Jake got to his feet again, as anger once again swept over him. ‘I did her a favour, ungrateful little cow, and that was how she repaid me.’ He leant down towards Lionel. ‘But killing her was a very bad idea,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘I didn’t! You can’t think I did!’
No. Jake didn’t think that at all. But he very much wanted Lionel to think that he did. The law were sniffing round, and he had a proposition to put to Lionel. But he had to get him good and scared first.
‘Who, then?’ he asked. ‘Your fairy godmother?’
‘Let him go?’ said Simon.
Melissa nodded, and stroked Robeson, who was sleeping off the anaesthetic.
‘But why?’
She sat down at the table, and picked up her knife and fork. ‘They don’t confide in newspapers,’ she said, with a shrug.
Simon felt irrationally as though Melissa was somehow responsible, because the evening paper for which she worked had told him that a man was being held, and now she was telling him that he wasn’t. ‘Was it the wrong man?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know!’ She began to cut up her chicken. ‘They wouldn’t say yes or no when they were asked if he had been eliminated from their inquiries,’ she said, her tone conciliatory. ‘Which probably means that he hasn’t been – they’re usually quick to point out if someone really isn’t a suspect any more.’
Simon looked at his plate. ‘ Do they know why she went to the match?’ he asked.
Melissa swallowed. ‘They haven’t said.’
Simon pushed his plate away. ‘I didn’t tell them everything,’ he said.
Melissa’s face coloured a little. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply.
‘I said she hadn’t told me her plans,’ said Simon. ‘But she did, sort of. She said she was meeting someone.’
Melissa put down her knife and fork. ‘What did she tell you?’ she asked.
‘Just that.’
‘It won’t be much use to the police, then,’ she said.
Simon should have told the police about Sharon’s appointment, but everything was so confusing; he had needed time to think. Then, when he saw the headline in the paper, he had thought that his information wouldn’t have helped. Now Melissa was telling him that nothing was settled, and he had to make a decision.
‘It might have been him she was meeting,’ he said, with a nod at the paper, and very little conviction. ‘This man that they’ve had to release.’
‘So what?’
‘I think I’d better tell them,’ he said.
Melissa pushed her plate away too. ‘I don’t see the fact that she was meeting someone had got anything to do with it,’ she said.
Simon shook his head. She wasn’t usually illogical. ‘Don’t you?’ he said. ‘ I think the police will.’
‘Oh, do what you like!’ she said, and ran upstairs.
Simon looked after her, puzzled by her reaction. He had thought he might get an argument, given the police’s unwarranted interest in her movements, and her current dislike of them; he had thought she might think that he had already told the police something which had led them on a wild goose chase, and that he should leave well alone.
He hadn’t expected her to be angry.
Lionel felt mesmerised; he watched as Jake moved, lithe as an athlete, across the room, watched as he opened a drawer, and almost passed out when he pointed a pistol at him.
‘I’ve been warned not to take the law into my own hands,’ he said conversationally.
He was walking towards Lionel with the gun trained on his head. Lionel couldn’t speak, couldn’t think; his vital functions seemed to freeze into immobility, for which he could only really be grateful. The gun was placed at his temple, and he still didn’t, couldn’t, move.
‘So we can do it legal,’ he said. ‘I can ring the police, tell them what Sharon told me.’
Lionel spun round, almost knocking the gun from Jake’s hand, but not quite. He doubted if he would have been quick enough to do anything even if he had. ‘ You can’t do that,’ he said.
‘I can. You’ve landed me right in it, Lionel. Because now that she’s dead, they’re going to be poking and prying into her affairs. Finding out what she did, who she saw, who she knew – what she knew.’ He pulled the clip from the gun.
It was empty. Lionel breathed again. He ought to run for it now, while he had a chance, but … he had to know what Jake was going to do.
‘I can give them an edited version of what Sharon told me,’ he said. ‘Leave my name out of it, and it doesn’t look good for you, does it?’
Lionel stared at him. ‘ Do you seriously think that I’d leave your name out of it?’ he demanded.
Jake smiled, shaking his head, and reached into his pocket. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you’ll go to prison, Lionel. If they believe you, and can prove anything, I’ll go to prison too – but I didn’t kill her. You did.’
‘I didn’t!’ Lionel was beginning to wonder if he could prove that Parker had had anything to do with the fraud at all. He was beginning to suspect that he had been set up as a fall-guy from the very start. He was beginning to realise what a fool he had been.
Jake was still smiling as he took the bullets out and inserted them in the clip. One by one, they clicked into place. ‘Or there’s suicide,’ he said, pushing the full clip home, and holding the gun at Lionel’s temple again.
Lionel didn’t believe he was going to shoot him. That sort of thing didn’t happen. ‘Why would I come here to commit suicide?’ he asked.
‘You came to plead with me to give you time to get the money back where it belongs,’ said Jake. ‘I’ll tell them that I knew nothing about it until Sharon told me yesterday. I’ll deny telling you anything. I’ll tell them that there was only one way you could know that I had found out, and that was if you had talked to Sharon.’
The pistol nudged Lionel’s temple, and he almost passed out.
‘I was very close to Sharon,’ Jake continued, smiling. ‘I told the Chief Inspector. We had a good thing going, me and Sharon. You had murdered my beloved, Lionel, and I told you there was no way I was giving you time to pay the money back. I was going to the police. You pulled out a gun and shot yourself on my rented shagpile.’
It sounded almost plausible. With a loaded gun at his temple, there was no doubt that Lionel was in a less than enviable position. But neither alternative had much in it for Parker. Lionel waited for his third choice, and was not disappointed.
‘Or,’ said Jake.
‘Done,’ said Lionel. ‘ Whatever it is. Just take that gun away, for God’s sake.’
Jake’s smile vanished. ‘ Thanks to you,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to leave much sooner than I meant to, with a lot less money.’ He shook his head. ‘I could have worked something out with Sharon,’ he said. ‘A deal – something. She just wanted to protect Whitworth – she wasn’t bothered about the investors.’
Lionel was still having trouble coming to terms with this altered image of Sharon. He could believe she had been involved with Parker, just. He was a bachelor, so there was no reason why she shouldn’t have had a relationship with him. But Simon? Sharon and a married man? But then he thought of all the times they had stayed at the office together, working late. Someone other than him would have tumbled weeks ago. Melissa had – that was why she had rung him, asking about Simon’s overtime. Served her right. She should make more of herself. She could be quite a good-looking woman if she tried.
‘I’d have worked something out,’ Jake said again. ‘You didn’t have to kill her.’
Lionel shook his head. ‘I didn’t,’ he said.
Jake took the gun away, and held it loosely as he looked at him. ‘I’m prepared to make it obvious that I was involved in the fraud,’ he said. ‘Once I’m safely out of the country.’
Lionel stared at him.
‘There’s a catch,’ said Jake. ‘In return, I want it all, and I want it on Monday. Today would have been much better, but you did a bunk.’
‘I didn’t – I …’
‘Then I leave, and you do what you can to get yourself clear.’
That was more like it. A solution that left Parker somewhere the law couldn’t touch him, and Lionel with nothing to show for six months’ hard work, holding a time-bomb. ‘But if we withdraw all that cash at once—’ he began.
‘It’ll look very suspicious,’ said Jake. ‘Tough. You can still do what we planned,’ said Parker. ‘More or less.’
‘Who’s going to believe me, if you’ve already gone? The whole point was that the cash would have disappeared bit by bit, and you would still be here – you would be backing me up.’
Jake shrugged. ‘That’s your problem. Though,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘ if you really didn’t kill her …’
At last. He believed him. Lionel hadn’t relished the idea of Parker believing him to be the author of his misfortune. If the police got on to him before he could do his disappearing act, that gun wouldn’t be for ornament.
‘… and I don’t really think you did – you don’t have the guts – then there is the question of who did kill her, and you know what they say, don’t you?’
‘What do they say?’ Lionel asked wearily.
‘Murder is almost always done by your nearest and dearest,’ said Jake. ‘ Maybe Sharon and Simon had a barney, and he ended up doing her in.’
Somehow, that seemed rather likelier than their having a liaison in the first place, Lionel thought.
‘Someone killed her. If it was Whitworth, that would strengthen your hand, wouldn’t it? She knew too much, so he killed her.’
The phone rang, and Jake fairly leapt across the room to pick it up. ‘Hello. Oh – Marilyn. Thank God – where the hell is Bobbie?’
Lionel watched as Jake Parker listened, his eyes at first disbelieving, then wide with shock.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No – you did right. I’ll be there. I’m coming now.’
He put down the phone and stared blankly at Lionel. ‘ I – I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Something’s … I’ve got to go.’
It seemed inappropriate in the extremely odd circumstances to inquire politely if anything was wrong, but Lionel would not have believed that anyone holding a loaded pistol could ever have looked so completely vulnerable.