Lloyd and Judy positively winced as they walked in to a barrage of messages from those manning the murder room.
‘Malworth want Detective Inspector Hill to ring Inspector Menlove?
‘We’ve found something in those clothes you brought in, Lloyd – I think you’ll be interested.’
‘We’ve got anonymous confirmation of a car having picked Sharon up – a male voice – reckons he heard the appeal on the radio. Still no make or number, but he thinks it might have been red or brown.’
Judy, dialling Malworth, glanced at Lloyd when she heard that.
‘Anonymous confirmation is no confirmation at all,’ he said. ‘It could have been Drummond himself.’ But it was an automatic last-ditch defence of his stance over Drummond.
She spoke to Menlove, and hung up, looking a little puzzled.
‘What?’ said Lloyd.
‘Some children blackberrying along the Stansfield Road found a flick-knife in the bushes,’ she said. And now a search has turned up the ski-mask.’ She frowned. ‘ He’s never got rid of them before,’ she said. ‘Or at least, we haven’t found them if he has.’
‘Any prints on the knife?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Lots. Of the children who found it. They were playing with it, would you believe? But the mask might give us something to go on.’
Lloyd sighed. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, and turned his attention to Barstow. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.
‘We found a cutting from a newspaper in the pocket of the skirt. We’ve sent it for prints – here’s a photocopy.’ Barstow picked up a sheet of paper, and handed it to Lloyd. ‘One of your theories looks good,’ he said, with a smile.
Lloyd took the paper, and read.
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.
There was a Stansfield phone number at the bottom. It wasn’t the general number for The Chronicle, which had recently moved to brand-new offices in Stansfield from Barton, swopping hot-metal type for electronics, but it was close to it, and he suspected that it was a direct line. It seemed unlikely that it would belong to anyone other than The Chronicle’s feature editor, who had assured him less than an hour ago that she had never met the girl.
Judy rang the number, ready to launch into her Other Woman act. After listening for a moment, she hung up. ‘Melissa Fletcher isn’t there to speak to me right now, but if I’d like to leave my name … et cetera, et cetera,’ she said. She looked at Lloyd.
‘She told me she’d never met her,’ said Lloyd.
‘Perhaps Sharon never rang her.’
Perhaps. But Melissa. Fletcher, or Whitworth, or whatever the damn woman’s name was, had gone missing on Friday night, and her boyfriend had found Sharon’s body. What Lloyd had confidently dismissed as coincidence was looking decidedly odd again. The versions of events given by Melissa Whitworth and Gil McDonald were at considerable variance not only with one another, but also with Simon Whitworth’s.
But if Melissa Whitworth and Gil McDonald were somehow involved in Sharon’s death, wouldn’t their accounts of events have given one another an alibi, rather than the opposite? And, quite apart from anything else, their joint reason for murdering Sharon Smith utterly eluded him.
And there was Drummond. There was always Drummond, whom Lloyd kept trying to cast in the role of witness rather than suspect, but without success. He looked at the copy of the newspaper cutting, and shook his head. Too many little puzzles.
He doodled on the blotter in front of him. There was one way that they could get it over with quickly. One way that would frighten the life, and the truth, out of McDonald and Melissa Whitworth. He glanced at Judy, who was talking to Finch, who had just come in. Above their heads was the board where a picture of Sharon Smith smiled at him. They would be releasing it to the press tomorrow; it would be on The Chronicle’s front page by late afternoon, and the trickle of response TO the radio appeal might gather some momentum; he didn’t want still to be messing around with the Whitworths and Mad Mac if they had nothing to do with it.
‘My office,’ he called over to them, and strode out of the murder room. Judy would argue with his proposed strategy; he would just have to pull rank.
They came into his office, and sat down. Lloyd raised his eyebrows at Finch. ‘ Did you get anything from Malworth?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But I’m having a drink with some of the lads tonight – I might be able to pick up the rumours.’ He sighed. ‘And I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘But so far I can’t find any connection at all between Drummond and Sharon Smith. They really don’t seem to have known one another at all.’
‘No,’ said Lloyd, resignedly. ‘I didn’t think they would have.’
Finch seemed disconcerted; Judy smiled.
‘Don’t worry, Tom,’ she said. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
Lloyd frowned a little. Used to what? ‘Lunch-time,’ he said, standing up. ‘ Team talk. Canteen.’
He watched Finch and Judy exchange glances, and raised his eyebrows. ‘I want us all to know exactly where we’re going on this,’ he said, ushering them out of the room. ‘And what we’re doing this afternoon.’
‘Oh, but sir, I was rather hoping to take the kids to—’
The kids? He had children? He was barely more than a child himself. ‘Whatever you were hoping to do this afternoon, Finch, you’re working,’ said Lloyd.
The young man accepted the order with an air of resigned martyrdom, and another covert, but not covert enough, look at Judy, who smiled.
Lloyd felt like a school-teacher taking slightly unruly children on an educational trip as he walked along behind them to the canteen. He wanted to get the Whitworth connection settled one way or the other, and he wanted it settled now; they could listen while they ate, and they would do what he told them to do, whether they liked it or not.
He’d teach them to make veiled allusions about some aspect of his personality which seemed to amuse them.
Mrs Smith, thin and colourless, admitted Lionel, who had belatedly realised that with all his other troubles, he hadn’t yet been to pay his respects. Wanda Smith sat on a sofa, a younger version of her mother, her eyes pink-tinged with grief.
A photograph of Sharon was on the bookcase, which had no books in it. Just photographs and ornaments. Sharon had been good at her job, and she had made an effort; always smart and well-groomed, the family tendency to a lack of colour made up for with skilful make-up. Lionel always admired that in a woman.
But then, the other two-Smiths probably didn’t look like this all the time, he reminded himself.
‘If there’s anything I – or the firm, of course – can do, Mrs Smith,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do,’ she said.
No. Lionel had never had to talk to anyone who had been bereaved by murder before. By road-accidents, by illness, by suicide, even, and God knew that was hard enough. But murder? He hadn’t come to terms with it himself, and he had only known the girl for just over a year. What Mrs Smith must be going through was unimaginable.
‘Obviously, if you have any legal … well, you know. Just ring myself or Simon … Simon Whitworth. And—’ He wasn’t sure how to say this in order not to give offence, but Sharon had moved back with her mother to help out financially after her father died; he had to say it. ‘And – well, don’t … don’t worry about money, Mrs Smith.’
‘I’m all right, thank you, Mr Evans.’
There was a photograph on the television of a man in his fifties. Lionel sighed. The Smiths had had more than enough to cope with; they probably didn’t need his presence making matters worse. He had said what he had come to say.
He got up. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ he said.
Mrs Smith accepted that with a slight inclination of her head. Her eyes were dull with misery. ‘She said she’d be home by seven,’ she said. ‘I had her tea ready.’ There was a hint of what he had heard before from the suddenly bereaved; a feeling of having been let down. Sharon hadn’t said that she was going to die.
‘If … if you need any help with anything at all, please don’t hesitate,’ he said. He meant it, but it didn’t matter how he said it, it still sounded like the automatic reaction to death; meaningless and pointless. ‘ I’ll see myself out,’ he said.
He was on his way home when what Mrs Smith had said struck him. Sharon was at the football match; why would she have said that she would be home by seven?
It probably meant nothing, he thought. She’d changed her mind, that was all. But he couldn’t see Sharon doing that without warning her mother not to get her tea ready. Still … he wouldn’t have thought that she would have been in any way personally involved with someone like Jake Parker, never mind having an affair with Simon Whitworth, so it just went to show that you didn’t really know people at all.
But falling for someone was a bit different from deciding to go to a football match, he argued with himself. Anyone might behave uncharacteristically where the emotions were concerned. But going to a football match – especially one involving Stansfield Town – was hardly a great emotional upheaval. Unless Simon had changed his mind, and gone after all. Perhaps they’d had a row; perhaps she had followed him up there …
He should go to the police. Tell them what he thought. Tell them, at least, what Mrs Smith had said. But could he really do that to Simon? Why not? he argued with himself. What did he know about Simon Whitworth? Next to nothing. He had answered the advertisement, so he’d got the job. For all Lionel knew, he might be perfectly capable of losing his temper to a murderous extent.
And Lionel had known Sharon well enough to be certain that if she really had been having an affair with Simon, then as far as she was concerned, it would have been serious. Simon had presumably just been bored with his unglamorous wife; Sharon could have become an embarrassment to him.
He slowed down as he reached the road that would take him home, or up the hill to the police station. He took the turning for home. Odd, he thought. He had taken Whitworth on purely and simply to implicate him in a fraud, without a qualm. But he didn’t feel that he could go running to the police with this.
Parker had pointed out that if Whitworth was suspected of having murdered Sharon, that would rather strengthen Lionel’s hand; perhaps that was why the guilt. He couldn’t be sure of his motives in going to the police. Implicating him in a fraud – shifting suspicion – was one thing; accusing him of murder was quite another.
He would have to give it serious thought.
They hadn’t spoken; Melissa sat with Robeson on her knee, staring at the sports programme on the television, not watching it.
Simon asked if she wanted coffee, and his voice came out hoarse from misuse. She said she did; that was something.
As soon as he moved towards the kitchen door, Robeson was off Melissa’s knee like a shot; he hurtled towards the closed door, trusting in Simon to open it before he hit it, which Simon did, with precision timing that would have done justice to the Red Arrows.
‘All right, all right,’ he said, getting out his plate and the cat food. Merely watching the can being opened sent Robeson into ecstasies; he rolled on the floor, then righted himself, and wound in and out of Simon’s legs, purring loudly enough for Melissa to hear him.
‘I think food has always been his real passion,’ she called through, in an attempt at lightening the prevailing mood. ‘I don’t think he’ll care what we’ve done to him, as long as we feed him.’
Simon laughed, to try to help out, but silence reigned again, and it was only Robeson’s purr and the clink of his identity disc on the dish that was heard until the doorbell rang.
Simon went into the living room as Melissa answered the door, and she came back with a woman whom she introduced as Judy Hill. At first he thought she was a friend from work, and was relieved; then Melissa said that she was a detective inspector, and he had to work hard at not allowing the dismay to show. This was quickly followed by the intelligence that she was investigating the rapes, and he breathed again, his stomach feeling as though he was on a roller-coaster.
‘Not at the moment,’ said Detective Inspector Hill, correcting Melissa. ‘I’m here about Sharon Smith.’
The roller-coaster dived again, and Simon sat down on the arm of the sofa. His heart could sink no further.
‘You ran an advertisement,’ the inspector went on, addressing Melissa. ‘Are you the other woman?’
It could sink further, and did. An advertisement?
‘Yes,’ Melissa said, eventually, after what had been a very long time to think about her answer. ‘I’m doing a series of articles on marriage,’ she added. ‘ It was to get copy.’
Simon almost laughed. He had seriously thought that Melissa had put a personal ad in the paper, trying to find out what had gone wrong between them.
‘And Sharon Smith replied?’
All manner of terrible possibilities went through Simon’s head during the long, long silence that followed.
‘Did Sharon Smith reply?’ repeated the inspector, and Simon realised that Melissa hadn’t answered her question.
‘Yes.’
The inspector nodded. ‘ Did you interview her?’
Melissa’s eyes’ flicked for an instant to his; they held a warning, an indication that he was not to contribute to this conversation. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Were you aware of her identity when you interviewed her?’
‘Yes, of course. I imagine that she wasn’t aware of mine, however.’
She had to have been, thought Simon. She knew Melissa’s name, knew what she did for a living.
‘I’d like to know what passed between you during the interview,’ said the inspector. ‘Presumably she was having an affair with a married man.’
‘Naturally, since that was the point of the article.’
‘Did she mention a name?’
‘No.’ Melissa’s eyes slid towards Simon. ‘He might be one of many,’ she said. ‘ Sharon preferred married men, apparently. She said single men were too possessive.’
Simon couldn’t believe he was hearing this.
‘And you were aware that she was the victim of the murder about which Sergeant Finch and Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd interviewed you yesterday morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you denied ever having met her?’
‘Yes.’
Simon realised that his mouth was open. Why? Why would Melissa pretend she hadn’t met her if she had? Knowing she was dead? Knowing what the police would think if the truth was discovered?
The inspector looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘ Melissa Whitworth, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Sharon Smith on Friday the twenty-fifth of October. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything …’
Simon watched, as though it was a scene from a play. In a moment, the stage would go dark, the lights would come up, and they would take their bows.
But all that happened was that Melissa got her bag, and her coat, and was taken out to a car. The inspector said something to him; he didn’t know what. He couldn’t move from the spot.
Mac was sitting on the end of the bed; the sergeant had the easy chair. Finch had been called to the phone, and Mac’s landlady had come tripping upstairs to tell him; Mac was lucky if she bothered shouting up to him.
They both had tea, provided by his landlady, with whom Finch had flirted outrageously, until she looked about seventeen instead of almost seventy. Mac knew that the tea was for Finch’s benefit; he, who could never have been bothered with the hard work of flirting, got nothing that wasn’t in the agreement.
Finch had wanted to know where he had gone when he left the football match. Mac had told him that he had realised that Donna Fairweather lived on the Mitchell Estate; he had originally been trying to find her house, hoping that he might get invited in, but instead he had become hopelessly lost in the fog.
Finch came back in. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder, Mr McDonald,’ he said. ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Mac stared at him.
‘Now, Mr McDonald,’ he said, and they were going downstairs, out of the door, walking out to the waiting car.
The afternoon had a dream-like quality, as though it was being filmed with a soft-focus lens. The young sergeant, who had changed from being a boy who could wrap old ladies round his little finger to a man who dealt with human disaster, sat beside him in the back of a car driven by a uniformed constable.
Neighbours were peering from windows, ducking back if anyone looked in their direction. His landlady was watching, looking on with a mixture of horror and pleasure. He was being driven through Stansfield to the police station, past rows of neat semis and terraced houses, along the road that separated the red and gold of the old wood from the tall pines of the new. Through the rash of mini-roundabouts, past older, larger, more opulent houses. Another mini-roundabout, and up the hill to the police station, square, solid and sixties.
The dream became more pronounced as they went into the station, Finch on one side, the constable on the other, and Mac was taken into a room where Inspector Hill stood at a table with Melissa. A uniformed sergeant sat at the table, and Melissa was emptying out the contents of her huge bag, a procedure which had evidently already taken a great deal of time, and had just finished.
‘Empty your pockets, please, Mr McDonald,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘These items will be returned to you.’
Mac slowly emptied his pockets, one of which still contained the tape. He placed it on the desk, Melissa’s handwritten ‘Sharon Smith’ all too visible.
Melissa could have stayed for ever in the groves of Academe, eventually getting a department of her own, losing more and more of her budget every year like her own head of department had. She could have lived in the sort of part-time ivory tower still afforded to caps and gowns during term-time. She could have written learned biographies instead of fashion hints, something she had very little right to do. She had thought long and hard before making the offered move into journalism, at first serious, then – as she discovered that she liked it much more – human interest.
And if she had, would she ever have met the woman who sat opposite her now, waiting like patience on a monument for an answer to her question?
Mac. He must have told them after all. But why? She had gone to the house with him. She had even enjoyed every minute of it, which was more than most blackmailers could hope for. But he was here too, so he must have told them.
‘Is this your notebook?’ she said again.
‘You took it away from me,’ she said. ‘You know it’s my notebook.’
‘And the entry dated twenty-fifth October contains notes relating to your interview with Sharon Smith?’
‘Yes.’ Melissa looked away. Why, Mac, why?
‘Why did you tell my colleagues that you had never met Sharon Smith?’ she asked.
Melissa gave a sigh. ‘ Sharon met me as a feature writer for The Barton Chronicle,’ she said. ‘I had never met her in my capacity as Simon’s wife, which is the one in which I was being interviewed by Mr Lloyd. I didn’t think it was relevant.’
The inspector was giving her a very dubious look, which was fair enough, in the circumstances.
The inspector handed her the book. ‘Could you read your notes, please?’ she asked.
Melissa read back her shorthand. A note of what she was wearing, the odd remark about her mannerisms, her expression when she answered the questions, which were indicated by numbers. Then, normally, she would play the tape, and match the two. Not this time.
The inspector listened. ‘They don’t seem very extensive,’ she said.
‘They’re not meant to be. We promised interviewees complete anonymity. These are just notes on how she struck me. I tape the actual interview, as I imagine you know.’
The inspector glanced at her own notebook. ‘Is that the tape which was in Mr McDonald’s possession?’ she asked, marking something off.
Damn him. Damn him to hell. Was that what he was going to tell her when he told her to come to the garage? That he was going to go to the police with it? They hadn’t had a chance to speak before Lloyd and Judy Hill had turned up. Or was that when he’d told Detective Inspector Hill about the tape? When they had been having their tête-à-tête over the car? He’d made her look a liar, then told them about the tape. Why?
‘Is that the tape which was in Mr McDonald’s possession?’ she asked again. There wasn’t the usual slight raising of the voice when repeating a question, the hint of impatience that most people employed. Just exactly the same question, in exactly the same tone of voice, as before.
‘I expect so,’ said Melissa.
‘Can you tell me what is on that tape?’ she asked.
Melissa felt her cheeks go pink. ‘I’ve no doubt that you have played it,’ she said.
‘Yes, we have,’ said Detective Inspector Hill. ‘ But I’d still like you to tell me.’
Melissa looked at her. She didn’t know Judy Hill at all, not really. A purely professional acquaintance, but none the less she was someone whose ability Melissa admired. ‘Why am I here?’ she asked. ‘ I don’t believe you think I killed her, whatever she and my husband were doing.’
Was there just a hint of surprise in the brown eyes? Surely not. Just more game-playing, and Melissa was tired of it.
‘Don’t pretend you haven’t worked it out,’ she said. ‘I’m sure her reference to ‘‘the office’’ left you in as little doubt as it did me. Sharon made it very clear that she was having an affair with her boss, and her boss just happens to be Simon, as you very well know.’
She remembered Judy’s parting shot when she had given her a lift home, about Sharon working for Simon. Had she known then?
‘When did the interview take place?’
Melissa wanted one of the men back. Either of them would do. Sergeant Finch, so suspicious of her that he might as well have brought handcuffs with him. Chief Inspector Lloyd, angry and looking for someone to blame. Anyone but Detective Inspector Hill, whose brown eyes looked so implacable now.
But of course. She hadn’t put a time on her notes, or the tape. Or a venue. ‘ I’m not certain now,’ she said. ‘Some time after lunch, I think.’
‘No,’ said the inspector, shaking her head.
Melissa looked at her She couldn’t know, however certain she sounded. Only she and Sharon Smith knew for a fact when that interview took place. Sharon was dead, and she hadn’t told anyone. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It must have been – I was in Barton in the afternoon.’ She had to remember the lies. She had driven home from Barton, therefore she had to have got there in the first place.
‘You interviewed her some time after six o’clock in the evening,’ said the inspector.
Melissa flushed.
‘You describe her clothes in your notes,’ said the inspector. ‘They’re the clothes she was wearing on Friday evening.’
My God, that would be no clue in her case, thought Melissa. But Sharon Smith wouldn’t wear the same outfit all day and all evening any more than Detective Inspector Hill would. Judy Hill probably thought that no female person was capable of such a wanton act of dowdiness. But it hardly constituted proof.
‘The clothes were brand new. Bought that evening,’ said Detective Inspector Hill. ‘ We have the receipt, timed at 6.13 p. m., and the salesgirl remembers the purchase.’
‘Then I expect it was the evening,’ Melissa said. She was in trouble. Real, real trouble, and she didn’t know how to get out of it. She was used to being one jump ahead of other people in the quick-thinking stakes, but she was overmatched.
‘You know it was the evening,’ Detective Inspector Hill said steadily. ‘And it was the night you spent at the hotel.’
‘I don’t see what—’ Mac found the body. Damn, damn, damn him. If she hadn’t met him …
‘Where did you meet Sharon?’
She doubtless knew the answer to that too. She seemed to specialise in asking questions to which she already knew the answers. Melissa gave up, and told the truth.
‘At the football ground,’ she said. ‘ Where she was later found. By Mac. With whom I had just been—’
‘What time was your interview?’ asked the inspector, interrupting Melissa’s angry reply.
Again. Just a question. Not a repeat of one which she had just answered with a pack of lies.
‘Just after seven,’ she said wearily. ‘We spoke in my car. She left just before the match kicked off at seven thirty.’
‘Did you see where she went?’
‘Into the ground.’
She wrote that down. ‘Sharon left you at seven thirty, to go into the match. You booked into the hotel at nine thirty or thereabouts.’ She looked up. ‘You told Detective Inspector Lloyd that you spent that time driving back from Barton,’ she said.
Melissa looked down.
‘Where were you between seven thirty and nine thirty, Mrs Whitworth?’ There was something infuriatingly calm about Detective Inspector Hill. She didn’t get annoyed with the lies, or impatient for the truth. She just asked polite questions, to which she mostly knew the answers.
Did she already know where Melissa was, too? Or was this where the fishing really began? ‘At home,’ she said, to test the water.
She wrote that down, as she had every other blessed word. If Melissa took notes like that, her interviews would never finish. She wondered if this one ever would.
‘Not according to your husband. He rang the station to say that you hadn’t come home.’
‘I went home after I interviewed Sharon,’ said Melissa, ‘and I came back out and went to the hotel. Simon must have just missed me.’
She wrote that down too.
‘I didn’t want to be there when Simon did come in,’ she said. ‘When I got to the hotel, I met Mac. I know he told you that we’d arranged to meet, but that’s just because he thinks it sounds better than the truth.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us the truth in the first place?’ she asked. ‘Or even the second place?’
Melissa could see the end in sight. ‘Because I didn’t think that my private life had anything to do with you,’ she said. ‘Because I didn’t want to have to answer these questions. Because it’s none of your business!’
Detective Inspector Hill didn’t reply. ‘Sharon gave you no clue as to who the single man was? The one who was too possessive?’
Melissa frowned. ‘No. I got the impression that she was just generalising. Didn’t you?’
Judy Hill closed her notebook, and switched off the tape that had been recording this interview. All over the place, it seemed, there was magnetic tape recording Melissa’s private life.
‘You’re free to go, Mrs Whitworth,’ she said. ‘No charges are being brought at the moment.’
She looked a little tired as she spoke. Melissa stood up. ‘ I’m sorry I messed you around,’ she said. ‘But …’ She sighed. ‘I do
have my own life to consider,’ she said.
She was given back her bag with its belongings intact; it was
the first time in years that she had even known what exactly was
in it. She walked out of the police station, into a late afternoon
where the horizon was once again obscured by mist, and into Mac.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
She gasped. ‘Oh, that’s good. That’s really good, Mae.’
He frowned. ‘I mean – are you out on bail, or what? I didn’t
know what was happening—’
‘No, I am not out on bail. I haven’t been charged with anything.’
‘Neither have I. Let’s go somewhere,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘What?’
The hotel – somewhere. Anywhere.’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘It’s finished, Mac,’ she said.
‘You can’t blackmail someone once you’ve played your ace!’
He gaped at her. ‘ Blackmail?’ he said.
‘What would you prefer me to call it?’
‘Blackmail? Is that what you thought? Is that why you came to
the house? Is that—’
But she was walking away towards the taxi rank, getting in and
slamming the door as Mac came running up, thrusting his hand
through the slightly open window, dropping something into the
cab.
The driver twisted round as she pushed the window up, very
nearly trapping Mac’s fingers. She wished she had.
‘Just drive,’ she said. ‘Drive!’
‘Play it!’ Mac was shouting, his voice muffled. ‘Play it!’
She felt around on the floor until her hand closed over the
cassette, and she put it back in her bag, where she should never
have put it in the first place.
She didn’t look back.
Jake had gone to the hospital again in the afternoon, to be told that Bobbie had discharged herself. She hadn’t asked him to come and get her; she hadn’t even told him. My God, he thought, as he drove into Malworth, Lloyd had been going on about private justice
– if he knew where to start, he would dispense private justice all
right. But he didn’t. He didn’t know how to cope with this at all. Marilyn answered the door, and told him that Bobbie was in
bed.
‘Is she asleep?’
‘No,’ said Marilyn. ‘At least, she wasn’t when I looked in.’
Jake stood awkwardly in the hallway. ‘I just want to talk to her,’
he said. ‘ I won’t stay if she doesn’t want me to.’
Marilyn looked a little dubious. ‘Let me tell her you’re here first,’
she said.
He nodded, and went into the living-room, where he paced up
and down until Marilyn came back.
‘She does want to see you,’ she said, looking relieved.
Jake went along the narrow hall, and tapped on her door before
going in. The colour was back in her cheeks; the puffiness on her
face had gone down. He went in a little further; not too close.
‘Are you feeling any better?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘They let me come home,’ she said.
He advanced a step further; she didn’t seem to mind, so he took
another step, bringing him to the end of the bed. ‘Can I sit down?’
he asked.
A nod.
He sat down gingerly. ‘Do … do you have to stay in bed?’ he
asked.
‘No. I just felt a bit tired.’
Jake felt slightly cheered. And relieved. ‘Do you think you’re
well enough to travel?’
‘Where?’
‘France,’ he said. ‘You’ve still got the ticket, haven’t you? It’s
still valid.’
‘That was before—’ She pressed her lips together, and blinked
hard, but the tears came all the same.
Jake wasn’t good with tears. ‘I know,’ he said quickly. ‘I know.
But you said you still wanted to go.’
‘Not yet.’
Oh, God. Jake ran a hand down his face. As far as he was concerned, persuasion consisted of a backhander, financial or physical, whichever he deemed appropriate. And until now, the women in his life had needed no persuasion, or he simply didn’t bother with them. It had been as simple as that. Bobbie had always done what he’d asked, and kept any questions to herself. But everything had changed since Sharon, and he didn’t know how to go about persuasion of the gentler variety.
‘I’ll be there before you know it,’ he said. ‘I told you. Just a couple of things that I’ll have to clear up here, that’s all. I don’t know how long they’ll take.’
She looked at him, her eyes widening. ‘Alone?’ she said. ‘You want me to go alone?’
‘That’s what you were going to do before,’ he said.
She didn’t speak, just sat, propped up on one elbow, her eyes cast down at the duvet.
‘But I’ll be there as soon as I can. Then we can really go. Jetting off to the sun, Bobbie. You and me, and—’ He broke off. You, me, and a pile of money. That was what he’d always said before. But the money wasn’t coming. ‘Well – you and me, anyway,’ he said. ‘But you have to go first thing tomorrow,’ he said.
‘No.’
He licked his lips, and tried again. ‘Dennis will pick you up at six o’clock, take you down to Dover—’
‘No.’
She had to go. He couldn’t expose her to more danger than he already had. She had to go. ‘You’re going,’ he said. ‘No arguments.’
‘What sort of trouble are you in, Jake?’ she asked.
Deep trouble. Jake smiled. ‘No trouble.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not going,’ she said.
‘You won’t be alone. I’ll tell Dennis to go with you – he’ll stay with you. He’ll make sure nothing—’
‘I’m not going.’
Jake rubbed his eyes. ‘Look – Dennis is going to be here at six o’clock tomorrow morning—’
‘I’m not going.’ He knew when he was beaten. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. But
promise me you’ll stay here. In the flat. Promise me.’
‘What’s going to happen if I don’t?’
He looked at her. ‘Just promise me,’ he said.
For a moment, he thought he had lost even her trust, as she just
looked back at him, a question in her eyes if not on her lips.
She nodded slowly. ‘I promise,’ she said.
He got up, relieved and suddenly desperately tired, as if the
adrenalin on which he had been surviving had suddenly been
withdrawn. He reached out to pat her hand.
She pulled it away, with a shudder.
It was almost dark by four o’clock now that the clocks had gone back. It got dark earlier and, at the moment, it got foggy earlier. That was good. On a Sunday, Malworth High Street was deserted; the wide thoroughfare that on weekdays and Saturdays was lined with parked cars and thronging with shoppers and office workers was quiet and empty. The shops were closed and, in some cases, shuttered.
But Colin wasn’t interested in the shops. He was looking at the window of the flat above the greengrocer’s, waiting for a light to go on. The street lamps had come on; dusk was growing into night. As he watched, a light appeared in the window of one of the other flats; in the alley, the lamp over the door to the flats was switched on. But her flat remained in darkness. She wasn’t home yet. But she would be coming home.
Colin pushed the bike across the road, watching the reflections of the street lights play over the polish. It was black. Black, and shiny and fast. He pushed it into the alley, right along to the other end, where the lane at the back led to the riverside area that they had redeveloped now. When he was a child, he used to come down here and play in the derelict warehouse, climbing crumbling walls until adults chased him off.
He left the bike in the deep shadow of the block of craft shops and luxury flats; no one would see it there as darkness fell. Across the road, across the park, down to the riverside, where the muddy bank could be relied upon to provide him with the implement he needed. He gouged a large stone from the soft earth, and washed it in the river before carrying it back with him.
Walking back to the alley, he paused at the lane end, but there was still no one about. At the other side lay High Street, dead and deserted, wisps of misty vapour twisting round the white light of the street-lamps. The alley was dark now, save for the splash of light above the door. He checked the name-plates. No one called Lloyd. Two couples, and a married woman. That had to be her, and she wasn’t his wife. She was someone else’s. But she seemed to live alone, so the chances were that she would come home alone. He stood back a pace, and pitched the stone swiftly and accurately at the light.
The tinkling of glass, and darkness. He moved quickly out into the street, but no one came to the door. After a few moments, he strolled back into the alley and waited in the shadow.
Everything was ready for her.
Lloyd had finally let Tom go at about half-past four; half an hour later, Judy escaped from the station. She let herself into Lloyd’s car, and waited for him, having a sneaky and much-needed cigarette with the windows down. Smoke drifted out, already creating a little patch of smog beside the car as it hung in the mist.
Eventually, the door opened, and he got in beside her.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well what?’ He started the car, and began to manoeuvre his way out of what seemed to Judy like an impossible position in the car park.
‘Well, I don’t suppose Andrews congratulated you on your super wheeze,’ she said.
‘At least it worked,’ said Lloyd, looking over his shoulder. He turned the wheel very fast to his right, and straightened the car just before it made contact with the Superintendent’s.
‘What about the tape? Don’t you think that that’s just a touch suspicious? And Melissa Whitworth didn’t know what had happened to it, I’m sure.’
Lloyd signalled right. ‘For the moment, we can’t prove that it’s anyone’s business but theirs,’ he said. And I don’t think we ever will. Mad Mac and Mrs W have lied in their teeth so that no one found out about their tuppenny-ha’penny romance.’
Judy wasn’t that sure. The post-mortem suggested that it had to have been Simon Whitworth who picked Sharon up and went back to the ground with her. But she let that go for the moment. ‘So – are you still a chief inspector?’ she asked.
‘Just about. Andrews was going on about their being quite likely to sue for wrongful arrest, her husband being a solicitor and all that – but I doubt if her husband’s opinion will be sought.’
‘But you didn’t for one minute think that either of them had killed her, never mind both of them,’ said Judy. ‘You still don’t.’
‘No. I just thought they would be frightened enough to tell the truth, and they were.’
Of course they were. Threatening to boil them in oil would probably have frightened them too. Their tuppenny-ha’penny romance, she thought, a little sadly. Lloyd had a good line in putting people down. But what about Sharon’s tuppenny-ha’penny romance? Didn’t he even think that that was worth pursuing? It had to be. She had been with someone, and her relative inexperience in these matters hardly suggested that it would be anyone other than Whitworth.
Her boss. They really should have thought of that in the first place. She looked at Lloyd from under her lashes, so that he wouldn’t see her looking at him, and watched as he leant forward over the wheel, waiting for a lorry which laboured up the hill. She had fallen for the boss. It was the one thing that irked her about it, really; it was so clichéd. Cars. Other people’s flats. Hotel bedrooms. That’s what married men meant. And Sharon preferred that? It had to have been a fairly recent preference, if the post-mortem findings were anything to go by. But McDonald had listened to the tape too, and he had confirmed that that was what Sharon had said – and that she had said Simon Whitworth sometimes hated her. But he had also said that he thought she had been lying.
Judy thought she must have been lying too, at least about preferring to have an affair. No one could prefer it. In fact, the sheer logistics of having an affair with a married man had been one of the reasons that Judy hadn’t done so seventeen years ago when she first met Lloyd. Amongst other things, none of which were concerned with morality, the idea of furtive couplings had not appealed. And it hadn’t appealed to Sharon all that much, presumably.
‘Surely it has to have been Whitworth?’ she said. ‘ This man in the car? Or are you still convinced that Drummond’s lying about that?’
Lloyd smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not now. But if he’s telling the truth, then it wasn’t Whitworth.’
‘Who else?’
‘I don’t know. But at the time Drummond was doing his Peeping Tom act, Whitworth was being telephoned at home by none other than Jack Woodford.’
Oh. Judy hadn’t known that.
‘It must have been one of her other non-existent boyfriends,’ said Lloyd, pulling out.
‘She wasn’t sleeping around with married men,’ Judy said firmly. ‘Whatever she told Melissa Whitworth. Not according to Freddie’s findings.’
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘But I think that might have been a slight exaggeration on Mrs Whitworth’s part McDonald said that she had been asked why a married man, and she said that she preferred that to a possessive single man. A brief romance with Parker, and then Whitworth. Just two,’ he said. ‘ Which makes sense with Freddie’s findings.’
Just two. The sum total of Judy’s relationships. And Sharon had gone to see Jake Parker; had Lloyd been right in the first place? Had they made love when Sharon visited him? Judy tried to put herself in Sharon’s place, something she was finding increasingly easy to do. If the circumstances were conducive, could she imagine being persuaded to make love to Michael again? If he were hurt, or in trouble, or miserable … if she felt he needed her? With painful honesty, she knew that it wouldn’t be out of the question. Was that what Sharon had done?
‘Perhaps she was with Jake,’ she said.
‘Not if Drummond really did see a car,’ said Lloyd. ‘And I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that he did.’
But that meant a third man, thought Judy. Someone who had never had much to do with men suddenly juggling three of them? For Freddie to have remarked on her inexperience, she really had to have had very few sexual encounters, and yet it couldn’t have been Whitworth in the car. Her eyes widened a little.
‘Sharon didn’t actually come right out with it to Melissa Whitworth,’ she said.
‘What?’ Lloyd waited at the Junction, signalling right.
‘She seems to have given her enough information to put two and two together – but she didn’t actually say that it was Simon Whitworth she was talking about. Supposing it wasn’t?’
Lloyd grew interested.
‘She made it clear she was having an affair with the boss – but which one? Couldn’t it have been Evans?’
Lloyd nodded slowly. ‘But it wasn’t Evans who claimed not to know what she had been wearing at work and then described her clothes with total accuracy,’ he said. ‘And it wasn’t Evans who gave Colin Drummond a beating.’
Judy frowned. The two incidents seemed to her to lack a connection. ‘Whitworth didn’t beat him up either,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Lloyd thoughtfully. ‘Two policemen did.’
‘Anyway – I thought you just said you believed Drummond?’ she asked.
‘I know,’ Lloyd sighed. ‘But every time I say it, my instinct shakes its head.’
She smiled.
‘I don’t believe that Sharon died as the result of a lovers’ quarrel,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe Drummond, and I’m damn sure that Parker knows more than he’s saying.’ He flicked the indicator down, and began signalling the left turn. ‘So let’s call on Jake Parker,’ he said.
So much for getting home early.