Chapter Twelve

Lloyd might have gone, had it not been for his bladder; he shouldn’t have had the tea on top of the coffee. It was his urgent need for her facilities that had changed his mind, though he wouldn’t tell Judy that. He caught her up as her footsteps started down the alley.

‘Hey, Jude,’ he called to her retreating backview, almost ghost-like in the misty darkness.

She turned.

‘You’ve persuaded me.’ He quickened his step again to catch up with her almost ghostly presence. ‘Aren’t there any lights in this place?’ he asked.

‘There’s one over the door,’ she said, trying to sort out her keys. ‘It’s not much use at the best of times, but it must have gone.’

Tell your landlord to change the bulb,’ he said. ‘This is dangerous.’ He crunched some glass underfoot, and then tripped over the step he had forgotten was there as the door opened into the equally dark entrance. ‘See?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

She closed the door and kissed him in the dark; he was glad he’d changed his mind, but he wished she would hurry up.

‘I’m letting you in on one condition,’ she said, as she put on the light, and started upstairs.

‘What’s that?’

‘That you leave the job here.’ She smiled, and carried on up, until she stopped, and turned. ‘ It could have been Whitworth,’ she said.

She was going to stand here and discuss it. It served him right for being hypocritical. ‘He was at the police station by nine fifteen,’ he said.

‘He could just have done it. He sees her, finds out that she’s told Melissa all about it, kills her in a rage, then carries on with what he was going to do – people have done that before.’

They had. But perhaps with a touch more time at their disposal. And Lloyd didn’t believe that Whitworth had killed her. Whitworth’s illusions were being shattered even as Lloyd had watched; he hadn’t found out all about Sharon on Friday night.

‘And perhaps he was at the football match,’ she said. ‘Perhaps that’s why she hung on to the key to the changing room.’

Lloyd shook his head. ‘If you ask me, the Whitworths’ sexual liaisons have nothing to do with this. I want the result of Drummond’s blood test.’ He tried to usher her upstairs.

Judy frowned. ‘You think he was with her?’ she asked.

‘Yes. After Melissa had left her stranded. He knew Sharon all right – that’s why he followed her. He’s her possessive boyfriend.’

Judy wasn’t instantly giving him The Look. He put his predicament out of his mind, and carried on with his scenario.

‘He was with her in the changing rooms. And he may not have killed her, but he saw who did. That’s what made him take off like that. That’s why he got beaten up – to make sure he kept the knowledge to himself. And Jake Parker knows who killed her too, only he wants to deal with the matter himself. That’s why he sent us on a wild-goose chase,’ he added. ‘Or hadn’t you noticed?’

Judy shook her head obstinately. ‘I don’t believe the police are involved in this,’ she said.

Fine. Lloyd put his arm round her, and headed for the flat and its plumbing. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Let’s do what you said, and sleep on it. Well see what it looks like in the morning.’

Jake got back into the car, starting the engine, and pushing in the cigar lighter as he shook a cigarette from the pack.

His heart had all but stopped when the headlights that had loomed out of the fog, and which he had expected to sweep past him as all the others had done, had suddenly been glaring into the car. He had thrown himself across the front seat, and waited until he heard the murmur of voices that meant that the Whitworths’ visitors had been admitted.

Then he had recognised the car that had sat in his own driveway a couple of hours ago. Lloyd. God Almighty, did the man never knock off for the day? He had left the car then, and stood in the shadow of the trees that lined the road, until at last Lloyd and Inspector Hill had emerged.

Lloyd had had a good look at the car; he had doubtless taken the number. It was Dennis’s car – Jake’s Mercedes was too flamboyant to park anywhere unobtrusively, and Dennis’s car had a surprising turn of speed for what looked like an old banger.

If Lloyd made inquiries, he’d find Dennis’s name on the log-book. And that would mean nothing to him at all.

The lighter popped out, and Jake applied the glow to his cigarette, inhaling deeply before easing off the handbrake and driving off into the fog.

Colin had never had to abort a mission before. He had been an inch from discovery; a millisecond from launching himself at her, when Lloyd had appeared, and he had had to stand still, unbreathing, not daring even to think, until they had shut the door.

He had hardly been able to get to the bike, his legs quivering, his heart pounding at the near-miss. Swooping down on the target only to have to bank away from a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, and return to base.

He sat on the bike, breathing hard. Then he removed the mask, stuffing it back in his pocket, wrapped round the knife. He pulled on his helmet, then pushed the bike on to Riverside, and started her up. He cruised at first, hoping to find another one; fog lay along the river, obscuring the view of the far side where they sometimes took short cuts on their own through the wood. It was a perfect night for it, and he wanted one badly.

But that might, he supposed, be pushing his luck. So he swung the bike round, and took the road to the airfield, to do the runs in the dark.

His speed and the fog made him almost miss the turn-off for the airfield, causing him to skid on the damp road. He righted the bike, steadying his speed, then slowed, and stopped at the single track road which led on to the old RAF station. He took off the helmet and carried it, half-riding, half-walking the bike on to the old runway, where he laid the helmet down, switched off the headlight, and roared away from a standing start into pitch darkness, the wind on his face, in his hair, wind that he was creating as he hurtled forwards through the still air

The bike’s front wheel flew up as it struck a join in the paving; he rode it on the back wheel, bumping down, wheeling round, revving the engine as he made the return pass, going further each time before he leant into the turn, so that he was moving faster. Faster, faster, smelling hot rubber, jumping with the bike as it met the hidden obstacles, landing, accelerating away again, his jacket billowing out. Wheeling round, head down, the engine screaming in protest, into the pall of exhaust fumes hanging in the motionless air. But it seemed to fuel the anger, and increase his frustration; he stopped before he damaged the bike.

He was on his way home when he saw one of them, all on her own, walking home through Malworth’s empty streets. He drove a long way past, bumped the bike into an alley and stopped. He removed his crash helmet, smoothed down his hair, pulled on the mask, and waited.

She didn’t make a sound once she saw the knife, and he told her who he was.

Simon watched the stars appear in the pre-dawn sky through the office window as he sat in the darkness at his desk, as he had all night. He had slept fitfully in his swivel chair, waking up at every creak of the old building, every night sound. The fog had gone, moved on by the same wind that was sending clouds to hide the stars almost as soon as they had appeared.

Six months, since he had first regarded this desk as his. Six months since they had come to Stansfield, in response to Lionel’s advertisement for a partner. Simon had spent his working life in big partnerships in big cities, where his presence or absence from his desk had been of no concern whatever to his clients. They had simply seen another partner.

The first big city had been where he had met Melissa; he had been dragged to a party at the university, and had taken her to be a student, only to find that she was a lecturer. The youngest lecturer since God knows when. She had of course had a sparkling academic record, unlike him. He had asked her out, once a couple of drinks had made him brave enough to take the rejection, but to his surprise she had agreed, even sounded enthusiastic about it.

They had seen quite a lot of one another; he never lost the faint feeling of surprise. The first time they spent the night together, he had expected to be the last; she was clearly better versed in such things than he. The first time she went home to visit her parents, he expected never to see her again. But back she came, turning up at his flat as though she really wanted to be with him. She had been writing the odd article then, doing the odd book review. His circle of acquaintances had included university professors and literary editors, with whom he had always felt a little awkward, because they had expected him to be as bright and expressive as Melissa.

She had been offered a job on a literary magazine, then, and had switched careers effortlessly, while he had still worked doggedly to improve his lot in his. They had married not long after that, he just a little surprised that she turned up. Then, he had found himself at literary lunches and book launches, chatting to editors and publishers and authors that he had to pretend to know, sometimes even to have read. Then a glossy women’s magazine had come head-hunting her. It had meant a move to London; she had asked him how he felt about that, but working in a big practice in a big city was the same job, wherever the city; they had moved to London.

Her brief had altered; then it had been best-selling authors and marketing junkets, trips to Wimbledon and Grand Prix races. He had rather liked that; he had been able to escape from the suffocating hospitality tent and watch the sport. Then she had moved into more general journalism, and he had found himself accompanying her to parties where everyone was a household name.

And still he had been a minor partner in a major partnership. The only difference that Simon had been able to detect had been that the legal work was almost exclusively on inner city development, and even more boring than before.

When he had seen Lionel’s advertisement, he had had to read it twice to make certain. Here was someone who wanted him – his expertise, his field, his line of country. Until that time, he hadn’t really thought of himself as having one. And Melissa hadn’t thought twice; she had given up her job at the magazine, and offered her services to the local paper in Stansfield, who were bowled over to have her, as they should be.

He had finally achieved something. He was Whitworth of Evans and Whitworth, not Whitworth in the Conveyancing Department. He had something concrete to offer Lionel, and he hadn’t even had to put money into the business. Melissa enjoyed working for The Chronicle more than she had the other magazines, because she was the features editor, and could instigate projects, and because she met real people, not packaged celebrities.

He had met a real person too. He had met Sharon, who had at first been a little shy of him, then opened out a little as she realised that she had to show him the ropes. He felt tears prick his eyes. Why would they all lie? Melissa, the police … but they couldn’t all be lying.

She had seemed so … so innocent. So honest. She had never read a piece of literary criticism in her life; she hadn’t been so much as on nodding terms with anyone remotely distinguished or famous. She had thought that he was clever and knowledgeable, and he had had the sheer luxury of not having to run just to keep up with her.

He supposed she had massaged his ego, but he couldn’t believe that she had employed deliberate guile in so doing. He had fallen in love with her, and she with him. She hadn’t liked the deception; she had begged him to tell Melissa and get it over with. Perhaps she had despaired of his ever doing that; perhaps that was why she had done what he had to believe she had done.

Though that hardly explained the things she was supposed to have said, and what the chief inspector had said about her having been with some man half an hour before she died. He wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.

He had been taken in. But why?

Mac lay fully clothed on the bed as the sun, obscured by cloud, rose invisibly in the sky, casting a grey light into his room. He hadn’t slept; he had smoked all his cigarettes. He had heard the rain come just after it got light; it was drizzling miserably against his unshaded window.

It had meant nothing to her, nothing at all. And he had lied for her right from the start. He had lied, first for her reputation, and then for her freedom. He had wiped that tape, he had been arrested, he had been interviewed by the police every day since it had happened. He believed that she had killed Sharon Smith, and it made no difference at all to how he felt about her.

He had been born again somewhere in the few brief hours he had spent with Melissa; he had seen hope steal over the dark horizon; he had thought, just for a moment, that he could hear someone cheering him on, that he had emerged from the desperate obscurity and become Mad Mac McDonald again. But that could never be. He had a past, but he had no future; Mac had already been down that road, and he was damned if he was going down it again.

He grabbed his jacket, rattled downstairs, and slammed the door before his landlady had time to get out of bed to see what he was up to.

Lionel pulled up outside the office. It was very early; he didn’t know how soon the fraud squad went about the business of freezing accounts and descending on suspicious solicitors.

Frances had been … well, she had been strong. And she had been supportive. She hadn’t just behaved as though he was telling her that he’d bumped the car, which he had been afraid of. She hadn’t packed her bags to get out before the disgrace, which he’d have understood. She hadn’t asked him how he could have done such a thing to her. She had listened, and she had said that Lionel must know who the best man was to defend him. He ought to put that in motion, she said, as soon as possible.

She had told him to go to the office early. She had advised against any more creative accounting in an attempt to absolve himself from blame; she thought he should simply tell them the truth. That he had been tempted, and had done what Parker had suggested. But she did think that he might want to take anything private, anything he didn’t really want policemen or anyone else picking up.

So that was why he was here. He was about to be charged with attempted fraud and embezzlement and goodness knows what all; Parker would probably get off scot free. Lionel would go to prison, almost certainly. And would be struck off without any doubt. His career, his life, was in ruins.

And yet he felt more at peace with himself than he had for the last twenty years. He frowned as he inserted his key in the door; it was already unlocked. Well, if they had done some sort of dawn raid in his absence, he would at least be able to challenge all their evidence.

But there was no sign of policemen. Burglars? Surely not. Lionel walked quietly through the office, checking each room; he literally jumped off the ground when Simon’s door opened.

He looked like death. Unshaven, crumpled, bags under his eyes.

‘What are you doing here?’ Lionel asked.

Simon looked at his watch. ‘What are you?’ he asked, and went back into his office, dragging himself back to the desk.

This hardly seemed the moment to tell him, but he might not get another chance.

Judy and Lloyd slept late; the rain had stopped the sun performing its wake-up service, and they had forgotten to set the alarm. Lloyd was always impossible when he was behind schedule in the morning; his routine for waking up was disturbed, and as a consequence it was as well to ignore him as much as possible.

Judy grabbed at the skirt that she had uncharacteristically left over the back of the chair on Saturday, when she had changed her clothes and had a bath and tried to pretend that she hadn’t been the victim of a pathetic act of revenge. She pulled her clothes on, and glanced at herself in the mirror as she raced past, coming out into the hallway to hear the hum of her battery shaver now that she had vacated the bathroom, which Lloyd had considered was not a moment too soon.

That would be wrong too, she thought. He didn’t have time for a wet shave, and that ridiculous shaver wouldn’t take the fuzz off a peach. She was proved right when he emerged from the bathroom, declaring that he looked like Desperate bloody Dan, and that they were going to the Whitworths’ again.

Judy stopped in the act of putting on a shoe while hopping about on one foot. ‘If we’re not going straight to work, why are we killing ourselves to get out?’ she asked.

‘I rang Tom while you were in the bathroom,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘ It gave me something to do while I was waiting. And I’ve brought him up to date on what we were told last night – he’ll pass it on to Barstow for the team-talk.’

Judy put on her shoe. ‘And why are we going to the Whitworths’?’

‘Because either they are involved in this, or they’re not, and I have to know one way or the other,’ he said, draping his tie round his collar, and looking round for the mirror that had been in the hall until she had put the pegs up. ‘Bedroom,’ she said.

He stood in front of the wardrobe, and called out to her as she hastily applied make-up. Clearly, calling on the Whitworths was to make their exit from the flat no more leisurely.

‘On the one hand,’ he said, ‘I’ve got Freddie telling me this girl was inexperienced with men. On the other, I’ve got Melissa Whitworth telling me she was a vamp. On the whole, I think that Freddie is less biased.’

‘So?’ said Judy, cautiously.

‘So at best Mrs Whitworth’s distress is exaggerating her impression of Sharon – and at worst—’ he came out of the bedroom – ‘she’s lying. I have to know if that’s for her husband’s benefit or ours.’

‘Or Sharon was lying,’ said Judy. ‘ To Mrs Whitworth.’

‘Why?’

Judy dabbed lipstick on to a hankie. ‘ To make damn sure she broke up the marriage,’ she said.

Lloyd looked interested, and then remembered that he was in a bad mood. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘in view of her inexperience, it’s reasonable to suppose that the man that Sharon was with was Whitworth.’

Judy shook her head in wonderment. ‘I said that last night,’ she said. ‘You said it was Drummond!’

‘And that if it was Whitworth,’ Lloyd continued, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘then he is lying about not being at the football match. And there seems little reason for him to do that, unless he saw something that he wants to keep from us. Like his wife, who was supposed to be at home at the time. Perhaps she didn’t just happen to see Sharon and pick her up again. Perhaps she was watching, and waiting.’

‘So you’ve changed your mind about police corruption and Drammond seeing the murder?’ she asked mischievously.

Lloyd scowled. ‘ No, since you ask. But I mustn’t have tunnel vision. Besides, we know these two were both involved with Sharon on Friday night, and we don’t have an ounce of proof that Drummond was. Yet.’

Judy sighed, and they went out to face Monday morning and the Whitworths. A drizzle that was barely visible, blown by a persistent wind, was soaking into everything; the warmth that had lifted the other days after the pre-dawn fog was no more. Clouds were streaking, grey and dismal, across the sky.

A lot of little puzzles, Lloyd had said, thought Judy, as they drove out of Malworth. She took her notebook from her bag, and looked through the notes, pausing at each query. Some had been resolved.

Wearing leisure suit to work? That had a cross beside it, and a description of what she had been wearing to work. And it was reasonable, Judy supposed, to change out of working clothes and into something more suitable for watching a football match, why should that entail actually buying clothes specially? That had seemed odd, but perhaps they had the answer now.

Newspaper cutting. It had been in the pocket of Sharon’s skirt; that should have suggested to them that the appointment with Melissa Fletcher/Whitworth had been made during the course of the day, and from what Evans had said, it seemed that it must have been; she had told her mother that she would be home at seven, and that would explain the change of plan. But someone who was solicitous enough of her mother’s feelings to move back in when her father died had not rung to stop a meal being made for her? Still – she would have been under some emotional stress, given what she was going to do. And perhaps she had wanted to wear something new, something special, to boost her confidence.

Along the dual carriageway, through the village, past Lloyd’s flat, over the roundabout, and up Byford Road, where Melissa had picked up Sharon Smith. And she had wanted to be taken back to the ground, but not, it would seem, in order to collect the clothes she had left there, though she still had the key.

Key. Parker had lent her the key, and she had kept it, intending to go back and pick up her other clothes. And perhaps the altercation between Barnes and Parker had alarmed her enough to forget them. But when she went back with Melissa Whitworth? Surely she would have remembered by then? And yet, she hadn’t mentioned them, or given that as her reason for wanting to go back. That was also a little odd.

Past the old post office, its grassed surrounds no longer on the Council mowing list, and obviously not on the new owner’s either. The tall, yellowing grass shifted wetly in the dismal wind. The road at the rear that once had led to Mitchell Engineering now led nowhere, and cars were parked along it, belonging to those who worked in the little offices and shops of the village. This was where Melissa Whitworth had had her close shave.

Almost ran over an unlit motorbike. That had to be Drummond. He had said that he had left the football ground at nine, and had been driving around. In which case, what had made him decide on his death or glory ride? Perhaps Lloyd was right; perhaps he had seen the murder. Or perhaps he had been murdering Sharon Smith himself. But there was nothing, either on his clothes or Sharon’s, to suggest that he had been anywhere near her; no witness, no shred of evidence. Finch couldn’t find that there had ever been any kind of connection between them. Logic said that he didn’t know her, and her history suggested that she did not have quickies in the changing rooms with men she had never met. So he had not been with Sharon after Melissa Whitworth had left her. But what had he been doing?

Further on, and the football ground was on their left, already back to normal. No blue and white ribbon, no cars and vans. Much the way it had been when Sharon went back up there with Melissa Whitworth.

Football ground. Parker and Evans were involved in a fraud over the development at the football ground. Melissa Whitworth had met Sharon at the football ground. There had been a fight at the football ground. Whitworth even took Parker back there when he had been released.

Why did Barnes start the fight? Lloyd’s question. Did Barnes start the fight? Judy wouldn’t take Parker’s word for anything.

Why did Parker change his story? Lloyd’s question again. To keep the police out of what he regarded as his business, Parker said.

Why did Drummond follow Sharon? Because he knew her, according to Lloyd. Because perhaps he was the over-possessive single man, about whom she may not have been generalising. But that didn’t accord with the evidence.

And all of them there, at the football ground. There were an awful lot of coincidences, she thought gloomily. She could see why Lloyd thought that Bobbie Chalmers was just one too many, and turned to her notes on the rape.

Lloyd was wrong. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe that someone had leaked confidential information for such a purpose. And yet, he had got rid of the mask and knife this time; why? Why was this time different? But Lloyd couldn’t be right. He couldn’t. Merrill might be right – Bobbie might know who the rapist was.

‘Are you not speaking to me?’ Lloyd asked.

She smiled. ‘Sorry. Just reviewing the situation.’

‘The situation is that we are having to go and waste more of our time with these …’ He made a dismissive noise when, for once in his life, he failed to come up with a word.

‘You’re letting them render you speechless,’ she said, with a smile. ‘You really do disapprove of them, don’t you?’

‘Don’t you?’ he asked, signalling right at the top of the hill, on the home stretch to the Whitworths’ house.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Judy. ‘ Melissa Whitworth’s all right. I don’t know him.’

Lloyd took his eyes off the road, the better to show Judy his astonishment. ‘We are about to question her for the fourth time about her movements on Friday night,’ he said. ‘For all you know she strangled that girl!’

‘With a man’s tie?’

‘Probably her husband’s tie,’ muttered Lloyd sourly. He didn’t like it when his theories were dented, even when he didn’t go along with them himself. ‘She went home to get it specially.’

‘According to your last bit of deduction, she didn’t go home at all. And I don’t believe she killed her,’ said Judy. ‘Any more than you do.’

Lloyd sighed loudly as the house, perched on its own on the edge of acres of fields, came into view in the distance. ‘How can you say she’s all right?’ he asked. ‘All you know about her is that she jumps into bed with total strangers.’

Judy laughed. ‘She jumped into bed with someone that she had met briefly. When she had had too many drinks and too much to put up with from her husband – marriage is like that sometimes.’

‘I see,’ said Lloyd. ‘You’re back on that, are you?’ On the exposed bypass, he flicked the wipers to full speed as rain misted his windscreen. ‘ If you married me, I could look forward to your hanging about hotels getting drunk and looking for rough trade, is that it?’

Judy smiled as they heard the siren; she turned to see the area car, lights flashing, indicating that it was going to overtake. It squealed to a halt outside the Whitworths’ house, and its two occupants met the man who was running down the path towards them.

Lloyd pulled in behind the police car, and Judy leapt out to see that it was Gil McDonald, of all people, who had run to meet it.

‘She’s dead!’ he was shouting. ‘She’s dead! Just … just the same way. She’s …’

And he sank to the grass verge on his knees, his head in his hands.