A Shred of Evidence (20 page)

She caught his hand. “You’ll be all right,” she said. “I’d back you against the system any day. And Bartonshire’s got room for both of us, I’m sure.”

He sat down at the table with her. “Malworth’s Superintendent is due to retire this year some time,” he said. “I thought I’d go for it. Strike while the iron’s hot, and all that.”

Judy tensed up. She knew what was coming next, and she didn’t want to discuss that of all things on his first night back.

“If I got it,” he said, “I’d want a base in Malworth, and your flat’s the obvious choice.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t work,” she said.

“I’m not talking about marriage!” He leant back and attended to the meal as he spoke. “We might as well,” he said. “It’s time we put it on an official footing, anyway.”

“No, Lloyd,” she said.

“Are you saying you would make me keep on this flat even if we were sharing yours?” He turned back to face her.

“I’m saying I would make you keep on
living
in this flat,” she said steadily.

“Why, Judy?” he asked. “Why won’t you even consider our living together on a normal, everyday basis like other people?”

She looked at him. “Because,” she said, “if this turns into a row, I can just get up and leave.”

He sighed. “It’s not going to turn into a row,” he said. “I haven’t even applied for the job, never mind got it.” He got up and took warm plates from the oven.

She always forgot to put plates in to heat when she did the cooking. It drove Lloyd into a frenzy. She addressed his back-view as he dished up the meal. “You’ll get it,” she said. “If you really want it. But I don’t believe you do.”

He paused for a second in what he was doing, then turned and grinned at her. “I’d run a mile from Malworth,” he said. “Besides, I don’t think the uniform would suit me.”

Judy relaxed at last. She had been ninety-nine per cent sure that it was a bluff, but the one per cent uncertainty had made for very thin ice to skate on. Still, she must be getting better at detecting Lloyd’s play-acting. That was something.

“I just thought I’d see if a seven-week absence had made your heart grow any fonder,” he said, putting down the food, getting knives and forks.

She looked at him. “It couldn’t,” she said. “And you know it.”

He just raised an eyebrow and sat down. “Eat,” he said.

She did. Lloyd opened a bottle of wine from the fridge, and there they were, eating a meal it would have taken her a day to think about, and hours to prepare for, and too long to cook, so nothing would have been quite the way it should have been. It had taken him twenty minutes, and everything was lovely.

After the meal, they retired with their tiny cups of high-octane
coffee to the sitting room and the sofa, where Judy kicked off her shoes and curled up beside Lloyd. “I missed you very much,” she said, and kissed him, to absolutely no response.

“I understood from our telephone conversation that you had managed perfectly well without me,” he said, in a mock huff, picking up his coffee, taking a sip.

“I managed perfectly well without you, and I missed you very much.” She kissed him again. His only response was to hold his cup out of the way.

“When?” he asked, taking another drink.

She laughed. “What do you mean, when?”

“When did you miss me?” He finished his coffee in one final gulp, putting down the still steaming cup. “In the morning, at night, at home, at work? When?”

“All the time,” she said, and kissed him again.

This time he didn’t ignore her. And she hadn’t just missed him; she had been lonely. Lloyd was her best friend, her boss, her lover, even her cook now and again, as tonight. She had felt as if everyone she knew had deserted her. She had chided herself for feeling like that; he was only going to be away for a few weeks, she had known he was coming back, and she had even seen him, albeit fleetingly, on the weekends he could get away.

It was ridiculous, she had told herself, to feel somehow bereft. What about women whose men went to sea for months at a time? They didn’t go into a decline, did they?

But then, neither had she. She had enjoyed taking charge at work, and she hadn’t been sitting twiddling her thumbs at home, either. She had her own life, her own interests, which rarely included Lloyd. It wasn’t as if they ever went out much together—come to that, they quite often didn’t even see one another after work.

But always, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she had been aware of there being something missing, and she had felt very alone. She was making up for all that now, as she welcomed him home.

He sneaked a look at his watch behind her back.

She pulled away from him. “Am I boring you?” she asked.

He grinned.

“Is there a film on or something?”

He looked hurt. “Would I be bothering with some old film on my welcome-home night?” he said.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I’m recording it,” he said, and grinned as she aimed a smack at him. He disentangled himself from her and stood up.

She put out a hand for assistance, but he shook his head. “No,” he said. “You wait there.”

“I rather hoped I might be coming with you,” she said.

“Just popping into the kitchen. Shan’t be a tick.”

He was up to something. She drank her cool coffee and thought that it perhaps tasted less like tar when it was hot.

“Here we are,” he said, coming back in with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

She smiled. “I should send you away more often,” she said.

“Ah, this isn’t a homecoming celebration,” he said, and handed her the glasses to hold while he opened the bottle with a satisfying pop and didn’t spill a single drop. He poured some into the glasses, stopping at exactly the right moment for the froth to rise to the top without going over, then touched her glass with his.

“Happy anniversary,” he said, just as she took her first sip.

She almost choked. Oh, my God. What had she forgotten now? “What?” she said. “Anniversary? Which anniversary?” They had met in February, more years ago than she was now prepared to count, but it had been February. She knew that.

“The seventh,” he said solemnly.

Her eyes widened. “Have we celebrated the other six?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Thank God for that. I thought my memory had finally gone altogether.” She drank some champagne while she thought about it, and he topped up her glass.

“Why haven’t we celebrated the other six?” she asked, deeply suspicious of this so-called anniversary.

“The first two seemed inappropriate, as you were still living with your husband at the time,” he said.

A little dig at her reluctance to end her already dead marriage, of course.

“And the next two didn’t seem like landmarks, really. The fifth would have been, but you were away that time.”

She had been on the Junior Command course two years ago, but she had been kept busy, so there hadn’t been too much time to brood. She had missed him; just not as acutely as this time.

“Six seemed a silly number to celebrate,” said Lloyd. “I thought I was going to miss it this year too, but here we are.”

What was this anniversary? She had come to Stansfield seven years ago, but that had been in April. “Anniversary of what?” she asked, giving up.

“Of the time you finally let me have my wicked way with you,” he said, and glanced at his watch again. “Your actual words were that it might not solve anything, but what the hell—or some tender, romantic tosh like that—and they were uttered on Monday the seventh of September, seven years ago.” He counted down. “To the minute,” he said. “Twenty-one fifteen hours.”

She nodded, dumbstruck. She definitely hadn’t forgotten the occasion. And it had indeed been early September, she had remembered that. But not the date, and certainly not the time. Only Lloyd would have made a mental note; only Lloyd would remember to remember.

“So why is the seventh anniversary a landmark?” she asked.

“The seven-year itch,” he said. “I haven’t got it.”

She smiled. “Neither have I,” she said.

“So let’s celebrate,” he said. “We can take the champagne with us.”

Colin pushed his empty glass over the bar. “Another one in there, please,” he said.

The young barman picked up the glass, his face doubtful. “You’re not driving, are you, sir?” he asked.

“Resident,” said Colin.

“Sorry,” said the barman, cheerfully getting another. “But we’ve been told to check.”

He stood at the bar, drinking whisky and soda, wondering what had become of his life.

“Colin.”

He looked up to see Patrick Murray, and raised his glass to him in a sardonic toast. “Top of the evening to you, Patrick,” he said. “How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. This is my local.”

Oh yes. Patrick lived in the town centre, in one of those maisonettes that he and Erica had looked at.

“How is everything?” asked Patrick.

“Fine,” said Colin. “Everything’s fine. The police are accusing me of murder, my wife’s accusing me of infidelity with a minor … Everything’s fine.”

Patrick glanced at the interested barman, and took his arm. “Let’s sit over there,” he said, steering him to a more private corner of the sparsely peopled lounge bar of the Derbyshire.

Colin sat down heavily in an easy chair, and looked at Patrick, who bent his head close, speaking in a low voice.

“The police don’t really think you had anything to do with this, do they?” he asked. “Everyone’s saying that they took you in for questioning this afternoon.”

“Yes,” said Colin, nodding. “Yes. They … they think I was with her. Last night.”

“What makes them think that?” asked Patrick.

Colin shook his head and took another gulp of his drink before he launched into explanations. “Natalie had a fantasy,” he said. “About me. Unfortunately …” He smiled, pleased to have got the word out; it hadn’t been very easy, which was odd, because he’d only had two drinks, not counting this one. “Unfortunately,” he said again, with bravura, “she wrote it down.” He tossed back what was left of his whisky.

Patrick picked up his empty glass. “Same again?” he asked, and went to the bar without waiting for a reply, returning with a whisky for Colin and a half pint of beer.

Colin took his drink from Patrick with a morose nod of thanks. “They’ve taken my clothes, my shoes, my blood, even … They think I killed her,” he said.

“Ah, you’re used to all that,” said Patrick.

Colin frowned. “What?”

“They do random testing after races, don’t they? For drugs? That’s not because they think you’re taking drugs, it’s because they have to prove you’re not.”

“I’d want my money back if I had been,” muttered Colin.

“That’s more like it,” laughed Patrick. “It’s the same thing with the police. If they’ve found this … whatever it was that Natalie wrote, they’ve got to prove that you had nothing to—” He broke off. “What the hell
did
she write?” he asked. “A diary?”

Colin shook his head. “Letters.”

“Letters?” repeated Patrick, baffled. “Saying what?” he asked.

“Describing what we’d done together.”

Patrick whistled. “No wonder you’re in the shit,” he said.

“But we hadn’t,” said Colin. “It’s not true.”

Patrick sat back and grinned. “That’s your story and you’re sticking to it?” he said.

“No,” said Colin wearily. “I never touched the girl. And by next week I’ll be able to prove to Erica that she’s wrong. Because whoever was with Natalie last night, it wasn’t me, and this test will prove that.”

“Then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you? It’s all a mistake, and they’ll realize that.”

“I’ve got Erica to worry about.” Colin stared into his drink, then lifted his eyes to Patrick. “She thinks I was having an affair with Natalie. That’s why I’m staying here. I can’t go home to all that suspicion—you don’t know what it’s like.”

Patrick smiled. “I’ve a fair idea,” he said, and sipped his cold beer. “What makes her think that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She won’t tell me.” He took a gulp of his drink as a full stop. “The police made her think it. I think.”

Patrick smiled. “Sure, it’s not every man can produce evidence that he wasn’t with another woman,” he said. “You’ll be in the clear, then, won’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said Colin.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’ll only prove I wasn’t with her last night,” said Colin. “It
won’t prove that those letters weren’t true. Sergeant Finch was quick to point that out. They know that Natalie was seeing a married man. A teacher.” It was quite difficult getting the consonants not to stick to one another, he found. “They think that was me, whether I was with her last night or not.”

“Ah,” said Patrick. “I see.”

Colin frowned. “What do you see?” he asked.

“You had been going with her, is that it?” asked Patrick. “But it was over, and you were with someone else last night?”

Oh, God. “No,” said Colin. “I’ve not been seeing her or anyone else.”

“Then what the hell have you been doing?”

“When?” asked Colin, a little confused now.

“When you go out. Erica doesn’t believe you’ve been running. She says you’ve lost interest in her. And you weren’t where you should have been last night, were you?”

“No,” Colin sighed.

“That adds up to another woman,” said Patrick. “And if that’s what you were doing last night, tell the police, for Christ’s sake—you can’t afford to be a gentleman. You’re mixed up in a murder enquiry.”

Colin looked at him. It was getting hard to focus, for some reason. Tiredness, he supposed. “There isn’t another woman,” he said. “I
have
been running. There’s nothing … nothing sinister about it. I’ve just been running.”

“Pull the other one,” said Patrick.

“Why does no one believe me?”

“Because,” said Patrick, “you’ve been running all your life. But it’s only this year that that’s meant leaving Erica alone for hours on end, and not wanting to have anything to do with her when you did condescend to go home.”

Colin frowned. “Why has Erica been telling you all this?” he asked. “Are you—?”

“No!” said Patrick, offended. “What do you take me for, for Christ’s sake? She just needed someone to talk to, that’s all.” He leant closer. “Look,” he said, “I’d be the last person to preach to you. But you have to box a bit clever. Erica’s found out. All right, she’s got the wrong end of the stick about last
night, because you weren’t with Natalie, but you can’t blame her for that, can you? You have to …” He moved his shoulders a little. “Duck and weave a bit,” he said. “Finish it with this one, for one thing.”