The Other Woman (21 page)

Sunday. Colin got up, and risked shaving now that his lip had gone down a little. It hurt, but he looked rather better than he had.

His mother hadn't stopped; Colin would swear she had been going on all night, full of righteous indignation about what they had done to her Colin. His father, on the other hand, was deeply suspicious of the whole business; he inclined to the chief inspector's belief that Colin had been involved with Sharon Smith in the first place.

Colin was glad that they had been away on the actual night; they may have been given a report by their ever-vigilant next-door neighbour, but at least they had missed him staggering home, using the bike like some sort of Zimmer frame as he had pushed his battered body along.

If his mother had seen that, she would have been camped out on the chief constable's doorstep. She hadn't asked him or herself why the police officers had done it, but his father had, obliquely. Colin had shrugged. He wouldn't be able to shrug when it came to a court hearing, but he would think of something.

He wished, almost with a smile, that he was black. Racists, he could say. All police are racist. And they would have swallowed that. As it was, he was white, middle-class, late teens, in gainful employment in one of his father's shops, and hardly what a court of law would see as a natural target for corrupt coppers.

And he almost wished that his father would do more than simply look sceptical and grunt the odd question to which he did not expect an answer, and even that only out of his mother's earshot. He should stand up for himself, not let himself be brow-beaten by her into agreeing with her every word. Colin didn't. But then again, if his father suddenly found some backbone at this stage it would be very awkward all round, so it was possibly just as well.

He went out, opening the garage door, smiling at the bike which gleamed in the sun that had already broken through the mist. He still felt stiff, but he thought he could ride her now.

He pushed the bike out on to the street, and started her up. He'd told the chief inspector what he had seen. Twice. And he still didn't believe him. He didn't like having his word doubted. And Chief Inspector Lloyd had seen him scared; Colin didn't like that, either. And he'd thought he could scare him again, turning up without warning. Coming round to the house like that, coming into the garage. How dare he come into the garage? It was private. It was Colin's space, where he could get away and work on the bike and think. His father used it to put the car away and take it out again, but for nothing else. How dare Lloyd invade his privacy like that?

He drove, mindful of speed limits and lights, into the centre of town, and had turned into a deserted High Street when he saw Lloyd and some woman coming out of one of the alleys which ran along the side of the shops. He slowed to a stop before they saw him, his foot on the kerb, revving the bike gently, as he watched them get into a car.

His curiosity overcame his desire to get out on to the open road and drive to where he could open the bike up and put her through her paces; instead, he followed them at a discreet distance, using what sparse traffic there was to keep out of sight, to find out where they were off to so early on a Sunday morning.

Malworth police station, as it turned out. She didn't look as though she was going to help with their inquiries. Then he saw her wave to a couple of policemen who were going on duty. She obviously worked there, and he was dropping her off.

He liked the idea of spying on Lloyd going about his private business, just as he had probed into his.
Have you got a girlfriend, Colin?
What business is it of yours, Chief Inspector Lloyd? He continued to follow Lloyd's car as he headed towards the river. At the lights, he took the Stansfield turn, and Colin went the opposite way, out into the countryside, to the disused airfield where he could let the bike go.

It was dangerous; the concreted wartime runways were crazed and broken, and high, strong weeds pushed up through the cracks, making the surface uneven, with sometimes as much as six inches between paving slabs. The old huts had been all but destroyed by wind and weather and vandals, and sheets of rusted corrugated iron lay unseen just beneath the grass. The bike would buck and rear like an untamed horse, threatening to throw him. But it wasn't enough, not now.

He sat on the bike, looking round at the desolation. This morning wisps of mist still hung almost motionless in the air, giving the derelict buildings a ghostly air. It was easy to imagine it busy and full of suppressed excitement, as the pilots waited for the next mission. He'd have liked to have been a wartime pilot. The airfield would have been blacked out when they got the call to scramble; he imagined himself climbing into the cockpit, in charge of a machine that would take him soaring into the air to join a skyful of others on a night raid. No lights; just menacing dark shapes moving against the stars, droning steadily through the night to rain their deadly cargo on the enemy.

He worked in one of his father's clothes shops.

Sometimes he would pretend, on the bike. He had never got caught before. Once, they had chased him, but he had lost them, weaving through Malworth's lanes and alleys where the car couldn't follow, back to the garage and safety. Engaged by enemy fire, but mission successful. This time he had been shot down in enemy territory, but that had happened to the best of them. And he had escaped, like the best of them. He was ready for another sortie.

His father had two shops; one in Malworth, and one in Barton. He hated his job; he hated the customers, hated his father for the calm way in which he had accepted his son's being turned down by the air force. You can always work in the shop until you know what you want to do, he had said.

He had longed to be out there in the heat and dust of the Gulf, flying low-level precision-bombing raids, banking away from the explosion which would light up the night sky behind him as he flew back to base over white moonlit sands to a desert runway and a hero's welcome.

You wouldn't have been out there, his father had said. These men have trained for years. They're not eighteen-year-old kids. He hated his father.

And the police. He felt again the helplessness when the policemen stood over him as he lay on the pavement. Not doing enough to hospitalise him, and have people asking questions. Just enough to hurt. Then the dread when two more of them arrived at the house. The day-long fear at the police station, and Lloyd, tricking answers out of him, asking personal questions, coming into his garage without asking, without waiting for an invitation that he would never have got.

And it had been early, he realised. Very early, when Lloyd and that woman had come out of that alley, talking and laughing together. Perhaps she was his wife. Colin smiled to himself, and started the bike again. But then, perhaps she wasn't.
Have you got a girlfriend, Chief Inspector Lloyd?
He got on to the road, and drove back into Malworth.

Perhaps it would be worth finding out a little more about her.

Jake had never felt helpless in his life; he had always been the boy the other kids were afraid of at school. He had always had an answer – he had even had an answer to Sharon's little bombshell. There was always a way out – helplessness was for people like Lionel Evans, born losers; it wasn't for him. But he felt helpless now.

Marilyn had rung him against Bobbie's express wishes, and had told him as much as she knew. Bobbie wouldn't see him last night, and he had eventually taken the nurse's advice, and gone home to get some sleep, though he would hardly classify the guilt-ridden night of tossing and turning as sleep.

She had finally agreed to see him that morning. To start with she had been almost businesslike, apologising for not being available when Dennis called, explaining that she had been unable to fulfil her commitments, as though she had been caught up in a traffic jam. She was trying desperately, heart-breakingly, to build a wall of indifference to what had happened, her eyes bright with anger and pain.

But the wall thankfully crumbled; she started telling him, speaking in a low monotone, and he listened, his helplessness growing. He didn't know how long it would be before she could travel; he didn't, he realised, even know if she still wanted to go. He could never make it up to her; he could never take the memories away. He had made promises he could no longer keep, but he could still give her a better life than she had had, if she would let him.

He said he was sorry, over and over again. He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. Bobbie, who didn't quite accord with the image he had been creating for himself in Stansfield, was the only woman for whom he had ever given a damn, and it was his fault that this terrible thing had happened to her.

She wouldn't let him touch her, and he didn't have the words to tell her how he felt about her.

‘Do … do you still want to come away with me?' he asked eventually.

She nodded; he was relieved, but it wouldn't help in the short term. He had to sort that out for himself. Everything had changed yet again, and the plan would just have to change with it. He knew how to sway with the punches, but this was below the belt.

There was a brisk knock, and a woman of about his own age came in. The kind that would have suited his image, the kind that would find him vulgar, and would bore him stiff.

‘Who are you?' he asked suspiciously.

She glanced at the bed, and smiled briefly. ‘My name's Judy,' she said. ‘I'm a friend of Bobbie's.'

He looked at Bobbie for confirmation, she nodded slightly.

‘I'll go, then,' he said, feeling awkward. He supposed a woman friend was a better idea, in the circumstances. He stood up, and bent down to kiss Bobbie's cheek, but she stiffened as he got close to her. He picked up the keys that she had left for him on the cabinet by her bed, and tried to smile, but he wanted to cry.

He walked from the room, and tried to remember that he was Jake Parker, and Jake Parker was
never
helpless.

Simon Whitworth was shown into an interview room, where two men already sat. One of them he recognised as Sergeant Finch.

‘Mr Whitworth – thank you for coming in,' said the other man. ‘I'm Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd – I believe you've met Sergeant Finch. I met your wife briefly, yesterday.'

Oh. Melissa hadn't said. She had seen Sergeant Finch, like he had. She hadn't mentioned any other visits from the police.

‘It may be nothing,' he said. ‘ But Sharon told me that she was meeting someone on Friday evening.'

‘Why didn't you tell me that?' Finch demanded to know.

Whitworth tried to excuse himself, but they were lame excuses, and the chief inspector indicated as much. He hadn't thought it was important, he had forgotten, he had meant to mention it, but somehow …

He gave up, worried about the impression he was giving. He was more worried by the time Lloyd had finished with him; if he had any more information that could help the police and was keeping it to himself, it would give him sleepless nights from now on. It would; but for the moment, it was information that he still had no intention of imparting.

‘Did Sharon ever mention someone called Colin Drummond to you?' Lloyd asked.

‘No,' said Simon. That must be the one they'd been holding.

‘And she gave no indication of who she intended meeting? Or where?'

‘No. She just said she had to meet someone.'

Finch looked slightly bored. ‘So that's it, is it? She was meeting someone? And she left at six?'

‘Yes,' said Simon.

‘What was she wearing to the office, Mr Whitworth?' asked Lloyd, suddenly.

Simon knew precisely. But he didn't suppose that bosses usually knew. He'd never noticed what his secretary in his previous job had been wearing.

‘I couldn't be sure,' he lied.

‘Dress, skirt, trousers – thank, please, Mr Whitworth.'

He swallowed. ‘Skirt,' he said. ‘And a blue blouse. Yes. A skirt with a sort of blue check, and a blue blouse.'

Finch got up and left the room. Simon looked at Lloyd, convinced that he knew, that he was only making matters worse by trying to keep it quiet. He just hadn't had time; he hadn't had time to sort out his feelings. He didn't think he could cope with Melissa's hurt on top of everything else.

Finch returned with a sort of jogging suit in a clear plastic bag. ‘Have you ever seen Sharon wearing this?' he asked.

Simon shook his head.

‘And she was wearing the skirt and blouse when she left the office at six?'

He nodded. His face was growing pink; he could feel it.

‘Do you remember what shoes she wore?'

Blue leather court shoes that matched the blouse, with a tiny little fabric bow of darker blue. ‘ Sorry,' he said, miserably. ‘ Why are you … was she wearing this when you found her?' he asked.

‘Yes,' said Finch. ‘She must have changed her clothes at some point, and she didn't go home – would you know where she might have gone?'

No. Simon was beginning to think that he didn't know her at all. ‘Wherever her appointment was, I suppose,' he said.

‘Yes,' said Lloyd. ‘Thank you for coming in, Mr Whitworth.'

Was that it? Simon looked at Lloyd, but he seemed to have lost interest in him. He was looking thoughtfully at the plastic bag.

‘I'll … er … go, then.' He left the room, and the police station, and found himself almost running in his desire to put as much space as possible between it and him.

Melissa put down the phone, her heart heavy. She had no option but to do what Mac had asked. Simon had gone off somewhere without saying where he was going, probably just to get out of the house, where the atmosphere was becoming unbearable, so thankfully she had been alone when Mac had rung.

He was at the garage, he said. He wanted to see her. She saw him waiting on the forecourt, looking out for her as she drove through the business park, and she viewed him with an odd mixture of pleasure and anger. She could have driven past, but she didn't care for the possible consequences, so she pulled in.