The Other Woman (27 page)

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.'