The Other Woman (5 page)

He stood up. ‘ I'll have a word with the duty inspector,' he said.

‘Good lad. Let's get out of here.'

Mac was lost. He didn't know the town well enough yet, and all his useful landmarks had been blotted out. His desire to walk had wilted a little, but taxis weren't forthcoming in this fog.

Before the total obscurity, his life had been a bit like the weather. Clear patches, when people knew who he was and wrote earnest articles about his downfall. They blamed everything from booze to birds to betting to brains, even; he should never have been a professional footballer, according to one. He was too clever to mix happily with people whose brains had a tendency to be in their feet. He should have used his A-levels and gone to university. No wonder he'd ended up pickling his brain; dying from lack of use, it was the only way it could be preserved, he'd said. Nice one, thought Mac the journalist.

But what did the stupid sod think he'd used? How did he suppose he had risen out of the pack? Oh, sure, there were some natural talents who could practically drag the ball towards them and whack it in the net, but he had never been like that. He had used his head to think, not to knock a football around.

By the time he was playing serious amateur football, he had worked out that his opponents very rarely planned ahead unless the move had been worked out in training so often that it had become second nature. And you could always use that to their disadvantage. It wasn't teamwork; if it didn't come off he got accused of laziness. But it had worked, more often than not, and then the glory had been all his, as he had gone from good to better, and begun to grab the headlines. Almost ten years right at the top, and all the goodies that that brought.

Money – what had seemed like an endless supply. People stopping him in the street for autographs; girls clamouring for him at the club-gates. Parties, nightclubs, TV shows, sharp suits and haircuts. Marrying a model who gave up her career to have his baby. The baby had been an attempt to save the marriage; it hadn't worked.

Going abroad; sneaking out to play the casinos and find girls. It was even better over there; women were as interested in football as men, and footballers were gods in some of these countries. The angel Gabriel must have felt like this when he came up with the best chat-up line of all time, Mac had thought on more than one occasion, but had had the sense not to say so to the good Catholic girl in his arms. Getting fined for missing training. So what? He could afford it, and he didn't need to train. He didn't follow set moves like a performing animal. He did what he was paid to do on the day, and that was what mattered.

Being brought back to England in a blaze of publicity, to rescue an ailing side, but the team had gone down anyway, and in its second season in the Second Division, the club had had a cash crisis. He'd gone on the market, and he'd waited confidently for a First Division team to make an offer, but none had come. His reputation was too bad, no one wanted to risk him now that he was in his thirties. He was over the hill. Too fond of the good life, too much of a liability. It had even been suggested that the club might never have gone down if it hadn't persevered with him.

He thrust his hands in the pockets of his overcoat as the chill dampness of the evening got to him again, and he realised that he had simply been walking, without any attempt to find his way. Now, he might as well be on the moon.

Snowy winter evenings sitting on the bench; wet, cold Saturday afternoons when he wasn't even sub. Watching the team, when he could be bothered, climbing its way back up. It had got back to the First Division after two seasons of not quite making it; his contract hadn't been renewed.

Management. He shuddered. Not for him, but he'd taken the opportunity when it had been offered, at Sandra's insistence. Sacked after the first season. Then it was days in the plural that he couldn't remember, and the next few years saw him spending what he had left and what he could earn from hazy chat show appearances. Then just womanising and boozing. Then just boozing, until he'd woken up in a hospital bed, two years ago, with no memory of how he had got there.

He walked further down the road, and came to a roundabout. He took the left turn, and walked down to where there appeared a T-junction, and suddenly he realised where he was. He was in the old village, the part of Stansfield that had always been there, on which the new town had been foisted. If he went back up to the roundabout, and went straight over, up Byford Road, he would join the bypass. It was a long walk, but at least he'd know where he was going. Home, if his rented room in someone else's house could be called home.

He'd pulled himself up from as near the gutter as a man could get without slipping down the drain, and for what? So that he could see quite clearly, without the alcoholic haze to protect him, that no one remembered him except a few sports hacks, and no one wanted to know. Parker had got together a so-called all-star side to take on Stansfield for his opening, and had tried to persuade Mac to play for it, but only because
The Chronicle
had suggested it, not because he knew who Mac was. Football, he had declared in a less public moment, was something he'd never had much time for. Neither had Mac now.

He trudged back up the way he had just come, resenting the fates which had even made him turn left instead of right, thus making him retrace his steps. It was all he ever seemed to do. All he could do. Retrace his steps, retrace his life. He smiled a little reluctantly. Most people didn't have that sort of life to recall, he supposed.

He was not looking forward to the last stage of his walk. The bypass was something of a hazard for those on foot on a night like this, with only muddy grass verges instead of footpaths, and no visibility at all to speak of. But, he realised, he still thought of routes in terms of driving; he could make use of land denied to traffic. With any luck he could cut across the sports ground; there were gaps in the so-called security fencing through which youths could get into the matches for nothing.

He wouldn't voluntarily go to the matches, but he'd had to cover a couple when neither of the real sports reporters could find the time to go. Football wasn't top of his list of favourite things. It had taken a while for any of his normal drives to get back into working order; his appetite had returned first, and he began to enjoy food again. Then music's appeal had returned; he'd found his record collection being sold at an auction, and had withdrawn it from sale, though he couldn't afford anything to play it on. His enjoyment of words, dormant since his English essay-writing days, had come back to him, prompting the thought of writing for a newspaper. And finally, he had found one that wanted him.

It had had to be sport, of course. To start with. Which included football. Perhaps one day he'd be cheering Stansfield on as they rose out of their obscurity, but he doubted it. No one was cheering him on as he struggled out of his; he was having to do it by himself. He could take no pleasure in football.

Nor in women. But his eyes had begun to follow the girls at the paper as they came and went; they, of course, didn't even look at him. He was some middle-aged bloke with grey hair who came into the office now and then, old enough to be their father. He had felt frustrated, with all that new-found energy and nothing to expend it on, but he hadn't wanted a woman's company, not at first. He had simply wanted the less complicated and more immediate pleasure of a woman's body, and had satisfied the need from time to time. But there was little pleasure to be had that way, and he had begun to want more. He had thought that tonight might be different, but he had been wrong.

Shoulders hunched, jacket collar turned up against the clouds of thickening fog in which he walked, he reflected on how he had meant to be spending the night, for Donna, if the boys on the sports desk were to be believed, was a dead cert.

And even she hadn't wanted to know.

Lloyd stopped speaking, wanting to make the words disappear again. He didn't look at Judy as she got up and went out into the hall; he knew he had done it again, and he didn't try to stop her leaving. The more precious his time with Judy became, the more he wasted it. Neither working nor living with her, he hardly saw her in view of their ridiculously unsociable hours.

But no hours at work had ever been as unsociable as the last one had been. He heard the door slam, and closed his eyes. He didn't know what made him say things like that, but he always did. And he couldn't stop. He would try to; he would try to calm down, to discuss their situation rationally. But when he opened his mouth, what came out was just another grievance. She was leaving before it got any worse, and he wouldn't try to stop her. Once, she wouldn't have gone, not wanting to leave before they'd made it up. Once, he would have asked her to stay. But they both knew now that all that happened was that his wounding tongue would run away with him.

Judy's divisional DO had taken it into his head to advise her – or order her, depending on how you looked at it – to find accommodation in Malworth rather than Stansfield; there wasn't much to be done about that, given their less than official domestic setup, so she had, with considerable misgiving, moved out of the flat and into one of her own in Malworth. It wasn't her fault – she could hardly have objected to the move on the grounds that she was living over the brush with Stansfield's DCI, a fact that she had failed to mention to her superiors.

So why was he blaming her? Why did he
do
this to her? He'd done it when she was living with Michael, and he was doing it again. There had to be a reason. He wanted to be with her more than he had ever wanted anything, and perhaps, he thought bleakly, that was the problem. He couldn't be sure that she felt the same.

He heard her car finally agree to take her home, and moved the curtain aside a little, intending to watch the little green mini make its way out of the garage area. But all he saw was a blanket of thick fog, worse even than it had been.

Get home safe, he said silently. Whatever you do, get home safe.

Whitworth wasn't as useless as he looked, thought Jake, bailed to appear at Stansfield Magistrates' Court on a charge of disturbing the peace, for which he would be bound over. He hadn't even let the news about Sharon shake his professional composure, which said something for him. But now that he was running Jake back to his car, he obviously felt that the circumstances had altered, because the subject was broached.

‘What really happened?' he asked.

‘On my life, Simon, it was an accident,' said Jake, his hand cheekily on his heart, deliberately misunderstanding the question.

‘Not that,' said Simon. ‘With Sharon.'

‘Oh, Sharon,' Jake said, glancing at Simon as the car crept along through dense fog. ‘She was with this bloke, chatting him up. I just said hello and all hell broke loose.' He couldn't see Simon's face. He didn't suppose he believed him. Which was, he thought, probably fair enough.

He wasn't, after all, telling the truth.

Driving gingerly through the outskirts of Malworth, Judy slowed down to a near-stop as she came up to a tableau of police car and motorbike on the dual carriageway, and signalled right to overtake them. That must have been the siren that she had heard, she thought, a little puzzled that the incident still seemed to be in progress. It had to have been well over an hour ago now. The bike wasn't damaged, and neither was the rider.

She found herself, as she always did in these circumstances, feeling for the offender. She wondered if this was a basic flaw in her character – surely she should be sympathising with her colleagues, who had had to get out of their nice warm car to deal with him? But then, she thought with a sigh, there were apparently a great many flaws in her character.

She had left as Lloyd was getting into his stride. She had learned to do that, at least. Not to let the row get to a stage where Lloyd could and would do real damage. She had had to do one or two major repair jobs on her feelings in her time with Lloyd, and opening old wounds hurt more than first time round; he knew that, and when he was angry with her, he had no use for ethics. She had learned to live with that. The really worrying part was that she had believed they had put the promotion business behind them. Evidently not.

She shifted up a gear, and drove away from the hazy, street-lamp lit scene at the side of the road, deciding against seeing if her colleagues had a problem; quite frankly, she didn't give a damn whether they had or not.

Melissa was at the hotel, just one of the sudden crop of buildings which had sprung up on land once owned by the now defunct Mitchell Engineering works, whose existence had brought the new town into being, and which had now vanished. She had a male companion; this was not altogether unpleasant, she had decided, after a much-needed intake of alcohol.

She had arrived at the hotel, disturbed by her near-miss with the motorbike, and had sat sipping a calming whisky and soda in the long lounge and dining-room, regulation pink and grey, and quite empty. She had had two more drinks before another customer entered.

He had grey hair, and a face that she recognised, but to which she had been unable to put a name. ‘I think the barman may have died,' she had said. ‘I haven't seen him for half an hour.'

‘Hello,' he had said, smiling, holding out his hand in greeting. ‘It's Melissa Fletcher, isn't it?'

He had met her at
The Chronicle
; Fletcher was her pen-name. But she hadn't had the faintest idea who he was.

‘Mac,' he had said, and she had remembered then. He wrote a column for the Saturday edition.

He was a lot older than Simon, but not as old as the grey hair would suggest. He had blue eyes; she hadn't noticed that when they had met before.

After some moments, the youth who looked too young to be serving behind a bar had almost sidled out, clearly finding two customers a bit on the hectic side.