The Other Woman (9 page)

‘Where did you telephone from, Mr McDonald?' Finch asked, as McDonald jettisoned the lit cigarette through the open car window, and drew another cigarette from the packet.

‘What? Oh – to the police, you mean? Here.' He jerked his head back at the telephone box by the entrance.

‘And … where did you get the cigarettes from?'

Good, good. Most of the cellophane was still on the packet, including a ribbon overprinted with the words
MACHINE PACK
. You didn't get a full twenty from a machine; the pack was obviously new, and he had said he'd given up. Lloyd hadn't noticed; he felt more confident about the young sergeant now. And the question had fazed McDonald; he was making a business of lighting his second cigarette to give himself time.

‘The pub,' he said, when he removed the cigarette from his mouth, trying to make it look as though speech would have been impossible before doing so.

‘Which pub?'

‘The one in the village. What's it called – Sneakers?' Finch nodded. ‘Did you have a drink in the pub?'

‘No.'

‘Would anyone remember seeing you, do you think?'

McDonald drew deeply on the new cigarette. ‘No,' he said. ‘I just went in, got cigarettes and came out – there was no one else around. The machine's in the foyer. Do you think I killed her, or something?'

‘We have to ask questions,' Finch said. ‘It's our job, Mr McDonald.'

McDonald subsided. ‘Sorry,' he said.

‘How long had you given up smoking?' Finch asked.

‘Three years,' said McDonald, looking a little surprised at the question.

‘What made you buy cigarettes tonight?'

‘Look – I'd been lost in the fog for hours, I had been stood up by the lady I was supposed to be taking to this damn opening, and I was feeling sorry for myself. So I bought cigarettes. It's not a crime yet.'

‘No, sir,' said Finch. ‘ But I'll be honest with you. I find it very hard to believe that you were wandering round for four hours. Why didn't you ask someone where you were?'

‘I just didn't. And I want a straight answer. Do you think I did that?' He pointed towards where Freddie worked.

‘I don't know,' said Finch.

‘Why would I phone the police?'

Finch shrugged. ‘People have been known to,' he said.

‘Who is she, anyway?'

‘We don't know that either.'

‘You don't know much.'

‘No, we don't. That's why it helps if people tell us the truth. For all I know she could be your date.'

‘What?'

‘Who were you supposed to take to this do tonight?'

‘A woman called Donna Fairweather – she works as a typist at
The Barton Chronicle
. She lives on the Mitchell estate – I was trying to find her house when I got lost.'

Going to cover the opening of the new sports and leisure centre, and he hadn't worn a tie? Lloyd thought about that as Finch jotted down the name. ‘Thank you,' said the sergeant.

McDonald watched Finch write. ‘I tripped over a body, and I went to that phone and rang you. I waited for you, and I've been here for hours, and now I find I'm suspect number bloody one!'

‘You've been very helpful, sir,' said Finch. ‘ Thank you for your time. You just stay here – I'll get someone to drive you home.'

McDonald gave a short laugh. ‘Someone to make sure I go home and stay there?' he said.

‘Yes, sir,' said Finch, with disarming honesty.

The two men walked away from the car, and Lloyd looked at Finch. ‘Well?' he said.

‘I'm damn sure he wasn't walking around for four hours,' said Finch. ‘But – if you want a personal impression – I don't think he had anything to do with it. I think he was up to something, but it wasn't that. And people don't automatically wear ties when they go out these days.'

Lloyd smiled at the accurate interpretation of his fleeting thought. ‘Just something he regards as none of our business,' he mused. ‘Yes. I'm inclined to agree. But once we know who the victim is, we'll be in a much better position to question Mr McDonald, and that's just what well do.'

The floodlights blazed through the night as the police searched for evidence. The body was taken away, and Freddie roared off; SOCOs took away all manner of things for forensic examination. Odd pieces of building materials lying around from the site, the Coke tins and empty cigarette packets that might just give them a lead; what looked like and probably was a load of rubbish.

The DCs arrived back, and Parker's story had been filled out a little from the one he had told at the police station. The girl he had spoken to was one Sharon Smith, who had worked for him once. She had been heavily engaged in chatting up Barnes when he had seen her at the ground, and the younger man had swung a punch when she left him to talk to Parker.

Sharon Smith answered the description of the dead girl; she lived with her mother, and Parker had supplied her address. Lloyd braced himself for the worst part of all.

Two hours later Mrs Smith had identified the body, and Lloyd was a little wiser about Sharon Smith and a great deal wearier. He drove back via the scene of crime, where they were trying to get prints from moisture-beaded metal railings, examining the tarmac surface of the car park, and the rather more productive grass verges out on the pavement, taking tyre impressions and footmarks before they were obliterated, by rain or whatever else the weather might have in store. At five o'clock he went home to get some sleep and to reflect on the little he had learned.

Sharon hadn't gone out much. She didn't have a boyfriend that her mother knew of. She had always been very quiet; never had all that much to do with men. She had taken a flat of her own at one point, when she had worked for Parker Development, but she had come back to live with her mother when her father had died, and her mother couldn't cope. She had taken the job with Mr Evans then, as it was too far to travel to Parker's. It was Mr Parker who had got her it, really. He'd always been very kind to Sharon. That might have been why she was at the football ground; she certainly wasn't interested in football. Her mother hadn't recognised the key; she thought that perhaps it had something to do with work.

Sharon had loved her family, and had been loved, that much was obvious. But she had kept her feelings and her private business to herself, and her mother and sister had respected that. Which was fine when she was alive, but not much use to him now. They had given him names of people who might be able to tell him more; he had passed them on, and made a mental note to speak to Parker as soon as possible.

He switched on the radio before getting his head down for a couple of hours. The fog would disperse soon after daylight, said the weathermen, but it would be dense and widespread again that evening. This pattern, they said, looked set to continue through the weekend. Lloyd had a feeling in his bones that the forecast might turn out to be more prophetic than the Met Office knew.

He got into bed looking at the clock, and decided it wasn't too early to ring Judy. She might have been trying to ring him back, and getting no reply. She would surely have been worrying; he thought he really ought to ring.

In a spacious, old-fashioned flat which had once been part of someone's town house in the centre of Malworth, above the shop into which the ground floor had been turned, Judy turned over in the double bed in which she had spent six warm, comfortable hours, and snuggled down into the duvet, sleeping the sleep of the just, or possibly of the just very selfish, depending on your point of view.

The insistent purring of the telephone penetrated her dreams; she opened her eyes, groped for the light switch, then focused on the clock, pulling a face. Work. Who else would phone this early on a Saturday morning? It wasn't fair. It was supposed to be her day off.

‘DI Hill,' she said.

‘Just wanted to say good morning.'

She stared at the phone, then at the clock again. ‘ Do you know what
time
it is?' she demanded.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘And for your information, I haven't been to bed at all yet.'

More fool him. Judy hung up on him again, pulled the duvet over her head, and was sound asleep again without so much as a pang of guilt.

At seven, the phone woke her again, and the feeling that she might just have been a little insensitive broke through the anaesthetic of sleep. She picked up the phone. ‘Hi,' she said. ‘ I'm sorry. Honestly.'

There was the tiniest of silences before anyone spoke. When he did, Judy blushed painfully in a way that would have gladdened Lloyd's disenchanted heart.

‘DI Hill? Merrill. Sorry to bring you in on your day off, but we've got another alleged rape, and I rather think your bedside manner is called for in this particular case. I'll give you the details when you come in.'

Oh, God. Her new DCI, the God-fearing, home-loving Arthur Merrill. Why, she wondered sleepily, as she got herself ready to face the day, were rapes always prefixed with alleged? Burglaries weren't. Car thefts weren't. Muggings weren't.

Only rapes.

Melissa lay on the hotel bed alone. Mac hadn't wanted to leave; he hadn't understood.

You have to come down from a high … wasn't that what Sharon had said? And she had come down from the high that Mac had given her. Talking to a stranger was easier, she had told Mac, a little unoriginally. Perhaps making love to a stranger was even better. Sheer physical pleasure uninhibited by years of day-to-day intimacy; fantasy could take over, and carry the two of you into another sphere. She had taken reckless, shameless enjoyment in Mac, and he in her; it had given them both a kind of release from reality.

But reality had come back, she had sent him away, and had lain naked on the bed, not moving, tears streaming down her face. Eventually, the tears had stopped, and she had slept, waking to the sense of achievement which she had felt with Mac gradually reasserting itself. Daylight was breaking through the mist that still hung low over the town, and she rose with the sun as it burned away the remnants of the fog, taking with it the claustrophobia which had haunted the night before, leaving everything clear and fresh.

She ran a bath, and took her time in its warm, soapy depths. The interlude with Mac hadn't been part of her plan, but it had been good for her, despite the sudden depression. Simon might not want her – Sharon's words again, and undeniably true, again – but Mac certainly had.

Now, she had to decide what to do next. One day at a time, she had told herself. By the time she was dressed, she knew that she was going home. Simon had to be faced.

Lionel drove up Byford Road towards the football ground, and saw the floodlights on in the daylight; his heart sank a little. He had to get it back, but he had rather hoped that he could get it without any fuss. When he saw the police car, his inclination was to drive past without stopping, but he had been signalling the turn, and the policeman was walking towards him.

He wound down the window.

‘Sorry, sir – no admittance, I'm afraid,' said the constable.

Lionel swallowed. ‘I … I wondered if someone could let me in – I left something here last night.'

‘Could I have your name, sir?'

He hadn't expected it all to happen this quickly. He felt sick.

Colin's eyes opened with a start at the banging on the door knocker. For a second, he forgot where he was, or why he was there. Then he looked down at his muddy jeans, and remembered, closing his eyes again.

The knock grew louder, more determined. His parents? Oh God, had they come back early? He hadn't had time to clean up. There would be questions; he'd have to think of something.

The knock grew louder still. ‘ Police!' a voice shouted. ‘Open up!'

Colin got up slowly, aching with the effort of moving. The anger had gone; the exhilaration that his foolhardy burn-up in the fog had given him was gone. The nausea, the numbing tiredness had gone. But now he ached. Every inch of him ached.

‘Colin Drummond? Police!' Another knock. ‘Open the door!'

And he was afraid. He opened the door, and saw two policemen, but it wasn't the same ones as before.

He breathed a sigh of almost giddy relief.

Simon heard the car, and ran to the door, arriving beside Melissa as she got out.

‘Where the hell have you been?' he shouted. ‘I've been worried sick!'

She reached back in for her bag and swung it out, locking the car. ‘I tried to ring,' she said. ‘You weren't here.' She walked past him into the house.

‘You could have tried again!' he said, running after her. ‘I've been up all night worrying!'

She put down her bag. ‘Have you?' she asked, her voice cool.

‘Yes,' he said, and sat down heavily. ‘‘Where
were
you?'

‘I stayed at an hotel,' she said. ‘And I did try again, but you still weren't here.'

‘I was at work. And I got called to the police station. I didn't get home until eleven. Jake Parker got into a fight at the football match.'

She frowned a little. ‘Is that why the police car?' she asked.

‘What?' he said.

‘There was a police car outside the football ground as I passed,' she said.

‘I … no. It was just a fight,' said Simon. ‘ Jake and some man called Barnes started pushing and shoving one another.' He wanted a drink. You couldn't have a drink at nine o'clock in the morning. He got up and went over to the kitchen area. ‘Coffee?' he asked, striving to make his voice normal.

‘Yes, please. I was going to ring you again, but I fell asleep,' she said. ‘I came home as soon as I woke up, rather than ring.'

Simon filled the kettle noisily, and switched it on. ‘I'd better ring the police,' he said.

‘Whatever for?'

‘I – I told them you hadn't come home,' he said. How could she make him feel as if that wasn't a perfectly natural thing to do? ‘They came and asked for a description of you.'