The Footballer's Wife (21 page)

‘Right,' Markie said, trying to decide as he spoke if the things he was suggesting constituted wise advice or if he was just talking in order to say something – anything – to make Charly feel better. ‘Leave it for a couple of days. Then I'll get my legal guy to give you a call.'

Charly nodded.

‘Have you got enough money?'

‘I've got money stashed all round the house. Joel was like some old man; money under mattresses, in plant pots, everywhere really.'

Markie walked over and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Well, get it all out of the plant pot – or wherever else you're hiding it – and make sure you know exactly what you've got. Don't let anyone else see it.' Charly didn't seem to be taking in what he was saying. ‘Yeah?' Markie asked sternly.

‘Yes,' Charly said immediately, as if she had been jolted from a daydream.

Markie left the house and pulled his phone out to call Terry. He needed to get home and get some sleep. Only then would he get some perspective on the week's events and be able to work out what he needed to do next.

IT WAS NEARLY
a month since Joel Baldy's death and the police were no nearer to finding the murderer. The CCTV footage showed nothing incriminating. There wasn't a single person with a motive to kill Joel who had showed up on the hotel's security tapes from that night. This wasn't wholly unusual, according to the papers, who had been following this story with morbid fascination. If it had been a lower-end hotel there would have been CCTV all over the place, but due to the salubrious reputation of the place, the security cameras were at a minimum and were mostly trained on the reception area and the valet car park beneath the building. Likewise, the staff who had been working on the night in question didn't have much to offer the police. There had been the obvious sightings of Joel Baldy falling through the door on his way to the
glamour model's room in which he was found murdered, but this sort of thing was fairly normal and the reception staff had just raised a knowing eyebrow when they saw someone famous follow someone else famous to their room. Whoever it was could have got to the room by simply asking another guest if they could let them through the carded security doors. One guest, a young woman visiting Manchester for the night, had come forward and said that such a thing had happened to her on the night in question, but she had been so inebriated that she couldn't give any sort of description other than to say that it'd been a man. The computer log showed that the time she swiped her card coincided with around about the time Joel was attacked, but without a description the police were no nearer to knowing who had attacked Joel.

The press themselves had been holding their own kangaroo court and had decided that there were a number of people who had every reason to want Joel Baldy dead. Scott Crompton was high on their list. As Charly's cuckolded ex-boyfriend he had every reason to be jealous of the young footballer, but neither they nor the police had anything that linked Scott to the murder. Len Metcalfe too was being routinely hounded at his place of work and
his home. His private life was now a topic of debate across kitchen tables up and down the country. This loner of a man whose wife left him and his kids years ago and who, it seemed, had conveniently popped up at the time that Len needed an alibi. Len was keeping a dignified silence. Gone was the angry Len who only a short time ago had been in the press for hitting football stewards and abusing photographers. In his place was a calmer man, one who spoke politely to the waiting paparazzi, insisting on his innocence and pleading with them on an almost daily basis to leave his family alone and afford them some peace.

There had been a few mentions of Markie Crompton but as he wasn't directly connected to Joel in any salacious way that the press could work out yet, speculation surrounding him had been short-lived. And then there was Charly. The press hadn't come out and directly accused her of being linked to the murder; but the Great British Public had. Websites and forums were jammed full of speculation about her involvement in Joel's death. There was a lot of sympathy for Charly, but there was an equal measure of cynicism; people who thought that she'd been in it for the money and was now just biding her time, playing the grieving
widow until such a time when she could claim what money was due to her.

Tracy didn't know what to think. And she didn't particularly care. She'd thought at first that Len was going to be charged with the murder and she could sit back and gloat as he was sentenced to life imprisonment. But that wife of his was still floating around and sticking to her alibi. The one thing that concerned her –
concerned
probably wasn't the right word,
bugged
was more accurate – was that Mac hadn't called. She had left a number of messages for him and had received nothing in return. Tracy wasn't soft enough to start thinking that something might have happened to him and that a search party needed sending out; she knew when someone was avoiding her. And spending a dirty afternoon with someone in a hotel only to disappear off the face of the planet, last seen heading for a Spanish island was, in Tracy's opinion, a good example of someone who was avoiding her. Tracy was convinced that Markie was hiding things from her. She didn't think that his business partner could vanish for a whole month and Markie not hit the roof and demand that someone find him. But he hadn't. Tracy wasn't quite so stupid as to think that she and Mac had had something beautiful together;
not quite yet. But she had fancied him rotten and she didn't like being ditched.
She
did the ditching in her relationships.

Tracy was in the Leversmith district of Bradington, wondering if Michelle Bennett of 43 Thorncroft Crescent was going to be true to her word and pay up this week. Tracy had had very few altercations in the first weeks of her new role as Collections Manager
.
A few women had refused to pay her, told her to come back or tried to get their husbands to deal with her, but Tracy had a very persuasive knack, it seemed. She had thought in the first week that it might be beginner's luck but a few months into it she knew it wasn't, it was something she was genuinely good at. Michelle answered the door. She had the money ready in her hand.

‘Thanks, love, same time next week?' Tracy said.

‘Yes, course,' Michelle said, smiling nervously.

Now that Tracy had established her rounds, people just expected her and paid up. And if she did encounter someone who was unwilling to play the game and cough up the money then she'd enjoy telling them that this wasn't an option. There wasn't a downside to this job, or so it seemed to Tracy.

Hearing her mobile phone ringing, Tracy pulled her handbag up to her ear before delving in to
answer it. Private Number. Tracy didn't usually answer numbers she didn't recognise but since Mac had gone she'd changed her policy. ‘Hello.'

‘Trace, it's me. Call me from a payphone.' It was Mac.

You bastard
, she thought. Ringing up like this, totally out of the blue. ‘On what number?'

‘The one in the car.'

‘What car?' Tracy asked. But the line had gone dead. Tracy walked over to the car that Markie had lent her and opened the glove compartment. Nothing. She looked in the boot, under the mats, in the arm rest, even under the pedals, until she finally flipped down the sunshield on the passenger side and found a neatly folded piece of paper. She pulled it out and read it. Sure enough, there was a mobile phone number. Tracy looked around to see if anyone was watching her. She quickly drove to the nearest call box and jumped out. She was fully expecting it to be vandalised but it was working. She rummaged around in her pocket and found a pound. Mac was going to have to call her back. She was damned if she was standing there firing her hard-earned cash into a payphone to talk to someone on a mobile – those things ate money. Tracy pulled the receiver to her mouth. ‘Jesus!' she
shrieked. ‘Who pisses on a public phone?' She spat on the receiver and wiped it with her sleeve. She punched in the number she had memorised and waited for it to ring.

‘Hello?' Mac said.

‘Where the hell have you been?' Tracy demanded.

‘Been over in Palma.'

‘That much I know. Bit of an extended holiday though, isn't it? A month!'

‘I thought the police might come looking for me.'

‘What for?'

‘What d'you think?'

‘Bloody hell. Joel Baldy. What the hell would they come looking for you for?'

‘He owed us money, didn't he?'

‘Did he?'

‘There was a file in the office. They got a warrant to search the offices; your Markie said. Once I heard that I thought it best to lie low.'

‘Yeah, they did, but they didn't find anything.' Tracy didn't want to say too much. She wanted Mac to tell her what he was driving at. ‘What's in the file?'

‘They found nothing?'

‘Don't think they knew what they were looking for. Anyway Mac, like I said, what's in the file?'

‘When Baldy first came to Rovers we bankrolled some of his gambling. It's fairly normal stuff. These lads come to the big city, green as grass; we know they're going to make a mint once their contracts are signed and they need some cash to look the part in the meantime. A lot of the time they're so young their parents hold the purse strings till they're twenty-one. So while they could be out living the high life they're holed up in their flat waiting for Domino's to drop off the pizza their mum's ordered. We supply bridging finance. Footballers usually pay up straight away; scared to death of any aggro. But Joel Baldy wasn't a case in point. I'd been on his back for a while. He owed us twenty-five grand. I wouldn't mind but twenty-five grand was change to a little shit like him.'

Tracy was listening intently, her mind whirring.

‘I don't trust the coppers, they'll be after me,' Mac continued. ‘If they've had your Markie in, then they'll have me in, I guarantee it.'

‘Why don't you come home and stop being paranoid. Face the music.'

‘I am home.'

This was news to Tracy. ‘Well, if you're home
they'll know because your passport will have come up, won't it?'

‘No. I can't explain now. But it won't.'

Tracy wasn't sure that Mac was the innocent man he was making himself out to be.

‘Trace, I need a favour.'

Here we go,
Tracy thought, raising an eyebrow. She wasn't a big fan of giving out favours; she was far better at receiving than giving.

‘Can I come to your house tonight, when Kent's out? I'll explain everything then.'

‘Get there for ten,' Tracy said quickly. With Kent out and a desperate Mac who she hadn't seen for a month, Tracy knew if nothing else she'd be in for a good time.

*

The knock at the door came at ten o'clock sharp. Tracy answered it. She wasn't Mac's number one fan at the moment but there was one thing he was good for and it was that one thing that was the reason she had agreed to see him; not because she wanted to help him. Tracy was wearing her dressing gown and nothing underneath it. This wasn't her usual tea-stained dressing gown though;
this was a new fake silk one that she'd bought from her special knicker shop in the market. The way she slinked to the door, she half reminded herself of Joan Collins in
Dynasty
. Mac was standing at the door looking wild-eyed; she opened it and he stepped in. At first it was as if all of Tracy's efforts had gone to waste. But once the door was shut Mac moved towards her. He looked around nervously. ‘Don't worry, the coast's clear,' Tracy assured him as he ran his fingers over her, desperate to touch her after a month apart.

Their lovemaking was hard and fast and as it came to a shuddering abrupt end for both of them, Tracy slumped back on the kitchen table trying to catch her breath.

‘Still a dirty get, I see,' she said appreciatively.

‘Well, I've not spent the last month at finishing school, if that's what you were wondering.'

Tracy smiled at him as she pulled her dressing gown from the floor and wrapped it around herself. But now that he had finished what she wanted him for, she was back to loathing him again.

‘What have you spent the last month doing?' Tracy should have stopped there, but restraint wasn't her strong point. ‘Other than moping round after your ex.'

‘What's that meant to mean?'

Tracy put her hands up in a placatory manner. ‘What our Markie said, not me.'

‘Well, your Markie needs to keep it buttoned where that's concerned. It's none of his business.'

‘You could have called. I thought we were getting on.'

‘We were,' Mac said shortly.

Tracy lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Right, let's try again. Forget I said anything. What have you spent the last month doing?'

‘Seeing a few people,' Mac said without meeting her eye.

‘What people?' she asked. He wasn't getting off that lightly. Mac's gaze fell on Tracy.

‘I need a favour,' Mac said, buttoning his fly and tucking his shirt back in.

‘You said on the phone.'

‘You said that the police hadn't taken the file. Can you get me it?'

Tracy sized Mac up for a moment. ‘I suppose so. Why can't you go in and get it?'

‘I need to stay out of the office. Once you've got that file I don't mind going in but if I go in myself and get it I think they'll have me for perverting the course of justice.'

‘But it's alright for me to pervert the course of justice?'

Mac laughed. Tracy knew he was thinking that it was rich, her beginning to care now about staying on the right side of the law. His reaction only served to make her dislike him even more.

‘You can go in and pick a file up and walk out with it. Doesn't mean you're doing anything bad, does it?'