The Footballer's Wife (31 page)

‘Husband,' Charly corrected.

‘Whatever.' Tracy waved a hand.

‘I'm afraid that won't be possible right at this moment.'

‘Tell him I know who did it. Then we'll see what's possible, won't we? And here's a clue. It's not her fat dad.'

The woman frowned at Tracy; she'd obviously had a long day and didn't need this spiky attitude. On the other hand, Charly could see she was thinking that if Tracy had some information on their high-profile case then her superiors would be all ears.

‘Could you wait there a moment? I'll just go see if Inspector Jowett is free to speak with you.'

‘Jowett? Is he running the investigation?'

‘No, but he's involved with the case.'

‘Don't I know it, love. From what I can gather he's up to his neck. He's bent as a nine bob note. Who's in charge?'

‘Detective Inspector Hannigan. Excuse me a moment.'

The woman disappeared through a door at the back of the reception area. Charly didn't dare say anything. Markie and Tracy also stood in silence. The policewoman came back a few minutes later. ‘He'll be here in twenty minutes. Can I get anyone a coffee?'

‘She's changed her tune,' Tracy said, not caring that the policewoman had heard her. ‘Right, now you're listening, you need to get to the Library hotel. The bloke who killed Joel Baldy is booked in there. He's probably done a flit now but it'll be worth trying. It's Mac Jones.'

Markie was holding his head in his hands. He didn't want Mac stitched up for this, but he didn't want Len stitched up for it either. He wanted to save Mac's skin but Tracy had told Markie exactly how Mac had been with her and he knew that although Mac was his business partner his loyalty had to lie with his family and he meant his mum. The jury was very much out for Markie with regard to Len. If what his mum was saying was right, he wanted Joel dead.

The door swung open and a harassed-looking middle-aged man walked through the door. ‘DI Hannigan,' Markie said.

He was followed by two burly officers manhandling Mac through the door.

*

Len felt as if he had been in the interview room for hours. This Jowett fella was making his life a misery
and he felt that he wasn't going to let him go until he had a written confession. There was a knock at the door. Jowett terminated the interview and went across and answered it. The other officer sat there staring at Len. Len looked back at him nonplussed – he was only doing his job. Unlike his colleague, who seemed to be getting personal joy from trying to get him to confess to a murder he hadn't committed.

Len looked across and could see the colour draining from Jowett's face. He nodded and turned to look at Len. ‘We'll continue questioning in the morning. It's late.'

‘You can't keep me here if you've nothing on me,' Len said, sensing a shift in the room.

‘We've got fingerprints on a door handle, Len. That'll do for now,' Jowett said wearily. Len didn't know what to think, but whatever the woman who had come to the door had just said had shaken the interviewing officer and he'd run out of all enthusiasm for grilling Len.

*

Tracy watched Mac as he took in the people in the foyer. He looked at Tracy, but she quickly looked
away. ‘Where's that cunt Swing?' he shouted at anyone who'd listen. Markie looked at Charly and Tracy. No one seemed to know why he wanted to see Swing and why he was so angry with him. Surely it was Tracy that he wanted to kill in all of this? Mac was struggling and shouting. Tracy got up from her chair. ‘I'm not listening to this shit, I'm off out for a fag.'

The door leading through to the main part of the station opened and an officer stepped through. When he noticed Mac, he looked as if he'd seen a ghost.

‘Jowett,' Mac said, still struggling. The copper didn't meet his eye, Tracy noticed. This was interesting. ‘Barrel-scraping, you lot, aren't you? What've you got on me?'

Jowett looked at his boss. DI Hannigan looked at Mac. ‘We've got the lot, sunshine. Enough to throw the book at you.'

‘Some fucking paperwork that that silly bitch photocopied. Put me down for twenty-five years,' Mac said sarcastically, still pulling at the two men who were holding him in cuffs.

‘No.' Hannigan looked at Mac blankly. ‘Your shoe covers, false passports you have in your name so that you looked to be everywhere at once, your
gloves and the clothes you were wearing on the night that have Baldy's DNA all over them. I won't go on.' Hannigan looked like he'd
love
to go on. ‘So you need to tell us what happened that night instead of pretending you were sunning yourself in Spain.'

Tracy was speechless. She looked at Mac. Just as she was thinking who had led them to all of this stuff and that it had to be an inside job, Charly flew at Mac. She was too quick for anyone to stop her.

‘I hate you!' she screamed, pulling her nails across Mac's face and drawing blood. As he was handcuffed he was unable to defend himself. But Hannigan leapt into action and pulled Charly away.

‘Right. Let's break the party up, shall we?' he said, holding Charly off the ground as she kicked out, trying to get free to have another go at Mac.

THE CEMETERY WAS
situated on a bleak hillside overlooking Manchester. Joel had been advised to make a will – all young footballers were, Charly had recently found out – and one of his requests had been that he be buried rather than cremated. She thought this an odd choice for Joel. She would have thought he'd have favoured a grand gesture – having his ashes scattered across the main stand at Manchester Rovers, or being given a Tibetan sky burial. For a footballer the whole thing was very understated. But this is where he had chosen. Apparently he had been walking here one day on his own and liked the quietness and solitude. Charly found it hard to believe that this was the same Joel who needed prising away from his PlayStation. But maybe the other side to Joel that she had always suspected was really there. She just
wasn't the person he was ever going to share it with.

Charly had been in two minds whether to go. The last few weeks since Mac Jones had been charged with Joel's murder had seen Charly's emotions put through the wringer. The full details of what had happened that night had yet to emerge, but Mac had followed Joel and in what could only be a premeditated attack, had stabbed him. He was claiming that it had all happened in the heat of the moment. That he was there to pick money up from Joel and that Joel had attacked him with a knife, but Mac had gone to great lengths to make sure that no one knew he had been in the room that night: plastic shoe covers, gloves. Hair covered, clothing that wouldn't shed telltale fibres. His two mistakes had been bribing a policeman who was now himself being brought to trial and forcing the disgruntled Swing to do his dirty work for him. Swing had turned grass and gone to the police telling them everything. How Mac had got him to fly to Spain with a passport that was in Mac's name but with a picture of Swing the afternoon before the murder took place. He then sent him back to Manchester with yet another false passport the following day to go to the lock-up where Mac had left all the evidence
from the previous evening and then bury it on the moors. Mac thought that he could trust Swing, but it seemed that Swing thought that he was being taken for an all-round mug by both Markie and Mac and was willing to take what was coming to him, which wasn't as bad as it could have been as his lawyers had cut a deal due to the evidence that he had provided. Charly couldn't forgive him. Not that she knew him and he'd be losing any sleep over it, but he had known who had killed Joel and kept it to himself for weeks.

Throughout the past few weeks Scott Crompton had been a rock. As had Markie. They had both been present at the church service today; quietly watching on in the background to make sure she was OK. Charly had asked Markie that he not tell his other sisters and brother about his link to her and he had agreed, assuring both Charly and Tracy that he was going to respect their wishes and keep it quiet. Charly had been waiting for Tracy to finally confront her dad with her accusations. If there was truth to Tracy's claims of rape then she couldn't blame her. Charly, however, couldn't help thinking that secretly Tracy would have made more of this years ago if her father had really attacked her. And that as Tracy had a history of dramatics
and crying wolf, this whole episode smacked of the same.

Charly walked over to the grave. Holding her up to one side was her dad, to the other her mum. She was angry. Charly found that her feelings towards Swing and Mac were slightly more ambivalent than they were towards her deceased husband. Looking back over the time since Joel's death until the police arrested Mac, Charly knew now that she had been in shock. She was only now emerging into the cold light of day, an angry young woman. Joel was dead and both her parents were tainted by this hideous turn of events. Len had been cleared, but his reputation had been tarnished and Shirley had been charged with providing a false alibi and was currently awaiting a decision from the police whether she would stand trial or not.

Joel's dad was at the other side of the grave crying. Charly couldn't even look at him. She knew they were crocodile tears and that he was secretly delighted that his son had left the bulk of his money to him. He was welcome to it. She had been doing a lot of thinking about her time with Joel and had come to realise that what she had put up with was abuse. Shirley had been gently trying to bring her around to this, suggesting to her that
the way that Joel had treated her hadn't been normal or acceptable. She'd found it hard to see at first. But now she could. Any dealings on this level with her mum were difficult however. Taking advice about how you should allow yourself to be treated from someone who deserted you as a child was hard to take. Charly knew that she might be upright and holding it together but she was fraught.

She looked into the hole in the ground where the coffin was being lowered. She was barely aware of the crowds that had gathered at the cemetery; there was nothing to stop people attending a public place like this and they'd turned out in force. She could see people holding up their camera phones and the thought briefly entered her head that she couldn't quite believe that they wanted a photograph of a funeral. Who were they going to show it to? What sort of down-the-pub banter accompanied such a picture? But then she knew that anyone with a camera was a potential paparazzi. A picture of Charly crying at her murdered husband's funeral could probably earn some hard-up kid a hundred quid. But she wasn't going to cry. She could tell. There was nothing about this whole day which was going to make her shed another tear. She felt that
she had cried enough and now just wanted to get this over and done with.

The vicar had finished his speech, none of which had meant anything to Charly. His talk of a talented young man snatched in the prime of his life was fair enough, but the whole devoted husband bit had been way too much. They'd only been married two minutes and Charly was most definitely coming round to the realisation that Joel had been nothing short of an unremitting shit.

Charly took the vicar's cue and bent down, scooping a handful of earth and throwing it in on top of the coffin. Opposite her Joel's dad did the same thing and then let out a sob and shouted, ‘My beautiful boy.' If anyone caught Charly's face on their camera phone at that precise moment they would have made themselves more than a hundred quid. It was a look of pure disgust. For what she had married, for his father's crocodile tears, for being a victim of her own starry-eyedness and – she had to finally admit to herself – her greed.

Charly turned to walk away, her mum and dad still linking her arms. As she walked to the car where Terry was waiting for her, aware of the stares she was drawing from all around, she saw Tracy standing by a tree glaring at Len. Charly
walked straight over to Tracy and grabbed her by the arm.

‘What d'you think you're doing?' Tracy asked indignantly.

‘Not today, Tracy. Of all days, not today.'

Tracy looked down at her arm as if to indicate that Charly should think about letting go right now. ‘I'm here to pay my respects.'

‘Well, that's good of you. Your lot are over there.' Tracy could see Markie and Scott heading over to them.

Tracy watched her sons approach and then turned her glare back to Len.

‘I want a word with you,' she said, her voice cracking. ‘But not here. Your lass is right. It's no place for what I've got to say.'

Charly was shocked but tried not to show it. She never thought she'd see the day when Tracy Crompton was actually respectful of someone else's wishes when they contravened her own.

*

Tracy marched toward the Metcalfe house. It was the day after the funeral and the country's press seemed to have finally had their fill of Len's daft
head and had decamped to hound some other unsuspecting poor sod. The fact that Tracy hadn't been allowed to say what she wanted to say the previous day rankled, but even she knew that kicking off at a funeral with a load of photographers waiting in the wings to dredge up her previous history with the papers wasn't the brightest idea she'd ever had. She'd been ready for him yesterday, though. She hadn't felt sick or guilty like she had in the past; she was genuinely ready to tackle Len about what had happened between them years ago.

She hoped that Shirley wasn't there but if she was she was going to ask her politely to leave.

Tracy knocked on the door. Len answered it, the door pulling tight when the security chain reached its limit. ‘Oh,' he said when he saw that it was Tracy.

‘Can I come in?' Tracy asked flatly. She wasn't about to start begging this idiot on top of everything else.

Len quickly undid the lock and stepped back into the house to let Tracy through the door. ‘No Shirley?' she asked.