The Other Woman (16 page)

And she wished, with all her heart, that she didn't feel like that. They had no excuse for doing what they had done. A policeman losing his temper with a suspect was wrong, but understandable; two of them setting about a defenceless young man was quite another.

And yet she didn't know for certain that she would have mentioned her trip home at all, had she known the whole story.

If anything, it had been even better. Again, Mac had felt a moment's awkwardness when the bedroom door actually closed behind them, but Melissa's total lack of coyness didn't allow for awkward moments; she made him feel like superman, like Mad Mac again, diving for the low header and slotting it into goal. Running towards the fans, arms above his head, listening to the roar.

Mac threw his arm out of the bed, feeling for his jacket, and took out the cigarettes and Lloyd's book of matches. The tape was still in his pocket; she hadn't asked for it back.

‘Everything was fine. Really. We've been married for nine years, and we were happy. He fancied a move – he got the partnership here, and we found a cottage – oh, it's right on the main road, but it's beautiful. I couldn't have been happier. I really couldn't. For maybe a month,' she added bitterly.

‘What happened then?'

Mac lit a cigarette, and wondered if he'd have to give up sex again in order to give up smoking. Why did you buy them? the sergeant had asked. Because he had been fed on a diet of movies in his formative years, and that was the only way the director could indicate what had taken place off-screen. Nowadays, it was the smoking that shocked people. He had needed a cigarette last night to complete the act, as he had always done. He hadn't wanted to smoke after his recent loveless encounters; this was different. He smiled, reminded of an old joke.
Do you smoke after intercourse? I don't know, doctor, I've never looked
.

‘I have to get back to work,' she said. ‘It's quarter past three.'

‘To find out all about Sharon?'

She was already dressing, as eager to put space between them as she had been before; she didn't answer.

Mac reached over for his empty coffee cup, and dropped the cigarette into it. The smoke rose and spiralled in the air. ‘Maybe you'll find out who killed her,' he said. ‘What will you do then? Or does that depend on whether or not it was Simon?'

She looked a little surprised. ‘What?'

‘She said he hated her sometimes. You think he killed her, don't you?'

Melissa smiled a little, and shook her head, but she didn't actually deny it.

Mac got up after she had left, and looked out at the quiet street. He knew Sharon Smith. Oh, he'd never met that particular one, but they were all the same, her type. Some of them were his neighbours, with their semi-detached houses and semi-detached husbands. Coiffured hair, feminine, made up to the nines. And it was all for show. Sex was just power to them; in the days when he was watching couples have their postcoital cigarette, girls like Sharon would withhold their favours until you put a ring on their finger. These days, it was a little more subtle. The ring came afterwards. But it came. The problem in Sharon's case was that Simon Whitworth already had a wife. All that stuff about preferring married men was rubbish; you could hear the lies. She preferred men with a bit of substance, a bit of money in the bank, maybe. And they tended to be married.

Simon's choice had been simple; Melissa or Sharon. Sharon had been a bit on the side for Simon – a change, an adoring little distraction who told him how clever he was, and who had pulled a fast-one on him. So he'd made sure that Sharon couldn't foul things up for him. Mac didn't blame him in the least; Melissa was worth a hundred Sharons. A hundred Sandras. A hundred of any other woman he had ever met.

‘You can't hang on to him now.'

Lloyd felt, and looked, mutinous. For no good reason, he had to admit. He knew he couldn't hang on to him.

‘Lloyd – your case, such as it was, and
you're
the one who thought it had to be strengthened, has just been blown away.'

‘Just because he seems to have told the truth about one thing, it doesn't necessarily—'

‘Release him, Lloyd. His parents are still here, and I want them all to go before they think of anything else to accuse us of.'

Lloyd loathed two fellow officers whom he had never met. There was no reason to suppose that Sharon's attacker would bear the marks of a struggle, but their behaviour had made certain that any such marks on Drummond had been well and truly disguised. In his opinion, that was no reason to cross Drummond off that list of names in the murder room.

‘Drummond knew her,' he said stubbornly. ‘Or at the very least, he knows a lot more than he's saying.'

‘You have no proof that Drummond ever set eyes on Sharon Smith before last night,' Andrews said. ‘And you only thought that he might have been involved with her once you knew that he wasn't the rapist.'

Lloyd hardly needed to be told all this.

Andrews sat back. ‘ Your case against him was influenced by your belief that he was the rapist, and he isn't. In my opinion, that belief has slowed down both of these investigations. I suggest you leave the rapes to the rape inquiry, and conduct this
murder
inquiry in a more ordered and rather less inspired fashion.'

He was on the carpet. It wasn't the first time, and he didn't suppose it would be the last.

‘I still have to talk to Drummond, sir,' he said. ‘I've been given no description of this car he's supposed to have seen, never mind who was driving—'

‘Because you were convinced he was lying! You didn't ask, did you?'

‘No, sir.' Lloyd still thought he was lying. That was why he wanted to hang on to him.

‘By all means continue to investigate his involvement – I'm not warning you off, for God's sake! But it isn't cut and dried, and it never was. Well have to hope that at least one of your two hundred witnesses saw something. Isn't it time you were doing something about getting them in here?'

Lloyd was dismissed, and went back to the office, where he immediately phoned the path lab to beg Freddie to give him anything he could as soon as he could. Freddie told him that the post-mortem would be being done that afternoon, which was something.

Tom Finch sat at the other side of the desk, shaking his head.

Lloyd smiled as he replaced the receiver. ‘It is, as they say, a rum do,' he said.

‘Rum? Whitworth's wife was staying at an hotel a mile away from the sports ground. Whitworth's partner was at a function in the sports ground. And Whitworth's secretary gets herself murdered in the car park
of
the sports ground. Gil McDonald – who just happens to work with Mrs Whitworth – was at the bloody place
twice
, and just happens to find the body on his second visit.' He drew a breath.

Lloyd still smiled.

‘Evans and Whitworth represent the owner of the ground at which all this was happening – he's involved in a fight at the same time, and it's Whitworth who turns up to bail him out! It's ludicrous!'

‘What about Colin Drummond?' asked Lloyd.

‘Well he's not in the frame any more, is he? Not now that we know what really happened to him. He's our best witness now.'

‘We don't know what really happened to him,' said Lloyd quickly. ‘Not officially.'

‘No, sir. But we do. So let's not beat about the bush.'

Lloyd was beginning to like Finch more every day, but he disagreed profoundly with his snap decision. ‘I accept that we have to take rather more notice of his story now,' he said. ‘But I still believe the whole business with the car is a figment of his imagination, and that he knows more about Sharon than he has so far told us. I agree that he's our best witness – but perhaps for different reasons.'

Finch nodded. ‘Yes, sir,' he said. ‘ Sorry.'

‘But since we're not beating about the bush, I'd like to know why two of our esteemed colleagues found it expedient to beat him up.'

Finch looked up. ‘Well, the word is that he's a cocky little bastard,' he said.

‘If we all took to beating everyone who answered that description, we'd never do anything else.'

He had got a glimpse of the cockiness when they released him. The fear of being beaten up again had gone, and the arrogance which suited him rather better than his humble act had returned. ‘See you in court,' had been his parting shot.

Lloyd got up, and looked out at the view of the car park. Malworth did have much better scenery, he thought. Judy was lucky to work there. He felt badly about the row. And he felt badly about how he had spoken to Mrs Whitworth. The woman had got on his very exposed nerves, that was all. But then, all women were doing that at the moment, come to that.

He turned back to Finch, acutely grateful that he was male.

‘So you want background on the two who beat him up?' Finch asked. ‘Unofficially?'

Finch had grown about ten years older since last night, Lloyd thought. They all had, he supposed. But the rigours of a murder investigation suited Finch. It had just given Lloyd a bad back. ‘Of course I do,' he said. ‘I'm not crossing Drummond off just because two barbarians chose to attack him and have made it impossible to say whether or not he had been in any sort of struggle before they got their hands on him.' He looked at his watch. Half-past three. ‘Have you eaten?' he asked.

‘No. I've been running round like a blue-arsed fly all day.'

‘So have I. Let's continue this discussion over whatever the canteen has to offer.'

Tom didn't look too enthusiastic about a working lunch, or whatever it was called mid-afternoon, but he walked with Lloyd to the old building, and the canteen, where he had hamburgers piled with tomato sauce and mustard.

‘I don't like Drummond's story,' Lloyd said. ‘It's too pat. A car picked her up and conveniently took her back to the football ground. I ask you.'

Finch said something that Lloyd had to translate into English from hamburger.

‘All the others?' he said, with a smile. ‘ What about them?'

Finch swallowed. ‘They were all there, sir. Or thereabouts.'

Lloyd looked disparagingly at his ham salad, and wished he'd had hamburgers too. But he was trying to keep the weight off that had developed a habit of creeping on. It was bad enough being bald, and feeling his back twinge every time he stood up. He didn't have to be fat as well.

‘Evans, Mrs Whitworth, McDonald. And Whitworth was … I don't know. Edgy, when I spoke to him.'

‘His wife had been missing all night and his secretary had been murdered,' said Lloyd. ‘I don't suppose you'd have been too sanguine in his shoes.'

‘But—'

‘What's the alternative, Tom? A conspiracy? Parker starts a fight to keep the police busy while Mrs Whitworth dispatches Sharon? Mad Mac McDonald is deputed to find the body, and Whitworth comes and bails Parker out? Drummond was an innocent bystander?'

Tom didn't look in the least chastened as he finished off his first hamburger and started on his second. ‘Why was Melissa Whitworth staying in an hotel when she was only a couple of miles from home?' he asked.

Lloyd smiled again. ‘I could hazard a guess,' he said. ‘But I won't. She says that she didn't fancy becoming a statistic on the bypass, even if it was only two miles. She'd already had one close shave with the traffic, and she didn't want another.'

Finch looked sceptical, as well he might.

‘I did some checking up,' said Lloyd. ‘She booked in at the hotel at about half-past nine, and about an hour after that was joined by someone answering McDonald's description. They had a couple of drinks – the barman didn't notice them leave the lounge, but he came out to serve two salesmen just after eleven, and they were gone.'

‘You think that Mad Mac was getting his leg over,' said Finch, indistinctly.

‘Precisely. I wouldn't have phrased it as inelegantly, but that is indeed what I think. What I don't think is that she was giving him directions to where she'd left the body.' He swallowed some tasteless salad. ‘He happened to know Mrs Whitworth, and he happened to find the body. And that's probably the only coincidence we've got.' He deliberately didn't say why he was of this opinion; he wanted to see what the young man did about that.

Finch did nothing but eat his hamburger, so Lloyd ate his salad, then told him anyway.

‘Parker used to employ Sharon,' he said. ‘And he became involved with her – he's told us that. For whatever reason, Sharon went back to her mother's, and Parker got her the job at his solicitors. It was his opening do – naturally, his solicitors were invited. And naturally,
The Chronicle
sent McDonald to cover it. Mrs Whitworth and McDonald have made a date, and they end up at the hotel – arriving separately to allay suspicion.'

Finch frowned, his mouth too full to allow him to voice his obvious objections, so Lloyd steamed ahead.

‘Meanwhile Sharon arrives at the ground – possibly she was actually with Barnes, or possibly she just chats him up.'

‘We can't shake his story that she just asked him for the time,' said Finch. ‘I left his statement on your desk.'

Lloyd put on his glasses and picked up the papers he had brought with him. He found the statement, in which Barnes maintained that Sharon had asked him the time, and before he could answer, Parker was pushing him away, and seemed to be about to set about Sharon. The gallant Mr Barnes had pulled Parker off, and the fight had begun.

Lloyd looked over his glasses at Finch, and grunted. ‘ Well,' he said, ‘whatever she did, she needled Parker, as a result of which he finds himself in a police cell. Who else would he ring but Whitworth? He's his solicitor.'

‘Why did he
want
a solicitor?' asked Finch, having swallowed the last of his hamburger.