The Other Woman (24 page)

Melissa Whitworth sat at one of the tables, apparently engrossed in a brochure; Lloyd smiled. He didn't suppose that she was any more a customer than he was, and at least one of his theories seemed to be right.

‘Mrs Whitworth,' he said. ‘I'm glad I've bumped into you.'

‘Hello,' she said, a little coldly.

Some sort of backing-down was in order, Lloyd decided, especially since he felt that she had indeed had her privacy invaded for nothing. The fact was that he was about to invade it again; he had to be able to cross that particular puzzle off if he was to give his undivided attention to sorting out the other puzzles. So he had better get on a better footing with the woman if he could.

‘I … I hope I didn't seem too impolite when we met yesterday,' he said. ‘I can only plead lack of sleep and a natural aversion to mortuaries.'

She smiled a little. ‘I think we were both a little on edge,' she said.

He sat down beside her. ‘I'd like to put a few more questions to you,' he said.

She sighed, and looked resigned. ‘Feel free,' she said.

‘Oh, yes,' said. Mac. ‘Italy. Making time and money, that was Italy.'

Detective Inspector Hill smiled. ‘What I want to know is why do you all come back?' she asked. ‘What brings you back to rainy old Manchester or wherever?'

Mac gave the question serious consideration. ‘Homesickness, of a sort,' he said. ‘Sunshine's for fun, if you're British born. It's what you get if you're lucky at the seaside when you're a kid. It's what you get on a package tour to Benidorm. But it's like wearing funny hats and drinking cheap brandy. It's all right for a fortnight in the summer, but you couldn't take it all year round.'

She paused by a two-door hatchback. It was a good little car – a few miles on the clock, but a nice runner. Mac told her so, and she opened the driver's door speculatively.

‘I thought the stock answer was pressure,' she said, as she got in. ‘ Italy's too rough for our gentle flowers.' She smiled.

‘Oh, there's enough of that, too. Football's a religion over there. A fundamental religion at that. You get spat at if you don't come up to scratch.' He smiled. ‘And – let's face it, in the end I didn't. They didn't want me to stay. That's basically why I came back.'

She laughed. ‘Are you being candid in order to indicate how truthful you are?' she said, adjusting the driving seat. ‘So I'll believe you about the one careful lady owner?'

‘No,' said Mac, honestly. ‘I gave up kidding myself years ago.'

‘But not the police,' she said, her tone of voice not altered one whit from the pleasant chat of a moment ago.

Mac was startled by the sudden change of subject. ‘ What?' he said.

‘You think you can kid us,' she said, putting the car through the gears, investigating the dashboard.

Mac felt as though he had been had. ‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘I really don't know …'

‘Someone answering your description was seen with Mrs Whitworth at the Marriot Hotel at ten thirty on Friday evening,' she said. ‘You told Sergeant Finch that you had been lost in the fog all evening.'

Mac gave a short sigh.

‘Well?' she asked, getting out, putting the driving seat back as far as it would go, then pushing the back down and getting into the rear passenger seat. She somehow managed to do that elegantly; Mac was impressed. Under other circumstances, he would have been more than pleased to be doing business with her.

She sat in the back, testing the leg-room, looking up at him, waiting for him to say something.

‘Well …' Mac looked down at her. ‘ Yes,' he said. There wasn't much else he could say.

‘Yes?' she repeated, opening windows, testing seat-belts.

‘Yes, I was at the hotel with Mrs Whitworth,' said Mac, like a child reciting lines.

She got out again. ‘Does it really go well?' she asked.

‘It'll go better than that Mini,' said Mac, not sure why she was keeping up the pretence of looking at the car.

‘Had you been with Mrs Whitworth all evening?'

‘Yes,' he said. He wasn't about to tell them what had really happened. He glanced anxiously over to the showroom, and could see that Melissa had been joined by Lloyd; he closed his eyes. They were being subjected to a neat two-pronged attack, and he hadn't suspected a thing.

‘Perhaps I could have a look under the bonnet?' asked Detective Inspector Hill.

Mac reached into the car and released the bonnet catch with a vicious tug. ‘Help yourself,' he said.

Turning his back on her, he employed the most useful skill he had picked up in his sojourn abroad. Under his breath, he swore long and hard in Italian.

‘Where were you before nine thirty?' Lloyd asked.

Melissa had patiently answered the same questions that both he and Sergeant Finch had asked her before, still maintaining that the last two miles of her trip had seemed too difficult in the fog. He still didn't believe her, but now he wanted to know where she had just driven from.

‘Barton,' she said. It was the first thing that came into her head; some of the offices at Barton were still open, to serve the local population. She did interviews all over the county; she could have been anywhere. So Barton would do.

‘So you had driven … what – twenty miles? And the last two were just too much for you?'

‘Yes,' she said. Damn it, surely it was entirely up to her how many miles she was prepared to drive in thick fog? She was beginning to believe it herself; it lent her answers an air of righteous indignation.

‘How long did it take you to drive the twenty miles?' he asked.

‘Over an hour and a half,' she said.

Lloyd sucked in his breath as he did a calculation. ‘At that rate it would have taken you another ten, fifteen minutes to get home,' he said. ‘ But you chose to stay in an hotel instead.'

‘That's right,' she said.

Lloyd got up and walked around, looking at cars, brochures, bending over to read the small print under the price tags.

Melissa looked in vain for rescue; Mac was obviously giving Judy Hill a part by part tour of the internal combustion engine.

‘I'm not inquiring into your private life for the hell of it,' he said, turning towards her and leaning on a huge four-wheel-drive off-road vehicle painted a quite startling metallic maroon.

‘Then why are you?'

He pushed himself away. ‘You know why, Mrs Whitworth,' he said, looking out of the window at Mac and the inspector, then back at her.

Melissa swung round and looked out at the view behind her; at yet another business park, for such everyone had had to learn to call these strange collections of offices and factories and showrooms and workshops, with pools and fountains instead of useful shops. The sun was bright, reflecting off the water in the pool, and making little rainbows in the spray from the fountain.

‘Because Mac found the body,' she said.

‘Is that who you were with at the hotel? Mr McDonald?'

She hoped Mac had given up his attempt at being gallant, because he was doubtless being asked the same questions. Had Lloyd really bumped into her as he had said? He must have, unless they were following her. But maybe they were. ‘Yes,' she said.

The chief inspector didn't comment; Melissa continued to look out of the window as her private life was being ripped open for him to have a peek inside.

‘Were you with Mr McDonald earlier in the evening?'

‘No.' The truth; as much of it as she was prepared for them to know.

‘Had you arranged to meet him at the hotel?' he asked, then, sounding puzzled.

‘No. I'd met him once before in my life, and I didn't even remember that,' she said. Let him think what he liked about her morals.

‘And was Mr McDonald at the hotel with you from half-past ten onwards?'

‘Yes.' She turned then, defiantly facing him. ‘I went to bed with him, chief inspector,' she said. ‘He left at midnight, and he found Sharon Smith's body. The whole thing was a coincidence, nothing more.'

He nodded. ‘I'm inclined to agree,' he said. ‘And thank you for being so co-operative.'

He left the showroom; that was obviously the signal for Detective Inspector Hill to stop pretending to buy a car. It was with surprise that she saw her come back to the showroom with Mac, and make arrangements for a test-drive, and for someone to come and give the car the once-over for her.

At last, their car drove off, and she and Mac were alone again. He swivelled round in his chair to look at her. ‘ Do you think they knew you were here?' he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I don't care,' she said. ‘What did you tell her?'

Mac looked a little apprehensive. ‘That we had arranged to meet,' he said.

Melissa closed her eyes. ‘Then we won't have seen the last of them,' she said, and got up. ‘I told him the truth.'

‘Oh. Sorry – I just wanted to …'

‘To protect my reputation?'

‘Yes,' said Mac. ‘I suppose so.'

‘Please
stop
trying to protect my reputation,' she said, and went out, getting into her car and slamming the door.

Protecting her reputation, she thought, reversing out of the space, and crashing the gears as she tried to move off. That somehow didn't sit well with the blackmail.

Lionel felt a little envious of Parker. He seemed all wrong, somehow, sitting in Lionel's own living-room, on Lionel's own sofa, dark and dramatic, a designer crook. He had seemed to bring his own colour with him; the drab monochrome of the Evans homestead was suddenly technicolor. Lionel had never altered a room by his presence.

He wondered if that was what had made him go in with Parker in the first place; if it wasn't so much the promise of all that money, which he didn't need, and didn't particularly want come to that, but the excitement, the danger of it all.

He hadn't really believed that Parker was going to kill him, but he had never known anyone who possessed a hand-gun, never mind being prepared to point it loaded at someone's head. It wasn't nice, but it was exciting. Because Parker could have pulled the trigger, if it had been in his interest to do so; Lionel knew that. It ought to alarm him. It ought to make him run to the police and tell them everything, to keep himself safe. But he didn't want to be safe.

‘Something else has happened,' said Parker, taking out his cigarettes. ‘Will your missus mind me smoking?' he asked, as he lit up.

‘No,' said Lionel. Of course she would.

‘I can't leave,' said Parker. ‘And I've had Lloyd sniffing round again this morning.'

That
alarmed Lionel. More than his life being threatened had alarmed him, because his life wasn't really in danger.

‘He and his lady sidekick have started wondering why Sharon should have been a target.'

‘I swear, Jake – I had nothing to-do with it!'

Jake nodded. ‘I believe you,' he said. ‘But the water's got murkier, and I have to change my plans again.'

Oh, dear God. Lionel glanced anxiously out of the window. Frances was at church; she would be back soon to cook lunch. What now?

‘So I don't want you to do anything with the money,' said Parker.

Lionel let out the breath he'd been holding. ‘Just leave it where it is?' he said, hardly able to believe that some unexpected development had actually got him off a hook rather than hung him on one. ‘That's a much better idea, Jake,' he said. ‘ If we took it all out at once—'

‘Just leave it where it is, Lionel. We're going to lie low, you and I. We have no option.'

Thank God for that. ‘What's happened to change your mind?' he asked.

‘The less you know, Lionel, the better.'

It wasn't entirely reassuring.

Simon and Melissa hadn't exchanged a word since their discussion about Drummond's release; he felt like death, and she didn't look much better. She had been out when he had got back from the police station, and he was upstairs packing a case when he heard the car. He hurriedly pushed it under the bed. He had to leave, obviously, but he didn't have to hurt Melissa any sooner than was necessary.

He came down to find Melissa sitting on the arm of her chair sooner than disturb Robeson. ‘Have you had the police again?' she asked.

‘No,' he said, alarmed. ‘No. Why – should I have done?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I just wondered.'

He sat down opposite her. There was no point in pretending that nothing was wrong between them. It had been getting worse and worse for weeks, and now it was impossible.

‘Melissa,' he said. ‘Why did you stay at the hotel on Friday night?'

‘You know why,' she said, stroking the cat.

Simon looked down at his feet. How had she found out?

‘As far as the police are concerned,' she said, ‘you simply worked with Sharon. And we're keeping it that way, aren't we, Simon?'

‘She … she wanted me to tell you,' he said, his voice no more than a whisper.

‘Did she?' she asked coldly.

‘I didn't have the guts,' he said.

‘Well, you'd better find some from somewhere,' said Melissa crisply. ‘Because the police aren't going to let this go.'

Lloyd and Judy positively winced as they walked in to a barrage of messages from those manning the murder room.

‘Malworth want Detective Inspector Hill to ring Inspector Menlove?

‘We've found something in those clothes you brought in, Lloyd – I think you'll be interested.'

‘We've got anonymous confirmation of a car having picked Sharon up – a male voice – reckons he heard the appeal on the radio. Still no make or number, but he thinks it might have been red or brown.'

Judy, dialling Malworth, glanced at Lloyd when she heard that.