A Shred of Evidence (6 page)

She got up to wander through the columns of tyres and wooden climbing frames. She didn’t know when Colin would appear; she just knew that he would, because he always came
home this way, and on Tuesday nights, hidden by the structures of the adventure playground, she always waited for him.

But tonight was going to be different; she had made that clear to him in her letter.

Ten past nine. Lloyd sipped an indifferent whisky and looked round the bar, where huddles of people sat actually discussing the stuff they had been listening to all day. They used jargon as though it were holy scripture, and spoke about modems and windows as though they were the deity.

Judy had, not unnaturally, asked why he had been so keen to go on the Leadership Development Program. His answer had been that he had a few years to go before he would have put in his thirty years, and early retirement on a reduced pension did not appeal.

That, he had told her, was the likely outcome of the changes about to be forced on the police, unless he got a rank that kept him clear of it, and to do that he had to be up to date with current command thinking.

In truth, there was a possibility of his being kept on at his current salary with the rank of inspector, and a desire to continue to outrank Judy might have quite a lot to do with his late-flowering ambition, but he tried not to think about that. His male chauvinist tendencies bothered him a little.

Neither of those reasons, needless to say, were the ones he had given Them. He had been scheduled to attend a Junior Command Course, to which this was the successor, after his promotion to Chief Inspector, but had been prevented from doing so by, of all things, appendicitis. He had never reapplied, and now, some years later, it should have been too late. But They had understood his belated desire to reach, if not for the sky, then at least for a hand-hold on the rooftiles.

So many senior police officers had been on accelerated
promotion that, in Lloyd’s official opinion, the opinion of the short bald bloke, there was a danger of a lack of empathy with the officers under their command, most of whom had achieved whatever rank they had by putting in years of service.

And if, he had said earnestly, in his man-of-the-people Welsh accent, as opposed to his expensively educated Welsh accent, his sinister Welsh accent, or his literary Welsh accent—the one that got Judy going—if a them and us situation was to be avoided, it seemed to him essential that a balance of old and new be maintained at the top.

Every round of interviews had seen him expand on his theme, which he found even more boring than they did; they had let him go on the course simply to shut him up, he was sure.

He had mistakenly thought that no one else had discovered this pub, its being a considerable distance away from Bramshill and not exactly the most welcoming place on earth, but it hadn’t remained undiscovered. The serious mob had found it. The ones who didn’t want to let their hair down, who had probably never let their hair down in their lives, had found it.

He would find a phone box and phone Judy. He hadn’t spoken to her for over a week, as the course work had got more and more demanding, and he had simply not had the time or energy to do anything other than work and sleep.

He wanted to hear her voice.

Daylight faded beyond the windows, and Patrick really hadn’t meant this to happen. But the bare, suntanned leg that pressed against his was … well, irresistible.

He had meant just to talk to her, that was all; there had been no ulterior motive. He had honestly not meant this to happen. He hadn’t expected her to come on to him the way she had, for one thing, but he had never been one to refuse what was on offer. He ought to, he knew that, but he had acquiesced thus far, and now his hand was on her knee, and … well, they weren’t going to talk, were they?

He knew he ought to put a stop to it now, while they were still both respectable, still hadn’t removed any clothing, were
still able to stop, but her parted lips were on his, her tongue slipping into his mouth, and, well … he didn’t have the willpower.

He never had had. He slid his hand up her thigh and muttered something about Colin, but she said what harm were they doing Colin?

None, really, he conceded. He didn’t suppose, he added, with what might have been a twinge of conscience, except that she was wriggling out of her pants, kicking them off, smiling at him.

What Colin didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, she said, and she was … Well, what was a man supposed to do?

He didn’t feel right about it, not really, all the same, and, anyway, Colin was hardly the only issue, he said, when he could speak. There were numerous other bars to what they were inevitably about to, to what they were in fact, to all intents and purposes, already doing. There was his wife, for one thing.

She said he hadn’t been too bothered about her in the past, so what had changed?

Nothing, he supposed. Nothing. God knew, he hadn’t changed. And he never would.

She had changed; she was making all the moves, and his far from robust conscience couldn’t possibly withstand what she was doing to him now.

The minimal resistance that he had put up melted away; the immorality of it all, the danger in which he was placing friendships, career, marriage, well …

There was only so much a man could resist.

“So how’s it going?”

“Drearily,” said Lloyd. “If there is anything more boring on this earth than a computer buff, I hope I never meet it.”

Judy laughed. “You’re bored because you’re not joining in,” she said. “It’s end of term. You’re supposed to be getting smashed out of your skull and pushing naked women into fountains by now.”

“No, that’s in a couple of hours or so. About eleven, that
starts. Why do drunks always shout? They’re about two feet away from one another and yelling as if they’re all stone deaf.”

Judy tutted. “I can see that you are not entering into the spirit of things,” she said. “The idea is to compromise as many female police officers as you can, in order that it might be used against them should there be any possibility of their actually being promoted to superintendent.”

There was a little silence at the other end.

“Hello?” said Judy. “Are you still there?”

“You know when you … when you were doing this course,” Lloyd began, haltingly.

Judy had known him much too long to be taken in by the shy, tongue-tied mode. “Yes,” she said warily.

“Did you get … What’s that dreadful expression Finch uses?”

“You know perfectly well, whatever it is,” she said crisply.

“Hit on?” he said.

“Lloyd—the only qualification for being hit on at one of these things is to be female. Of course I did.”

“What did you do?”

“Mind your own business,” she said.

Another silence. This time she didn’t break it.

“I wish you were here or I was there,” Lloyd said.

“It’s nothing like as bad as you’re making out,” Judy said. “None of it. My translation is that the course is really quite interesting, but you won’t admit it.”

“Have you missed me?”

She had seen him twice in seven weeks. The first time she had been working all weekend, and the second she had been called in to work before he’d been there an hour and had got back just as he was leaving, because he’d only come for the day. It had been worse than not seeing him at all.

“I managed,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “Are you going to resent my coming and taking charge at work again?”

“No,” she said truthfully.

“Good.”

“So—what have you got on for the rest of the week?” she asked.

“Oh, this and that. I think I get released some time on Friday.”

“Maybe I can wangle Friday off,” said Judy. “We can have a nice long weekend.”

“That sounds very good,” said Lloyd.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“And what sort of day have you had?”

“My new car won’t go.”

“It is not your new car,” Lloyd said. “You bought it nearly a year ago. It was never your new car. It was someone’s new car once, but that was about twelve years ago.”

“Well, it won’t go.”

“Get rid of it. Get a proper new one. With a warranty, and AA membership, and … ”

Judy settled down comfortably, lying on the sofa, as Lloyd got into his stride, moving smoothly from how she should buy a new car to how she should run her entire life. She wasn’t listening to the words, just to his voice. Even over a phone line, Lloyd’s voice, with its carefully nurtured just-Welsh accent was top of the list that she kept in her head of Good Things about Lloyd.

What he was saying was patronizing and infuriating and top of the list of Bad Things about Lloyd, which was why she didn’t listen. But eventually he got off the lecture and just talked about the people he was meeting, about the course.

He made her laugh. He had always been able to make her laugh, and she could forgive him almost anything for that. But there was more, much more than that.

She wondered if she should tell him one day how much she loved him, but she thought he might just become unbearable if he knew.

Sherlock whimpered as soon as Erica closed the door; he had thought that he was going to be taken out, obviously. She had forgotten all about him—Colin always took him out
when he came home from school, but of course he hadn’t come home from school.

She heard the car drive off, and looked at the dog. Colin would be back soon—he would take him. But … well, perhaps she could do with some fresh air.

“Come on, then,” she said. “Let’s go walkies.”

The bloodhound, which looked ancient but was in fact just a year old, lumbered along the hallway, into the kitchen, picked up his lead, and lumbered back.

She strolled down the busy road, Sherry on the lead, trotting obediently at her heel as cars zipped past at head height with the occasional burst of music from their open windows on this soft summer night. There was open land across the road, through the underpass, but she walked on down towards the Green. She would get there at about five to ten; Colin would be there on the last leg of his run, or she would meet him on the pathway.

If he really was out running, that was.

“It’s Natalie’s mum,” said Kim’s little brother, who had dived for the phone as being yet another thing that would delay the dread moment when he had to go to bed. He was far too late as it was.

Kim took the phone. “Go to bed,” she said.

He stuck his tongue out at her. God, she hated baby-sitting. “Hello, Mrs. Ouspensky,” she said.

“Kim—is Natalie with you?”

“No,” said Kim. “Did she say she was coming here?” she asked, her tone guarded. Natalie’s love-life was a bit too complicated, and she might have said she was with Kim. Well, if she had, she should have warned her.

“No. She went over to see her gran, but she should have been back an hour ago. Her gran said she went for the ten-to-nine bus. She should have been home by ten past. I saw the bus go by.”

Oh dear. Natalie had obviously not counted on Gran reporting her movements. “I haven’t seen her,” she said.

“It’s not like her,” said Natalie’s mother.

Well. It was like her, really. Natalie’s mother had a bit of a blind spot about Natalie. Not that she would go out of her way to worry her mother, but you couldn’t pick and choose when to see someone if he was married. And she was only an hour late, after all.

Kim hated having secrets. She didn’t like her own secrets, and she certainly didn’t like having custody of someone else’s. “I’m sure she’ll be all right,” she said. “I expect she just missed the bus—I think there’s only one an hour out to your place.”

“Not from her gran’s,” said Mrs. Ouspensky. “They’re every twenty minutes until twenty to ten. It’s the little buses up there, and the garage is down our way, so they come right until ten. But the last bus has been.”

“Well—maybe she … went to see someone else.”

“Who?” Mrs. O. jumped on the statement practically before Kim had stopped speaking.

“I didn’t mean anyone in particular …”

“Look—Kim—is Natalie seeing some boy?”

“No,” said Kim, with absolute truth. Not a boy.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right, I’m probably worrying for no reason at all. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“No bother,” said Kim, lying in her teeth. “And I’m sure she’s all right, Mrs. Ouspensky.”

Hannah left the adventure playground, and walked along the service road, towards the footpath up to Ash Road. She could get a bus home from there, and that seemed the best idea, really.

The figure that almost bumped into her at the alley tried, for a moment, to turn away, but then turned back, and looked at her.

Hannah saw who it was, and froze to the spot.

Ten past ten. In the almost-deserted Stansfield police station, Tom Finch rubbed his eyes and moved on, with considerable lack of enthusiasm, to the second witness statement on the aggravated burglary. He had little stomach for the task of presenting a case to the Crown Prosecution Service;
sometimes it seemed to him that whatever you did, they would throw it out for lack of evidence.

Right now, he’d welcome anything that would rescue him; the job wasn’t getting done while he was stuck here, pen-pushing; the villains were out there, and they didn’t need to shuffle bits of paper around before they could get a result.

Still, at least he wasn’t at Bramshill, like the DCI. He’d be back any day now, and acting Chief Inspector Hill would be back to taking orders. Tom wondered how she would take it. Professionally, of course—but she had enjoyed being in charge, all the same.

Women sometimes found it just too difficult and even she had problems, it seemed, with the rampant sexism. Tom didn’t think he was too guilty of it—he had been a bit leery of having a woman boss, but she was all right. He was supposed to moan about her, so he did, but that was just the way it was. There was that time they had been at the scene of a stabbing, and the blood on the floor had made her queasy … that was pounced on, of course, and he’d had a laugh at her expense with the rest of them. He felt just a touch disloyal about that; she was his governor, and he should have stood up for her. Lloyd would have.