The Footballer's Wife (14 page)

‘Don't push your luck, sunshine,' Tracy said,
rolling over, her back to Kent, pulling the sheets over her head.

*

Len hadn't slept; he'd had a fraught night. After he had left Charly he'd gone in search of Joel Baldy, but Manchester was a big place and one that he wasn't particularly accustomed to. Since he'd returned home he had lain awake thinking of the events of the last twenty-four hours.

He was now positioned awkwardly on the settee, wishing himself back to sleep. It was nearly 9.30am and he couldn't go back to the hospital feeling like this; he needed some rest first. As he finally began to drift off, there was a bang on the door that made Len leap from the chair, his heart pounding.

Len was contemplating not answering it when there was another almighty hammering. ‘Police!' a voice shouted. Len's heart leapt. What now? Had that psychotic son-in-law of his got into the hospital and to his daughter? He immediately opened the door.

‘Is Charly alright?'

The police officer standing at the door looked
Len up and down. ‘Your daughter's fine. Unlike your-son-in-law.' Len looked at the cop. He wanted nothing more than some terrible fate to befall Joel Baldy but right now Len couldn't quite understand what those words meant and what they had to do with him.

‘What's he done now?'

‘He's dead.' The police officer let the words hang in the air as he watched Len for a reaction. Len fell back slightly, as if he'd just had the stuffing knocked out of him. ‘And we'd like to know where you were last night, Mr Metcalfe.'

‘I wasn't anywhere,' Len stammered. ‘Well, I was; I was here.'

‘Just here? You were with your daughter at the hospital last night, weren't you?'

‘Well, I was, but . . .'

‘Your daughter, who'd been badly beaten by her husband . . .'

‘Yes she had, but that doesn't mean that I did anything to him.'

‘The concierge of the apartment where Mr and Mrs Baldy lived says that you weren't in a particularly forgiving mood last night.' The words
Mr and Mrs Baldy
hit Len hard. He couldn't bear to think of his daughter as Mrs Baldy. She was Charly, his little
girl, not some footballer's chattel to be beaten as he pleased.

‘Mr Metcalfe?' the police officer said, looking at Len. Len looked at the man – he'd obviously been speaking but Len hadn't heard what he'd said. ‘Where were you at four o'clock this morning?'

Len looked the man dead in the eye. ‘I was here,' Len said, but he hadn't been. The thought of finding Joel Baldy had become too much for him and he had been in Manchester driving around, wondering where he could find the lout who'd battered his daughter.

‘And can anyone else vouch for that?' the officer asked. Len knew that the hole he was digging was only going to get deeper. He shook his head.

‘Your car was spotted on CCTV in Manchester city centre at 3am.'

‘I woke up here, in my own bed.'

‘What does that prove, Len? Nothing. So you're not denying you were in Manchester at three?'

‘I never said that.'

‘You don't need to.'

‘How was he murdered?'

‘I never mentioned murder, Mr Metcalfe.'
Hadn't he?
Len thought.
What had he said? Dead? Killed?
He couldn't remember.

‘Len Metcalfe, I am arresting you on the murder of Joel Baldy . . .' Len felt the room swim in front of him as the officer stepped forward and placed the cuffs on his wrists. There was no way he was getting out of this lightly.

The front door opened, and Len looked up, expecting Jimmy. There was no one else who'd just walk right in, other than Charly. The police officer turned around and looked at the woman standing in the doorway holding some milk and a loaf of bread.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing with him?' she asked, outraged.

Len didn't know what to say, but he looked at the woman in front of him and hoped that what he was seeing was real, that she was here, for some inexplicable reason, to throw him a lifeline. ‘Joel's been murdered.'

The woman gasped. ‘No!' Then she gathered herself. ‘Well, he's not got owt to do with it.'

‘Last night at four,' Len said.

‘Well, he can't be in two places at once and he was in bed upstairs next to me, snoring his head off.'

‘You never said you had company, Len.'

‘Well . . .' Len began but the woman interrupted.

‘I'm not bloody company,' she said, throwing the
bread on the table and putting her hand purposefully on her hip. ‘I'm his sodding wife.'

*

Jodie was sitting in her apartment staring out of the window.

‘Eat,' Leanne said, plonking a sandwich in front of her sister.

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘I don't care whether you're hungry or not, you need to eat.'

Jodie pulled the sandwich towards her and looked at the salami. It turned her stomach. ‘I think I'll stick to veg for a while.'

‘Right, I'll do you beans on toast, and you're eating it whether you like it or not,' Leanne said, pulling at the cupboard doors to see what food Jodie had in.

Jodie had been back from the police station for a few hours but she couldn't sleep. She couldn't stop thinking about how she had last seen Joel Baldy. The police had questioned her about whether she had heard or seen anything suspicious, which she hadn't. Leanne's boyfriend Tony had picked Jodie up from the police station. It had been early enough
for the news not to have broken and for the place to be free of photographers but Leanne had preempted what was coming. Jodie's phone had been ringing off the hook for the past hour and she knew that she was at the centre of a national news storm. But she didn't have anything to tell anyone. Neither did Kim, as far as she could gather. They had both just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what about Joel? Who would do that to him? It was common knowledge that he'd turned into a bit of an arsehole as his career had taken off but Jodie couldn't think of a reason why anyone would want him dead.

And then there was the matter of Charly. She was still officially on Leanne's books but more importantly, as much as they hadn't seen eye to eye in the past, she had been Scott's girlfriend and he had thought the world of her. Leanne wanted to see her to make sure she was being properly looked after. Jodie had her reservations. Leanne had called around and found out that Charly was in hospital; she couldn't find out why she was there and didn't even know if she knew about Joel yet. In the end Jodie had told Leanne that she thought it was best if she let the dust settle before contacting Charly. It was all very well offering her support but Jodie
didn't want Charly jumping to any ill-informed conclusions about why Jodie had been there when they found her husband's body.

‘Have you heard anything from Kim yet?' Jodie asked. She hadn't seen the girl since they had been put into separate police cars early that morning.

‘I've left her a message; she's probably still being questioned. I've told her to call me straight away. I know what that one's like – she'll be all over the papers pulling one of those wronged faces and spilling her guts if I don't get to her and tell her that it's only a short-term money-making scheme and then she'll forever be known as the girl who was with Joel Baldy when he was murdered.'

‘Yeah, but that's what she'll be known as anyway.'

‘True, but it's better for her, and me, if she plays it low key. And anyway, she needs to play this down as much as possible. I wouldn't want to get into the ring with Charly Metcalfe, would you?'

Jodie wasn't scared of Charly but she knew what Leanne meant. She was a Metcalfe and if someone crossed her she'd have her revenge, even if it took her the rest of her life to get it. Thinking this, something occurred to Jodie.

‘D'you think she did it?'

‘From her hospital bed?'

‘We don't know, do we? She finds out Joel's sneaking back to some page three girl's room and she goes schizo. Not beyond the realms of possibility.'

‘True, but she'd have knifed Kim before she knifed Joel, wouldn't she?' Leanne reasoned, pouring the beans from the saucepan onto the toast.

Jodie thought about this for a moment. Leanne was probably right. But the reality was that neither of them knew the truth and probably wouldn't until the rest of the country found out.

‘
ALRIGHT, LEN, YOU
can pick your jaw up off the floor,' Shirley said. She'd been there for nearly two hours. The police had taken her statement and she'd kept to her story of having been in the house last night. Something that she knew was probably hard for Len to swallow as she hadn't been near the house for ten years.

‘Why?' he said.

‘Why what?' Shirley asked. But she knew why.

‘Why everything. Why this? Why'd you leave? Where did you go? Why've you come back now? Who've you been with? What about your kids?' With each question Shirley could see Len getting angrier and as much as it annoyed her to have to face these questions, she knew that he had every right to ask them.

‘I've been back a few times but I've bottled it
whenever I've got near the house.' This was her fourth attempt to knock on her old front door and she would have probably bottled it again if she hadn't watched the police arrive and heard what they'd said.

‘Not surprising.'

She ignored the jibe.

‘And this –' She waved her arms, indicating her being there under the circumstances they both found themselves in ‘– well, this is because I saw the coppers pull up outside and followed them to the door. I heard what they were arresting you for and I thought that it was rubbish. There's no way you'd have murdered that lad.'

‘How do you know?' Len asked angrily.

‘Well, did you?' Shirley shot back.

‘No.'

‘Well then. So I nipped to the shop and bought some stuff to look like I was just coming back in and I hoped to God that the door wasn't on a Yale lock because I don't have a key.'

‘You do.'

‘What?'

‘I never changed the lock.'

Shirley looked sadly at Len. She had hated him when she'd left. But she'd hated everything: she knew now, she'd known for years, that it hadn't been Len's
fault for how she felt, it had been hers. And then she had convinced herself that he would turn the kids against her and that they wouldn't want to know her until staying away had just become part of who she was. She had her stock response that she'd honed over the years: she was Shirley, from Bradington. Yes, she had two kids, but they were with their dad. She saw them when she could. But she didn't and she'd never tried to. Now, standing here in her old house, feeling her old life all around her, she realised what she had done; she'd left Len a broken man.

‘I'm sorry,' Shirley said.

‘What for? Because I didn't change the lock?'

‘No. Because . . . everything.'

‘Well, it's not just me you need to apologise to.'

Shirley nodded. She didn't need to say anything; she knew that she had years of apologising to do to Charly and Jimmy. Shirley suddenly felt exposed; she could feel Len was looking at her. She wanted to hide her head in the polo-neck jumper she was wearing.

‘What you after?' Len asked finally.

‘I'm not after anything,' Shirley said. She was genuinely affronted.

‘Pull the other one, Shirl . . .' Len began to get angry.

‘I just wanted to see you.'

‘Yeah . . . and?'

‘And nothing. I wanted to get to know my family again.'

‘We're not a bloody drop-in centre.'

‘I never said you were.'

‘You don't need to. I know how you work, don't I?'

‘You never knew how I worked, that was the problem.' Shirley didn't mean it, she just needed to retaliate.

‘So you running off and not showing your face for ten years, that's my fault, is it?'

‘I never said that. I just didn't think you understood me.'

‘Oh boo bloody hoo, Shirl.' Len jumped to his feet. Shirley hadn't expected everlasting gratitude but he could at least lay off for a few minutes – she had after all just prevented him from being arrested for murder.

‘Len, do you want me to go again? Because I don't want to, but I will.'

Len looked at her, scrutinising her from top to bottom. ‘No,' he said sadly, shaking his head. ‘But I want to know why you're back.'

Shirley was about to explain things to him.

‘And I don't want any cock and bull stories from
you either, I want the truth. Understand?' Shirley nodded her head. But she wasn't ready to face her past herself at the moment, so she gave him a brief watered-down version of events.

*

Charly couldn't work out where she was. It took her a few minutes of feeling completely trapped in her own body and not being able to make any sense of her surroundings before she worked out she was in a private room in a hospital and the person who had put her there was her husband.

She pushed herself up in the bed and felt as if every muscle in her body was asking her not to do that again. She daren't look in the mirror; she had no idea how her features were currently arranged, but things didn't feel too good. The door opened and a nurse came into the room. She seemed shocked to see Charly awake.

‘Oh, morning. How are you feeling?' she asked distractedly.

‘I've been better. Do I look awful?' Charly put her hand to her face and could feel that her cheek was distorted and swollen.

‘I've seen you in photos looking better,' the nurse
said diplomatically. ‘I don't think we'll be keeping you in much longer, though.' She looked at Charly sympathetically. Charly wanted to cry. She didn't need this woman's sympathy. She didn't want to be just another victim of domestic violence who came through the doors of the hospital to be fixed up and sent home to receive another pasting. But that's what she was, unless she did something about it. Yet right now she couldn't think of anything worse. She just wanted to go home to Joel, listen to his apology, believe him this time, and crawl into bed. Charly wanted desperately to be the one in a million who could change her husband. They must be out there somewhere, those women who'd succeeded, otherwise why would so many women try? Where was Joel, anyway? Shouldn't he be here at her bedside, racked with guilt and promising her the earth in return for her forgiveness and silence?