The Footballer's Wife (22 page)

Tracy wasn't altogether buying this, not that she was about to tell Mac. ‘I suppose. Alright, which file is it?'

Mac described what Tracy was looking for.

‘OK, I'll get it first thing.'

‘Great,' Mac said, checking his pocket for his phone and preparing to leave.

‘Where you going?' Tracy asked.

‘Got stuff to do. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? Once you've got the file for me.'

‘What you going to do with it once you've got it?'

‘Shred it. What else?'

‘Why don't I just save you the bother and shred it for you?'

Mac looked at Tracy momentarily. ‘No, Trace,' he said, ‘I'd like to do it myself.'

‘Fair enough,' Tracy replied affably. But as Mac turned to the door Tracy's eyes narrowed; Mac had just done himself absolutely no favours. He might as well have come straight out with it and said that he didn't trust her.

‘You need to tell our Markie what you're up to. He's got shit he needs to straighten out,' Tracy said, as if she was conducting business as usual.

‘Yeah,' Mac mumbled in agreement. He walked out of the door looking preoccupied; he didn't even kiss Tracy goodbye. She watched him go, wondering what was going on in his head, what his next move would be, but knowing one thing: she would beat him to it.

*

It was midnight and Tracy had let herself into the office. She found the file that Mac needed and leafed through it. There was a record of exactly how much Joel Baldy had borrowed, how much he owed, and a list of cryptic notes about his lack of payment that weren't too hard to decipher. The last notation said, ‘Next time he pays up or we go to level three.' Tracy didn't think a person had to be Einstein to work out that level three wasn't a rap on the knuckles. She
pulled the rest of the paperwork out of the file and leafed through it. There were a number of famous names among this little lot and Tracy flicked through them with interest.

Once she had made sure that there was nothing else in the office that might alert the police to any wrongdoings of Mac's, she walked over to the door. Next to the door was the photocopier. Tracy fired it into life and stood back to inspect it. It would probably take her all night to work out how to make this thing do what it was meant to, but she didn't care. She was going to make two copies of everything in this file and then she was going to post one to the police. Nobody took Tracy Crompton for a mug, especially not some half-arsed extortionist like Mac Jones.

*

There was a knock at the door. Tracy was sitting in front of the TV in her dressing gown watching a cookery programme, wondering exactly who it was who took the advice of these chefs and parboiled then roasted a load of spuds to make the perfect chip. The Wing on the estate did the perfect chip in her opinion; her definition being
that it was a chip and she hadn't had to cook it. She wasn't getting up to answer the door. Let Kent get it, she thought. She'd had a hard day's door-knocking herself; she wasn't about to start answering them in her spare time. The knock came again, this time louder and harder. ‘Kent!' Tracy shouted. There was no response so she climbed out of her chair. ‘If you want something doing, kill Kent and then do it your bleeding self,' she mumbled. But before she had chance to get to the door, Kent had beaten her to it. She walked into the hall and two police officers were standing at the door.

‘We'd like to speak to Tracy Crompton.'

‘Why, what's she done?' Kent asked suspiciously.

The copper at the front, who seemed like the one who did all the talking, looked at Kent as if his days were numbered. ‘That's something we'll be discussing with her, isn't it?'

Tracy pulled her dressing gown tightly around her. Her mind was racing. She hadn't done anything really illegal for a while. She'd helped Karina shift some hooky gear on eBay but there was no way they could link her to that. And it was years since she'd been allowed to have a catalogue account so it couldn't be that either.

‘It's alright, Kent, I'll talk to them.' This couldn't be anything to do with Mac, could it? she thought, but quickly dismissed this as paranoia. Nothing in what she had sent anonymously to the police implicated her in any way, she was sure.

Kent stepped back, letting Tracy go to the door.

‘Could we come in, please?'

‘I'd rather you didn't,' Tracy said cockily.

‘Of course you would, and I'd prefer not to have to take you in for questioning, but sometimes these things happen, don't they?' the copper said, matching Tracy's pluck. The younger police officer behind him smiled to himself.

‘You can come in if Laughing Boy there wipes the smirk off his face,' Tracy snapped.

‘Now, Mrs Crompton. Let's have less of the abuse towards a police officer.'

Tracy stood back and allowed the coppers into the house. She quickly looked outside to see if anyone on the street was watching – she'd be a laughing stock if people thought she had just rolled over and let the police in her house. But then, she had to remind herself, she'd never really cared much what her neighbours thought about her, even when it came to cooperating with the police.

Tracy sat down at the kitchen table. The police
officers followed suit. ‘What d'you want?' Tracy asked wearily.

‘Cup of tea'd be lovely, thanks, I'm spitting feathers.'

‘That's a shame,' Tracy said, not making any move to get out of her chair. ‘Like I said, what do you want?'

Kent was hovering around in the background.

‘No tea?' The officer doing all of the talking turned to his subordinate. ‘That's not very nice, is it?'

‘No, it's not.' The pipsqueak shook his head.

Tracy eyeballed the pair.

‘We came here to talk to you about a very delicate situation but it looks like we're just going to have to come right out with it.'

Tracy was maintaining an icy composure but there was something about the way the copper was enjoying what he was saying that made her think she might have been better off putting the kettle on and breaking out the Garibaldis. The copper pulled a picture out of his jacket and threw it on the table. It was a CCTV image and it wasn't the clearest she'd ever seen but there was no mistaking who was pictured. It was Tracy with Mac at the hotel in Blackpool. He had his arm around her and was kissing her. Tracy looked at it with horror.

‘This is one of the last sightings of Mac Jones. The landlady of the Shangri-La in Blackpool gave a statement saying that between 2.35pm and 4.49pm on the day in question you and Mr Jones were there together.' Tracy wanted to jump up and cover Kent's ears. ‘Seemed like you had a very nice time, too,' the policeman added for good measure.

‘And how would you know that?' Tracy asked, wondering how on earth she was going to get Kent to believe that this was all a huge misunderstanding.

‘We have a statement from the owner of the Shangri-La stating that when asked if everything was alright as she had heard some noises that she thought to be someone in pain, you and Mr Jones took the landlady's innocent question as a slight and replied.' He read the statement out in a slow monotonous drawl ‘–“That wasn't pain, it was shagging, love. You might want to try it one day. Loosen yourself up a bit.”' He folded the statement up and looked at Tracy. She wanted to thump him.

Kent walked out of the room. ‘Kent!' Tracy shouted, jumping to her feet. Kent didn't turn around; he marched straight ahead and out of the front door. He slammed it behind him with such ferocity that the boarded-up top part of the door
that Tracy had been meaning to have fixed for over a year fell out onto the floor. She ran back to where the police officers were sitting. ‘Happy now?' she demanded.

‘Well, Tracy, if you
will
go playing away with someone who's now wanted for questioning, these things will bite you on the arse.'

‘Wise words,' the pipsqueak agreed.

‘Alright, Confucius, I don't need a bloody lecture. I don't know where he is. He's my bloody business partner, he's my son's business partner and he's done one, leaving us in the shit.'

‘But you were conducting an affair?'

‘What's that got to do with the price of fish?'

‘Everything. Answer the question, please.'

‘What went on with me and Mac is nobody's business.'

‘We've got pictures saying it is.'

Tracy looked at him. She wasn't going to win this argument. And there was something about the fact that it was being conducted with her in her dressing gown that made her feel she was at a distinct disadvantage.

‘You've just wrecked things between me and my other half so what else do you want from me? I don't know where Mac is.'

‘Have you heard from him since that day?'

Tracy didn't falter for a moment; one thing she had on her side was that she was a natural born liar. ‘Not a word.'

‘After this picture was taken, where did you go?'

‘I went off to see Kent win an Elvis competition.' A knowing look passed between the two police officers. ‘And you can knock the funny looks on the head. This isn't some moral crime you're here for, is it? Where I get my kicks is nothing to do with the Bradington constabulary. After the Elvis competition me and Kent went back to our hotel and then got the coach home the next day. Call the Ponderosa if you don't believe me,' she said, referring to the hotel she and Kent had stayed at.

‘We do because we already have. Thanks, Tracy, but nice to know where to come when I've forgotten how to do my job.'

‘Anyway, what you after Mac for?'

‘It's come to our attention that Joel Baldy owed your boyfriend quite a bit of money. You knew that though, didn't you, Tracy? What with you working for him and Markie now.'

‘No, I didn't. I deal with any women on the books who've fallen behind on their payments.
Pretty-boy footballers aren't my bag, officer. All extremely legitimate though, the business. But then again, you know that, don't you, otherwise you'd no doubt be blagging my head about that an' all.' Tracy wanted this pair of halfwits out her house. She had to get hold of Kent. He was a soft arse, but he hadn't deserved to find out that Tracy was having an affair in such a cruel and unexpected way.

‘No need to be defensive about the business, Tracy. I'm sure it's all above board. But just so you know what to say to Mac Jones if he does get in touch. He needs to answer a lot of questions and he's not helping himself by staying away. He's making himself look like he's very definitely got something to hide.' The policeman got to his feet and his sidekick copied him. ‘Be sure to call us if you hear anything, won't you?'

‘I'll be straight on the blower,' Tracy said sarcastically.

‘Good, because you're the nearest thing he's got to an alibi at the moment.'

‘Get lost. I've just told you, I was with Kent that night.'

‘Well, according to Mac's passport he was in Majorca the same day, flew out that morning. But
as these pictures prove, things aren't always what they seem, are they?' Tracy looked at him with steely conviction but underneath she was quaking.
What had she let herself in for here?
It looked as if Mac knew far more than he'd been telling her if he'd planned to make it look like he was out of the country on that day. Tracy didn't have a clue what was going on.

As the officers left, Tracy pulled her mobile phone out of her dressing-gown pocket and called Kent. There was no answer. She ran upstairs and pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a jumper and shoved her hair into a ponytail. Stepping out into the cold night air, she closed the door behind her. Seeing the board on the floor she picked it up and placed it back in the hole it had fallen from. She looked at it; it'd do. No one in their right mind would break into the Cromptons' house anyway, Tracy thought, knowing that although everything else might be falling in around her, her hard credentials were still firmly intact.

*

Markie was sitting at the bar of the Glasshouse sipping a neat bourbon and wondering when Mac
was going to make an appearance. He had had enough of all this bullshit. Mac needed to come back and face whatever music he needed to face like a man. Markie had been hauled in yet again and informed that not only did he have a personal gripe with Joel through his loyalty to Charly but he had a professional one too. The police knew about the loans that his business gave to new footballers and Markie had spent hours convincing the interviewing officer that he had nothing to do with that side of the business.

Markie didn't think for a second that Mac was responsible for murdering Joel Baldy; Mac was a lot of things but an amateur he wasn't and killing someone so high profile was amateurish. But he could do with showing his face and sorting out this mess himself so that they could all get on with their lives. Anyway, Markie wondered, what good was a dead Joel Baldy to Mac? He owed them money, something they were never going to see now that he wasn't around to pay it. Markie had managed to make sure that Mac's side of the business was covered in his absence. It wasn't something that either of them talked about but since Markie had spent a few years inside, they had both ensured that their businesses – although better when they were
both around – didn't suffer if either one of them suddenly wasn't there. Leanne's boyfriend Tony had filled in as far as running the club doors was concerned. And Karina's ex-boyfriend Gaz had stepped in to oversee Mac's collections that weren't being handled by Tracy. Swing, that idiot, who Markie still couldn't bring himself to speak to, had stepped into the breach to up his collections when he had returned from a week's holiday to find Mac AWOL.

The stool next to where Markie was sitting angrily scraped away from him. He looked across to see who was making such a point of sitting down: it was Kent. Markie was so unused to seeing his mother's boyfriend in this setting that he didn't say anything for a moment. Kent looked at him. ‘Markie,' he said as if he was here for
Men's Business.