The Footballer's Wife (28 page)

‘Len Metcalfe, we are arresting you on suspicion of murder . . .'

‘Shirley Metcalfe, we are arresting you for perverting the course of justice . . .'

Len stared at Shirley. She looked back at him in alarm. It looked like their conversation was going to have to wait.

*

Tracy and Tammy were on their much-talked-about night out. Talked about by Tracy, at any rate. Tammy had seemed to just worry about the prospect of having to spend the evening with her colleague and mother of the boss. Tracy had arranged for them to go to the Glasshouse and sit in the VIP area sipping lethal cocktails. Personally she'd never understood the attraction of champagne. Everyone banged on about it but it wasn't much use for getting pissed as a newt. That's why Tracy liked Long Island Iced Teas. Any cocktail with five different spirits in was a friend of Tracy's.

So far the night had gone to plan. Tracy and Tammy were getting along famously and the girl wasn't too bad when she had a few drinks down her neck and relaxed a little. ‘So, how long you been working for our Markie now?' Tracy shouted to Tammy over some racket that the DJ seemed insistent on playing.

‘A year. Since Leanne left.' Leanne Crompton had been Markie's office manager for a time before she set up in business on her own.

‘How much is he paying you?' Tammy looked shocked. Tracy looked at her as if this was a totally reasonable question.

‘Er, sixteen grand a year.'

‘If I was running the place I'd have you on more. Give you some incentive.'

‘Right,' Tammy said slowly.

‘I mean, you need to know when you've got good staff and sometimes I think that our Markie hasn't a clue. I think you should be on at least twenty grand.'

‘Do you?' Tammy said cautiously.

‘Yeah, but what do I know?'

Tammy smiled nervously and sucked back a large strawful of her drink.

‘You any idea what level three means?' Tracy asked innocently.

Tammy looked at Tracy, slightly taken aback. ‘In what context?'

Tracy was getting a little sick of the dancing round the handbags routine, but she persevered. ‘Well, if our Markie was to say to you, “We had to go to level three on that”, what would he mean?'

Tammy looked at Tracy as if this was a trick question. ‘It means apply force, doesn't it?'

‘What sort of force?' Tracy probed.

Tammy looked like she'd said too much. ‘I don't know if I'm right, it's just what I've sort of . . . gathered.'

‘Yeah, that's what I'd sort of gathered too.' Tracy nodded. ‘Have the police contacted the office again?'

‘Again?' Tammy asked, confused.

‘I just mean that they had Markie in for questioning and they were round my house. Thought they might have been in the office, that's all.'

‘Not that I know of.'

Tracy nodded. She wasn't sure why she was putting herself through tonight, but she knew that it was probably better to have Tammy on side than not and if that was all that came out of this evening then it was an evening well spent.

Tammy went to the toilet and Tracy checked her phone. She thought that Markie might have called to see if everything was to their satisfaction but he probably couldn't care less whether his mum was having a nice night out. Sometimes she felt as if she bent over backwards for her kids and got nothing in return. She had four missed calls. There was a voicemail message. It was from Mac.

‘Hi Tracy. I'm just calling for a chat. Give me a call. Back on the old number now.'

Tracy dialled his number. What was going on? she wondered. Why hadn't the police arrested him? Maybe they had and they'd let him go. They were a useless lot, she thought; she should've been a copper herself, she'd have got more done.

‘Hello, stranger,' she said, walking over to the
foyer of the club where she could just about hear herself think.

‘Tracy, fancy meeting up? I owe you a kiss and a cuddle and a sorry.' She'd rather have poked her own eyes out than kiss and cuddle this sap after his disappearing act but she wanted to know what was going on.

‘Where are you?'

‘I'm in the library.'

‘Renewing your books?' Tracy joked.

‘Very funny. The hotel.'

The Library was Bradington's new boutique hotel. Tracy didn't rate its chances for longevity. The good people of Bradington were more your thirty-pound-a-night kettle-nailed-to-the-wall lot but it was nice to see that someone thought the city was worth sticking a few quid into.

‘I'll be there in half an hour,' she said, swigging her drink.

Tammy came back from the toilet. ‘Same again?' she asked.

‘No, love, I'm going to hit the sack if you don't mind.' Tracy knew that this was an early exit for someone who had been bleating on about their night out for so long but she'd rather get to the bottom of things with Mac.

‘Oh, OK.' Tammy actually sounded gutted.

‘Come on, love, when you're my age you need your beauty sleep. Tell you what, give one of your mates a ring and get a couple of bottles of champagne in, my treat.'

‘Really?' Tammy asked, genuinely grateful.

‘Course.'

Tracy walked behind the bar and whispered to the barman, ‘Two bottles of champagne, and tell our Markie I've stuck them on the work tab.'

‘There isn't a “work tab”,' he said rather haughtily.

‘There is now.'

*

The only way to describe the Library for Tracy was
posh
. The reception area was tastefully decorated with dark Edwardian colours that perfectly complemented the grand old building. The windows were swathed with purple velvet curtains and the huge mirror that hung at the back of the small reception area was an understated gold antique. It was the sort of taste that Tracy wished she had, but she knew that she couldn't walk past an ornament of a cat playing cymbals without buying it and sticking it on
her cluttered mantelpiece, so the chance of her house ever looking anything like this was remote.

She asked for directions to the room where Mac was staying and felt curiously nervous. She couldn't quite place the reason for the nerves. She didn't think that it was because she would soon be seeing Mac again. She didn't think it was because she was in a hotel that she felt sure she was about to be thrown out of because she didn't look like she should be anywhere near somewhere this classy, and she certainly didn't think it was because she had betrayed Mac, because Tracy didn't think for a minute that she had. He'd let himself down, if anything. Maybe it was a combination of all those things that was making her nervous. Or maybe it was none of the above and Tracy was sensing something that she didn't even know about yet.

She knocked on the door of room five and waited for it to open. Mac was standing there looking slightly dishevelled but good for it. ‘Come in, sweetheart,' he said, standing back to allow Tracy into the room. He didn't grab her as she thought he might. He simply stood there looking at her. Tracy looked around the room. She was going to sit on the bed but then opted for the chair in the corner.

‘Nice gaff.'

‘Not bad for round here, is it?'

‘A lot of weather we've been having,' Tracy said, half-smiling.

‘We're not good at bullshit small talk, are we?'

‘No, so let's cut it, shall we? Where the fuck have you been, if you'll pardon my French,' Tracy asked, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible.

‘Look, Trace, I know we were messing around and you probably thought that I was a right tube for going off like that, but I swear I had good reason.'

‘Did you kill Joel Baldy?' Tracy asked outright.

Mac didn't flinch. ‘Now, Tracy, you know me and I'm not going to start going into the arse of things with anyone. Even you.'

‘Especially me.'

‘Why d'you say that?'

‘That's what it sounded like you were driving at.'

‘I don't drive at anything, I come straight out and say it. Anyway, Len Metcalfe's been arrested for killing the Baldy lad, so I think it's fair to say the police have got their man and I'm free to come back.'

‘Len?'

‘Thought you'd be pleased.'

It wasn't exactly what Tracy had been planning but it
was
good news. She thought that the police
had exonerated Len since the prodigal wife had returned.

‘How do you know?'

‘I've got someone on the inside at the cop shop.'

Tracy felt the colour drain from her. Maybe this was why there had been no mention of the file she had sent to the police. She wracked her brain, trying to think if anything she had sent directly implicated her. She could always pin it on Tammy if she had to. ‘Really?'

‘Really.' Mac was eyeing Tracy closely. She shifted uncomfortably in the chair. ‘Poor old Len, eh? They found some fingerprints at the hotel, apparently. Waiting for the forensics to come back. Three people who were staying at the hotel that night picked him out in photos they were shown and he had the best reason in the world to want him dead.'

‘Do you think he did it?'

Mac laughed loudly for a few moments and stopped abruptly, looking at Tracy with what she knew to take as serious hatred burning in his eyes. ‘Do I think that fat little Len Metcalfe murdered a strapping lad like Joel Baldy in his hotel room?' Mac asked, looking around the room that he was staying in as if he'd just realised that this too was a
hotel room and what an amazing coincidence that was. ‘I think it'll have taken someone far stronger than Len to pull that off, don't you, Tracy?'

Tracy got up from her seat and headed towards the door. Mac got up and pressed his hand hard against the door. ‘Sit down,' he ordered. ‘Me and you have got some talking to do.'

Tracy did as she was told. She had no choice. She was terrified.

*

Len was sitting in the interview room staring blankly at the wall. He was going to have to come clean with the police this time, tell them everything. He'd thought that by trying to keep himself out of the frame initially he'd be doing not only himself a favour but more importantly, Charly. Now he knew what it must look like to the police and he was wishing that he could turn back time and hold his hands up to what he had really done on the night that his son-in-law was murdered.

Two police officers came into the room. One sat down and without saying anything looked at Len witheringly. The other one threw his files on the
desk and said, ‘Could have saved us and yourself a bit of time, Mr Metcalfe, telling us from the start what happened.'

‘I'm saying nowt till that thing's turned on.' Len nodded at the tape recorder on the table.

The officer looked at his colleague and raised an eyebrow. ‘10.48pm . . .' he said, pressing record and going on to state the date, Len's name and what he was being arrested for.

The officer sat back in his chair and eyeballed Len, obviously thinking that he and his colleague were here for the long haul and were going to have to drag the truth out of Len. Len didn't envy these men. The one doing the talking, his eyes were grey and sunken, his skin pallid from spending too many days in interview rooms with little light. Len sat forward and placed his hands flat on the table as if he needed all the ballast he could get to support what he was about to say.

‘You don't need to do all that probing questions and whatever else it is they teach you at training college. I'll tell you everything.'

The police officers leaned forward. This was obviously a turn-up for the books.

*

Markie was at Pandora's, a massage parlour that he owned in Manchester. He was sitting in the foyer drinking a beer while the girl on reception nervously counted out the week's takings. He didn't visit this place often. There was a time when he utilised the services of the girls here, simply because they were on offer, but now he was bored by the idea. He didn't like the look of Sharn in her tacky silver hot pants and barely-there top. He knew she was nervously eyeing him up. A lot of the girls here did that, as if Markie was somehow going to take them away from all this. Fat chance of that; he had enough on keeping his head above water without worrying about an ex-hooker for a girlfriend.

‘I think it's all here, Markie,' she said, putting the money in an envelope. A door at the other end of the corridor opened and a busty woman in her late thirties wearing a trouser suit and sky-high heels walked out.

‘Bloody hell, stranger,' she said.

‘Now then, Trish, how's it going?'

‘Alright. Had some nob-head do a runner the other night but Swing caught up with him and gave him a kicking.'

Markie's jaw clenched at the mention of Swing.

That lot, he really needed to haul them all in and make sure he was keeping track of them. Trish walked towards him, and helped herself to some water from the cooler next to Markie. ‘Business is good at the minute. Load of new Polish builders in town for them flats they're slinging up up the road.'

‘Poles, eh? Anything specific?' Markie always found it funny when people had certain fetishes. Trish had often said that priests were the worst; they always wanted punishing. And often their idea of punishment knew no bounds.

‘Not really. Men are men, aren't they? Whatever country they're from they just want to get their end away.'

Markie smiled at Trish. To the punters she was Pandora, although her own name was far more suited to her hard-faced reality than Pandora was.

Markie's phone began to ring. It was Charly. He answered it, but didn't want Sharn or Trish to hear his conversation with her. ‘I'll call you back in a minute, yeah?'

Charly said yes, but Markie could hear that she was crying. He took the money from Sharn as he pocketed his phone. ‘Nice seeing you, ladies,' he said and headed out of the door, passing a
shady-looking man in the stairwell who couldn't have looked more like a first-time punter if he tried.