The Other Woman (17 page)

Lloyd sipped his cold tea. ‘Parker is a back-street thug who has made money,' he said, ‘He likes having the power to snap his fingers and have Whitworth come running. That's all.'

Finch wiped his hands on the paper napkin. ‘I'd be prepared to swear that Mrs Whitworth had no idea who McDonald was when I spoke to her this morning,' he said.

Lloyd stood up. ‘I want to know exactly what Sharon Smith did between leaving the office and getting herself murdered. All we've got to go on is that she was at the football match, for some reason. There were two hundred other people there, so someone must have seen her. Her movements shouldn't be that hard to trace.' He finished his tea. ‘If she wasn't the victim of a random killing, then someone wanted her dead. We have to find out why before we can find out who.' He walked towards the door and turned back. ‘And I want to know what that key opens,' he added.

Back in the office, he formulated an appeal to the football-loving public to come forward with any information they had, however insignificant it seemed. Finch had gone tearing off to confirm with Parker Lionel Evans's account of his actions during the evening, giving himself indigestion at the very least, and probably storing up ulcer trouble while he was at it.

Lloyd took things at a rather easier pace. He wanted badly to see the results of the forensic examination of the buildings, and while he could not be said to want it, he needed the result of the post-mortem, which Freddie was doing even now. He had toyed with the idea of sending Finch, but the lad had been working himself ragged, and he thought that it would perhaps be less than fair. He would go himself.

The super was out of the office; Lloyd left the draft appeal on his desk, and went off to join Freddie at Barton Hospital morgue, a procedure which never did his temper much good at the best of times.

Still, he thought, brightening a little even as his steps took him towards the room, with its dreadful smell of antiseptic and other, nameless horrors, at least Freddie was also male. Even Kathy was on her honeymoon, as he was reminded when he saw Freddie prepare to dictate his findings to a cassette.

‘Lloyd,' he said, not looking up before beginning his work.

Lloyd spent a lot of time not looking at anything; he could hear what was being dictated, but Freddie's notes were largely incomprehensible to the layman, so he waited for the abridged version.

‘That's that,' said Freddie cheerfully, switching the machine off with his elbow and a great deal of difficulty. ‘She died from asphyxiation. Several contusions and abrasions, none very serious. Time of death is between three and six hours from when she was found, give or take an hour or so.'

Lloyd pulled a face. ‘Thanks,' he said.

Freddie shrugged. ‘There's a Nobel prize waiting for the man who can find a way of ascertaining the precise time of death,' he said. ‘Temperature isn't much of a guide in asphyxiation deaths, so the whole thing becomes even more of a lottery.'

‘OK,' said Lloyd.

‘She was fit and healthy. She hadn't eaten for some hours before death, and she hadn't been drinking. She was less sexually experienced than you would expect for a woman of her age. These days, anyway,' Freddie added.

Lloyd smiled. ‘ Once upon a time,' he said, ‘single meant virgin – eh, Freddie?'

Freddie's eyes widened. ‘Did it sound disapproving? I didn't mean it to. I really meant the opposite.'

Lloyd was grimly pleased that the evidence was going some considerable way towards disproving Drummond's story of her having it off with someone who picked her up in a car.

‘But she had had recent intercourse,' said Freddie, with what seemed to Lloyd like malicious timing.

Lloyd sighed. ‘ How recent?'

Freddie smiled. ‘I don't know, Lloyd, I wasn't there. Recent enough for it still to be detectable. Half an hour before, say. I've taken samples for DNA.'

Time for another rethink on Drummond. Andrews' unspoken warning about jumping to conclusions was, Lloyd grudgingly conceded, entirely justified, and his rap over the knuckles for dismissing the young man's story was probably less than he deserved.

‘An observation,' said Freddie, breaking into Lloyd's morose thoughts.

‘Go on,' said Lloyd, tiredly. Just a few more years until he could retire and let someone else take on the human race in its less lovable moments.

‘These days, more and more people are using condoms if they go in for casual sex. One wasn't used in this instance, as you'll have gathered.'

‘So – taken in conjunction with her below-average sexual experience, you think she in all probability actually had a steady relationship with whoever she was with?'

Freddie beamed at him. ‘ I don't think anything. I have made an observation. I will go so far as to say that she possibly knew the person quite well. But you think what you like.'

Thanks, thought Lloyd sourly. The only person with whom he knew Sharon had had a relationship was the only one who couldn't possibly have been in that car with her.

‘I think I want the result of Drummond's blood test,' he muttered.

‘It's gone off to the lab, Lloyd. I can do no more than that,' said Freddie. ‘It'll be at least two weeks before we get the result.'

A line from an old song was running in Lloyd's head, despite his efforts to ignore it.
You can't make love on a cycle, Michael, like you can in an automobile
. So perhaps the car story was true. Another scenario began to present itself. He wasn't alone in jumping to conclusions – Parker had admitted that he might have done. Sharon had gone to meet someone; whoever it was had failed to turn up, and she had checked the time, to make certain that she wasn't early. Parker, seeing her speaking to Barnes, thought that he was the new boyfriend, and caused the trouble from which Sharon walked away. The person she had expected to meet at the match had arrived late, to find that the match had been abandoned. He had driven away from the ground, and had caught Sharon up. She had got into the car with him.

Why go back to the football ground? Well, he had known it would be deserted, and perhaps they didn't have much choice about where they met. A married man? In any event, despite Parker's apparent belief, Sharon had been far from promiscuous, according to Freddie. That had to make it relatively easy to find out who was in the car with her, surely? The thought brightened him a little.

But then there was Drummond. Watching all this. And reacting very strangely indeed. Lloyd couldn't shake Drummond off, couldn't cast him in the role of innocent bystander. If Finch found any connection at all between Drummond and Sharon, Drummond would be back in custody, complaint or no complaint.

‘Do you think she put up a fight when she was attacked?' he asked.

‘Hard to say. She was strangled from behind – not much opportunity to fight back. She certainly struggled – some minor grazing and bruises, as I told you, so she might have left her mark on him.' He smiled. ‘But then again, she might not have.'

‘Was she definitely killed where she was found?' Lloyd asked.

‘Nothing to suggest otherwise, apart from the sawdust – which she could have picked up when she was alive, of course. She could have been killed in situ.'

He smiled again and Lloyd waited patiently for the punch line.
‘But then again, she needn't have been,' said Freddie.
Pathologists were such a comfort.

Melissa left Parker's offices in Malworth, got into her car, and checked over the notes she had got on her investigation into Sharon Smith's background. She had checked on Sharon's school straight from Mac's so that the editor didn't find out just how long her lunch-hour had been.

The notes weren't up to much. Sharon had left school at sixteen, having taken five CSEs and passed them, but she wasn't what you would call academic. She had played games, but not to any particularly high standard. The woman was clearly having trouble remembering who she was, which was reasonable, given the seven-year gap since Sharon had left, but it was evident that Sharon had not made her mark on school life.

She had forced herself to ring Simon and get the details of her background. The police had been to see Simon too, of course. No, he had said, they hadn't been too bad. He had tried to telephone her, but she had been at lunch.

Melissa thought again about her lunch-hour, and the high came back, just like before, despite the fact that her hand had been forced. It had been blackmail, but it had been therapeutic blackmail, if such a thing was possible.

The Parker Development offices were closed on a Saturday, and the security guard had never heard of Sharon. Mr Parker had been in earlier, but he had left.

Melissa drove through a misty Malworth, checking her watch. She mustn't be late for the vet; she had to pick up Robeson. She was waiting to come out of a side street when she saw Detective Inspector Hill; she had seen a lot of her when she did the column on the aftermath of rape, in the wake of the recent attacks. She had been very helpful.

Melissa frowned as she watched the inspector take a note from under her windscreen, read it, then screw it up and throw it into one of the bins that adorned every other lamp-post in Malworth in its attempt to regain the Best Kept Town trophy. Then she tried to get into her car, but the key didn't seem to work.

There was a hooting from behind, and Melissa, much to the annoyance of everyone around, cautiously changed lanes and turned right instead of left. She pulled up beside the inspector. ‘Can I help?' she asked.

Detective Inspector Hill turned quickly, startled by her voice. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘It's you. I … I can't unlock the door.'

‘Have you tried the passenger door? The lock's probably collapsed or something.'

She had seen Detective Inspector Hill very angry – angry enough to say things about the judicial system which Melissa had felt it prudent not to publish; she had seen her relaxed. She had seen her control a quite sizeable press conference. She had never seen her flustered.

‘I … yes. No – it's silly. Someone's superglued the locks.' Her face was pink, her eyes bright. She tried to laugh it off without much success.

Melissa opened her passenger door. ‘I'll give you a lift,' she said.

She looked as though she was going to refuse, but she got in. ‘Thank you,' she said. ‘ It's kind of you.'

‘Can I give it to the news desk as a filler?' asked Melissa. ‘Vandals strike at copcar?'

‘If you like.'

Melissa smiled. ‘Just a joke,' she said. ‘ I won't tell them if you don't want me to. I'm not paid to give them news.' She pulled back out into the traffic, occasioning more hoots. ‘Where to?' she asked.

‘Oh – I live on the High Street. It's not far.'

Melissa wondered about the note under the windscreen. If she was a newshound, she would drop off the inspector and come back and fish for it in that bin. But she wasn't a newshound, and she had a cat to fetch from the vet's. Besides, police officers were probably always having this sort of thing done to them by those whose lives they had made less comfortable.

She glanced at Detective Inspector Hill, who sat stiffly beside her, her cheeks still burning, her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead.

She didn't suppose it always produced that reaction, though, she thought, and sneaked another look at her watch. Between five and six, the vet had said, and she didn't have any spare time. Perhaps she could telephone Simon, get him to go to the vet. Or even come back after she'd taken Robeson home.

As the thought crossed her mind, she heard the hum and beat of the street-sweeper as it made its noisy way along the wide pavement, saw the driver get down and empty one of the bins into its trailer. He would obviously beat her to it, whatever she did.

Oh, well. She wasn't a newshound anyway. She pulled up as instructed, outside a shop, and Detective Inspector Hill got out.

Few women could make her feel that she didn't do enough with herself, as Lionel had observed when making a clumsy pass at her during her own house-warming party. She was very confident of her womanhood; girls like Sharon Smith didn't make her question herself at all, unless they had just told her they were sleeping with her husband.

But Detective Inspector Hill could manage it, even when she was uncharacteristically agitated, without saying a word. She wore as little make-up as Melissa, and her hair was short and natural too. But she looked elegant and
right
; she was somehow dressed for early autumn, not in summer jeans and T-shirt and an old cardigan in case it got cold. Her skirt and jacket were autumn coloured; the crisp shirt was a perfect contrast, the shoes, even the bloody tights were right. She could have understood if Simon had wanted someone like her. Someone with a touch of class, someone who made more of herself without making herself a dressmaker's dummy.

And now she was covered in cat hairs, which she was absently attempting to brush from her skirt. Melissa felt awful.

‘Sorry about that,' she said. ‘I had to take the cat to the vet yesterday afternoon – I'm just on my way to pick him up.'

‘That's all right,' she said. ‘And thanks. I'm sorry I wasn't very good company.' She looked a little ashamed. ‘ I believe Sharon Smith worked for your husband,' she said. ‘ It must have been a shock for him.'

‘I expect it was,' said Melissa, speaking before thinking. The bitterness was evident. But for once, the usually sharp Detective Inspector Hill hadn't seemed to notice.

The fog was closing in again as Colin straightened up from his task, and looked out of the garage door. He stretched; the aching in his bones was wearing off now that he could relax.

He had checked the bike minutely, just in case it had been ‘accidentally' scratched or otherwise abused when it was in police care, but it seemed to be all right. He was getting away from his parents, who had spent every minute since they had got home demanding to know what was going to happen.