The Other Woman (22 page)

‘I can't stay long,' she warned him. ‘I have to get Sunday lunch.' How she could tell such a lie without blushing, she didn't know. Simon had had his last Sunday lunch when he married her.

‘I'll bet,' he said.

She smiled. ‘Why am I here?' she asked, walking with him into the showroom.

‘Because hardly anyone comes in on a Sunday, and I wanted to see you again,' he said. ‘I run to coffee and biscuits.'

She sat down, resigned to being at Mac's beck and call as long as he had the tape. And it was a lot easier than being with Simon, when all was said and done.

‘Why don't you have a game of golf?'

Lionel raised his eyes to heaven. ‘I don't
want
a game of golf!' he said.

‘You should do something,' said Frances. ‘Take your mind off it.'

Oh, sure. Hitting a golf ball would take his mind off it.

‘Why don't you tell me?' she asked.

‘Tell you what?' He felt the alarm seizing his throat, making his voice sound odd.

‘Whatever it is that's bothering you.'

‘Sharon Smith has been killed!'

Frances sat down with her cup of tea. She never ate the huge, late Sunday breakfast that she always cooked for him. He had eaten; worry increased rather than decreased his appetite.

‘But that's not it,' she said. ‘You've been like it ever since you came back from that do at the football club.'

Lionel stared at her. He couldn't remember this many words passing between them since they had stood at the altar. But it didn't surprise him that she could tell the difference between normal long silences and worried long silences. Frances always knew.

‘I trust you're not going to say that sort of thing if the police come here,' he said.

She frowned. ‘Why should the police come here?' she asked.

‘You've heard that announcement!' Frances always had Radio Barton on from the moment she got up until the moment that she switched on the television for the early evening news; they had heard the police appeal for witnesses about six times already.

‘But you didn't see Sharon there, did you?' she asked.

Lionel closed his eyes. ‘No,' he said.

‘Well, then. You can't tell them anything.'

Frances never asked questions. She would snoop and pry, and she found things out, but she never asked questions. Why now? Why in God's name now?

‘They know I was there,' he said. ‘I was on the guest list.' Even Frances couldn't find out that he hadn't been on the guest list, surely. But he had to account for the fact that the police would be coming here; they had said so, when they had given him his wallet. Someone would call, they said. He hadn't told her about his wallet, because he never told her anything much. After his visit to the police station, he hadn't wanted to tell her.

He had to worry about the police, and Parker. He didn't need to start worrying about Frances as well.

Colin had watched as Judy Hill had come out of the hospital and got back into a Panda car. She sat in the front with the driver, and after waiting for a break, they moved out into the growing day-tripper traffic. Colin let a few cars go by, then pushed away from the pavement, weaving in and out, keeping an eye on the police car.

Even on a Sunday, the road from Barton was busy. But the sight of a police car made everyone drive at the forty miles an hour laid down, despite the dual carriageway; it wasn't easy to keep well out of then-way, but he did.

They didn't go back to Malworth police station, as he had expected; the car had signalled left halfway along the Malworth Road, and taken the turn into Stansfield village. In order not to be spotted, Colin had to carry on, and take the next left, risking a few moments of speeding to arrive by a different route at the village, stopping just before the first exit they could take, if they hadn't got there before him. He waited by a storage depot, where he wouldn't be noticed, and smiled with triumph as he saw the car, signalling the turn into Byford Road.

He moved when it did, and had a satisfactory number of vehicles ahead of him as he watched the unlit blue lamp on the car make its way up to the roundabout, and go straight across.

They must be going to the football ground, he thought. He was following a car up there just like before. The thought excited him; he wished he had the cloak of fog and the anonymity of an unlit bike in darkness. But it was broad daylight, with the sun climbing in the sky, heating up the ground so that the drop in temperature would bring the mist again by evening. He hung back, watching until the car's indicator proved him right; when it went out of sight, he revved the bike and sped through the traffic until he too reached the ground.

He pulled in, and stopped the engine. Bumping the bike over the pavement, he pushed it to where the high hedges would give him cover, and watched.

She got out of the car, and it drove off again. After about five minutes, Lloyd's car drove in. Colin ducked down then, and pretended to be working on the bike as he watched through the gaps in the privet.

He smiled. He had just had an idea.

Judy looked out of the picture window that ran the length of the room, at the mist which still hung, wispy now, over the pitch, weaving through the tall floodlight columns and the golden autumn trees that ringed the ground. Following the pattern of the previous day, the sun had broken through; it would be a beautiful day again. She had handed her case-load over to Detective Chief Inspector Merrill with relief; the atmosphere at Malworth was not one that she would have relished working in. Lloyd had told her to go straight to the football ground when she was free, and now his car was down below her

She watched him speak to the groundsman; he was doing his Welsh boyo act, she thought, able to tell from the body movements. The groundsman had regarded her with deep suspicion, even after she had shown him her ID; he was talking to Lloyd as if he had known him all his life.

She heard feet on the stairs, and the door opened with a suddenness that had once upon a time made her start, but to which she had grown accustomed.

‘Detective Inspector Hill,' he said, smiling broadly. ‘How nice to have you with us.'

Judy smiled.

‘I wanted you to see the scene for yourself,' he added. ‘Maps and plans are all very well, but it's better if you can visualise the actual place.'

Out on the gallery, he again described the events of two nights before, indicating the two points at which there had been incidents, reminding her that though the ground had been floodlit, the fog had been so bad that the match had been abandoned, and that once the lights had been put out, the place was in near-total darkness.

‘But,' he said, ‘the sawdust is
inside
. In the big building.'

Judy looked across at the half-completed centre. It was comprised of several linked blocks, some of which were finished, some of which still had builders working.

‘And the buildings had been secured for the night before Sharon ever left the office,' Lloyd said. ‘In her skirt and blouse,' he added, with a little bow of acknowledgment. ‘So perhaps we've solved the little puzzle of the key. And we're checking with the shop to see if that receipt is for the clothes she was wearing. The superstore's only ten minutes' walk from Evans and Whitworth, so I expect it is.'

‘Good,' said Judy, though she had rather been assuming that to be the case all along. It didn't seem to help much.

‘Parker's meeting us here,' he said. ‘If that key is to one of these buildings, we have to know how she got hold of it.'

‘But Drummond says they stayed in the car,' she said.

Lloyd snorted. ‘Personally, I don't believe a word that Drummond says, but I've been told not to jump to conclusions.'

‘It's your theory,' Judy pointed out indignantly. ‘Not mine.'

‘It's my scenario based on Drummond's account of what happened. But if you ask me, it's an account which isn't borne out by common sense.' He looked at her. ‘You don't take your clothes off if you're having a bit of nooky in a car. You just … well – remove any actual obstacles to progress, don't you?'

‘I wouldn't know,' she said, with mock primness. But the statement was true enough, as Lloyd well knew.

He grinned. ‘Take my word for it,' he said.

‘But she must have changed her clothes,' said Judy, thoughtfully. ‘Couldn't that have been what Drummond saw her doing?'

Lloyd was shaking his head. ‘She was wearing the leisure suit at the match,' he said.

‘So she was.' Judy subsided a little, and realised that she had better write up everything Lloyd had told her last night, or she would forget things. ‘Perhaps she was changing back into her other clothes,' she said hopefully, though she couldn't imagine why she would bother. ‘And whoever she was with killed her before she could.' She smiled at herself. ‘I'm getting as bad as you,' she said. ‘And quite frankly, Sharon doesn't strike me as the type to have men flying into uncontrollable rages at all, never mind twice in one evening.'

Lloyd laughed. ‘ But perhaps Sharon isn't quite what she seemed,' he said.

It was what she had thought this morning. But then she had thought that Sharon seemed to have been a little like her herself; still hardly the type to inspire jealous rage. She leant on the rail, and watched as a sleek car made its way up, the groundsman waving to its driver. Her eyes widened as she saw him get out. ‘What's he doing here?' she asked.

Lloyd looked down. ‘That's who we're meeting,' he said. ‘Jake Parker'

Judy nodded down at him as Parker walked towards the building. ‘He was with Bobbie Chalmers in the hospital,' she said. ‘He's the one she's going away with.'

Lloyd frowned, looking from Parker to the half-finished building, then round the rest of the ground. ‘Going away, is he?' he said, and went back into the room, to wait for him. ‘You wait out there,' he instructed, pulling the curtain across far enough to mask her presence. Judy sighed. Lloyd was fond of theatricals.

Parker came in; Judy heard him pass the time of day with Lloyd in confident modified Cockney tones that entirely suited the camel coat and identity bracelet image he projected without actually wearing either of these items.

‘I'd like you to meet my colleague,' Lloyd said. ‘Detective Inspector Hill.'

Judy felt as though she were coming on to a stage as she stepped through the sliding window.

Parker looked at her, then made a contemptuous noise. ‘I thought you said you were a friend of hers,' he said.

‘I hope I am,' said Judy steadily.

His eyes lost their hostility, and their certainty. He looked like Bobbie had; impotently angry, not quite, but almost, defeated. ‘ Yeah,' he said. ‘Sorry.'

‘We'll find him,' she assured him. But it was never easy. Crime – real crime, was difficult enough. But there were informants and neighbourhood-watch hawks; there were honest citizens prepared to help. Serial rape was different. No network of petty criminals to give them information, wittingly or otherwise. No members of the public, because it happened in lonely, deserted places. And often, very often, someone protecting the criminal. Still, they would get him. For the moment, it was no longer her immediate problem.

‘Miss Chalmers won't make an official complaint, I understand,' Lloyd said

‘Do you blame her?' asked Parker.

Lloyd gave a little shrug. ‘I'm wondering why,' he said.

‘She knows why.' Parker jerked his head at Judy.

‘Mr Parker,' said Lloyd quietly. ‘ I don't believe that you have told me the truth.'

Parker looked from one to the other, then walked out on to the balcony, his back to both of them, his shirt-sleeved arms spread along the rail, his back tense.

Lloyd moved to the open window. ‘ Sharon was in one of the buildings under construction,' he said. ‘Either before, during, or after her murder'

Parker's shoulders hunched, and his hands gripped the rail. Then he turned to face them. ‘ She came to see me,' he said.

‘When?'

‘I don't know. I was getting things ready for the party. About half six, seven. Something like that.'

‘Why?'

‘Just to say hello.'

Lloyd's eyebrows went up slowly. ‘She came all the way here from her office just to say hello?'

Jake shook his head. ‘She was meeting someone here,' he said.

Judy looked at Lloyd.

‘She had been shopping,' Jake said. ‘She asked if there was somewhere she could change. I gave her the key to the centre.' He nodded over to it as he said the word. ‘Changing rooms,' he said, with a shrug. ‘That block's complete.'

Judy thought that Lloyd might explode. When he spoke, his voice was as low and as Welsh and as dangerous as he knew how to make it. ‘ I want to know why you didn't tell me this before, Mr Parker,' he said.

Parker wasn't moved by Lloyd's evident anger. ‘ I didn't want to discuss it,' he said.

‘You preferred to waste police time?'

‘I wasn't trying to waste your time,' he answered evenly. ‘But what we discussed was private.'

‘Private? After she had been murdered?' Lloyd's blue eyes blazed, but his voice was controlled.

‘I thought you'd got him.'

Lloyd went out on to the balcony and stood directly in front of the much taller man. ‘I saw you first thing yesterday morning, Mr Parker,' he said. ‘I don't believe you knew then that we had anyone in for questioning. I had only just been told myself. And I want to know why Sharon was here, and why you didn't tell me that she was here.'

‘It's still private.'

‘Do you have the key to these changing rooms?'

‘No. I'd forgotten about it, to be honest with you. I didn't see her again until the carry-on on the terraces.'