The Other Woman (10 page)

‘Oh, Simon, for God's sake!'

‘What did you expect me to do? I was
worried
– I thought you'd had an accident! They were supposed to be watching out for your car – fine job they did of that, if you've just passed …' He stopped shouting, and went to the phone, while Melissa sighed her impatience with him.

‘Stansfield Police.'

‘Oh – is Sergeant Woodford there, please?'

‘No, I'm sorry – he went off duty at six. Can I take a message for him? He'll be back on at ten o'clock tonight.'

Of course he'd gone off duty. Simon couldn't think straight. But the last thing he wanted was the police involving themselves with his life, and … He licked his lips. ‘I … he may not have … it's just that I told him last night that my wife hadn't come home, and now she has.'

But it wasn't as simple as that. He had to give his name, Melissa's name, their address, the registration number of Melissa's car, and then wait for someone else to come on the line.

‘Mr Whitworth? Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd. Could I have a word with your wife, please?'

He held the phone out to Melissa. ‘It's a chief inspector,' he said. ‘He wants to speak to you.'

‘Oh, really!' She took the phone. ‘ Melissa Whitworth speaking,' she said.

There followed a series of terse replies from her to lengthy questions from the chief inspector.

‘So I understand.'

‘I tried. He wasn't at home.'

Simon made the coffee.

‘No. I work.'

‘
Barton Chronicle
.'

‘Very well. If you must.'

She slammed down the phone. ‘The damn police are sending someone to talk to me at work!' she said angrily.

‘Why?' asked Simon, mystified.

‘How the hell should I know? You're the one who rang them!'

Simon looked at his watch. ‘Oh, look – I've got to go,' he said. They still worked Saturday mornings in Stansfield solicitors' offices.

‘Yes,' said Melissa. ‘It wouldn't do to keep Sharon waiting, would it?'

Simon frowned. But he didn't pursue her odd response; he had to get to the office, and whatever else Melissa was doing, she was spoiling for a row.

‘I'd better ring and tell her I'm on my way in,' he said, picking up the phone as Melissa went upstairs.

But there was no reply.

Jake ushered the chief inspector into the patterned depths of the sitting room, where the curtains still held off the daylight. He put on the light rather than opening them.

‘Terrible thing,' he said. ‘I'd hoped – last night … well, I'd hoped you were wrong.'

Lloyd nodded briefly. ‘How well did you know Sharon Smith?' he asked.

Jake shrugged a little. ‘She worked for me,' he said. ‘Sit down,' he urged. ‘ Would you like coffee or anything? I've just made some.'

The chief inspector declined the offer, and Jake sat down, his mouth dry. Why did this feel like a dawn raid?

‘How did this fight over Sharon happen?' Lloyd asked.

‘This character she was with objected to her talking to me,' said Jake. ‘He hit me, I hit him – your guys saw it, and came charging over. Other people were getting involved. Someone grabbed me – and you know the rest.'

‘In his statement, Barnes seems to think you started it. He says he wasn't with Sharon – she simply asked him for the time.'

Jake didn't think that his smile would do much good this time. It was hardly appropriate. ‘ Yeah, well,' he said. ‘Perhaps I jumped to conclusions.'

‘You did start it?'

‘Maybe,' Jake looked up. ‘ Does it matter?' he asked, getting up. He was having some coffee, whether or not his uninvited guest wanted one.

‘She's dead, Mr Parker. Of course it matters! I have to know as much about her as possible. Why did you start it?'

Jake went determinedly into the kitchen, and poured himself black coffee. His eye throbbed, his head wasn't together yet. He had to be careful. Lloyd followed him in, and just stood there, while Jake swallowed the strong dark liquid. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘I take it your relationship with her was more than just a working one?' Lloyd said.

Jake drank more coffee. ‘Sure,' he said. ‘Why not? We were both free agents. Look – I didn't like the way she was behaving, all right?'

‘What did she do when the fight started?'

‘She took off.'

‘Did she leave alone?'

Jake drank some more coffee. He had been too busy head-butting a policeman to notice; it hadn't occurred to him until now that she might not have. ‘After I pushed him away, he came back and dragged me away from her.' he said. ‘She walked off. That's all I know.'

‘Did you see anyone go with her, or after her?'

‘That's
all
I know!' repeated Jake.

Lloyd looked at him for a long time. ‘ If you're thinking about private justice, you can forget it, Mr Parker,' he said.

Jake finished his coffee, and poured more. ‘I've no idea who killed her,' he said, with as much patience as he could muster. ‘ I've told you everything I know.'

Lloyd didn't believe him. But Jake was getting used to that by now.

Engaged again. Mac put down the phone, and walked briskly back up the street to his digs. He had used the phone box rather than ring in what would almost certainly be his landlady's hearing – but he mustn't start behaving like a criminal, he thought, as he let himself into the house, and took the stairs as quietly as he could.

‘Mr McDonald!'

My God, they should use landladies instead of radar. He turned. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘I'm having to go over to my sister's,' she said. ‘ She's been taken bad again. There's a hotpot in the fridge that you can heat up for your evening meal – I've left instructions on how to use the microwave.'

‘Thank you.'

‘I should be back about ten, I think. She's usually perfectly all right – she just panics.'

He smiled briefly. The conversation seemed to be terminated; he turned back and went up to his room.

He'd be as well going to see Melissa at the paper. They didn't want his piece on the opening for tonight's edition, but he could write it up and use it as an excuse. He rang Sheila at the garage, and said that he wouldn't be in until the afternoon.

He had lied to the police. He wouldn't have reported it at all if he'd thought for a moment that they would suspect him of murdering the girl. If you found a body, you reported it; that had been all that he had thought. The questions, the intense interest in what he had been doing – that hadn't occurred to him. Now, on reflection, he knew that it was bound to have made them suspicious of him. But they couldn't prove that he hadn't been walking round Stansfield all evening; they certainly couldn't find anything to tie him in with the dead girl, aside from the fact that he had found her, and somebody had to find the dead bodies that other people from time to time left lying around.

It was usually fishermen, he reflected, as he shrugged on his jacket. Or people taking their dog for a walk. Or kids playing in old air raid shelters. Did they all get the third degree about what they'd been doing? Probably, he told himself comfortingly. But Mac had a nasty suspicion that he would get to know the officers of Stansfield constabulary much better than he had any desire to before this business got itself sorted out.

And he had to tell Melissa that he had kept her name out of it. The paper obviously didn't know yet that he had found the body, or he would have heard from them, but she would, of course, find out. So he'd get some Brownie points for not giving her hobby away, at least But of course – he didn't have to write up his piece. His having found the body was a good excuse for going to the paper, he told himself, as he set off towards the bus stop. He would go in to report his news, and just happen to talk to Melissa while he was there. Even with the uneasy feeling that lying to the police had given him, he viewed seeing Melissa again with pleasurable anticipation, and he felt almost jauntily certain that a little shuttle-bus would appear as soon as he arrived at the stop, so good a turn did his luck, seem to be taking.

And a shuttle-bus indeed did; he took the fifteen minutes or so of the journey to sort out his thoughts. He was, despite joking to himself about updating the sports desk on the available skirt, beginning to doubt that Melissa's behaviour of the night before had been in character, and he was glad that he hadn't told the police about her. If he had, it might all have got out, and he wouldn't have wanted to do that to her. He had never felt chivalrous about any woman before, and he walked in the sunshine towards
The Chronicle
offices with a spring in his step.

Until he saw the police car already there.

‘And you thought she was me?' Melissa looked with astonishment at the young sergeant who had arrived on the dot of nine o'clock.

‘For a while. The first thing you do is check to see who's been reported missing.'

‘But my husband said that he gave you a description of me,' Melissa pointed out.

Sergeant Finch nodded. ‘That was after we had found her,' he said. ‘We naturally assumed that it wasn't you then, but we did have to make certain.'

Melissa stared at him. ‘You thought that he'd done away with me, and got someone to say she was me on the phone?' she asked.

‘Stranger things have happened.'

The newsroom had been buzzing with the murder when she had got there; the police, however, had been very cagey, and had so far only released her description and the fact that they were treating it as foul play. Melissa could see the reporters just waiting to pounce on Sergeant Finch when he had finished with her.

They were in the editor's office which Finch seemed to think afforded her some privacy. The glass walls simply had the opposite effect, with everyone looking towards the room, trying to guess what her involvement was.

‘Can I ask where you were?'

‘No, I don't think you can,' said Melissa. ‘I chose not to go home last night – that's surely my business?'

Finch smiled. ‘Probably,' he said. ‘ But my boss might not see it like that.'

‘Your boss has no more right to know what I was doing last night than I have to know what he was doing,' she said.

‘That kind of depends on circumstances, doesn't it, Mrs Whitworth? I mean – if he had spent last night accepting bribes from criminals, you'd think it was your business then, wouldn't you?'

‘And did he?' asked Melissa, only too aware that it was difficult for journalists to make stands on rights of privacy.

Finch shrugged. ‘You can ask him yourself,' he said. ‘I think you'll be getting a visit from Chief Inspector Lloyd before too long.'

‘Good. I look forward to putting him straight about the rights of the individual in this country. Well, if that's all, I really do have to—'

‘Just one other thing,' he said. ‘Gil McDonald.'

The name meant nothing to Melissa. She frowned. ‘Who?' she asked coldly.

‘I was told I might find him here.'

Melissa shook her head. ‘ I've never heard of him.'

‘He does a column for you, I believe.'

‘Not for me,' she said. ‘I'm the features editor – I know our columnists.'

‘No – sports.'

‘Mac!' she said, startled to realise that she didn't even know his real name. My God, did they have video cameras in hotel bedrooms these days? ‘Yes, yes – that's right. I only know him as Mac. Sorry.'

‘That's all right. I wondered if you could tell me anything about him, but obviously not. Who would be able to?'

‘Barry Houghton,' she said, pointing through the glass, and then saw everyone swoop on him as Mac himself walked into the room. She frowned. ‘That's Mac,' she said, pointing to the figure in the middle of the small crowd.

Finch sat up a little and craned his neck to see over the filing cabinets. ‘Oh, of course,' he said. ‘Something of a scoop, isn't it, to have one of your very own columnists find the body?'

Melissa went very cold.

‘Perhaps you'd ask Mr Houghton to come in and have a word with me?'

Jake had tried to contact Lionel Evans, without success. Whitworth had told him that he was in Birmingham all day; Jake remembered now that he had said something about that last night. He rubbed his eyes, making himself wince as he disturbed the bruised skin. It only took an hour to get to Birmingham – Evans would presumably be back some time. He would try again this afternoon. He'd keep trying. He would camp out on the bloody man's doorstep if he had to.

He hadn't expected an early morning visit from the police; he had told them all they needed to know about Sharon last night, and had hoped that that might have been that. But Chief Inspector Lloyd had wanted to know more, and had asked questions that Jake hadn't expected; he had thrown him. He wasn't used to being on the defensive.

He'd handled it pretty well though. He
was
used to thinking on his feet. But he had the uncomfortable feeling that so was the chief inspector, and that could prove just a little tricky.

Colin had been brought to Stansfield police station to help with their inquiries. He had been asked about his injuries, and they had suggested that a doctor see him. He hadn't objected.

The police that had come for him had said that they wanted him to answer questions in connection with the murder of a Sharon Smith. He had told them he'd never even heard of her, but they didn't say anything else. At the station, his appearance had given rise to a lot of comment and some excitement. He had said that he didn't want a solicitor, and that he didn't want anyone informed. He had said that he didn't want his own doctor present at the medical examination.