The Other Woman (20 page)

‘We're supposed to be off-duty,' he reminded her.

‘We can be off-duty when we've eaten,' she said.

As they ate, he told her what they knew; no more. No half-baked theorising, not yet. Not so soon after being proved wrong about Drummond. By Judy, of course. It would be good to have her back in harness with him.

‘The lab have confirmed that there
were
traces of sawdust on her clothes, and SOCOs will be at the site tomorrow to see where it might have come from,' he finished.

She nodded, and got up from the table, switching the kettle on. ‘Tea or instant coffee?' she asked.

And a coffee-grinder. He'd civilise her if it was the last thing he did. ‘Tea,' he said. It would be tea bags, of course, but that wasn't as bad as instant coffee.

‘So there you are,' he said. ‘Two little puzzles. The sawdust – and this key that no one knows anything about. Any observations?' he asked, when she had made the tea.

‘Just one,' she said. ‘A leisure suit and trainers are very sensible things to wear at a football match, but I'd like to know if that's what she was wearing at work.'

Lloyd beamed, and stood up, putting his arms round her as she closed the teapot lid. ‘That's my girl,' he said, and got smacked on the hand.

‘If Drummond's telling the truth,' he said, instantly forgetting his resolution not to theorise, ‘ I think Sharon had a married man tucked away somewhere. Arranged to meet him at the match, and he didn't turn up. But she spoke to Barnes, and Parker got the wrong idea.'

Judy nodded, and reached past him to pluck two mugs from the tree on the worktop.

‘Then the boyfriend saw her, picked her up, and they went back to the ground, because it was deserted, and they wanted privacy. They didn't know they had a voyeur taking notes.'

‘It's possible,' said Judy. ‘I suppose. But why did this married man kill her?'

Lloyd shrugged. ‘Search me,' he said, with a grin.

They took their tea into the living room, and Lloyd looked round the flat. He hadn't been here very often; the last time, the walls had had the previous tenant's wallpaper still decorating them, the paintwork had been a dingy pink, the floor had been partially covered with a large rug of an indeterminate colour, a brownish reddish darkish sort of colour. He had been told that that didn't matter because she wasn't going to be in the flat that long.

Now, the walls were newly painted in white with a peach tinge, the paintwork was sparklingly new and brilliant white, the rug had been replaced by several smaller scatter rugs on floorboards which had been sanded and varnished.

‘When did all this happen?' he asked.

She looked round. ‘Oh – I just did things here and there,' she said.

Without mentioning it to him, he thought. ‘You varnished the floorboards?' he asked, disbelievingly.

‘Well, no – I got a man in to do that. He was very good – he only took a couple of days.'

Lloyd drank some tea before he spoke. ‘You don't mean to leave here, do you?' he asked.

She sighed. ‘Lloyd,' she said. ‘Do you think we could discuss this some night when we don't have a whole extra hour to do it in?'

‘Do the clocks go back tonight?' His impromptu night-shift had disoriented him.

She nodded.

‘But you don't, do you?' he persisted.

‘I think I've got a book somewhere about coping with rape,' she said. ‘From when I did that course – I think I should take it in to Bobbie Chalmers, if she won't have counselling.'

‘Fine.' Lloyd put down his mug. ‘But I thought we could be off-duty once we'd eaten? I have no desire at all to discuss work.'

‘It's better than discussing us,' she said. ‘We don't have rows about work.'

Oh, God. He didn't want a row. He was much too tired to have a row, for one thing. He joined her on the sofa. ‘Sorry,' he said, putting his arm round her. She smelt of bath-oil; her hair was soft against his face.

He woke up at four in the morning to find himself covered with Judy's spare duvet. She had left a little lamp on for him. He smiled, and got up stiffly from the sofa, feeling his back, switched off the lamp, then tip-toed in the darkness out into the hallway and crept into the bedroom.

He undressed and got into bed beside the sleeping Judy, which was something he always found very reassuring, and just one more thing that he missed now that she didn't live with him.

Mac lay on the bed, headphones on, listening again to Sharon Smith's words.

Melissa had carried that tape around with her after the interview. Had she gone home? Had she told Simon what his girlfriend had done? Had she perhaps even played it to him? It was no honest mistake on Sharon's part, Mac was certain – she knew who she was talking to, all right.

Mac took off the headphones and thought for a moment. He could hear the lies; he'd noticed it before. A kind of rehearsed precision in her answers that you didn't get when people were really baring their souls. But why would she lie?

Could it all have been some sort of fantasy? Some sort of revenge for a slight? Like sending someone a Valentine to get them into trouble, only much, much worse?

He looked at the tape, and he wondered. If there was no truth, in it, then Simon might have
felt
like killing her, but he wouldn't have. He might have sacked her, but he wouldn't have killed her.

He ran the tape back, and listened again, his face growing sombre. Sharon Smith was telling lies; he was sure of it.

But Melissa had believed her.

Judy blinked as the morning sun came through the thin curtains, waking her as it had all week, and found Lloyd beside her. Good, she thought sleepily.

She hadn't thought twice about what to do when she had left Melissa Whitworth's car and run up to the sanctuary of her flat; she hadn't thought at all. Instinct rather than conscious decision had prompted her to reach for the phone and dial Lloyd's number. His latest gadget had answered, saying that he couldn't come to the phone, but he'd be home sooner or later. She had waited impatiently for the tone, and said ‘Please come over,' before she had given herself up to the tears.

At first, when she had seen the note under her windscreen she had thought that they had come and painted more double yellow lines when she hadn't been looking. Then, when she had unfolded and read it, she had been unable to see how its unpleasant contents could refer to her. The anonymous writer, she had thought, must have got the wrong car. But then she had realised, with a stab of guilt, what it was all about.

Her confidential chat with Merrill had got round with the usual staggering speed of station rumour, and this was her first taste of retribution. She hoped she hadn't made too much of a fool of herself with Melissa Fletcher. At least she hadn't burst into tears then, which was all she had felt like doing.

What made it all so much worse was that she couldn't imagine a single one of the dozens of male colleagues with whom she had worked over the years being reduced to tears by a malicious trick and a few unlovely adjectives. But it wasn't so much the manner in which the message had been delivered that was upsetting her, she knew that. It was what it had said, and she hadn't told Lloyd that, because it was that that had made her feel guilty.

Six forty-five. She frowned. This was too early, she thought. On the other days, it had been time to get up when the sun had invaded her sleep. Gradually, her brain stirred itself. The hour. It was really
seven
forty-five. She should be up, she thought, pushing back the covers, then another few brain-cells kicked in. No. It was Sunday, of course. She relaxed back on to the pillow, then sat up again. Lloyd had said that Merrill would be ringing; she had better get ready to go in to work and sort things out, if she was joining the murder team. And there would be no day off today. She pushed back the covers again, and got as far as swinging her legs out of bed. No, no. It
was
really six forty-five.

‘Mm? What? What's wrong?' Lloyd opened one reluctant eye.

She smiled. ‘Nothing,' she said, lying back down, pulling the cover back.

He opened both eyes. ‘What time is it?' he asked.

‘The extra hour,' she said, snuggling up to him.

‘If you want that sort of thing first thing in the morning, you'll have to go elsewhere for it,' he mumbled.

She did, rather. But Lloyd was not a morning person in that respect or in any other. He had conquered his desire to stay in bed until noon by waking up as late as possible, getting shaved and showered and dressed as quickly as possible, swallowing coffee, and getting to the car. Then, and only then, did his system adjust to the new day, which it did with startling, and usually irritating, rapidity.

She liked mornings, though until her inherited ultra-thin curtains she had usually slept until the alarm woke her. But she liked watching the dawn touch the sky, and hearing the birds call, and listening to the sounds of the world waking up. She enjoyed the semi-reality of early morning, the slow adjustment.

‘You
don't
want to leave here, do you?' Lloyd said.

She sat up. ‘If you're awake enough to start a row, you're awake enough to—'

‘I don't want a row. I want an answer. Please, Judy.'

She thought about her answer before she gave it. He didn't hurry her; he wouldn't like it, and he knew it. He would probably rather she didn't answer. But she did. ‘I've never lived on my own before,' she said. ‘I'm thirty-eight years old, and I've never lived on my own.'

A flick of his eyebrows indicated that that wasn't so unusual. She knew it wasn't. People lived at home, then married and set up home with someone else. But it hadn't been quite like that with her. She had met Lloyd, complete with wife and children, and her story might have been more like Sharon Smith's, if she hadn't been afraid to have an affair. Lloyd's theory of the married man seemed likely to her; hence no discernible boyfriend. But there she went again, thinking about work because it was easier than thinking about them.

‘I lived with my parents,' she said, at last. ‘Then I met Michael, and I wished all the time that I was with him. Then I met you, and that was hopeless, so I married Michael, and wished all the time that I was with you.' She paused. ‘I know what I'm like, Lloyd,' she said. ‘And I'd rather be on my own, wishing I was with you, than with you and wishing I was on my own.'

His blue eyes looked directly into hers, daring her to deviate one centimetre from the truth. ‘And when you
were
with me?' he asked. ‘
Did
you wish you were on your own?'

She shook her head. ‘ But I'd never been on my own then,' she said. ‘ Not properly. Not somewhere that was mine, and no one else's.' She took his hand. ‘And we weren't together long enough for the bloom to wear off,' she said.

He gripped her hand tightly. ‘Who says it has to wear off?' he demanded.

‘Oh, Lloyd. It always wears off. It has to.'

He sat up. ‘You married Michael because you wanted to pretend that I didn't exist,' he said. ‘Of
course
the bloom wore off!'

Judy stood her ground. ‘And you and Barbara?' she asked.

He looked down.

‘I'm sorry, Lloyd. But it's true. You married Barbara because you really wanted to – not as a substitute for what you couldn't have. It was fine to start with – right?'

‘Yes,' he said, looking up again. ‘But there were children, and money worries, and my peculiar working hours – this wouldn't be the same!'

The sun inched up the sky; a patch of light shone through the thinnest patch of material in a hazy splash on the duvet. Judy looked at it as she spoke. ‘ It would be,' she said. ‘There would be different causes, but it would be the same effect.'

‘No!' He pulled her round to face him. ‘You and I have meant this much to one another for seventeen years, Judy – don't try to pretend that we haven't.'

‘I'm not,' she said, alarmed that he might think that, even for a moment. ‘I … I just think that that's because we haven't lived together. I don't want to spoil what we've got.'

He flopped down on to the pillow. ‘ For God's sake,' he said.

She looked down at him. ‘Lloyd,' she said, ‘I love you. I know I don't say it very often. Do you need to be told?'

He shook his head, with a little smile.

‘You mustn't ever doubt that. It's not like I felt about Michael – that was to do with him being the first. This is real. And nothing's going to change it.'

He looked exasperated. ‘But you've just said that living with me would change it.'

‘I wouldn't stop loving
you
. But you—'

‘That's crazy!' He shouted to stop her finishing the sentence, and sat up again. ‘ It's nonsense.'

‘No.' She shook her head. ‘You're a romantic. You think it'll be roses all the way, and it won't.'

He gasped. ‘ Why would I think that? It isn't roses all the way now!'

‘But you think that my marrying you would end all the rows and the hassle – and it wouldn't! They'd just be different rows – and the only difference would be that I couldn't just get up and walk out on them!'

He stared at her. ‘You're wrong,' he said. She wasn't making a very good job of explaining. She had avoided

this conversation for weeks because she knew she would never

make him understand. ‘I like things the way they are,' she said.
‘I don't.'
She smiled at him. ‘But you're the unselfish one,' she said.
He held her close to him. ‘All this is a smokescreen,' he said.

‘You always do it. Give yourself good reasons for what is simply

a fear of committing yourself to anything that might alter whatever

nice cosy rut you've—'
She kissed him. ‘You're awake now,' she said.