The Other Woman (7 page)

He made tea, and wished that Melissa would come home. He was worried about her. He glanced at the clock, a pool of dread forming in the pit of his stomach. He had been so relieved once again to find the house empty; it had given him a chance to think about what was happening without Melissa asking all the time what was wrong. But it was such a dreadful night; she could have had an accident. He could imagine the scorn with which he would be greeted if he were to start ringing hospitals, but it was really very late now.

He pulled the telephone towards him, and dialled the number of the police station.

‘Sergeant Woodford, please,' he asked when he got through.

‘Who's calling?'

‘Simon Whitworth.' His hand gripped the receiver as he. waited for the call to be put through. If Melissa had had an accident, he'd—

‘Woodford.'

‘Ah … Sergeant Woodford. It's … er … it's Simon Whitworth here – I was in earlier to see Jake Parker?'

‘Yes, Mr Whitworth.'

‘Well … I hope this doesn't sound too hysterical, but my wife – she did say she would be working late, but it's almost half-past eleven now, and – that is, she works in Barton, you see. Well – she was interviewing someone, but I don't know where that would be – it could have been anywhere in the county, really.' He took a breath, aware that what he had just said probably hadn't made any sense at all. ‘I wondered if you had had any accidents reported,' he said.

‘I can check for you, Mr Whitworth,' he said, his voice entirely calm. ‘ One moment.'

Simon's foot tapped nervously on the floor as he waited once more, his ear cocked for the sound of a car engine that never came. Please Melissa, please. Don't have had an accident.

‘The good news is that we have had no serious accidents reported,' Sergeant Woodford's reassuring voice said.

Her car could be in a ditch, unnoticed. She could be bleeding to death somewhere … Simon couldn't bear it.

‘If you can tell me the make and number of your wife's car, we'll certainly keep an eye out for it,' he went on.

Simon supplied the information, wondering in a detached way if they did that for everyone, or just for people with whom they happened to have a professional connection. He had a good relationship with the police, unlike some of his colleagues; his practice tended towards property and divorce, and he really only got involved in the criminal courts with people who had got themselves into a scrape, like Parker, rather than the persistent offenders, whose solicitors were seen as an evil insisted on by the law.

‘Try not to worry, Mr Whitworth. She may have stayed over in Barton, in view of the weather. It's like this all over the east of England, they tell me.'

‘She would have phoned,' said Simon. But then, he hadn't been there, had he? He closed his eyes. Had he heard the phone ringing just as he got to the front door? It could have been. It could have been Melissa, trying to tell him where she was.

Please God let it have been Melissa, he thought, as he thanked the sergeant, and replaced the receiver.

Lloyd knew that he shouldn't have said the things he had, but he had been angry.

She made him angry, therefore it
was
partly her fault. He had known Judy since she was twenty years old, which was when he had fallen for her; fallen in love almost instantly with an open, friendly face, shining dark hair and honest brown eyes, almost before they had even spoken to one another. Once they had, he had discovered the quick intelligence which had almost been buried under a lack of belief in herself; he liked to think that he had had a hand in bringing it out.

But she still hated change, hated having to adjust to new situations, and he knew what would happen. She had been in her new flat for almost two months, and it was turning into home. Even though she didn't like it much. Even though she missed being with him. It was home, and the longer she lived there, the more used to it she would become, and it would be the devil's own job to make her leave the damn place again, once she had dug herself in there.

Despite that, Lloyd hadn't tried to put obstacles in her way – in fact, he had been a positive tower of strength; it wouldn't be forever, he had assured her. It wasn't as if they couldn't see each other. And it would only be until the divorce, when their relationship could at last come out of the closet in which it had been uneasily and inconveniently concealed for the last two years. Not particularly well concealed, come to that; bits of it had invariably got caught in the door, and were visible to anyone who cared to look.

But as far as the top brass were concerned, she had shared with another policewoman until the move to Malworth, and in amongst her usual dread of the new, he fancied he had seen a hint of relief in Judy's eyes that the deception was over. There would have been a hell of a stink if anyone had found out, so he could understand that, even though it had been her idea in the first place. He would never have suggested that she put herself in such an invidious position. It had been her idea, and then she had worried about it, all the time. He hadn't complained about that either – in fact, he told himself, he had been entirely understanding about the whole thing.

The trouble was that the more he glowed with righteous indignation at her treatment of him, the less he understood just what she was supposed to have done. He was faced with the unwelcome thought that he might be being unreasonable.

Never. He poured himself a whisky and picked up his book. Never.

They would probably be charging him with reckless driving. They had given him a speeding ticket. They had examined every inch of the bike by torchlight, trying to find something wrong with it. They'd have been lucky. Colin spent hours on the bike; it gleamed with health. They had breathalysed him, and had been really disappointed when they had found out he hadn't been drinking. His road tax, insurance and licence were all in order. He had been wearing his crash helmet.

They hadn't liked that. They had wanted to be able to take the bike away from him. And when the radio had confirmed that he was the owner of the bike, they had liked it even less.

They had kept him there for an hour and a half, and then had had to settle for the ticket. But they hadn't liked it.

‘You're going to remember us,' one of them had said.

Back at home at last, Colin bathed his face, and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Thank God his parents were away, though with their usual perversity, they were coming back tomorrow, rather than adding the weekend to their holiday, like everyone else. Colin looked at his own eyes burning back at him, and threw up in the basin.

He felt suddenly and desperately tired; he collapsed into a chair, and fell into an almost immediate and almost unconscious sleep.

Jake Parker let himself into the large bungalow which he rented from people who had gone to the States on a twelve-month exchange. It was much too large for one person, but it had the right image. Stansfield didn't go in much for penthouse flats; which would have been rather more his style than the over-fussy architecture of the bungalow, not to mention its Laura Ashley interior. Still – it was all right for entertaining business acquaintances.

Bobbie liked it – not that she had been there that much. He preferred to keep her in the background – she didn't quite fit in with the image he was trying to project. She shared a flat with another girl in Malworth, and lived on presents and promises of great things to come.

And they would come. Nothing was going to stand in his way. He'd made damn sure that he could distance himself from the whole thing – not so Lionel. And if push came to shove, he would have no hesitation in dropping Lionel right in it.

He pulled off his tie, and poured himself a drink. He was tired, after his exertions; his eye hurt. He looked at it in the mirror over the bar, and held the glass up in a grim, silent toast.

Out in the lobby there was a cigarette machine; Mac had given that up too, but he stuffed coins in and pulled out the first packet he came to, tearing off the cellophane as he glanced into the lounge. He longed to be back in bed with her, but she had wanted him to leave, and he wasn't about to spoil things.

It had never been like that with any of the peroxide blondes with their tight skirts and sexy wiggles that more often than not were violations of the Trade Descriptions Act. Melissa wore old jeans and a shapeless sweater; that, he had discovered, was because she didn't need to look sexy. She just was.

The lads on the sports desk didn't know about her, did they? Melissa Fletcher, the one who hadn't had the faintest idea who he was when he had been introduced to her at the paper, who hadn't even remembered his name earlier on this evening, had just given him the best time he'd ever had.

He could have had anyone he wanted in the old days. And had. Models, film stars … falling at his feet, they'd been. But it was a funny old game, life. Stood up by Donna the dead-cert divorcee who was well past her sell-by date, only to be seduced by someone twelve years his junior who until now hadn't known he existed. Perhaps it had been his personal charisma all along, and nothing to do with the fame and the money. Or perhaps Melissa Fletcher was a pushover, which seemed a touch more likely. He'd have to tell the sports desk to update their files.

He wondered if she did this all the time. A couple of reps had appeared since he had gone upstairs with Melissa; if he hadn't bumped into her, it might have been one of them. Tough luck, lads, he thought. You don't know what you missed.

She was on the skinny side, and the tall side – Mac had a preference for ladies a couple of inches shorter than he was, and, if anything, she was just a touch taller. Thinking about her made him want her again, despite the tendrils of ardour-damping fog wrapping themselves round him as he stepped out into the damp air. He could have gone on all night, and so could she. But she had asked him to leave.

The mist was patchy now; some spots were clear, and he could see the stars. But then he would find himself walking into its depths again. He drew out a cigarette, and put it between his lips, then automatically searched his pockets for non-existent matches. He swore, and pushed the useless comforter into his pocket.

He had gone up to her room with no great hopes; if anything, he had been depressed, having just given her the printable chapters of his less than successful life story. But his mumbled, would-be jokey fears that his lack of female companionship for the last few years might have blunted his technique – his declared celibacy was stretching a point, but his recent encounters had required no technique – and that his abused body might not have the attraction it had once had, had been allayed by her frankness about the whole thing, and had vanished altogether at the first electric touch of her skin on his.

He turned into the football ground, almost groping his way towards the railings, looking for the gap.

He had never met anyone like Melissa, far less gone to bed with her. He wouldn't have, not in the old days, because she wasn't beautiful; her features were too sharp, her face too long, her hair too short, her breasts too small, her body too angular. But the combination of intelligence and unashamed sensuality had knocked him sideways, and he was a happy man.

Life, he thought, could hold no more surprises, not after Melissa. Until his foot hit something soft and yielding, and he looked down.

Life had one more surprise up her sleeve.

He had phoned Judy eventually, just to make sure she had got home all right, and to say he was sorry. Lloyd always said he was sorry. He always
was
sorry. She had been monosyllabic, which had annoyed him all over again; he had given vent to his feelings, and she had hung up on him. He wanted to ring her again, ask her forgiveness, get her to say more than yes and no. But it was after midnight, and she was probably in bed. She hated having her sleep interrupted. But then she probably wasn't asleep – not when they were still at loggerheads.

A little voice told him that that was whistling in the dark; she almost certainly
was
asleep. Then she had no right to be, not while he was here worrying about everything. Serve her right if he woke her up.

The phone rang, and he smiled broadly. She did feel like he did, he thought, as he picked it up. ‘Hello,' he said, his voice contrite.

‘Sir? Finch here, sir. We've got an as yet unidentified body in the car park of the Byford Road sports and leisure centre. We've got her bag, but there's no ID. It looks like she's been strangled. The pathologist is on his way, and the police surgeon's already here. The inspector said I should call you,' he added, just to cover himself.

Lloyd's eyes closed briefly. ‘Description of the victim?' he said.

‘Female – fair hair, about five feet six, apparently aged between twenty and thirty. She was found by someone taking a short cut home.'

‘Did he trample all over any evidence that might have been, there?' asked Lloyd testily.

‘Probably, sir. He practically fell over her. You'll see when you get here – it's pitch dark. Someone's taken a preliminary statement, but I haven't been able to question him yet.'

Lloyd sighed loudly. ‘Thank you, Tom. I'll be there in about—'

‘There's something else, sir. Mrs Whitworth – the solicitor's wife? Didn't come home from work. He rang the station a while back to check on accidents.'

Lloyd's instantly suspicious mind logged that, as had Finch's. ‘Have you got a description of her?' he asked.

‘No. He wasn't actually reporting her missing, apparently. It was a more or less informal call to Jack Woodford. We're getting her description, but there's no sign of her car at the ground.'

‘Right. I'll be with you in … well, what's the weather like?'

‘Bloody awful, sir.'

There was a silence after that, which Lloyd broke with the suggestion that neither of them had wanted to make. Rapists sometimes went over the edge.