The Other Woman (8 page)

‘Has he gone one step further this time?'

‘Can't be sure, sir. Her clothes are disarranged, but it doesn't look like a sex attack. Not at first glance, anyway.'

Lloyd thanked Finch, and put down the phone. He wasn't certain, as he reached for his jacket, whether Finch's final statement was good news or bad news. A rapist turned murderer was always bad news. But two violent criminals in one not very large town was worse.

He drove out of the village, stopping at the roundabout to check for sudden traffic coming out of the void, then drove on, picking up speed as the visibility lengthened and it was possible to remember what driving without a blindfold was like, only to slow down again as another bank of fog rolled in.

At the top of the hill was the grim paraphernalia of sudden violent death. Police cars, ambulance, people milling around, the area being cordoned off. The blue lights blinked blearily through the mist, and Lloyd pulled into the side of the road, a little way away from the crush of vehicles. With just a little reluctance, he got out of the car, and looked at the fog swirling round the orange glow of the street-light, the last one before the football ground, and the unlit bypass.

It was popularly supposed to be on nights like these that Jack the Ripper had stalked Whitechapel, he thought, with the gas-lamps guttering as the hansom cab clip-clopped its way into the mask of smoke and mist, leaving his latest victim on the cobbled street. Shivering, he walked purposefully towards the car park, and the police surgeon loomed out of the darkness as he approached.

‘Lloyd – I've certified death, taken temperatures – all the usual stuff. Left notes with your sergeant. Bright lad, that.'

Lloyd nodded.

‘Do you want me to hang around for the pathologist?'

‘No, Doctor, thank you. It could take him hours to get here in this.'

‘Right, I'll be off then.'

Lloyd moved towards the cordoned-off area where the duty inspector was organising the uniforms for a search, and where the victim presumably lay. He carefully followed the path indicated.

‘Evening,' said the inspector. ‘I've got my lads doing a search of the immediate area in case he's broken in to a building or anything, but I expect he's long gone.'

Lloyd nodded. Close to, he could see her by the fuzzy beam of the inspector's torch-light, half-sitting, half-lying, her head slumped against the thick concrete upright of the fencing, a man's tie tightly wound round her neck.

Finch was taking a call on the car radio; Lloyd looked down once again at the girl, then over at the football ground, and the black shapes of the floodlights in the mist. ‘Find someone who can switch these things on!' he shouted angrily. ‘I'm not waiting all bloody night for lights to arrive!'

The inspector went off to comply with the request; Finch hastily finished his call, and came over to where Lloyd stood. ‘Sorry, sir,' he said. ‘I didn't know you were here.' He looked a little anxious, but Lloyd wasn't angry with him. ‘I should have thought about getting the lights on,' he said.

After a few minutes, the inspector returned. ‘Mr Parker has said he'll get the groundsman out,' he said.

‘Good.' Lloyd sighed. ‘Thanks.' He turned to Finch as the other man walked away. ‘Right,' he said. ‘ Tell me what you know.'

Finch took a breath. ‘I know that we're doing Parker for breach of the peace,' he said. ‘And now we're asking
him
to help us out.'

Lloyd sighed. ‘The papers will love that,' he muttered. He glanced at Finch. ‘Was that why you didn't ask for the lights to be put on?' he asked.

‘No sir,' said Finch honestly. ‘ I just didn't think.'

Lloyd smiled. ‘Neither did I,' he said. ‘Parker won't fight shy of the publicity.'

‘The fight was over some girl,' Finch reminded Lloyd. ‘Their statements just accuse one another of starting it – no one said who the girl was – not to us, at any rate.' He glanced over to where the makeshift shelter was being constructed. ‘Do you think that might be her?' he asked.

Lloyd thought about that. ‘ Could be,' he said, after a moment. ‘I want to see Mr Parker if he comes down here. The moment he arrives – and don't let him anywhere near the scene.'

‘Sir,' said Finch. He hesitated slightly, then went on. ‘It's probably nothing,' he said. ‘But when I looked at the body, I could smell sawdust.'

Lloyd shrugged. ‘There's a lot of building work going on,' he said.

‘Yes, sir – but I can't smell it anywhere else. And I couldn't see any sawdust on the ground.'

Lloyd nodded. ‘ Well see what the lab has to say,' he said. ‘In the meantime – what else?'

‘She was found by a man who gave his name as Gil McDonald,' Finch said.

Lloyd was transported back fifteen, twenty years at the mention of one of his all-time heroes. Gave his name as Gil McDonald. Lloyd looked at the young man – how old was he? Twenty-eight? He would have been about eight years old in the days when Gil McDonald would suddenly come tearing into the box from nowhere at all and volley a ball right past the keeper. He'd assumed that
The Chronicle
article was syndicated, but if it was the same Gil McDonald, then he must have come to live among men right here in Stansfield. Lloyd had always been a terrible disappointment to his Rugby Union obsessed father, with his love of the round-ball game. The real game, he would tell Jack Woodford, when he pointed out that Lloyd wasn't exactly a regular at Stansfield Town matches. The First Division game.

Gil McDonald. Mad Mac. Finch would have been about eighteen when he started his long descent. Couldn't have been a football fan.

‘Sir?' Finch was aware that he seemed to have lost his audience. ‘Mr McDonald says that he was intending to take a short cut across the ground. Apparently, you can squeeze through a gap in the fencing just there,' he added, pointing, ‘and he was looking for it when his foot actually struck the body.'

‘Is he wearing a tie?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘In one of the cars, sir.'

‘You haven't asked him where he'd been or what he was doing here?'

‘No, sir. I was too busy trying to make sure no one else stood on the body.'

Lloyd smiled a little at the hint of defiance in the young man's voice. ‘Quite,' he murmured. ‘Quite. Carry on with whatever you were doing.'

Finch went off, and Lloyd was pleased to note that he did not immediately go and talk to McDonald. He liked his men to have minds of their own. He sighed again.

His women certainly did, he thought sourly, then immediately felt guilty. She hadn't
done
anything, he told himself again. Neither had his ex-wife, with whom he had also had a difference of opinion, or – come to that – his daughter, over whose actions the difference of opinion had occurred. But all that had to take a back seat; he had his job to do, and at least Judy would understand that, which Barbara never had.

And he didn't like the way this one was shaping up. No identification yet; no immediate lead on why she was dead. A rapist on the loose, and a reputedly millionaire businessman getting himself involved in a fight over a woman. This woman? Jack Woodford said that she had gone off before the police got to them. He'd need confirmation of who the woman was, but she was probably nothing to do with anything.

DI Barstow was setting up the murder room at the station, plucked from sleep like most of the people already hard at work on the case. But they really had nothing to go on, so far. All they knew right now was that there had been two hundred people here tonight, and that meant two hundred potential witnesses, with the consequent huge amounts of legwork and paper-work. Her shoulder bag had been found, complete with purse, which still had money in it, so robbery was unlikely to be the motive. It had no credit cards, no driving licence, nothing to say who its deceased owner was. It had a receipt, dated that day, for clothes she had bought at the superstore, which might be some sort of lead, and a key, which seemed to be to a street door. But they didn't know who she was, and until they knew that … He sighed for the third time.

The groundsman arrived, but Parker had not accompanied him. Lloyd watched as the powerful lights began their sequence. When they were all lit, he turned towards the fence. The fog was lifting; the light was good. He sent two DCs to interview Parker about the evening's altercation, and resigned himself to waiting for answers.

He heard Freddie's car long before it nosed its way into the line of cars by the entrance, its powerful engine humming through the stillness as it came along the bypass, growing to a roar as the car made its way towards the ground. Even at the low speed enforced on it by the weather, it sounded angry. It growled to a halt, and Freddie's tall thin frame emerged with some difficulty. In the summer, he would drive it minus its top, and would step out over the closed door.

‘No assistant tonight?' Lloyd asked.

Freddie smiled. ‘No. She and her police sergeant are off on honeymoon.'

Oh yes. Judy had told him that Bob Sandwell had finally married Kathy. He'd forgotten.

‘Well,' said Freddie, still smiling, despite what he was about to do. ‘Lead the way.' Freddie enjoyed his work, and would set about it with an enthusiasm that was almost, but not quite, infectious.

They picked their way through the scene of crime officers to the body, and Freddie crouched down to begin his examination. He didn't touch the girl's body until he had noted everything about it and its environment which might be of use to the investigation, writing quickly and neatly. He sketched out the area, the position of the body, the spot where her bag had been found.

He looked at the tie, turning the end carefully to reveal the label. ‘If you were hoping it was the tie of a very exclusive club, forget it,' he said, with a grin, looking up at Lloyd. ‘This is one of thousands.'

‘You needn't look so pleased about it,' said Lloyd. He was all right once the investigation was under way, and the victim was just a name about whom they had to find out as much as they could. But until she had a name, the investigation would be being conducted in a void; Freddie could tell him how she had died, and give him an estimate of when. He and forensic could, with luck, give him pointers on the physical and mental characteristics of the murderer. Her clothes, her injuries, everything would tell part of the story. Perhaps even Finch's sawdust. But every minute they lost before they could circulate her description, before they could start interviewing possible witnesses, the murderer was a minute better off.

He went across to the car in which Finch was speaking to Gil McDonald, and got into the front passenger seat. It
was
the Gil McDonald. He felt the almost schoolboyish pleasure that he always did on meeting a famous face, and always wished he didn't.

‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd,' said Finch. ‘ Mr McDonald, sir.'

‘I wanted my boy to be a footballer,' Lloyd said.

McDonald raised his eyebrows. ‘And what does he do?' he asked.

‘He's a plumber. Well – he will be, when he's finished his apprenticeship.'

‘Good,' said McDonald. He took a slightly battered cigarette from his jacket pocket. ‘You don't have a light, do you?' he asked. ‘No one smokes any more,' he added, with a hard look at Finch.

Lloyd had a book of matches somewhere, because he'd picked them up in a restaurant yesterday. He always did that, though he didn't smoke either. Judy did. He found them, and handed them to McDonald, who looked pale and upset.

McDonald struck the match which flared with the alarming suddenness of paper matches, and inhaled deeply, coughing immediately. ‘ I'd given up,' he spluttered. ‘Until tonight.'

When the spasm had subsided, Lloyd indicated that Finch should carry on.

‘Can I ask where you had been, Mr McDonald?'

McDonald released smoke without choking this time. ‘ Nowhere,' he said. ‘ Walking round in circles.'

Finch looked puzzled.

‘I was here earlier to cover the opening. I left after about half an hour, but I got lost in the fog,' said McDonald.

‘And … when did you leave here?'

‘Around eight,' he said.

Finch's fair eyebrows shot up. ‘You were lost in the fog for almost four hours?' he asked.

McDonald, cool as you like, nodded. Lloyd didn't speak. He wanted to see how Finch handled the interview, and he wanted to come to terms with the idea that a hero of his might just have strangled someone. He had been wild, in his youth. Mad Mac wasn't just a newspaper epithet because it was alliterative. He had gone at everything hell for leather; if he had felt like killing a woman, he would have been quite likely to do it and damn the consequences.

‘You were lost for four hours in a town like Stansfield?' asked Finch.

Judy wouldn't have done that. Finch had asked the last question; Judy would have let it lie there until it got some sort of response other than the nod.

‘I might not have
been
in Stansfield all the time, for all I know,' said McDonald. ‘I got good and lost.'

‘You found your way here, though,' Finch said. ‘When you came to the opening.'

‘Yes. But I tried to go home a different way.'

‘Why?'

McDonald looked uncomfortable for a moment. ‘ I just wanted to walk for a bit,' he said. ‘But I got lost. Eventually, I realised I was in the village. I knew how to get home from there.'

‘Where's home?'

‘Digs,' he said. His voice was cool, but his hands were agitated, seeking something to do. He fiddled with the wedding ring he wore. He smoked quickly, in short puffs. ‘In Buchan Road.'

Buchan Road was on an estate which, like the football ground itself, bordered on the bypass, about three miles further down by road. Crossing the pitch and the public playing fields would indeed be a short cut.