The Other Woman Read online

  ‘Are you going to spend all the time grumbling?’ she asked, as she surveyed the many Chinese dishes at her disposal, and selected a spare rib dripping with syrup.

  ‘I just wish one of them could spell, for God’s sake. Is that asking too much? What do they teach them at school, that’s what I’d like to know. Can’t multiply or divide without a calculator.’

  Judy smiled. ‘Neither can you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s different. I know how, even if it’s not my forte. They don’t. And they can’t spell.’ He stabbed at a prawn ball with his fork. ‘Watch your sweater,’ he advised.

  Judy put a hand under the treacherous rib to catch any drips. It was really a little too warm in Lloyd’s flat for the sweater, but he liked her in it. ‘ It’s not new, you know,’ she said.

  ‘You still don’t want to drip syrup on it.’

  ‘Not the sweater! The problem.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Just after I started in the job, I had to deal with the applications for licence extensions. They were supposed to be addressed to the chief superintendent, but one firm of solicitors always addressed them to the chief inspector.’ She rescued some syrup that dribbled down her chin. ‘Anyway, one day I was in their offices, and I asked the typist why she addressed them to the chief inspector. She said it was because she couldn’t spell superintendent.’

  Lloyd permitted himself a reluctant smile. ‘At least she knew she couldn’t spell superintendent,’ he said.

  Judy knew that it wasn’t the prevailing standard of literacy that was really bothering him, but she kept up the pretence, listening to the moans about grammar and punctuation that she had heard a million times before, because the last thing she wanted was for him to get on to the real reason for his mild fit of depression.

  That, she knew from experience, led to rows. Rows in which she was always the loser, always the guilty party. In the past, this had been true; she had been trying to string him along and keep her marriage going at the same time. But she could hardly be held responsible for a job where your bosses had the right to make you live where they wanted you to live.

  But everything was always her fault. Lloyd was always right, always knew best. He had been analysing her and her motives for seventeen years, and she didn’t suppose he was going to stop now. Every time they had a row – if you could call the one-sided harangues rows – she was told precisely what was wrong with her, and how that could be remedied if she would just think about other people for a change. The fact that his words echoed uncomfortably closely those of her mother when she was in her teens, and Michael when their marriage finally hit the rocks, did nothing to make it easier to take.

  So she would let him go on about people using commas instead of semicolons, because that was only an indirect criticism of her, and not one which gave her any sleepless nights.

  ‘Are you listening to a single word I’m saying?’ he demanded.

  ‘No,’ she said, with a grin, spooning fried rice on to her plate.

  Fog hovered still and thick, flooding the football pitch like a phantom sea, blanketing the public playing fields beyond. Moisture beaded the mud-guard of the bike and the PVC of his gloves as Colin Drummond pushed up the visor and waited. Slowly, he drew off one glove, and without taking his eyes away from the car, he undid the strap and removed his helmet, running his bare hand through black, well-cut hair, his youthful, handsome face set and determined. He laid the helmet on the seat behind him, and slipped his hand into the glove again.

  He had seen the fight, seen her walk away. He had watched her, and had gone to the bike and started it up, just as her back view became indistinguishable from the rest of the blotted-out landscape. His foot touching the ground now and then to keep the bike balanced, he had followed her as she walked down the hill. She may or may not have been aware of his presence; she didn’t turn round.

  He had been undecided as to his next move. In the event, it had been decided for him, as a car had come past, its outline fuzzily visible as it pulled away. But then it had seemed to stop, the rear lights which he had expected to vanish within a hundred yards inexplicably remaining as two red splashes in the mist. Except that it hadn’t stopped; it had merely been moving at exactly the same pace as he had. Walking pace. Her pace.

  He had frowned, increasing his speed slightly, to see what was going on. That was when he had seen the brake lights glare, then the door had opened and she had got in. The car had moved off, keeping to ten miles an hour as it had groped its way through the almost impenetrable fog, completing a tricky turn in the road to head back the way it had come. He knew its speed precisely, because he had followed, far enough back to be unnoticed.

  Followed them right back to the football ground, deserted and in darkness. He had stopped, headlamp out, just at the entrance, as they drove to the farthest corner. He had wheeled the bike up on to the verge, behind the high hedge, as the car’s engine was cut, and the headlights extinguished. They had been there for almost ten minutes now; away, they thought, from prying eyes.

  But hidden by the hedge, silent, and all but invisible in his black clothes, Colin watched them.

  Chapter Two

  Lionel sat staring at the television screen, not seeing. He felt sick, and afraid, and he had to work out what he was going to do.

  He had never really known until now how important his life was to him. If anything, it had seemed pointless; a job he didn’t much care for, a marriage that had evolved into a near master-servant relationship which was not of his making, whatever Melissa Whitworth thought. No children. No social life to speak of, unless you counted going to the pub.

  Fridays used to be drinking after hours in Sid’s back room and watching adult videos. They all knew that it was about as adult as comparing genitals behind the toilets at the mixed infants, but it passed the time, and they were good for a laugh. Frances had found out, of course, somehow. One of the wives had told her; one of the more broadminded wives.

  They were only rented videos, for God’s sake … they were just a bit of fun. Frances had never mentioned it, of course. She didn’t have to. He had seen the look she had given him the following Friday night when he had got ready to go out. The same look as when she’d found that magazine – if she saw some of the stuff that people got hold of, she wouldn’t …

  So, he had stopped going out on Fridays, and had missed his little bit of excitement, though that had been more than made up for by what had happened since. Tonight, however, he had gone out – he had received a call when he got home, inviting him to the do at the football club. He had asked Frances to come with him, but she had refused. Which was, as things had turned out, just as well.

  There were tears in his eyes. He had thought he hated his life, but he didn’t. He didn’t. It was important to him. He looked at his wife, who had been watching television when he had come in, and hadn’t turned her head; neither of them had spoken. They had long ago abandoned conversation. But Frances was important to him, and he had to work out what to do now, if he wasn’t to lose everything.

  The phone rang; Lionel stiffened, and tried to marshal his wits.

  ‘That’s the phone, Lionel,’ said his wife.

  He looked at her. ‘I know it’s the phone, Frances,’ he said, but still made no attempt to move.

  ‘Would you like me to—?’

  ‘I would not’

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’

  She looked older than he did, though she was three years his junior: he still had a full head of curly brown hair; she had started going grey in her thirties.

  ‘Yes!’

  He wondered if she should try that hormone replacement business. He closed the door to the sitting-room, and picked up the phone, his heart beating hard.

  ‘Lionel?’

  His heart somersaulted with relief. ‘Yes – is that Melissa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He didn’t often get a call from Melissa Whitworth. He always rather got the impression that she tried to avoid him. He had never been so glad to hear anyone’s voice, because it wasn’t the one he had been expecting.

  ‘I … I was just wondering … is Simon working late again?’

  He was having difficulty taking in the words. ‘Sorry, Melissa? I didn’t quite catch that.’

  ‘Simon,’ she said. ‘I phoned the office, but there was no reply.’

  ‘No, there wouldn’t be,’ Lionel said, unsure of what to say. ‘Sharon closes the switchboard at five.’

  ‘Doesn’t he usually have a line through to his desk when he’s working late?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ he snapped, relief giving way to anger.

  ‘Why does he have to work late so often anyway?’ she asked. ‘I never see him. It’s after nine o’clock.’

  Lionel had more than Melissa’s sensibilities to worry about. ‘ I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘I would if I ever saw him.’

  The dialling tone hummed in his ear; he replaced the receiver, and stood for a moment in the hallway, trying to sort out what he was going to do.

  Perhaps nothing was the wisest course.

  Judy had tried to reason her way out of the inevitable row which she had failed to stave off, but it hadn’t worked. She hardly participated in the rows; she would defend herself from the more outrageous accusations, but she couldn’t find the words to combat his, and she wouldn’t want to use them if she could. She didn’t want to hurt him back.

  And yet it seemed that she did, all the time, without trying. So he tried all the harder to hurt her, and it worked. She didn’t know if what he said stung because it was unwarranted or because it was true. She didn’t want to know; she just wanted him to stop.

  This was the final phase, whe
n the accusations would come in short bursts between the long silences, like a sniper just letting the enemy know he’s there in case they’ve forgotten their predicament. One such came now.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said tiredly, in response to the old, old bottom-of-the-barrel suggestion that she really wanted Michael back. He knew that that wasn’t true; once, it had hurt her, when she thought that he believed it. Now, she knew better.

  ‘Then why haven’t you done anything about divorcing him?’ he demanded, as though they hadn’t had the conversation forty times before.

  ‘I have. You know I have.’

  ‘Oh, sure. By mutual consent – it could – all have been over and done with if you’d divorced him for adultery, and we wouldn’t have to be living in two separate flats!’

  She asked him what right she would have had to do that, since she had been committing adultery for two years before he had finally set up home with some girl from the office.

  ‘You told me he had women all the time you were married,’ Lloyd said, managing to make it sound as though she had lied about it for some reason.

  She sighed. ‘He did. I’ll rephrase it. I was committing the kind of adultery that would stand up in court long before he was. You can hardly cite some woman in Brussels or an air-hostess he spent the night with in Frankfurt.’ She even smiled; this was, she thought, the winding-down process, when the argument would give way to near-banter and eventually to a sort of forced humour. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I didn’t care at the time, so I can hardly get all moral about it now, can I?’

  ‘Then you could have let him divorce you.’

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, the exasperation almost manufactured these days. He was trying to exasperate her, so she would be exasperated. Acting. Lloyd did a lot of that; it must be rubbing off on her.

  She was relaxed now; it was all over bar the making-up, which she didn’t enjoy as much as they said you were supposed to. It was all part of the inevitable pattern of the rows, and the very predictability made her uneasy. But it was better than the row itself, and she welcomed the signs of a truce, so she played along. ‘If I’d done that, he would have named you – and then where would we have been?’

  ‘Where would you have been, you mean.’

  She frowned, puzzled, but carried on, perhaps a touch grimly, with the point-counterpoint. ‘ No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘You’re the senior officer – you’re the one who would have been held responsible.’

  ‘But I’m not the one who’s looking for promotion, am I?’ he shouted. ‘I’m not the one who’s suddenly decided that I want to be chief constable!’

  She hadn’t predicted that.

  The bank of fog reflected back her headlights, and Melissa, suddenly aware of how fast she was driving, braked hard, almost as though the wall of vapour was a solid obstruction. The car entered its yellow depths, and visibility was virtually non-existent. She signalled the right turn; ahead of her she could see pinpoints of light. Much sooner than she expected, the car was almost on top of her, and she realised that she had strayed on to the wrong side of the road. She wrenched her wheel to the left, swearing with shock.

  She didn’t see the motorcyclist at all until she was almost on top of him. She was still pulling left, cutting in front of him, and for a desperate moment, a crash seemed inevitable. The motorcyclist took the only option open to him and roared through the almost impossible gap to safety.

  Melissa’s hands shook on the wheel as she pulled the car up on the waste ground, and watched him go on his invisible unlit way into the layer of mist, apparently unconcerned that he had been an inch away from being a statistic.

  Colin Drummond knew how narrowly he had escaped death. He had accelerated away from the danger in instinctive self-preservation, but he didn’t reduce his speed now that the danger had passed; he wanted it; he needed it. And he still didn’t put on his lights, because he didn’t want to be seen.

  He was roaring round the roundabout which guarded the entrance to the old village, revving hard as he straightened the bike, thundering past the old shops and offices. His hands gripped the handlebars tighter as he swung left at the junction, leaning over, his knee almost touching the ground, righting the bike and bombing through the opaque night, shattering the stillness of a community that had closed its doors on the hostile weather, weaving round the parked cars as he suddenly became aware of them, heading for the dual carriageway, and the open road.

  There, he let the bike go at full throttle, and was joyously, thrillingly, gunning through the zero visibility as fast as its powerful engine would let him. Nothing could touch him, nothing could harm him. He heard the siren, saw in his mirror the car come out of a

  lay-by, light flashing.

  They’d have to catch him first.

  ‘Have you told anyone you’re here?’ asked Simon.

  Parker shook his head. ‘Who needs to know?’ he asked. ‘ I feel soft enough as it is. Just get me out of here. What time is it, anyway?’

  ‘Just after twenty to ten.’ Simon wasn’t convinced that it was going to be that simple. Parker had needled him as soon as he had arrived, with his complaints about how long it had taken him to get there, rather as though his head-butting a policeman was somehow Simon’s fault. And Sergeant Woodford had not seemed to be in a compromising mood; Simon’s only hope was the duty inspector, who might persuade the sergeant not to charge Parker, if Simon could produce a good enough excuse.

  ‘How on earth did you come to hit a policeman?’

  ‘I didn’t know he was a policeman! I just felt someone grab me, and I jerked my head back.’

  ‘So it was accidental?’ asked Simon, a little more’ hopeful than he had been.

  Parker nodded. ‘It was an accident,’ he repeated. ‘I had my back to him. It was pure reaction to being grabbed from behind.’ He looked at Simon, the picture of injured innocence, with an incipient bruise forming round the left of his wide eyes.

  He reminded Simon of a footballer trying to convince the referee that bringing his opponent down in the penalty area was simply not in his nature.

  ‘How did you get involved in a fight on the terraces?’ he asked. ‘Why weren’t you up in the box, hosting your party?’

  ‘I saw Sharon – I was just having a word with her, that’s all. Then this nutter comes and thumps me.’

  ‘Sharon?’ asked Simon sharply.

  ‘Yeah. She used to work for me – didn’t you know?’

  Simon frowned. ‘ Yes,’ he said. He knew that. What he hadn’t known was that she was the girl that this fight had all been about. There were conflicting accounts of the incident; Parker said that she had been chatting up Barnes and that when he spoke to her, Barnes took a swing at him; Barnes swore that she had simply asked him the time, and that the next thing he knew Parker was laying into him.

  As far as Simon’s professional involvement was concerned, how it all came about hardly mattered; Parker had injured a policeman in the ensuing fight, and that was why he was there. But now that he knew it was Sharon, the whole thing took on a different complexion.

  He stood up. ‘ I’ll have a word with the duty inspector,’ he said.

  ‘Good lad. Let’s get out of here.’

  Mac was lost. He didn’t know the town well enough yet, and all his useful landmarks had been blotted out. His desire to walk had wilted a little, but taxis weren’t forthcoming in this fog.

  Before the total obscurity, his life had been a bit like the weather. Clear patches, when people knew who he was and wrote earnest articles about his downfall. They blamed everything from booze to birds to betting to brains, even; he should never have been a professional footballer, according to one. He was too clever to mix happily with people whose brains had a tendency to be in their feet. He should have used his A-levels and gone to university. No wonder he’d ended up pickling his brain; dying from lack of use, it was the only way it could be preserved, he’d said. Nice one, thought Mac the journalist.

  But what did the stupid sod think he’d used? How did he suppose he had risen out of the pack? Oh, sure, there were some natural talents who could practically drag the ball towards them and whack it in the net, but he had never been like that. He had used his head to think, not to knock a football around.