The Other Woman (19 page)

Lionel stared at him. ‘ Do you seriously think that
I'd
leave your name out of it?' he demanded.

Jake smiled, shaking his head, and reached into his pocket. ‘No,' he said. ‘But you'll go to prison, Lionel. If they believe you, and can prove anything, I'll go to prison too – but I didn't kill her. You did.'

‘I didn't!' Lionel was beginning to wonder if he could prove that Parker had had anything to do with the fraud at all. He was beginning to suspect that he had been set up as a fall-guy from the very start. He was beginning to realise what a fool he had been.

Jake was still smiling as he took the bullets out and inserted them in the clip. One by one, they clicked into place. ‘Or there's suicide,' he said, pushing the full clip home, and holding the gun at Lionel's temple again.

Lionel didn't believe he was going to shoot him. That sort of thing didn't happen. ‘Why would I come here to commit suicide?' he asked.

‘You came to plead with me to give you time to get the money back where it belongs,' said Jake. ‘I'll tell them that I knew nothing about it until Sharon told me yesterday. I'll deny telling you anything. I'll tell them that there was only one way you could know that I had found out, and that was if you had talked to Sharon.'

The pistol nudged Lionel's temple, and he almost passed out.

‘I was very close to Sharon,' Jake continued, smiling. ‘I told the Chief Inspector. We had a good thing going, me and Sharon. You had murdered my beloved, Lionel, and I told you there was no way I was giving you time to pay the money back. I was going to the police. You pulled out a gun and shot yourself on my rented shagpile.'

It sounded almost plausible. With a loaded gun at his temple, there was no doubt that Lionel was in a less than enviable position. But neither alternative had much in it for Parker. Lionel waited for his third choice, and was not disappointed.

‘Or,' said Jake.

‘Done,' said Lionel. ‘ Whatever it is. Just take that gun away, for God's sake.'

Jake's smile vanished. ‘ Thanks to you,' he said, ‘I'm going to have to leave much sooner than I meant to, with a lot less money.' He shook his head. ‘I could have worked something out with Sharon,' he said. ‘A deal – something. She just wanted to protect Whitworth – she wasn't bothered about the investors.'

Lionel was still having trouble coming to terms with this altered image of Sharon. He could believe she had been involved with Parker, just. He was a bachelor, so there was no reason why she shouldn't have had a relationship with him. But Simon? Sharon and a married man? But then he thought of all the times they had stayed at the office together, working late. Someone other than him would have tumbled weeks ago. Melissa had – that was why she had rung him, asking about Simon's overtime. Served her right. She should make more of herself. She could be quite a good-looking woman if she tried.

‘I'd have worked something out,' Jake said again. ‘You didn't have to kill her.'

Lionel shook his head. ‘I didn't,' he said.

Jake took the gun away, and held it loosely as he looked at him. ‘I'm prepared to make it obvious that I was involved in the fraud,' he said. ‘Once I'm safely out of the country.'

Lionel stared at him.

‘There's a catch,' said Jake. ‘In return, I want it all, and I want it on Monday. Today would have been much better, but you did a bunk.'

‘I didn't – I …'

‘Then I leave, and you do what you can to get yourself clear.'

That was more like it. A solution that left Parker somewhere the law couldn't touch him, and Lionel with nothing to show for six months' hard work, holding a time-bomb. ‘But if we withdraw all that cash at once—' he began.

‘It'll look very suspicious,' said Jake. ‘Tough. You can still do what we planned,' said Parker. ‘More or less.'

‘Who's going to believe me, if you've already gone? The whole point was that the cash would have disappeared bit by bit, and you would still be here – you would be backing me up.'

Jake shrugged. ‘That's your problem. Though,' he added thoughtfully, ‘ if you really
didn't
kill her …'

At last. He believed him. Lionel hadn't relished the idea of Parker believing him to be the author of his misfortune. If the police got on to him before he could do his disappearing act, that gun wouldn't be for ornament.

‘… and I don't really think you did – you don't have the guts – then there is the question of who did kill her, and you know what they say, don't you?'

‘What do they say?' Lionel asked wearily.

‘Murder is almost always done by your nearest and dearest,' said Jake. ‘ Maybe Sharon and Simon had a barney, and he ended up doing her in.'

Somehow, that seemed rather likelier than their having a liaison in the first place, Lionel thought.

‘Someone killed her. If it
was
Whitworth, that would strengthen your hand, wouldn't it? She knew too much, so he killed her.'

The phone rang, and Jake fairly leapt across the room to pick it up. ‘Hello. Oh – Marilyn. Thank God – where the hell is Bobbie?'

Lionel watched as Jake Parker listened, his eyes at first disbelieving, then wide with shock.

‘No,' he said. ‘No – you did right. I'll be there. I'm coming now.'

He put down the phone and stared blankly at Lionel. ‘ I – I've got to go,' he said. ‘Something's … I've got to go.'

It seemed inappropriate in the extremely odd circumstances to inquire politely if anything was wrong, but Lionel would not have believed that anyone holding a loaded pistol could ever have looked so completely vulnerable.

Lloyd got home, his virtually sleepless night beginning to catch up with him. Just driving was tiring in this weather, peering through the mist. He wanted to get in, have a night-cap, and fall asleep to an old film on video.

He listened to the sole message on his answering machine, and left the flat again, driving straight to Judy's through the ever-thickening fog.

She opened the door a little guiltily. ‘You look tired,' she said.

He smiled. ‘I'll survive,' he said. She looked worried, as he had known she would. She was smiling, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong, but she was hopeless at that, and the three-word message she had left him had merely confirmed what he had feared.

‘Have you eaten?' he demanded, as he removed his coat and hung it up on the hooks which had suddenly made an appearance in her small hallway.

She shook her head. ‘I'm not hungry,' she said.

‘Did you have lunch?'

‘No.'

‘Right.' He went into the kitchen, snapping on the light. ‘I'll do you an omelette. Have you any cheese?'

‘I couldn't eat it, honestly, Lloyd.'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘ Nonsense,' he said, opening the fridge, and finding cheese, rather to his surprise. ‘Anyone can eat an omelette. I'll share it with you.' No need to inquire about eggs; there was always a plentiful supply. Judy was a bacon and eggs for breakfast woman, which was just as well, because she didn't seem to eat anything else unless he fed her.

She grated cheese while he broke eggs into a bowl, salting and peppering them. Black pepper was always available now; his next task was to get her to buy a pepper-grinder instead of using the ready-ground stuff.

He had news for her which he was diffident about imparting, and she clearly had problems which she didn't want to admit. The result was a very rare slightly awkward silence, which Judy broke just as he was about to take the plunge.

‘Did you go to see Drummond again?' she asked.

A reprieve. He put two plates into the oven to warm up; he wasn't sure he wanted a reprieve. In his book it was always better to get bad things over with. ‘I did,' he said, finding a fork, and gently beating the eggs. ‘He is one very weird young man. And Finch is right. He is a cocky little bastard, when he isn't frightened of being beaten up.'

He saw Judy's back stiffen, and her grating hand stop for just a moment before continuing to attack the cheese. He couldn't believe that he had said it. Freudian. It had to be. He wanted to get it over with, so he had introduced the topic without even thinking.

‘Someone superglued my car locks,' she said. ‘And left me a note to explain why.'

So that was it. Lloyd sighed. ‘Forget it, Judy,' he said. ‘It's a piece of juvenile behaviour that you should just ignore.'

The cheese was on a hiding to nothing. Lloyd put the frying pan on the gas, and introduced an enormous knob of butter to it. He cleared his throat a little.

He hadn't felt as bad as this since he was six, and he'd had to confess to his dad that he'd eaten all the strawberries out of the patch in the garden. He could still feel the soft earth, warm beneath his bare, scuffed knees, as he had had just one, and then another, and just one more, until they had all been gone.

‘Merrill will be ringing you tomorrow morning,' he began, ‘ but I might as well tell you now.'

She turned to him, her face apprehensive. ‘ Ringing me about what?'

The butter began to sizzle, and Lloyd moved the pan, sliding the melting gold across its surface. He didn't use a non-stick pan himself – he had inherited a cast-iron beauty that was coming up to its telegram from the Queen. But he supposed if they said they were non-stick, then they were. Modern cooking utensils were probably the only new-fangled things with which Lloyd did not hold.

Her question wasn't repeated, but it was hanging about, waiting to be answered. He was often very grateful that he wasn't a miscreant trying to pull the wool over Judy's clear eyes. And he had brought the subject up, so he had no option but to answer.

‘Andrews thought we could do with beefing up the murder-room team,' he said, turning the gas up full, and standing by with his bowl of eggs. ‘Barstow's the incident office manager, so I can't have him on the streets. Besides, if he gets this job he's after, he'll be whipped off to patrol a desk at headquarters any minute.' The eggs hit the almost-burning butter, and they didn't stick.

‘Finch is a good lad,' he continued. ‘ He's bright, and keen … but he doesn't have the experience, or the rank.' He reached across her for the plate of vanquished cheese. ‘Andrews thought we could do with another DI, and your name was suggested.' He lifted the edges of the omelette, adjudged the moment right, and popped in the cheese. ‘Merrill has agreed to second you for the duration.'

There. He'd got it out, and had made the omelette, all in one go. Now Judy was looking at him, her dark eyes resting on his for a long time before she spoke.

‘Who suggested it?'

‘What?' he asked, playing for time, as he flipped the omelette over, and took the plates from the oven, neatly producing two halves of omelette, and putting them down at the table.

‘My name was suggested,' she said patiently, opening the drawer. ‘Who suggested it?' she asked, holding out his knife and fork to him.

Lloyd wanted to look away from the steady brown gaze, but he didn't. ‘ I did,' he said, taking his cutlery. ‘One thing about our beloved chief constable throwing everyone up and seeing where they land is that the gossip hasn't got to the current top brass at Stansfield. I thought I could get away with it, so I just—' He shrugged a little and sat down.

‘Why?' she demanded, joining him.

‘Why what?' he asked.

‘Why did you suggest my name?'

He could tell her that he missed the totally unimaginative logic which she possessed, and which provided checks and balances for his own inspirational (as Andrews had rather nicely called it) guess-work, keeping him off the carpet on more than one occasion. He could tell her that Finch wasn't, for the moment, at any rate, a suitable sounding board for his theories; he would either act on them, which would be disastrous, or think that Lloyd was off his head. He could tell her that neither living with her nor working with her was getting him down, and he had seized the chance of having her around. It would all have been true, but it was for none of those reasons, and Judy knew it.

‘Because I knew your life would be made hell at work,' he said, and began to eat.

She looked away then.

Well, Lloyd thought stoutly, he could weather it. He'd done it now, so she would just have to put up with it. Maybe he was a chauvinistic pig who thought that all he had to do was ride up on his charger and rescue the damsel in distress whether she wanted to be rescued or not. Maybe he did have a nerve thinking that he could interfere in her business, in her professional relationships with her colleagues. But he wasn't going to stand by and watch her …

He shouldn't have been eating the strawberries at all, never mind all of them. But he had seen them just lying there, red and plump, and he had crawled under the netting, just to taste one. It had been delicious. Sweet and juicy and slightly warm; he could taste it now. They had all been delicious.

‘Thank you,' she said, turning back, and smiled.

He stared at her. ‘I'm not in trouble?' he asked.

He hadn't been last time either; his dad had laughed. ‘Never mind,' he had said. ‘Were they good?'

‘You had no right to interfere,' she said. ‘But I wasn't looking forward to next week.' She paused. ‘And you didn't lie to me,' she added.

Was that why his dad had forgiven him too?

Lloyd smiled back at her, but already she was fixing him with a stern eye. ‘Was it honestly Andrews' opinion that you needed another DI?' she asked.

‘Cross my heart. Ask him.' After a little subtle prompting, perhaps. But the actual suggestion had issued from Andrews' lips, and he had
thought
it was his opinion, at least.

‘Then you'd better fill me in on Sharon Smith,' she said.