The Other Woman (26 page)

‘Yes.'

‘When you denied ever having met her?'

‘Yes.'

Simon realised that his mouth was open. Why? Why would Melissa pretend she hadn't met her if she had? Knowing she was dead? Knowing what the police would think if the truth was discovered?

The inspector looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘ Melissa Whitworth, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Sharon Smith on Friday the twenty-fifth of October. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything …'

Simon watched, as though it was a scene from a play. In a moment, the stage would go dark, the lights would come up, and they would take their bows.

But all that happened was that Melissa got her bag, and her coat, and was taken out to a car. The inspector said something to him; he didn't know what. He couldn't move from the spot.

Mac was sitting on the end of the bed; the sergeant had the easy chair. Finch had been called to the phone, and Mac's landlady had come tripping upstairs to tell him; Mac was lucky if she bothered shouting up to him.

They both had tea, provided by his landlady, with whom Finch had flirted outrageously, until she looked about seventeen instead of almost seventy. Mac knew that the tea was for Finch's benefit; he, who could never have been bothered with the hard work of flirting, got nothing that wasn't in the agreement.

Finch had wanted to know where he had gone when he left the football match. Mac had told him that he had realised that Donna Fairweather lived on the Mitchell Estate; he had originally been trying to find her house, hoping that he might get invited in, but instead he had become hopelessly lost in the fog.

Finch came back in. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder, Mr McDonald,' he said. ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in evidence.'

Mac stared at him.

‘Now, Mr McDonald,' he said, and they were going downstairs, out of the door, walking out to the waiting car.

The afternoon had a dream-like quality, as though it was being filmed with a soft-focus lens. The young sergeant, who had changed from being a boy who could wrap old ladies round his little finger to a man who dealt with human disaster, sat beside him in the back of a car driven by a uniformed constable.

Neighbours were peering from windows, ducking back if anyone looked in their direction. His landlady was watching, looking on with a mixture of horror and pleasure. He was being driven through Stansfield to the police station, past rows of neat semis and terraced houses, along the road that separated the red and gold of the old wood from the tall pines of the new. Through the rash of mini-roundabouts, past older, larger, more opulent houses. Another mini-roundabout, and up the hill to the police station, square, solid and sixties.

The dream became more pronounced as they went into the station, Finch on one side, the constable on the other, and Mac was taken into a room where Inspector Hill stood at a table with Melissa. A uniformed sergeant sat at the table, and Melissa was emptying out the contents of her huge bag, a procedure which had evidently already taken a great deal of time, and had just finished.

‘Empty your pockets, please, Mr McDonald,' said the desk sergeant. ‘These items will be returned to you.'

Mac slowly emptied his pockets, one of which still contained the tape. He placed it on the desk, Melissa's handwritten ‘Sharon Smith' all too visible.

Melissa could have stayed for ever in the groves of Academe, eventually getting a department of her own, losing more and more of her budget every year like her own head of department had. She could have lived in the sort of part-time ivory tower still afforded to caps and gowns during term-time. She could have written learned biographies instead of fashion hints, something she had very little right to do. She had thought long and hard before making the offered move into journalism, at first serious, then – as she discovered that she liked it much more – human interest.

And if she had, would she ever have met the woman who sat opposite her now, waiting like patience on a monument for an answer to her question?

Mac. He must have told them after all. But why? She had gone to the house with him. She had even enjoyed every minute of it, which was more than most blackmailers could hope for. But he was here too, so he must have told them.

‘Is this your notebook?' she said again.

‘You took it away from me,' she said. ‘You know it's my notebook.'

‘And the entry dated twenty-fifth October contains notes relating to your interview with Sharon Smith?'

‘Yes.' Melissa looked away. Why, Mac,
why
?

‘Why did you tell my colleagues that you had never met Sharon Smith?' she asked.

Melissa gave a sigh. ‘ Sharon met me as a feature writer for
The Barton Chronicle
,' she said. ‘I had never met her in my capacity as Simon's wife, which is the one in which I was being interviewed by Mr Lloyd. I didn't think it was relevant.'

The inspector was giving her a very dubious look, which was fair enough, in the circumstances.

The inspector handed her the book. ‘Could you read your notes, please?' she asked.

Melissa read back her shorthand. A note of what she was wearing, the odd remark about her mannerisms, her expression when she answered the questions, which were indicated by numbers. Then, normally, she would play the tape, and match the two. Not this time.

The inspector listened. ‘They don't seem very extensive,' she said.

‘They're not meant to be. We promised interviewees complete anonymity. These are just notes on how she struck me. I tape the actual interview, as I imagine you know.'

The inspector glanced at her own notebook. ‘Is that the tape which was in Mr McDonald's possession?' she asked, marking something off.

Damn him. Damn him to hell. Was that what he was going to tell her when he told her to come to the garage? That he was going to go to the police with it? They hadn't had a chance to speak before Lloyd and Judy Hill had turned up. Or was that when he'd told Detective Inspector Hill about the tape? When they had been having their tête-à-tête over the car? He'd made her look a liar, then told them about the tape. Why?

‘Is that the tape which was in Mr McDonald's possession?' she asked again. There wasn't the usual slight raising of the voice when repeating a question, the hint of impatience that most people employed. Just exactly the same question, in exactly the same tone of voice, as before.

‘I expect so,' said Melissa.

‘Can you tell me what is on that tape?' she asked.

Melissa felt her cheeks go pink. ‘I've no doubt that you have played it,' she said.

‘Yes, we have,' said Detective Inspector Hill. ‘ But I'd still like you to tell me.'

Melissa looked at her. She didn't know Judy Hill at all, not really. A purely professional acquaintance, but none the less she was someone whose ability Melissa admired. ‘Why am I here?' she asked. ‘ I don't believe you think I killed her, whatever she and my husband were doing.'

Was there just a hint of surprise in the brown eyes? Surely not. Just more game-playing, and Melissa was tired of it.

‘Don't pretend you haven't worked it out,' she said. ‘I'm sure her reference to ‘‘the office'' left you in as little doubt as it did me. Sharon made it very clear that she was having an affair with her boss, and her boss just happens to be Simon, as you very well know.'

She remembered Judy's parting shot when she had given her a lift home, about Sharon working for Simon. Had she known then?

‘When did the interview take place?'

Melissa wanted one of the men back. Either of them would do. Sergeant Finch, so suspicious of her that he might as well have brought handcuffs with him. Chief Inspector Lloyd, angry and looking for someone to blame. Anyone but Detective Inspector Hill, whose brown eyes looked so implacable now.

But of course. She hadn't put a time on her notes, or the tape. Or a venue. ‘ I'm not certain now,' she said. ‘Some time after lunch, I think.'

‘No,' said the inspector, shaking her head.

Melissa looked at her She
couldn't
know, however certain she sounded. Only she and Sharon Smith knew for a fact when that interview took place. Sharon was dead, and she hadn't told anyone. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘It must have been – I was in Barton in the afternoon.' She had to remember the lies. She had driven home from Barton, therefore she had to have got there in the first place.

‘You interviewed her some time after six o'clock in the evening,' said the inspector.

Melissa flushed.

‘You describe her clothes in your notes,' said the inspector. ‘They're the clothes she was wearing on Friday evening.'

My God, that would be no clue in her case, thought Melissa. But Sharon Smith wouldn't wear the same outfit all day and all evening any more than Detective Inspector Hill would. Judy Hill probably thought that no female person was capable of such a wanton act of dowdiness. But it hardly constituted proof.

‘The clothes were brand new. Bought that evening,' said Detective Inspector Hill. ‘ We have the receipt, timed at 6.13 p. m., and the salesgirl remembers the purchase.'

‘Then I expect it was the evening,' Melissa said. She was in trouble. Real, real trouble, and she didn't know how to get out of it. She was used to being one jump ahead of other people in the quick-thinking stakes, but she was overmatched.

‘You know it was the evening,' Detective Inspector Hill said steadily. ‘And it was the night you spent at the hotel.'

‘I don't see what—' Mac found the body. Damn, damn,
damn
him. If she hadn't met him …

‘Where did you meet Sharon?'

She doubtless knew the answer to that too. She seemed to specialise in asking questions to which she already knew the answers. Melissa gave up, and told the truth.

‘At the football ground,' she said. ‘ Where she was later found. By Mac. With whom I had just been—'

‘What time was your interview?' asked the inspector, interrupting Melissa's angry reply.

Again. Just a question. Not a repeat of one which she had just answered with a pack of lies.

‘Just after seven,' she said wearily. ‘We spoke in my car. She left just before the match kicked off at seven thirty.'

‘Did you see where she went?'

‘Into the ground.'

She wrote that down. ‘Sharon left you at seven thirty, to go into the match. You booked into the hotel at nine thirty or thereabouts.' She looked up. ‘You told Detective Inspector Lloyd that you spent that time driving back from Barton,' she said.

Melissa looked down.

‘Where were you between seven thirty and nine thirty, Mrs Whitworth?' There was something infuriatingly calm about Detective Inspector Hill. She didn't get annoyed with the lies, or impatient for the truth. She just asked polite questions, to which she mostly knew the answers.

Did she already know where Melissa was, too? Or was this where the fishing really began? ‘At home,' she said, to test the water.

She wrote that down, as she had every other blessed word. If Melissa took notes like that, her interviews would never finish. She wondered if this one ever would.

‘Not according to your husband. He rang the station to say that you hadn't come home.'

‘I went home after I interviewed Sharon,' said Melissa, ‘and I came back out and went to the hotel. Simon must have just missed me.'

She wrote that down too.

‘I didn't want to be there when Simon did come in,' she said. ‘When I got to the hotel, I met Mac. I know he told you that we'd arranged to meet, but that's just because he thinks it sounds better than the truth.'

‘Why didn't you tell us the truth in the first place?' she asked. ‘Or even the second place?'

Melissa could see the end in sight. ‘Because I didn't think that my private life had anything to do with you,' she said. ‘Because I didn't want to have to answer these questions. Because it's none of your business!'

Detective Inspector Hill didn't reply. ‘Sharon gave you no clue as to who the single man was? The one who was too possessive?'

Melissa frowned. ‘No. I got the impression that she was just generalising. Didn't you?'

Judy Hill closed her notebook, and switched off the tape that had been recording this interview. All over the place, it seemed, there was magnetic tape recording Melissa's private life.

‘You're free to go, Mrs Whitworth,' she said. ‘No charges are being brought at the moment.'

She looked a little tired as she spoke. Melissa stood up. ‘ I'm sorry I messed you around,' she said. ‘But …' She sighed. ‘I do

have my own life to consider,' she said.
She was given back her bag with its belongings intact; it was

the first time in years that she had even known what exactly was

in it. She walked out of the police station, into a late afternoon

where the horizon was once again obscured by mist, and into Mac.
‘Are you all right?' he asked.
She gasped. ‘Oh, that's good. That's really good, Mae.'
He frowned. ‘I mean – are you out on bail, or what? I didn't

know what was happening—'
‘No, I am not out on bail. I haven't been charged with anything.'
‘Neither have I. Let's go somewhere,' he said.
She stared at him. ‘What?'
The hotel – somewhere. Anywhere.'
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘It's finished, Mac,' she said.

‘You can't blackmail someone once you've played your ace!'
He gaped at her. ‘ Blackmail?' he said.
‘What would you prefer me to call it?'
‘
Blackmail
? Is that what you thought? Is that why you came to

the house? Is that—'
But she was walking away towards the taxi rank, getting in and

slamming the door as Mac came running up, thrusting his hand