by Mike Ashley
Karl was a salesman. It didn’t matter much to him what he sold. Kitchens, carpets, computers. He was good at it. Persuasive. No wonder he had charmed her into marrying him. He could talk for England. Trouble was, he wasn’t so hot when it came to performance. But that never seemed to bother him. Currently he was working for a firm that specialized in bespoke loft conversions. The commission was good, provided you made the sale – and that was the rub. No one with any nous ever wanted to bother with a one-legger. The object of a home sales visit was to get the punters to sign up on the dotted line. But people would do anything to avoid making a commitment to buy. When you were dealing with a married couple, it was vital to have them both there, listening to the pitch. If you had to contend with a one-legger, it was too easy for the decision to be dependent on the okay of the absent spouse. If that happened, then nine times out of ten, the sale would never be made. It was all about human nature, as Karl often said. He fancied himself as an amateur psychologist. In fact, Claire thought, he fancied himself, full stop. That was true of Zack too, of course. But with rather more reason.
“She’s married, then, this Mrs Bailey?” Claire had asked, a picture of innocence.
“Oh yeah. Husband’s away a lot, she says.”
I bet, Claire thought. “What sort of age is she?”
Karl pursed his lips, considering. “Middle-aged, I’d say. yeah, that’s it. Fat, fair and forty.”
Lying bastard. The woman on the phone had been much younger than that. Oh well. It didn’t matter now. Zack had done the necessary. Now all she had to think about was whether she still looked good in black. It was a young colour, she thought, and you needed the figure to carry it off. But she had a few years left in her yet, that was for sure. And with the benefit of the pay-out on Karl’s life insurance, she meant to make the most of them.
Suppose it didn’t work out with Zack. She dipped into a box of After Eights and told herself she had to be realistic. He was a hunk, and he’d carried out his task more efficiently than she had dared hope, but he wasn’t necessarily the ideal lifetime soulmate. No-one so keen on motorbikes and football could be. Not to worry. She could play the field, look around for someone handsome who could help her to get over her tragic loss.
The doorbell sounded. Suddenly her mouth was dry, her stomach churning. This was the test, the moment when she would need to call up all the skills from her days in amateur theatre. She’d tended to be typecast as a dumb blonde, but now she must be shattered by bereavement. She took a deep breath.
The doorbell rang again, long and loud. She checked the mirror. Eyebrows raised, lips slightly parted. Understandable puzzlement at such a late call. A faint touch of apprehension. Perfect.
She remembered to keep the door on the chain. An important detail. These things mattered. The police must not think that she had been expecting them to turn up. In fact, they had moved quickly. Impressive efficiency. She had not thought they would be here so soon.
The door opened and she saw her husband Karl on the step. He was breathing heavily. Yes, despite Zack’s claim to have killed him, he was definitely still breathing.
Five minutes later, she was telling herself that it was a good thing that Karl was so obviously – and uncharacteristically – flustered. Flustered and, more typically, self-centred, concerned only with himself. He had not noticed how his arrival had shocked her.
“Here you are.” Her hands were trembling as she passed him the tumbler of whisky he had asked for. She poured one for herself. Both of them needed to calm down.
“Thanks, darling.” He swallowed the drink in a gulp. “Christ, I needed that.”
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t going to panic, whatever the temptation. Faced with a husband who had died and achieved resurrection within the space of half-an-hour, the best course was to say as little as possible. He was obviously panic-stricken. And he needed her help. These days he only called her darling when he wanted something.
“Listen,” he said hoarsely. His tie was at half mast and his hair, normally immaculate, was a tousled mess. “I have – a bit of a problem.”
“What sort of problem?”
“I’m not going to bullshit you,” he said, in precisely the sincere tone he adopted when lying to her about his trysts with clients or young girls at work. “I’m in a spot of bother. If any questions are asked, I need you to say that I spent the evening here.”
“What?” She was baffled. “Who will be asking questions? Why do you need me to lie for you?”
He caught her wrist, and looked into her eyes, treating her to his soulful expression. “Darling, I’m asking you to trust me.”
“But why? I mean, none of this makes sense.”
“It – it’s not something I can talk about right now. Okay?”
No, she wanted to say, it’s bloody well not okay. But she chose her words with care and spoke more gently than she might have done. “It’s just that, if I don’t have a clue what has happened, I might just put my foot in it unintentionally. If it’s trust we’re talking about, don’t you think you should trust me enough to tell me what’s going on?”
He buried his head in his hands. Claire had never seen him in such a state. If she didn’t despise him so much, if she didn’t loathe him for not being dead when he was supposed to be, she might almost have felt sorry for him.
“I can’t!” It was almost a wail.
“You must,” she said, a touch of steel entering her voice.
“But . . .”
She folded her arms. “It’s up to you.”
He looked up at her. Distressed he might be, but Claire recognized the familiar glint of calculation in his eyes. After a few moments he came to a decision.
“I don’t want to say much about it,” he said. “But I suppose I do owe you some sort of explanation.”
“Yes, you do.”
He blinked hard. “It’s like this. I had a row with this girl – you know, it’s Lynette, who used to work in our office. We were going to go for a drink at this pub in Stockport. Oh, I know it sounds bad, especially after I swore that our little – flirtation – was a thing of the past. But I can explain. Our meeting up was innocent enough, but something happened. There was – an accident. She hit her head. When I tried to bring her round, I realized she was dead.”
Claire stared at him, unable to comprehend what he was saying. “You killed Lynette?”
“Oh, don’t say it like that. We were in this alleyway near the pub and we started arguing. I gave her a push – a tap, really. She fell over and smashed her head on a jagged stone, simple as that. It was all so sudden. She must have had a thin skull or something. Oh God, I didn’t mean this to happen.”
“In Stockport, you said? When was this?”
He shrugged, as if irritated by the irrelevance of the question. “Does it matter? Twenty minutes ago, I guess. If that. I broke every speed limit in the book on my way back over here.”
“But – your meeting with Jennifer Bailey . . .”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Forget about it. The police mustn’t hear about it. I was here at home with you. Watching the box all evening. Okay?”
“I don’t understand,” she said and it was no more than the truth.
“Oh God,” he said again. Tears were trickling down his cheeks. “It just happened. I can’t explain any better than that. Not right now.”
But he hadn’t given any sort of an explanation, so far as Claire was concerned. It wasn’t so much the mystery of why he had killed that silly little girl Lynette. Last year’s fling had evidently started up again, even though he’d promised he would never see her again after she left the company. No, what Claire could not get her head around was the sheer impossibility of it. How had her husband managed to murder someone in nearby Stockport, when according to Jennifer Bailey he was at one and the same time in Bradford on the other side of the Pennines, and Zack was convinced he’d been run over by a stolen Fiesta?
She wasn’t able to contact Za
ck until the middle of the next morning. Karl didn’t work nine-to-five hours and he didn’t have any calls to make first thing. But after a night of tossing and turning, he decided to visit the office and file his weekly report. He had managed to regain a semblance of composure and he thought it would be a good idea to be seen to act normally.
On his way out, he kissed her for perhaps the first time in a month. “I just wanted to say – thanks. You’ve been fantastic. I won’t forget that.”
Claire gave him a weak smile. It seemed the safest response.
“And you’ll remember, won’t you? If the police come, we were together all night. You never let me out of your sight for more than a couple of minutes.”
“But how do you expect to get away with it?” she asked. “You were with Lynette. Won’t someone have seen you?”
He shook his head. “We never made it to the pub. The streets were dead quiet. We both arrived in separate cars. There’s nothing to link me with that place. No-one saw us, I’m sure of it.”
“I still don’t follow,” she said. Already she regretted agreeing to help him out. He’d caught her at a bad time the previous night, when she was so shocked by his reappearance that he could have talked her into anything. “I mean, what about Jennifer Bailey? Why not get her to do your dirty work for you?”
His expression was one of genuine horror. “She was a customer. I told you. How could I ask her to give me an alibi? You don’t think we were having an affair, do you?”
“Well, I . . .”
“You did! Oh, Claire.” He took her hand in his. A romantic gesture; no doubt he employed it with all his conquests. “Listen to me. I realize things haven’t been great between us for a while. But we can try again, can’t we? I’ve come to my senses, honestly. You’re a wife in a million, I see that now. Will you give me another chance?”
She withdrew her hand. “You’re saying you haven’t got a thing going with Jennifer Bailey?”
“I told you. She’s a middle-aged frump. Last night, I was on my way over to Bradford and I suddenly decided it was a complete waste of time. You know what one-leggers are like. I don’t know what got into my head, but I decided to give Lynette a ring. See how she was getting on, for old times’ sake, that’s all. There was nothing in it. Zilch. She suggested meeting for a quick drink. But when we met, she made it clear she wanted us to get together again. I told her there was nothing doing, that I wanted to make a go of things with you. She became angry, hysterical. I didn’t know how to deal with it. She lunged at me and – and that’s when I pushed her.”
His voice was breaking. He had missed his true vocation, she thought. He was better at acting than she was; he might have made a fortune on the stage. Because he wasn’t telling her the truth, of that she was sure. His story didn’t begin to explain why his client, the frump, the one-legger, had called her to say that he was on his way home when he was out pubbing with his floosie. She thought about confronting him, telling him about the message from Jennifer Bailey, but decided against it. He obviously knew nothing about the call. She would keep that morsel of information to herself until she had more of a clue as to what he had really been up to.
As she made herself a snack lunch, Claire asked herself if it was possible that the whole story about killing Lynette was some sort of elaborate charade. She wouldn’t put it past him. Like most serial adulterers, Karl possessed a vivid imagination and a gift for telling fairy stories that the Brothers Grimm might have envied. Suppose he planned to resume his affair with the girl. The prospect of divorce held no appeal for him, she was well aware of that. Too expensive. Perhaps he had decided to concoct this extraordinary story of killing the girl by accident so that Claire would think she had him in her power and relax. If she thought Lynette was dead, she wouldn’t suspect him of continuing to sleep with her, would she?
No. It was too bizarre. Ridiculous, even by Karl’s standards of excessively ingenious subterfuge. There had to be some other explanation. She would need to undertake a bit of detective work. But first, she must find out what had gone wrong at Zack’s end. She had tried to phone him as soon as Karl had stepped out of the door, but there was no answer on his mobile. She pressed redial, but as the number began to ring, she heard footsteps coming up the path to the front door. Hurrying into the dining room, she saw through the window that a lean young man was standing on the step, pressing the bell. Quickly, she cancelled her call. Zack would have to wait a few minutes.
Her immediate impression when she answered the door was that the young man was almost as gorgeous as Zack. He didn’t have the same dark and dangerous eyes, or the muscular shoulders and chest. But he was smart to the point of elegance and his neatly scrubbed face was boyish and appealing. Very nice. Wholesome, you might say. It made a change.
“Mrs Doherty?”
She stared at him with only the slightest nod.
“My name’s Godstow. Sergeant Paul Godstow. I’m with the police.” He showed her his i.d. “May I come in?”
“Certainly, sergeant.” When in doubt, ooze charm. She treated him to a brilliant smile which she hoped would disguise her nervousness. What now? “Can I offer you a drink?”
“Thanks, but no.” He followed her into the living room. “You see, Mrs Doherty, it’s like this. I just need to ask you one or two questions about last night.”
He was checking up on Karl. They had already got wind of her husband’s past relationship with Lynette. She swallowed and launched into the tale that she had agreed with her husband. He’d been with her since coming home from a call at half past five. They had eaten together, watched a little television, discussed the need to redecorate the hall and first floor landing. She’d ironed a couple of shirts, he’d done a bit of tidying in the loft. They had retired to bed at about eleven o’clock to sleep, she strongly implied, the sleep of the just.
The policeman frowned. “So you were together all the time?”
“That’s right, sergeant.” She smiled again. He was dishy, there was no denying it. “Not a very interesting evening, but that’s married life for you. The excitement doesn’t last.”
He looked straight at her. “Depends on who you’re married to, I suppose.”
“That’s true,” she murmured. “Will – will that be all?”
“For the moment, Mrs Doherty. It’s just possible I may need to come back to ask you one or two more questions.”
“Any time, any time at all,” she breathed and was secretly entertained when his face turned beetroot red. “Actually, I was preparing lunch when you arrived. Nothing special, just a salad. I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?”
“Thanks, but no,” he said. “There’s a lot to do in connection with the enquiry.”
“Oh, well, another time perhaps.”
He handed her a card. “This is my number. If anything springs to mind, I’d be glad to hear from you.”
“Sorry I haven’t been able to help. Perhaps I ought to return the compliment anyway.” She found a slip of paper and wrote the number of the house and her own mobile in her flamboyant script. “Don’t hesitate to call me.”
He considered her carefully. “Thanks, Mrs Doherty.”
“Please call me Claire.”
“Thanks, Claire. I’m sure we’ll talk again.”
“Zack? God, I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. What went wrong?”
“Nothing,” he replied. His voice sounded dreamy, as though he were living out a fantasy. “I went out for a ride on my Harley, that’s all. And I felt free as a bird. It’s amazing, you know, darling? You can snuff out a life just like that” – she heard him click his fingers – “and guess what? You carry on, same as before. You haven’t changed. You’re still you. You’ve murdered someone, but it’s not the end of the world. Not for you, at any rate.”
“Not for your victim, either,” she said grimly.
“What do you mean?”
“Karl’s still alive.”
She could hear his inta
ke of breath. “This your idea of a joke? Don’t tell me you can’t cope with what we’ve done. You told me you were sick of him. I did it for you.”
“You didn’t do it at all,” she said curtly. Rapidly, she told him what had happened. The awestruck silence at the other end was eloquent. “Are you still there?” she demanded.
“I don’t get it. There must be some mistake.”
“Yes, and it looks like you made it.”
“But it all went according to plan.”
“Something went wrong with the plan, then.”
“No, no, you don’t understand.”
“That’s true, Zack. I don’t bloody understand a thing. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you can cast any light on this whole God-awful mess?”
“No, I . . .”
He was stammering, sounding like an overgrown schoolkid. He was so much less mature than the sergeant, she thought. Now there was a young man who was going places. Quiet, assured, effective. Everything that Zack was not.
“So tell me what really happened. Did you by any chance run over a bit of sacking that you mistook for my husband? An easy mistake to make in the dark, I suppose. A shop window dummy that seemed to have a bit of life? Or at least more of a brain than you?”
“No, honest. I did the business. He came out of the house, just like you said he would. I mean, I didn’t see his face under the streetlight, so it wasn’t easy to compare him to that photo you gave me. But he was a big bloke, muscular, walked with a bit of a swagger. It had to be your old man.”
Claire groaned. Zack coughed and kept on talking. She thought he was trying to convince himself, rather than her, that he hadn’t made the ultimate in fatal errors. “He’d been in there since before I turned up. I couldn’t see where he’d parked. I thought it was probably out of sight so the people next door wouldn’t twig that something was going on. I was following him down the road and then the pavement came to an end. I’d staked the spot out in the afternoon. Double-checked the address you gave me, the photograph of your old feller. Everything was planned down to the last detail.”
