The Other Woman by Jill McGown Page B

empty cigarette packets that might just give them a lead; what looked like and probably was a load of rubbish.
    The DCs arrived back, and Parker’s story had been filled out a little from the one he had told at the police station. The girl he had spoken to was one Sharon Smith, who had worked for him once. She had been heavily engaged in chatting up Barnes when he had seen her at the ground, and the younger man had swung a punch when she left him to talk to Parker.
    Sharon Smith answered the description of the dead girl; she lived with her mother, and Parker had supplied her address. Lloyd braced himself for the worst part of all.
    Two hours later Mrs Smith had identified the body, and Lloyd was a little wiser about Sharon Smith and a great deal wearier. He drove back via the scene of crime, where they were trying to get prints from moisture-beaded metal railings, examining the tarmac surface of the car park, and the rather more productive grass verges out on the pavement, taking tyre impressions and footmarks before they were obliterated, by rain or whatever else the weather might have in store. At five o’clock he went home to get some sleep and to reflect on the little he had learned.
    Sharon hadn’t gone out much. She didn’t have a boyfriend that her mother knew of. She had always been very quiet; never had all that much to do with men. She had taken a flat of her own at one point, when she had worked for Parker Development, but she had come back to live with her mother when her father had died, and her mother couldn’t cope. She had taken the job with Mr Evans then, as it was too far to travel to Parker’s. It was Mr Parker who had got her it, really. He’d always been very kind to Sharon. That might have been why she was at the football ground; she certainly wasn’t interested in football. Her mother hadn’t recognised the key; she thought that perhaps it had something to do with work.
    Sharon had loved her family, and had been loved, that much was obvious. But she had kept her feelings and her private business to herself, and her mother and sister had respected that. Which was fine when she was alive, but not much use to him now. They had given him names of people who might be able to tell him more; he had passed them on, and made a mental note to speak to Parker as soon as possible.
    He switched on the radio before getting his head down for a couple of hours. The fog would disperse soon after daylight, said the weathermen, but it would be dense and widespread again that evening. This pattern, they said, looked set to continue through the weekend. Lloyd had a feeling in his bones that the forecast might turn out to be more prophetic than the Met Office knew.
    He got into bed looking at the clock, and decided it wasn’t too early to ring Judy. She might have been trying to ring him back, and getting no reply. She would surely have been worrying; he thought he really ought to ring.
    In a spacious, old-fashioned flat which had once been part of someone’s town house in the centre of Malworth, above the shop into which the ground floor had been turned, Judy turned over in the double bed in which she had spent six warm, comfortable hours, and snuggled down into the duvet, sleeping the sleep of the just, or possibly of the just very selfish, depending on your point of view.
    The insistent purring of the telephone penetrated her dreams; she opened her eyes, groped for the light switch, then focused on the clock, pulling a face. Work. Who else would phone this early on a Saturday morning? It wasn’t fair. It was supposed to be her day off.
    â€˜DI Hill,’ she said.
    â€˜Just wanted to say good morning.’
    She stared at the phone, then at the clock again. ‘ Do you know what time it is?’ she demanded.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said. ‘And for your information, I haven’t been to bed at all yet.’
    More fool him. Judy hung up on him again, pulled the