Free The Other Woman by Jill McGown Page A

‘The papers will love that,’ he muttered. He glanced at Finch. ‘Was that why you didn’t ask for the lights to be put on?’ he asked.
    â€˜No sir,’ said Finch honestly. ‘ I just didn’t think.’
    Lloyd smiled. ‘Neither did I,’ he said. ‘Parker won’t fight shy of the publicity.’
    â€˜The fight was over some girl,’ Finch reminded Lloyd. ‘Their statements just accuse one another of starting it – no one said who the girl was – not to us, at any rate.’ He glanced over to where the makeshift shelter was being constructed. ‘Do you think that might be her?’ he asked.
    Lloyd thought about that. ‘ Could be,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I want to see Mr Parker if he comes down here. The moment he arrives – and don’t let him anywhere near the scene.’
    â€˜Sir,’ said Finch. He hesitated slightly, then went on. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said. ‘But when I looked at the body, I could smell sawdust.’
    Lloyd shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of building work going on,’ he said.
    â€˜Yes, sir – but I can’t smell it anywhere else. And I couldn’t see any sawdust on the ground.’
    Lloyd nodded. ‘ Well see what the lab has to say,’ he said. ‘In the meantime – what else?’
    â€˜She was found by a man who gave his name as Gil McDonald,’ Finch said.
    Lloyd was transported back fifteen, twenty years at the mention of one of his all-time heroes. Gave his name as Gil McDonald. Lloyd looked at the young man – how old was he? Twenty-eight? He would have been about eight years old in the days when Gil McDonald would suddenly come tearing into the box from nowhere at all and volley a ball right past the keeper. He’d assumed that The Chronicle article was syndicated, but if it was the same Gil McDonald, then he must have come to live among men right here in Stansfield. Lloyd had always been a terrible disappointment to his Rugby Union obsessed father, with his love of the round-ball game. The real game, he would tell Jack Woodford, when he pointed out that Lloyd wasn’t exactly a regular at Stansfield Town matches. The First Division game.
    Gil McDonald. Mad Mac. Finch would have been about eighteen when he started his long descent. Couldn’t have been a football fan.
    â€˜Sir?’ Finch was aware that he seemed to have lost his audience. ‘Mr McDonald says that he was intending to take a short cut across the ground. Apparently, you can squeeze through a gap in the fencing just there,’ he added, pointing, ‘and he was looking for it when his foot actually struck the body.’
    â€˜Is he wearing a tie?’
    â€˜No, sir.’
    â€˜Where is he now?’
    â€˜In one of the cars, sir.’
    â€˜You haven’t asked him where he’d been or what he was doing here?’
    â€˜No, sir. I was too busy trying to make sure no one else stood on the body.’
    Lloyd smiled a little at the hint of defiance in the young man’s voice. ‘Quite,’ he murmured. ‘Quite. Carry on with whatever you were doing.’
    Finch went off, and Lloyd was pleased to note that he did not immediately go and talk to McDonald. He liked his men to have minds of their own. He sighed again.
    His women certainly did, he thought sourly, then immediately felt guilty. She hadn’t done anything, he told himself again. Neither had his ex-wife, with whom he had also had a difference of opinion, or – come to that – his daughter, over whose actions the difference of opinion had occurred. But all that had to take a back seat; he had his job to do, and at least Judy would understand that, which Barbara never had.
    And he didn’t like the way this one was shaping up. No identification yet; no immediate lead on why she was dead. A rapist on the loose, and a reputedly millionaire businessman