Deathly Affair Read online

  To begin with they had kept their affair a secret. With about twenty years between them he had never expected the relationship to last, but as soon as she had fallen pregnant he had seized his chance. When her parents had supported his proposal, he knew he had won. Now, at fifty-two, he was old enough to know better than to remain obsessed with his young wife, but he could not help his adoration. He had always known she would never love him as he loved her, with an all-consuming passion that made everything else seem pale and dull. Meeting her had given purpose to his dreary life, and their marriage ceremony had been the best moment of his life. Right up to the very last minute he had expected her to do a runner. Relief, not happiness, had nearly reduced him to tears on seeing her arrive at the registry office flanked by her parents, one on either side of her, holding her by her arms. She had been visibly shaking and her parents had looked grim, as though they were attending a funeral.

  He had let her think he was happy about the baby for its own sake. In reality he was pleased because he thought the baby would tie her to him, making her need him as he needed her. Their relationship could never be equal though, because she could walk away from him at any time and move on with her life. As far as he was concerned, she was his life. Before the baby arrived he had lived in fear of her leaving him. Once Aimee was born, he felt he had been granted a reprieve. But Ann had been unable to conceive again after problems with her first delivery and, now their daughter was fifteen, he worried about what was going to happen when she grew up and left home.

  He provided a home for Ann, but he was afraid that would not be enough to keep her. She was only thirty-two, with nearly all of her adult life ahead of her. If she ever tried to leave him, he would do everything in his power to stop her going. He knew what it was to be lonely and the thought of living in the house without her terrified him, as did the prospect of facing old age without her. Ann said she loved him, but he knew that was not true. If love had not been kind to him, he knew that solitude was worse. So he was grateful to his wife for her feigned affection. He understood she was fond of him, and he had to be satisfied with that, even though he wanted her to love him with a fierce passion he suspected she was capable of feeling, but not for him.

  He gave up speculating what his life might have been like if he had never met Ann, and whether he might have been happier with a woman who was able to love him as he loved her. He could not help his feelings, and he would never give Ann up. After a while he stopped telling her how he felt; it was too painful watching her pretend to reciprocate his feelings, and they found a way to live together in spite of the difference in their attachment. He wondered if every marriage was like his, with one partner loving, while the other was loved. It comforted him to think he was not alone in his desperation.

  When Ann suggested she look for a job, David was horrified and insisted she stay at home.

  ‘We could put the money aside for Aimee,’ she said. ‘She’s going to want to go to university.’

  ‘Whatever she wants to do, I’ve taken care of everything,’ he told her. ‘We’re perfectly comfortable as we are. There’s no need for you to worry. And there’s certainly no call for you to go looking for a job.’

  He was immensely relieved when she backed down without further protest. He told her he was happy to take care of the bills but the truth was he hated the idea of her finding a job and working with other men, some of whom would no doubt be closer to her in age. He could not imagine other men would be able to resist falling in love with her, as he had done. He had never had any close friends, and he dropped his few desultory social acquaintances once he was married, and refused to socialise with Ann’s friends. They were all much younger than him, and likely to find him a bore, and he could not risk allowing them to influence her. He worried sometimes that Ann would find her life with him dull, but she assured him that running their home and looking after Aimee kept her fully occupied.

  ‘I don’t know how other women have time to go out to work,’ she told him. ‘How do they ever find time to wash the curtains and clean out their cupboards regularly?’

  As long as Aimee was living at home he felt relatively secure, but that would not continue forever. Already Aimee was considering her options for the sixth form, and talking about higher education. She grunted dismissively at him when he pointed out that the university in York was one of the best in the country, and there was really no need to look anywhere else.

  ‘I’m not staying in York,’ she said. ‘No way. The whole point of going to university is –’

  ‘Is to study so you can get a better job,’ he interrupted her.

  Aimee rolled her eyes. ‘The whole point of going to university is that you can get away from your parents.’

  ‘We’re not that bad, are we?’ he asked with a smile.

  Aimee heaved an exaggerated sigh. ‘Oh Dad, that’s so like you, missing the point again.’

  To his surprise he had found he got on well with his teenage daughter, who seemed to seek out his company whenever she could. Ann called her a ‘daddy’s girl’ and he detected more than a hint of envy in her voice. Unused to being liked, he regarded this show of affection from his daughter as an unexpected bonus life had thrown him, but he knew it would not last forever. Aimee would leave home and then it would be just him and Ann. He looked forward to that time with trepidation, terrified he would not be able to keep her.

  ‘You won’t leave me when Aimee goes off, will you?’ he asked her once.

  ‘Goes off? What do you mean goes off?’

  ‘I mean when she leaves home.’

  ‘Oh, well why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘Well? Will you?’

  ‘Will I what?’

  ‘Will you leave?’

  ‘What? Aren’t we talking about Aimee leaving home?’

  He was convinced she was being deliberately obtuse, avoiding giving him a straight answer, but somehow his question was lost in the apparent misunderstanding. He never dared ask her again.

  5

  Geraldine assured Ian she was happy to attend the post mortem by herself and he smiled in relief, claiming that he had to study a stack of documents connected to the case. Her readiness to visit the mortuary alone was unforced, since she understood the real reason for Ian’s reluctance to accompany her. It gave her a sense of deep satisfaction to know she was helping Ian in some way.

  Jonah Hetherington greeted Geraldine with a cheery wave of a bloody hand. An ugly little man with a face like a pug dog, he was surprisingly attractive, thanks to his cheeky grin. He had carried out post mortems on the victims in quite a few of Geraldine’s cases so far, and they had built up a strong mutual trust through their professional encounters. He joked that he might not recognise her were they ever to meet without a cadaver for a chaperone.

  ‘This one’s a bit of a puzzle, isn’t he?’ he asked, nodding at the body lying on a table in front of them. ‘Oh well, I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting to spend too long on him?’

  Jonah could have been referring to a crossword clue he had not yet solved. Once again Geraldine was dismayed at the offhand way her colleagues referred to the victim but, before she could challenge him, the pathologist carried on speaking in his characteristically good-humoured tone.

  ‘His clothes and poor personal hygiene seem to confirm the suspicion that he was a vagrant, living on the streets. He had an empty beer bottle in one of his coat pockets and quite a lot of alcohol swilling around in his guts, and he hadn’t eaten for a while. His trousers were several sizes too large for him so either he’d lost weight since he bought them, or else they were second-hand. If I had to hazard a guess at his age I’d say he was in his forties, although he looks a lot older than that. It’s hard to be sure. And I suppose there’s not much hope of identifying him?’

  ‘What about dental records?’ Geraldine asked half-heartedly.

  They both knew it was u
nlikely the dead man had paid regular visits to a dentist.

  ‘So, he’d been drinking,’ Geraldine said when it was evident Jonah was not going to respond to her question. ‘What else can you tell us?’

  ‘He’d not eaten much recently. In fact I’d say he hadn’t been eating very much for quite a while. He was badly malnourished.’

  ‘Does that mean he’d probably been living rough for a while?’

  The pathologist gave a helpless shrug as though to say, ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ After a pause he answered her with a question, ‘You know there are centres in York that provide breakfast to rough sleepers?’

  ‘Yes, we’re asking around. How did he die?’

  ‘He was strangled. You can see the imprint of the noose here.’

  ‘Was he strangled with a rope?’

  Jonah frowned. ‘No, it wasn’t a rope, it was a length of fabric of some kind. The width of the injury and the neatness of the edges suggest it could have been a tie.’

  Once again Geraldine had the impression that he was not being as attentive to detail as he would normally be in a murder case. She hoped the fact that no one appeared to have cared about the victim was not going to make her colleagues slapdash in their approach. As far as she was concerned, the fact that no one was likely to call them to account was irrelevant. She tried to ignore her concerns and focus on the victim.

  ‘What can you tell us about the murder weapon?’

  Jonah shook his head. Instead of answering her question, he raised one of his own. ‘Who would bother to do such a thing to him?’

  With growing irritation, Geraldine repeated her question.

  ‘Murder weapon?’ Jonah chuckled with his usual good humour. ‘Doesn’t it ever strike you when you see a man in a tie, that we’re surrounded by men wearing lethal weapons around their necks every day?’

  ‘I’ll never go near a man in a tie again,’ she promised, returning his smile. ‘Unless it’s a bow tie. Now, what can you tell me about the tie that was used on this poor guy?’

  ‘Yes, poor in every sense of the word, I fear. Well, first off, we can’t say for sure that the killer used a tie to strangle him. It could have been any narrow strip of material, but there were no rough edges so it hadn’t been torn off from a larger piece. Under magnification you can see the threads, so yes, it was fabric of some kind, but I’m only speculating about what it might have been. But,’ he paused and glanced at her as though to check she was listening, ‘a few minute strands of fabric we found adhering to his skin have gone off for analysis. We’ll know more when the report comes back. We might have a colour and be able to tell you exactly what kind of fabric it was.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Geraldine said. ‘Let’s hope the lab don’t take too long to get back to us.’

  Once they had some idea of what had been used to strangle the victim, they would be able to search CCTV footage of the area with a clearer idea of what they were looking for. With luck they might spot someone arriving or leaving the crime scene at around the time they thought the tramp had been killed, wearing a tie that appeared to match the strands of fabric found on the body. That way they would at least have a visual image of the killer which might enable them to narrow the field of suspects down to a man or woman, with dark or fair hair, with a certain build and an individual gait. While that would not necessarily lead them to the killer, any such information would certainly assist them in getting a conviction once the killer had been traced. But that was still a long way off.

  At this point in an investigation, Geraldine’s attention usually turned to the family of the victim, and how to communicate the news of their loss. That, generally, was the most harrowing part of her job. But on this occasion there was as yet no one to tell, because they did not know who the victim was. It was possible they would never find out. She found that prospect almost unbearably sad.

  Jonah’s cheery voice broke into her reverie. ‘All we need now is CCTV footage of an easily recognisable individual, wearing a tie of the appropriate colour, leaving the scene, preferably looking around with a furtive expression. And if we can trace that individual to a car with a visible registration number, the case will be solved.’

  Geraldine smiled. ‘That would be nice.’

  Aware that reality was likely to prove far more challenging than Jonah’s suggested scenario, Geraldine returned to the police station to write up her report.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ariadne asked her, looking up from her own work.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?’

  Ariadne shrugged. ‘You just looked very solemn.’

  ‘I’m thinking about the man who was killed. How do you want me to look?’

  Her friend hesitated and lowered her voice. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, and as far as we know so far, nor did anyone else. He’s dead and...’ On the verge of becoming emotional, Geraldine broke off with a slightly embarrassed laugh. ‘Anyway, I dare say we’ll get to the bottom of it eventually.’

  ‘You’re right, it’s going to be tricky, not knowing who he was,’ Ariadne agreed, misunderstanding what Geraldine was saying. ‘But we’ll track him down eventually.’

  Geraldine was not sure whether Ariadne was referring to the identity of the victim or his killer, but she felt too despondent to care. She was not sure why she felt so depressed about the death of an unknown man.

  When Ariadne suggested going for a coffee, she agreed gladly. ‘Only if we don’t talk about the case,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why, but this one is getting to me,’ she added. ‘It just seems so sad that no one knew him when he was alive and no one cares now he’s dead,’ but Ariadne had already walked away and did not appear to have heard her.

  6

  At times Mark almost wished he had never agreed to Ann’s regular weekly visits. Like so much that happened in his life, it had seemed like a good idea at the time but, although it was still fun, the glamour of having an affair with an older woman had palled and he was growing tired of her demands. She was so needy. The sex was still great, and he enjoyed her appreciation of his skills in bed almost as much as the excitement of the act itself, but the novelty was wearing off. Ann was not the only woman in the world, and he was beginning to find her attention suffocating.

  They had met at a school concert he had attended with his own sixth form choir. Ann’s daughter had been singing in a choir from another school. He had noticed Ann in the audience straight away, and had sought her out during the interval. With only a short time to introduce himself to her, he had worked quickly to arrange a meeting, and their affair had developed rapidly after that. Within a couple of months, he felt he had lost all control of the relationship.

  He was not used to having a woman reorganise his flat, and he did not appreciate her meddling with his possessions. To be fair, he was not exactly tidy, but he knew where to find things. Even searching for something as small as his phone when it was silenced never took long in the flat, but once Ann started moving everything around, he struggled to find anything. Eventually he accepted her interference as the price he paid for having a clean flat. In many ways, he would miss her if she stopped coming to see him. Without them exchanging a single word on the subject, she had worked her way through the dirty laundry piled up on his bathroom floor and now did his washing every week. And that was not all. She also wiped around the kitchen and bathroom, and hoovered the carpets. Basically, it was like having a cleaner with benefits. So he let it ride.

  ‘You’re as good as a wife,’ he had once quipped, immediately regretting the joke when he saw the hungry expression in her eyes.

  The relationship was never going to develop into anything more than a weekly visit, and even that was too frequent for his liking, but he was loath to lose her because that would mean having to do his own cleaning again. These days he just left his washing-up to accumulate in the kitchen and
by the time Ann left, it was all done. On the face of it, there really was no downside to the arrangement, other than the risk that her husband might find out about their affair. If that ever happened, which seemed unlikely, it would hardly be Mark’s problem to deal with. He had no wish to cause Ann any trouble, but she had entered into the affair with her eyes open and, of the two of them, she was the one who insisted on keeping their relationship going. If she had told him she wanted to end it, he would not have objected. She was not that important to him, yet from the way she behaved and spoke she made it sound as though he was the centre of her existence. He was both flattered and irritated by her infatuation.

  ‘You may not always feel the same way about me, you know,’ he said when she complained, wistfully, that he never told her he loved her.

  ‘I‘ll always feel the same way about you,’ she replied.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just know that I will. You can’t stop loving someone.’

  ‘What about your husband?’

  Frowning, she asked what he meant.

  ‘You say I’m the only man you’ve ever loved –’

  ‘Because you are.’