Deathly Affair

by Leigh Russell

  Several times she had hinted that if Mark begged her to move in with him, she would willingly abandon her marriage, and she repeatedly told him that she would do anything for him. But he never encouraged her to leave her husband, even though he knew she was miserable with him. Instead, he did his best to convince her he was only doing what he thought was best for her, and so they slipped into a comfortable routine, seeing one another most Tuesday evenings.

  ‘I’m so happy here,’ she told him as she lay in his arms one evening. ‘I still can’t believe it. I go to sleep every evening thinking about you, and wake up every morning thinking about you. Sometimes I dream about you. I don’t believe in fate and all that, but it really seems as though we were destined to be together. Loving you is the only thing that gives my life meaning.’

  ‘You know I care about you,’ he replied. ‘But you have to stay with your husband. I’m only thinking of you, and your daughter,’ he added, seeing her crestfallen expression. ‘You know I’m right. It would be cruel to your daughter if we allowed our affair to break up your family.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘Not many men would be as thoughtful as you. When Aimee’s older we’ll talk about what we’re going to do. Once she’s left home, things’ll be different.’

  One evening she yanked the duvet off the bed and found a pair of lacy scarlet knickers that did not belong to her. Furious, she picked them up by the label and brandished them in his face.

  ‘What the hell is this?’

  He forced a smile, inwardly cursing the careless girl he had brought home the previous night.

  ‘It looks like a pair of knickers,’ he replied.

  Her voice grew shrill with anger. ‘They’re not mine!’

  ‘No? Really? Are you sure? They must be my sister’s then,’ he replied, with what he hoped was a disarming smile.

  ‘Your sister’s?’

  ‘Yes, she was here on a flying visit. She only stayed for a night. I slept on the sofa and let her have the bed.’

  Ann scowled at him.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ he asked.

  ‘You never told me you had a sister.’

  He laughed at her indignation. ‘So?’

  He turned away, but she was not ready to let it go. ‘What was your sister doing sleeping in your bed?’

  ‘Where else was she supposed to sleep?’

  ‘How do I know the woman who slept in your bed was really your sister?’

  Mark raised his eyebrows, then burst out laughing. ‘I can’t believe you’d think for one moment that I’d lie to you,’ he said, when he was able to catch his breath. ‘You must know by now that I’m crazy about you. Come on. Come here, you silly thing. Why won’t you trust me?’

  When she refused to be placated, he pretended to lose his patience with her.

  ‘All right,’ he snapped. ‘If you refuse to trust me, why don’t you just go home?’

  She immediately capitulated, as he had known she would, and she kissed him passionately.

  ‘Of course, I trust you,’ she murmured as his lips moved down her neck.

  Mark wondered if it was his conscience that prompted him to suspect he was being watched, when really it was the married women he was seeing who ought to be feeling guilty. He was single, and free to sleep with anyone he fancied. He thought Ann would sympathise with his fears, so he confided in her. To his annoyance, she mocked his suspicions.

  ‘This is no laughing matter,’ he insisted, struggling to control his irritation. ‘I’m telling you, I’m being stalked.’

  ‘Stalked? As in, you have a stalker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t just think I’m being stalked, I know. I’m telling you, someone’s following me wherever I go.’

  ‘Who is she? Is it someone from the school where you work? Perhaps there’s an obsessive psycho there who fancies you?’

  ‘I don’t know who it is,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t think it’s a woman.’

  She frowned. ‘You think a man is stalking you? Really? What makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly, but it’s true. I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t tell you about it if I wasn’t sure.’

  Ann looked baffled. ‘And you’re telling me this isn’t a woman?’

  ‘No, I just told you, it’s a man.’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Prove it? I’ve got the evidence of my own eyes.’

  ‘I mean actual proof, like photos or something, because if it’s true, you’re going to need to tell someone and you need to be able to prove you’re being stalked.’

  ‘I told you, I’ve seen someone following me. I don’t know who it is.’

  ‘Well, what did you see, exactly?’

  ‘A figure.’

  ‘What sort of a figure?’

  He shrugged, making no attempt to hide his irritation. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know who it is. Whoever it is keeps to the shadows and follows me around whenever I go out. I’m telling you, someone’s stalking me. He’s out there in the street, watching me. Every time I go out, he’s there, waiting for me. I can’t go to my car, or walk down the road, or to the station, without being followed.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to the police? Let them sort it out.’

  ‘The police? Why would they listen to me?

  ‘That’s their job.’

  ‘They’re not going to listen, are they? Even you don’t believe me, and you know I’d never lie to you.’

  He paused, struck by the irony of his words.

  Ann hesitated, gazing at him with a worried expression. ‘Have you ever experienced anything like this before?’

  Realising she suspected he was mentally unstable, he felt a surge of rage, because her conjecture stirred up his worst fear.

  He glared at her. ‘I’m not schizophrenic, and I don’t suffer from paranoid delusions.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she lied.

  But obviously it was. Outraged by her scepticism, he stood up and stalked over to the window. Reaching to close the curtains, he recoiled suddenly, as if he had been slapped. A figure was standing on the opposite pavement, staring directly at his window.

  He summoned her rapidly, in a low undertone. ‘Come here, quickly, and you can see for yourself.’

  Heaving a sigh, she climbed off the bed and went over to join him.

  ‘Look down there,’ he said.

  She leaned forward and peered out of the window. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

  He turned his head to look at the empty street below.

  ‘There’s no one there now,’ he said. ‘But there was a moment ago.’

  Ann reached out and put her hand on his arm. ‘If that’s true, you need to report it to the police.’

  ‘If it’s true? I’m telling you I just saw him. He was there.’

  Struggling to control his panic, he flung himself down on the bed and buried his face in the pillow.

  ‘Mark, you have to go to the police,’ she said. ‘What does the man look like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, sitting up. ‘It’s just a shadowy figure in a hoodie.’

  She nodded, frowning. ‘You need to get close to him and get a photo of him. That way we can see if we recognise him.’

  He realised what she meant. ‘You think it’s your husband, don’t you?’

  She nodded uncertainly. ‘More likely a private detective he’s hired to follow me around.’

  ‘But I’m the one who’s being followed, not you.’ He was nearly shouting at her. ‘This isn’t about you. Don’t you understand, someone is threatening me, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.’

  She left soon after, for once eager to get away. Although he was scared to be alone
, he was pleased to shut the door behind her. Her bland disbelief had upset him more than he had let on. Passing the window, he glanced down and saw that the hooded man had returned. Standing motionless between the street lamps, the stranger stared up at him from the shadows. Mark swore helplessly, then realised that he was turning himself into a victim. He did not have to allow the anonymous stranger to terrorise him. Determined to take control of the situation, he armed himself with a sharp knife from the kitchen, and set off to confront his antagonist. Flinging the front door open, he burst out into the street. In the time it had taken him to race downstairs, the man had vanished. But the unspoken threat remained.

  10

  By the time Geraldine had gone to bed on Monday, the forensic report on threads found on the victim’s neck had been received. The traces of fabric came from a cotton material that had been dyed dark red. It had been difficult to establish the exact colour at first sight as the red dye had been stained with blood where the victim’s skin had broken with the friction of the noose, but with close analysis the colour was now confirmed. They now knew for certain that the tramp had been strangled with a strip of red cotton material. It could have been a tie. The details of his noose made no difference to the dead man, but Geraldine felt cautiously encouraged by the new information, as though the police were closing in on the unknown killer. She went to bed feeling more positive than she had been for a few days, and woke up early on Tuesday morning. Since there was nothing more she could do until she reached the police station and was given her duties for the day, and the sun was shining, she decided to have breakfast on her narrow balcony overlooking the river.

  Sitting with coffee and cereal, she did her best to focus her attention on the boats sporadically passing by, and the pedestrians out on the far side of the river, having a morning stroll. But at the back of her mind she kept picturing the victim, probably pissed, staggering along the street. He might have been singing drunkenly to himself as he walked. Perhaps he had paused as he reached the doorway in Coney Street where he slept. Swaying, he might have been fumbling in his coat pocket for a drink when a shadowy figure stole up behind him, flung a tie around his neck, and twisted the ends swiftly and strongly, round and round, while he scrabbled at the noose with fingers frantic, then limp, and finally lifeless. The assault had probably lasted less than five minutes, enough time to kill a man no one cared about.

  ‘So, we have no idea who this man was,’ Eileen said. ‘We’re still waiting for a DNA report. We’re hoping someone will come forward to report him missing, but we can’t rely on that, given that he appeared to be sleeping rough.’ She paused. ‘It’s possible no one will ever realise he’s missing. In the meantime, we’ll be checking with the local homeless shelters to see if anyone there can recognise him.’

  That morning Geraldine went to the Fishergate Resettlement Centre, where homeless people were prepared for independent living. She found herself in a newly refurbished building, which she learned housed two dozen single rooms and half a dozen double ones. The man who let her in explained that he was a volunteer who had been working there for nearly ten years. He was a sprightly grey-haired man in his seventies and Geraldine guessed he had been helping at the centre since he had retired. He asked if she would prefer to talk to one of the key workers, but she decided that someone who had been there for around a decade was likely to know more than an employee who might not have worked there for long.

  ‘The residents all want rooms to themselves,’ the volunteer explained, ‘but we have a waiting list. Sometimes there’s only a bed in a double room available, but we move them into a single room as soon as a single becomes available. It never usually takes long because we try to move them on as soon as they’re ready. What we offer here is a stepping stone to independent living. Not all of our residents are down and outs. Some of them have been thrown out by their families, or they’ve lost their jobs and their homes. You know what they say: we’re all of us only two pay days away from being homeless. And not all of the rough sleepers who come here stay for long. Some of them don’t settle. We look after them, but they have to follow the rules. We have to be strict – no alcohol or drugs on the premises, and they’re responsible for keeping their own rooms tidy – it’s all part of preparing them to move on to independent living. We offer workshops in raising self-esteem, literacy, cooking, all the skills they’re going to need when they leave. We do everything we can to support them but even so, not everyone likes it here.’

  Geraldine wondered whether her own sister had ever stayed in a similar shelter. If she had, she would have been thrown out for failing to kick her drug habit. The thought made Geraldine shiver. Dismissing the memory of her sister, Geraldine turned to the reason for her visit and showed the volunteer a photograph of the dead man.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s Bingo,’ he said straight away.

  ‘Bingo?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the name he goes by. He’s not been a resident here, but he’s used the crash pad a few times.’

  ‘Crash pad?’

  The volunteer nodded. ‘Yes, in severe weather we try to pack in as many of the rough sleepers as we can, so it’s a case of laying out mattresses in the communal lounge. There are quite a few of them who come in when they have to find shelter from the weather. Bingo stayed with us from time to time, but he was never here for long. He would drift in here in the bad weather, and then leave. He’s been coming here, on and off, for years now. And,’ he leaned closer and lowered his voice, ‘every time we saw him he looked worse. He didn’t look after himself at all. I think he was pretty sick towards the end. We tried to get him to see a doctor, but he flatly refused, don’t ask me why. People can be stubborn like that.’

  Geraldine wondered how a sick man living on the streets was supposed to look after himself but she did not comment.

  ‘He was a gentle soul, poor old Bingo,’ the volunteer went on. ‘I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do away with him. I mean, he wasn’t the sort to get into fights or anything, not like some of our clientele who are involved with drugs. I guess some vicious bastard must have set on him. He would have been easy prey for a violent attack. He wasn’t the sort to fight back, even if he had the strength.’

  ‘Do you know his full name?’

  The man shook his head. ‘He told us his name was Bingo, but we never knew if that was his real name.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘You will catch whoever did this, won’t you? They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.’

  ‘I assure you we’re doing all we can.’

  He hesitated. ‘The papers are saying you’re not interested, on account of no one caring about the homeless, but –’

  Geraldine interrupted him briskly. ‘This man was unlawfully killed and we are investigating his death in exactly the same way as we would any other murder on the streets of York. Murder is murder, regardless of the victim’s identity.’

  The man nodded uncertainly. ‘That’s good to hear,’ he replied.

  Geraldine had the impression he did not believe her.

  ‘Do you think any of your other residents might be able to tell me more about him?’

  ‘What is it you want to know?’

  ‘Discovering his identity might help us to find out who killed him.’

  But no one knew the victim, and those who remembered him did not know his full name, or even whether Bingo had been his real name.

  ‘It sounds like a name he adopted for himself,’ Eileen said when Geraldine told her what she had discovered. ‘Perhaps he thought it would bring him luck,’ she added with a sour smile.

  ‘He might have been an educated man,’ Geraldine said. ‘There’s a character called Bingo in PG Wodehouse.’

  ‘Is that his surname?’

  ‘No, he was called Bingo Little. But I’m not sure if it was supposed to be a real name, or a nickname.’

  ‘Well, let’s look into the name Bingo and se
e what we can come up with,’ Eileen replied.

  11

  Mark did not answer the door the first time the bell rang. He could not imagine why Ann would want to return at such a late hour, and he was not sure he wanted to see her again so soon. He lived in fear of hearing that she had decided to leave her husband. If that happened, he would have to face her wrath when she learned that he had no intention of letting her move in with him. When the bell rang again, he almost did not open the door and, when he did, he nearly shut it again without listening to what the man on his doorstep had to say. It was growing dark outside and he was surprised that anyone would be cold calling so late.

  ‘Whatever you’re selling I’m not interested –’ he began.

  The other man cut him short, speaking in a strangely flat voice. ‘I’m not selling anything. You don’t know who I am, do you?’

  Mark squinted at the stranger as he introduced himself as a neighbour, adding that he had ‘seen Mark around’, and was surprised Mark did not recognise him. Mark studied the man on his doorstep. With a pale face beneath hair cropped very short, a straight nose, full lips and dark eyes that were curiously intent, there was nothing memorable about him apart from his piercing gaze. So although it was slightly surprising that Mark had never noticed him, he could quite plausibly have passed the other man in the hallway a few times without registering his appearance.

  ‘How can I help you?’ Mark asked.

  ‘It’s about your car.’

  ‘My car? What about it?’

  The other man gave a helpless shrug. ‘I guess you’d better come and take a look. Assuming it is your car I’m talking about.’ He reeled off the registration number of Mark’s car.

  Mark nodded. With a sinking feeling he grabbed his keys and followed his neighbour down the stairs to the underground car park, grumbling that the CCTV cameras were not working again. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the neighbour stood back to allow Mark to go in front of him. Approaching his car, Mark frowned because there did not appear to be anything wrong with it. He leaned forward, and did not know what hit him next.