The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

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.”

Ibet, 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 Zack 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