“I don’t know,” I said unhappily. “I don’t want to, but that’s not the same thing. It does make a twisted kind of sense. I mean, it would explain a lot of things.”
“It would explain why Clare’s been so cute with you, but it doesn’t explain why Jacob would want to get himself involved with something dodgy going on in Ireland.”
“We don’t know that he’s involved with anything,” I said quickly.
“When Slick’s bike disappeared, where was the first place MacMillan’s lot came looking? Here. Why do you think that was, hmm?” Sean fired back at me. “And he has Irish connections – not least of which is his ex-wife.”
“They’re not divorced,” I corrected automatically.
“Estranged then,” Sean dismissed. “Whatever. We don’t know what she was after here today, unless it was the ten grand, but if that was what they were after and they found it, why try and throw you out? Why not just leave peaceably, if they’d got what they came for?”
I thought about that one for a few moments, leaning my hip against the sink. The only sound in the kitchen was the scrape of the metal bowls being pursued across the floor as the dogs stuffed themselves.
“Do you think she knows about Jamie and Clare?” I asked then. “Could she have demanded money to keep quiet about it? What if that’s why Clare had the money in the safe, ready to pay her off? Then she has her accident with Slick and Isobel goes looking for the money because she knows it’s there.”
Sean shook his head. “You’re clutching at straws, Charlie,” he said. “It doesn’t answer who knocked them off – or came after you for that matter. And anyway, if Clare was in that kind of trouble, don’t you think she would have told you the truth?”
I thought of Jacob, who was just as much my friend as Clare was. “I don’t know.”
I wanted to cast Jacob’s former wife into the role of villain, I realised. With a boyfriend like Eamonn in tow, it wasn’t difficult.
“Did Madeleine manage to dig up anything on Eamonn?”
Mention of his name did something dark to Sean’s face, as though he was recalling the encounter with the Irishman and regretting something.
“She’s on with it at the moment,” he said. He gave me a weary smile. “The Merc was registered to Isobel, so all we’ve got to go on is Eamonn’s first name. Even for Madeleine that’s a tall order.”
“When were you going to tell me about this?” I asked quietly.
“I wasn’t,” he said, making no bones about it, “right up until Pickering mentioned that bit about the stuff waiting in Ireland and Jacob being in on it.”
“Just how long ago was Jacob done for receiving?” My own defensiveness made me snappy. “Only, in all the time I’ve known them the only illegal thing they’ve done is broken the speed limit. Oh – and given you shelter when MacMillan was after you for murder.”
Sean ducked his head in wry acknowledgement. “The conviction was a while ago,” he allowed. “Eight years, I think. Nearly nine.”
“Before my time.” Before Clare’s time, too. I remembered Jamie’s comment about helping Jacob dig the driveway sensor in. How old did he say he’d been at the time? Ten. He was barely twenty now. “I think he and Isobel were still together back then,” I said.
“So he could have learned to hide it better. Or he’s been keeping his nose clean and something’s come up that’s got him involved again.”
“Like what?”
Sean shrugged again. “You tell me?” he said. “His girlfriend’s just been knocked off another man’s bike and damned near killed; his ex- – sorry – estranged wife has turned up out of the blue, running around with a psycho who likes to burgle his house when he’s not there and beat up his friends; and his son’s part of an illegal road racing gang who may be about to be prosecuted for their part in Slick’s death. Oh and, to cap it all, his boy might just be knocking off his girlfriend. Face it, Charlie, Jacob Nash is in the shit – we’re just trying to work out how deep.”
I sighed and rubbed a hand across my eyes, defeated. “OK,” I said. “I give in. You’re right. The thing is, what the hell is he mixed up in, and how do we get him out of it?”
“He may not want to be got out of it, have you thought of that?”
I didn’t answer that one right away, just met his gaze and held it. What are you saying, Sean – that not everybody wants to be saved?
“I know,” I said, “but I have to try.”
***
It wasn’t long before I dragged myself up to bed, hoping to catch up on some of the sleep I’d missed the night before, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, I lay awake for a long time after I’d turned out the light. Maybe I should start drinking decaf, but that wasn’t the only thing that kept me from sleeping.
Even after I’d talked it through with Sean, I still had no idea what Jacob and Clare might be caught up in. Again I berated myself for not seeing more of them lately. If there’d been something troubling either of them I should have been there to see it. Been there to offer my help.
Somewhere below me I could just hear Sean making phone calls in the study and I was washed with guilt that I’d dragged him away from his work.
And for what? He’d come because he’d heard the pain in my voice. He’d dropped everything and driven three hundred miles for no other reason than because I needed him. If there was one thing I didn’t doubt, it was the strength of his feelings for me.
Then I remembered again the way he’d calmly prepared to dispatch Eamonn, like he was a rogue animal who simply needed putting down. It wasn’t just the deadly skill he possessed, it was his apparent willingness to use it.
Not in a foreign country, hunted and on the run, in a desperate situation of kill or be killed. But in the middle of the English countryside, on a man who’d already been disarmed and who posed no immediate threat. The memory sent a cold fear clutching at my stomach, made me roll away and bury my face in the pillow.
Sean had been trained as a killer by the army, no two ways about it. That he’d found a legal use for that training and that instinct in civilian life was to his credit. But he’d been pushed to his very limit and beyond. What had he lost along the way?
I’d been frightened for Sean before. Of the danger he found himself in, of what it might do to him. But I’d never been personally frightened of him. My reaction tonight had shaken me more than I liked to admit. As if, by giving in to it, I was admitting he was out of control and dangerous. Even to me.
Perhaps especially to me.
I tossed and turned for over an hour. Eventually, I caught his soft footfall on the stairs. He didn’t know the house well, but he still intuitively managed to avoid the creaky boards. He moved along the corridor and paused, seemingly right outside my unlocked bedroom door.
I held my breath, not that it would make any difference. He’d be able to hear my heart hammering against my ribs anyway.
There was the slightest rattle of the old brass door handle being turned, the movement of hinges. I raised my head and peered into the gloom, but my own door had remained firmly shut. I heard the slight click of another door closing. The one across the corridor. The spare room Jamie had used last night.