Waiting in the car, Adele realized she’d have minded less if she’d caught Brendan groping a busty barmaid. Gerard Finucane was bad news. And wasn’t he supposed to have gone back to Ireland after the trial?
Finucane was a builder, and Brendan knew him through work. They were friends, but made an odd couple, a quiet and nervy professional and a loud, egotistical extrovert. Finucane called himself an entrepreneur, but that was simply a synonym for a criminal. Brendan introduced Adele to him before the wedding, and when they went out for a drink as a threesome, she realized within minutes that this was a man who loved taking risks. Finucane didn’t care, he simply couldn’t help himself. Brazenly, he stroked her leg under the table while Brendan told a tedious anecdote about some job they’d worked on together. For a few minutes, she did nothing about it, but when Finucane’s fingers strayed under the hem of her skirt, she gave him a fierce look and shifted her chair away. His response was a cheeky wink and an excessively loud guffaw when Brendan belatedly delivered an anti-climactic punchline.
Finucane hadn’t made it to the wedding, because he’d been remanded in custody, accused along with a couple of thugs who worked for him of beating up a business rival and leaving him brain-dead. Reluctantly, Brendan admitted to Adele that Finucane had been inside more than once in his life. But the trial folded on the first day when the main prosecution witnesses failed to turn up. Had they been threatened? Nothing could be proved. Finucane and his henchmen walked away from court without a stain on their characters.
Even so… How could a decent, caring man like Brendan be friendly with a violent criminal like Gerard Finucane?
And what was inside the padded envelope?
“How was your afternoon?”
“Oh, it was great. The kids loved Squeaky.”
Nothing much else was said on the way home. No mention of a trip to the Spread Eagle, though Adele’s nostrils detected a beery whiff. Squeaky uttered not a word, but when Adele stole a glance at the back seat, Squeaky’s grin seemed as triumphant as it was vindictive.
Brendan and Adele lived in a split-level house on a steep hill overlooking a fast-flowing stream. It was a new-build and obtaining planning permission in the green belt had been fraught with problems, but Brendan knew the right people and, for all Adele knew, greased the right palms. She didn’t care if a few rules needed to be bent; their new home occupied one of the most desirable locations in the north of England, and when it was finished it would be worth a fortune. A balcony was to be built on to the living room, from which in summer they would be able to look down on the stream and the woods beyond.
Before getting married, they’d talked about starting a family. Adele liked the idea of having kids; Josh hadn’t been interested, but something was lacking from her life and she wondered if it might be motherhood. Not that she was starry-eyed about small children; she’d taken an unpaid position as a classroom assistant in a school in the next village, and she found the constant squabbling a bore. But you saw your own offspring differently from other people’s.
A month ago, she had told Brendan she’d stopped taking her contraception, but since the row about Squeaky, they hadn’t made love. Brendan wasn’t a man for reconciliation sex – quite a contrast to Josh, and one of the few areas where the comparison favoured her first husband – and she was becoming frustrated by his continued lack of response. She had her needs, and one of the things that had most attracted her to Brendan had been his skill at fulfilling them.
“Shall we open a bottle of Chablis?” she asked before starting the meal. “I need a drink, how about you?”
Brendan frowned. He was fussy about mixing the grape and the grain. Now was the moment for him to mention that he’d had a quick half and a catch-up with Gerard Finucane.
He cleared his throat. “Lovely. I could do with a drop of alcohol myself. I love performing for an audience, but it does leave me shattered.”
As they were undressing in their vast and luxurious bedroom that night, Brendan launched into a long and complicated explanation about the delay to the building of the balcony and the garage block. Adele hated mess, and yearned for the work to be finished. She was almost tempted to ask if he should bring Finucane in to speed it up. For all his faults, at least he was renowned for getting things done.
Adele lay in bed, waiting for her husband. He took an age cleaning his teeth. Did he want her to give up and fall asleep with boredom? She decided to go on to the offensive.
“Why did you let Squeaky talk like that in the car?”
Through the open door to the en suite bathroom, she saw Brendan freeze in the act of lifting his electric toothbrush.
“Just leave it, can you, please?”
“Brendan, I’m trying to help.”
“You’re not helping,” he muttered.
“Why did Squeaky want to go into the forest?”
He spat into the basin and padded back towards their king-size bed. She saw that he’d developed some sort of tic in his left eye. Nerves? What did he have to be stressed about?
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He clambered into bed and she stretched an arm around his waist.
“Brendan, it’s not natural. We both know what happened in the forest. Why are you letting that bloody doll talk like that? What’s going on?”
He lifted a hand and switched off the light. They never made love in the dark, she didn’t know why. Her guess was that Gilly had preferred it with the lights out, and this was one of the changes Brendan had made in his life. New woman, new house, new adventures in the bedroom. He’d been so inventive, until the arrival of Squeaky.
“Goodnight.”
“Brendan, we need to discuss this.”
He wriggled out of her grip and did not reply.
“Brendan.”
No answer. Was he trembling? And if so, why?
“Let’s go into the forest.”
Adele woke in the early hours, hearing Squeaky’s voice in her head. As a rule she was a sound sleeper; even when Josh died, she’d kept managing six or seven hours each night.
The forest meant only one thing to Brendan. Among the oaks and the firs was the lay-by where Gilly and her boyfriend had parked their car, not far from the cottage where the lover lived, before poisoning themselves with exhaust fumes.
Brendan was snoring. The sleep of the just? Adele couldn’t help doubting it.
Was he giving money to Finucane in that padded envelope, and if so, why was payment due? Time to think the unthinkable. Suppose that, instead of being in Dublin, Finucane had sneaked back into England and killed Gilly and the man on Brendan’s behalf. He was capable of murder, but surely Brendan wasn’t? Not Brendan, the charming, introspective worrier she had fallen in love with.
Yet he had a powerful double motive. What if greed and jealousy had driven him to do something terrible – or rather, hire Finucane to do something terrible, and now he was tormented by guilt?
That might explain an obssession with the two deaths in that fume-filled car, and Squeaky’s insistent demand:
“Let’s go into the forest.”
No! There was a flaw in the theory. Relief flooded through her. Finucane was street-wise, in a way Brendan never could be. If Finucane had agreed to carry out a couple of contract killings, he’d have insisted on payment in advance. Or, at the least, half his money upfront, half on delivery of his side of the bargain. Inconceivable that he’d have waited until now to take his money. Brendan couldn’t have been paying him for services rendered. Maybe there was something other than cash in the envelope, maybe…
Another thought struck her, and even snuggled under the thick duvet, she found herself shivering.