What if he wanted Finucane to undertake another job for him?
“Where’s Squeaky?” Brendan demanded the next morning.
They were breakfasting in their magnificent new kitchen. Through the panoramic windows, Adele watched tentative snowflakes drift on to the York stone flags before melting.
“More toast?”
“Did you hear me?” Brendan’s voice rose as he struggled to control his emotions. “What have you done with Squeaky?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
A good impersonation, even if Adele said so herself. Her lips didn’t move at all, but she thought she’d captured Squeaky’s provocative, malicious tone.
Brendan slipped off the high stool and advanced towards her. His eyes shone with anger, his shoulders were rigid with tension.
“For God’s sake, what have you done?”
“Oh, dear me!”
Adele had climbed out of bed in the middle of the night, taken Squeaky from the bed in the room next door to theirs, and hidden the doll in a linen basket in the utility room. The temptation to throw Squeaky in the dustbin, or even go outside and toss it down into the stream, had almost overpowered her. Yet somehow she’d kept calm enough to resist the urge to be rid of Squeaky for ever.
And it was worth the effort, to see the truth revealed in Brendan’s eyes.
He cared more for Squeaky than he did for her.
A week later, Adele was sitting in a restaurant, enjoying a turkey dinner with colleagues from the school where she worked, when a discreet waiter asked her to accompany him to the manager’s office. There she found a young woman police officer with sorrowful eyes and a bad case of acne.
“Mrs Keane?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“I’m so sorry to interrupt your Christmas meal. Would you like to sit down, please?”
The restaurant manager, face etched with anxiety, pulled out a chair for her.
“What’s happened?”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
Adele counted the pimples on the woman’s cheeks. Said nothing.
“It’s your husband. I’m sorry to say that he has been in an accident.”
“Oh my God. Is he hurt?”
The policewoman bowed her head. “I’m afraid he died a short time ago.”
Adele made a small yelping noise of incoherent distress.
“I am so sorry, Mrs Keane.”
“What…what in Heaven’s name happened?”
“He was hit by a motor vehicle as he left a public house.”
Adele stared. “Yes, he told me he’d be popping out for a pint while I enjoyed myself with my friends.”
The policewoman cleared her throat. “I have to tell you, the driver did not stop. We suspect he’d been drinking. There were eyewitnesses who said the vehicle swerved before it knocked down your husband, and then accelerated out of sight. The driver must have known he’d hit someone. But it’s the time of year. In the run-up to Christmas, people drink far too much. It’s appallingly irresponsible.”
“Nice place,” Finucane said a couple of nights later, as he looked around the living room. “No expense spared.”
Adele was bored with playing the grieving widow. Putting her glass down on a glass-topped occasional table, she sat on the sofa and kicked off her shoes. “Nothing but the best, was Brendan’s motto. He had the money, and he didn’t mind spending it.”
Finucane said something coarse about Brendan.
“I suppose we ought to talk about your fee,” Adele said.
Finucane grinned at her. “You already made a payment in kind in the hotel, don’t forget. I’m not some bog-standard mercenary, you know. We can come to an arrangement, you and me.”
Adele chortled and lifted her glass. “Suits me, sweetie. So here’s to – mutually satisfactory arrangements.”
He swallowed some wine and fingered the brickwork of the exposed chimney breast. “Not bad,” he said, with deliberate ambiguity. “Not bad at all.”
“I want to know about Gilly.”
He put a stubby finger to his lips. “Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”
“Come on, Ged. I’m dying to know the gory details. How did you do it?”
He laughed. “You’re really something, you know?”
“Yes, I do know. Satisfy my curiosity, and then we can finish the bottle upstairs.”
A theatrical sigh. “Women, eh?”
“Can’t live with them, can’t live without them?”
A broad grin. He wasn’t handsome, not in Brendan’s league at all in terms of looks, but she was conscious of a crude magnetism pulling her towards him.
“All right, if you really must know. When Brendan was away, Gilly had the house to herself. Once her feller, Hodgkinson, left his wife in hospital, he came around. They had a few drinks and smoked some dope before going to bed. I was waiting for my chance.”
“Go on.” She saw he relished having an audience. A bit like Brendan with Squeaky.
“I fitted a garden hose that Brendan had left out for me to the exhaust of Gilly’s estate car, using a kid’s feeding bottle which he’d cut in half. Wearing surgical gloves, I ran the hose through the garage and utility room and up a hole in the floorboards right underneath the bed. As soon as I switched on the engine, I nipped upstairs. The two of them were dead to the world. I pulled the duvet over Hodgkinson’s nose and mouth, squeezed hard for half a minute and pushed the hose into his face with my right hand, and held it there until he was dead. Same with Gilly. She was stoned, and barely struggled. Not that she was strong enough to fight back, even if she’d realized what was happening. She was a tiny, frail woman. Big tits, mind.”
“Not as nice as mine, though.”
“No way, darling, you’re one of a kind.”
She licked her lips provocatively. “You’d better believe it.”
“Anyway, I lugged both of them to the car and put them in the boot with a blanket over their heads. I’d put a folding bicycle in the car as well. After I’d driven to the forest, I dumped Hodgkinson in the driver’s seat. Gilly stayed in the boot. I put some family photos that Brendan gave me next to her body, put earphones on her, and switched on her iPod, so it seemed she’d been listening to her favourite Leonard Cohen tracks. And then I connected a length of vacuum hose to the exhaust, put the other end in the boot, and switched on the ignition. Once the scene was set, I took out the bike and cycled away.
“We had a couple of lucky breaks. Hodgkinson had told his wife’s nurse that he couldn’t bear what was happening to her. She thought suicide was in his mind. And the detective leading the inquiry owed me a favour. Some of the forensic stuff was mislaid. Nothing could be proved.”
Adele clapped her hands. “Amazing!”
He fondled her bare neck. “Yeah, that’s me. Amazing.”
“And it doesn’t bother you…that you killed a couple?”
He exhaled. “It was a job. You can’t be sentimental.”
“Not like Brendan. His conscience bothered him.”
“Not enough to stop him wanting you out of the way, sweetheart. Lucky you realized and got in touch.”
“Lucky you were willing to change sides.”
A raucous laugh. “No contest. I’ve always fancied you, Adele, you must know that.”
“I suppose so,” she said with a sweet smile.
“Brendan didn’t know when he was well off.”
“No.” Adele ran her fingers through Finucane’s hair. “Did he say anything about this…new relationship?”
“Nah, he made a mystery out of it. Whoever he was seeing, I bet she didn’t compare to you.”
Adele pictured Squeaky’s weird eyes and red lips.
“You’re right.”
Finucane closed his eyes as her hand slid between his legs.
“Ged, is that you?”
Finucane sat up with a start, swearing wildly.
“What was that?”
Adele moved away from him, gasping in fear. “A voice… it sounded like…no, it can’t be.”