by Cat Hogan
Andy, great to catch up last Saturday. Really enjoyed the few pints. Hope everything is OK with you and your mignotta. Whatever happens, Andy, I will be there. I have your back. Chat soon and we can talk about the trip.
Scott and his Italian words! Andy didn’t have a clue about the language, but something was familiar about that word. He had heard him use it before when speaking to him. Pretty weird text all in all.
He thought about the way Scott spoke to Jen. He could understand why she didn’t like him. She accused him of being arrogant, which was true. She accused him of being possessive of him, also true. She accused him of trying to attack her in the kitchen. The lines in his brain started to blur. As each thought came, there was a crossover. He wasn’t sure if it was Sharon speaking, or Jen. It played out in his mind, like a split screen, both women speaking, and saying the same thing at the same time: He is obsessive – he wants to hurt me – I am afraid of him.
History repeating itself.
Then the memory of where he had last heard that Italian word from Scott came back to him in high definition. It was as he sat on the beach with Sharon in his arms the morning they found her. Scott had found her. Jen’s voice came back into his head: You told me yourself you never really believed Sharon took her own life – she was afraid of heights – she would never have gone up that cliff on her own, in the dark! The same thought he had himself, many nights as he sat with Scott and poured his heart out to him. Scott convinced him it was suicide.
Mignotta.
‘Your little mignotta is gone. I’ll never leave you. I will take care of you.’
He said it out loud, repeating the words Scott had said that morning on the beach, as they came back to him with absolute clarity. He punched the word into Google Translate, no longer thinking it was a term of endearment.
Enter Text: mignotta Translation: whore
Conversation after conversation flooded into his head. The way Scott was with people in general, the way he spoke to women, and treated them like possessions, using and abusing. The constant need for the high, be it through coke or drink. The superiority.
The rose-tinted glasses had suddenly fallen off and Andy was beginning to feel a real sense of dread.
He found Jen’s number on his phone and rang her. No answer. He rang again, same thing, no answer.
Jen’s voice pierced his thoughts: A potential rapist-slash-murderer . . .
Then Scott’s voice: She made a pass at me. Maybe she had a thing for me and then you came along.
He knew now with certainty that Jen was telling the truth. She had so much baggage about her scars, there’s no way she would make a pass at anyone. He needed to get home and fast.
Chapter 32
Danny bolted in the door in front of Jen and Butch went wild, welcoming him. She was glad to be back in the heat of the house. September my arse, she thought – it felt more like November. At least it was dry, but she wasn’t sure if the rowan tree would take much more of a battering from the gale-force winds raging around the place. She locked the door and fired the keys into her bag, dropping it on the floor in the hallway.
‘Dinner will be ready soon and then we’ll stick on the movie.’
‘OK, Mam. Can I have my ice cream now?’
‘After dinner, you little monster! What did I say to you earlier?’ She laughed to herself as she picked up his coat off the floor.
‘OK. We’re going to play Lego upstairs, Mam, while we’re waiting.’
Danny and Butch scampered up the stairs.
She put the supplies into the fridge, and put the heat back on under the pot of stew.
‘You really should get someone to change your locks, Jen. You wouldn’t know who would let themselves in if they had a spare key. Under the flowerpot – how imaginative.’
Her heart stopped beating for a second, then she turned around to face him.
‘What are you doing here?’
He was standing at the kitchen door, blocking her way into the hall.
‘I just thought I would drop down and keep you company, seeing as Andy is working. Thought you might be lonely. I have locked the front door again for you – keep intruders out. Dinner smells great, what are you cooking?’ He swung the spare keys around on his finger.
‘Scott, my parents are on the way down now.’ It was a lie, but she knew she was in real trouble. He was blocking the path between her and Danny. She had no way of getting to him.
‘Your parents have their club tonight, do they not? If my memory serves me correctly, they never come down to you on Wednesday, as they go there. I think you are mistaken, my dear. No one is coming down tonight. Besides, you only have two settings on the table.’
‘Scott, you need to leave. We are not friends, and I don’t think we have anything to talk about.’ Jen cursed herself for dumping her handbag as usual in the hallway. She couldn’t get to her phone either. She needed to get him out of the house, and fast.
‘Relax, Jen. Put the kettle on. Let’s have a coffee and clear the air. Why don’t I put an extra setting on the table? I will stay for dinner. That’s a good idea, isn’t it? We’ll have dinner together, the three of us, and we can clear the air and be friends. Would you like that, Jen?’
‘Honestly, Scott, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Danny is tired, and we just want a quiet night. I’ll make you a coffee, but then I need you to go. I am happy to have a chat and clear the air. That sounds OK. I’ll bring Danny up some dinner to his room and then we can talk.’
She was watching him like a hawk, and he was watching her. The thought of grabbing a knife out of the cupboard crossed her mind, but it wasn’t a Hollywood movie playing out here, this was real life.
The monologue going on in her brain surprised her. Just keep calm, Jen. Just keep calm. Don’t rise him. Play him at his own game. Be charming. Diffuse the situation.
‘I would like to see Danny, Jen. He’s a pleasant little chap – and, by the look of things here, quite the artist.’
He was flicking through Danny’s drawing book, and she felt sick. She didn’t want him next or near her boy or his things.
‘Why don’t you and I sit down and have something to eat, Scott? We can leave Danny where he is, and we can chat properly. You’re right. We do need to clear the air and put things behind us, and why not do it now? Take a seat there, and I will get you a coffee.’ She tried to plaster on a smile – it felt more like a grimace. How was she going to get him out of the house? ‘I’ll just pop up to Danny with some dinner.’
‘No need to do that, Jen. He’ll come down when he’s hungry. I wouldn’t want you trying to get out the window or anything up there now, would I, after coming all this way for a visit? Now, make the damn coffee and sit down.’ That was an order, nothing pleasant in his tone of voice.
Her hands were shaking as she poured the coffee. She knew she was trapped here with him. Where had he put the spare keys? He must have slipped them into his pocket. The only way out was through the back door. She needed to get upstairs to Danny. For the first time ever, she prayed Danny wouldn’t come down anytime soon.
‘Jen, we have a lot to talk about here. Don’t you agree? You’re trying to paint quite the picture of me, are you not? Drug-running, murder, manipulation, all-round bad guy, isn’t that right?’ He was sitting bolt upright at the table, with his hands wrapped around the mug of coffee.
‘I don’t see you denying any of it, Scott.’
‘Hmmm, let me see. Let’s start at the top of the list, shall we? Drug-running. Yes, it’s true, and it was all going swimmingly until you started to interfere. This is way bigger that you, my dear, and had started long before you came on the scene.’
‘Tell me more, Scott? I’m intrigued.’
‘Well, it all started a couple of years ago. Just after Sharon’s death – I’ll get to that in a minute. Doc and Tess were the perfect couple for it. They had their own business, and their marriage even then was on the rocks. Clara was a friend of mine, an old s
hag – she was working for me. The plan was for her to hook up with Doc, and get him onside. What I didn’t envisage was they would actually have feelings for each other in the end.’
Jen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He was responsible for the affair; he had orchestrated the fucking thing.
‘So anyway, Clara worked her magic on Doc, and Tess worked away in the pub. I could see that they were struggling, but I needed for her to be in desperate need of funds so she wouldn’t ask too many questions. The time was right a few months ago. I had a lot of cash and I needed somewhere to dump it. My solicitor drew up the paperwork, and in her post-miscarriage heartbroken state, Tess didn’t really read the small print. My solicitor works for me, so he made it all look above board. Job done. Nice income. Tess is unwittingly laundering drug money and her husband is the drug runner. Dig a bit deeper and the bogus paperwork leads nowhere near me. No connection.’
Jen felt sick to the stomach. It was becoming clearer by the minute he was a sociopath. She needed to get out. She knew she was in real danger.
‘And that is where Andy comes in, dear, and I suppose Sharon. Andy is a fisherman at heart – with a brilliant brain. I met him in college, the friendship was genuine enough, it was just an added bonus that he was from a fishing family and worked at sea. I needed to get the stuff into the country under the radar. I needed a willing participant. Sharon was the driving force behind them – she was really ambitious and career-driven. In your defence, you are a much nicer girl, and a better match for Andy. So if the wife was out of the picture, it was a given gentle Andy would come home to his family. It worked. I knew he wouldn’t partake in anything illegal, but his mate Fran was the perfect fit. It was all planned out, and the drugs were being picked up and brought in without Andy ever knowing.’
Had he just admitted to killing Sharon for drugs?
‘Are you telling me you’ve been smuggling drugs into the country on Andy’s trawler without him knowing, and you killed his wife just to get him back to the harbour, and onto the boats? Why did you need him? Why couldn’t you have just picked a random fisherman to do your dirty work for you? Why Andy?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you, Jen. Sharon was a cut-throat power-hungry bitch, so I was doing Andy a big favour by getting rid of her. Sure it’s the romance of the century with you and Andy and, in effect, you should be grateful – I was doing you a massive favour as well. You are as shrewd as your Aunty Pat, Jen. You remind me of her. She knew what had happened with Sharon. I told her just before she died.’
‘Scott, I have heard quite enough of this. I don’t want to know any more, and I want you to get out.’ She stood up from the table.
He stayed sitting. She made a dart for the door, but he grabbed her by the arm.
‘Sit fucking down! You will listen to every word I have to say. Try a stunt like that again, and I will break your fucking legs.’
She sat back down and tried to figure out what to do. Her mind was going into overdrive, trying to come up with a plan. If she ran, she could lead him out of the house and away from Danny. All she cared about was keeping her little boy safe. But … afterwards … there would be nothing to prevent him from coming back to do as he pleased with her defenceless son.
‘Where was I? Oh yes. So back to the list we go. Drug-running, murder, manipulation – you were right about it all. Everything was going fine until you stuck your little claws into Andy. Has he told you yet? Looks like he’s not going on his trip – he has decided to stay here with you and your little brat. Fan-fucking-tastic. And they all live happily ever after. He loves ya, baby, scars and all!’
‘How could you do that to your best friend, Scott? He thought the world of you. How could you destroy him like that?’
‘It was all about the money, honey. I had to keep my suppliers sweet as well. You think I’m a bad boy? I’m a puppy dog in comparison to them. Swings and roundabouts, baby, swings and roundabouts.’
His sing-songy voice was grating on her nerves. Slowly but surely she could feel the adrenalin rise and a dark primitive rage grow from the pit of her stomach. Something had shifted in her head and her heart.
He will not hurt my boy.
‘And where did Sal fit into your plan?’
‘Nowhere. I just liked Sal. She is an incredibly talented girl. I actually could see myself settling down and retiring with someone like Sal. She was a sweetheart, and such a shame she found out about me shagging Clara. Even Mother Dear would have approved of Sal. She liked her, and you for that matter. I saw you talking the night you were there – no doubt she warned you about me. I told her about Sharon, you know. I wanted her to fucking suffer the consequences of her actions. She got herself pregnant with me all those years ago, just to trap my father, and then he ended up killing himself because of her. You are all the same – bastard women. Sal would have eventually done the same thing – used and abused for money.’
‘Scott, you can put this right. You can get out now, and go somewhere. I will never breathe a word of what you have told me. You have the money – God knows, you have more than enough. Just disappear. What’s keeping you here? You don’t need to stay.’
‘I want to stay for now, Jen. The trip with Andy was my retirement plan: leave the donkeys here to do my work for me, and I’m in the wind, travelling around the world. But you sure fucked that up on me, didn’t you? You should have stayed away. He was my friend first, and all that fucking Sharon wanted was to separate us. She tried to come between me and Andy, and failed miserably. You are not going to come between us now. Andy will come on this trip. I just need an incentive for him to drop tools and go.’
She knew what was coming next, and she needed to stall him. Maybe someone would call round. She could hear Danny playing away in his room with the dog. Butch wouldn’t recognise the menace in the situation – not unless Scott actually attacked her – after all, to him Scott was a visitor he was familiar with. He would just come down and lick him to death. She stole a glance at the clock. It was quarter to seven, and starting to get dark. The wind was still blowing a gale, so even if she ran out into the garden and started screaming no one would hear her. Her only option was to get Danny down here, and try and get him out the door at least. He would run straight to Sal’s parents’ place. It was part of the drill: if Mammy was in trouble, go get help either by ringing from home, or running to the house at the end of the lane. If only she could get him out the door.
‘So what do you think of all that, my dear?’ he said.
His tone was mocking but something in the way he was regarding her gave her a sudden insight. He wanted applause.
‘Well, I think you’re a genius, Scott. I had no idea you had such a complex plan afoot. You are actually amazing!’
He looked at her to see if she was mocking him, but she opened her eyes wide and made sure they were shining in admiration. He smiled at her, and shrugged his shoulders.
She knew he was covert in his narcissism but it was still there. He was a sociopath, a killer and a narcissist. The psychology lectures started to churn in her brain – psychopathy, narcissism, the traits and how to deal with them.
‘How did you keep all that to yourself? If I had been clever enough to pull something like that off over the last few years, I would want the world to know. Oh my goodness! How did you ever think of all of it? You are unbelievable. And to get away with it, wow, I’m so impressed.’
She stood up from the table.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I was just about to get dinner. Would you like some?’
‘Yes, thank you. Now Jen, how are we going to fix this?’
‘I’ll dump Andy. There’s the incentive for him to pack up and go.’
‘Now you’re getting it. That’s exactly what I want.’
She knew he was toying with her, and he had no intention of leaving the house with her still in one piece, but she could buy some time and become the manipulator for a little while.
She walked over to the kitchen door.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘I need to call Danny down for dinner. I thought you wanted to say hello to him? He must be starving by now – we’ve been chatting for ages.’
He didn’t try to stop her.
She called up the stairs. ‘Danny darling, come down for your dinner! Now!’
She must play up to his obvious narcissism, try her best to come across as though she almost had a crush on him, was entranced by his brilliance. She wasn’t religious, but right now she was praying to anyone who would listen. St Anthony and Mary were high on the list. It always worked for her father, she would learn by example.
He had relaxed further in the chair, but she needed Danny here before she did anything.
‘Hiya.’
Danny was looking at Scott. Jen knew by his face that he felt something was amiss. He was an intuitive little boy but, apart from that, Jen had let her mouth run away with itself when talking to Sal about Scott. Had Danny overheard some of that? Whatever the reason, Danny was on the defensive, she knew that, and she was delighted.
‘Hello, Danny. How are you?’
‘Fine,’ he mumbled.
Under any other circumstances, Jen would have admonished him for his bad manners, but not tonight. Things just might be OK. She grabbed a jug of water and more cutlery from the press, and sat her son on the chair at the top of the table, closest to the patio door. Scott was sitting on the long side of the table, and Jen’s place was at the end. Scott was between them, but it made no odds. She would strike when the time was right.