They’ll leave the shutters down for twenty-four hours, he thought, just to be absolutely sure. Vienna will be back on a Dubai beach by then.
His mind was growing numb. He remembered something from a history book he had once read. When the Persian matriarchs wanted to rid themselves of the most treacherous family members, they locked them away in sumptuous apartments and left them to die. From a business point of view, it made perfect sense to do so. He should have put forward the idea as part of his new business model, but, just as Lassiter had warned, someone else had thought of it first.
He found himself laughing as the freezing snow-laden winds whirled about him, and then he could no longer close his mouth.
<
~ * ~
SQUEAKY
Martin Edwards
L
et ‘s go into the forest,’ Squeaky said.
Adele glanced at Brendan. Her husband was hunched over the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Lips motionless. She looked over her shoulder.
Squeaky squatted on the back seat, grinning at her.
Something about Squeaky disturbed Adele, and in wilder moments, she fancied Squeaky knew it. Those widely spaced blue eyes weren’t as innocent as they ought to be. They stared through Adele, as if her skull were made of glass, exposing her thoughts like scrawl on a postcard.
The car rounded a bend. Fields dusted with the first snow of winter bordered either side of the road. In the distance, a dark gathering of trees stretched as far as she could see. A brown signpost for tourists pointed the way, but the lane was deserted.
‘Let’s go into the forest.’
The scratchy, high-pitched voice made Adele’s flesh tingle. She clenched her small fists. Brendan’s lips were parted. She could see the pink tip of his tongue. The car jerked forward, as he pressed his foot on the accelerator. They raced past the road sign.
‘But I wanted to go into the forest.’
‘Shut up!’ Adele muttered.
‘Oh, dear me!’’ This was Squeaky’s catchphrase.
‘I told you to shut up!’
How shaming, to scream like that at Squeaky. Stupid and immature of her, too, but she couldn’t help herself. Brendan threw her a glance. Was that dread in his eyes? The heater was buzzing - he had changed it to the highest setting - and the car’s interior was stuffy. Sweat slicked his brow.
‘Are you . . . OK?’ His voice never used to falter like this.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
They drove on in silence for another twenty minutes, until they reached the hospice on the outskirts of the next town. While Brendan waited to reverse into a vacant space, Adele jumped out to buy a parking ticket. She took another look at Squeaky through the window of the car. Snub-nosed and straw-haired, with a red top and baggy blue jeans. A figure that might have walked out of a bad dream. Squeaky ought to find it impossible to scare a grown woman. But a tremor ran down Adele’s spine as she shoved coins into the slot of the machine.
When she returned to stick the ticket on to the windscreen, Brendan had Squeaky over his shoulder, and the big canvas hold-all in his hand. He pecked Adele on the cheek.
‘See you later . . . Have a good shop.’
Why couldn’t he meet her eye? She strove for brightness. ‘Good luck. Hope the kids have a wonderful time.’
As she walked towards the main road, Squeaky’s piercing gaze seemed to track her movements. She felt naked, despite being wrapped against the cold in a warm woollen coat and scarf. Squaring her shoulders, she looked straight ahead, determined not to spare Squeaky another glance. Though she itched to put her hands round that scrawny neck.
Drifting through the crowds in the shopping mall, she found it impossible to push Squeaky out of her mind. Sometimes she thought there were three people in their marriage, not two. Whenever she tried to talk about her anxieties to Brendan, he was kind but intransigent. Squeaky had changed his life for the better, he said. Surely Adele understood? He’d found his true vocation. It wasn’t as if his wife had any cause to worry.
After all, Squeaky was only a doll.
~ * ~
When Adele first met Brendan, at a party thrown by a casual acquaintance neither of them knew well or much liked, he told her he was a magician. After their first night in bed together, he confessed that his magic amounted to little more than a few conjuring tricks. He didn’t even run to a glamorous assistant, he said with a mock-sheepish grin. For years, he’d worked as a quantity surveyor, but after the death of his wife he’d wanted to change his life completely. Adele knew how he felt.
They had plenty in common. Liked the same TV shows, laughed at the same jokes. He was marvellous company, charming and courteous, although Adele was perceptive enough to detect a streak of self-indulgence running through him. But that had been true of Josh, it was true of most men. Maybe all men. Brendan was a nice guy, but not the strongest of characters; forced into a corner, he’d put himself first. But you had to balance positives against the negatives. Brendan made her smile, for the first time since Josh’s accident, when they were out boating in his native Australia, on the final day of the holiday of a lifetime to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.
Bereavement was another thing they had in common. Brendan made no secret of his devotion to the first Mrs O’Leary. Not that Adele resented this: jealousy wasn’t one of her vices. She deplored the way Gilly had betrayed Brendan’s trust. He still kept photos of her in an old suitcase in the loft, and the identical pout featured in every single one. Gilly was pretty and vain, the doted-on daughter of a widowed wealthy banker. When Daddy died, she needed someone else to spoil her rotten. It was clear even from Brendan’s kind-hearted comments that she’d been flattered by his unfailing attentiveness, and relished having a good-looking man at her beck and call. And Brendan, tall and introspective, with a mop of dark hair and deep brown eyes, was a very good-looking man.
Adele lingered in her favourite fashion store, where Christmas carols sung by a kids’ choir trilled over the loudspeakers.
‘Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel.‘
After that disturbing episode with Squeaky, she was in the mood for a treat. A skimpy designer nightdress caught her eye. The price was extortionate for something so skimpy and insubstantial, but money wasn’t a problem, and Brendan would love slipping it off her slim white shoulders. So, a treat for both of them. She carried her trophy to the till.
Poor Brendan deserved his fun. He was terrific in bed, but that hadn’t been enough for vain and selfish Gilly. She’d started an affair with an old school friend called Hodgkinson, who’d contacted her via a social networking site. Hodgkinson was married to a woman disabled by some rare malfunction of her auto-immune system. Brendan knew none of this until the police came knocking at his door one Saturday afternoon, and told him that his wife had been found dead in a car filled with exhaust fumes. She and the school friend had perpetrated the ultimate in selfishness. A suicide pact.
‘Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.’
She stabbed her PIN number into the credit card machine. Brendan was quite open about the fact that the police had needed to check him out in order to make sure that he hadn’t contrived an ingenious double murder. To a suspicious detective, the affair might seem to give him a motive to do away with Gilly and her lover, and to make matters worse, Brendan inherited all the money her father had left her.
Lucky he was a conjuror in his spare time. While Gilly spent her last hours with her lover, he’d risen bright and early to travel to a hotel in Bath where he’d been booked by a distant cousin to perform some table magic at her husband’s fortieth birthday party.
It all made sense. Gilly was a flake, the other man was depressed about his wife’s deteriorating health, and t
hey couldn’t see a happy future together. Two star-crossed lovers whose self-absorption knew no bounds.
And even if a suicide pact seemed an overreaction, what other explanation could there be? The lover’s wife was immobile in a hospital bed, while Brendan had a perfect alibi.
~ * ~
It was so sad. Brendan explained to Adele that after Gilly’s death, somehow he couldn’t face performing magic tricks any more. She sympathized; he was a sensitive soul. The money he inherited enabled him to pack up his job, but he still yearned to become an entertainer. Six months after he and Adele returned home from a blissful honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean, he stumbled across an internet auction that seized his imagination.
Squeaky was for sale.
As a schoolboy, he told Adele, he’d practised mimicry from time to time, but magic was his first love. On the spur of the moment, he decided to acquire a dummy of his own and become a ventriloquist.
At first, Adele was delighted. Brendan needed to scrub the memory of magic - and Gilly’s treachery - out of his mind. What better way than to discover a fresh interest’? For a few weeks, because they believed in sharing, she even taught herself ventriloquism. Its mysterious nature intrigued her; the first ventriloquists had been shamans and gastromancers, and the idea of taking on another persona seemed attractive.
‘You’ve got a knack for it!’ he’d exclaimed in delight.
She’d tried to look modest. ‘I just believe a couple ought to share their interests, that’s all.’
All too soon, the novelty palled. As it did, she found herself disliking Squeaky more with every week that passed. How silly, to loathe a stuffed dummy. Yet she couldn’t help feeling dismayed by the amount of time Brendan devoted to his hobby. Worse, he teased her by making Squeaky poke fun at her clothes and hairstyles. All in good spirit, of course, but Squeaky’s sense of humour was sharper and less kindly than Brendan’s. Once or twice, a barbed jest got under Adele’s skin.
Was Squeaky a boy or a hoydenish girl? Brendan was vague, and the dummy’s appearance and voice were oddly sexless. But there was no denying that Squeaky had a spiky personality, tainted by malevolence. He, she or it - whatever - seemed to glory in stirring up trouble.
Before long, Adele wanted Squeaky out of the house, but Brendan was better at ventriloquism than he’d even been at magic, and he wouldn’t hear of ditching the dummy. He started to pick up bookings: children’s birthday parties, in the main, but he also performed in social clubs and rest homes. Today he was putting on a show for sick children in a hospice. Brightening their troubled lives.
When Adele pushed it, they had their first blazing row. Brendan’s pleasant face turned pink with outrage. He wouldn’t hear of getting rid of Squeaky. How could Adele possibly make a fuss about a doll who brought pleasure to countless people, kids and old folk in particular?
Adele found herself shouting, ‘Sometimes I think you care more about that fucking dummy than you do about me!’
‘You’re making a fool of yourself,’ he hissed. ‘Behaving like a spoiled brat.’
He’d never criticized her before, and that came as such a shock, in the end she gave in. Usually, Brendan was master of his emotions. But she’d seen something new in him. A cussed determination that was proof against anything she might say. She saw that he found her objections to Squeaky mean-spirited and neurotic.
Shopping done, she decided a quick gin and tonic would fortify her for the return trip with Squeaky. She wasn’t due to meet up with Brendan for another half hour, so she made her way to The Spread Eagle, on the other side of the road from the hospice. It wasn’t a salubrious locality, and the pub didn’t have a good reputation, but who cared? Suppose some man chatted her up, she wouldn’t start kicking and screaming. She could do with being made to feel good. To feel herself desired again.
Walking up to the bar, she glanced in a large oval mirror that hung above the counter. In the reflection, she saw Brendan. He was seated at a table, with a half-pint glass of beer in front of him, handing a padded envelope to a bulky man with a broken nose.
For God’s sake. It was Gerard Finucane.
Adele didn’t wait to be served. As Finucane put the envelope in the jacket of his coat, she turned on her heel and hurried out into the wintry evening.
~ * ~
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. He 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 anticlimactic 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 in 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 w
as 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 Finucane 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.
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10 Page 7