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 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 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.
‘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 to get 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 obsession 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 streetwise, 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.
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, and 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 woman 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 woman 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 b
reast. ‘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?’
Guilty Consciences - [A CWA Anthology] Page 8