Road Kill

I hoped the lights weren’t up high enough for Sam to spot the way my colour rose but I wouldn’t have liked to bet on it.

“What did he say?” I rushed on. “Did you tell him anything about the accident? What—”

“Whoa.” Sean held up his hands. “I told him no more than he needed to know, Charlie,” he said. “Jacob’s down in County Cork. He was going to head straight up to Dublin and pick up the first available ferry service to Holyhead. He’ll be home sometime tomorrow.” He drained his coffee cup and regarded me with that unnerving calm of his. “There’ll be plenty of time to talk to him about what both he and Clare might – or might not – have been up to with Slick when he gets back.”

***

Sam left soon after that, slinking out like a dinner party guest who suddenly finds his hosts having a domestic over the souffle. Not that Sean and I got to blows over the fact he hadn’t told me about Jacob’s call. I was just upset by the way he ducked out of answering any questions about it.

It wasn’t until we were alone that I found out the reason he was being so evasive.

“Your friend Jacob is not exactly squeaky clean when it comes to the law,” he said, folding his arms and leaning his shoulder against the kitchen doorway. “Did you know he’s got form for handling stolen goods?”

I was feeding the dogs and froze right in the middle of putting their bowls down onto the flagged floor. It was as much at the emphasis on your friend as on anything else.

“No,” I admitted. I straightened and stuffed my hands in my pockets, feeling my chin come up almost of its own accord. “How did you find that one out?”

He shrugged. “Madeleine,” was all he said.

“Sometimes,” I muttered, “that girl doesn’t know when to stop digging.”

“Better to know what we’re dealing with,” he said, his tone cool now. “You told me yourself you don’t think Clare’s being entirely truthful with you. Maybe that’s why.”

“Ah,” I said, aware of a sickly taste in my mouth, “I heard something tonight that puts a bit of a different spin on things. According to Tess, Jamie told her the reason Slick was giving Clare a lift up to Devil’s Bridge on Sunday was to meet him. She reckoned Clare and Jamie were . . . involved.”

“Ah,” Sean said, unconsciously echoing me. “That does alter things somewhat, doesn’t it? And you believe her?”

“I don’t know,” I said unhappily. “I don’t want to, but that’s not the same thing. It does make a twisted kind of sense. I mean, it would explain a lot of things.”

“It would explain why Clare’s been so cute with you, but it doesn’t explain why Jacob would want to get himself involved with something dodgy going on in Ireland.”

“We don’t know that he’s involved with anything,” I said quickly.

“When Slick’s bike disappeared, where was the first place MacMillan’s lot came looking? Here. Why do you think that was, hmm?” Sean fired back at me. “And he has Irish connections – not least of which is his ex- wife.”

“They’re not divorced,” I corrected automatically.

“Estranged then,” Sean dismissed. “Whatever. We don’t know what she was after here today, unless it was the ten grand, but if that was what they were after and they found it, why try and throw you out? Why not just leave peaceably, if they’d got what they came for?”

I thought about that one for a few moments, leaning my hip against the sink. The only sound in the kitchen was the scrape of the metal bowls being pursued across the floor as the dogs stuffed themselves.

“Do you think she knows about Jamie and Clare?” I asked then. “Could she have demanded money to keep quiet about it? What if that’s why Clare had the money in the safe, ready to pay her off? Then she has her accident with Slick and Isobel goes looking for the money because she knows it’s there.”

Sean shook his head. “You’re clutching at straws, Charlie,” he said. “It doesn’t answer who knocked them off – or came after you for that matter. And anyway, if Clare was in that kind of trouble, don’t you think she would have told you the truth?”

I thought of Jacob, who was just as much my friend as Clare was. “I don’t know.”

I wanted to cast Jacob’s former wife into the role of villain, I realised. With a boyfriend like Eamonn in tow, it wasn’t difficult.

“Did Madeleine manage to dig up anything on Eamonn?”

Mention of his name did something dark to Sean’s face, as though he was recalling the encounter with the Irishman and regretting something.

“She’s on with it at the moment,” he said. He gave me a weary smile. “The Merc was registered to Isobel, so all we’ve got to go on is Eamonn’s first name. Even for Madeleine that’s a tall order.”

“When were you going to tell me about this?” I asked quietly.

“I wasn’t,” he said, making no bones about it, “right up until Pickering mentioned that bit about the stuff waiting in Ireland and Jacob being in on it.”

“Just how long ago was Jacob done for receiving?” My own defensiveness made me snappy. “Only, in all the time I’ve known them the only illegal thing they’ve done is broken the speed limit. Oh – and given you shelter when MacMillan was after you for murder.”

Sean ducked his head in wry acknowledgement. “The conviction was a while ago,” he allowed. “Eight years, I think. Nearly nine.”

“Before my time.” Before Clare’s time, too. I remembered Jamie’s comment about helping Jacob dig the driveway sensor in. How old did he say he’d been at the time? Ten. He was barely twenty now. “I think he and Isobel were still together back then,” I said.