I spent Friday at home, cleaning the house, making up the spare bedroom for Eva’s return, baking some bread for Saturday morning’s breakfast, sweeping the front porch. As I’d emptied the dustpan into the bin by the front gate, Clive had emerged from next door, shouting a ‘bye, Jenny’, over his shoulder, then stopping abruptly halfway down the path as he spotted me.
‘Err … hi, Clive,’ I said awkwardly.
He opened his mouth, then shut it again, his face reddening. Then he grunted something unintelligible and turned away, stumbling and almost tripping over an uneven flagstone in his apparent rush to make it down his path and into his car, revving the engine loudly and speeding off down the street.
Shit. I’m the neighbour from hell, aren’t I? They just don’t want to know me, and why would they? I’ve turned their nice quiet street into a circus over the past couple of weeks.
And so I went back inside and carried on cleaning and baking and tidying. I needed to keep busy, because if I stopped, even for a minute, the thoughts came crowding in, thoughts which even I was no longer sure were logical or rational. Thoughts about Quinn, the man who was Danny’s only relative in the UK, and one of his closest friends. The man who I, after our meeting the previous day, had increasingly begun to think might know more than he was admitting about Danny’s disappearance.
I kept replaying our conversation in my head.
They think that whatever happened to him happened weeks ago … they found blood, you see, in our old apartment in London, lots of blood …
The blood in our Chiswick apartment, and the fact that it had been identified as Danny’s blood, was something the police had never told the press about, something that had never appeared in the newspapers. I didn’t think Bridget knew about it either; she’d certainly never mentioned it to me during our phone calls. So why had Quinn not reacted to that, in any way, when I’d told him about it? Why hadn’t he asked me to elaborate, to explain? Instead, he’d just watched me as I spoke, with that slightly odd expression on his face which I still couldn’t quite work out. And then there had been the surprise and distaste on his face when I’d asked him if he thought Danny might be cheating on me. What had he said?
I’d batter him for that …
It was a pretty extreme thing to say, wasn’t it? Surely, even if Quinn didn’t agree with ‘adultery’ as he put it, he wouldn’t actually beat Danny up over it? It wasn’t as if Quinn was particularly fond of me, and would feel affronted on my behalf. But even so, the fact that he’d said it, and the fact that he hadn’t reacted at all when I’d told him about the blood, was making me think. Could it have been Quinn who had attacked Danny in our old apartment? Could Danny have hidden his injuries from me because he didn’t want me to know that his cousin, his friend, had turned on him, and the reason why he’d done so? And … another thought suddenly struck me. Quinn had acted oddly, had left immediately, when I’d mentioned Bridget. Could she somehow be involved in all this after all, but maybe not in the way I’d first considered? I’d originally wondered if she was protecting Danny, helping him to hide away in Ireland possibly. But what if it was Quinn she was actually trying to protect? If he had attacked Danny, did she know about it? Is that why she’d asked me about the police investigation when I’d spoken to her, trying to find out if they might be on to Quinn? But why would she protect Quinn if he’d hurt her son – did she dislike Danny that much? Or was all this in my imagination?
Even if I was right, it still didn’t explain where Danny was now or why he’d disappeared, I thought, as I kneaded the dough, mechanically pummelling it, flipping it back and forth on the flour-covered table. But if I went to the police, told them about my fears about Quinn, that might at least divert their attention away from me, and help them get closer to the truth of all this.
I needed to talk it all through with Eva first, I thought. And would the police even listen to me this time? They certainly hadn’t seemed to