The Wife Before Me(76)

What is he talking about? Karma and bikers and his dead wife – where is this conversation going? Elena wants to hear about Nicholas and how she can get her children and her inheritance back; but there is something about Billy’s posture that stops her restless movements.

‘Me and Red, well, we got to taking about bikes,’ he continues. ‘He showed me photos of his Harley. A fine-looking bike, if ever I saw one. He told me the man who sold it to him was one of those slick financial sorts. Gave him some investment tips. Red made a packet as a result. I don’t know what made me ask when he bought it but I did.’ Billy pauses, frowns, as if unsure whether or not he should continue.

‘Go on,’ Elena prompts him. She has no idea what is coming next. It will be bad, though, of this she is certain. Anxiety has become her bowstring, finely tuned to premonitions.

‘It was two days after John’s death,’ Billy continues. ‘Red remembered the date because it was his birthday. But he couldn’t bring the name of the seller to mind.’

‘What are you trying to tell me, Billy?’

‘It rained hard on the night of John’s accident.’ He sucks in his breath, as if he too can’t believe what he is going to say next. ‘The road was very slippery. The police always assumed that a car driver skidded on the wet surface and then drove off after the accident. By the time we found John, there were no tracks to prove otherwise. But I saw a bike on Kilfarran Lane that night. I’d walked to the gate to call the dog in. John wouldn’t have reached Woodbine by that stage. I knew it was a Harley going by. It’s got a distinctive sound because there’re two pistons and only one pin in the crankshaft.’ He stops, shakes his head. ‘Never mind the technicalities. What I’m trying to say is that I heard that sound and also recognised the bike by the headlights. I reported what I’d seen to the gardai but the following morning they found one of those metal Mondeo logos near the scene. They were convinced it had fallen off the car that hit John.’

She stares into the fire. Nicholas is the father of her children. The heat stings her eyes, flames her cheeks. How can her heart continue beating so fast, so violently, without collapsing into stillness?

‘You’re not suggesting it was Nicholas who sold his bike to Red?’

‘I’m not suggesting it. I’m telling you he did. Red rang me a few days ago. He’d found the chequebook he used when he bought the Harley. Nicholas’s name is on the stub. So is the date.’

‘That can’t be true.’ Billy has no reason to lie to her, but what she has heard is too horrifying to accept. ‘All that proves is that Nicholas sold his bike around the time Amelia’s father died. It has to be a coincidence. Nicholas is violent but to call him a murderer… it’s ridiculous. I won’t listen to this. I won’t—’

‘Sit down, Elena. Please.’ The colour has drained from Billy’s face. Aware that his heart is also in turmoil, she does as he asks.

He opens his wallet and shows her the cheque stub. ‘I got that in the post from Red. Like you say, it could be a coincidence.’

‘It has to be a coincidence.’ She doesn’t want to think about the photograph in Yvonne’s album but it flashes before her like a danger signal. Nicholas, relaxed in leather, leaning against his Harley, and Yvonne’s admission that he’d kept it in her garage long after he had stopped using it.

Billy hands the cheque stub to her. ‘Take this. I’ve photocopied it. I’ve no idea what you can do with it but someday maybe…’ His body sags in the armchair. Elena is conscious of his fragility. She finds his tablets and he slips one under his tongue.

‘Stress busters.’ His smile is strained; his concave chest rises and falls fast. ‘No matter how you do it, I hope you can bring him to justice, Elena.’

When they part, she is still in a state of disbelief. She will visit him again, she promises.

His house is close to a bend on Kilfarran Lane and she is edging the car cautiously out of the entrance when she notices Nicholas’s BMW. Two wheels are up on the narrow pavement and the car slants, half on and half off the road. Nicholas must have returned early from the gym and parked opposite Billy’s house. The driver’s seat is empty and her children are not in the back. Elena is wearing sunglasses, her hair covered by a hood, yet she feels as exposed as she always did in that instant before he struck her. From the corner of her eye, she sees him emerge from the trees that shadow the pavement. She only catches a fleeting glimpse of him as she bends her head over the steering wheel. Her foot shakes when she presses it against the accelerator. The rage that seized her when she attacked him had been an impulse, scalding and visceral, passing through her and fading as quickly as it had come. But the deliberate taking of a life, the methodical planning and ruthless execution… how could she have been so deceived in love?

Billy must be zonked on medication. Dementia setting in. The fear of death disturbing his mind. But the cheque stub lies on the seat beside her. It flutters, as if disturbed by the jerking speed of the car as she turns and drives from Kilfarran Lane. She glances sideways at the wing mirror. Nicholas is standing in the middle of the road and, as if aware that she is looking back, he lifts his hand and waves.



* * *



Billy Tobin’s death makes the morning headlines.

The elderly man was pronounced dead at the scene and his body removed from his home on Kilfarran Lane. Time of death has yet to be ascertained but it is believed he had been dead in his living room for four days before his presence was missed and the gardai were called. Foul play is suspected and gardai are appealing to anyone who was in the vicinity of Kilfarran Lane on Saturday and noticed anything unusual to contact them at Kilfarran Garda Station.