Page 54 of The Psychopath Next Door

‘Earth to Ethan,’ Iris said. ‘Are you all right?’

I realised she’d been talking to me for a while. I was struck dumb by the stress of what I’d witnessed. I still didn’t speak when Rodney came back with several rolls of banknotes, which he handed to Iris before gently taking the Beatles album.

‘Good luck with your missus,’ he said to me before he left. ‘My advice – bin her and find someone who looks at you like you’re made of chocolate.’

‘What was all that about?’ Iris asked as we watched his Bentley pull away.

I shook my head.

‘None of my business, I suppose. Here, this is for you.’

She handed me one of the rolls of twenty-pound notes.

‘What’s this?’

‘What does it look like? That’s five thousand pounds. Your commission.’

‘But I didn’t ask for one.’

‘Ethan, don’t insult me by turning it down. You’ve earned it. Use it to go on a nice holiday. Treat the kids and Emma.’

I went to her front door, holding the money, still in a daze.

‘By the way,’ she said as I stepped outside, ‘I had a dream about Fiona last night. Her and a friend of mine who died a few years ago. The three of us were going on a foreign trip together. We were in an airport and my friend couldn’t find her passport and Fiona kept saying it didn’t matter, that she’d help her. Very strange.’

I wasn’t sure what to say.

‘The point is, I woke up sure I remembered where I knew her from, but by the time I got downstairs and put the kettle on it had gone. Like a bubble. Pop.’ She smiled, a little giddy from making all that money. ‘It will come back to me, though. I have no doubt about that.’

19

Patrick walked straight past their table to the far side of the garden, barely glancing at them as he went by. He settled at a trestle table in the corner, in the shade of a large oak tree. A wasp must have made a beeline for his Guinness –a wasp making a beeline, Fiona would have to remember that one – because he made a swatting motion before settling down to drink his pint and read a book.

Trying to sound like Maisie, Fiona said, ‘We’ll give it a few minutes before we start, okay? My English accent? Is it convincing?’

‘Yeah. I think so. You sound a bit posh, though.’

‘Do I?’ That wasn’t good. It wouldn’t fit with her cover story.

‘How about this?’ She toned it down, thinking about a woman from Essex she’d shared a cell with for a few months, before she was moved to Franklin Grange.

‘Much better. You sound normal now.’

‘Normal is good. Now listen, let me quickly run through the plan again.’

She spoke quietly, confident her words wouldn’t drift through the still air to Patrick, who appeared to be engrossed in the book he was reading.

‘Okay,’ Fiona said when she’d finished. ‘Let’s play.’

She opened the box and took out the chess set, laying out the pieces. Out of the corner of her eye Fiona saw Patrick look up, hisattention snagged immediately, like he had some kind of radar for his favourite game.

Without looking over at him, Fiona and Rose started playing. Fiona had instructed Rose to pretend Patrick wasn’t there and play as she would at home. If she had been worried the girl might be distracted, those worries were quickly laid to rest. Rose, with the black pieces, played her favourite response to Fiona’s e4 opening: the Sicilian Defence. The two of them quickly followed the classic sequence of moves, exchanging pawns in the centre, before the game began to get interesting. Like Rose, Fiona found herself getting drawn into it, especially when Rose surprised her by bringing out her queen early, exposing the piece and allowing Fiona to capture it.

‘Oh dear,’ said a voice from behind Rose.

She looked up. It was Patrick. She hadn’t noticed him cross the pub garden to watch them.

‘I blundered,’ said Rose.

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