Page 4 of The Last Bench

‘The thing is, I couldn’t get him up the back door step. No matter how many times I tried, I didn’t have the strength to move the wheelbarrow up and over. You know my back gives me trouble. I thought it best to leave him here until you got home.’ Anne reached over and touched John’s arm lightly. ‘Could you push him up on to the step and into the kitchen for me? I think we should get him inside. In case someone comes to the back door. I know it’s unlikely, as the gate is closed now. But even so. Better be careful in these situations.’

‘In these situations?’ John exclaimed, colour rising in his cheeks. ‘When have we ever had a situation like this before? What in God’s name . . . I mean, I can’t . . . I don’t . . . Anne, what have you done?’ John spluttered in stops and starts.

Anne nodded sympathetically. She genuinely felt bad for springing this on her husband. But it was better this way. He would have talked her out of it if she had shared her plan.

‘Bring Hinges inside, and I’ll tell you everything.’

Anne watched her husband’s face as he grappled with his options. And to John’s credit, without any further argument, he picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow, tipping it and a still moaning Hinges back, until the front wheel was on top of the step to the house. Then he pushed it inside.

‘You made that look easy,’ Anne said admiringly. Today she felt every bit of her forty-seven years, while John never seemed to age, despite being close to fifty. ‘Honestly, I’d have been here all night trying to do the same. He’s heavier than he looks.’ She grabbed the bottle of Jameson whiskey and poured John a glass. ‘Sip this. It will help. You’ve had a shock.’

John waved aside the drink, as Hinges made another attempt to speak. She could pick out a couple of the choice words he was calling her, despite the gag. She turned to him and said wearily, ‘Oh, do shut up. I’ve told you already there’s no point fussing. When we’re ready to talk to you, I’ll take the gag off and you can let loose!’ Then she returned her attention to her husband and said, ‘I had to take him.’

John pulled her by her arm into the hallway, closing the door to the kitchen behind them. ‘Have you lost your mind?’

‘I’ve never felt saner in my entire life,’ Anne replied. She looked down at her hands – and, of course, there was no more trembling. Partly because now John was with her, and she knew that with him at her side she might pull this off. But also because she was finally doing something. For too long, they had been living a nightmare that no parent should ever bear.

Stuck. Unmoving. Powerless.

But no more.

Four

John

John dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand. That’s what they told you to do when you were caught in a nightmare. To check whether the situation was real or not. Wake you the hell up.

‘Is that the man who murdered our child sitting in a wheelbarrow in our kitchen?’ John asked, his voice low and far calmer than it had any right to be. A bead of sweat trickled down his back, and he shrugged off his suit jacket, letting it drop to the ground.

Anne picked up the jacket, smoothed it with her hands, then hung it on the handle on the back of the bathroom door. All the while, she watched him, her eyes wide and glistening in her flushed face.

He raised an eyebrow and asked again, ‘Anne?’

‘Yes, that’s the man.’

So there was no waking up from this.

He cursed again, running his hands through his hair. Anne said she had a plan. But before he questioned her about that he needed to understand how the hell his sixty-kilo wife managed to get a six-foot man, at least fifty kilograms heavier, bound and gagged to their home. ‘How did you do it?’

‘It wasn’t on a whim. I’ve been planning this for several months, ever since Hinges’s trial,’ Anne admitted. She lifted her chin, and John could see pride in her eyes. ‘While you were in the office, I’ve been monitoring his movements. Following him. Watching him.’ She walked into the kitchen, returning with her handbag a moment later, and pulled out a pink notebook with a detailed gold leaf pattern on it. ‘See,’ she said, showing it to him.

Written in her neat handwriting, Anne had carefully listed Hinges’s whereabouts by date and time. He flicked through the pages, dozens of them. On every page, there were a couple of items circled.

‘Where I could identify a pattern, I marked it,’ Anne explained.

‘Christ Almighty,’ John said, shaking his head in disbelief. He’d seen her with the notebook over the past few weeks and had assumed she’d started writing her Christmas shopping list. She sometimes did that – buying presents for their kids, ready for when they came home from university. ‘This is insane, Anne.’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve never felt saner. I was careful, John. I took no chances and knew the best chance of catching him was on a Thursday.’

John felt a stabbing pain under his ribcage. Was he having a heart attack? ‘I cannot believe what I’m hearing.’

Anne lightly touched his arm. ‘I was cautious. He never saw me. Last week, I thought he might have copped me. I was hiding behind a group of teenagers on the main street. He was heading up the Opera House laneway. Anyhow, he turned round, looking all around him. When he locked eyes with me, he threw his gaze upwards and dismissed me in a flash. To him, I was a middle-aged lady. Forgettable. Not a threat.’

John thought he knew his wife better than anyone else on this planet, but clearly not. ‘Okay, get to how you got him from wherever he was to here,’ John said, his voice clipped, edged with tension.

‘I’m coming to that. As I said, once I realised that Hinges follows a similar pattern each week, I came up with a plan. On Thursdays, he has a regular meet-up with several customers in a car park – you know the big one behind that supermarket that closed down last year, the one on that road near the church in Wexford. We parked there once when we couldn’t get a spot for that show in the Opera House.’

John nodded. Typical Anne, who never knew the names of buildings or roads. He’d always thought of her fondly as a little scatty. His eyes darted to the door of the kitchen, and he opened it quickly to check on Hinges.