Page 44 of Hidden Daughters (Detective Lottie Parker #15)

Councillor Denis Wilson liked to project an image that warned people he was not someone to be messed with. Image was everything in his line of business.

He was tall and slim, his neat hair feathered with grey, and he was vain enough to dye it, but not yet.

Fine-boned, and handsome – this he’d heard muttered in bars when he bought the pub a drink.

Slick-suited, he normally wore navy or grey, though for a funeral he wore ebony black, always dry-cleaned and with impeccable creases.

High-profile was the name of the game. He insisted on wearing a red cravat with everything, even though his advisers told him it distanced him from the ordinary people.

The ordinary people had voted for him to become a councillor, so he knew his cravat didn’t make a blind bit of difference.

Getting potholes filled, that was what they wanted.

And grants for lights and community groups.

Hedges cut and roads surfaced. All that parochial shit.

A necessary evil he had to endure for now.

His focus was set on the bigger picture.

He was going to go far in politics and relished the day he’d leave potholes behind for ever.

The murder of the unidentified woman in Connemara was a blessing for him.

It gave him a platform with the wider media.

At first he praised the competence of the local gardaí and expressed his faith in them.

Now he was switching his stance to criticism of the cutbacks and how they were impacting rural forces.

A soapbox ready made for him. And he was grabbing it with both hands.

No one was going to stop him now. No one would dare stand in his way.

And that Mooney detective bloke better get his finger out and do a bit of work.

Wilson phoned the superintendent again. Keep the pressure on, because he could not let this opportunity slip through his fingers; no bungling rural guard was going to fuck it up.

He took off his red cravat and selected a similar one from the drawer.

‘It’s the same as the other one,’ said a voice from behind him.

‘Oh, I know it looks the same but I like the feel of this one better.’ He’d almost forgotten about the other thing that could fuck everything up for him. His wife.

‘Don’t worry about it, darling,’ she said. ‘You wear what makes you comfortable.’

‘You know I always do.’ He hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but the undertone told her that he didn’t need her input. And he didn’t like it when she called him darling .

‘Do you want me to come with you to that gallery opening this evening? I can be ready in no time.’

Dear God in heaven, fuck no, he swore silently in his head. That was all he needed. ‘I thought you had your book club this evening?’

‘I can cancel. The ladies won’t mind.’

But I do, he thought. ‘It’s okay. I’ll manage just fine. My advisers will make sure I don’t put a foot wrong.’

‘Or a word wrong,’ she said.

He caught her image behind him in the mirror. She had that look, that half-smile that wasn’t a smile at all. He could never get to the bottom of what really made her who she was, because he sure as hell was failing in making her who he wanted her to be.

After the next general election, as soon as he was elected to government, he’d set the divorce in motion. She was a liability. And those with liabilities did not get to sit at cabinet.