There was a plethora of information on the rise of Corrigan Construction. Adrian had found article after article online about contract bids won by the company, including many of the bigger construction jobs in the county and beyond. Over the ten years they had been in the area, their profile had increased exponentially. The head office building Adrian and Imogen had visited had been constructed when the company moved into the area, bringing with them hundreds of job opportunities.
Adrian couldn’t stop thinking about the difference between the woman they had seen in that hospital bed and the polished Angela Corrigan with her Dynasty looks. They needed to speak to her alone, without being under the watchful eye of her husband. A husband who had never reported her missing, even though she was in the hospital for several days. Adrian could only imagine what kind of state she had been in when she turned up back at home.
There was something else bothering Adrian. Something that had just occurred to him. Adrian had been all over the news when he rescued Angela Corrigan from the river, so unless Reece had been living under a rock then he would have seen that footage. Granted, Angela looked nothing like the woman they had seen at Corrigan’s house, but at the same time, if Reece had been involved in what happened to her, then surely he would have been paying attention when the news said she had been fished out of the water, that Adrian had pulled her out. This was the point that Adrian was stuck on. How much did Reece actually know?
He obviously knew his wife was missing from their home, but did he know where she was? Did he know what had happened and why? When he opened the door and saw Adrian standing there, did he know that Adrian had pulled her from the river?
More secrets. More lies.
‘Find anything interesting?’ Imogen said, putting a coffee in front of him.
‘Lots of stuff about the business, not much about the man. Literally pages of results online about Corrigan Construction. Charity things, building jobs, but they all seem to be kind of impersonal and distant. There’s got to be more to him than this.’
‘I was thinking about that, actually,’ Imogen said. ‘He said they got sued by someone a couple of years ago. Who was that? I bet they have a story to tell.’
‘Good thinking. I’ll see if I can find out who it was.’
Adrian typed in the buzzwords and looked through the results. He found a small article four pages into the search engine in an old local paper about an accident that had happened on one of the Corrigan building sites. A man lost his arm owing to a faulty piece of machinery.
‘This guy lost his arm on a Corrigan building site two years ago. The timing fits. If nothing else, we know this guy used to work for the company. Maybe even at the same time as Simon Glover and Leon Quick.’
‘I just keep seeing it repeatedly. Leon Quick was a bit tense when we got there and then minutes later, he decided to take his own life,’ Imogen said, preoccupied by what had happened the day before. ‘Did we do that?’
‘I don’t think he was fine when we got there, to be honest. Did you see how jittery he was?’
‘I thought he might be on something, or you know, in withdrawal, but the preliminary path reports say he was clean.’
‘Just anxious; scared of something or someone,’ Adrian said.
‘Do you think Angela Corrigan knows why he killed himself?’
‘If she does, I don’t think she will tell us. No one seems to be telling us anything.’
‘You think Reece Corrigan is the one who gave her those injuries and left her in the river?’
‘He didn’t report her missing. He must have known where she was or thought she wasn’t coming back. Did he even care? But then, why would she go back to him?’
‘Is it a money thing? That house, that car, don’t come cheap. Is that why she stays with him? I always used to struggle to understand why a woman would choose to stay in an abusive relationship, but with the things I have seen in this job, I am just thankful for everyone who gets out. If he did think she was dead she could have been home free. She could have disappeared without a trace.’
‘I don’t think either of us are in a position to judge other people for their relationships. Maybe she’s too scared to leave. We need to speak to her alone,’ Adrian said.
He would be lying if he said he didn’t hold some resentment towards his mother for not getting out while she could, for staying with the person who made their life hell. He wouldn’t hear anyone else say that, though; she was as much a victim as he was.
‘How are you with all this?’ Imogen asked as if reading his thoughts.
‘Right now? I’m really angry. I want to get her out of there.’
‘Until she confirms what we already think we know then we are powerless. She didn’t give us any fingerprints or DNA at the hospital, so we can’t even prove that she is Jane Doe. They will have top lawyer money and they could explain their way out of it. Say it was a lookalike or something.’
‘But it is her.’
‘So, we wait until he leaves for work and then we go and speak to her. We’ll brief the DCI today and we can go in the morning. If we blow this, then we put her in even more danger. Not to mention the fact that we have absolutely no proof that Reece Corrigan is to blame for Simon Glover’s death and Leon Quick never specifically named him. It could just as easily be someone else at the company. Corrigan himself said they employed plenty of ex-cons. We have nothing.’
‘It was him. I can feel it. I’d rather keep an eye on him. A violent man like that, he is bound to step out of line. I saw it time and again with my father. It didn’t matter how many times he claimed to have changed, he always resorted to that closed fist again.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Imogen said.
‘I’m suggesting a romantic evening in the car with a chip butty and couple of Tizers. We can brief the DCI in the morning.’
‘You want to stake out the house?’
‘I feel responsible for that woman, Imogen. Isn’t there some old proverb that says if you save someone’s life it then becomes your duty to protect them? I feel like I have to make sure she is OK.’
‘How do you know that the violence is not the compromise she is willing to make for that lavish lifestyle?’
‘That doesn’t make it right. Besides, she was trying to leave, remember? At least that’s what the passport suggests.’
Adrian tried not to sound as annoyed as he was. His words were clipped and his jaw clenched to stop himself from snapping at Imogen.
‘Of course not. I am not saying it’s right at all. I’m just saying, she might not thank you for getting involved.’
‘That’s our job, to get involved. Do you know how different my life would have been if the police got involved once in a while, how different my mother’s life would have been? Thankfully, we don’t have the same insane domestic abuse laws that existed when I was a kid. Did you know that up until 1991 it was legal to have sex with your wife without her consent? Can you imagine that? It wasn’t considered rape if you were married.’
‘You’re taking everything I say the wrong way. We’re both responsible for Angela Corrigan, but what’s happening to her isn’t our fault, though. It’s Reece Corrigan’s – we think.’
‘It has to be him,’ Adrian said, blowing the air from his cheeks, trying to calm himself.
‘And we’ll get him, we will. But we can’t go about this half-cocked. If we want to nail that shitbag then we have to do it by the book.’
Adrian admired Imogen’s optimism, but he knew from experience that domestic abuse was so much more complicated than that. He saw his mother get hurt time and again, almost as many times as she defended his father’s behaviour to Adrian. Even when people tried to help, she would push them away.
He wasn’t angry at Imogen, though. How could she understand? How could anyone who hadn’t been in that situation? It was hard to explain that it was possible to love someone who hurt you. That it was fear that kept you in line, not just the fear of what they might do to you when you were there, but also an amplified fear of what they would do to you if you tried to leave. And then there were the things they told you: that you would never make it without them, that you were nothing and that you deserved everything you were getting. How could you make someone who hadn’t lived through it understand?