Quentins Read online

  "What time would you like me to deliver everyone home?" he asked mildly.

  Anna gave a tinkling laugh. "Frank, honestly, you don't have to ask, you are their father. We aren't the kind of people who have court rulings. Keep them all day until they're tired. Right, girls?"

  Right, they said, pleased that there was no row. Daisy was nearly nine and almost grown up, so when the others weren't listening she whispered some of her theories about Santa Claus to her father. Frank listened thoughtfully and said it was hard to know all right and we should all keep an open mind on things.

  "Do you mind about Harry being here, Dad?" she said.

  "No, darling, not if it makes your mother happy." He tried to read her face, but wasn't sure if he had given the right answer or not.

  The shops were crowded. It was hard for six-, seven- and eight year-olds to make decisions. The little legs were tired when they got to Quentins, the first guests.

  "You're welcome," the waiter said. "Can I take your parcels for you, ladies?" Daisy, Rose and Ivy giggled at being called ladies. "How will you know which are ours?" Ivy asked.

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  "You'll give me your names and I'll write them down," he said.

  "What's your name?" Daisy asked.

  "Blouse Brennan," the man said.

  I

  "Why?" Ivy asked.

  "When I was a young fellow I called my shirt my blou forgot all about it, but no one else did."

  "Well, a shirt is a sort of blouse," said Daisy.

  "That's what I always thought," Blouse said, pleased.

  Frank looked at his eldest daughter with pride. The restaurant rilled up, mainly families, the odd twosome. Even though he felt a deep sense of loneliness not to be part of a proper family, Frank thought from time to time that he got envious glances with his three beautiful daughters. Alert and smiling and interested in everyone.

  "Look at that couple kissing," Rose said as a bottle of champagne was opened at a nearby table.

  "Does that woman have any legs?" Daisy said in her bell-like voice.

  The woman in the wheelchair turned round with a smile. I do, dear, but they're not any use to me, so the waiter wheeled me in up the ramp. He was very helpful."

  "I saw you come in. That was Blouse that wheeled you in."

  "Blouse, is it? A very nice young man," the old lady nodded.

  Finally her companion looked up from staring at the floor. It was Yvonne from work.

  Frank "was amazed and pleased. "So you decided to come yourself, too," he said happily. "Isn't it great! I must introduce you to my daughters." He brought them over to Yvonne's table where they all stood in everyone's way until Blouse Brennan suggested that he merge the two parties to save on space.

  Yvonne's face was scarlet. "I can't tell you how sorry I am, Frank. This was all my mother's idea," she hissed at him.

  "But I can't tell you how delighted I am . .." he began.

  They could hear the children talking to Yvonne's mother, asking her how her legs had decayed, and did she bother wearing stockings, and what would happen if the restaurant went on fire? "Blouse would push me down the ramp," Yvonne's mother said.

  "Indeed I would, Madam," he said as he tied Ivy's table napkin around her neck, the "way the French do.

  "What lovely dresses you have." The old woman felt the coloured velvet frocks.

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  "They're from our mother. She doesn't live with Dad any more, you see, so that's why she's not here." Daisy seemed to have a mission to explain today.

  "So you must remember it all to tell her. She'll want to know what you did because she loves you so much, like your father does. He must love you a lot to think of taking you to a very high class restaurant like this."

  "Is it high class?" Rose was interested.

  "The highest there is." Yvonne's mother was firm on this.

  "It's a pity they're not both here together," Daisy sighed.

  "Oh, I don't know ... you can have better times separately. Like Yvonne's father and I. We loved her to bits, but we changed in loving each other, and she was always happy with both of us, weren't you, Yvonne?"

  "Yes, I was, indeed," Yvonne said, astounded.

  "So her dad loved someone else eventually, and I loved someone else, but it didn't take away one bit from loving Yvonne. Isn't that right?" she barked at her daughter.

  "Oh, absolutely right, Mother. Like as if your heart got bigger or something and there was more love in it," Yvonne said, wild eyed at the whole thing.

  Frank patted her knee and stroked her hand. "Yvonne, I wish you knew how much this means .. ." he began.

  But Yvonne was listening to what her mother might be up to now. It was reasonably harmless. She was asking her new best friend Blouse Brennan for some bread that they could throw to the ducks in St Stephen's Green.

  "Can we come too?" Rose asked.

  "Please," Frank begged. "Please." And it was arranged. There would be time later, much later, when she would tell him that her mother and father had never separated, and he had died fifteen years ago and her mother had never looked at another man. This was not the time to do it. The Special Sale Lunch was nearly over, the rain had stopped and it was time to go and feed the ducks.

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  PARI III

  :t

  r

  i

  i

  -t,

  Chapter Nine.

  Ella looked up when the stories were told. As far as she could see, they had gone well. At least she had managed to hold their interest. She must leave them now and give them a chance to talk about it all. She moved swiftly. No, no, she would get herself a taxi, she pleaded. It was part of the excitement of being in New York. Please let them not see her out, she would much prefer them to stay and discuss what she had told them.

  And then she escaped. Down in the lift, out of the quiet building into the amazingly noisy traffic. And then she got to her little hotel, which was beginning to seem like home, and up to her

  room.

  Now she could do what she had been putting off until she got her work settled. She sat down and opened up Don Richardson's computer.

  It got dark in New York as she trawled through the computer. Bank account numbers in the Isle of Man, in the Cayman Islands, in Switzerland. None of it made any sense, since the names were in some kind of code.

  She recognised property agreements there, but none in Don's name or in his father-in-law's. Then she saw the file with her own name and her heart leaped. Maybe he had made an investment for her as he had once told her he would. Something to provide for her after his time. She gulped in case he really had done that. He must have loved her at one stage. But it didn't seem likely. It wasn't Ella Brady. This Brady family, a family of five, a man, his son, the son's

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  wife and two children, and they were living in Playa de los Angeles. There were letters about them to banks and from banks. Whoever they were, these Bradys had plenty of money. And a lot of it deposited very recently. By far the largest sum had been the week that she had been in Spain with Don. When he had been away from the hotel. When his wife Margery Rice, mother of his two children, was there. Suddenly she realised that not only had he taken everything else she had but he had also taken her name.

  There were so many things she could do. She could find the number of the Fraud Squad in Dublin and tell them the machine was ready for collection. She could contact an Irish television station. She could telephone Don now; the Brady family had a phone number and were listed in his machine. She could tell him that if he restored all that her father had lost, she would hand him back the computer, no questions asked. She could contact one of the various insurance companies involved and offer to give it to them. She realised that this was a decision she had to make entirely on her own. Everyone's judgement would be partisan. They would want to do what they thought was best for her or for them or for somebody. Why did she not give it straight to the police? That was what a normal citizen would
do.

  She opened the mini bar in her room and took out a miniature Jack Daniel's and drank it from a tooth mug. It made nothing clearer. It did nothing to sharpen the blurred edges. If you had loved someone, slept with him, shared everything with him for month after month, you didn't hand over the files without a backward glance. There was some kind of mad nobility about it ... Even if be behaved like a bastard, she was not going to. This was just one more test of her loyalty.

  There was a way she wanted to show him that not everyone sold out their friends and lovers. She didn't want to talk to Deirdre about it, or Nick or Sandy or anyone. She had to make up her own mind what to do. In some crazy way she wanted to talk to Don. Well, that was an option too. Mad as it sounded. There were so many things she wanted answers to. Like had he always known he was going to call himself Brady or was it because of her? Like how could he have planned everything so meticulously and then left the machine in her flat? Did he intend to or was it an oversight? And if he had always loved Margery, why had they lived such totally separate lives? And did he have any guilt, or could he live with it all, saying it was just showbiz? In some insane way, she

  could imagine the conversation. But she would not have it from here. She had been alarmed to know that he was now looking for the machine and sending messe ngers around the place trying to track her down. It had been a bit frightening.

  But she hadn't felt frightened before. In fact, having the laptop made her feel in some odd way more secure. And as long as she had this computer in her possession, he might get in touch. She realised now that this was why she had never let it go. It was her last link with him. For four months it had been a sort of comfort to her to know that it was there physically. Some solid reminder of all they had.

  But things were suddenly very different now. She could no longer tell herself that Don knew nothing of all that had been going on. That he had been swept along somehow in his father-in law's plans. That there was going to be a perfectly innocent explanation.

  Having opened the lid of the laptop, she could no longer tell herself this. It was beginning to dawn on her that Don Richardson was deeply involved. For the very first time she realised that she might indeed be in real danger and she had no idea what to do. She was so tired she couldn't think.

  She would do nothing tonight. There was no need. After all, the briefcase containing the computer had been in her possession for over four months. If she had been going to turn him in, he could well assume that she would have done it by now. He must think that she had never got into it and had decided not to hand it over to those who would be able to learn what it contained. He should be feeling safe and secure now, so why on earth was he suddenly getting jittery and sending her messages about it? Maybe he really wanted to see her.

  A man went up the lane behind Tara Road and put a letter into what they called the Annexe of what used to be the Bradys" house. It was not in an envelope, just folded in half. It had been sent by e-mail and printed out, but with no name or identifying marks at the top.

  Barbara and Tim Brady didn't hear it coming through the letterbox, because they were asleep. They didn't see it until the next morning at eight o"clock, when Barbara was going out to work. And she did not read it then because the hall was dark and she was running for the bus. She let herself out by the wooden

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  door into the lane behind the house. The garden didn't belong to them any more. It never would again.

  In New York, Ella was in bed. Not asleep but resting. No pressure, no hurry, she told herself over and over.

  She had to be at Derry and Kimberly's office tomorrow at nine. She must sleep well.

  There was a system on the hotel telephone where you could switch it to automatic voice-mail. She switched it over. That meant if someone called in the night it wouldn't wake you. Not that she was expecting a call, but she had to be alert tomorrow, no matter what happened. No pressure, no hurry. He doesn't know you"ve opened it.

  She had a long, warm bath, went to bed, and fell asleep with a television chat show blaring away.

  So she missed the series of phone calls that began at about ten minutes after 3 a.m. New York time, just after everyone in Ireland had come to grips with the 8 a.m. news there. She didn't look at the little winking light until she was dressed and ready to leave the room. Hoping it wasn't a message from either Derry or Kimberly about the meeting, Ella dialled the number to retrieve the messages.

  She sat in horror on the edge of her bed as she heard Nick and Deirdre and her father tell her what had happened.

  These were the only households who knew where she was staying. Nothing they said made any sense. It was like words that were all jumbled, strung together, not proper sentences.

  Only one more person knew her address and that was her new friend Harriet, the dealer who had sold her the dog collar. She had called also. Because Harriet's voice was less shocked, less horrified and sympathetic than the others, it was the only message that Ella understood.

  "Listen, Ella. In case nobody's told you, he's killed himself out in Spain. He was scum. He wouldn't even stay and face what a mess he'd got everyone into. Probably half the country's already told you, but just in case I wanted you to be warned, just in case. You're worth twenty of him, so don't weep over him, Ella. He's not worth it."

  When she got her breath back, she played the first three messages again. Now she understood what they were saying. It

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  had to be true. They couldn't all have imagined it. Who should she phone first? Ella didn't want to talk to any of them.

  She looked across at the computer. It really didn't matter any more. He had taken a boat out to jagged rocks and ended his life. She wondered had he choked or suffocated to death, or had his body been dashed against rocks? Had he any last-minute regrets and tried to survive? Don dead. Because of other people's money? Because of failure? Because he couldn't get his hands on that briefcase. Why hadn't she given it back to him? She hadn't even known what to do with it herself. If she had called him and said he could have it, then he would still be alive. She would call up the Irish newspapers on the Internet and see what they said. Before she talked to anyone, she needed to know more.

  Don Richardson's handsome face looked out of every newspaper in Ireland and even some in England. He was described as a disgraced financier. The newspapers congratulated themselves for having correctly speculated that he had been in hiding in Spain. It was reported that his small boat had foundered on rocks at a particularly dangerous Spanish headland. A place where nobody took any kind of craft. Certainly, an experienced boatman like Don Richardson would have been aware of its perils. His body had not been found. The tides in this area could have carried it far out to the Atlantic.

  He had parked his car on a nearby pier and left several envelopes on the front seat. The contents had not been made public, but it was understood that the letters were in the nature of an apology and an attempted explanation. Sympathy and concern had already been expressed by many of the business community in Ireland. Shock and disbelief had been registered by those of his family and former friends when they had been contacted. Of his immediate family there was no information. Some papers thought that they were co-operating with the authorities. Others said there had been no trace of them. One newspaper, in an article called "Darling Margery", claimed that one of his letters had been to his wife, urging her to bring up the children in dignity. But since that newspaper was also one which in the past believed it had interviewed extraterrestrials and women who had been born with four legs, it was not given a lot of credence.

  She telephoned her father first, but his phone was engaged. So she called Deirdre on her mobile.

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  "I know there are ways it's sad for you," Dee said, "as well as being a terrible shock, but honestly there are ways it's for the best."

  "That someone should kill himself, that's somehow the best?"

  Tm thinking of you, Ella. That's all I'm doing. You can g
et on with your life now."

  Tm getting on with my life fine. I've been doing that since he walked out on me months ago. It's he who's not getting on with his life. Can't breathe or talk or know what day it is today."

  Tm not making light of it. I thought in a way it kind of ended all the stress . .. somehow." Deirdre was backtracking now. She had most definitely said the "wrong thing.

  "What stress did I have that has ended? I still know he never loved me. I still have to work to pay off the debts he left my family with. What's better about his being at the bottom of the ocean?"

  Tm so sorry, Ella, so very sorry," Deirdre said.

  "I know you are, Dee. Just don't go round thinking it's all for the best, will you?"

  Deirdre made a quick call to Nick. "She's probably trying to get through to you now. Whatever you do, walk on eggshells. She doesn't see it all as the great relief that we do. I opened my big mouth and felt a right eejit."

  "Thanks, Dee. I'll warn Sandy."

  "Heavy on the sympathy, that's where I fell down," Deirdre said ruefully.

  "You're a good friend. She'll know that."

  "I hope."

  "Hi, Nick."

  "Ella, poor, poor Ella."

  "Why am I poor Ella, Nick? He never loved me. He stole

  everyone's money. I was just saying to Dee, nothing's changed.

  That's all the same as it was. He's dead, that's all. I just wanted to

  talk to you about this meeting today." "You're going to it?" He was astounded. "Well, of course I am, isn't that what I'm here for?" "But maybe not today, Ella. I could call them and explain." "This is my job, my pitch. Don't dare interfere. The thing I