by Ashley Cain
“Seriously, I had nothing to do with any of those things. All I did was put salt in the brownie mix and mustard in the mayonnaise. Promise. The rest had nothing to do with me at all”.
“Even if it had nothing to do with you, and I don’t believe you for a second, given that your Uncle Ivan had asked you to sabotage my cooking, didn’t you wonder what was happening when all the other things started to occur?”
“At first no” he said. “Remember I’m not from Jersey, and so I thought the burglary was just one of those things that happened. Was glad I had an alibi though all the same. I started to panic a bit when the police came round as I thought they may ask for identification but fortunately they took at face value that my name was Connor Monroe. Then when your café got burned down, I did ask my uncle if he knew anything about it and he swore he didn’t. Said something about you had upset a lot of people and probably had a number of enemies. You hadn’t been exactly friendly to me and so I could understand it. When your house got set on fire though with you in it” he ran his fingers through his hair again “that was something else. It just seemed like it was time to get out of here. I thought my story was going to unravel and that the police would discover I wasn’t really Connor Monroe and so decided to make my escape pretty quick. Only it wasn’t that easy as I discovered at the airport that my photo had been circulated and so I came back here. Saw you coming out of the Rockspur apartments as my taxi pulled up so followed you here”
As much as she distrusted him, his story did seem believable. And he hadn’t tried to attack her when he had had plenty of chances. Maybe there was something in what he said.
“OK” she said eventually. “Let’s say I believe you, which I don’t yet, so don’t start getting any ideas”. She waved the knife. “Why did Ivan Fletcher want you to, how did you put it, cause chaos in my kitchen? It doesn’t make sense”.
“Business. The thing about my family, April, is that we are pretty ruthless when it comes to business. Even my grandpa is not as innocent as you may think. Uncle Ivan had bought the cafe down the harbour as you know, and he said it would be good for his business if you had a few bad reviews. Said you needed taking down a peg or two”.
“And you were happy to oblige I suppose?”
“Yeah, sorry about that”. He smiled ruefully. “Why not? It wasn’t like I knew you and I didn’t mean you any lasting harm. But when the café got burned down, it got me wondering. I knew my Uncle Ivan was ruthless, but I didn’t think he would go that far. But like I said, when I asked him, he told me that he hadn’t had anything to do with it and so I believed him”.
“And the plan was that you would manage the Bay Harbour Grill long term?”.
“No, but I decided to stay around for a bit, and my Uncle Ivan was only too happy to offer me the job temporarily. Said it was good to keep it in the family although taking back my real identity was going to get a bit awkward. We hadn’t worked out how we were going to do that. I’d decided though that staying in Gull Bay had its advantages”
“Marcy Brownlow no doubt” April answered sarcastically
“Pfft. I wasn’t thinking of Marcy but now you come to mention it”. He smirked. “To be honest though I’m much more interested in women who give me a challenge”. Despite herself April blushed.
April wanted to believe him, she hadn’t ever really believed that he was capable of murder, no matter how irritating he was. “Why are you here now?” she asked. “Why not try to get off the island another way? With your uncle’s money you could easily have hired a boat”
“I was worried” he said simply. “The more I thought about it, the more I started to think that my uncle had been involved in trying to burn your cabin down. He had been so odd when you left the party the other night, kept muttering that you just wouldn’t give in. It didn’t make any sense at first, after all the café wasn’t really competition for the restaurant, but the more I thought about it the more I started to think about something my Grandpa had said after we had just got here”.
“What was that?” April’s mind went back to the time that she had met Ivan’s father. She had thought the conversation was odd then, but couldn’t quite recollect what it was. Was this what it was all about after all?
“He had come back from a walk, him and my grandma, and we were all having a drink in the garden. And he suddenly mentioned that he was surprised the café was still here and that it had been updated. He asked if your grandma Ruby was still alive?”
“And what did your uncle say?” April asked slowly.
“He said that you owned it now, that you had made it much better than it had been and we should have dinner there one evening. But it was what my Grandpa said afterwards that made my uncle sit up. He said that he had done a deal with your Grandad years ago to sell the land for development, but your grandma had put her foot down and refused to move. He said it was a shame because if you were sensible you would have sold up rather than renovating because if the land wasn’t redeveloped soon it could never be redeveloped. That was the terms of the deal. Apparently, it had been a hell of a job to get it through back in the day and it had a time limit on it. And it got me thinking, if your café and your cabin burnt down then maybe you would be desperate to sell the land and may not realise how much it was worth”.
April was quiet. It made sense.
“But would he really try and kill me to get his hands on my land?”
“I can’t believe he would try and kill you April. He probably didn’t realise you would be in that night” But even as he said it April could see the realisation dawn over his face. “But then, where else would you be?” he said bitterly.
Just then the phone in the café rang. The noise jolted both of them out of their thoughts. April motioned with the knife for Connor to stand aside and he did as he was told. She went through the door to answer the phone.
It was Miguel.
“I thought you might be there” he said. “I couldn’t reach you at Hope’s cottage. Hope called five minutes ago; said to tell you she thought she had worked it out. She was going to go and see Ivan Fletcher”.
“No, she can’t” April could hear the panic in her voice. “You need to go there Miguel now and stop her. She is going to be in danger”.
“I can’t” Miguel sounded anxious. “We decided to come in to town after you had left, it’s so rare that we get the time off together that we thought we might make the most of it and have a few drinks this evening”.
“I need to go there. Miguel phone the police. Tell them to go to Ivan Fletchers house immediately”.
She put the phone down and sprinted for the door. “What is it?” She turned to find Connor was by her side. She had to make a split decision to trust him and did. If it was the wrong decision then she would die with her last thought being that Grandma Ruby would be right, she always saw the best in everyone.
“Hope has gone to confront your uncle”.
Connor ran in front of her. “We need to get over there fast” He set off at a sprint up the road. April let the door slam behind her and followed him. She could not let Hope put herself at risk on her behalf.
Chapter 31
April thought she was relatively fit, but she had to admit as she took off up the road after Connor that she wasn’t as fit as she thought. It didn’t help that once they turned right, away from the sea, the road rose steeply. By the time she reached the Rockspur apartments on the corner she was out of breath and panting, and Connor was nothing more than a speck in the distance, a good 600 metres in front. He must almost be at his uncle’s house, for it was just around the next bend.
She leant against the granite wall, at the entrance to the Rockspur, where the apartment’s name was proudly displayed in large silver metal lettering. There was still a number of unanswered questions, and she was not entirely sure whether she believed everything that Connor had told her. There was no doubt in her mind though that Ivan Fletcher was behind all the problems, but she still couldn’t f
ully understand why. With his house overlooking Gull Bay he had been not only a regular customer, but a neighbour, a supporter of her café if not a particularly friendly one. That he would have tried to force her to sell, had even resorted to trying to kill her seemed improbable.
And yet even if there was a lack of evidence, all roads led back to Ivan Fletcher. Unless. As she stood on the side of the road another thought struck her. All roads could lead back to Connor himself. What if it hadn’t been Ivan whose ears had pricked up when his father had mentioned that the land on which her café was built was worth a fortune as development land, but Connor himself? If he was in Jersey on an extended holiday with his mother then there obviously wasn’t work waiting for him in South Africa. Had he seen the opportunity himself and now, when it all seemed to be unravelling, was ready to blame his uncle? He hadn’t run with her to the house but had sprinted on ahead. He could be lying in wait in the trees just around the bend, ready to spring out and attack her. With her out of the way, the café, or what was left of it, would go to her mother who would never think to check whether it was worth anything or not and be only too happy to offload it to a handsome young man with a ready smile and a fistful of cash.
April checked the time on her watch. It was six or seven minutes since she had spoken to Miguel and told him to phone the police. Assuming he had got straight through it was probably going to be another ten minutes before they arrived. Indecision flooded her mind. Should she wait here on the roadside which would make her safe, but was ten minutes in which Hope’s life was possibly in danger, or should she trust Connor and follow him to the house, potentially putting herself at risk if it was a trap? As she pondered on the question, another thought struck her, a possible third way.
Just a little further up the road, no more than fifty metres away, a track led up through the trees to join the main cliffside path from the beach. It was a little used track, because, unlike the path from the beach, it was steep and did not afford the same views. The advantage now though was that it led directly to the edge of Ivan Fletchers property. It would take her a few minutes to climb, but once she did, she would be able to approach his house from the back, hopefully unseen. It was getting dark for they were close now to the shortest day, and if she kept close to the tree line, she would possibly be able to get right up to the house. There she could try and look through the windows to see what, if anything, was happening. If nothing else it would give her the element of surprise. Her mind made up she quickly ran along the road to the small wooden gate that signalled the start of the path. Pushing it open, she picked her way quickly up the path, tripping on roots and trying to avoid being clawed at by the gorse bushes that were dotted below the trees. She wished she had a torch, or her phone, so that she could have something to light her way, but she hadn’t and there was no use complaining. The longer it took her the darker it would get and so she pressed on. Eventually she reached the top and stood on the edge of the cliff.
She could see the house to her right, ablaze with light. It was a good four hundred metres away and the grounds were vast and well lit. She would have no trouble getting closer if she kept to the shadows of the trees, but she would struggle once she had to leave the trees and run across open ground. Just as she was about to turn and make her way closer to the house, she heard a noise from the direction of the house and froze. Within seconds she saw Connor, his cream anorak billowing out behind him, running across the back lawn in the direction of the cliff top. And as her eyes followed him, she became aware of another sound from the cliffs in front of her, the sound of people arguing, their raised voices carrying in the still, cold air.
The police had to be close, but there was no time to waste. Scrambling to her feet she ran along the cliff path which was well lit by the light from the house. She knew that she was on a course to meet Connor and also knew that had hadn’t seen her yet. As she kept him in her sight line, she could see that he wasn’t looking around him as he ran, but that his attention was focused on something straight ahead of him, on the cliff edge itself.
She soon found out what it was. On the edge of the cliff, Hope was standing between Ivan and Imelda who each had hold of one of her arms and seemed to be trying to pull the old lady apart between them. Hope was standing a few feet away from the cliff edge, and seemed remarkably calm given that between them the two siblings appeared to be trying to tear her frail arms from their sockets. Ivan and Imelda were too busy screaming at each other to notice the arrival of Connor and April and they both paused a few metres away from the trio.
“Let her go” Imelda screamed at her brother. “Ivan this has got to stop”. There was none of the assured confidence that had been in her tone the other times that April heard her speak.
“It’s too late Imelda, who is going to miss this nosy old bat? With her out of the way nobody knows”.
“I know” Imelda shouted, her voice high and shrill “I can’t let you do this. I can’t believe what you have done. Let her go Ivan, it is not too late”.
“Get your hands off her” The tone was stern, the voice authoritative, and for the first time April heard the trace of a South African accent. Why had she never heard it before? It was faint but unmistakeable and made Connor’s voice sound deeper somehow.
“Don’t be stupid Isa, you are involved as well. We can’t let this old busybody ruin what we planned. We are family we stick together”.
“We never planned this Uncle Ivan, I never agreed to this. I said I would help you but not like this. This has got completely out of control”. He took a step forward towards his uncle. “Let her go”.
“You’re like Grandpa” Ivan snarled; his voice contorted with rage. “He was weak, would never take the final step to get what he deserved. Was always happy to let others make the money whilst he made do with the scraps from their table”. He wrestled Hope away from Imelda, who had momentarily been distracted by the appearance of her son. “You have to be ruthless in business, if things don’t happen the way you want them to, you have to make them happen”. He manhandled Hope to the edge of the cliff and Imelda screamed and made a lunge for him. But it was too late.
Ivan shoved Hope who stumbled just as Isa leapt the couple of metres that separated them and planted a punch on the side of his uncle’s face, just below the eye. Ivan’s reflexes made him take a step back and he involuntarily yanked Hope, who fell off the cliffside. She would have plunged to her death if it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of Imelda, who dived after her and managed to grab the sleeve of her coat. As Ivan and Isa traded punches, the older man taller, but Isa young and strong, April grabbed hold of Imelda’s ankles and stopped her falling down the cliff herself. She could see that Hope was not in immediate danger as the wily old lady had managed to grab on to a tree stump with her free hand, but they couldn’t hold this position much longer. Looking back, she could see that Isa had knocked Ivan to the ground and was standing over him.
She was just about to shout him over to help her, when she heard shouting from the direction of the house. Craning her neck around she could see a group of people running across the grounds. The flashing of blue lights illuminated the house and the trees behind. She felt strong hands grabbing her by the shoulders and she was lifted to her feet, whilst others rescued Imelda and Hope from the cliff edge. Imelda in tears, the mascara running down her cheeks, took a step towards her son but a policewoman intercepted her and led her away. Isa and Ivan were handcuffed and led towards the house. Isa stayed silent whilst Ivan shouted obscenities, although it wasn’t clear whether these were directed at the police, his sister, his nephew or everyone.
A paramedic put a blanket around Hope’s shoulders and led her towards an ambulance that had driven across the lawn. She tried to refuse to get into it, but the paramedic insisted.
“I’ll be alright, stop fussing” she protested, but the pained expression on her face and the constant rubbing of her arms where she had been pulled showed that she wasn’t alright. “It is for the b
est Hope, you need to get checked out” April said smiling, although she didn’t feel like smiling. She could not believe that Ivan had been prepared to kill Hope, and felt guilty that it all seemed to be linked to the land her café stood on. If she had realised what this was all about, she would have sold the land to have stopped this madness. Much as she loved where she had lived, nowhere was worth a life.
“Your grandma would have been proud of you” Hope said from inside the ambulance.
“For what?” April answered. “I haven’t done anything”
“For not giving in”.
April felt guilty for the thought that she had just been having. “There is a world of difference between not giving in when you don’t know what you are not giving in to, and willingly making a stand” she argued. “I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have sold if I had known what this was all about. It doesn’t seem worth it somehow does it?”
“You wouldn’t have given in” Hope shook her head. “No matter what knockbacks you got, you were still intent on keeping the café going. Ivan Fletcher knew that, and I believe that is what made him keep on doing more and more harm. He hated to lose and you were beating him”.