“I don’t trust him.”
“We don’t have to trust him. Just sell his house, buy him another one and collect the commission.”
Andrew laughed out loud. That sounded like the Ella of old, the Ella he had not heard from for a long time. He was smiling as he sat at his desk again. His suspicion that Jason Laide was trying to buy the fifty acres in Ballyhaven was ridiculous. So ridiculous that he banished the thought from his mind and got on with his day’s work.
* * *
Ella already had three customers interested in Sharon and Jason Laide’s home. She was standing in their house now, waiting as the third set of viewers looked around. They were making some very promising remarks. Ella had only to sit back and let the clients outbid each other.
She glanced at her watch as she waved the people off. Just enough time to get to Peter Sheehan’s office without rushing too much. By now, he should have the results of her blood tests and a programme organised for her recovery. He should have. He must.
She had to wait ten minutes in reception before Dr Peter Sheehan finally came to the door of his office and called her in.
Today he was wearing a beige sweater and snug jeans. He seated her in front of his desk and then went to sit behind it himself.
“How have you been since I saw you last, Mrs Ford?”
“You tell me. What did my blood tests show?”
“They don’t tell me how you feel. Only you can do that.”
Words like hopeful and hopeless, confident and despairing, tumbled around Ella’s head. Opposites. Feelings pulling and dragging in all directions. From the terror of Karen Trevor’s perpetual dying to the desperate need to regain control of her mind, of her life.
“I thought I was finding a way back,” she said. “I felt strong after talking to you. Confident. But then . . .”
To her shame, Ella felt tears behind her eyelids. Hot and salty, they welled and spilled over onto her cheeks. She dashed them impatiently away with her hand and took a deep breath. Peter Sheehan was regarding her impassively with his clear green eyes. Not commenting, not helping. Just sitting there like a judgemental green-eyed statue, mentally noting every tear, every quivering breath. God damn him!
“It’s still happening. All the time. Everywhere. Anywhere. It happens.”
“What happens?”
“Don’t play the psychiatrist game with me! You know. I told you. I see Karen Trevor. Injured and bleeding. Dying.”
“Karen Trevor, who died in your accident.”
“Did she? She figures a lot in my life for a dead woman.”
Ella heard the hysteria and anger in her own voice. Suddenly she felt mortified. Andrew would be embarrassed if he knew she was shouting at his old school friend. Fuck Andrew too! Why wasn’t he here with her? Where was the support from her husband, the understanding? True, she had told him very little about her . . . visions but he had not tried very hard to reach her, had he?
“Andrew probably thinks I’m mad,” she blurted out.
“Probably?”
“Well, we never actually discuss his opinion of my mental state.”
Realising how very bitter and petulant she sounded, Ella dropped her head, shielding her face from Peter Sheehan’s perceptive gaze. He asked her for the log of events he had advised her to keep. She had to admit then that she had forgotten, maybe deliberately, to commit any of her mental torture to paper. That would have given the visions of Karen Trevor an authenticity she was not prepared to handle. She heard him get up from his desk and walk to the other side of the room.
“Come and sit here, Ella. Do you mind if I call you Ella? Make yourself comfortable.” He indicated an armchair.
When she was settled, he seated himself in the upholstered chair opposite. “Now,” he said, “you are going to tell me everything you remember about the accident. Every little detail of that day. Everything you felt. Are you ready?”
Ella was ready. Without difficulty she recounted all the events of that day from the torrential rain to her last memory of Karen Trevor’s wrecked 4x4.
“You’ve been back to the accident site?” he asked when Ella had finished.
“Many times,” she replied. “That road leads to some very exclusive properties. We’ve been involved in selling two of them during the past year. I don’t have a problem with the actual site of the accident. And you can also record, Dr Sheehan, that I don’t have a problem driving or with work.”
“I see. And do please call me Peter.”
“No, Peter, you don’t see. Nobody does. It’s . . .”
He put up his hand to stop her and then stood and walked to his desk. Picking up a page, he handed it to her.
“This prescription should help you sleep. That’s all for today. I’ll see you next week.”
Ella felt as if he had slapped her across the face. She had confided in him, trusted him and cried in front of him. He had even told her call him Peter. And now he was dismissing her. Pig! She stood up abruptly and took the prescription from him.
“Time up. Get out. Is that it?”
“For today,” he smiled, unruffled by her obvious anger. His eyes crinkled at the corners and the lovely white teeth flashed.
If Ella had not been so angry with Peter Sheehan she would have thought him a very attractive man. Just as well she was furious.
* * *
Jason would have said he felt vulnerable if he had recognised that quality in himself. Instead, he thought himself to be at a loose end, to be somehow unnecessary.
He had spent the morning wandering from one of his enterprises to the other. Everything was rolling along nicely. He did not need to involve himself with the day-today running any more. Just the more sensitive projects. The haulage business was being run very efficiently by the expensive team of managers he employed. He recruited them for their education, their nice accents, their image. The respectable face of Laide Haulage International. Even though he paid their wages, or their remuneration as they preferred to call it, their respect for him was only skin-deep. He knew it. Mr Laide to his face and, behind his back, ‘that lout from the wrong side of the city”.
It was the same story in his chain of dry cleaners, the printing business, his fleet of taxis, his portfolio of apartments all over the city. His club. The Eureka Club. That thickly carpeted, plushly decorated, private members club where the cream of society went to secretly indulge their need to have a gamble. Poker schools, roulette tables, blackjack. It was all there in Eureka. Van Aken supplying equipment, a management team running the place and Jason, out of sight, taking the profits. Very few people knew of his association with these businesses. He had front men in place. Apparently respectable, socially acceptable people who had all exposed some weakness which Jason had been able to exploit to his benefit. They might think he was a piece of shit but they could never, ever, allow that thought to escape.
Restless, he drove towards home. A nice long bath and a few drinks might cheer him up. As he turned the key in his front door, he admitted to himself that all the alcohol or bath oil in the world could not ease the ache in his belly. Throwing his keys on the hall table, he went upstairs and straight to the bedroom. The door was opened back. He hated open doors. Hated letting his privacy out or other people into his private space. He remembered that Ella Ford would probably have been showing clients around today. Nosey fuckers, poking and prying into his home. Into his bedroom for Christ’s sake! Peering at the four-poster where he and Sharon slept, where they made love.
Tossing his jacket on the bed, he walked into the ensuite bathroom and turned on the taps in the sunken bath. He searched the cabinet until he found the blue bottle of bath oil which Sharon used. When he tipped some into the water the scent of Sharon instantly filled the room. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, longing for the sight and touch of the only woman he had ever loved. His lady. His wife.
Stretched out in the fragrant, warm water, he fell asleep.
Jason woke with a start and almo
st slipped under. The water was cool now. Shivering, he got out of the bath and dried himself off vigorously, getting angrier with each rub of the towel. What in the fuck was he doing here on his own while his wife was off enjoying herself on the ski slopes of Austria? Screwing someone else! Opening those smooth, long legs to some gigolo! Going into the dressing room, he grabbed clothes and threw them on, put on his shoes, combed his hair and then stood there. Lost. Lonely. Longing for Sharon.
Remembering the brochure on Manor House, he went out to the car to get it. He brought it into the study. He liked to sit here in the room that Sharon had decorated especially for him. The walls were oak-panelled and the shelves were lined with leather-bound books he had never read. And never would. Turning on the green desk lamp, he spread the brochure out and examined it. From the rose gardens to the stables to the magnificently spacious rooms, this house was Sharonesque. Class. Style. He flipped over the page and gasped. It should be bloody class. It should be fucking Buckingham Palace for the price! He quickly worked out the Fords’ commission and decided they would definitely owe him a few favours if the sale went through.
Picking up the phone, Jason dialled the international code for Austria and then tapped in the local area code for Salzburg.
As it rang he pictured the three-storey building on Junkergasse, Sharon sitting by the huge open fireplace in the lounge, glowing after a day on the ski slopes. It had been the place where he and Sharon had spent most time together in the early days. Not too much time. Not even then, when she could not seem to get enough of him. Then too, everything had been on her terms. Dispensing just enough sharing to keep him happy, enough sex to keep him interested. He had always felt uncomfortable in the Junkergasse house. Not in control. It was her property, bought by her with money she had inherited from her father. Her house, her rules.
The ring went on and on, persistent and unanswered. Just like the question Jason tried to silence in his head. Persistent and unanswered. Why in the fuck had Sharon married him in the first place and why did he allow her to continue to use him? Humiliate him?
He slammed the phone down. Maybe she was not in Salzburg at all. Or maybe she had been lying naked on the thick rug in front of the log fire in Junkergasse, a muscular young man lying beside her, both laughing as they listened to the phone ringing.
“Ignore that, it’s just my husband,” she would say in that smoky voice which sent shivers down his spine.
He could ring her mobile but did not want to know it if she was with one of her lovers.
He stormed out of the house and jumped into his car. He drove quickly. He knew exactly where he could go to regain his feeling of control. He knew exactly the woman to restore his masculine pride. To make him proud of himself again.
* * *
Deep in the cellar which ran underneath the entire length of the house on Junkergasse, Sharon had been aware that the phone upstairs was ringing. She had ignored it.
Nearby the gas boiler hissed as it pumped heat throughout the three-storey building, the freezer hummed, stacks of unused furniture and discarded bric-a-brac surrounded her, racks of wine bottles glinted in the light from the bare bulbs which hung low from the ceiling. She had come down here on a sorting mission. What to put in storage and what to discard. Seasons of melting snows had seeped through the foundations of the house and a fine mould now laced the lower walls. The cellar would have to be cleared by next week, when work was due to begin on dry-lining the leaky old cavern.
Sharon shivered. This was the only area of the house where she felt uncomfortable. More than that. Terrified. Every time she came down the steep stone steps into the dark space, she relived her nightmare. Her eyes were drawn now to the furthest corner where hampers of old linen were piled high. That was where she had hidden from Jason on that awful night five years ago. That was where Jason had found her, curled up and shaking. He had beaten her almost senseless. She walked slowly towards the corner now, one roll of green stickers and one roll of red in her hand. A guide for the workers. Green to keep and put in storage. Red to discard. Dump. Destroy.
Her fingers shook as she peeled off a red sticker and stuck it onto the bottom hamper. Some very fine linens were stored in there but nothing was so fine that it could obliterate the memory of that night. Working faster now, she put a red sticker on each hamper. Her legs began to shake too, just as they had on that night as she had run down the cellar steps and hidden here. A refuge from Jason’s rage. She had felt so safe in Junkergasse up until then. Had thought herself clever and resourceful. And she had been. She had managed to buy this house, book her flight, wind up all her affairs in Ireland and come here without Jason ever suspecting that his wife, his new bride, was about to leave him. She had not reckoned on the depth of Jason’s anger or the far reach of his influence. He had tracked her down and beaten her up. He had kicked and punched while she had pleaded for mercy.
She slid down the length of the wicker chests now and dropped onto the floor as she had then. She heard their voices again, hers whimpering and weak, his piercing and trembling with rage.
“Bitch!” he had roared as he grabbed her throat. “Nobody runs out on Jason Laide! You’re my wife. You’ll always be my wife. You’ll never, ever, escape from me. You’re mine.”
“I’m leaving you, Jason,” she gasped. “This marriage was a mistake. For both of us.”
He had put his hands around her throat then and squeezed. As consciousness faded she saw his eyes water with tears of rage. When she had woken, those same teary eyes were staring at her. Jason Laide was crying, swearing eternal love, vowing that he had never meant to hurt her.
“Don’t ever run away from me again, Shar! We’re meant to be together.”
Weak, terrified, in pain and fear for her life, Sharon had then made the second biggest mistake of her life after marrying Jason. She had agreed to stay with him. Sorry now that he had hurt her, afraid that his reputation as a macho man would suffer if she left him, he had agreed to her terms and she to his. And so the farce of Laides’ open marriage had been born. Separate lives in different countries but yet spending enough time together to appear to be a couple. Enough to fool onlookers but not enough to fool themselves. Not Sharon anyway.
She levered herself up from the floor now. It was time to take control. This mockery of a marriage would have to end. Coming down here to the cellar had made her face her fears. He could, and would, kill her and worse still, those she loved most, if he knew the truth about her life in Salzburg. His arrogance had protected her up until now. He believed she was too terrorised to do anything he would not approve of. He was right. She was terrified. But there were stronger emotions than fear.
He was talking now about buying a bigger house in Ireland, getting more insistent about her spending time there, hitting her harder when she would not agree quickly enough.
She hesitated before opening the safe. Her life, her freedom depended on her instinct being right. Jason’s papers were in there. The taped and sealed envelopes he always asked her to bring back with her when she was returning from Ireland. And always with the warning that he would break her neck if she ever opened them. She prayed, her lips moving silently, as she picked up the first envelope and tore open the tape that secured it. If she was right, if these envelopes contained evidence of illegal deals, tax evasion and undeclared income, then she would have something with which to bargain, something to barter for her freedom. To outwit him.
Ten minutes later, ripped envelopes, torn bindings and papers lay as she had dropped them. All covered in Jason’s handwriting. She had found what she was looking for. The records of offshore accounts and shell companies were here. So too was page after page of extortion, bribery and blackmail. There were photographs and videos too, all neatly labelled. And now she knew why he would resort to any measures to protect this hoard of filth. This evil on which his empire was built.
A noise sounded. A whispery creak. It was the gentle groan of ageing timbers but it made Sharon jump. Her
shocked senses snapped back and she heard herself sob. Jesus! How could she have been so cowardly? Why had she allowed him to bully her into being his courier for all this filth? Stupid, stupid woman! To think that she had married this creature! An apt partner for a man idiotic enough to detail his every crime in his own handwriting and then to store the evidence.
Sharon closed her eyes. She had tried to be so clever. To take control. A double life? No problem! And she’d thought it had worked. Jason had indulged what he believed to be her penchant for foreign property and young lovers. Because, in his way, he loved her. She was probably the only person in the whole world for whom Jason Laide felt genuine emotion. She had only ever intended her ploy as a temporary solution anyway. A stopgap until . . . until what?
Everything was changed now. No more waiting for the right moment to rid herself of Jason Laide. No more running back to Salzburg and pretending for a few glorious months that he did not exist. Her repulsion now outweighed her fear. It was time to do what she should have done a long time ago. It was time to divorce Jason.
A video in the pile caught her eye. She picked it up. It was labelled in Jason’s childish handwriting: Marie Murphy aka Maxine Doran. Then she climbed back upstairs and put it in the video machine. She switched it off after a few minutes and brought it back to the cellar. There was no need to see any more. She knew now why Maxine Doran always seemed to be at Jason’s beck and call. She did not have the stomach to check the other videos or photos. They would all be the same. Just different victims.
Slowly, carefully, Sharon put all Jason’s papers, videos and photographs together in a neat pile and carried them up to her bedroom. She locked them into a drawer and poured herself a very stiff brandy. Then sitting on the side of her bed, she cried for the girl she had been and for the woman she had become.
* * *
Maxine hated night flights. Or more accurately, she hated night landings. After dark, all airports had a sameness. The lit-up runway and city lights beneath her now could equally be Beirut or Cairo, Dublin or Delhi. She could have waited until morning. Maybe she should have. When she’d left Paris, the rest of the fashion crew were preparing to go clubbing, living it up in the city where style and glamour were ingrained in the very fabric of the infrastructure, in the air the elegant Parisians breathed.
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