He dragged a hand across his eyes, rubbing them viciously. “It was a complete shock when I heard someone calling. I thought it had to be her, I thought it was the girl come back, that they’d planned to meet. I only meant to push her out of the way, to make sure she didn’t see me. But then .. . then I got angry, I wanted to punish her for being in your house, I wanted to punish her for behaving like a cheap .. .”
He trailed off, the energy went out of him, he sank back on his haunches and lowered his hands onto his knees. He whispered, “But it was you.”
There was a long pause in which the only sound was the rasp of his breathing.
Finally she asked, “And you blackmailed Ben?”
“I wanted my money,” he said dully. “I wanted him to know what it was like to pay up. I’d got the proof of what he’d been up to. I used it to make sure I got my money.”
“You took what he owed you?”
“Double. Exactly double. He never worked that out! It never occurred
to him that I could have done such a thing, you see.” He was still
close enough to tears that he laughed easily. “He thought ‘
The doorbell made them both start a little. They exchanged glances, Catherine’s bewildered, his afraid.
She moved towards the door. “Who is it?” she called.
“Catherine, it’s Fergal.”
She looked back towards Simon. He was still kneeling, his eyes fixed on the floor.
She opened the door a short way.
Fergal seemed immensely tall against the darkness. His expression was very stern. He said in a voice designed to carry, “Just calling by to see you’re all right, Catherine.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m all right,” she said.
Flicking his eyes towards the road, Fergal added in a whisper, “I’ve got Mike right here. We could have the police round in a jiff.”
From behind her, Simon said flatly, “He knows, Catherine. He knows everything.”
As she moved back to let Fergal pass, Catherine pretended faint irritation. “Watching over me again, were you, Fergal?”
“Oh no. Never,” he remonstrated gently. “No, if you’re to thank anyone, Catherine, it should be Mr. Devlin.”
Chapter Sixteen
Foxrock, 21st February.
Dear Catherine, Forgive me for not having been able to meet up with you for so long. Christmas seemed to arrive in a terrible rush, and then as you know I was off to the US for the best part of two weeks, and then back to a situation here that has conspired to keep me chained to my desk ever since. But Fergal tells me that you’ve had a good offer on the house. I’m glad things have moved so fast. I hope that you’ll find what you’re looking for in the way of a new place very soon. A fresh start is a great thing.
Regarding the financial matters, the final account is now complete. Fergal will give you the details. He is in London from this Saturday evening and will phone you to arrange a time to call.
I hope Bridget has been able to provide you with all the necessary liaison over the garden I’m afraid I haven’t had the time or the mind to give it proper attention. But I have every hope of getting down to Morne to see the work begin. And if, as Bridget tells me, you will be coming over before then (to plan the excavations?), then we will definitely meet, though it may have to be in Dublin.
Maeve sends her fondest love. She is good and busy.
Your friend, as ever,
Terry
Built in sturdy post-modern style on the site of a demolished church in Bayswater, the block was four years old but looked older. The agent had extolled the virtues of the stainless steel kitchens and bathrooms, but Catherine had taken the flat not for the gleam of its plumbing but for its position high on the fifth floor, its south-west-facing terrace, and the reserved parking in the basement garage below.
Arriving on this Sunday morning, letting some air in, she also discovered that you could hear church bells drifting from the direction of Hyde Park, and the faint screech of shunting trains beyond Paddington Station.
While waiting for Fergal, she took measurements and inspected the decorators’ progress. The whole place was to be white: a space intentionally blank. She would impose some sort of mark with her antiques, her pictures, and the few bits of modern furniture she had yet to choose. But possessions would be kept to a minimum. She had the instincts of an itinerant now; no sooner camped than ready to move on. It was no coincidence that the feeder road to the Westway was barely fifty yards away.
It was just before eleven when Fergal rang the bell.
“I thought we were doomed to the phone for ever.” Her smile didn’t entirely hide the reproach beneath.
He pecked her cheek. “Not for want of seeing you, Catherine.”
She gave him a conducted tour, which took all of two minutes. “A tidy little place,” he commented, with the forced interest of a man who expects little of his surroundings.
They sat on two cheap plastic chairs belonging to the decorators. A slow rain speckled the windows.
“So, what’s going on, Fergal? Why are you two rushing around like mad? You’re bad enough, but Terry ... We’ve talked twice, I think, since Christmas.”
“Oh, you know how he is, always saying he’s going to ease up, and then he’s away again, after another hotel, another enterprise.”
“It’s not that he’s gone off the idea of the garden then?”
“Oh no, it won’t be that!” he declared without hesitation. “No, it’ll be the hours he’s working, all God made and more. Which isn’t to say he won’t be keeping an eye. He always keeps an eye. You can be sure he’s fully aware of the progress of the garden.”
“So what’s this project, Fergal?”
Fergal took on the abstruse expression of someone whose lips are sealed. “Empire building, you might say.”
Taking her shrug as a display of bewilderment, Fergal hastened to add, “Oh, it’s not for the money that he does it. Never the money. The house at Foxrock, it’s not grand, you know, not by the standards of some in Dublin. No, he’s a restless spirit, that’s the truth of it. It’s in his nature to look for the next challenge. Apart from the horses and the racing, there’s little to occupy him, you see.”
“But Maeve, he’s got Maeve.”
“Aha. But then he hasn’t seen so very much of her since Christmas. She’s found herself some new friends. Students like herself. They’re always away somewhere walking the hills, or off to the films, or gone to the dancing. It’s a great thing for her, the dancing.”
“So she’s happy, Fergal?”
He made a speculative gesture. “She will be, I believe. Yes, one day.”
Catherine had an image of Maeve in a group, dancing, and of Terry going back to an empty house.
“I was hoping to meet Terry at Morne this week,” she said. “But of course it doesn’t look as though he’ll be free. When I ask Bridget what to do she just tells me to go ahead.”
“I would do that very thing then,” Fergal suggested calmly. “Go ahead.
Take it as a declaration of faith in your judgement.”
“Supposing he doesn’t like the result?”
“You can tell him he should have paid more attention,” Fergal retorted uncompromisingly.
Despite Fergal’s reassurances, Catherine couldn’t quite rid herself of the idea that, having done his duty by everyone, Terry had moved on, that, subconsciously or otherwise, he was distancing himself from the past and everything associated with the period of Maeve’s obsession. And, as Catherine hardly needed reminding, associations didn’t come much stronger than herself.
Fergal cleared his throat in the manner of someone getting down to business. “So ... I have brought what Mr. Devlin likes to call the final account.” He pulled a paper from his breast pocket and handed it to her. “He wants to know if it meets with your approval.”
It was a list of six charities, with, against each one, the sum it had received by way of anonymous do
nation. Since drugs had seemed the most likely source of the money, it had been Catherine’s idea that a large proportion of it went to addiction and rehabilitation projects. For the rest, she had left the decisions to Terry. The total came to over three-quarters of a million pounds.
“It looks fine,” she said.
“Mr. Devlin also wanted to be sure that you had received everything that was owing to you. That nothing was outstanding.”
This was Fergal’s way of asking if Ben had made over the house proceeds and signed the other papers relating to the separation settlement. “My solicitor tells me it’s all gone through,” she said.
“And the house sale?”
“Completion next week.”
“So, you’re all set then?”
She had no real reason to disagree. Her work was picking up, she had financial security again, she had this place, and a modified car in the garage below. Everything she needed, and yet, and yet .. . she felt unsettled. She was alone and lonely, of course: that was part of it.
But also, somewhere in the long process of drawing a line under the
past, she’d developed a sense of unfinished business, of matters
unresolved. Gradually,
amid the legal discussions, the house clearance, the impending divorce, the shadow of an idea had begun to form on the edge of her mind.
She grasped at it now. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
He waited attentively.
Catherine began slowly, almost casually. “It’s just a small thing. I don’t even know if you’ll be able to tell me. About the accident.. . the attack.”
A ‘>-3,’ slight wariness crept into his eyes.
“When you arrived that night, when you saw me there .. . you checked my pulse, my breathing. Presumably you checked on the bleeding too, to see where it was coming from.” She turned this into a question with a lift of her head.
Fergal’s shaggy eyebrows drew into a frown. “I did,” he said.
“And where was it coming from, the blood?”
“Your ear. Your left ear.”
“Aha,” she murmured, attempting to sound indifferent. “And that was it? Nowhere else?”
“So far as I could tell.”
“And Maeve .. . she’d tried to mop up the blood?”
Fergal’s eyes were very still, and she had the feeling he was way ahead of her. “Apparently so.”
“A pair of panties, wasn’t it?”
“I was not aware of what they were at the time. I thought -if I thought at all that it was a handkerchief.”
Catherine made a show of absorbing this. “And the scarf? Did you see the scarf?”
There was a taut silence. “No,” he said.
Catherine shrugged lightly. “But you knew she’d left a scarf?”
He hesitated. “Not then. I was told later.”
“And you know where it was found?”
She wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment that made him grow uncomfortable, or the confirmation of where this had been leading. “I believe I heard a while later.”
She looked away to the window and the misty rooftops. “When Maeve was ill,” she said in a low voice, ‘was it just chance that she got septicaemia, Fergal? That she nearly died?”
She left it several seconds before looking back at him.
He was staring at her obdurately.
“Or was there a procedure that went wrong?”
“I couldn’t answer that,” he growled, dropping his eyes.
She asked so quietly that it was almost a whisper, “Was there an abortion, Fergal?”
He tightened his lips. “I could not say.”
“Could not or must not?”
He didn’t reply.
“I understand,” she murmured, turning her head to scrutinise the window once more. “Suppose, though, that I simply asked you to indicate if I was wrong nothing more. Just... if I was wrong.” She left this thought in the air for a moment while she transferred her gaze to her hands. “The reason I ask, Fergal, is that I want to leave the whole thing behind. I hardly need tell you how important it is to me. But I’m still finding it difficult. Partly, I’m finding it difficult to understand why Maeve should have been so ... persistent. But if you were to indicate to me that I wasn’t wrong, then it would begin to make sense, you see. I would understand why she did what she did, why she came to the house that day. I would feel very much clearer.” In her mind, she added, about Ben as well. And about Terry. “It would make it that much easier to put it all behind me.”
Unable to explain it any better, she finally brought her eyes up to his.
His frown had returned, deeper than ever, his eyes hunted across the floor as he wrestled with some inner debate. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision. His mournful eyes lifted to hers and he affirmed with a soft sigh, “No, Catherine, you would not be wrong.”
She embraced him solemnly at the door. “Tell Bridget I’ll be coming to Morne on Thursday. If she could make the arrangements.”
The sky was still stormy from recent rain, but as the car left the village and turned up the lane the clouds seemed to break up a little, the air to brighten. Passing through the gates, climbing towards the house, the rhododendrons drooped and glistened, tattoos of rain dropped from overhanging branches, and the surface of the drive ran with a web of rivulets.
Catherine had expected a gardener’s car, or the golf buggy, or both, but there were three jalopies and two vans outside the house, one with ladders, another with faded sign writing that said Decorators.
Though it had stopped raining, the driver insisted on holding an umbrella over her. He promised to return in three hours.
Inside the house there were dustsheets and ladders. The hall had been painted a soft cream, the drawing room was turning a slightly warmer shade of white. The floors had been sanded and sealed. The dining-room walls had been filled and rubbed down, and a sample of eggshell blue daubed across the furthest wall in a broad cross. A selection of curtain samples had been pinned to the shutters. Through the doorway to the kitchen, she glimpsed new units in pale wood and a gleaming hardwood floor.
The men were taking a smoking break in a corner of the drawing room. “Ah, if you’re after Mick, he’ll be back directly,” one of them told her.
She waited in the dining room, sitting at the trestle table, most of which had been taken over by paint pots and rolls of lining paper. She tried to clear her mind for the meeting with the landscaping contractors and tree specialists, but all she could think was, So he’s going to use the place after all. She examined her emotions with curiosity, and decided she was glad.
A vehicle approached the house with a soft hum and drew up noisily on the gravel. A car door slammed, footsteps sounded, the front door cannoned open and crashed against the stop, and through the open doorway she saw Terry stride across the hall to peer into the drawing room. Half way back across the hall he saw her and hastened forward again.
She laughed as she called out his name.
He took both her hands in his and smiled. When he kissed her, his cheek was smooth and she caught a scent of aftershave.
He stood back and regarded her appraisingly, and she noticed his eyes, which were clear and bright, and very steady.
“You look well, Catherine.”
He seemed taller and to have lost a little weight, though that may have been the effect of his suit, which was dark and beautifully cut and undoubtedly expensive.
“I didn’t think you were able to come!” she said.
“It’s amazing what Bridget can do with the diary when she really tries.”
He continued to survey her openly and fondly for quite a while before turning to pull a chair up to the table. As he sat down, he slipped the button of his jacket and smoothed his tie, and it occurred to her that he spent most of his life in such well-made clothes, and that the image she’d held of him all these months, the rather self-conscious figure in the misguided gardening outfit,
had been quite wrong.
She said, “Your empire won’t crumble while you’re away then?”
He grinned. “It’s the vanity of self-made men to think that the ship will hit the rocks the moment their backs are turned.” He rotated a hand, and she remembered the unexpected grace of his gestures. “I should have two hours at least before danger looms.”
“That long.” She turned down her mouth in mock rebuke.
“But I’ll take as long as I need today, because it’s not often I get the chance to see you, Catherine.”
“Entirely your fault, Terry.”
Beneath his smile, he was rueful as he said, “Yes, my life is madness at the moment.”
She indicated the room. “You didn’t tell me you were doing the house.”
“Ah? Didn’t I?” He affected a bafflement that was entirely unconvincing. “It’s just a quick coat of paint really, to make it presentable.”
“But the kitchen .. . the curtains and colours. You’ve got someone helping you? A designer?”
He gave her an odd look as though he wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret this question. “A designer? Yes, but no one I know,” he said with a quiet emphasis whose significance she could only guess at. “Bridget organised someone.”
“And you’re going to use the place? You’re going to come regularly?”
“Ah, well .. . we’ll see.” Abruptly, he changed the subject. “Now, Catherine, I want to know the final account? You were happy with it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good, because I can tell you, it’s been the devil’s own job giving away money that you do not own and cannot possibly account for, money that will get you into jail quicker than a raid on the Central Bank. My financial man’s been red-eyed and drowned in sweat. Like someone handed a hot coal trying desperately to pass the damn thing on without dropping it on his foot.” A gleam of mischief came into Terry’s eyes, and she had the feeling he had secretly enjoyed the challenge.
“However it was done, it was worth it.”
“Indeed it was, Catherine. Indeed.” Risking the decorators’ dust, he slid his elbows onto the table and rested his chin on his hands. “I also thought it prudent to make some enquiries about our mutual acquaintance.” He added anxiously, “If you should like to know, that is?”
Keep Me Close Page 38