Ebb and Flow

by Mary O'Sullivan

  “Where do you hide him when I go to Salzburg?”

  “Frieda’s daughter and son-in-law keep him in their home. You met them, remember? They brought you hill-walking. It was never a problem. You rarely visited and seldom stayed long.”

  “What have you told him about his father?”

  “That he’s very busy travelling around the world making money. I’ll be honest with Harry when he’s old enough to understand.”

  “Harry? Harry.”

  Jason’s shoulders began to shake. Sharon watched as the bully, the blackmailer, the drug pusher cried. She walked across and sat beside him. Tentatively she put her hand on his shaking shoulders. He leaned against her and she felt his hot tears on her neck.

  “You were so wrong, Shar. I would have been a good father to him. I would have given him everything I didn’t have when I was a child.”

  Tears welled in Sharon’s eyes now too. What had she done? What in the name of God had she done?

  “When would you have told me if I hadn’t seen this photo?”

  “Not until he was a lot older. Until he could decide for himself whether he wanted to see you or not.”

  “If you had been a better wife and I had my son here I would have made different decisions. None of us would be in this mess now.”

  Sharon pulled away from him. He was doing it again. Confusing her. Fooling her. Nobody had made him into a blackmailer and drug dealer. That had been his choice and he would probably have made the same choices even if he had known about Harry from the beginning. She opened her bag and took out a photograph of Harry, smiling, his red hair gleaming.

  “Here take this. It’s better than any your spy has taken. You can keep this photograph, Jason. But don’t ever come near us.”

  Jason stared at the picture of his son. A mirror image of himself at the same age stared back. But Harry was stronger, better nourished.

  “What are you going to do?” Sharon asked. “For Harry’s sake I’m not going to turn you in to the police but other people may. For instance Maxine Doran or Oliver Griffin.”

  Jason looked up at her and smiled. “I think I’ll go on safari.”

  Then he wiped his eyes on his sleeve, hauled himself up off the chaise longue with the lemon upholstery, kissed her on the cheek and walked out of the room holding the picture of his son in his hand.

  Sharon sank back onto the seat he had just vacated and cried for Harry. What cruel mistakes both his parents had made.

  * * *

  Even in the dim light of his study, Ella noticed the hollows underneath Rob Trevor’s cheekbones. The man seemed to be rapidly caving in. Ella sat, not even sure if Rob was aware of her presence.

  “Quite a storm brewing up outside,” she said but, getting no response, she tried again.

  “Is that Jason Laide’s car I saw parked at the front of the house?”

  Rob looked up and his eyes glittered with an anger Ella had not guessed he could possess.

  “Yes. The thug is here. Could you believe he threatened me with violence? I don’t know what would have happened if his wife had not calmed him down.”

  “Sharon is here too?”

  “They’re in the drawing room. I should have thrown them out. I don’t want that man anywhere near me.”

  “Did Andrew ring you this morning?”

  “He did. He told me there may be an investigation into Laide’s business affairs. That I would be well advised not to deal with him. I withdrew my agreement to sell to him. That’s why he went berserk.”

  Pity tugged at Ella’s heart. In Rob’s obvious distressed state it must seem to him that he could not get rid of Manor House. That it was holding on to him, sucking him into its dark corners and creaky attics. She reached across and gently stroked his cold hand.

  “Maxine Doran really wants this house. She’ll buy it from you and then you can get on with the rest of your life.”

  “She died nearly twenty-five years ago.”

  “Rob, what’s the matter with you? She’s not even twenty-five yet. Maxine is alive and well. And with my husband.”

  “No. No. I mean Lady Harriet Wellsley. I changed my mind about investigating Lady Harriet. I hired a private detective. I had to. I wanted to understand before I left here why Karen had been so obsessed by her. All those hours spent staring at Lady Harriet’s portrait when she should have been talking to her child. And to me.”

  Rob’s gaze went off into the distance again. He really appeared to be at the limits of his stress tolerance. Ella squeezed his hand to remind him she was there.

  “And? What did this detective find out?”

  “He emailed this morning. In the early nineteen hundreds Lady Harriet married a stable hand named Murphy. She stayed with him for twenty years in some little hovel in the inner city. The Wellsley clan, of course, disowned her. It seems she had been saving pennies here and there for the twenty years. When she had enough together she bought her passage to South Africa and . . .”

  Rob paused again. This time Ella left him to whatever thoughts he had until he was ready to continue.

  “The Wellsleys have distant cousins in South Africa. They own a big plantation. Harriet lived out the rest of her days with them. She never spoke about Ireland. They didn’t even know she had a son. She was ninety-nine years old when she died.”

  Ella thought of the beautiful young girl in the portrait, full of youth and beauty. What a sad and lonely outcome all that promise had.

  “Where’s the portrait now?” she asked.

  “I burnt it.”

  Ella stared at him. My God! What was that painting worth?

  “I took it out of the frame this morning, brought it to the courtyard, poured petrol on it and watched as it crackled and curled. And I’ll tell you, Ella, I felt such relief when there was nothing left of it but a handful of ashes. I must be insane. Of course I am. Mad with guilt and grief. But I believe Lady Harriet Wellsley was trapped by her father’s curse. She was undead. Now, she is gone. I think I heard her . . .”

  Rob stopped talking. Whatever he had thought he heard, he decided not to pass on. Ella reached for his cold hand and held it in hers. She too felt relief that the beautiful portrait with the very ugly history was no more. But Rob was still haunted by ghosts. She saw them in his eyes. The ghosts of his wife and child. He seemed very much alone with his torturous memories.

  “So what now, Rob? Are you satisfied that Karen’s problems had nothing to do with the unfortunate Lady Harriet? Will you be able to put all this behind you?”

  “Of course not. I lost my wife and child. I’ll always believe though this goddamn house had something to do with the way Karen was. The way she died. I can’t wait to get out of it. In fact I won’t wait any more. I’m going to London to live. Leaving in the morning. You and your husband can sell the house for me. Betty will look after it until the new owners arrive.”

  Ella jumped at the sound of a loud crash. “Damn!” Rob muttered. “Bad storm. Another slate gone.”

  Ella shivered. She stood, anxious now to leave here and get home before the storm got too bad. She extended her hand to Rob. “Good luck in London, Rob. I hope you’ll be happy there.”

  Rob stood up and walked around the desk. He stooped and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, Ella. You’ve been very kind to me. I hope you’ll be happy too.”

  Thoughts of Cuanowen and her new life plan ran through Ella’s mind. Yes. She would be happy. After the sadness of her failed marriage had eased, after the accident and Karen Trevor had become a distant memory. After she had settled into her new job.

  Rob walked with her to the door. As they passed the drawing room Sharon Laide emerged, red-eyed and very pale except for one livid patch on her left cheek.

  “Are you all right, Sharon?”

  She nodded her head in reply to Ella’s question. “I’ll be fine. I just need to get back to Salzburg.”

  Rob cleared his throat. “Mrs Laide, there’s the matter of your husband’s deposi
t on this house. I’d like to return it. Will I give it to you now? It’s cash.”

  “I’ll bet it is. Give it to Jason, please. I don’t get involved in his financial affairs. Goodnight.”

  Rob shrugged and raised an eyebrow as Sharon turned and walked out through the hall. She struggled with the latch on the big door. Rob opened it for her and both she and Ella went out together into the storm. It was already dark, the thick wads of black cloud smothering what light there might have been. The strong winds were swirling sheets of rain in all directions. They ran for their cars, holding their coats over their heads.

  Ella jumped into her car and wiped the rain from her face with a tissue. She looked out at the windswept old house and sighed with satisfaction. This would definitely be the last time she would lay eyes on it. She felt strong enough now to stare into its granite face and not be touched by its coldness.

  Just as she turned the key in the ignition Sharon pulled up beside her and hooted. She indicated for Ella to lead the way. Ella waved back and put her car in gear. They drove in convoy down the avenue and out onto the narrow road with the stone ditches and overflowing channels. They drove slowly and carefully until they came to the hairpin bend. The bend that Ella knew so well. Every stone and bramble. The bend where over a year ago she had been critically injured and Karen and Ian Trevor had lost their lives.

  The bend where Jason Laide’s car now lay embedded in the stone wall, lashed by wind and rain. The bend where Jason lay crushed and broken in his car. His head a bloody mess. A picture of a little boy clutched in his hand.

  The bend where Jason Laide lay dead.

  Chapter 33

  Sharon rode in the ambulance taking her husband to the city hospital. As Ella watched it disappear off into the distance, blue light now switched off, she realised for the first time that she was drenched to the skin, freezing and beginning to feel the onset of shock. When a paramedic bundled her into the emergency car to drive her to hospital she did not object.

  “Is there anyone you would like us to contact for you?” the paramedic asked.

  Ella shook her head. She would ring Andrew herself as soon as her fingers thawed out. For now she just wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Her increasingly nightmarish thoughts. Images of Jason Laide’s smashed head floated before her eyes, interspersed with the too familiar images of Karen Trevor bleeding and dying.

  She looked out the passenger window at the accident scene. In the lashing rain police were measuring and writing reports, the flashing blue lights of their patrol cars bouncing off the twisted metal of Jason’s car.

  “That’s the second fatal crash at that corner in just a year,” the paramedic said as he steered his car carefully past the police cordon.

  Ella didn’t answer him. She was desperately trying to hold onto the strength she had lost for so long and had just recently rediscovered. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to imagine Cuanowen. The beach, the sea, the rocks, the deep pools teeming with marine life. The future.

  The rest of the journey passed with Ella counting the beats of the windscreen wipers, noting the buildings they were passing, listening to the crackling reports on the car radio and every so often taking her mental journey to Cuanowen. Everything and anything to stop her thinking of what had happened on that cursed stretch of road.

  In the hospital Ella was quickly and efficiently checked over, dried off and heated up. When she rang Andrew to tell him what had happened some instinct told her he was with Maxine. She assured him that she was all right and there was no need for him to come to the hospital.

  “My car is still at the accident scene. Would you collect it?” she asked.

  “Of course. Then I’ll collect you from the hospital on the way home.”

  Home. Where was that? Not the house she had shared with Andrew. Not the house in Cuanowen she had shared with her parents. She didn’t have a home to go to, did she?

  “No, thanks, Andrew. I must go to Sharon. See if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “Of course. I can’t say I feel sorry about Jason. But I do pity Sharon. Just as well she was here and not away on one of her trips. Are you sure you’re okay, El? It must have been awful for you. Like history repeating itself.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she answered more impatiently than she had intended. It was just that she still wasn’t sure of the answer herself.

  A care assistant provided dry clothes for her from the stock of donated items the hospital kept for such emergencies. Ella shrugged off the hospital gown she had been given and dressed herself in a brown skirt with box pleats and a polka-dot blouse. “You’d better keep yourself warm,” the care assistant said, handing her an oversized Aran sweater. They both laughed at the finished effect. Before she left the Accident and Emergency, Ella had to listen to the advice the nurse was giving. Yes, she’d watch out for any vomiting, headache or signs of delayed shock, she promised, before making her way to the morgue.

  She found Sharon, still wet and ghostly white sitting in the corridor outside the mortuary door. A nurse was seated beside her but Sharon looked very much alone. In her hand she was holding a photograph. It was bloodstained. The same photo that Jason had been clutching in his dead hand. Ella nodded at the nurse and then sat on the other side of Sharon, slipping her arm around the shaking shoulders.

  “I did love him once,” Sharon whispered. “He wasn’t all bad. He didn’t deserve this.”

  Ella squeezed Sharon’s shoulder. It was shaking more now. She exchanged glances with the nurse.

  “I think you should see the doctor soon, Mrs Laide,” the nurse suggested.

  Sharon continued on talking as if she had not heard her. “It’s my fault, you know. I never told him about Harry. Not until this evening in Manor House. He was looking at the photo. That’s why he crashed. I know it.” She held the blood-soaked picture out to Ella.

  The child in the photo could not be anyone else but Jason Laide’s son. He had red hair, pale skin, light blue eyes. A mirror image of his father. Ella stared. She had never known Sharon and Jason had a child. If what Sharon was saying was true, neither had Jason. No wonder he crashed the car, no wonder he took his eyes off the road. He had died because he and Sharon could not be honest with each other, not because, because . . .

  Ella suddenly took her arm from around Sharon and stood up.

  “Sharon, go get checked out. See the doctor. Change your clothes. Then we’ll meet and I’ll help you make arrangements.”

  Responding to the new authority in Ella’s voice, Sharon nodded agreement and stood up. Just as the nurse put her arm around her to lead her away, a paramedic came towards them, a little leather notebook in his hand. Ella recognised him as being the person who had attended to Jason at the accident scene tonight.

  “Excuse me, Mrs Laide,” he said. “This fell out of your husband’s pocket while we were putting him into the ambulance. I thought you might like to have it.”

  Sharon reached out and took the bloodstained notebook. Hands shaking she flicked it open. The first words she saw were Dirk Van Aken, written in Jason’s distinctive, semiliterate scrawl. A glance told her there were times and dates and amounts recorded. She handed the notebook back to the paramedic.

  “Thank you but I don’t want it. The police may though. Would you see that they get it, please?”

  Then she turned her back on all the surprised faces and walked with dignity down the corridor towards the treatment centre.

  * * *

  Sharon’s house was like a command centre. She rang Salzburg as soon as she arrived back from the hospital. Frieda immediately agreed when Sharon asked her to bring Harry to Ireland for his father’s funeral. Andrew and Pascal called to the house, leaving Ella’s car outside for her and then going to the funeral home to make burial arrangements on Sharon’s behalf. Worried about how pale and weak Sharon looked, Ella tried to convince her to go to bed but Sharon was immediately on the phone again, asking her solicitor to call and see
her. He must have lived nearby because ten minutes later Ella opened the door to him.

  He listened carefully as Sharon told him what she knew of Jason’s affairs.

  “Just as well you bought your Salzburg home with your own money,” he said. “I have a good idea that Jason’s assets may be frozen while investigations are ongoing. And afterwards some or all of them may be disposed of.”

  “I had no idea he was involved in drug dealing. I thought he was just an astute, if dodgy, businessman. Am I in trouble? I’m all that my son’s got. What will happen to him if I go to jail?”

  The solicitor had tried to reassure Sharon. The more he spoke about the laws Jason might have broken and the possible repercussions of his crimes the more fearful Sharon became. He rambled on and on, quoting the Criminal Justice Act 1994, the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996, the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act 2001 until eventually confusion replaced fear in Sharon’s mind.

  Then, after all the waffle, he just patted her on the hand and said, “You’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about. You haven’t committed any crime. You may have unwittingly benefited from the proceeds of crime though and that could cost you. We’ll meet tomorrow and prepare your statement for the police.”

  “I’m not going to mention anything about the blackmail.”

  The solicitor opened his mouth to object but Sharon gave him one of her most withering looks.

  “I’ll be asking you to defend me against any charges of fraud or benefiting from proceeds of crime, or whatever it is you were talking about. I did live well on Jason’s earnings and I never asked where they came from. That’s fair and I’ll take that on the chin. But if you as much as mention blackmail, I’ll deny it. There’s no evidence now anyway. It’s all been returned to the rightful owners. Over. Caput. Understood?”

  Ella watched in admiration as Sharon, so distraught by the events of tonight and the possible years of legal wrangles ahead, fought tooth and nail to protect the people Jason had hurt most. And she won her battle. This one at least.

  By the time the solicitor left the house Sharon was near collapse from shock and exhaustion.