Quentins (38 page)

“And it's an elegant shop, I hear from all.”

“Well, thanks to you, we're going to make it more widely known certainly. Come on in, won't you?”

If Patrick Brennan was the slightest bit surprised to see a caller at six-thirty in the morning, he showed no sign of it. He was always there at this hour to do the pastry cooking. He was bad at delegating, he admitted, and just couldn't hand that chore over to someone else. This
was his real skill, and what he enjoyed most. Today he had to make two lemon tarts, a chocolate roulade, a chocolate mousse, a tray of poached pears, a great bowl of chocolate curls, two liters of praline ice cream and a raspberry coulis.

“But do you have to start so early?”

“Well, I do, really, you need constant exact temperatures for desserts. Later in the day the ovens are always opening and closing. It's not as good.”

And before the city woke up properly, Quentins seemed to be buzzing. A lad called Buzzo came in to hose out the dustbins in the lane and line them with heavy-duty garbage sacks. He scrubbed out the kitchen and made note of supplies needed.

“My brother used to do this at the start,” Patrick explained. “But he's a family man now and he'll be going out to get us the vegetables, so we hired Buzzo. Poor divil, it's his only way of having a proper breakfast, getting a few euros together, and still getting to school by nine. He gets the money into his hand from me. I don't really approve, but if you had Buzzo's family . . .”

“Drink, I guess?” Derry inquired.

“Oh, no. Drink they could cope with. Drugs, I'm afraid. Lives in a bad area. All his brothers are addicts and his father's a dealer.”

“His mother?”

“Away with the fairies, spaced out for years now.”

“No hope for the kid, then?”

“He's survived so far. He's very bright, you see, so a few of us just make it easier for him to get by without having to be tempted by the drug money. Soon he'll be old enough to have a place on his own. He's gone down now to make tea and tidy up a bit for the Kennedys' men, who are doing a job down the road.”

“Are they a good firm?”

“About the best, they did our last repaint job and I couldn't praise them enough.”

There was the sound of a horn outside.

“It's the linen, Mr. Brennan. I'll take the sack down to them now,” Buzzo called out.

Yesterday's dirty tablecloths and napkins went off in the van down the lane and Buzzo returned carrying a large box of folded replacements. This had just been put away in what was called Brenda's cupboard when the meat arrived.

By now the chef trainee had arrived, so he took over, and Buzzo, with his folded bank note in his pocket, was heading off for the second job of the day. It reminded Derry so much of his own early years, finding any job that was going and nailing it down. He wished he could tell Buzzo how well it had turned out for him, but kids hated these preaching speeches, so he would say nothing.

The trainee, who was called Jimmy and a bit slow for Patrick's liking, was being hastened through his coffee. His job now was to cut up the meat and have it ready for Chef to cook when the time came. At the same time he was to make a stock with the bones, chicken carcasses and vegetables that were in the cool room all tied up in plastic bags.

Ah, then Blouse Brennan appeared to check the list of what they needed. “I'll have to buy courgettes. My own are ludicrous,” he apologized.

“That's all
right
, Blouse, a lot of places buy all their vegetables,” Patrick assured him.

Then the fish box came from the fishmonger, and then boxes of wine from the supplier and the cheeses.

The assistant chef, Katie, said that there were three new cheeses today. She laid them out expertly on a marble-topped trolley in the cool room. “That's three more to teach the waiters how to explain and pronounce. I'll
have to ring up the cheese man and check myself first. We don't want to look like eejits.”

Derry smiled at her. If she were to say that to the camera, it would be very endearing. Ella had been right. Following a day in the restaurant was a good way to let the story unfold.

Ella! She was going to be fine. She had promised to ring if she wasn't.

Ella wanted to be alone. She needed to think. She did not need endless helpful voices of friends telling her she was all right and that was all right and everything was going to
be
all right. None of these things was true.

Don Richardson was coming after her. Or was he?

Could she take Sasha seriously? She needed to talk to somebody. It wasn't fair to wear Derry down with it all again. Perhaps he'd go to her parents' house.

She called her mother. And discovered that he had just left.

“How was he, Mother?”

The question seemed to upset Barbara Brady. “He was . . . well, he was all right.”

“No, Mother, I mean it.”

“Well, what do you want to know? He wasn't pale or anxious . . .”

“I mean, was he sane or did he look as if he were going to come after me with a cleaver?”

“He thinks he's coming after you with an offer you can't refuse. He thinks you're going back to him.”

“Then you've answered my question, Mother. Then he's far from sane, we must bring in the cavalry.”

She phoned the Fraud Squad. They had heard. He would be in custody by evening.

Dee wasn't able to come to the phone, her message said. Ella saw Nick and Sandy watching her covertly through the glass door . . . she couldn't wait like this in
a trap until he arrived. She had to get out. But she knew they wouldn't let her.

Leaving her jacket over the back of her chair and her handbag on the desk so that they would think she was coming back, she took her telephone and her wallet with her. She slipped out to the bathroom and to the side door into the lane. They would be annoyed, but she had to be alone. She hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Stephens Green. From the back of the cab she dialed info and got Michael Martin's number. She got through straightaway.

“Yes?” he said crisply.

“Tell him to stop looking. I'm on my way to Stephens Green. I'll be beside the duck pond. I'll see him there.”

“Yeah, you and half the Guards in Ireland.”

“If they're there, it's not because I'll have brought them,” she said, and hung up.

“You okay?” the driver asked, looking at her in the mirror.

“I don't know,” Ella said. “Why do you ask?”

“You're shivering. You've no coat. You look worried.”

“All of these things are true,” Ella agreed.

“So?”

“So I have to do something I don't want to do and I'm a little bit afraid,” she said.

“Take someone with you,” the driver suggested.

“I can't.”

“You've got a phone. Then tell someone where you're going.”

“But I don't want anyone coming in and interrupting it.”

“You're in a mess, then, aren't you,” the driver said agreeably.

“I am indeed,” she said.

***

Derry King walked back to the building where the major painting job was taking place. He saw the professional sign for the painters. His father could have been part of this firm, lived in this city. Derry could have grown up here. But then, if he had, he might well have been like that boy Buzzo, cleaning out dustbins, making tea on sites before school. Like his own childhood had been in New York.

He saw two men walking toward a van with the name Kennedy on it. They stood discussing a sheaf of papers, some attached to clipboards. He watched them for a long time with a lump in his throat. They were square men like himself, same bristly hair, a little taller than he was, but they had the same lines coming out like a star around the eyes. You would not need a college degree in genetics to know that these were relations.

He should be their friend. They were, after all, the sons of brothers. But there was so much to regret. To try to forget. He would walk away.

At that moment they looked over. He couldn't run.

“Sean? Michael?” he said.

“Well, Derry, you came to see us at last,” said one of them.

“You knew me?” He didn't know whether to be pleased or outraged.

“Of course we did.”

“Kim, I suppose?” he said.

“Well, she did show us a photo of you when she was here, but that was a while ago, and anyway, aren't you the spit of us.”

“That's
right
.”

He still seemed uneasy.

The bigger man said, “Now, it's easy for us to know you. There's only one of you. You don't have an idea which of us is which. I'm Sean and this is Michael, the brains of it all, and can we buy you breakfast.”

“I've been eating breakfast for hours,” he said with a half-smile.

“It's the one meal you can't overeat on, they say.” Sean was eager. Touchingly eager to treat the cousin who had ignored them for decades.

He looked from one to the other. “You don't seem surprised to see me,” he said.

“Kimberly sent us a message saying you might be here and to look out for you,” said Michael.

“And one of the painters said there was a Yank who was the dead image of us, asking about us in the café,” added Sean.

And they laughed like old family friends as they went to Derry's third breakfast of the day.

Possibly ducks were not as content as they looked. Maybe they were up to their little feathered armpits with worry, but they looked fairly sound, Ella thought. As if they had it sorted.

She looked around. There was no sign of him yet.

She sat down on a bench and found a paper bag with the remains of someone's breakfast croissant. Normally she would have been appalled at the Dublin litter problem. Now she could give it to these quacking ducks as she pleased. Maybe it was what they called an act of random kindness to leave the bag there.

She saw people moving around, some of them hurrying, others idling. None of them was Don. And yet she knew he would come. He had moved so quickly from Spain. He must be desperate to find her. Perhaps he had known she was lying when she spoke to him last night about having given it in already. He must have flown out of Spain immediately, gone by London possibly. What passport had he used?

Suddenly she felt frightened. Why had she arranged to meet him here?

She dialed the number of Derry King's cell phone. It was up on the screen, but she needed to press the green button for it to start ringing. Before she could do that she saw Don. He was moving toward her, arms out.

“Angel,” he cried. “Oh, Angel, nothing matters now. I'm just so glad to see you again.”

Derry didn't know how the day passed, so much happened, so much was seen and noted. Even in his busiest days setting up his own business in the U.S.A., he had not met so many people in the space of one day.

His cousins brought him back to their headquarters and explained the business from the ground up. How it had seemed such a great idea to hire themselves out to builders as master painters, to put a seal on their work as if it were. But there were problems.

They told him unemotional stories about their own father, now dead, and their mother, who was in an old people's home and would love to see him, but maybe in another visit, not this one. They pushed him not at all and he felt he had known them all his life.

He went back to Quentins to follow how the day was unfolding there. He met the staff, saw them learning the names and nature of the new cheeses, watched the clever changing of tables as booking changed minutes before lunch was served. And noted the clockwork precision of the kitchen, where everything had its own rhythm.

Derry saw Brenda on the phone and she told him she had just heard that Don Richardson was in Dublin.

“Does Ella know?” he asked immediately.

“Apparently so, she's safe at Firefly Films. With Nick and Sandy.”

“He didn't waste much time,” Derry said.

“No, I suppose he thought he'd better run in before the Guards got their paperwork ready,” Brenda said.

“If he sees her . . .” Derry began.

“He won't.”

“No, but if he does, do you think she might go back to him?”

Brenda noticed what she thought was more than a professional interest in the question. His face was very concerned. Wishing she believed what she was saying, she assured Derry that there wasn't a chance in hell that Ella would look at that man again.

“Hallo, Don.” Ella's voice was flat.

“Oh, my darling Ella.”

“No, Don, none of that.”

“But nothing's changed. There's been such hell and I know that I put you through it, but I had to. So that in the end we would be—”