Maeve Binchy - Quentins

"Can I speak to Mrs. Margery Brady, please?" Ella felt her voice faltering. Derry squeezed her for solidarity.

There was a pause. "Who?" the man asked.

"Mrs. Brady. Margery."

"Where did you get this number?"

Ts this 23 Playa de los Angeles?"

"Yes, but . .. this is not a number that anyone has

The voice sounded familiar. Terribly familiar.

"Don?" Ella gasped.

"Angel? Ella, is that you? Angel?"

She couldn't find the breath to say a word.

Derry had an arm around her shoulders and was offering her a sip of water. She pushed the water away but held his hand very tight"

"Don, is that really you? You're not dead?"

"Where are you, Angel?" His voice was insistent, very anxious.

"You told me you were going to die, kill yourself," she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

I was going to, but in the end ... No good at finishing anything, me." He gave a hollow little laugh. The laugh he gave when things were very serious.

I thought you were dead, Don. Dead, you know, at the bottom of the sea. I wept over you everywhere, that you would never see this lovely autumn with the leaves changing, with the sun coming through the trees. I even wept for your sons, that they wouldn't know you .. . and you never died ... you never died at all."

"But that's good, Angel Ella, isn't it? We'll be together once I sort out this mess."

"You never loved me, Don."

"Of course I did ... do."

"What had you intended to do, Don?"

"Wait until I could get the laptop so that we could sort it all out. Get our life together."

She was silent.

Derry squeezed her hand harder. She had been holding the receiver so that he could hear what was being said.

"Ella. Ella Angel, are you there?"

"You never loved me at all. Was it just sex? Was it because I was young? What was it?"

"We'll meet. Bring me the laptop. I'll tell you everything then."

"I can't do that, Don."

"Why not?" He sounded weak.

"Because I gave it to the Fraud Squad."

"And the money for your parents? I can prove you took that."

"No, I gave that back too."

"I don't believe you."

"Why not?"

"There would have been someone on to me by now."

"There will be, Don, there will."

"When did you give it to them?"

"An hour ago," she said, and hung up the phone.

Chapter Fifteen.

It all took much less time than they thought. The detectives came to the hotel. Two quiet, unassuming looking men, one a tall, dark man she had met before when she had lied about the computer.

"So it turned up eventually?" he said, looking at her.

It did," she said simply.

"And you are .. .?" he asked Derry.

Derry handed him a business card. "Derry King, friend and business partner of Ms Brady."

"And this is . . .?"

"A ticket and key for a safe deposit box. Don Richardson claims he left bank drafts or certified cheques there for me."

"And you haven't opened it?"

"No."

"If they were for you ...?"

"He defrauded my father of money. They were a sort of apology, or that's what I thought."

"All the more reason to take them, then . .." The detective never finished a sentence, just left it hanging there and someone finished it for him.

This time it was Derry. "Ms Brady and her parents, being very moral people, decided they couldn't just take money like that and say nothing. They are returning it to you."

"Quite so. Very admirable."

"And the password to the computer is Playa de los Angeles, like the city Los Angeles."

"Ah, you just guessed this . . .?"

"Not exactly

"So Mr. Richardson told you .. .?"

"Not exactly that either. He told me ages back that it was "Angel" and when I tried it recently it wasn't, so I tried words a bit like that and it opened."

"Well done, Ms Brady."

"But that's not the main thing..." she said, her words tumbling out.

"It's not?"

"No, the main thing is he's not dead. He's alive. I spoke to him this evening. He never killed himself at all."

She looked from one face to the other to see the shock register. But to her surprise there was nothing at all.

"We never really thought he was dead," said the detective. "Didn't fit the pattern. Made no sense for him to kill himself."

"I thought he was dead and I used to know him very well indeed," Ella said.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"You might have told me," she said with tears in her eyes. "Saved me all that heartbreak."

"We didn't exactly see you since it happened. We asked yo u to keep in touch in case his briefcase turned up and you didn't... so how could we have told you?"

Derry intervened. "But now the briefcase has turned up and Ella has been in touch, so is that everything?" His voice was smooth but with authority.

The two men responded to him. They stood up and shook hands. They thanked them for the co-operation and asked if Ella, and indeed Derry if he wished, would accompany them to the safe deposit box, so that the hand-over of what it contained could be authenticated.

"His name and address and contact numbers are all there," Ella told them. "He calls himself Brady, of all names. Isn't that a really nice bit of a laugh for all of us?"

There was real sympathy in the faces of the detectives. The whole thing was over in an hour. Ella called her mother. "It's done. It's given back. Well, given to the Guards, anyway," she said in a dull tone.

"Well, I'm sure that's right. Thank you, Ella."

"No, thank you, Mother, and Dad, too, for being nice and normal and believing someone I introduced you to. I will make it up to you if it's the last thing I do."

"Stop, Ella." Her mother noticed that the voice on the phone was shaking and tearful.

"And one more thing, Mother . .."

"You're not coming home tonight?" her mother guessed.

"That's it. You're psychic," she said.

"Don't get too upset, Ella. That's all I ask. The man is dead now, let him rest. We have no way of knowing how sorry he may have felt at the end. His mind disturbed and everything. We can't judge the dead."

"The man is not dead, Mother. He's alive and well and living with his family in Spain."

"No, Ella. He "was killed in that terrible boat tragedy .. ."

"He faked it. He's living out there on Dad's money, and do you know what? He's calling himself Brady, Mother. That's what he's doing." She sounded quite hysterical.

"Is Derry there?" her mother asked.

She handed him the phone. Ella could only hear his end of the conversation.

"Well, of course I will, no, have no worries. Certainly I will. No, she's actually much calmer than she sounded to you. I think it's just saying it for the first time to someone is the hard bit. No, she's in no danger, Barbara, believe me, she's not. And I too. Goodbye."

She sat there unseeing. They were talking about her as a parcel. A package of nerves and reactions. Not a person.

"Do you know, Derry, the only thing that will hold me together over all this is very hard work," she said.

"Good. I was hoping you'd say that."

She was surprised. I thought you'd say talk, examine it, analyse it."

"No, there's no point. We won't get to first base now, analysing what makes that guy tick. You've done all you said you would from this end. Now get on with your life."

"And I can stay here?"

"Of course. Let's get down to work straight away." He pulled a second chair up to the desk. "Let's look at some of these stories. See how we could tell them . . . should it be table by table . .. have Mon and Mr. Harris sitting down side by side, explaining how it all began at one table, then move to another and get another story . .. Or we could do it as an hour-by-hour thing .. . like the restaurant starts to stir at about five a.m."

Ella laughed. A real laugh. "I don't think anything stirs in Dublin at five a.m."