"No, Kennedys are tough but they're fair. If you do the work right, paint well and put in the hours, then you go home with a decent pay packet at the end of the week."
"Kennedys?" he asked.
"That's us, well, that's the bosses."
"Two guys called Sean and Michael?" Derry enquired.
"The very ones."
"Well, isn't that a small world."
"You know them?"
"No, my ex-wife met them a few years back, said they were good guys."
"They're not bad at all."
"Will they be round during the day, do you think?"
"Bound to be, they usually come in round seven when we"re meant to be clearing out of the place. Will I tell them who was looking for them?"
"No, it's okay. I'll come back and tell them myself." He had no intention of coming back. It was such an extraordinary coincidence that he should walk into his father's family by accident. What was anyone doing, calling this place a city? They were mad. It was a village. Sandy called Tim and Barbara Brady to tell them that Don Richardson had been seen in Dublin.
"Thank you, Sandy. As it happens, Mr. Richardson is here with me at this very moment. I'm telling him that we have no idea where Ella is and that you don't either."
"She's here, Mrs. Brady, don't worry. We'll get the Guards," Sandy whispered.
The phone was hung up.
"Ring them again, Nick, quick, tell them he's in Tara Road."
"They're not taking it as urgently as I thought," Nick said. "They
seem to think it's all a matter for Fraud, they don't think she's in any danger."
"Well, can't we speak to Fraud?" Sandy said. "They may think differently."
"They've passed my message on," Nick said. "But I'll ring again saying where he is now." "We didn't expect to see you again, Don," Barbara Brady said when she got over the shock of seeing him on her doorstep.
"I know, I know. But you did know I was alive? Ella must have told you."
"Yes, she did, last night. She was very startled, shocked."
"Is your husband at home, Barbara? I'd like a quick word with you both. It won't take long."
"Tim isn't here. He's at the doctor. He doesn't sleep at all well, and there's a matter of his getting counselling."
I can't tell you how sorry I am." Don looked sun-tanned but thinner than he had before. He had lost his lazy, easy confidence and his eyes darted around all the time.
"Yes," Barbara Brady said bleakly.
"I have had so many regrets in this sad business. I truly did enjoy talking to him. He was a man of such integrity and a, well, a man of faith in a way."
"He's not that now," Tim Brady's wife said, looking around the small house they lived in, her face showing just how disturbed and upset the man of integrity and faith was these days.
I did everything I could to make it up to him. I sent money. Ella surely told you that?"
"We couldn't take that," Barbara said as if it were obvious.
"May I sit down, please?" Suddenly the great Don Richardson looked tired and even a little frightened.
"I'd prefer if you didn't, Don, it would be hypocritical to pretend that you are welcome here."
"Ella?" he asked.
"I don't know, I really don't. She didn't come home last night."
"Please."
"I can't tell you what I don't know."
Til only talk to her for ten minutes, in front of you and Tim if you like, or here in the house. Please, I have to ask her something."
"I think you asked her enough over the years."
"No, I'll tell you what it is. I know her. I know her, for God's sake. When I was talking to her last night, she said she had given in the laptop. She wasn't telling the truth. All I have to do is meet her and tell her how much she can save, for everyone, if she doesn't give it in. I can get it back together, that's what I'm trying to do. I can rescue people's investments, your Tim's, too."
"I don't think she cares about the computer," Barbara said.
"I agree with you and I don't believe she's handed it in."
"She told me she had given it back."
"She said given it back?"
"Those were her words. Then she said, "Well, to the Guards anyway"."
He was thinking hard. I still don't believe she would have done it. I know her voice, you see."
The telephone rang. "Can you answer it? It just might be her," he pleaded.
But it was Sandy at Firefly Films.
He stood listening.
"Who was that?"
"Just friends concerned for her."
"So they know I'm back, you can see I haven't much time."
"Do you know that I don't give a damn how much time you have, Don Richardson, or how little? Our only daughter had the misfortune to love you and she has ended up a hurt, damaged girl as a result. She lives with a sense of guilt and shame on account of you, and the fact that her father is a shell of a man, disgraced and empty, and that I live in a prefabricated hut instead of that house over there. She has wept oceans over your leaving her to live in a marriage that she thought was over. She wept further oceans when she thought you were dead. Now do you understand how little I care about how much time you have or don't have ? I do not know where Ella is, and if I did know, then by God I wouldn't tell you."
"I'll go now, Barbara, and I won't say any more. I urge you not to, either. Remember, there is still the possibility that Ella may forgive me and come with me. I don't want her to feel that the door to her mother and father is closed."
He was gone and Barbara Brady stood in her doorway shaking at the courage she had shown and her fear that Don Richardson might be right. Was it possible that, after everything, Ella would go back to him again? Derry walked by Quentins again. This time there was activity
inside. He knocked at the back door. "I'm Derry King. I'll be meeting you tonight," he said.
The tall dark man dusted the flour and sugar off his hands and gripped Derry's warmly. "Brenda told me all about meeting you at lunch. I couldn't be there. Someone had to run the shop."
"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 6.30 in the morning, he showed no sign of it. He was always here at this hour to do the pastry cooking. He was bad at delegating, he admitted, and just couldn't hand it 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 litres 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 rubbish sacks. He scrubbed out the kitchen and made a 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 a.m. He gets the money in his hand from me. I don't really approve, but if you had Buzzo's family . .."
"Drink, I guess?" Derry enquired.
"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 Kennedys" men, who are doing a job down the road." "Are they a good firm?"