The Stone House (24 page)

‘Daddy had an affair? I can't believe it!'

‘It's the truth, Moya. You were all young and there was no question of me leaving him. So I accepted it. Accepted her. What else could I do?'

‘Did anyone else know about it?' Moya asked.

‘There was a bit of gossip and rumour-mongering but I just ignored it all.'

Moya was appalled. She had always known that her father was a gambler and a risk-taker but to have an affair in a small town like Rossmore was crazy.

‘What did you do?'

‘I held my head high. I loved your father and he loved me. I stayed home and raised you girls. I was mad as hell with Frank for what he was doing to us but my home and my family were more important than a hundred women.'

‘Things are different nowadays,' sighed Moya. ‘More complicated.'

‘Not so different,' her mother comforted, patting her hand. ‘Though the minute you stop loving him, well, that's a different matter.'

‘Granny, Granny, look at the fish I caught. It's a rock breen!' yelled Gavin, running towards them with his net and a slopping bucket of water.

‘Come and show it to me,' smiled Maeve, arms open wide, ending the conversation.

Lying in bed that night, listening to the sound of the tide in the distance, Moya remembered all the happy years of her childhood and realized how hard her mother had fought to protect them from everything, just like she was doing with her own children.

KATE WASN'T SURPRISED
when her mother phoned and asked her to come down home for the weekend for she knew with Moya and the children gone back to London it must be lonely for her.

‘The house is so quiet your father and I are rattling around like two old codgers, it would be lovely to see you, pet.'

‘I've a work function to go to on Friday night, Mum, but I'll come down on Saturday and stay over,' she offered.

‘Couldn't you stay longer, pet? Maybe take a few days off work.'

Kate's holiday days were precious, her mother knew that! She might be earning a high-flying figure and paying off the mortgage on the new apartment that she'd bought in Monkstown – which hopefully had already doubled in value – and had made two small investments in start-up companies she'd advised, but the one thing she wasn't rich in was time!

Take a few days off! ‘Are you all right, Mammy?' she asked, suddenly worried.

‘Yes, love, I'm fine. It's your dad I'm concerned about.'

‘Is he sick?'

‘No, it's not that,' she said secretively, ‘it's something else. I don't want to discuss it on the phone, but he might need your help in the office to sort out a few things.'

Kate was aghast. In all her life her father had never once asked her for a bit of professional advice or even properly discussed the number of business investments he was involved in. He was a wheeler-dealer type, full of bravado and show, turning money easily one day and making it by the skin of his pants another, but he'd always been able to provide his family with a good living. She suspected he sailed too close to the wind but now, she wondered, had he finally run himself into trouble? ‘Listen, Mum, I'll ask Bill for a day or two, OK, but that's all I can manage. I'll see you both on Saturday around lunchtime.'

Her mother had made a thick vegetable soup, which was like a meal it was so filling. Her father, at the other end of the kitchen table, looked embarrassed. He'd lost weight recently, had gone grey.

‘Daddy, you'll have to tell me what's going on if you want me to help you. The first thing I usually do with clients is sit them down and get the whole story.'

He dunked a piece of bread in the soup, avoiding her eyes.

‘Well, I'm not one of your clients, so I'll thank you to avoid the lecture.'

An antagonistic client was bad enough, but an
antagonistic father, that was something she could do without!

She said nothing and watched him spoon the soup slowly into his mouth, fiddling with the slice of bread. Normally he'd be gone from the table by now, in watching the racing or the football on TV. Her mother was right, there was definitely something up with him.

‘Dad, I'm down for a nice pleasant weekend and to see the two of you. If while I'm here you want a little bit of legal advice, no problem. Otherwise I'm just happy to relax and go for a few walks. Fergus and Conor invited me to go sailing with them over to Passage tomorrow afternoon, so if you don't want to talk to me about whatever is going on I'll just go with them.'

‘He's a stubborn old fool and he does need your help,' her mother pleaded. ‘For God's sake, Frank, tell Kate all that's happened since Martin retired from the business, please!'

Kate knew it was hard for him to suddenly have to confide in one of his daughters, to step down from his pedestal as head of the family and admit perhaps that he had not been as clever or cute as he should have been.

‘I'm ruined,' he said slowly, dropping the spoon, despair etched on his lined face. ‘The council are being investigated with regard to planning irregularities.'

‘And what's that got to do with you?'

‘Well, Martin and I always believed in oiling the wheels, so to speak.'

‘Bribes?' Don't say her father was stupid enough to be involved in bribing local councillors, buying his planning permissions!

‘It's how things work,' he explained. ‘How else do projects get off the ground and everyone gets to make a bit of money so everyone is happy.'

‘Dad, tell me, you didn't pay or take any bribes?'

‘Kate, it was just dinners here, a few drinks, donations for this and that, weekends away and the odd little holiday, money to good causes, bits of important knowledge passed on to the right people, advice to a friend or two. There was no harm in it!'

‘Are there records?'

‘I'm not sure. Martin kept the books, dealt with the accounts. My end was buying and selling land and property, turning things around to make a profit or deciding to make an investment or not.'

‘Is there anything else?' she asked, suspicious.

‘I've had a letter from the bloody Revenue and they're talking about an investigation.'

Kate swallowed hard. It was worse than she'd imagined. She caught her mother's eye: she'd been right to get her involved. Her father was going to need all the advice and help he could get.

Frank opened up the office in town on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, the two of them trying to go through more than twenty years of files and payments and bank lodgements and withdrawals. Even at a quick glance Kate could see where her father and Martin Duffy had turned a quick profit on a huge part of land sales they'd acted on. Kate noted down cases where there were gaps in the registration, sometimes the partnership buying the piece of property and then selling it on to another vendor later, their ownership never legally declared.

‘Christ, Dad, some of this is illegal!'

‘There was no harm done,' he said defensively.

‘What about the mill?' She turned her attention to the old mill at the edge of town; she remembered how proud she'd felt when her father had purchased it. Obviously it had protected status because of its age and historical importance. Kate was flabbergasted to see in the documents the council's permission for its redevelopment as exclusive holiday apartments and a restaurant five months later with absolutely no mention of its status or the protection of its original features. She pulled out the file, determined to go through it later that night with a fine-tooth comb if need be to see if her father had incriminated himself or there was any direct link to the council or its officers at the time. She yawned, exhausted: this was going to take for ever. There were boxes of stuff to go through!

They worked through till late that night, Maeve Dillon producing a slow simmered beef casserole when they eventually got home. Her father excused himself saying he needed a drink as he slipped on his raincoat and disappeared down to McHugh's.

‘Leave him go,' urged her mother. ‘A pint will do him good.'

Kate lifted in a box of files from the hall and curled up on the couch barefoot to read them, tossing some to her mother trying to explain what exactly they were searching for.

‘Is it bad, Kate?'

There was no use lying to her mother. At least she'd had the good sense to get her involved.

‘It's complicated, put it that way.' She sighed to herself, wishing she could spare her mother. ‘Dad and Martin have sailed really close to the wind, and with this council investigation and also the Revenue likely to turn their attention to him, it's not good news.'

‘How far will they go?'

‘As far as it takes.'

Sunday and Monday and most of Tuesday were spent in the same fashion, Kate managing to get two long walks in the fresh air to clear her head. Her father's business affairs were in a worse mess than she'd imagined.

‘Dad, we need to get an accountant to look at this and assess the liabilities involved.'

‘Larry Flood used to do our audit.'

‘Dad, he's about seventy, for God's sake. We need to get a fresh eye on this. I'm not a financial expert. What about Patrick?' she suggested.

‘Under no circumstances are you to tell Moya and Patrick about this, do you hear, Kate?'

‘Dad, they're probably going to hear, no matter what you do. Patrick's used to this kind of stuff. OK, maybe not normally as messy as this but he's an accountant.'

‘Didn't you hear me?' he shouted. ‘I'm not having Patrick go through my business affairs!'

Not wanting to upset him any more, Kate let the matter drop. Maybe one of her colleagues could recommend someone.

‘What about Martin? You were partners. What does he say?'

‘I told you Martin's retired. He's an old man now. He left the business in my hands and this, all of this,
is down to me,' he said despairingly. ‘We still have some investments together but otherwise he's not involved. I'm not having him dragged into this.'

‘Dad, some of this goes back years and no matter what you do or say now, most of it is going to be public. You've broken the law, and there are no two ways around it. Look, you bought two of the fishermen's cottages down on the Harbour Road off poor old Jem Crowley for a song and then five weeks later sold them on to O'Malley construction for a fortune, and looking at the records you failed to register as the owner and never paid tax. The fact that you are also a shareholder in O'Malley's is going to be seen as very suspicious.'

‘Jem was delighted with the money we paid him. He was only storing lobster pots in one of them!'

‘Come off it, Dad, the other was his home and he'd have been far happier to have got a decent price for them.'

Kate sat in her father's large leather office chair, knowing that probably within the year the office and much of what he had worked for would be gone. She would advise him to settle. Things could be sold off to raise cash if need be. Looking at him standing in his shirtsleeves at the filing cabinet she felt a rush of pity for him. He'd always been so strong and self-assured, always out, busy working, making money, spending it easily, generous to those around him. Sean's death had almost destroyed him, but somehow he had managed to keep going. She could never understand his getting involved with Sheila O'Grady. She'd never excuse it, but she'd kept his secret all these years. Never said a word to the others. Looking at him now, grey haired,
tense, bent down over years of files and paperwork, she wondered how many more secrets of his were to be uncovered.

‘I got Jem a place in the Harbour.'

‘What?'

‘I made Tom O'Malley provide him with one of the smaller holiday cottages, 'twas a palace in comparison to his old place.'

‘But he doesn't live there,' she said, thinking of the wealthy families who kept yachts down on the marina who booked the houses from one year to the next.

‘I know. Jem lives in two old rooms up behind McHugh's, rents the cottage out.'

‘Oh Dad!' she said, throwing her arms around him. Her father was one of those blustering big men who take on the world and she loved him for that. She couldn't stand seeing him brought down, fighting off grey civil servants and fastidious prosecutors who would rake through every penny that came through this office door and try to smear his good name. She'd do everything in her power to help him, fight if need be and settle where called for.

‘Listen, Dad, I'll do everything I can to help. Maybe it's not as bad as it looks.'

BACK IN DUBLIN
Kate could not get the quandary her father was in out of her head. The situation was even more serious than either of her parents realized and she needed financial advice from someone used to dealing with the Revenue Commissioners and government departments. Bill had thrown her the name of a guy they'd used before and Kate had set up a lunch meeting with him in the Clarence Hotel as she had no intention of bringing him to the office.

‘Hiya, Kate,' he'd greeted her as they took their seats in The Tea Room, Kate making sure they were seated in a part of the restaurant where they couldn't be overheard. They ordered quickly. Kate was relieved that Rory McWilliams had passed on the alcohol, as she wanted him to have a clear head.

‘So what is it?' he asked. Kate was taken aback by his directness.

‘I have a problem with someone.'

‘A client?'

‘Yes,' she lied, ‘who is perhaps looking at charges of
corruption, bribery, I'm not sure yet. Planning deals that were pushed through a local council.'

‘Backhanders?'

‘More than likely. The files are in a heap, no proper paperwork, a set of accounts not done for almost three years, insider type trading but with regard to property and land acquisition.'