‘Good, then you can have a look at the files yourself. Interesting reading by the way, especially Capritzo’s death which, quite frankly, I don’t think was an accident but hey, who am I to say.’
2
Cavendish Hall, Southern Ireland
September 16th, 11:17 a.m.
The back seat of the Land Rover had been laid flat to accommodate the children’s paraphernalia, from training potties to bassinets and, it would seem everything in between. Carl Emery stood staring at the clutter while mentally shaking his head. ‘At this rate we’re going to need the other Rover.’
He turned as Jean Murphy arrived carrying her daughter Catherine. Both were dressed for travel. He frowned. ‘Where are you going Jean?’
‘I’ll not let her go to that God forsaken country without a friendly face being with her or wee Elizabeth without a companion.’
‘Does Mike know about this?’
Jean drew herself up to her full height. ‘I’ll not pretend that there’s a marriage between us. Mike would rather embrace a bottle of whiskey than his wife and children and that is his choice. I too have made a choice so it is done and finished. Catherine will stay with me and Christopher will remain here with Gabriel so the nursery will carry on with the laughter of children yet awhile. In a year and a day, we will return.’
‘There’s no guarantee Jean that the Benghazi will allow Sarah or the children to leave the country let alone return to Ireland.’
‘Well, we will just see about that, won’t we,’ she huffed.
‘Excuse me ma’am,’ one of the girls from the nursery whispered, ‘but the photographs have arrived and … here, I’ll take Catherine for a walk while there’s still time.’
‘Thank you Kathy,’ Jean said as she set Catherine down on the stone-chip driveway then took possession of a package wrapped in brown paper. She opened it. ‘Sarah wanted copies made to take with her.’
Carl watched as the first photograph appeared. He knew it well. It was a beautiful picture taken on the day Richard’s first born son William was christened. Sarah was dressed in a pale green woollen suit almost lost behind yards of white lace material that draped down from the child held securely in her left arm. Her right arm rested inside Richard’s. But the most striking feature was the happiness and yes, pride, so evident in both parents. The way his right hand rested on top of hers; the way they smiled almost shyly.
The original copy was in the Amber Room. It was the very same copy that Richard consigned to an album which he placed in the bottom drawer of one of the filing cabinets in the vault. When Carl retrieved Capritzo’s dead body that horrible, horrible night, the album and the photograph were found beside him.
‘Was that the last image he saw before he was rendered unconscious and his oxygen starved brain went into hyper-drive, manufacturing horrific nightmares from which he would not, could not waken?’
Carl tried to push the memory from his mind but … He could have saved him, could have opened the vault in time but he didn’t because he wanted Capritzo to die and so did Sarah. Carl had tampered with the fail-safe locking mechanism to make it look like an accident but the truth was that Sarah had closed the door, locked it then walked away and so too in a sense had Carl which made him an accessory after the fact: an accomplice to cold blooded murder. He didn’t care because earlier that evening he had pushed Capritzo’s bodyguard Maharsh backwards, sending him hurtling down the marble staircase to his death. No one helped him. It was all his own work and he was proud of it.
Why did she do it? Because Capritzo was determined to wipe out the Develin line.
‘Why? Did you hate your father so much that you would actively seek to destroy his grandchildren? Was that the reason or was there something else?’
Carl watched helpless as the second photograph appeared. It was of Sarquazi and his infant son Marcus. Sarquazi was spoon-feeding the child warm tea, heavily sweetened and milky. It was a loving, tender moment caught forever in time. Carl looked away as Jean ran the tip of her index finger across the glass.
‘She loved them both you know and she misses them so much.’ She turned away as the tears formed. ‘I’ll put them in her car now so she knows I’ve haven’t forgotten.’
Her car – Richard’s Daimler, lined up with the rest ready to take them to Dublin where Sarquazi’s ship waited to transport them to Morocco. Sarah would be leaving Cavendish Hall in just a few short hours with all of her children; perhaps never to return. It was a truth Carl Emery found insupportable.
*****
From the corner of his eye Carl caught sight of a shiny black Mercedes coupé as it turned off the main road and onto the driveway leading into Cavendish Hall. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He strained to see who it might be but the darkened windows gave nothing away beyond giving the vehicle a sinister look which alarmed him. ‘Jean,’ he called out, ‘get Kathy and the baby and go into the house - now.’
He backed away as the car ground to a halt and the driver’s door flew open. ‘How you doin’ boyo?’ Jack Mulphy shouted as he leapt from the vehicle.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Carl shouted back.
‘Ah, thanks for the gracious welcome you asshole.’
They embraced warmly. Carl and Jack were childhood friends. When Carl lost his family in a tenement fire where he was eight years old, they lost touch with each other for over forty years. Two years ago Carl was able to track Jack down. He was a U.S. Marshall in Arizona but, as it turned out by chance, he was thinking of early retirement and returning to Ireland. And so he did as Head of Security at Cavendish Hall. Divorced, with no children Jack was ready and able to take on anything and that included a young wife introduced to him by Yusuf Sarquazi.
Jack liked Sarquazi almost as much as Carl hated him possibly because, despite the fact that Sarquazi had forced Sarah into marriage, she had fallen in love “with that black-eyed son of a bitch”; a situation Carl found intolerable. The worst part was that he made life difficult if not downright miserable for Sarquazi from the moment he arrived at Cavendish Hall with Sarah and his infant son until he died the very next day.
Jack would never forget the image of Sarah clutching Sarquazi’s body while screaming at Carl to stay away. She was hysterical with grief.
‘Do you know what I want you to do Mr. Emery? I want you to dig his grave, that’s what I want you to do; beside his mother. Beside his mother, do you hear me?’
Carl tried everything he could to make amends but no matter what he did he knew that she would never forgive him nor would she ever forget. ‘I’m not your little girl Mr. Emery, and I never have been.’
When Sarah arrived at Cavendish Hall in early January, 1980 Carl assumed that, like a young girl named Sabrina, she too was being paid handsomely for her services. His assumption was grossly incorrect;
