Caragh Flynn was a conundrum, decided Bruno. She was clever, cunning and spectacularly lazy. She reminded him of an exotic cat. Sleek and sly, confident in her supremacy, trading on her looks.
He’d asked her to come over for a drink that evening, to discuss the hotel. She’d arrived bang on time. Eight thirty. She was wearing a black skirt, just above the knee, with a white blouse, crisp and pristine, but just transparent enough to reveal the lacy straps of the white bra underneath. Court shoes – not high, but enough heel to elongate her already long, slender, lightly tanned legs. A smudge of grey eyeliner, a hint of lip gloss. The faintest trace of some light, fresh scent. Pearl earrings and a slim gold chain with a crucifix round her neck. This girl was no surfer chick. She was a consummate professional. Bruno guessed that it had taken her quite some time to dress. To look so businesslike and efficient, yet give the hints of softness and femininity that would leave most men putty in her hands.
Bruno led her through into the living room. He saw her eyes flick around the walls, appraising the contents of the room in a split second, but not giving anything away. Bruno smiled to himself. He could tell by the set of her shoulders, the way she was carrying her head, that it was a strain for her to keep up this cool nonchalance, to pretend as if she wafted in and out of million-pound pads every day of her life. This little girl from the west of Ireland, with her sherry-coloured eyes and her copper hair.
He gestured for her to sit on the sofa with the view of the bay, then planted himself on the one adjacent, crossing one leg over so his foot rested on his knee. She sat bolt upright, but she met his gaze boldly.
‘So,’ she said, in her softest, most beguiling Kerry lilt. ‘You’ve had a while to suss everybody out. What do you think of the show so far?’
For a moment Bruno felt as if the tables had been turned, and he was the one under scrutiny. She was incredibly self-possessed, and he couldn’t help admire her for it.
‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘if I didn’t already own the place I wouldn’t touch it with a shitty stick. It’s a dinosaur. The staff are delinquents. And before you start defending yourself, I know you’re only the acting manageress. You took on a poisoned chalice, and you’ve had no direction, no support, no budget . . . frankly, I’m amazed you’ve stuck around.’
‘I was going to give it till the end of the summer,’ admitted Caragh. ‘Then maybe go off to Dubai.’
‘What brought you over here in the first place? I know your part of the world. It’s incredibly beautiful. And not so different from here.’
‘Small-town Irish life is ten times more claustrophobic than English. I’m not Doctor Flynn’s daughter over here.’
‘So you can behave as badly as you like?’
He was teasing her. She could have bristled, but she didn’t. She leaned back in the sofa, tilted her head to one side.
‘Not so much that. There’re more interesting people to behave badly with.’ She tucked her hair behind her ear, a habit Bruno had noticed. ‘My brother’s an equine vet just outside Bath. I came over to stay with him a few years ago, and it was like being able to breathe all of a sudden. I was already trained in hotel management; I’d been working at one of the big hotels on the outskirts of Killarney. It was pretty easy to get a job here.’
‘Well, as you might have guessed, I want to shake things up.’
‘You’ll be bankrupt by Christmas if you don’t.’
He laughed at her bluntness.
‘Actually, I think this place could limp on indefinitely just as it is. But I think it would be much more of a challenge to turn it round.’
He began outlining his plans. She listened attentively. After a few minutes, she shifted forwards in her chair slightly, tipping her pelvis, then uncrossed her legs languidly. Bruno was left in no doubt that she was a natural redhead.
For a moment, he was tempted. She was, after all, his type: sleek and groomed and ruthless. She had that little bit of edge he liked. He imagined that she would be totally uninhibited, that she would go out of her way to impress him with her bedroom antics. Under all that crisp clothing she’d be a vixen, a wildcat. Bruno knew it would only take one click of his fingers. But he managed to restrain himself. That was exactly what she wanted. For him to fall for her charms and be put off the scent. He ploughed manfully on with his prosaic descriptions.
‘I’m installing a new computer system. Each guest will have a card, like a credit card, and every transaction will be recorded on that card until they come to settle up. There’ll be virtually no need for cash in the entire hotel.’
‘Good idea.’ Caragh smiled her approval.
‘It will make fiddling well-nigh impossible.’
‘Fiddling?’
Bruno nodded gravely.
‘I’ve had all the figures examined by a friend of mine who’s an expert in these things. He’s trained to spot patterns. The books here just don’t add up. The takings are totally erratic; the average spend per customer isn’t at all consistent. Which suggests the staff are on the take. Whether some or all of them isn’t clear at the moment.’
‘Are you quite sure?’ Caragh looked at him coolly. ‘The weather can have a very strange effect on spending patterns down here—’
‘Don’t worry. That’s been taken into consideration. It’s a very sophisticated program I’ve used – it’s quite terrifyingly Big Brotherish.’
For a moment they stared each other out, each knowing what the other was thinking. Caragh caved in first.
‘It’s a bit like loft insulation, then, really,’ she said finally. ‘You spend a little bit of money to stop the pounds flying out.’
‘Exactly. And no one will be able to skim off the profits, even if I’m not around.’
They smiled at each other, both equally clear that the message had been received and understood.
Bruno leaned back and curled his arms round the back of his head, deliberately nonchalant, as if the answer to his question was of no matter.
‘So. Where do you see yourself in the near future, Caragh? Sunny Dubai? Or are you going to stick around in sunny Mariscombe?’
Caragh looked at her watch and stood up.
‘Work me out a package,’ she said briskly. ‘And we’ll talk.’
She held out her hand for Bruno to shake. He got to his feet slowly, took it, shook it, then didn’t let go, but looked her in the eye and spoke softly.
‘By the way . . . Caragh?’
He hesitated. She tilted her head to one side enquiringly.
‘Yes?’
He cleared his throat.
‘I prefer my senior staff to wear knickers. If you don’t mind.’
Bruno watched as Caragh stalked her way down the steps leading to the sands, her head held high, and marched back towards Mariscombe. He admired the straightness of her back, the square set of her shoulders and the way she didn’t stumble once, even though her shoes weren’t ideal for walking on the beach.
He was in two minds about her. In some ways, he would be mad to lose her. If she was channelled, she could be a great manageress. She had that Irish charm that always seemed to work wonders with guests, and she didn’t need to be liked by the staff, which meant she could whip them into shape. But there was no doubt she was corrupt. Bruno had done his research and was quite satisfied that she’d been on the fiddle, even if he couldn’t actually prove it. But then, he reasoned, anyone who’d been given the chance of running the Mariscombe Hotel as it was, and hadn’t taken advantage of the fact that it was a complete shambles to line their own pockets, probably wasn’t worth employing in the first place. He admired opportunism and initiative. And he didn’t like doing the expected.
Was it worth taking the risk on her? Bruno thought he would probably enjoy breaking her. She’d fight him every step of the way and spit in his eye, he knew she would. There was something slightly dangerous about her; something slightly unhinged. But there was nothing he liked better than a challenge.
Hannah thought she was in heaven. Sitting outside like this with Frank, the pair of them sipping their Beck’s, some chill-out music wafting out of the speakers Frank had propped up on his windowsill, chatting idly. She shivered slightly. Although it had been a warm day, the air was dropping rapidly in temperature. It was still too early in the year for the night to hold on to the day’s heat.
‘Are you cold?’ Frank jumped up, concerned. He picked up his sweatshirt, which was hooked over the back of his chair. ‘Here, put this on.’
Hannah obeyed. She didn’t need telling twice. As she pulled it on over her head, she breathed in the smell of him, then shivered as the soft lambiness of the fleece inside stroked her arms. To be this close was such sweet torture.
‘So you reckon my proposal’s all right?’ Frank was asking her anxiously, for the seventy-fifth time.
‘I think it’s brilliant,’ Hannah reassured him, for the seventy-fifth time. ‘And even if it’s not exactly what he wants, it shows you’ve thought about it. And you know what you’re talking about.’
‘Thanks for your advice.’ Frank leaned over and kissed her on the head. ‘You’re a complete star, you know that?’
Hannah sat stock-still, her heart thumping. Frank had kissed her! Hastily, she picked up her bottle and drank from it to hide her confusion.
It was ironic that, despite the fact that she was always there for the others, she would have no one to share this moment of triumph with, no one to pick over its significance. Hannah knew she was taken for granted by the others, and usually she didn’t mind. Day after day, night after night, she was always there for whoever had been injured in the ongoing battles for affection. Yet no one ever realized that inside her own heart was aching, that she was in turmoil, because she knew Frank would never look at her, with her super-size conk and her size eight feet. For a moment, she thought wistfully that it would be nice to have someone to chew over this development with. Sometimes she confided in Molly, one of the chambermaids, but Molly always shot off home and never came out for a drink. She’d told her about the nose job, but Molly thought she was mad. It was easy to say that when you had a cute little freckle-smothered button.
‘Another beer? There’s one left.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve had three already. And I haven’t quite finished this . . .’
‘Go on.’
As Hannah hesitated, a figure came striding towards them through the moonlight. Tall, elegant, businesslike – Hannah’s heart sank. Caragh. There would be no more kisses now. And it brought her crashing down to earth.
‘Fuckin’ patronizin’ twisted lowlife bastard!’ Caragh’s language was foul when she was riled. The nuns would have been horrified.
‘What have I done?’ Frank leaped to his feet, terrified that he’d stepped out of line.
‘Not you, you eejit.’ Caragh flopped into a chair. ‘Bruno arsin’ whatever his name is. He’s blown it with me, I can tell you.’
‘Drink?’ Frank proffered a bottle of Beck’s.
‘I need something a bit stronger than that.’ Caragh dismissed his offering with a wave of her hand. ‘A glass of Archers or something.’
‘I don’t actually have anything else,’ admitted Frank.
Caragh scowled.
‘Go on, I’ll have the beer then.’
Frank flipped open the last bottle, the bottle that Hannah had been about to drink.
‘So what’s he done?’
‘Who?’ Caragh glared at Hannah in the half-light. ‘You mean Bruno? Only as good as accused me of being on the fiddle.’
‘But you are,’ Frank pointed out reasonably.
‘We all are,’ Caragh replied sweetly. ‘Which means that if I go down, you all go down with me.’
‘Not all of us, actually.’ Three Beck’s had given Hannah an uncharacteristic bolshiness. ‘Some of us weren’t given the chance to join your little Christmas club. And, anyway, haven’t you heard of honour amongst thieves? You can’t bring everyone else down. It’s just not done.’
Frank shrank back into the shadows, cringing. No one had ever dared cross Caragh before. She shot Hannah a look of pure poison, then stood up.
‘Come on, Frank,’ she ordered. ‘I’ve had that ol’ pervert trying to look up my skirt for the past hour. I know what he wanted. He wanted me to sleep with him. I don’t know what he thinks I am, I’m sure.’ She stretched languorously and her blouse slipped up, showing her taut stomach. ‘I need a massage. I’m totally stressed. He didn’t seem to realize that I’m the one that’s been keeping this dump together.’
Hannah watched the pair of them slip away into the shadows, Frank casting an apologetic glance behind him. Her heart sank as she sipped the last of her beer. She imagined the two of them on Frank’s bed, his long, brown fingers caressing Caragh’s skin, exploring her perfect body – high, rounded breasts, slender hips, toned thighs . . .
Hannah sighed. What hope did she have? Maybe she shouldn’t bother. Maybe she should just give the money to starving children in Africa and be done with it. There wasn’t a plastic surgeon in the world that could work the miracle she needed.
L
ess than a week after their takeover, The Rocks looked as if a bomb had hit it.
George and Justin were overawed at Lisa’s drive. She’d refused to employ anybody to gut the place, arguing that the money would be much better spent on fixtures and fittings and that they were all perfectly able-bodied.
‘You can’t be expected to help. It’s bloody hard work.’ Justin, who was strangely old-fashioned when it came to what was expected of women, watched in horror as she kicked out a toilet cistern with a booted foot.
‘Listen, I’ve lived on my own all of my life. I’m a demon at DIY,’ argued Lisa. She’d proven this very fact by locating the stopcock earlier and turning off the water at the mains. ‘I got fed up being charged a bomb every time I needed something doing. I just bought a manual and got on with it.’
She wrenched the pipes out of the wall as George and Justin exchanged grimaces over the top of her head. From then on she set the pace. She had them out of bed at seven o’clock every morning, stripping wallpaper and pulling up carpets. The skip lorry could barely keep up with them. But she was a fair taskmaster. She ran down the hill to the bakery at nine o’clock for croissants and
pains au chocolat
, then made them bacon sandwiches at midday. At six, they were finally allowed to stop, and they all went down to the beach for a swim, to wash away the dust and the filth. They floated on their backs in the water, gazing at the sky, allowing their aching muscles to relax.