The Clayton Account Read Online Free

region.’ Speer began to understand.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Yes. In such circumstances, anyone with a bad word to say about you, here …’ – he waved at the forests and hills – ‘would be digging his own grave.’
    Morales snorted. The image appealed to him. ‘Just so, my friend. Now tell me: how do we do it?’
    ‘Well, you have a construction company in Spain –’
    ‘Constructora de Malaga. Small fry.’
    ‘Yes, but we could capitalize it. I’ll need to move some money around. Then it could go into joint venture with you –’
    ‘With the Morales Foundation.’
    It was Speer’s turn to look curious.
    ‘My new charity. I will speak to De la Cruz and set it up. Meanwhile, you organize the money.’
    ‘I’ll have to go to New York, of course.’
    ‘You do that. And give my best regards to the Laundry Man.’
    * * *
    On Thursday morning Tom Clayton awoke early and went for a run on the beach. The wind had abated completely and a wintry sun was rising over the Atlantic. As he ran, breathing in the salty tang of the ocean, he went over his plans once more. Over the past two days he had made telephone enquiries. One day should be enough to accomplish what he wanted.
    An hour later, having showered and dressed in appropriate travelling clothes, he locked the house and looked at it contemplatively for an instant, then walked down the path carrying his luggage to the car. The early-morning traffic between Long Island and Kennedy Airport was light. He returned the hire car, dropped his bags in the United terminal and took a taxi into Manhattan.
    He first called briefly at the offices of Sweeney Tulley McAndrews, where he collected certified copies of his father’s and his grandfather’s wills. He looked at them carefully: just as expected, Pat Clayton’s will made no mention of Swiss accounts. Satisfied, Tom put both wills in his briefcase alongside the other documents he had brought from the house. By mid-morning he had taken the papers to the New York Bar Association’s headquarters, where Richard E. Sweeney’s signature was certified with apostils. He then walked to Federal Plaza and had the Bar Association’s signatures legalized by the State Department.
    At one o’clock he met his sister for lunch at Gino’s on Lexington. Tom was already seated at their table when she came, elegant as always, in a new Chanel suit, attracting glances from men and women alike. More than ever, she struck Tom as the perfect likeness of their mother, exactly as he remembered her, for at thirty-seven, Tessa was almost the same age Eileen Clayton had been when she died.
    They talked about the funeral, their respective partners and their children. Inevitably, most the conversation was about their father, and Tom noticed that Tessa kept averting her eyes.
    ‘Something on your mind, I think.’ His tone made it not a question.
    Tessa looked up at him, then nodded. ‘Did Dad ever talk to you about the Irish thing?’
    ‘You mean the family in Ireland?’
    ‘That too, yes,’ she replied hesitatingly. Then, as Tom remained silent, she continued:
    ‘I mean about the Cause, the Struggle, whatever they call it.’
    ‘Not in years.’ Tom had vague memories of his parents’ conversations and the whispered references to Uncle Sean.
    ‘He hated them, you know?’
    ‘Dad? Hate?’ Tom could not hide his surprise.
    ‘With passion,’ she said sadly. ‘He blamed them – I think he meant Uncle Sean – for our losing touch with the old country.’
    ‘When did he tell you that?’ Even as he asked the question, Tom felt guilt flood through him: realizing how selfishly he had always pursued his own ambitions, and how little thought he had devoted to his widowed father.
    ‘When he came back from his trip to Ireland,’ Tessa’s eyes clouded for an instant, ‘he even cried.’
    Tom took a sip of his wine and looked around the busy room as his sister regained her composure. It seemed bizarre, in this fashionable mid-town restaurant, to