A Chance Encounter by Rae Shaw (e manga reader TXT) 📗

Luke and Sophia, playing catch with the kids outside.

Ellen wandered through the house not daring to open closed doors – perhaps due to a lingering fear of what might lie on the other side. One was slightly ajar, and she peered through the crack. Haynes was behind a desk, reading something resting on his knee. The concentration was vivid on his face. As she tiptoed past the door, a noisy floorboard betrayed her. He called to her and asked her to come in.

The room was lofty with a wall of shelves housing leather-bound antique books that were probably for impressing visitors and not reading. On the wall, there were several framed pictures of contemporary landscapes. The artist had captured an urban scape with skyscrapers. She recognised part of the City from her daily sojourn into work – something she wasn't required to do any longer.

He followed the line of her sight. ‘They're Hettie's. The advantages of having an artist as your wife, you get to commission whatever you like.’ Jackson rose to greet her. ‘Please, sit. You slept well?’

The chair faced the desk. It reminded her of visiting the doctor, but not the counsellor whom she had consulted at the request of social services. He had always put her on a couch surrounded by cuddly bears. Those soft, inert objects were supposed to comfort her. She had despised the man for treating her like a child. Freddie had never… she inhaled and cleared her dry throat.

‘Yes. Thank you for helping me. The helicopter and everything. I’m very grateful.’ She clasped her hands. ‘I have questions.’

‘Ask them,’ he said kindly.

‘Was Freddie ever real? A real person?’

Jackson paused before answering. ‘Freddie Zustaller. His surname means deliverer in German. He isn’t German. His nationality is no longer significant. He moves about Europe and rarely meets people face-to-face. He uses others to do his dirty work. Mainly Eastern Europeans or other ethnic groups. He's probably not in Ireland. If he is, he would be far away from where you were.’

‘I don’t understand. Who is he then?’ Freddie had never stated his nationality.

‘Zustaller is a career criminal who ran his shady accounts through a firm called Haydocks. You've heard of it?’

Ellen covered her mouth. ‘Mark worked for them. He didn't do anything—’

Jackson interjected. ‘No. Absolutely not. I never suspected him. Quite the contrary. Mark reported illegal practices to the police and the money was confiscated. Mark made a very bitter enemy. What I don't know is how Zustaller found you.’

She explained in a faltering voice how Freddie had tricked her by posing as a victim support counsellor.

Jackson pursed his lips. She waited for a rebuke, but it didn't come. ‘I'm sorry, Ellen. Freddie's name was a cover for a sinister operation. Whoever you communicated with was after information about Mark and also your father. You were groomed to get at Mark.’

She opened her mouth, wanting to confess further, all the things she passed onto Freddie in her ignorance, but she shouldn't be apologising to Jackson for revealing information she should have kept secret. Somebody else deserved that apology.

‘Zustaller is a trafficker,’ Jackson said slowly. ‘He sells women, men too, to others and on again.’

Prostitutes. She didn't need to hear the word – she knew what went on in that so-called hostel. Freddie had wanted to pimp her. Bile stuck in her throat, layering the parched surface thickly with an acrid taste. The trembling was hard to control. She weaved her fingers, locking them into a knot.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Jackson asked.

She shook her head. ‘He is, was, convincing.’

‘Ah, don't judge yourself harshly. And, to be frank, given what we know, that is the charitable foundation I run, they are good at this. Zustaller would not have involved himself if it wasn't so personal. Would you say you were always dealing with the same person? In retrospect, is it possible that you were communicating with—’

‘Yes,’ she said. He waited as she pressed the heel of her palms against her wet eyes, hiding the tears that dangled on her eyelashes. ‘Sometimes he treated me like a kid sister, other times friendly, calling me sweetie. Occasionally, he pissed me off. I thought he was a priest.’ Dropping her hands, she laughed; the sound stuck in her throat and fizzled out. ‘He told me he was a social worker. He knew I'm not a fan of them. Bizarrely, it convinced me that he was real... I didn't even question the details of the dig. A fake dig. It's so obvious now.’ She slumped. How stupid she must appear to the man behind the desk – a chief executive who made important decisions on a daily basis and probably was a better judge of people than she ever would be.

Jackson moved out of his imposing chair and chose another nearer to her. She remembered him at the nightclub. A commanding presence; the host who circulated effortlessly, dipping in and out of conversations while she drank herself into oblivion. Across the expanse of the club, she recalled the blur of his face harbouring the two sharp pinpricks of his eyes. He had been watching her.

‘Why are you so interested in me and Mark?’ she asked.

He leaned back in his chair, and sighed. He spun the yarn out in a dispassionate voice. The efforts of Opportunitas in uncovering the network controlled by the Deliverer, her Freddie and his many voices. Then her father, Bill, who murdered somebody significant, deliberately provoking conflict. The tangle Mr Haynes described weaved its way toward her, she could sense the direction as the threads of his story came together. As for Mark, he unwittingly spoiled things further for Freddie Zustaller. She noted Jackson always called him Zustaller.

‘He’s got other names. It surprised me he used that particular version with you, because it’s the one I first heard years ago, when I