by Alan Glynn
I got out and started walking, briskly, and not in any particular direction. As I moved, I replayed the scene with Ally over and over in my mind. Her resemblance to Melissa was uncanny and the whole experience had left me stunned – blinking at infinity, shuddering in sudden, unexpected spasms of benevolence and hope.
But as I moved, too, I could feel Gennady’s silver pillbox lodged in the pocket of my jeans. I knew that in a few hours’ time I would be opening the box, taking out the two tablets that were left in it, and swallowing them – a simple, banal sequence of movements that was all too finite and bereft of anything even approaching benevolence or hope.
*
I wandered on, aimlessly.
After about half an hour, I decided there wasn’t much point in going any further. It looked like it was going to start raining soon, and in any case the unfamiliarity of these busy commercial streets was becoming a little disconcerting.
I stopped and turned around to go back towards the car. But as I did so I found myself staring into the window of an electrical goods store in which there were fifteen TV sets banked up in three rows of five. On each screen, staring directly out at me, was the face of Donatella Alvarez. It was a headshot. She was leaning forward slightly, her eyes big and deep, her long, brown hair casting one side of her face into shadow.
I stood frozen on the sidewalk, people passing behind and around me. Then I stepped a little closer to the window and watched as the news report continued with exterior shots of Actium and the Clifden Hotel. I moved along the window and stepped inside the door so I’d be able to hear the report as well as see it – but the sound was quite low and with the traffic passing behind me all I could hear were fragments. Over a shot of Forty-eighth Street, I thought I caught something about ‘… a statement issued this afternoon by Carl Van Loon’. Then, ‘… a re-appraisal of the deal in the light of negative publicity’. And then – I was really straining to hear now – something like ‘… share prices adversely affected’.
I looked around in exasperation.
There was another display of TV sets tuned to the same channel in an alcove at the back. I quickly walked the length of the store, past VCRs and DVDs and stereos and ghetto-blasters, and just as I got to the other end, they were cutting to a piece of footage from the MCL–Abraxas press conference, the one with the camera gliding across the top of the room from left to right. I waited, my stomach jumping, and then after a couple of seconds … there I was, on the screen, in my suit, gliding from right to left, staring out. There was a curiously vacant look on my face that I didn’t remember from the first time I’d seen this …
I listened to the report, but was barely able to take it in. Someone at Actium that night – probably the bald art critic with the salt-and-pepper beard – had seen the footage on the news, and it had jogged his memory. He’d recognized me as Thomas Cole, the guy who’d been sitting opposite Donatella Alvarez at the restaurant, and who’d later been speaking to her at the reception.
After the press-conference footage, they cut to a reporter standing in front of the Celestial Building. ‘Following up this new lead,’ the reporter said, ‘police then came to Eddie Spinola’s apartment here on the West Side to question him, but what they found instead was the body of an unidentified man, believed to be a member of a Russian crime organization. This man had apparently been stabbed to death, which means that Eddie Spinola …’ – they cut back to the footage from the press conference – ‘… is now wanted by police for questioning in relation to two high-profile murders …’
I turned around and walked swiftly back to the other end of the store, avoiding eye-contact with anyone. I stepped out on to the sidewalk and turned right. As I passed along by the window-front, I was acutely aware of the multiple screens showing yet another re-run of the press-conference footage.
On my way to the car, I stopped at a pharmacy and bought a large container of paracetamol. Then I stopped at a liquor store and bought two bottles of Jack Daniel’s.
After that, I got back on the road, still heading north, and left Albany as fast as I could.
*
I avoided the Interstate highways and took secondary roads, passing through Schenectady and Saratoga Springs and then up into the Adirondacks. I took a random, circuitous route, and wove my way towards Schroon Lake, oblivious of the natural beauty that was all around me, my head buzzing instead with an endless succession of garbled images. I veered over into Vermont, staying on secondary roads and worked my way up through Vergennes and Burlington, and then over towards Morrisville and Barton.
I drove for seven or eight hours, pulling in only once, for gas, at which point I also took the last two pills in the silver box.
*
I stopped at the Northview Motor Lodge at around ten o’clock. There was no point in driving any further. It was pitch dark now, and where was I going to go in any case? On up to Maine? New Brunswick? Nova Scotia?
I checked into the motel using a false name, and paid for the room in cash. In advance.
Two nights.
After I got over the initial shock of the décor and colour schemes in the room, I lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
According to the TV news bulletin I’d seen earlier, I was now a wanted murderer. That wasn’t quite how I saw myself, but given the circumstances I knew I’d have a pretty difficult time bringing anyone else around to my point of view.
It’s a long story, I’d have to say.
And then I’d have to tell it.
Whether or not I had realized it at the time, I realized now that this was why I’d packed my laptop computer in the holdall. The last coherent thing I would ever do would be to tell my story, and leave it behind for someone else to read. I lingered on the bed for quite a while, thinking things through. But then I remembered that I didn’t have that much time left in which to be coherent.
I got off the bed, therefore. I switched on the TV set, but kept the sound down. I took out the laptop from the bag, as well as one of the bottles of Jack Daniel’s. I put the plastic container of paracetamol tablets on the little bedside table. Then I sat down here in this wicker armchair, and with the sound of the ice-machine humming in the background, I got started.
*
It’s now Saturday morning, early, and I’m beginning to feel tired. This is one of the first signs of withdrawal from MDT – so it’s just as well that I’ve more or less finished here.
But finished what?
Is this a true and honest account of how I came close to doing the impossible, to realizing the unrealizable … to becoming one of the best and the brightest? Is it the story of a hallucination, a dream of perfectibility? Or is it simply the story of a human lab rat, someone who was tagged and followed and photographed, and then discarded? Or is it – even more simply again – the last confession of a murderer?
I don’t know any more, and don’t even know that it matters.
Besides, I’m feeling drowsy, and a little weak.
I think I’m going to lie down for a while.
*
I’ve just slept for about five hours, fitfully, tossing and turning. For the whole time, it felt like I was having a continuous, full-on anxiety dream, and when I woke up I had a headache behind my eyes which quickly spread out to the rest of my skull. Disorientated, groggy, nauseous, I then got off the bed, came back over here to the wicker armchair and replaced the computer on my lap.
It’s now around midday, and the TV is still on, tuned to CNN.
Clearly, something major has been happening since yesterday evening, or early this morning. I’m looking at shots of battleships stationed in the Gulf of Mexico, of ground troops being deployed along border areas, of Defense Secretary Caleb Hale in emergency session with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Along the bottom of the screen a band of text announces that a live presidential address from the Oval Office is about to commence.
I close my eyes for a while, and when I open t
hem again the President is on the TV screen, sitting at his desk. I can’t bear to turn the sound up, and as I study him closely, and see the alert, gorged MDT expression in his eyes, I realize that I can’t bear to look at him any more either. I reach out for the remote control and flick over to another channel, cartoons.
I gaze down at the keyboard of the laptop. My head is pounding now, and getting steadily worse. It’s time to shut off the computer and put it aside. I look over at the small table next to the bed, and at the plastic bottle on it containing 150 paracetamol tablets. Then I look at the keyboard once more and, wishing the command had a wider, smarter application – wishing it could somehow mean what it says – press ‘save’.
About the Author
Alan Glynn was born in 1960. He studied English Literature at Trinity College and has worked in magazine publishing in New York and as an EFL teacher in Italy. His second novel, Winterland, was published in 2009, and will be followed by Bloodland in 2011. He is married with two children and lives in Dublin.
By the Same Author
WINTERLAND
Bloodland
(Autumn 2011)
Corruption. Collusion. Conspiracy.
A tabloid star is killed in a helicopter crash and three years later a young journalist is warned off the story.
A private security contractor loses it in the Congo.
In Ireland an ex-prime minister struggles to contain a dark secret from his time in office.
A dramatic news story breaks in Paris just as a US senator begins his campaign to run for office.
With echoes of John Le Carré, 24 and James Ellroy, Alan Glynn’s follow-up to Winterland is another crime novel of and for our times – a ferocious, paranoid thriller that moves from Dublin to New York via Central Africa, as it explores the legacy of corruption in big business, the West’s fear of China, the role of back-room political players and the question of who controls what we know.
Winterland
(available in paperback now)
‘A dark edgy thriller packed with genuine suspense and a real sense of danger, diving into a world of crime, corruption and violence that is all too convincing.’ The Times
‘A page turner in the best sense of the word … the three set pieces of the story are as good as anything I’ve read in contemporary crime fiction.’ John Boyne, Irish Times
‘An enthralling and addictive read.’ Observer
‘Clever and intense; a dark and powerful slice of Dublin noir. I loved it!’ R. J. Ellory
‘A terrific read … completely involving.’ George Pelecanos
‘Timely, topical and thrilling.’ John Connolly
‘A resonant, memorable and uncomfortable read … Winterland is a book that speaks to absolutely now.’ Val McDermid
Copyright
First published as The Dark Fields in 2001
by Little Brown & Company
First published as Limitless in 2011
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© Alan Glynn, 2001
The right of Alan Glynn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–27335–5