Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  Then, a couple of yards in front of him, he notices something in the road – strange marks, a series of curves. They are interlaced and go left from the centre of the road and disappear into the ditch. He knows that these can only be one thing, tyre marks – the result of severe skidding. As he moves closer to the marks, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing, he notices that the thick bush at the side of the road where the skid marks disappear has been disturbed – flattened, in fact – leaving a large gap. He approaches the gap and walks right into it, drawn irresistibly to whatever it is he’s going to find. He steps across the ditch and looks down the slope. At first, he sees nothing unusual. There is the line of the stream, the glistening water, an occasional boulder on one side or the other.

  Then he sees it, and can’t understand how it wasn’t the first thing he saw. Forty or fifty feet below, at the bottom of a now obvious track through the grass and bushes, he sees the back end of a vehicle. It is wider than a normal car – like a four-wheel drive, possibly an SUV.

  It is sticking up out of the stream, which means its front end is probably submerged in water.

  Which means the driver …

  McNally has taken a few steps down the slope before he knows what he’s doing, before he realises it’s too steep. If he goes on he’ll slip and fall, and maybe break his neck. He turns and struggles back up.

  Standing in the ditch again, catching his breath, he looks up and down the road, but it’s deserted.

  He takes out his mobile phone. He hates this bloody thing and hardly ever uses it. Everyone seems to have one these days, and it’s all ringtone this and text message that. He bought his to have in case of an emergency.

  His hand is shaking as he prepares to key in 999. He glances back towards the stream.

  This isn’t exactly the kind of emergency he had in mind.

  4

  At about 7.30, Paddy Norton gets out of bed and puts on his dressing gown and carpet slippers. Bleary-eyed, unshaven, he wanders downstairs. He goes into the reception room at the rear of the house and starts circling the full-sized snooker table he put in a few years back but has hardly used since. He played a lot when he was a young man, and to this day he still derives visceral pleasure from the memory of a maximum break he once scored against Larry Bolger. It was his first – and only – 147, and it actually ruined the game for him, because unless every frame he played after that was another 147, what was the point? Anything less was a taunt – if you were this good once, type of thing, what the fuck is wrong with you now? He got the table put in imagining he’d be able to just mess around on it and relax, but it never felt right – whereas walking around it does feel right. And it’s probably because of the sheer size of the table, not to mention the size of the room, that it feels like he’s doing more than just pacing up and down, that it feels, sometimes, like he’s in the chariot race from Ben-Hur.

  This morning, though, as he stops to lean against a corner pocket and catch his breath, it feels a bit more like the Stations of the Cross – so he decides to give it a rest. After a moment, he opens the double doors and goes through into the living room.

  When Norton left things with Fitz last night and went home, the first thing he did was to take two more Narolet tablets, but instead of knocking him out they kept him awake. He had a glass of Power’s and went to bed, but he couldn’t sleep, so he lay there staring up at the ceiling. At one point, he even thought about leaning over to Miriam’s night table to get her bottle of sleeping pills, but …

  No.

  He sinks into an armchair now and turns on the TV. He watches Sky News for a while – then some Dr Phil, then an episode of Cheers, whatever is on, his thumb working the remote control, the rest of him, every other muscle in his body, freeze-frame still.

  Miriam comes in shortly after nine, already dressed and with her make-up on. She asks him what he’s doing.

  He looks up. ‘I’m watching TV.’

  His mouth feels dry.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she says, walking over to him, ‘you know I don’t like the TV on in the mornings.’ She gently extracts the remote control from his hand and points it at the huge plasma screen on the wall above the fireplace. ‘It’s unhealthy.’

  The screen goes blank. She throws the remote control onto a sofa opposite Norton, out of his reach.

  A tall woman, elegant and self-possessed, Miriam is wearing a Paul Costello suit and a string of pearls Norton gave her for their last wedding anniversary. ‘I’m going into town for most of the day,’ she says. ‘Then I have that fund-raiser at six.’

  It is only then that Miriam seems to notice the dishevelled, exhausted state her husband is in.

  ‘Darling. Are you all right? You look dreadful.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘Oh, Paddy, honestly.’

  What does this mean? He isn’t sure. Her tone is dismissive, but indulgent at the same time. He can’t wait for her to leave.

  ‘I’m going upstairs now to have a shower,’ he says, but he doesn’t move.

  Miriam leans down and pecks him on the forehead. As she withdraws, he thinks he sees her wrinkling her nose.

  ‘The sooner the better,’ she says, and quickly adds, ‘OK, I’ll see you later.’

  She turns and walks out of the room.

  Norton doesn’t move. He looks over at the remote control. The obvious thing to do would be to get up, walk across to the sofa and retrieve it, but somehow initiating this simple sequence of physical manoeuvres proves beyond him.

  When he eventually does stand up, over forty minutes later, Norton ignores the remote and walks out of the room. He stands in the hallway for a moment, hesitating. Then he wanders across the hallway and into the kitchen, where he puts on the coffeemaker – because that’s what he needs to kick-start his day, surely, a good strong dose of coffee.

  He sits at the huge rectangular breakfast table and waits. Miriam had the kitchen redone recently and it’s a cold, industrial look, all chrome and brushed steel, a bit like a restaurant kitchen – which of course was maybe what she had in mind, seeing as how they do so much entertaining.

  He looks up at the clock. It’s nearly ten.

  He goes back to the coffeemaker and pours himself a cup. Then he reaches over to the transistor radio beside the toaster and flicks it on to get the news headlines.

  He resisted doing this earlier. No one has phoned yet, so he isn’t really expecting anything, but he figures he might as well check. The first story is yet another worrying ESRI report on the economy. Then comes the announcement of a new investment in the Waterford area by the electronics giant Paloma. Then the stalled CAP reform talks in Brussels. Then the bit he already knows about, the shooting dead last night of a young man in the beer garden of a Dublin pub. This is followed by a drugs seizure story, a car bomb in Baghdad and a row in London over a security breach at Clarence House.

  But that’s it.

  Norton turns off the radio and takes a sip from his coffee. What was he expecting? Who knows? He remembers another occasion like this – also in a kitchen, and a much more modest one, if memory serves. The kitchen in the house on Griffith Avenue. He’d been up all night, waiting for a phone call, which never came.

  Norton drinks the rest of his coffee quickly and then refills his cup.

  He can hear the Hoover going upstairs. Mrs Burke has begun her daily round. He’ll wait until she has finished the bedrooms before going up. He doesn’t want to give her a fright.

  As he is pouring a third cup of coffee, his mobile rings. It’s in the pocket of his dressing gown. He fishes it out and looks at the display. There is no number, which means that it isn’t Fitz and it isn’t the office. He quickly moves back to the table with his coffee and sits down.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Paddy. Ray Sullivan.’

  ‘Ray.’ Norton stands up. He glances over at the clock.

  ‘Ray, it’s 10.15 – what is it, 5.15 there? Jesus, I thought I was bad.’
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  ‘I can’t sleep, Paddy. Never could. I do my best work at 5 a.m. This new business cycle we have these days? With all the twenty-four-hour non-stop global bullshit? It’s only just catching up with me. But listen, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Ray, I’m fine.’

  Norton sits down again. He takes a quick sip from his coffee. Ray Sullivan is the CEO of Amcan, a company Norton is hoping to secure as the anchor tenant for Richmond Plaza. But several thorny issues – installation specs and naming rights among them – remain unresolved, and negotiations have been dragging on for months.

  ‘Good. Now. Listen to me.’

  Sullivan has a particular style, and you don’t have much choice but to go along with it.

  ‘I’m listening, Ray.’

  ‘OK. I had lunch with our friends yesterday, like I told you, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And what do you know, they’d like to meet with Larry when he’s over next week.’

  Norton tightens his fist and gives it a little shake. ‘Excellent, Ray. I’ll set it up.’

  ‘Good. Good.’ He pauses. ‘But I want to keep a firm lid on this, agreed?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Sullivan clears his throat. ‘Because let me make something clear to you, Paddy. These are very private people. They like their privacy.’ He pauses. ‘And they go to great lengths to protect it.’

  ‘I understand that, Ray.’

  In addition to being the CEO of Amcan, Sullivan also sits on the board of the Oberon Capital Group, a private-equity firm that has extensive business interests in more than a hundred countries worldwide.

  ‘They just want to meet him, have a talk, get the measure of the man. No press releases or publicity or anything.’ He pauses again. ‘So we’re on the same page here?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Ray Sullivan leaves that hanging for a moment. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK. We’ll talk again. Say hi to the lovely Miriam for me.’

  ‘And to the lovely Caroline.’

  This way of finishing their telephone conversations has become something of a routine.

  Norton puts his mobile down on the table.

  After a moment, he stands up. He needs to make another call. He goes and gets the cordless phone from the wall unit beside the fridge. Better to use the landline, he thinks. In case anyone is trying to reach him on the mobile.

  Still standing, he bangs out the number and waits.

  Voicemail.

  He doesn’t leave a message. He tries another number. And waits.

  ‘Good morning, the Depart –’

  ‘The Minister, please. It’s Paddy Norton.’

  ‘Just a moment, please, Mr Norton.’

  With the phone cradled on his shoulder, he reties the belt around his dressing gown.

  ‘Mr Norton? The Minister is unavailable at the moment. Can I –’

  ‘No. It’s OK. I’ll call again later. Thanks.’

  Norton should have known. With that Paloma announcement on the news, there’s no way Bolger wasn’t going to be tied up.

  He puts the phone down, then picks it up again almost immediately. With the Oberon Capital Group now firmly in the picture, Norton is pretty sure negotiations with Amcan will be stepping up a gear or two. There are several people he needs to talk to.

  But as he stares at the phone in his hand, he realises he’s not in the right frame of mind, that his celebrated ability to compartmentalise has – for the moment at least – deserted him.

  A while later, at nearly eleven o’clock – and on the jittery side of four cups of coffee – he grabs his mobile from the table, walks out of the kitchen and wanders down the hallway towards the rear of the house.

  Once inside the large reception room, he starts circling the snooker table again. This time he falls into a slow, steady rhythm and tries to empty his mind. What he can’t get out of his mind, though, is how reckless he has been. The thing is, he panicked last night, he overreacted, he left himself exposed – and that’s something he wouldn’t have done when he was younger, or even a few years ago. After Rafferty showed up at the hotel, direct involvement of some sort was unavoidable, and he did his best to limit that involvement, but the question remains: How much damage has he done? Has he compromised Richmond Plaza? Has he compromised Winterland Properties?

  Or is it even worse than that?

  After another lap of the table, Norton finds himself wondering if he shouldn’t give in and call Fitz. As before, they agreed no contact, but by this stage of the morning he really needs to know what’s going on. Because until he gets word from someone, Fitz or whoever, or hears something on the radio, he simply won’t be able to shake off the feeling that things are spinning out of control.

  He’s a few paces into the next lap when his mobile rings.

  Spring, winter, whatever.

  He stops and fumbles at the pocket of his dressing gown. When he eventually gets the phone out, he stares at the number on the display for a second, then presses Answer.

  5

  Gina has her phone on the table, neatly lined up beside her cappuccino and her notebook. Willing the damn thing to ring, she glares at it every chance she gets. But she’s not getting too many chances, because Tom Maloney, sitting opposite her in this small café on Dawson Street, is one of those intense people who insist on maintaining unbroken eye contact as they speak. He also has bad breath and an even worse habit of using it to state the obvious.

  ‘Look, it’s OK if your version one point zero is a little rough around the edges: what’s crucial is to get it out there, get it launched, get it known –’

  How could he think she doesn’t know this?

  ‘– and then you can work on landing the marquee customers.’

  Gina realises that what they’re talking about – strategy, the future of the company – is important, but at the moment she couldn’t care less about any of it.

  ‘And of course,’ Maloney is saying, ‘it may even turn out that your best customers aren’t the ones you expect them to be –’

  Her phone rings. She whips it off the table. It’s P.J. She’s disappointed, but doesn’t show it. She looks at the time: 11.25.

  Short meeting.

  ‘Hi, P., listen –’

  ‘Hey, Gina, so that was pretty useless, and I –’

  ‘Can’t talk now, P.’

  She says it so firmly that P.J.stops in his tracks. ‘OK.’ He then says, ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.’

  ‘OK.’

  She puts the phone down, aware that Maloney is probably flattering himself about how riveted she is to what he’s been saying. But what she’s actually thinking is Get me out of here. Because if she’s not going to talk to P.J. –

  Her phone rings again.

  As before, she whips it off the table, but this time she stands up, having seen from the display that it’s Yvonne.

  She turns away from the table, doesn’t indicate anything to Maloney and heads for the door.

  ‘Yvonne?’

  It’s noisy out on Dawson Street, with traffic, tourists, a plane passing overhead.

  ‘Gina?’

  ‘Yes.’ She stares at the pavement. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘OK, Gina, listen to me.’

  ‘Yvonne, what’s wrong?’

  Gina presses the phone to her ear. Oh God, here it comes.

  ‘It’s Noel.’ Yvonne pauses. ‘Our Noel.’ Gina closes her eyes. ‘He was killed last night. His car ran off the road.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Somewhere in Wicklow.’

  ‘Wicklow?’

  Yvonne is sobbing now, and Gina can’t make out what she’s saying, or even if she’s saying anything at all.

  A dozen questions occur to Gina, and as quickly it occurs to her that none of them matters.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispers, ‘poor Jenny.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Where –’

  ‘The
y brought the body to Tallaght Hospital. Jenny’s on her way out there now.’ Yvonne then says something incoherent about ‘the two Noels’ and starts sobbing again.

  Gina nods along. She doesn’t know what Yvonne has said exactly, but the impact of putting these three words together is as much as she can deal with.

  She swallows. A raw, uncomfortable lump has formed in her throat.

  After a long and painful silence, the sisters somehow manage to get practical for a few seconds and make an arrangement. Yvonne says that because Catherine has just come back from identifying young Noel’s body and is naturally inconsolable she and Michelle will stay with her for the time being. Gina says that she’ll go out to Tallaght. They can talk later on the phone, or text.

  As her arm drops to her side, Gina realises that she won’t be having that chat with Noel over the next couple of days, the one he seemed so anxious to have. She realises that she won’t be seeing Noel again, ever.

  She looks around. The sun is shining now. Dawson Street looks beautiful, as it always does in the sunshine, and she wonders what is to stop him from just showing up here? What is to stop him from appearing, this minute, on the pavement in front of her, striding down from St Stephen’s Green, say, or up from Trinity College?

  She shakes her head, slowly, as the lump in her throat approaches critical mass.

  Where is he?

  Gina walks back into the café. She retrieves her notebook from the table and her bag from the floor.

  ‘Have to go,’ she says, not looking at Maloney.

  Outside again, she turns right and heads in the direction of the taxi rank halfway up the street, her eyes filling with tears.

  6

  ‘Joining me now from our Dáil studio is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Larry Bolger. Good afternoon, Minister.’

  ‘Sean.’

  Waiting for his first question, Bolger stares at a point on the wall directly opposite him.