Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  But still, he enjoyed what just happened, and would like more of it … the naked flattery, the attention, the access.

  He places his hand on the shiny black surface of the leather car seat and strokes it. He’s enjoying this, too – being driven at speed through the city, invisible behind the tinted windows of a limousine. On the outside, people flicker past, heads occasionally turning, but never close enough to see in any detail. Buildings, storefronts, façades – these are all insubstantial, one-dimensional, the city reduced to a celluloid, hallucinogenic rush. What it would be like to have a police escort, or to be at the head of a full motorcade – open top, waving at crowds, engines roaring all around you, in the line of fire – he doesn’t even want to think about, because the whole thing gives him such a tingling sense of urgency, of power, that it’s almost unbearable …

  The car pulls up outside his hotel. As he waits for the driver to open the door, he takes out his mobile phone and switches it back on.

  Crossing the sidewalk, he glances left at the dark windblown canyon that is 57th Street, and feels a sudden chill.

  On his way into the lobby, holding his mobile out in front of him, he sees that he has six voice messages and seven texts. That volume of traffic over only a couple of hours is just a little heavy, even for him – so before he spots Paula approaching from the other side of the lobby, ashen-faced, shaking her head, Bolger knows that something is wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ he says.

  Paula is still shaking her head when she speaks. ‘Ken Murphy.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Bolger says, ‘what?’

  ‘He’s working on a story for tomorrow.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He swallows.

  Paula seems reluctant to go on. She also seems angry, or disgusted, or just weary – he isn’t sure which.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well,’ she says, not looking him in the eye, ‘apparently it’s something about an affair and … unpaid gambling debts?’

  4

  ‘How’s it going, love?’

  Gina turns around. She’s startled but tries not to show it. She arrived early and sat in a booth opposite the bar, with a clear view of the entrance. She ordered a bottle of Corona. She waited.

  Now, unexpectedly, Terry Stack has appeared from behind her.

  She looks up at him. ‘Fine.’

  She wonders if he was already here. She doesn’t think so, because she looked the place over before sitting down. Does that mean he has special privileges? He’s allowed to come in by the back door?

  Maybe he actually owns Kennedy’s now.

  Stack slides into the booth opposite Gina. He nods at the bottle of Corona in front of her and says, ‘Get us a pint there, would you?’

  For a second Gina thinks he’s talking to her, but then she sees one of his hoodies sloping over to the bar. She doesn’t want to look around again, but she also suspects that the previously unoccupied booth behind her is now occupied.

  More boys in hoodies?

  His security detail.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to meet me,’ she says.

  Gina is determined to be civil with Stack – and neutral, as neutral as she can be.

  ‘The pleasure’s all mine, love.’

  But straightaway she’s wondering how civil or neutral it would be to tell him that her name isn’t love.

  ‘Whatever,’ she says, studying the label on her Corona bottle.

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad you’ve kept in touch, because –’

  ‘I wasn’t keeping in touch,’ she interrupts. ‘Jesus. I just have a few questions I want to ask you.’

  ‘Right, right. Yeah. Anyway, I was going to contact you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ll get to that.’

  The hoodie returns. He places a pint of stout in front of Stack and then, glancing at Gina, disappears. Stack takes a sip from the pint and clears the foam from his upper lip.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She has no intention of elaborating. It’s none of Terry Stack’s business how she is.

  ‘I knew Noel’s ma had a few sisters,’ Stack then says, ‘but I didn’t realise –’

  He stops here, searching for the right words.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That one of them’d be so young and … gorgeous-looking.’

  Jesus. ‘Well, there you go.’

  She takes a sip from her bottle. He takes another sip from his pint.

  ‘So what do you do?’

  Gina wants to scream. Is this a date she’s on? ‘I work in software.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Not exactly the opening he was looking for, she expects, because what’s he going to say now? That’s funny, I dabble in software, too – the piracy end of things.

  ‘What area?’ he says.

  ‘Data recovery. I work for a development company.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ She leans forward. ‘Look, Terry, I don’t want to talk about my job or about how I fucking am – I just want to talk about my brother and my nephew, OK?’

  Civil, neutral. Nice going.

  Stack smiles. He looks less like a priest in civvies today. He’s wearing a jacket and shirt but no tie. He has thick greying hair and tired brown eyes, and there’s a weird twist to his mouth when he speaks.

  ‘OK,’ he says, ‘fine.’

  ‘Right. OK.’

  ‘I told you I wasn’t going to let this rest, and I’m not. I’ve been making, er … let’s call them enquiries.’

  He pauses for effect.

  Eventually, Gina says, ‘And?’

  ‘You’re in a real fucking hurry, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aren’t you? I thought you said whoever did this was going to pay.’

  ‘I did. I did. And they will.’

  ‘So?’

  Gina can’t believe the tack she’s adopting here. Is it nerves? Is she compensating for the fact that she’s actually terrified? Because the thing is, she got Stack’s number from Catherine, but before she rang him she trawled through a few newspaper archives on the Web, and it turns out that Stack’s gang not only infringe the Copyright Act to the tune of millions of euro every year, not only deal heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis, not only traffic young girls in from Eastern Europe, but they are widely believed to be responsible for – and she can’t discount, she supposes, possible involvement in this by young Noel – three recent and particularly vicious murders.

  She’s also aware of the unorthodox uses to which Stack himself sometimes puts his training as an electrician.

  So just what is it, she wonders – given that she’s pretty much spent the last ten years of her own life sitting in front of a computer screen – what is it that qualifies her to be so pushy and aggressive with him?

  Stack shakes his head. ‘I’m getting to it. Jesus. OK, first up, there are feuds going on out there, right? Fuckers blowing each other away because one of them has a lip on him, or he gave the other one’s girlfriend a dart, or whatever, but I run a tight ship.’

  She nods.

  ‘The lads I have working for me are focused, you know what I mean?’

  Gina wants to say, Yeah, yeah, get on with it.

  ‘So there was no reason for anyone to do Noel, no reason I know of, no reason at all in fact.’

  Gina swallows. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, like I said, I talked to some people and … I’m getting some fairly fucking strange reports back. There’s rumours going around.’

  ‘What kind of rumours?’

  ‘Well.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I heard this from a couple of different people. They’re saying that the hit was really meant for your brother, that there was a mix-up –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘– with the names being the same and all. The whole thing was arranged in a big rush, apparently –’

  Gina leans forward
.

  ‘– and wires got crossed. It was just assumed that a hit on Noel Rafferty had to be, well, a hit on our Noel.’

  Gina feels like she’s been punched in the stomach.

  ‘Now whoever done the job was a pro,’ Stack goes on. ‘There’s no denying that, but they could only act on the basis of information they were given, and that information –’

  ‘No, no, wait –’ Gina is shaking her head at this, and vigorously, as though trying to brush aside anything that isn’t one hundred per cent relevant. ‘I don’t understand –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who would want to kill my brother?’

  Stack pauses and grunts.

  ‘You tell me. I don’t fucking know.’

  ‘I don’t know either. How would I know?’

  ‘He was your brother.’

  ‘Yeah, but –’

  Gina is lost here. For a week she’s been contending that there was more to what happened than met the eye – and now, faced with a possible confirmation of this, she finds herself unable to accept it. She assumed there was some connection between the two deaths, a causal link – but in her mind it all remained vague and non-specific.

  What Stack has just posited, by contrast, is shockingly specific.

  ‘I mean …’ She doesn’t know what to say. ‘It was still an accident, the way he died, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stack says. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe? What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. Just that this … well, it changes things.’

  ‘Are you saying that maybe it wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘I don’t know. It still could have been, I suppose. But not necessarily.’

  ‘How? He was over the limit, that’s in the autopsy. His car ran off the road. Everyone says it was an accident.’

  ‘Gina, love, you can fake an accident. You can hold someone down and reef a naggin of Power’s down their throat. You can fiddle with the brakes of their car. There’s a million different things you can do.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘Look, if your brother was the target of the original hit and they fucked that up, then it makes sense that they’d try again.’

  ‘But do it differently.’

  ‘Yeah. Probably. Chances are there was a bit of panic in the air.’ He takes a sip from his pint. ‘Of course, there’s no way of proving any of this now. Because he’s gone, he’s buried, and the forensics are gone, too. Not that anyone would believe it in the first place.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She lowers her head.

  ‘Listen to me, Gina,’ Stack says. ‘This is still only speculation. No one knows who the shooter was, not yet anyway. So what you should be doing is trying to find out if anyone had it in for your brother.’

  She looks up. ‘But he was … he was an engineer.’

  ‘Ah go on, would you. These professional cunts are no different from anyone else.’ He pauses. ‘Think. Did he owe money to anyone? Did anyone owe him money?’

  Gina shakes her head. ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Believe me,’ Stack says, lifting his pint again, ‘with this kind of thing it’s nearly always about money.’

  Gina looks around her in exasperation.

  The place is almost empty. Two old-timers are sitting at the bar, and there’s a group of middle-aged women in the far corner.

  It’s early, though.

  This is the second time in a week that Gina has been in Kennedy’s, and she’s finding the experience unutterably weird. It’s a quiet suburban pub now, carpets and dark wood everywhere, at least four TV screens that she can see, and a blackboard menu with stuff on it like seafood chowder and toasted paninis. But when she was growing up, Kennedy’s was a very different place. What it was, in fact, was an awful dive.

  Guinness, Harp, Woodbines, King crisps.

  Spit, piss, vomit.

  Her father used to drink here.

  Gina remembers coming in as a kid – being sent in – to get him or to give him a message.

  Her mother used to drink at home.

  ‘And if it isn’t about money,’ Stack is saying, ‘chances are it’s about sex.’

  Gina looks at him. He has what could develop into a smirk on his face.

  ‘Noel was a happily married man,’ she says, immediately realising that to someone like Stack this might sound naive.

  ‘But sure they’re the worst,’ he says on cue. ‘I see blokes like that all the time, gagging for it.’

  Gina doesn’t want to get into this. Taking a sip from her Corona, she tries to think of a neutral response. But then, luckily, Stack’s mobile phone goes off.

  He takes the phone out of his pocket and puts it up to his ear. ‘Yeah?’

  Gina looks away – over at the bar. She’s still in shock and feels a little sick. She turns back and stares down at the table.

  ‘When did he ask?’ Stack is saying, and in a loud whisper. ‘Was it this morning?’

  Up to now Gina’s been assuming that her brother’s death was some form of collateral damage, a messy, possibly unintended consequence of her nephew’s murder. But now she has to deal with the fact that maybe the reverse is true: that her nephew’s death was the unintended consequence of her brother’s murder.

  She lifts her head again. Stack is tapping his fingers against the side of his pint. His brow is furrowed. He is listening intently.

  To avoid looking at him, she glances around.

  Three of the TV screens are showing snooker. The fourth screen, mounted above an alcove near the door, is showing the six o’clock news. The sound is down, but Gina watches it anyway. After a few seconds it cuts from the newsreader in the studio to a reporter outside. Talking directly to camera, the reporter is across the street from a large hotel in what looks like Manhattan. Gina can’t hear him, but she senses an urgency in the way he’s speaking. Then it cuts to another man entering an office, sitting at a desk and picking up a pen to sign a document. This is one of those staged and fairly stilted archive clips they use to identify government ministers.

  In this particular instance the government minister is Larry Bolger.

  Gina finds this a little strange. Not strange that he’s in the news – Larry Bolger is frequently in the news – but strange because she actually had a brief conversation with the man only last week.

  ‘He’s a little prick.’

  Startled, Gina turns back and looks across the table at Stack.

  ‘I gave him the details yesterday,’ he’s saying into his phone, ‘so he knows what the story is. He’s a scabby bollocks. Look, don’t let him leave. Keep him talking. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  He closes the phone and puts it away.

  Gina wishes she hadn’t heard that.

  ‘Have to go,’ Stack says. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Er … that’s OK. Thanks for the information.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Gina takes a Lucius business card out of her wallet and hands it to him. ‘If you hear anything else, will you let me know? My mobile number is on there.’

  ‘Sure. Yeah. Of course.’

  As he gets out of the booth, Stack produces a business card of his own and places it on the table. Without picking it up Gina can see what’s printed on it.

  Terry Stack, Electrical Contractor.

  ‘Feel free,’ he says, ‘if you ever want to contact me.’

  She nods, but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Any time of the day or night,’ he adds. ‘It’s a twenty-four-hour service.’ He winks at her. ‘Emergency call-out.’

  She nods again and says, ‘OK. Whatever. Thanks.’

  Then she slides his card off the table and puts it into her wallet.

  Stack picks up his pint and drains it. ‘Right, love,’ he says, putting the glass back down. ‘Take it easy.’

  He walks off. He nods at the barman as he passes. Three guys in hoodies follow him out.

  Gina’s stomach is jumping. S
he wants to leave now, too, but decides to hang on for a couple of minutes.

  She takes a sip from her Corona.

  She rubs her eyes and wonders if she shouldn’t go back and speak to everyone again. If so, who does she start with?

  Eventually she puts her wallet away and slides out of the booth. On her way over to the door, she glances up at the TV screen above the alcove.

  The news is still on. The German Chancellor is standing at a podium, addressing a press conference.

  As Gina opens the door, she braces herself for the cold night air.

  5

  Mark is that close to calling the waiter over and ordering a drink.

  Just to make this bearable.

  The atmosphere tonight at Roscoe’s is lively – but not at this table. At this table, to put it mildly, things are a little strained.

  Mark picks at his rocket salad. The building contractor, a small, muscular Corkman in his early sixties, moves asparagus tips around on his plate and tells a rambling story about his early days in London. The fat accountant concentrates on his fish cakes in blue-cheese sauce.

  There is a bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water in the centre of the table and Mark stares at the label on it.

  How could he have been so naive?

  It has taken him until this, his third meeting with the building contractor, to realise that the elaborate dance of negotiations they’ve been involved in so far has really been about getting Mark to pay some money up front before any agreement can be reached. The builder hasn’t said anything explicit, but with one of his accountants sitting beside him this evening it’s clear he wants to take the matter to the next level.

  He probably assumes that Mark has been playing some kind of hardball. It won’t have occurred to him that Mark is actually an idiot. In fact, it’s only when the figure of twenty thousand euro is mentioned – albeit in a suitably ambiguous context – that it dawns on Mark what is actually happening. He can’t believe he didn’t see it coming.

  And they’re only on their starters.

  Which is why he’d kill for some neat gin – and served, preferably, in a pint glass. But the builder and the accountant aren’t drinking, so Mark isn’t going to risk it.