Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  Taking a deep breath, Norton fills his lungs with healthy sea air. In front of them, two seagulls flap past, squawking. Out on the horizon there is a ship, a tiny dot, one of the ferries.

  Anyway.

  About Dermot Flynn, he’s ambivalent. What happened was a mess and should have been avoided – though in the heel of the hunt no real harm was done, and in a way they’re lucky to have him out of the picture.

  But as for the second situation, Norton is barely able to get his head around it. Mark Griffin stalking Larry Bolger with a kitchen knife? Going around stabbing people in the leg with it?

  It’s not an image he can dwell on for too long.

  Eventually, and as calmly as possible, he says, ‘Look, there’s nothing we can do about Flynn now, but this other guy … you’re going to have to find him. You’re going to have to stop him.’

  ‘Stop him? Jesus, Paddy, I don’t know. This is all getting –’

  ‘What? Out of hand? And whose fault is that?’

  Fitz doesn’t answer.

  There is a long silence. An elderly couple stroll past. The man nods at the two gents on the bench and says, ‘Grand evening.’

  The two gents nod back.

  ‘None of this would have happened,’ Norton then says, ‘if the original hit on Noel had gone according to plan. All the focus now would be on gangland crime, and how it’s getting out of hand. Your one Gina wouldn’t be going around asking awkward questions.’

  Fitz grunts again but doesn’t speak.

  ‘Right,’ Norton goes on. ‘The phone call. What did she say exactly?’

  This was arguably even more serious than the Mark Griffin situation. Because it was clear that Mark Griffin was traumatised, disturbed, whatever. He was weak, and wounded. He could be dealt with.

  But Gina Rafferty?

  No.

  Leaving messages on Mark Griffin’s answering machine?

  Putting a call through to Harcourt Street? Talking to a journalist?

  No fucking way.

  Fitz exhales. ‘Well,’ he says, his voice thick with reluctance, ‘basically she asked him if they could meet. He asked why. She said she had a story. He asked what it was and she said she didn’t want to go into it over the phone. Then he said he was busy and did she know how many calls like this he got in a week, that she’d have to give him something. So then she went on for a bit about the two Noels, but by this stage she was sort of rambling, and I don’t think your man was too impressed.’

  ‘Did she mention any other names?’ Norton says. ‘Terry Stack? Larry Bolger?’

  ‘No. I think she was going out of her way to be, what’s it, circumspect?’

  ‘Right.’

  Norton swallows. He feels a sudden tightness in his chest. This Nalprox stuff is supposed to be the same as the Narolet, but he’s not so sure – he’s detecting subtle variations, little wrinkles in the texture of it.

  ‘So, how did it finish up?’

  ‘O’Driscoll said that unless she could come up with some hard evidence she was wasting her time. And his. Then your one went all quiet. And that was it.’

  That’s not it, of course, Norton thinks. He looks at his watch.

  ‘Something has to be done,’ he says. ‘Tonight. This can’t be allowed to spill into another day.’

  ‘Jesus, Paddy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know, I mean … another two –’

  ‘What’s the alternative, Fitz?’ This comes out in a loud, desperate whisper. ‘Tell me. Because it’s only a matter of time. A few more bloody questions from her, to the wrong person, and we’re at the tipping point. This could all fall apart.’

  After a long pause, Norton then says, ‘Look,Fitz,things have got out of control here, I know that. And I take some of the blame. I do. But if you can contain this tonight, end it …on top of what I owe you already I’ll give you five hundred grand. Offshore account. No traceability.’

  Fitz turns to look at Norton. He makes a whistling sound. ‘You serious?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  Norton stares out at the horizon, waiting.

  Fitz runs a hand through his hair. Eventually he says, ‘Yeah. Fair enough.’

  ‘Do it any way you want, just take care of it. And you do it, do you hear me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No operatives, no outsourcing. You do it.’

  Fitz nods.

  After another long pause, Norton says, ‘Where is she? At the moment?’

  ‘Er … at home. In her apartment. She’s been there all day.’

  Norton stands up. It’s darker than when he sat down, and chillier. City lights are shimmering now along the bay.

  He looks at Fitz. ‘Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Get back there. Stay on top of her. Maybe she’ll phone Griffin again. Maybe he’ll phone her.’

  6

  Gina’s mobile rings at a quarter to eight. She’s on the sofa watching an old episode of Seinfeld. Half watching it. Not really watching it at all. She presses Mute on the remote and looks over at the desk, at her phone, stares at it – disinclined, though, to get up and answer it. She’s not in the mood for dealing with anyone.

  Earlier in the day her incipient panic gave way to despondency, then torpor. After a brief but humiliating conversation with that journalist she threw her mobile on the desk, went into the bedroom – still dressed for work – and lay down. She was fuming.

  But she knew he was right.

  If she’d been more explicit and mentioned people by name, he still would have said what he said, which was, ‘Yeah, fine, great, but where’s the evidence?’

  Later, in the afternoon, she changed into jeans and a T-shirt. She made coffee, sat at her desk and went online in the vague hope of … she didn’t really know what. She googled BCM and found out as much as she could about the company her brother worked for. She followed links to other engineering companies. She read an official report on an EU website about corporate malfeasance. She read an article somewhere else about a recent scandal in Greece involving bribery, blackmail and a couple of supposedly accidental deaths – which, when she first came across it, sent a little pulse of excitement through her system, as though the story might actually provide her with some sort of corroboration. But the excitement didn’t last, because none of it was relevant. It wasn’t evidence of anything. It was stuff on the Internet. It was stuff she’d have to be out of her mind to imagine could have any bearing on anything.

  And as she waits now for the phone to ring out – hours later, slumped on the sofa – she thinks, Yes, out of my mind, that feels about right. Eventually, though, when the phone does stop, she can’t help getting up off the sofa and going over to it.

  One missed call. New number.

  She presses Reply. She stands there, waiting. She is out of her mind.

  It answers. ‘Gina?’

  She recognises the voice straightaway. ‘Mark?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you OK? Where are you? Did you get my message?’

  ‘No, I’m … message?’

  ‘I left a message on your home phone this morning, I didn’t have your mobile number.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘It’s just, I was saying … I think I’m maybe on the wrong track, about Bolger. I mean, it doesn’t seem –’

  ‘I went … after him today –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘At least tried to. I didn’t come close.’

  ‘What do you mean went after him?’

  Silence.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘I tried to … attack him.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I really wanted to, but … I didn’t even …’ He stops here, struggling, it seems, to get the words out.

  Gina turns and looks at the TV, as though for assistance on this, as though it should be running a news flash or something, a crawl, anything. What she sees instead is Kramer hurtling through the door of Jerry�
��s apartment.

  She looks away again.

  ‘You didn’t even what?’

  ‘I had a knife. I –’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘I didn’t even take it out. I couldn’t. I was just standing there, looking at him, and –’

  ‘Where was this?’

  He explains, but his voice is shaky, and he pauses constantly to take deep breaths. When he gets to the part about sticking the knife in the guy’s leg, Gina flinches.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘What happened then? Did you get hurt? You sound –’

  ‘No,’ he says quickly. ‘I didn’t. I’m … I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, you don’t sound fine. At all.’ She waits, but he doesn’t respond. ‘You actually sound awful, Mark. Spacy. Are you OK? Where are you?’

  He still doesn’t answer.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘Listen,’ he then says. ‘I … I finally saw them. Today. For the first time in …I saw them. Saw what they looked like.’

  Gina closes her eyes. ‘Who?’ she whispers.

  ‘My family.’ He pauses. ‘I’m looking at them now. Lucy was so small, she …’

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘…she was tiny, but the funny thing is … what I remember is …how big she was, I remember her hands, her –’

  ‘Mark,’ Gina pleads.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  He tells her. But he says he can’t move. He’s afraid to move. He’s been sitting here for ages, maybe hours – he doesn’t know. His heart is pounding, he says, like it’s about to explode. He feels sick.

  ‘That’s … that’s anxiety,’ Gina says, ‘trauma … it’s post, er …’ She doesn’t know what she’s saying. ‘You’re in shock.’ She pauses. ‘Mark, do you want me to come out there?’

  ‘Yes.’ He groans. ‘No.’ He groans again. ‘Would you mind?’

  She takes directions. The Cherryvale Industrial Estate – right at the entrance, third row along, eighth warehouse on the left.

  Unit 46.

  Norton is standing in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, waiting for Ray Sullivan to appear, when his phone rings. Sullivan has made a surprise stopover on his way to a conference in Vienna and wants to have dinner. Norton didn’t mind changing his plans – the opening of a Friel revival at the Gate – but he’s agitated about what’s going on and isn’t exactly in the mood right now for a full, high-energy dose of Ray Sullivan. He’d much prefer to be sitting in a theatre, constrained to silence, letting his mind wander.

  He looks at the display. It’s Fitz, which is good. Maybe. Hopefully.

  He presses Answer and holds the phone up to his ear. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Paddy, listen, I’m in the car. I’ve located your man.’

  Norton is relieved. But what now? And does he really want to know? He glances around the lobby. What he said in the carpark – standing there, doors open, wind blowing all around them – was that he didn’t want the details, just the broad strokes.

  The timeline.

  He said he wanted closure.

  ‘Paddy? You there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK. So I’ll talk to you in a while then?’

  ‘Yeah. Good. Good man.’

  That’s it.

  As Norton is putting his phone away, he glances across the lobby and sees Ray Sullivan stepping out of an elevator.

  Gina puts on a sweater and then her brown leather jacket. On the pavement outside her building, waiting for the taxi, she zips the jacket up. The rain has moved on and the sky is clear, but it’s cold.

  As she wills the taxi to arrive, her heart is pounding.

  She looks up and down the quays, sighs, turns.

  The building she lives in is just one of many in this riverside regeneration, but there is a desolate feel to the place at night. At ground level everything is closed, except for the odd Spar, or empty Italian restaurant or theme pub attached to a new hotel. The streets here, between these new hotels and new apartment blocks, lack any atmosphere – they seem forced, a developer’s idea of ‘new’ city living.

  Gina still has a hard time thinking of this as town.

  The taxi arrives.

  The driver appears to be the silent type, which is good, but instead of going back the way he came, from town, he heads for the toll bridge. This makes sense – it’s just that Gina isn’t prepared for the shock of having Richmond Plaza loom up on her so suddenly like that.

  But once they get past it and are heading west across the city, Gina can think of only one thing. What is she letting herself in for here? Since Monday, either face to face or over the phone – and while remaining, effectively, complete strangers – she and Mark Griffin have had this series of intense, urgent, almost intimate conversations. It’s been very weird. Actually, in a way, she feels responsible for him – because if she hadn’t steered him in the direction of Larry Bolger, would he have … ?

  But a knife?

  Her stomach sinks.

  He seemed a little dangerous to her the other day, and she was obviously right about that. At the same time he seemed vulnerable.

  Gina stares out of the window.

  Soon her thoughts are a blur, like the view, which has become this gentle strobe effect, this seemingly endless, self-replicating pattern of semi-detached suburban houses.

  After a while, tired, apprehensive, she closes her eyes.

  Lucy in the sky …

  He remembers that now. His father used to say it all the time, and Lucy used to love it, used to pretend that she could fly … arms out … running …

  In that garden maybe? The one in the photo?

  Mark shifts his position on the floor and winces. The pain is severe and constant, additional shoots of it accompanying even the slightest movement. But that’s exactly what he has to do now – move, and all the way over to the door, to open the damn thing, because otherwise how will Lucy get … Gina … how will Gina get in when she arrives?

  He hasn’t been on his feet in a while and doesn’t know if it’s going to be possible. He leans back against the wooden crate and manoeuvres himself up, one inch, one searing shock wave of pain, at a time.

  Lucy in the sky …

  It’s funny, but his sister today – if she’d lived – would be about the same age as Gina is … and might even, he imagines, look a bit like her, too.

  Up on his feet, he moves tentatively, shuffles forward, reaches out to the nearest sturdy object for support.

  It seems blindingly obvious to him now, but having seen his family, even if only in photographs, having seen their faces, he realises what it is that in one form or another he’s been experiencing all these years. Loneliness. He’s been missing them. After all, he was only five at the time. He was happy. They were his entire world, and he loved them, as purely, as unconditionally, as viscerally, as only a small child can love.

  And then one night it all came to a dead stop.

  So what did he expect?

  As he looks over at the door, the throbbing in his heart falls into a sort of rhythm with the throbbing in his side, making each footstep he has to take, each passing second, that shade more bearable.

  And then, quite suddenly – grunting, gasping – he’s there. He flicks the catch with his hand and pulls the door open slightly, letting in a gust of cold air.

  Mark doesn’t know why he called Gina. It seemed to make sense, and to be about the only physical action he was capable of taking – picking up his phone, pressing the keys – that wasn’t liable to kill him.

  But it still felt proactive – contacting the one person with at least some understanding of his situation, the one person who could appreciate, for example, how important finding those photographs was for him.

  And maybe she has new information.

  Because didn’t he interrupt her? On the phone? Wasn’t she about to say something when he cut across her?

  He wonders now what she’d been going to say.

&nbs
p; He stares at the door.

  In the meantime, though, there’s something he needs to do, and urgently – he needs to take a leak, has done for the best part of an hour. Back over there on the floor, he even debated whether or not he shouldn’t just surrender to it, and let it happen, let it flow, because what difference would it make?

  But then he thought, no … not with Gina coming.

  He shuffles across the floor towards the office, and when he gets there he stops and presses his forehead against the wooden door frame. He is dizzy and weak, and could easily, almost happily, collapse right here on the floor.

  But he’s not going to.

  He feels his way like a blind man along the wall and goes into the tiny bathroom. He struggles with his zip and eventually manages to get going, but halfway through he hears something outside – a car door being closed.

  He groans, half in pain, half in relief. When Gina sees the state he’s in, she will insist on calling an ambulance, and he won’t be able to stop her. But that will be OK … now, at this stage, that will be OK.

  He does up his zip with great difficulty and turns around.

  When he hears the steel door clicking shut, he tries to call out – something like ‘In here’ or ‘I’m in the bathroom’, or just simply ‘Gina’, but he can’t get anything past his lips. His throat is dry as a bone.

  Then he hears a voice, and freezes – because it isn’t Gina’s.

  ‘Hello?’

  It’s a male voice.

  ‘Hello? Mr Griffin?’

  Mr? Who is this?

  Footsteps on the concrete floor.

  ‘Hello? Anyone here?’

  There’s already a hint of impatience in the voice, and Mark feels a rising sense of dread. He doesn’t move, just leans against the wall and waits.

  The next time he hears the voice it is closer – if not actually inside the office, then at the doorway or just outside it.

  ‘Griffin?’

  No Mr this time.

  Mark remains still.

  He hears footsteps again, but this time they’re on wood – inside the office.