Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  What does this mean?

  Before she has time to think about it, however, there is another, more immediate demand on her attention.

  Ratface is groaning, and moving – or at least trying to.

  Gina walks around him in a wide arc. She keeps her distance but notices something straightaway. It’s just beneath his head, on the floor … blood, a few crimson drops glistening against the dull grey of the concrete. She hunkers down to see a little better, to see what condition the side of his face is in. There’s a nasty gash there, all right – but she’s having a hard time connecting it to anything she might have done.

  Then Ratface opens his eyes, and Gina starts back in fright.

  ‘Jeeeesus,’ he groans. ‘What the fuck?’

  Gina keeps her balance. She remains hunkered down and watches as he struggles to move. She watches him squirm and wriggle and slowly realise what’s going on.

  Up to this point he hasn’t looked at her, but now their eyes meet.

  ‘You …’

  ‘Where’s Mark Griffin?’

  ‘… cunt …’

  ‘Where is he?’

  He groans again and wriggles vigorously for a while. ‘Let me go,’ he then says, seeming to accept that there’s no chance he’ll get loose on his own. ‘For Jaysus’ sake.’

  Gina stands up. ‘Tell me where Mark Griffin is.’

  ‘I don’t fucking know where he is.’

  ‘Yes you do. You heard him giving me directions on the phone and then you rushed out here before I arrived and you took him somewhere, now where?’

  She feels like punctuating this with a kick to his abdomen, or his crotch, but she resists.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Gina takes a deep breath. She knows that if he keeps stonewalling here she’ll start to fall apart. She’ll lose the advantage.

  ‘If you won’t answer my questions,’ she says, taking out her mobile again, ‘maybe you’ll answer a few for the police.’

  ‘Ha.’

  What does that mean?

  She waits for him to say something else and when he doesn’t she holds her phone up and tries to focus.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he says. ‘Brilliant. Call the cops.’

  Gina hesitates. ‘I’m going to,’ she says.

  ‘Great. Because I’d love to hear how you’re going to explain this.’ He yanks his head sideways at her, exposing his wound. ‘I’ll have an army of bleedin’ lawyers up your arse and down your throat so fast you’ll be wishing I was the one who fucked you. Which I then will, after they let you out on bail.’

  He’s playing for time here – because why would he try to dissuade her from making the call, if what he says is true?

  But then again, what he says probably is true. The cops arrive – but who do they arrest? Him? Why? What do they charge him with? Being tied up and assaulted? And how does she avoid coming across as deranged and hysterical?

  She puts the phone down by her side.

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re right. It’s not the Guards I should be calling.’

  She puts the phone into her jacket pocket and takes out her wallet. She searches through the wallet and extracts a business card. She puts the wallet away and takes out the phone again. Looking down at him, business card held up in one hand, phone in the other, thumb poised, she says, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Get stuffed, would you?’

  Gina keys in the number, spins on her heels and walks away. By the time she’s a couple of yards across the warehouse floor the number is ringing. She looks at the business card again, and swallows.

  Electrical Contractor.

  She waits. There’s a click. Then, ‘Hello?’

  She slips the card into the back pocket of her jeans.

  ‘Terry? It’s Gina Rafferty.’

  There is a pause.

  ‘Well, well. How’s it going, love?’

  ‘OK.’ She closes her eyes. ‘Listen, I think I might need your help with something.’

  Because of the way he is sitting – fully forward, elbows on the table – Norton can feel his mobile phone pressing against his ribs. It’s in the inside breast pocket of his jacket, and he wishes it would ring.

  ‘… so we’d like you to consider it,’ Sullivan is saying. ‘I mean, we think in the current climate it makes a lot of sense.’

  Sullivan is proposing a last-minute design modification to the lobby of what will soon be called the Amcan Building – the installation of optical turnstiles with infrared sensors.

  ‘Basically, it’s an ID-card verification system,’ he says, ‘but they can also be fitted with barriers, either a steel arm or a retractable wing. The barriers aren’t essential, but they do add a measure of psychological, what’ll we call it … comfort.’

  Norton looks across at Sullivan, trying to focus. ‘I don’t know, Ray. Fine, you’re the anchor tenant, but there’s at least a dozen others, and I doubt if any of them will agree with your assessment of the threat level. They certainly won’t want to share the costs.’

  ‘Believe me, Paddy, in the long run this shit will be cost-effective. All it takes is one security alert, one nut job, and you’re ahead of the game. Back home, since 9/11, installing these things has been standard practice.’

  Norton can see a certain logic to this, and how it might work here as a marketing tool to woo US companies jittery about investing in what they perceive as an increasingly vulnerable Europe, but he isn’t in the appropriate frame of mind to tease the issue out tonight.

  He looks at his watch again, this time openly.

  When is Fitz going to call him?

  ‘Paddy?’ Ray Sullivan says, leaning forward. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Somewhere else you’d rather be?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Norton busies himself with what’s left on his plate, a last piece of monkfish and some fennel.

  Should he call Fitz?

  When Gina comes back and resumes her position at the wooden crate, she is overwhelmed by a sudden wave of exhaustion. She gazes down at Ratface. It’s clear that he’s in severe pain now, his supply of adrenaline surely, by this stage, pretty much depleted.

  ‘You’re in over your head here,’ he says after a while, struggling to get the words out. ‘I’m telling you. Don’t be making things worse for yourself than they already are.’

  But not in any mood to be listening to this, Gina looks around, spots something on the floor beside the forklift and goes over to pick it up. Holding it behind her back, she approaches Ratface, hunkers down again and says to him, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me, no?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or who you’re working for, no?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or who killed my brother, no? No? NO?’

  ‘No, you fuck –’

  In a single swift movement she brings the dirty, oily, bunched-up piece of rag around and stuffs it hard into his mouth. To the sound of him gagging, she stands up again and walks back to the wooden crate.

  Over the next few minutes, she looks at her watch several times.

  She should have asked Terry Stack if he could bring a couple of Valium with him, or a Xanax, or something. She wishes, at the very least, that she had a cigarette. Not that she smokes anymore, but in the last few weeks she’s had the old craving more than once, and each time she resisted. If there were a pack in front of her right now though, she wouldn’t resist for a second.

  Then it occurs to her that maybe he has some.

  She gets off the crate and walks over to Ratface again. Seeing her coming, he goes rigid. His eyes bulge and he mumbles something through the cloth. It’s as if he’s expecting her to kick him – which she’s still tempted to do, but instead she bends down, holding a hand out in front of her for protection.

  He makes a sudden movement and her heart lurches.

&nbs
p; But it’s not as if he’s going anywhere.

  The gash on the side of his face is awful-looking. It’s deep and messy. But what can she do? Her concern is genuine, just misplaced – because does she really imagine that when Terry Stack arrives he’ll be busying himself with washing the wound in warm water and gently applying disinfectant and a bandage?

  Avoiding eye contact with him, she reaches down to his other pocket. The first thing she extracts from it is a mobile phone, which she places on the floor beside her. Then she extracts a packet of twenty Major and a Zippo. She’d prefer something milder – in another lifetime she used to smoke Camel Lights – but Major will do.

  She puts the cigarettes and lighter into her own pocket and looks down at the mobile phone. She should have thought of this earlier. What if it rings?

  Shit.

  It’d be liable to give her a heart attack.

  She picks up the phone and strides across the warehouse. When she gets to the steel door, she opens it and steps out into the cold air. She raises an arm and flings the phone as far away as she can. She just about hears it land – on the other side of the floodlit yard somewhere.

  She turns back.

  When she gets inside the door again, she stops for a moment and looks around.

  They are alone here, aren’t they?

  On the far side of the warehouse there is another door. She goes over and tries it, but it’s locked. Then – and conscious of not letting Ratface out of her sight – she goes over to the office unit and pokes her head around the door.

  It’s empty.

  Walking back towards the wooden crate, she takes the cigarettes out of her pocket and lights one up. Her hands are shaking, but the first drag is exquisite, more than she could reasonably have expected. Her brain chemistry seems to go through a rapid series of changes and her mood elevates.

  But this lasts only three or four seconds.

  With the next drag, and the one after that, it’s business as usual. After another couple, she looks at her watch.

  How much longer before Stack gets here? Five minutes? Ten minutes?

  And then what?

  When she finishes the cigarette, she throws it on the floor and stubs it out with her foot.

  She picks up the gun from beside her and examines it. It’s the first time she’s ever handled a gun and it feels strange. Is it loaded? Is it ready to use? Do you just pull the trigger? What about blowback and recoil? She’s not even sure she knows what these terms mean – but then again, does she really want to know?

  Isn’t that why she called Terry Stack?

  She puts the gun down again. She walks over to Ratface.

  He turns his head slightly and looks up at her.

  ‘Listen,’ she says, ‘I’m going to ask you one more time, OK?’

  She pauses, waiting for him to indicate that he understands, but he just keeps staring up at her.

  ‘Right. Where is he? What have you done with him?’

  Ratface appears to mumble something, but Gina isn’t sure if he’s answered the question or not. She leans down and pulls the rag out of his mouth.

  ‘Where is he?’ she says again.

  ‘Get stuffed, you bitch.’

  Gina stands back up. ‘That call I made a while ago? Do you know who it was to?’

  ‘Phone a fucking friend, was it?’

  ‘Yeah, right. Ever heard of Terry Stack?’

  He doesn’t react in an obvious way, but Gina can tell from his eyes that he’s stunned.

  ‘Yeah.’ She nods her head. ‘I thought you might have.’

  But then she looks up, hearing something outside.

  A car.

  ‘That’ll be him,’ she says, and turns away.

  She picks up the gun, the mobile and the photos from the crate and stuffs them into her pockets. She walks over to the steel door, opens it and looks out into the yard.

  An unmarked transit van is parked a few spaces along from the Saab. The driver and passenger doors open at the same time and two men get out. As they approach, Gina sees that one of them is carrying something by his side, a briefcase or – oh God, of course – a toolbox.

  When he gets to the door, Terry Stack smiles and says, ‘Gina, how’s it going? I’m glad you called me. You did the right thing.’

  Gina shrugs her shoulders. She’s cold and tired, and suddenly feels way out of her depth. What she wants to do more than anything else right now is cry, break down and sob, but Terry Stack would love that. He’d love nothing more than to be putting his arms around her and going, ‘Ssshhh, there, there, love, it’s all right.’

  She stands back, holding the door open for them, and points. ‘He’s over there.’

  Wearing an overcoat, Terry Stack struts in, followed by the other guy, who is younger and wearing the standard-issue grey hoodie. This younger guy is the one carrying the toolbox.

  Terry Stack turns to Gina and says, ‘You work in software, right? That’s what you told me, data retrieval?’

  She nods but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Well, I’m pretty good at data retrieval myself, so don’t worry love, we’ll sort this out.’

  Gina wants to stop everything right there, to reverse this, but –

  ‘I just need to find out –’

  ‘I know, Gina, I know. You told me on the phone. It’s all right. It’s under control.’

  She sighs and then trails behind the two men as they walk over to where Ratface is lying on the floor.

  Terry Stack leans down and takes a look at him.

  ‘Ah, well Jaysus,’ he says, half laughing. ‘Will you look who it is?’ He straightens up and rubs his hands together. ‘Fitz, me auld flower, how’s it going?’

  Fitz.

  They seem to know him. Is that good or bad?

  As though in answer to her question, Gina glances over and sees that not only is this Fitz wriggling now, but he’s trembling, and has just pissed himself.

  Lightning quick, Terry Stack kicks him in the stomach.

  Gina gags.

  ‘Open the box up there, Shay, would you?’ Terry Stack says. ‘And see if you can find the nearest socket for me as well.’

  Gina shakes her head and says in a sort of strangled whisper, ‘I’m … I’ll be outside.’

  Without looking back, she makes straight for the steel door, opens it and heads out into the cold night air.

  Having extracted a promise from Norton that he’ll look into the optical-turnstiles thing, Ray Sullivan now embarks on an anecdote about his father, the apparently legendary Madison Avenue advertising executive Dick Sullivan. It’s about how some town in California during the sixties decided to change its name for commercial reasons and hired Sullivan Sr., who ended up sketching his ideas out to members of the County Board over lunch on the back of a cocktail napkin.

  But Norton has never heard of the veteran adman and is barely listening anyway.

  By the time their coffees arrive, Sullivan Jr. has moved on to another story and is getting quite animated. There are gestures involved, and funny voices. For his part, Norton occupies himself with the cream and sugar. At one point, noticing a sudden lull, he looks up. Sullivan is staring at him, and has also – it quickly becomes apparent – asked him a question.

  Norton just stares back.

  Then he gets up from the table. ‘Ray, I’m sorry. I have to go outside for a minute. I’ll … I’ll be back.’

  He strides across the dining room. When he gets out to the reception area and is heading for the main exit he reaches into his jacket pocket.

  The sound Gina hears as she takes the next drag on her cigarette is short, shrill and penetrating. She looks up and remains still for a few seconds, listening.

  She really can’t be sure that the sound wasn’t just some form of distortion carried here from a distance by the wind.

  She closes her eyes.

  But neither can she be sure that it didn’t come from nearby, from directly behind her, and that it wasn’t a scr
eam.

  She moves quickly, out into the middle of this windswept, floodlit yard.

  The cigarette in her hand is a welcome distraction – though in normal circumstances a second one of these and she’d be on all fours, ready to puke.

  After a while, feeling a little too exposed, she heads towards the opposite side of the yard. The units here are larger. They have more elaborate loading docks, with metal awnings and concrete ramps.

  She huddles in a corner, by the side of one of these ramps. She stubs the cigarette out, and immediately starts shivering.

  How long will this take?

  She has no idea. It’s not as if she has a frame of reference. But one thing she does know for sure: things are beginning to unravel.

  And a couple of seconds later, as though on cue, she hears another weird sound.

  She steps forward.

  It definitely isn’t a scream this time. It’s also too close to be coming from the other side of the yard.

  So what is it?

  The direction of the wind changes. For a second or two the sound becomes clearer.

  A bloody ring tone?

  She looks down and sees it, Fitz’s mobile. It’s on the ground in front of her, a few yards away, emitting the theme music from a spaghetti western, one of the Clint Eastwood Dollar movies.

  Rolling her eyes, she walks towards it, this tiny object, its backlight pulsating electric blue.

  As she reaches down to pick it up, blood rushing to her head, Gina thinks she sees what is on the display – the caller ID – and her heart stops. She stands up and tries to steady herself. She holds the phone out and looks at it, squinting. But then, in the split second before the phone rings off and goes dark again, it comes into focus for her.

  Very clearly.

  But not just the two words on the display, not just the name.

  Everything does.