Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  The dead men are named as Terry Stack, Martin Fitzgerald and Eugene Joyce. One of the injured men – both of whom are still in intensive care – is named as Shay Moynihan. The other one has yet to be identified.

  Investigations are ongoing.

  ‘I mean, honestly,’ Miriam says, flicking off the radio with one hand and pouring freshly brewed coffee into her husband’s cup with the other, ‘what are these people anyway, savages?’

  ‘Yes,’ Norton says, ‘they are, they’re animals, pure and simple.’

  He and Miriam’s rapprochement started late last night and he doesn’t want to do or say anything now to endanger it – such as disagreeing with her, or pointing out to her that one of these savages may actually have been in this kitchen once, may have sat where she’s sitting, may even have drunk from the very cup she’s holding in her hand.

  Norton stares into his coffee.

  Since first hearing the news this morning – and on the radio like everyone else, though probably earlier than most – he’s been trying to visualise the scene, to conjure it up in all its graphic horror. But he can’t. More sober calculations keep getting in the way.

  He raises his coffee cup and takes a sip. Miriam is concentrating on peeling an orange.

  These two men in intensive care, for instance – he can only assume that the unidentified one is Mark Griffin … in which case he can only hope that the little fucker doesn’t make it. Terry Stack’s being out of the way, however, is a major plus, his involvement even breathing new life into Norton’s original strategy of trying to make the whole thing seem gang-related. Fitz himself – who clearly couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery – wasn’t much of a threat, but he was the one direct link between Norton and pretty much everything that’s happened recently.

  There are variables, of course. Knowns and unknowns. What happens if Mark Griffin does make it? And what kind of a trail did Fitz leave behind him at High King? Documents? Recordings? Transcripts? Probably. But Norton’s not too worried, because it would hardly be in High King’s interests to compromise the confidentiality of their single most important client.

  No, the biggest variable in all of this, the least predictable one – the great unknown known – is Gina Rafferty. She wasn’t mentioned in any of the radio reports, so … where is she? Weighed down at the bottom of a river somewhere? Hidden in the boot of a car? Would that be too much to hope for?

  Miriam places a few segments of orange before him on a plate. ‘There you are,’ she says. ‘Vitamin C.’

  ‘Thank you, darling.’

  What kick-started the rapprochement last night was an email from their daughter in Chicago. At the very end of it, and almost as an afterthought, she mentioned that she’d be home for Christmas. This was great news, and enough to alter Miriam’s entire mood, taking her in seconds flat from chilly to warm, from clipped monosyllables to a torrent of chatter. Patricia’s last visit over two years ago hadn’t gone at all well, and here would be a rare chance for mother and daughter to regain some lost ground.

  For his part, Norton was – and still is – relieved. But he knows from experience that this will now become a major project for Miriam – doing up rooms that don’t need to be done up, organising lunches and drinks parties, as well as endless shopping. He knows her propensity to obsess. He also knows from experience that ten minutes off the plane and Patricia will be choking on all the attention. Ten minutes inside the house and she’ll be on the phone to see if she can’t bring the date of her return flight forward.

  But at least it means that for the moment Miriam will no longer be giving a shit about him and his supposed dependency on prescription painkillers.

  Vitamin C?

  Thanks a lot.

  Half an hour later he’s in the car on Pembroke Road – but instead of going straight on to Baggot Street, to the office, he turns right at the canal and heads down towards the quays.

  He phones his secretary and tells her he’s going to be late.

  ‘But not too late, I hope,’ she says, ‘because you have –’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  He has an eleven o’clock meeting with the Amcan people to iron out the final details of the tenancy contract. He gave in to Ray Sullivan last night on the question of the additional security measures, and there’s no reason now why they can’t close the deal, and soon – the beginning of next week or maybe even as early as tomorrow.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ he says, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ve plenty of time.’

  It’s a crisp late-autumn morning, calm and clear after the high winds of last night. As he moves along South Lotts Road, Norton glances to the left. Dominating the city skyline, defining it, is Richmond Plaza. Then he looks to the right. It used to be that wherever you happened to find yourself in Dublin, you could pretty much rely on the red-and-white-striped twin chimneys of the Poolbeg power station to find you. Situated in the bay, these were a sentimental reference point for many people – they defined the city, they were the first thing you saw, through mist and cloud, on the flight path into Dublin Airport. But that has all changed. Because what immediately catches the eye these days is the considerably taller glass and steel structure rising up out of the docklands. It’s a more appropriate structure anyway, in Norton’s opinion. Better to have office and retail space, a hotel, condominiums – he thinks – than a brace of ugly industrial smokestacks.

  Stopped at a red light on Pearse Street a few minutes later, he reaches into his pocket and takes out his Nalprox. He wasn’t sure about these yesterday. Compared to the Narolet they seemed weaker somehow, but at the same time … stronger? Is that possible? Differently calibrated? He doesn’t get it. They’re all he’s got, though. He pops two of them into his mouth, hesitates briefly, and then pops a third one in as well. For good measure.

  The traffic moves and he turns right onto Tara Street. They crawl along and stop at another red light. He reaches over with his left hand and opens the glove compartment. He waits a moment and then looks. There it is, the grey barrel sticking out from under his pouch of AA documents. Before leaving the house earlier, he got this from the safe in his dressing room. He’s never used it, nor does he have a licence for it – but he’s always liked the idea of having a gun. Fitz got it for him some years back after there’d been a spate of burglaries in the neighbourhood.

  Apparently it can’t be traced.

  The light changes. Norton flips the glove compartment closed.

  He crosses the river and turns right onto Custom House Quay.

  Gina Rafferty has an apartment down around here somewhere – that’s what she told him the day they met – and he’s guessing it’s in one of these new complexes.

  Fitz would have been able to give him the exact address.

  But even with the address – and assuming she’s still alive – how likely is it that he’ll just see her here, spot her walking along the pavement or coming out of her building?

  Not very.

  In any case, the traffic is moving at quite a clip, and in seconds he has already gone too far. He cruises past Richmond Plaza. At the end he takes a right and goes over the toll bridge. He’ll loop around through Ringsend, make his way back to the other end of the quays and start again.

  At this point, he doesn’t know what else to do.

  As Larry Bolger steps into the shower, he wonders if this delay isn’t going to scupper everything. If the moment isn’t going to pass.

  Bracing himself, he turns on the water and lets it run cold for a while.

  The plan was hatched late last night in a fug of nervous exhaustion – with Bolger himself and a few others working the phones to drum up support. But then, at the last minute, there was a complication.

  Isn’t there always?

  Just after 2 a.m. news broke of a horrific gangland massacre in the west of the city, three dead apparently – so they decided at once to abort. There was no point in going head to head with a story like that. It would dominate the
news cycle and upstage any other story, especially a political one, for at least twenty-four hours.

  He adjusts the temperature of the water and reaches for the soap.

  But in a way he’s relieved – because although he’s been working up to this for years, now that it’s within his grasp he feels deeply uneasy about it. Over these last two days he hasn’t had a chance to make any enquiries into the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death, but he’s determined to rectify that. What he’d really like to do, in fact, is to visit the old man out in the nursing home in Wicklow – and today, if possible. When else is he going to be able to do it? This may be the last chance he gets for a while.

  He’ll have a look at his schedule.

  As he scrubs away the anxiety and tension of a long night, it occurs to Bolger that there’s something else he should be relieved about, too – the ease with which he appears to have seen off this recent so-called scandal. The affair part of it was a non-starter – in post-Catholic Ireland no one had the stomach to get into that. And as for the gambling debts, well, they were eventually seen as just a personal-finance issue, nothing that could be spun as improper ‘contributions’ or that involved any obvious conflict of interest. So although the media gorged themselves on the story and wanted more, the opposition parties folded quickly.

  He puts the soap back in the dish, turns, closes his eyes and lets the jet of hot water massage the back of his neck.

  Besides, as often happens in politics, the story moved on all by itself, in this case mutating over the space of forty-eight hours into a full-blown backbench revolt. The thing is, while the Taoiseach’s spineless performance in the Dáil on Tuesday may not have been enough to trigger the long-anticipated leadership crisis, an imminent leak to the media revealing the source of the original Bolger story almost certainly will be.

  He turns off the water, steps out of the shower and puts on his towelling robe.

  An official in the Taoiseach’s own department? The irony is too rich.

  Bolger looks at himself in the mirror.

  So, a plan was hatched.

  The idea was that once this new angle on the story got fed to the media – and preferably this morning – senior figures in the party would persuade the Taoiseach to stand down and cede power. To none other than the Minister himself. There’d be no need for a divisive leadership contest.

  It was perfect – a bloodless coup.

  But then someone decided to turn on the radio.

  Bolger picks out a shirt, and as he’s putting it on, his phone rings. He looks at the display. Paula. He puts the phone on his shoulder, cocks his head to one side and starts buttoning up his shirt. ‘Paula, yeah, what is it? I’m tired.’

  In the brief moment before she answers, Bolger can picture Paula rolling her eyes and thinking, Jesus, Larry, we’re all tired.

  ‘Have you heard any of the details of this thing?’

  ‘What, the shooting?’

  ‘Shoot-out more like. Bloody OK Corral stuff. And fifty euro says at least one subeditor sticks that in a headline somewhere.’

  ‘Do they know who’s involved?’ All Bolger heard on the early bulletin was the body count. No names had been released at that stage.

  ‘Yeah, the main players seem to be Terry Stack and someone else called … er … Martin Fitzgerald.’

  Bolger stops, hands poised to do up the top button of his shirt. He looks at himself in the mirror again. These two names … there’s a resonance here, an echo …

  ‘Larry?’

  ‘Is that the Martin Fitzgerald who owns High King Security?’

  ‘I think so,’ Paula says. ‘But they’re playing up a paramilitary angle. I don’t know, ex-INLA, some crap like that. Two scumbag smack dealers blowing each other away obviously isn’t sexy enough for them.’

  Bolger doesn’t quite know what to make of this.

  ‘But I’ll tell you one thing,’ Paula goes on, ‘we were right to hold off, because it’s going to be wall to wall today, the law-and-order agenda for breakfast, dinner and bloody tea.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Bolger says, doing up the button. ‘But anyway, listen.’ He slips the phone from his shoulder into his hand. ‘This little delay actually suits me. Because there’s something I need to do this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh.’ Suspicious. ‘What’s that?’

  He tells her about how he intends going out to the nursing home in Wicklow to see his father. But as he speaks – still staring at himself in the mirror – his unease deepens.

  What’s he expecting to find when he gets out there?

  He doesn’t know. Maybe nothing. Clarification. If he’s lucky.

  Answers.

  Though how much he thinks the old man will be able to tell him – in fact how much he thinks the old man will be able to remember, and about anything – well, that’s another matter altogether.

  When Gina wakes up, it takes her a moment to remember where she is. Leaning on one elbow, she raises herself up a little in the bed and looks around.

  She’s in the spare room of Sophie’s new apartment.

  But …

  Oh God. Of course.

  She throws the duvet back and swings her legs out.

  After what happened last night, she can’t believe she actually slept.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed now, she runs her hands through her hair and tries to pull everything into focus. But there’s really only one point to consider here, one central fact: no Mark Griffin. The warehouse, Fitz, Terry Stack, those other guys who came, the awful carnage that ensued …

  But where the hell was Mark through all of it?

  Where is he now? She’s got to –

  Then a stab of panic hits her as she registers the morning sunlight and realises that hours must have passed – six, seven, eight hours – since she left the warehouse.

  She looks at her watch.

  A quarter past nine.

  Jesus, how did she sleep so –

  What did Sophie give her?

  She stands up but feels weak, her movements sluggish, her limbs heavy.

  She sits back on the bed and closes her eyes.

  Once beyond the roundabout last night she hailed a cab and came directly out here – because there was no way she could face going back to her own place. But she needed somewhere to regroup, to think, to work out a strategy. Once inside the door, though, she made it plain that she didn’t want to answer any questions, and Soph went along with that. She offered Gina a drink, which Gina didn’t want, and then offered her a Valium.

  Gina opens her eyes.

  Maybe that explains why she’s still so groggy, why she was able to sleep. She just took what Sophie gave her and didn’t check its strength. But it’s obvious now that it wasn’t a tranquilliser; it was a bloody sleeping pill.

  She looks down. She’s still in her clothes, black jeans and a sweater. Her leather jacket is on the end of the bed, folded neatly.

  She looks around.

  Where are her shoes?

  She has to get out of here. She has to find out where Mark is and what happened to him.

  She stands up and walks over to the door in her bare feet. The door opens directly onto the living room, and there, sitting on a leather couch, dressed for work, looking up at her a little nervously, is Sophie.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ Gina says back, and shrugs. ‘What the hell was that you gave me, Soph? It knocked me out.’

  ‘You asked for something. Do you know how upset you were when you got here last night? You were …’

  Gina shakes her head. ‘I don’t really remember, not in any detail, but look, I … I have to get out of here. I’ve got –’

  ‘You were bordering on hysterical,’ Sophie says, leaning forward on the couch. ‘But you wouldn’t talk to me, you –’

  ‘I’m sorry, Soph, I didn’t mean to put you through that. You were the only pers–’

  ‘I didn’t mind, you idiot. But I was worried. I figured that m
aybe you’d …’ She stops here and stands up. ‘Look Gina,’ she says, as though about to make a formal announcement. ‘There was something on the news this morning.’

  Gina looks at her. Oh God. Of course there was. Media coverage. It had never occurred to her.

  But then something else occurs to her, and she looks over at the main door of the apartment. What kind of a trail did she leave behind her last night?

  She swallows.

  Should she even be here? Is it safe for Sophie? Is it safe –

  ‘Gina.’

  She looks back. ‘What?’

  ‘On the news. There’s been this, I don’t know, gangland thing. In a warehouse somewhere. Three people are dead, including that guy who was at your nephew’s funeral.’

  Gina stares at her, nods. ‘Three? You sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The hoodie must have made it.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Anything else? Christ, Gina, didn’t you hear what I just said?’

  ‘Yeah, Soph, I heard. Now what else was there?’

  ‘OK, OK. Let me think.’ She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. ‘They also said there are two guys in intensive care.’

  Gina looks at her.

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Yeah, one of them was stabbed and the other one was shot. I can’t believe I’m even saying this. The one who was shot they found in an alleyway or something. Nearby.’

  Mark.

  It has to be.

  Gina feels simultaneously sick and relieved.

  Then Sophie takes a step towards her and says, ‘You were there, weren’t you, last night?’