Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  ‘So you’re going to give them my head on a plate, is that it?’

  ‘It’s not me.’ Bolger laughs. ‘I think you’ve taken care of that yourself.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘Fuck you, Larry.’

  Bolger says nothing.

  ‘You’re a two-faced bastard, do you know that?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for … Jesus, I put you where you are today.’

  ‘Of course.’ Bolger clears his throat. ‘Listen, I have to go. I have a meeting, a pretty important one, as it happens.’

  ‘Grand, keep your distance, don’t answer my calls, cut me off, be a prick, fine, but I can ruin you, Larry. There’s all that financial stuff, going way back, the loans, the dig-outs. And that’s just for starters.’ He pauses. ‘I can, and I will.’

  Bolger swivels his chair from side to side.

  ‘You know what, Paddy?’ he says. ‘I couldn’t care less. Do what you have to do. I’m going to be the leader of this country in about an hour’s time and no one can take that away from me. My name will be entered into the history books. So whatever happens afterwards … scandals, enquiries, tribunals …’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t care. These days that stuff is almost par for the course anyway. It comes with the territory.’ He pauses. ‘So … whatever. I’ll be seeing you, Paddy.’

  He puts the phone down.

  ‘Minister?’

  He looks up. His secretary is standing in the doorway. She’s pointing at her watch.

  ‘Er, yeah.’

  Bolger gets up from the desk. He gives a quick shimmy to his suit, gets it into shape. He straightens his tie. He clears his throat.

  ‘OK,’ he says, ‘I’m coming.’

  He heads for the door.

  About an hour later, in the ICU ward of St Felim’s, Mark Griffin opens his eyes.

  His mind is blank, and it remains that way for several seconds.

  Then … bed.

  I’m in a bed.

  He concentrates.

  In a hospital … and that’s a nurse.

  She’s at the foot of his bed, filling in a chart, concentrating herself.

  He stares at her. She glances up and gets a start.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Mark.’

  She reattaches the chart to the end of the bed and comes around to the side.

  He follows her with his gaze.

  She then leans in closely and examines his eyes with a penlight – first the left one, then the right.

  She stands back.

  ‘It’s Helen,’ she says. ‘I’m Helen. How are you feeling?’

  He gives a slight nod to his head, and then frowns.

  He’s confused.

  ‘You’re under sedation,’ she says, apparently reading his confusion. ‘Movement will be slow. For a time. Don’t worry about it.’

  He opens his lips to speak, but nothing comes out. He nods again, still confused.

  ‘It’s Monday,’ she says. ‘Monday afternoon. You’ve been here for more than four days.’

  His mind goes blank again.

  Four days? Is that what she said? Fine. Whatever.

  Then it hits him.

  Four days?

  It’s like getting whacked on the head with a baseball bat.

  Evidently, the panic shows.

  ‘Look,’ the nurse says, ‘I’ll … I’ll call one of the consultants. They’ll want to have a look at you anyway.’

  He watches her leaving and then stares at the door.

  Four days?

  Was that … the alleyway, the warehouse, and then earlier … was all of that four days ago?

  Jesus.

  What’s happened since then?

  He looks around the room, struggling to focus. Fighting the narcotic sludge. There are machines next to the bed, humming and beeping. There’s a wall-mounted TV.

  No windows.

  What happened?

  Fear pulses through his system. He looks over at the door again.

  What’s happening now?

  ‘You know … you’re a very lucky girl.’

  Gina bites her lip, holds back. She’s exhausted. She’s been awake, more or less, since she got up on Friday morning in Sophie’s apartment. Over the weekend, while in garda custody, she lay down a few times and closed her eyes, but she never sank far below the threshold of consciousness.

  ‘I don’t feel it,’ she says eventually.

  Merrigan lifts his coffee cup and holds it in front of his mouth. ‘Believe me, you could have faced charges a lot more serious than illegal possession of a firearm.’

  He takes a sip from the coffee, blows on it and then takes another sip.

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘But I really don’t think luck comes into it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She glances around. They’re in Neary’s on Chatham Street, at a table towards the back. The place is almost empty. Halfway along the bar two burly middle-aged guys are nursing pints and talking. Every now and again a word or phrase from their conversation breaks loose and carries down the room, director’s cut, salad dressing, gigabytes.

  ‘Well,’ Gina says quietly, ‘for one thing, he should be facing charges, not me.’

  ‘What he will be facing is litigation, and plenty of it.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not –’

  ‘Gina, listen.’ He puts his cup down and sits back in the chair. ‘You’ve destroyed the man’s reputation. You’ve held him up to ridicule. His career is finished. He’ll never get another project off the ground. Literally. But that other stuff? The emails you showed us? The phone calls? His association with Martin Fitzgerald? What Terry Stack said? It’s all circumstantial.’

  ‘What about –’

  ‘Noel’s SUV was a total write-off. Nothing’s going to come out of that either. There’s no evidence.’

  She looks at him. ‘What do you think?’

  He exhales loudly. ‘I’ve investigated a good few murders in my time. You learn to be pretty resigned about it. If you haven’t got the evidence, you move on. You can’t go by what something looks like. Not if it’s all you’ve got. Not if you’re unsure there’s even been a murder.’

  She nods, eyes focused now on the low table between them, on the arrangement of objects on it – the coffeepot, her own untouched cup, his cup, the milk jug, the sugar bowl. After a few seconds, and in her exhausted state, it takes on the character of a weird, phantasmagoric arrangement of chess pieces.

  ‘You also learn to be dispassionate,’ Merrigan goes on. ‘Though having said that, Noel was a good friend of mine. I knew him for nearly twenty years and I hate the idea that … that …’

  He waves a hand in the air, dismissing the thought, banishing it.

  She looks back over at him. ‘No, say it, go on, you hate the idea that he might have been murdered. Is that what you actually think?’

  He is silent for a moment. Then he says, ‘OK,I’ll admit it … it doesn’t look good.’

  ‘He just gets away with it then?’

  ‘Well, not technically.’ Merrigan drums his fingers on the side of the chair. ‘Because technically, you see, legally, the man hasn’t done anything to get away with. He hasn’t been –’

  ‘Oh come on.’

  ‘Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, Gina, but I can’t ignore my professional training, my –’

  ‘Fine, but that’s not something I have to struggle with –’

  ‘Oh I know.’ He pauses. ‘That’s what has me worried.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Merrigan sighs. He seems exhausted, too – though not from lack of sleep. His face is lined. He looks drained, weary, ready to retire.

  ‘I think you’re a lot like Noel,’ he says. ‘You’re tenacious. You don’t give up easily. But you’re also very foolhardy, you’ve shown that already, and if you push this any further you could get into serious trouble, more trouble than you’re in now.’

  ‘But if he’s
guilty –’

  ‘Even if he isn’t, Gina, there are libel laws in this country. You can’t just go around making accusations against people like that. This is a wealthy man we’re talking about. He could make life very difficult for you.’

  ‘So his wealth protects him? Is that it? This fat murdering bastard?’

  She looks away, shaking her head.

  Merrigan takes in a long, deep breath.

  He leans forward in his chair. ‘Suppose for a moment he is guilty, and that everything you say is true. Think how dangerous that makes him. Then think how much you’ve pissed him off already. What is there to protect you from him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Exactly. I can’t protect you. The Gardaí can’t protect you. Not without reasonable cause. You’d be on your own.’

  ‘I’ve been on my own all along.’

  Merrigan sits back and shrugs his shoulders. ‘Norton has taken a very serious hit here, and where it hurts. Why can’t you be satisfied with that?’

  ‘Because it’s nothing compared to the damage he has caused.’ She sighs. ‘Paddy Norton has destroyed people’s lives. I mean, apart from the others … look at Mark Griffin, on a bloody ventilator.’ She pauses. ‘And you know, to be honest, I don’t even know what happened there, or why, the background, the history … but Norton’s prints are all over that, too.’ She pauses again. ‘I should have asked him about it when I had the chance.’

  Merrigan holds her gaze. ‘I can see this becoming an obsession with you, Gina, do you know that? I can also see it destroying your life.’ He pauses. ‘So I’m asking you – in fact, as a senior police officer, I’m telling you – leave this alone. Don’t ever go near Paddy Norton again, or make contact with him. Yeah?’

  Gina’s impulse here is to push it, but what’s the point? It would be futile. She knows the arguments. She doesn’t want to hear them from him. She doesn’t want to hear them from herself.

  Nothing would change.

  He is staring at her.

  ‘Yeah?’ he repeats.

  After a few moments, she nods her head.

  ‘Anyway,’ she then says, and smiles – her first in quite some time – ‘you knew Noel for twenty years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She is almost alarmed to see the effect her smile has on Merrigan. The reaction is instant. He moves, shifts his position in the chair, all but wriggles.

  She smiles again. She can’t help it.

  It’s like administering a small jolt of electricity.

  ‘Yes,’ he repeats, nodding vigorously, ‘I did.’

  ‘So,’ she says. ‘Talk to me about him.’

  Norton turns right onto the Dual Carriageway from Eglinton Road. He’s been driving around for a while, an hour or two, and doesn’t want to stop – or go home, or go anywhere – but he’s tired and definitely getting a little woozy.

  He went into the office this morning but stayed only twenty minutes. Then he turned his mobile phone off. It was after that conversation with Larry Bolger. But he was getting too many calls from people he didn’t want to talk to anyway – Daniel Lazar, Yves Baladur, Ray Sullivan, someone from the Department of the Environment, someone from the bank, various investors, journalists … Miriam …

  He passes the RTÉ studios at Montrose.

  Those bastards in there have been running the same identifying clip of him in all their news bulletins since Friday. It shows him, some months back, entering the Fairleigh Clinic, taking the front steps two at a time – but over and over again. The repetition of the clip has become something of a joke, with one smart-arse on the radio today even remarking that after so much exercise Mr Norton should probably expect to lose at least a little weight.

  It’s humiliating.

  The box and torn packaging on the passenger seat beside him is what’s left of the Nalprox. He’s been popping them indiscriminately all weekend and is going to have to arrange a repeat scrip soon.

  He flicks on the CD player.

  Jarring, dissonant brass and a demented string section. He goes on to the next track. It’s more soothing, some clarinet thing, but after a minute he flicks it off anyway.

  He keeps replaying Friday in his head.

  He just didn’t see it coming, not like that.

  He didn’t have her pegged for such a scheming, devious bitch.

  Stopped at lights, he reaches over and opens the glove compartment. If he’d had this bloody gun with him on Friday, he would have used it and dealt with the consequences later.

  But he didn’t. It was sitting here in his car, gathering dust.

  He’d still like to use it, though – and will, if he ever gets the chance.

  If she ever comes near him again …

  A few minutes later, as he’s pulling into the gravel driveway of his house, he has a momentary lapse of concentration – or maybe even of consciousness – and swerves a bit to the left. He scrapes the side of his car against the iron gate and then mounts a rock-bordered flower bed, crushing a row of crocuses. It takes him a few awkward moments to manoeuvre the car off the flower bed and park it properly.

  When he gets out of the car, he stands for a moment on the gravel and takes a couple of deep breaths. He looks up at the sky, which is grey and overcast. Then he inspects the side of the car, swears under his breath, shakes his head. Turning to go into the house, he notices two men standing at the gates.

  One of them has a camera.

  ‘Fuck off!’ he shouts, and raises his fist in the air.

  He hadn’t noticed them on the way in.

  Miriam is waiting at the bottom of the stairs. For the last three days she has been struggling to maintain some kind of equilibrium. But conflicting forces have made this very difficult. One side of her wants to be loyal and supportive to her husband. The other side, it appears, wants to insult and belittle him.

  The best she can manage is a sort of tense neutrality – severe, clipped.

  No make-up.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Out. Driving around.’

  ‘I see. Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

  ‘I didn’t feel like it.’

  ‘Did you check your messages?’

  ‘Oh Jesus, Miriam.’

  He walks across the hall and into the main reception room. He goes over to the drinks cabinet and pours himself a large Bushmills.

  Then he stands, looking at nothing in particular, and sips the drink. He has his back to the door and doesn’t know if Miriam is there or not.

  But she doesn’t have to speak. He can hear her voice in his head.

  Whiskey? For goodness’ sake, Paddy, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon.

  He turns around.

  She isn’t there.

  Keeping a close eye on the door, Mark tries to piece everything together in his mind – but the pieces keep shifting position and changing shape. At the end there, in the warehouse, something happened, it’s just that he doesn’t know what exactly. Because he wasn’t in any condition to take it in. What he does know is that Gina was supposed to show up, but someone else was there, someone who knew he’d be there … and then, after a while, seemingly, all hell broke loose …

  But what happened to Gina? Where is she now? How is she now?

  One way or another he’s going to have to find out. He’s going to have to ask the nurse if she knows anything, or if she can arrange to buy him a phone, or get him a newspaper – or, at the very least, turn on the TV.

  Assuming he can trust her, that is. Assuming he can trust anyone.

  Because there was that guy at the warehouse, and the guy earlier, the one in the car park, the one who shot him.

  So presumably there’ll be others.

  Mark’s stomach turns.

  Not to mention the police. The police will definitely want to interview him. But given that he almost tried to kill a government minister, well … the police are probably the very last people he should trust.

  Then, as if on c
ue, the door of the room flies open and a tall man in a blue suit barges in.

  Mark flinches and turns his head to the side, expecting the worst.

  ‘So, Mr Griffin,’ the man says in a booming voice, ‘Nurse here tells me that you’ve decided to rejoin us.’

  Mark looks up.

  The man in the suit is about fifty and has the air of an ex-rugby player.

  The nurse is standing behind him.

  ‘Henry Dillon,’ the man says, producing a penlight from his breast pocket and clicking it. ‘Shall we?’

  He then proceeds to examine Mark thoroughly, prodding, probing, moving him on his side, testing his reflexes.

  He makes adjustments to the various IV drips.

  Mark remains anxious, but at the same time – for the moment, at least – he’s relieved.

  ‘So,’ the consultant says, folding his arms, ‘that bullet? Looks like it had your name on it all right.’

  Mark’s eyes widen. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, just that you may have it for life. We can’t take it out. Well we could, but it wouldn’t be worth the extra damage the operation would cause. But you’ll be fine. It’s more common than you might think. People leave hospitals with foreign objects in their bodies all the time.’

  Mark stares at him, unsure what to think. Foreign objects? Is this some kind of code? Is he being threatened here? Or warned?

  He remains silent.

  ‘Well, you seem to be making a remarkable recovery,’ the consultant says, heading for the door. ‘We’ll probably move you to a step-down unit later today or tomorrow. By the way, there are some people who want to have a word with you and I’m going to go ahead and authorise them to pop in for a chat. Is that OK?’

  Mark swallows.

  Some people? A chat?

  ‘Yeah, but … what people?’

  Halfway out the door, the consultant glances back.

  ‘Why, the police, of course.’

  As Gina walks down Grafton Street, around College Green and onto the quays, she hears Merrigan’s words in her head.