Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  I can see this becoming an obsession. I can see it destroying your life.

  She doesn’t think he’s wrong.

  She knows she’s under the influence of a compulsion that she doesn’t understand or currently have the energy to resist. She thought after Friday that it would dissipate, that she could settle for how things had turned out, for a lesser form of justice.

  But it only intensified.

  And hearing last night that Norton was refusing to press charges actually made it worse. Something crystallised for her in that moment. It was the realisation that she needs to press some form of charges against him.

  But now, in the cold light of day, that seems like a remote possibility. Because how does she pursue this? How does she even approach him after everything that has happened?

  Walking along by the river, Gina looks up at Richmond Plaza and finds it hard to believe that she’s not still up there, not still holding a loaded gun in her hand, not still pointing it at Norton’s head, because compared to the intensity of that experience, everything else seems unreal to her, pallid and insubstantial.

  But at the same time she can’t give up.

  That’s not an option.

  So when she arrives at her building, gets upstairs and through the door of her apartment, she walks straight over to the desk in the corner. She takes off her jacket. She puts down keys, wallet, phone.

  And stares for a while, first at the wall, then at the keyboard of her computer.

  She could call him on his mobile.

  But that might be too direct. What if he doesn’t answer? What if he decides to alert the guards?

  She needs something that will give him pause, something to provoke him.

  Sitting down, Gina pictures Mark Griffin lying in an ICU ward, on life support, and it occurs to her again that his involvement in all of this is something she has never challenged Norton on. It’s actually the one aspect of the whole business that doesn’t fit, that she doesn’t understand.

  So with the queasy self-awareness of a compulsive gambler about to place one more – one last – bet, she taps the centre of the keyboard and activates her computer. She opens the file. She turns on the printer.

  She looks at her watch: 4.25.

  I can see this becoming an obsession. I can see it destroying your life.

  Then she picks up her mobile and calls a local courier service.

  When Mark mentions Gina Rafferty’s name to the nurse, she recognises it immediately and is able to inform him that not only is Gina all right, she’s been in the news and has made quite a splash …

  Mark finds this alarming, and then confusing. It just doesn’t make sense.

  Richmond Plaza? Paddy Norton?

  He is relieved to find out that Gina is OK, that she’s alive, but he doesn’t get what she is up to, he doesn’t –

  Which is when the nurse suggests that she might try and get a hold of one of yesterday’s newspapers for him, an Independent or a Tribune. There was plenty of coverage in all the Sunday papers, and at least one of the patients in the next ward along is sure to have something left over.

  She’ll go and have a scout around when she gets a chance.

  But maybe in the meantime Mark might like to watch some TV?

  ‘There’ll be news on in a while.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Fine. Thanks.’

  The nurse switches on the TV and hands him the remote.

  ‘Er, Nurse,’ Mark then says, ‘look, there isn’t any chance I could get my hands on a mobile phone, is there?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. You could borrow mine if you really need to make a call … or –’

  ‘Do they sell them downstairs, at reception? Is there a shop? Could –’

  She nods. ‘Yes, don’t worry about it. I’ll arrange something.’

  After she leaves, Mark stares up at the screen for a while but is unable to focus on anything.

  He keeps glancing over at the door.

  When are the police going to show up? And what are they going to ask him when they do?

  He exhales loudly.

  But let’s face it, are they really going to bother asking him anything at all? Because in whose interest is it to hear what he has to say?

  It’s in his interest. And in no one else’s.

  Mark may no longer be a threat to anyone physically, but he is still a threat, just of a very different kind. The mere fact that he’s alive and has a story to tell not only threatens Bolger’s advancement in the party, it may also seriously threaten the reputation and stability of the great party itself.

  Mark feels as though he’s emerging from a dense fog, which he puts down to a combination of the adjustments the doctor made to his IV drips and what he imagines to be a natural surge in his own adrenaline levels. But the result is that he’s now extremely agitated and doesn’t know how much longer he’s going to be able to just lie here like this.

  Doing nothing, waiting for …

  For what?

  He looks at the door, and then up at the TV again.

  The news is coming on.

  The programme’s signature tune rises portentously, and fades.

  He tries to focus.

  The doorbell rings.

  Norton doesn’t move.

  He has no intention of answering it, given that it’s probably a journalist out at the front gate. They’ve tried this on a few times over the past three days.

  He’s been drinking coffee and his heart is racing. The whiskey earlier made him sick. For the first half an hour he felt fine, even a little exhilarated – which was probably due to the mix with the pills – but then he got nauseous and threw up. The switch to coffee was fine at first, too – but now he feels jittery and anxious and has a tightness in his chest.

  He should eat something, but … maybe later.

  The TV is on. He’s not focused on it, though.

  Then the phone rings. In the hall.

  He has no intention of answering that either.

  It can ring out. Or Miriam upstairs will answer it. There were several calls earlier, which he’s assuming she did answer. But if so, she never passed on any messages. And some of the calls had to have been for him, because he hasn’t been getting back to people. Voicemail, text messages, emails – he’s been ignoring them all.

  He’s not in the mood.

  A few moments later, he hears Miriam coming down the stairs.

  He tenses, not in the mood for her either.

  She opens the hall door. He hears her stepping out onto the gravel.

  He waits, listens.

  What is she doing?

  She’d better not be going out to talk to a journalist, because that’d be really stupid. Though on reflection it’s not something he can see Miriam doing. With her it’d almost be like breaking a religious taboo.

  She comes back in and slams the front door shut. Then she comes into the living room. Without saying anything, she walks over to the sofa where Norton is sitting. She has a large brown envelope in her hand. She drops it in his lap.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I don’t know, Paddy. I’m not in the habit of opening other people’s packages.’

  She turns and leaves.

  Norton looks at the envelope for a moment and then tosses it down beside him on the sofa.

  He turns back to the TV. The six o’clock news has just come on, and guess what – for the first time since Friday evening Norton is not the lead story.

  Larry Bolger is.

  Norton grunts. He wants to turn the TV off or switch to another channel, but he can’t. He stares at the screen – fascinated, mesmerised, but also disgusted. It’s not so much that he thinks he should be there, in the background, basking in the reflected glory – of course he should – it’s more that Larry’s arrogance is so breathtaking, his casual assumption that he can cut old ties so … so deluded.

  They show clips of Bolger leaving Áras an Uachtaráin, then arriving back at Leinster House, an
d then – at which point Norton presses the Mute button on his remote – addressing the chamber. After that, in a quick résumé of his career, various photos appear on the screen: a schoolboy in front of a grey institutional building, Liam Bolger flanked by his two teenage sons, the mangled car, a campaign poster … then Larry wearing an election rosette, Larry sitting at the cabinet table, Larry standing in front of the main stage at an Árd Fheis … on and on, the young man Norton first knew, slim and with an implausibly bushy head of jet-black hair, morphing into the greying, stocky middle-aged bollocks he is today.

  Taoiseach Larry Bolger.

  Give me a fucking break.

  Whatever it is Mark is expecting to see on the news, it’s not what he gets, because the lead story isn’t about Gina Rafferty or Richmond Plaza – though it was hardly likely to be – it’s about Larry Bolger and how he has taken over as …

  Taoiseach?

  But –

  How could this have happened so fast? Last Wednesday the man was just a minister, getting over a personal scandal. There was talk all right, speculation, but –

  Gazing at the screen, Mark feels as if some kind of cosmic trick is being played on him.

  His stomach is jumping.

  He feels like Rip van fucking Winkle.

  In utter disbelief, he watches as they show footage of Bolger leaving Áras an Uachtaráin, returning to Leinster House and addressing the chamber, after which they go back over his career and show photos from the archives, old black-andwhite ones … of a small child in a school uniform, of Bolger’s father flanked by his teenage sons, and then –

  Mark flinches, rears back in horror.

  – of a crushed and mangled car by the side of a country road.

  He grabs the remote and turns the TV off.

  Holy fuck.

  Holy fuck.

  He takes a few deep breaths, and then, unwilling to linger on the image in his mind’s eye – unable to linger – he flicks the TV back on.

  Bolger at a press conference, flanked by senior ministers.

  Mark can’t believe it.

  Can’t believe any of it.

  And as he stares at the man on the screen he is seized by this awful, queasy sense of himself as an inconvenience, as a piece of someone else’s unfinished business. Twenty-five years ago his family was wiped out, taken from him physically, which was bad enough, but then they were taken from him emotionally as well – and now the person responsible for that is trying to wipe him out, too? And why? Because he’s apparently looking for … what? Some kind of closure?

  Well, so be it.

  Mark pulls back the covers of the bed.

  So be it.

  He moves his legs to the edge, slides them over and manoeuvres himself into a sitting position.

  If he wants closure, then he can fucking well have it.

  But it’s only at that point that Mark realises he has a catheter attached to him, and that the catheter is, in turn, attached to a drainage bag hanging from the side of the bed. What does he do? Yank it off? He then tugs at the lumen strip on his neck from which the various IV drips connect to bags mounted on a mobile unit next to the monitors. Does he yank this off, too?

  He should try and stand first.

  He glances up at the TV. They’re in a studio now, dull voices droning on about momentous events, the big day, history.

  He eases his feet down onto the floor, aware for the first time in a while of a dull pain in his back – a pain that seems to be rapidly intensifying.

  He raises his hand up to his neck and is about to tear the strip loose when suddenly his eyes well up with tears.

  What does he think he’s doing? Is he insane? What’s his plan here, to breach government security wearing a hospital gown and then strangle the new prime minister with his catheter tube?

  It’s beyond pathetic.

  He leans back against the bed and groans, the pain getting worse.

  Across the room, the door opens.

  The nurse is backing in with a trolley, but she stops halfway and addresses someone outside, maybe the guard, maybe another nurse.

  ‘Ah go on, he’s not, is he?’

  Mark lifts himself up onto the edge of the bed. He turns, wincing, and eases himself into position again.

  ‘Listen, don’t believe everything you hear.’

  He pulls up the covers, leans his head back against the raised pillows and closes his eyes.

  ‘See ya.’

  He listens as the nurse wheels the trolley in through the door and across the room.

  His heart pounding, his eyes stinging.

  After a moment, the nurse comes over to the bed, picks up the remote control and turns off the TV.

  Mark then feels her tossing something onto the end of the bed.

  A while later, when she has left the room once more, he opens his eyes.

  At the end of the bed there is a copy of the Sunday Tribune.

  To distract himself from what’s on the TV, Norton picks up the envelope beside him on the sofa and examines it. He doesn’t recognise the handwriting. He tears the envelope along the top. Inside it there is a single page of glossy photo paper. Printed on the page are three photographs.

  One each of a man, a woman and a small girl.

  At first he is puzzled. He looks inside the envelope again and sees a business card. He takes this out and examines it.

  The name on the card is Gina Rafferty.

  His heart lurches.

  If she ever comes near me again …

  He looks back at the photographs and …

  Of course.

  Jesus, she has a nerve. But what is she up to? Is this meant to be some sort of coded message – a veiled threat? He thought that by not pressing charges he’d at least be eliminating her from the equation. He thought she’d go away and leave him to deal with the fallout, with all the shit she’d stirred up … but now this …

  He reaches forward, straining to breathe, and places the page of photos on the coffee table. He picks up his mobile and flops back. He switches the phone on, enters his PIN and waits.

  Then he looks for her number, finds it, calls it.

  It rings.

  There is an ad on the TV, a silver car speeding across a desolate moonscape.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is harassment. I could get the Guards to have you –’

  ‘Then go ahead. Call them. They know where I live.’

  He pauses, glances at the photographs again – at the three faces, with their alien, remote expressions.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with these pictures?’ he says. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘My point?’ She almost laughs. ‘That no one has made the connection yet.’ She pauses. ‘But they will, sooner or later, and probably sooner.’

  ‘What connection?’

  ‘Oh come on. All it takes is one journalist to see it, to remember the name from the other night. Or one phone call.’

  He grinds his teeth. He stands up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  This sounds weak, even to him.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  He waits. She doesn’t respond. The silence goes on for quite a while. During it, he walks across the room and stands at the window. The curtains are half open. It’s dark outside, except for the security lights on the front lawn, and the streetlights in the distance, and all the lights of the city, thrown up, reflected, falling back like snow.

  ‘Listen,’ Gina says eventually, ‘those three people died unnecessarily. And it wasn’t his fault, Tony Griffin’s, like everyone said it was at the time. Now, I can’t prove it, of course, what was going on. No one can. Mark couldn’t. But maybe it’s time that someone bloody well admitted it, yeah?’

  ‘Jesus. What was going on? I don’t …’ He is barely able to suppress his rage. ‘Meaning what exactly? Dunbrogan House? Is that it?’

  She says nothing.

  ‘Been doing your homework, have you?
You bitch.’ He puts a hand up to his chest and rubs it. ‘Very well,’ he goes on, wincing, ‘you want to talk about this, yeah? About Frank and Larry? About the accident? Let’s talk about it then.’

  ‘Yes … let’s.’

  ‘But not over the phone.’ His voice is hard now, and controlled, almost a whisper. ‘Somewhere outside. Somewhere neutral. And right now.’

  If she ever comes near me again …

  ‘Fine,’ Gina says without hesitation. ‘Tell me where.’

  *

  The main story on the front page of the Sunday Tribune is about Larry Bolger and his imminent coronation. However, there is a piece at the bottom – and two more inside, on page 8 – about Richmond Plaza.

  Mark reads these, a little impatiently at first, but then with growing interest.

  It is not stated explicitly – nothing is, presumably because of the country’s strict libel laws – but with the report by that engineer, what Gina seems to have uncovered here, theoretically, reading between the lines, is a motive for the murder of her brother.

  Or what she sees as the murder of her brother.

  And this Paddy Norton, the developer, is the focus of all her attention. She seems to have pursued the man with a ferocious determination, and …

  Mark puts the paper down for a moment, and as he gazes at the wall opposite, and listens to the monotonous beeping of the monitors, a thought occurs to him.

  She was going to tell him something.

  It was their last conversation. The one on the phone. She was talking and he interrupted her.

  What had she been going to say?

  He tries to remember. He was …

  I think I’m maybe on the wrong track.

  That was it.

  About Bolger.

  He closes his eyes.

  I think I’m maybe on the wrong track, about Bolger. I mean, it doesn’t seem –

  He opens his eyes again.

  But what? It doesn’t seem what?

  It doesn’t seem that Bolger …

  He’s confused. He takes up the paper again and scans the final paragraphs of the article he was reading.