Bloodland: A Novel

by Alan Glynn

  And what if it is him?

  Conway said this guy had seen something or had felt that something wasn’t right at the place where he worked, the Leinster Helicopters maintenance hangar in Kildare. But what specifically? And now that he’s dead – which is presumably why – how is anyone ever going to find out?

  On to phase two.

  Jimmy picks up his phone again.

  He calls the Missing Persons Bureau. He calls Leinster Helicopters. He calls a guy he used to work with who is now a crime correspondent for a local radio station. He calls a few other people. He leaves messages. He even gets a couple of callbacks.

  But what comes from all of this is … nothing.

  The crime correspondent tells Jimmy in the strictest confidence that although it hasn’t officially been confirmed yet the body that was found in the Wicklow hills a few weeks back is probably that of missing Dolanstown drugs kingpin Derek Flood. The woman he talks to at Leinster Helicopters barely remembers Joe Macken and when she checks with a colleague it turns out that Macken worked for an agency in any case. A further inquiry reveals that about a year after he disappeared Macken’s wife remarried and emigrated to Australia.

  It’s as if everything has evaporated.

  As for the CCTV footage in the London hotel where Bolger died, what is that, conceivably, going to reveal? And how is Jimmy Gilroy, unemployed journalist, supposed to get his hands on it in the first place?

  He looks up from his desk and out across the room.

  Let’s hear it everybody for the deranged person.

  * * *

  ‘Housekeeping.’

  Tom Szymanski turns to face the door, groans.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, half shouting it, ‘five minutes.’

  He stands up from the bed, flicks the TV off and throws the remote onto the pillow.

  There’s less work these last few mornings for housekeeping to do. What is it? He looks around the room. He doesn’t know. This is Friday. The last time he had a hooker up here was Sunday or Monday. The last time he got properly shitfaced, with all the concomitant fallout, beer bottles, ashtrays, pizza boxes, take-out cartons, was … night before last? Or night before that again?

  He’s not sure.

  Last night he did nothing.

  Watched TV, smoked a little weed, looked out the window.

  It’s not that he’s getting bored or anything, because if you’re a vet, an experienced one, you don’t really get bored. You don’t have the luxury. There’s no longer any unoccupied territory in your brain where that can happen.

  But you have to keep busy all the same – either working, or overloading your senses – because you are fighting something, and if it isn’t boredom, maybe it’s antiboredom. Like antimatter.

  Or whatever that shit is.

  Dark matter.

  Dark boredom.

  Fuck.

  Can he stop this, please?

  Outside, Szymanski walks around for a while – up and down Fifth Ave, between Thirty-fourth and Forty-second. It’s a nice day and there’s something easy about New York. It’s frenetic and ceaseless, but if you don’t bother the place, it won’t bother you.

  He stops in at a diner for some breakfast.

  He takes a booth by the window and sits down. Beside him, there’s a newspaper. He picks it up. It’s a New York Post. Today’s. Someone must have left it behind.

  He lays it out on the table in front of him.

  Waitress comes. He orders coffee and –

  It’s really all about the coffee.

  Coffee and pancakes.

  ‘You want some OJ with that today?’

  No, I want it tomorrow, you stu—

  Easy.

  He nods. Goes back to the Post. He doesn’t buy newspapers. Doesn’t believe in them. All the shit you’re expected to eat.

  Sports coverage maybe, but even that.

  He reads a thing about City Councilman Tony Rapello (D-Bronx), who wants to introduce legislation forcing bar and nightclub owners to install a minimum number of security cameras. He reads about a newborn baby that was found abandoned at a subway station in Queens, left in a bag next to a fucking MetroCard machine.

  Jesus.

  Then, as his pancakes are arriving, he sees it.

  Run, Johnny, run.

  That motherfucker.

  John Rundle is rumoured to be setting up an exploratory committee for a possible presidential run next year …

  Szymanski nearly chokes on his coffee.

  Accompanying the article there’s a photo of Senator ‘Johnny’ Rundle, complete with prominent hand brace, standing next to some bearded guy outside an unidentified office building. Although Rundle isn’t quoted directly in the article, an aide says that the senator will be attending a reception in the city on Wednesday, at the Blackwood Hotel, and that an announcement may be made then.

  The article goes on to explain that the senator sustained a serious injury while on a recent trade delegation to Paris. He was coming to the aid of a motorcyclist, who had collided with a barricade, when his hand was crushed underneath the hapless Parisian’s chopper.

  Szymanski laughs at this.

  Again.

  And this time out loud.

  Which gets some looks.

  He starts his pancakes, and re-reads the article.

  What was it Lutz said the day of the incident? That the senator’s brother owned the mine at Buenke? That they were a ‘big’ family? And that consequently Ashes had picked the wrong day to go crazy?

  Szymanski leans forward and studies the photo again.

  It’s well known that politicians lie all the time, but it’s not every day you get to catch one out in as blatant and incontrovertible a lie as this.

  He pushes his plate aside and drains his coffee.

  What day is this? Friday?

  He air-signs check to the waitress.

  Maybe he’ll hang around the city until Wednesday, see what happens.

  See what kind of a day that is.

  * * *

  Walking along Wicklow Street on his way to meet Maria Monaghan, Jimmy’s phone rings.

  He pulls it out and checks the incoming number.

  ‘Phil?’

  ‘Jimmy.’ Phil Sweeney’s voice is quiet, muted. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m in shock. I’m sure you are, too.’

  ‘Yeah, I actually can’t believe it. I knew he had financial difficulties, but Jesus, he was always so –’

  ‘That’s not why he did it, Phil.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was there last night. I was with him. Not when he jumped, but up to a few minutes beforehand.’

  In the silence that follows, Jimmy slows down and stops. Standing now by the side window of Brown Thomas, he waits. But the silence goes on so long that he eventually has to interrupt it.

  ‘Phil?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m here. Look, this is weird. We have to meet.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that, Phil. I’m in the –’

  ‘Jimmy –’

  ‘I don’t have –’

  ‘JIMMY.’

  ‘OK. Fine.’ He clears his throat. ‘Of course.’

  There is silence for a moment, and then in quiet tones, almost whispering, they make an arrangement to meet.

  Tomorrow evening. The Long Hall on George’s Street.

  Jimmy’s head is reeling as he puts his phone away.

  Ten minutes later he’s in Rastelli’s sitting down opposite Maria Monaghan.

  It takes him a while to adjust. He’s also distracted by how Maria looks. There’s something different about her, and he’s not quite sure what it is.

  A girl comes over and they order coffees.

  Jimmy is hungry, but this isn’t a conversation he wants to have while he’s eating.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ he says. ‘I realise it must seem a bit…’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘it does.’ She studies him for a moment. ‘You look like shit, Jimmy
.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So what’s going on? You made some pretty big claims on the phone there. You’d better explain yourself, because I’m not staying here any longer than I have to.’

  Then it hits him what it is. She’s not dressed for work. She’s in jeans and a zip-up sweater. And she’s slightly paler-looking, too, no sign of any make-up.

  She seems more relaxed.

  ‘Not at work today?’ he says.

  ‘I’ve taken some time off. I was due a few days.’

  He nods, delaying.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  ‘OK.’ He launches into it. He may look like shit, and feel like shit, but the one thing he can’t afford to be accused of here is talking shit. What he says has to make sense, and not just to her, to himself as well. Which it does, largely. But as he proceeds, as he talks, as their coffees arrive, it occurs to him that all he’s doing is describing a sequence of conversations he’s had – and private, unrecorded conversations. It doesn’t help that two of the people he spoke to are now dead. Nor does it help that what he got from the others – from Gary Lynch, from Francesca and Pia Bonacci – was little more than conjecture and speculation.

  Jimmy wants Maria to believe what he’s saying, partly because he believes it, and partly because he hopes the knowledge that Susie wasn’t to blame for what happened will bring Maria a certain degree of solace.

  But he’s not going to convince her with this.

  What’s to stop her from thinking he’s deluded and has made it all up?

  Nothing.

  It’s only when he gets to the end that he sees a flicker in her eye, a response to something he’s just said.

  He leans forward. ‘What?’

  Maria doesn’t answer.

  He glances around, thinking back for a second, going over it in his mind. He’d been telling her about the mine in Congo, about Dave Conway trying to sell it, about the deposit of thanaxite they’d discovered.

  About Buenke.

  And BRX.

  Clark Rundle.

  Gideon Global.

  ‘What?’ he says again, looking directly at her.

  She’s pale, even paler than before.

  ‘Maria?’

  She swallows. ‘Did you say thanaxite?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She holds his gaze, but doesn’t speak.

  ‘What’s wrong? Have you heard of it?’

  She nods her head very slowly. ‘Susie mentioned it in that text she sent me from the hotel, before she left. I had no idea what it meant. It seemed like nonsense. I mean, the whole text, it was –’

  ‘What did it say?’

  Maria hesitates. This clearly isn’t easy for her. Some of the texts that Susie sent to people that morning were leaked to the media and quickly became infamous – evidence that she wasn’t in a stable frame of mind. She sent one to her agent screaming, Get me a decent fucking job before I go completely FUCKING insane!!!! She also sent a couple to a friend in Dublin in which she said some fairly scurrilous things about a well-known broadcaster who had recently interviewed her.

  But the text she sent to Maria that morning has always remained private.

  She leans back in her chair. ‘It said, I can’t remember exactly, it was about going on the helicopter ride with some of the guys, along the coast, and then, Thanaxite baby, that’s where it’s all at, we’re heading for the blood-soaked motherlode.’ She shrugs. ‘I never knew what that meant. But it was just so Susie, you know, it was typical, she was a messer, she spoke in code, yo this and yo that, rhyming slang, song lyrics, made-up Dublin rap, whatever. It could have meant anything. Plus she was clearly high as a kite. So it didn’t strike me as significant at the time. And after the crash, what did anything matter? She was dead.’

  Jimmy nods, ‘Yeah. Sure.’ He lowers his voice a notch. ‘But doesn’t this corroborate what I’m saying? What Dave Conway told me?’

  Maria nods back, reluctantly.

  Jimmy can see it in her face. She was sceptical before, impatient even. Now she’s putting the pieces together and they seem to fit. ‘If what you’re telling me is true,’ she says eventually, ‘then this whole chain of events, from Susie’s death right up to what happened last night, it’s all the result of a desperate scramble to protect ownership of a mining concession?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She holds her hands out in disbelief. ‘Is that … could that possibly be true? I mean…’

  ‘Well, there seems to be an awful lot of money involved, so on balance I’d say yeah, it could.’

  But Maria is barely listening. ‘My God. Poor Susie. You know, I think I’m almost glad Mum and Dad didn’t live to hear this. It’s too awful. It’s –’

  And then she stops, as something obviously occurs to her. She looks at Jimmy. ‘What happens now?’

  He isn’t sure what to say here. He looks down at his coffee, which he hasn’t touched. ‘I don’t know, Maria. I wanted to tell you this, and I wanted you to believe it. That was important to me. Who else is going to believe it, though? On what conceivable basis could any official investigation of this go forward?’

  ‘On the basis that…’ She stops, trying to think it through, the ramifications.

  But he sees it dawning on her.

  ‘There’s no evidence, Maria. Nothing at all. Two of the principal witnesses are gone. If Susie hadn’t sent you that text, with that word in it, which in itself hardly qualifies as evidence, would you believe it? Would you even still be sitting here?’

  Maria considers this, looks at him. ‘You’ve described a conspiracy to murder six people, Jimmy. Including my sister. That’s insane. Can these bastards simply be allowed to get away with it?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘What?’

  Jimmy clicks his tongue. ‘Leaving aside for a minute the issue of resources, and the fact that I don’t have the backing, the protection, of an official news organisation, there is another avenue of approach here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Two of the people who were at the table that night in Drumcoolie Castle are gone, yeah? Larry Bolger and Dave Conway.’

  Maria nods.

  ‘But there were three others. The ones who actually had the incriminating conversation, and who presumably carried through on it.’

  She nods again.

  ‘Clark Rundle, Don Ribcoff and … some old guy.’

  11

  AT AROUND NINE O’CLOCK ON SATURDAY MORNING Rundle and Eve are having coffee in the kitchen of their fifty-seventh-floor apartment in the Celestial Building. They’re talking about Daisy, about Oxford, about England, and when Rundle’s phone rings he resents the intrusion.

  It’s Don Ribcoff. He’s downstairs in his car and needs ten minutes.

  Rundle could ask him to come up, but he’s not going to.

  ‘I’ll be right down,’ he says into the phone, and makes an apologetic face at Eve.

  She’s used to it. Twenty years of marriage to Clark Rundle and what’s she going to do, start getting snippy now?

  She reaches for her own phone as he gets up to leave.

  Descending in the elevator, Rundle feels relatively relaxed – happy to be back from his trip and looking forward to dinner with Jimmy Vaughan tomorrow night.

  Outside, he strolls across the wide plaza towards the kerb, keenly aware of the monolithic slab of bronze-tinted glass shimmering in the sunlight behind him. As he gets near the parked limousine, a door opens, and Ribcoff emerges.

  The two men stand on the sidewalk, traffic whipping past.

  ‘Some weird news,’ Ribcoff says. ‘From Dublin. Dave Conway killed himself on Thursday night. Jumped off a sixth-floor balcony.’

  Rundle is surprised, and shows it. ‘That is weird. Any fallout we need to be concerned about?’

  ‘Maybe. Our asset there is working on it. It turns out someone was with Conway before he did it. The two of them were seen talking, and then this guy was seen leaving. In a hurry. By some local k
ids.’ He pauses, reluctant to go on. ‘It might’ve been that journalist.’

  ‘Might have been? I thought you had him under surveillance?’

  ‘We did. But not round the clock. I mean, we checked him out, went to his apartment, trawled through his shit, but there was nothing much there. He wasn’t deemed a risk.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘We’re looking into it.’

  Rundle glances around. ‘What’s the take on Conway? What are people saying?’

  ‘Debts, bankruptcy. He was in for a couple of hundred million. Victim of the recession. It seems to be straight up.’

  Rundle nods. ‘Fine, but this journalist prick talks to Bolger, then he talks to Conway … we have to assume he knows something. Or thinks he knows something. We have to assume he’s a risk.’

  ‘Yeah. But from what our asset could find out the guy is more or less unemployed. Until recently he was working on a book about that actress who was killed in the helicopter crash. That’s how he got caught up in this.’

  ‘And that doesn’t make him a risk? Jesus, Don.’

  Ribcoff looks around, nodding. ‘OK. I’ll get our asset to take another look at him.’

  ‘Not just another look, Don. Sit on the bastard. We don’t want any surprises here.’

  ‘Right.’

  Rundle is anxious to get away. ‘That it?’

  Ribcoff nods.

  ‘Keep me posted.’

  ‘OK.’

  As Rundle is turning to go, Ribcoff says, ‘By the way, have you seen Mr Vaughan yet? Since we got back?’

  ‘No,’ Rundle says, feeling a slight impatience at the question. ‘I’m seeing him tomorrow night.’

  Back in the elevator, he takes out his phone and calls Regal.

  Unfortunately, Nora is not available today. They’re about to suggest someone else, another escort, but Rundle hangs up.

  * * *

  As he walks along George’s Street on his way to the Long Hall, Jimmy keeps turning and looking behind him. He can’t shake the uneasy feeling that he’s being followed. No one in his line of vision offers themselves up as a likely candidate, but then …

  He wouldn’t expect them to.

  Stepping into the pub, Jimmy glances around and spots Phil Sweeney sitting alone at the bar.

  He looks tired. There is a glass of whiskey in front of him.