Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  So what happened?

  Noel can only guess. Most gangland killings, apparently, in the end, come down to one of three things: a turf dispute, someone creaming off the top, or a clash of personalities. All three are possible in this case, he supposes, though knowing his nephew, only the last one seems really likely.

  Noel climbs into his SUV and makes his way down the five levels to the entrance as fast as he can, tyres screeching at every turn. But Dublin’s nightlife is hopping and when he pulls out onto Drury Street the traffic is practically at a standstill. He hunches over the steering wheel.

  He doesn’t need this, just as he doesn’t need the band of pain that starts throbbing now behind his eyes.

  The traffic moves forward, but only a yard or two. It stops again.

  Rubbing his eyes, Noel thinks back to what happened in the hotel bar. He didn’t need that either. He didn’t need Paddy Norton jabbing him in the chest with his finger, and he certainly didn’t need another rundown of the arguments – arguments he’s been hearing incessantly now for the last two or three days. The timing of Jackie’s call didn’t help either, of course. Leaving in a hurry like that made it seem as if he were running away. It was –

  Noel shakes his head.

  What he does need here, maybe, is a little perspective. Richmond Plaza, like any big development, is going to have its fair share of problems. All the ones so far have been surmountable, and this one won’t be any different.

  His nephew, on the other hand, is dead.

  As they approach George’s Street, the traffic loosens up a bit. Noel takes his mobile out again. He needs to talk to someone. He calls Jackie and asks him if he’s heard anything else.

  ‘No, and it’s a little strange to tell you the truth. I called around, but pretty much hit a brick wall.’

  A detective superintendent based in Harcourt Street, Jackie Merrigan is a good friend of Noel’s and – important in the construction industry – a valuable source of information inside Garda headquarters. Over the last year or so, as a favour to Noel, he’s also been providing updates of a different kind.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Noel asks. ‘Was it a professional hit?’

  ‘Oh, I’d say so, yeah.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘It has all the hallmarks.’

  Noel pauses, shaking his head. ‘I’m still in shock here. I mean, I was having a drink with Paddy Norton and I just walked out on the man, didn’t look back.’

  ‘Understandable, Noel.’

  ‘Yeah. Listen. Thanks. Anyway, I’m heading out to my sister’s now.’

  ‘Right.’ There is a pause. ‘Pass on my condolences, will you?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll talk to you again.’

  Noel hits End. As he holds the phone in his hand, something occurs to him. He left his folder sitting on the hotel bar.

  Shit.

  What does he do now? Call Norton? Arrange to swing by his house later to pick it up? He’ll have to. He’s got that conference call in the morning with head office in Paris.

  Shit.

  But he can’t be thinking about this now. He can’t. He puts the phone back into his pocket.

  A couple of minutes later, he’s turning off the South Circular, then crossing the canal, and once he’s on Clogher Road, at this time of night, it’s a straight run all the way out to Dolanstown.

  3

  Alone in the house, Catherine is reeling from the news. When the phone rang, she was sipping a vodka and Coke, but now she refills the glass with just vodka and takes a long hit from it. She puts the glass down and picks up her mobile. She phones one of her sisters, Yvonne, who lives nearby, and tells her the news. After the initial shock, Yvonne is all business. She says give her fifteen minutes, that she’ll call Michelle and Gina and then come over. Catherine also calls Mrs Collins next door, who says she’ll come in and sit with her until Yvonne arrives.

  The TV is still on. Catherine was watching a rerun of Friends, and even though she’s not watching it now, she can’t bring herself to turn it off – not until someone arrives, it’s company, and anyway holding the remote in her hand makes her feel like she’s doing something, like she’s in control. Through all of this – the calls, the standing around, the Friends – she continues crying, either in silence, with tears running down her cheeks, or at full tilt – all out and uncontrollable. At one point, she catches sight of herself in the mirror and gets a fright. Is she really that old looking? Is she really that old?

  This all seems unreal to her, like it’s happening to someone else. Given what Noel was involved in, though, it’s not as if she hasn’t already pictured the scene a hundred times, on a hundred other nights. It’s just that the reality of it is, well … different.

  When Mrs Collins arrives Catherine immediately regrets having phoned her. The woman is kind, but too kind, you know, she’d smother you with kindness, and now five seconds in the door she’s already hard at it. After a while Yvonne arrives and takes over, thankfully – even though the first thing she does is whip the glass of vodka away from Catherine, saying a shot or two is fine, for your nerves, but you don’t want to overdo it. The cops’ll be here soon, she says, and you’ll probably have to go somewhere to identify the body, and anyway there’ll be plenty of time for drinking later. Then she puts the kettle on – the kettle, the fucking kettle.

  Catherine hates the kettle.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ Mrs Collins says, looking uneasily into the kitchen after Yvonne, ‘a nice cup of tea.’

  The ‘nice’ really grates on Catherine’s nerves. To distract herself, she glances over at the framed photographs arranged on shelves in the corner of the lounge. She stands up and walks across the room to get a closer look at them.

  She can’t believe this. She was eighteen years old when Noel was born, and just look at her. She was fucking gorgeous. Every bloke in the area wanted to ride her and wouldn’t leave her alone, so it was no surprise when she got pregnant – but of course it did have to be with a mad bastard like Jimmy Dempsey. Not that it mattered though. Once she had the baby, she didn’t care, and was even relieved when Jimmy fecked off to England. Noel was her baby. He wasn’t a Dempsey, he was a Rafferty – and a Noel Rafferty at that, just like her brother.

  The photos are arranged in order and she gazes at each one of them in turn.

  Oh God, she thinks, biting her lip – the little fella. Look at him there – as a baby, a boy, a teenager. That’s his life … all of his life now.

  Starting to sob again, she turns away. Yvonne approaches her with a cup of tea. Catherine wants to say Fuck off, would you, I don’t want tea, but she doesn’t, she takes it.

  The doorbell rings.

  Noel.

  As he comes in through the hallway, Catherine rushes out from the lounge to meet him. They stand there locked in a tight embrace for up to a minute.

  Catherine has always adored her brother, even though in recent years they haven’t seen each other as much as they used to, or anyway as much as she’d like. Noel has been up to his eyes with work, spending every waking hour, it seems, locked away in meetings, off on foreign junkets or just stuck on building sites. However, there’s more to it than that, and it hits her now, what she’s known all along but hasn’t ever wanted to admit.

  With her son’s growing profile, mentions in the paper and so on … had he become something of a liability as far as her brother was concerned, a potential embarrassment?

  Meaning what?

  Catherine doesn’t know, but in her confusion she allows the thought a little space to breathe. As she stands there in Noel’s arms, stroking the silky texture of his suit and losing herself in the haze of his cologne, she wonders if maybe, at some level, he isn’t relieved to have his young nephew permanently out of the picture.

  But once the thought is formed, she flinches from it, and confusion quickly gives way to shame.

  Noel is the first to extract himself from the embrace. He then holds Catherine’s face in his h
ands and stares into her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Catherine,’ he says.

  Her face crumples again and they re-embrace for a moment. Yvonne comes out from the kitchen. She and Noel acknowledge each other with silent nods. Somehow, they all move into the lounge and end up sitting on sofas. But it feels weirdly polite, like it’s some kind of formal occasion. There’s a tension in the room, and no one seems to know what it is.

  Then Mrs Collins stands up and it becomes clear.

  ‘I’ll just slip away,’ she whispers, nodding at Yvonne and then at Noel. She glances at Catherine and cocks her head sideways. But suddenly she’s gone and it’s just the three of them.

  Family.

  But this doesn’t last very long.

  The doorbell rings again and Catherine’s heart lurches. She thinks maybe it’s Michelle or Gina.

  As Yvonne goes out to answer it, Catherine and Noel remain still, looking across the room at each other in silence, listening.

  The door opens.

  ‘Good evening, ma’am.’

  It’s a deep voice, an accent – a fucking culchie.

  Noel stands up. ‘The guards,’ he says quietly.

  He goes out.

  Catherine listens to the shuffling in the hallway as two or maybe even three of them come in. Not much is being said. She imagines some pointing going on, faces being made, heads nodding. Then comes the moment she dreads. She looks up as two uniformed guards step into the room. Over their uniforms they have on those yellow reflective jackets that make them look like Teletubbies. They both have hangdog expressions on their faces, and are followed by a plainclothes detective, a shorter, older man in a navy suit. This isn’t the first time the guards have been to the house, but it’s the first time they’ve ever been let in the door. Catherine feels a flicker of indignation. She knows how Noel would feel about this. But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have the will. There are too many other things going on in her head, vying for her attention – memories of Noel, images, snatches of things he said. She’d love another hit from that glass of vodka.

  Where did Yvonne leave it?

  ‘Mrs Rafferty?’

  Mrs? She’s not even going to correct them on that one.

  She looks up. They’re standing around awkwardly. No one tells them to sit down.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  The detective steps forward. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for you, Mrs Rafferty.’

  She realises he’s only doing his duty, that it’s a formality, but she can’t help thinking what Noel would be saying if he was here now, he’d be saying, ‘Listen, you stupid fucking bogman, tell us something we don’t know.’

  4

  On Wicklow Street, parked near Louis Copeland’s, Paddy Norton sits slumped in his BMW, staring at his mobile phone. He has just walked back from the hotel, not the better yet of Noel Rafferty’s sudden appearance in the bar forty-five minutes earlier.

  What in God’s name does he do now?

  He hesitates, and then places his mobile on top of the folder lying on the passenger seat beside him. He reaches into his pocket and produces a small silver pillbox. He opens it and taps two Narolet tablets out into the palm of his hand. He raises his hand, knocks the two tablets into his mouth and swallows them back dry. With the booze he already has in his system these should kick in pretty soon, help him to calm down.

  It’s fairly cold outside but he’s sweating. He draws the back of his hand across his upper lip.

  He shifts his considerable weight in the seat. The car is spacious, roomy, but Norton gives it a run for its money all the same.

  He looks down at the phone again.

  It was enough of a shock having Noel turn up unexpectedly in the first place, but what was the story then with him rushing off like that – pale all of a sudden, barely a word, no explanation? And who had that been on his mobile? Was it a tip-off of some kind?

  Hardly.

  There’s nothing for it. Norton has to talk to Fitz. The arrangement was no direct contact for at least a week, but clearly that doesn’t apply anymore, not in these circumstances.

  He picks up his phone again, selects a number and hits Call.

  As he is waiting, he feels the first, vague stirrings of the Narolet in his system.

  Anticipa-a-tion.

  Soon he’ll have to keep reminding himself that he is, in fact, extremely angry.

  The call is answered with a ‘Yep?’

  ‘What happened?’

  Silence at first, then, ‘Jesus, I thought –’

  ‘What happened?’

  More silence, as well as some eye-rolling probably. Then, ‘It went OK.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’ve just had a fucking drink with the guy.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I’ve just had it confirmed.’

  Norton says nothing. His breathing pattern is slow, laboured, quite loud. He waits for more.

  ‘It happened an hour ago, less.’

  In the silence that follows, Norton struggles to contain himself. He wants to be explicit, but he can’t. They’re on mobiles here. They have to be discreet.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand,’ he says eventually, the Narolet all over him now like a heavy blanket of snow. ‘Something’s gone wrong. Check again. Christ. I’ll ring you back.’

  He puts the phone down, but just as he’s about to start the car up, it rings – Vivaldi, one of the seasons.

  He grabs the phone again, hoping that it’s Ray Sullivan. New York is five hours behind, so Ray Sullivan could easily still be in his office at this time.

  Norton looks at the display on the phone.

  But it’s not Ray Sullivan. It’s Noel.

  He takes a deep breath.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Listen, Paddy, I’m sorry for skipping off like that, but there’s been an emergency, a family thing. It’s … it’s awful.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Norton swallows. ‘What?’

  ‘My nephew’s been shot. In a pub. He’s dead.’

  Norton closes his eyes and says, ‘Oh fuck.’ Then he exhales loudly, deflating like a balloon.

  ‘Yeah,’ Noel says, ‘I’m out at my sister’s house now. She’s in bits of course. The cops are here. It’s chaos.’

  ‘Well, look, I’m sorry,’ Norton says, very quietly. ‘Your nephew, wasn’t –’

  ‘Yeah, Catherine’s lad, Noel. He was into all sorts of shit, so I can’t say I’m surprised. But still, it’s a shock.’

  Norton exhales again. He can barely believe this.

  ‘But anyway, the thing is,’ Noel goes on, ‘I left that folder on the bar in –’

  ‘Yeah,’ Norton says, ‘it’s OK, I’ve got it.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to need it. Tonight. There are some things in it I want to check –’

  ‘Look –’

  ‘– for tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh come on, Noel, come on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What the fuck am I going to tell Ray Sullivan?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tell him the truth.’

  ‘Oh for –’

  ‘Look, Paddy, I’m sorry, but … it’s just not right.’

  Norton stares out across Wicklow Street. On the other side some young women are walking past. Despite the cold, they are all wearing short, skimpy dresses, and despite the acres of flesh on display, thighs, shoulders, backs, there is nothing sexy or attractive about them. They look like a pack of strange animals, roving the plains in search of food and shelter. One of them is lagging behind, weaving drunkenly along the pavement. Norton thinks of his own daughter, pictures her here, like this, and a wave of emotion – unadulterated and operatic – washes over him. The Narolet does this sometimes, makes him a little weepy, leaves him exposed. But that’s fine, he likes it, looks forward to it even.

  ‘Paddy?’

  Norton shakes his head. He looks at the dashboard, refocusing.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he says. ‘I’m not go
ing to argue with you any more, Noel. Do what you want. Let’s meet someplace and you can pick it up.’

  ‘I can drop out to the house.’

  ‘No.’ Norton pauses here, closing one eye. ‘I’m still in town. We can meet halfway somewhere.’

  ‘Fine.’

  They make an arrangement. The car park behind Morahan’s. In forty-five minutes.

  ‘See you then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Norton holds the phone in his hand. It weighs a ton.

  He never wanted this.

  He’s been in the property business for over thirty years – here and in the UK – and during that time he has put up countless hotels, apartment blocks, office complexes and a shopping centre or two. He has made a considerable reputation for himself, as well as a lot of friends, and a lot of money … so naturally he’s not going to let some self-important little prick like Noel Rafferty flush all of that down the toilet –

  Norton shakes his head.

  – and especially not over something like this …

  In a reflex movement, Norton brings a hand up to his chest, and winces.

  He remains still, letting the seconds roll past – five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds. What’s the deal here? Is he just excited or are these actual palpitations? Is this a warning sign or is it the precursor to some kind of massive heart attack?

  Who knows?

  He waits some more, and it seems to pass.

  He looks at his watch, and then back at his mobile. He calls Fitz’s number again and waits.

  He never wanted this. He really didn’t.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘We need to meet.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Right now. In the next twenty minutes.’

  5

  Coming out of Isosceles, after the gig, after the minimalist repetitions and phase-shifting polyrhythms of Icelandic trio, Barcode, Gina Rafferty is feeling transported. This is the first proper night out she’s had in weeks, and although there is something ironic in the fact that the complex, patterned music actually reminds her of work, of computer code, of the alternating ones and zeroes they all toil so endlessly over in the office, she doesn’t feel cheated or shortchanged. It’s the same mechanism in each case, for sure – it’s the language of order, the language of structure – but the context is quite different. So it’d be like comparing, say, legalese with poetry, the syntax of a contract with the metre of a sonnet …