Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  Gina leans forward slightly. ‘Noel, are you OK?’

  He nods vigorously. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, Jesus. Now go on, get inside or you’ll catch your death. And I’ll see you in a while.’

  ‘OK.’

  But neither of them moves.

  Noel then reaches out and takes her by the arm. ‘I know these are awful circumstances,’ he says, staring into her eyes, ‘and let’s face it, the next couple of days are going to be fairly hectic, but maybe at some point we can sit down and have a really good chat, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, I’d like that.’

  And she would, too. Every time she sees Noel she remembers how much she likes him.

  ‘Great,’ Noel says, giving her arm a quick squeeze. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ He then produces car keys from his pocket. Gina steps back and watches him getting into the SUV. As he pulls out of the driveway, he looks around, beeps the horn and waves.

  Gina waves back, turns and heads for the front door.

  6

  Noel can’t help smiling as he cruises along Greenhalgh Road West. He always gets a kick out of seeing Gina. Despite the age gap, he feels connected to her in a way that he doesn’t with the others, and it’s not some indulgent, avuncular type of thing either – he and she have a lot in common. He and she, as Noel sees it, are the two that got away. Catherine, Michelle and Yvonne all got trapped early – limited exposure to education, maximum exposure to neighbourhood muppets like Jimmy Dempsey. Noel, on the other hand – and with a work ethic inherited from their old man – clawed his way through school and then, as he stacked shelves by day, through an engineering course at night. Maybe Gina didn’t have to claw so much, because the times were a little different, but Noel still thinks of her as someone with the drive and ambition to achieve almost anything.

  He’s helped the others out over the years, paid for things, talked to people, pulled strings, but Gina has always insisted on her independence – which of course Noel loves.

  He glances at his watch. As he savours the prospect of seeing her again so soon, his mobile goes off.

  He’s just passing the Crumlin Shopping Centre.

  ‘Yep?’ It’s Jackie.

  ‘Look, Noel, I’ve had a word with a few more people, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And it’s the same story. No one knows a thing. The other members of the gang are all freaking out apparently.’

  Noel taps his fingers up and down on the steering wheel. ‘Christ, someone must know what happened.’

  ‘You’d think, but the people I spoke to say there was no particular feud going on, no outstanding thing, no obvious reason for this.’

  Noel exhales. ‘Yeah, but I mean look, half of these bastards are going around out of their heads on coke, they’re pumped up on steroids and they’ve got guns they barely know how to use. You told me all this yourself. They don’t need a reason. You look at them crossways and that’s it, you’re dead.’

  ‘That’s true, but this job wasn’t like that. It was clean and professional.’

  ‘Jesus, all this gangland shit is –’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s just the point, Noel. I don’t think it was gang-related.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think it’s something else, someone else, an outsider. Has to be. Whacking Noel Rafferty like this? It makes no sense.’

  ‘Hhnn.’ Noel swallows. ‘Whacking Noel Rafferty,’ he repeats. He knows what Jackie means, but the words leave a strange taste in his mouth. ‘OK, Jackie, thanks. Keep me posted, will you?’

  Shaking his head, Noel drops the phone onto the passenger seat. His sister, his nephew … his nephew, his sister. And now – with Morahan’s just up ahead – Paddy Norton, Richmond Plaza, this bloody situation …

  His head is throbbing.

  He pulls into the half-empty car park at the back of the pub and crawls along until he spots Paddy Norton’s BMW in the corner. He parks a couple of spaces up from it.

  He holds the steering wheel with both hands for a second and shuts his eyes. A weird feeling comes over him, a sense that something isn’t right. He can’t put his finger on it, but it’s there, in the back of his mind. It’s nagging at him, like a name he’s forgotten and is desperately trying to remember.

  He opens his eyes and wonders if he has any Solpadeine. He looks in the glove compartment. He finds a box there, but it’s empty.

  Aware of Paddy Norton getting out of his car, Noel turns and starts getting out of his. He doesn’t want any more arguing here. He just wants to get the folder and go. He’s scheduled a conference call for tomorrow morning with head office in Paris, and that’s all there is to it.

  ‘All right, Noel?’ Paddy says.

  ‘Yeah.’ Though hardly, given what’s happened. He looks at his watch. ‘I have to get back out to my sister’s. She’s distraught.’

  ‘Naturally enough, I suppose.’

  The two men stand facing each other. It’s cold and quite breezy now. Norton is wearing his Crombie coat, buttoned up, a silk paisley scarf and leather gloves. He’s not wearing a hat, and the few wisps of brown-grey hair he has left on his head are being tossed about gently by the breeze. He also has a glazed look in his eyes, a look that Noel has seen before, and dreads. The man is fifty-seven years old, but tonight for some reason he looks a lot more than that, closer to sixty-seven.

  ‘So have you got the folder on you, Paddy?’ Noel asks.

  ‘Yeah, I have, yeah.’ Norton tips his head back slowly. His eyelids are at half-mast and his voice sounds a little slurred. ‘It’s in the car.’

  ‘Well, can you give it to me then?’

  Norton pauses. ‘You haven’t mentioned it to anyone yet, have you? Discussed it with anyone? No?’

  It’s as though his tongue is swollen and the words are having a hard time getting past it and out of his mouth.

  ‘No. Of course not. That’s what we agreed.’

  ‘OK. Good.’

  ‘So. Come on then, let’s have it.’

  Norton shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, Noel, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Noel feels really tired all of a sudden. He still hasn’t figured out what is wrong, but the suspicion that something is wrong has deepened and is draining him of energy, of resolve.

  ‘Well,’ Norton says, raising his eyebrows, ‘if you can’t figure that one out, you’re not nearly as smart as I gave you credit for.’

  This tone, sarcastic and detached, goes hand in hand with the glazed look and lethargic manner. Noel wonders if Norton isn’t on some kind of medication here and if that wouldn’t explain the mood swing. He does know from experience that when Norton is in this state you can’t reason with him.

  ‘Look,’ Noel then says – and of course immediately trying to reason with him, because what else can he do? – ‘not giving it back to me won’t change anything. I’ll just give Dermot a ring.’

  ‘Ah,’ Norton says, ‘Dermot.’ He looks down at the ground, at his shoes, at Noel’s shoes, but not at Noel himself. ‘Dermot Flynn. Now there’s an overzealous little cunt if ever there was one.’

  ‘He was just doing his job, Paddy.’

  ‘No he wasn’t.’ Norton looks up again. ‘No one told him to stick his nose in. I didn’t. Did you?’

  ‘Look,’ Noel says, ‘what difference does that make now?’ He shakes his head. ‘We’ve been over this. We don’t have any choice.’

  ‘But there’s where you’re wrong, Noel. We do.’ Norton pauses before adding, ‘Well, at least I do.’

  Noel stares at Norton, and that’s when it hits him. He understands now what’s wrong and it’s confirmed for him when he turns to the right and sees someone approaching from the other side of the car park.

  There is light from the street and from the back of the pub, but it takes Noel a moment or two to recognise who this is.

  ‘Fitz?’

  ‘How are you, Noel?’

  Fitz is a short, muscular man in his late forties
. He’s wearing jeans and a zipped-up leather jacket. His hair is thinning and he has a round, red, babyish face. He runs a company called High King, which provides on-site security at all of Paddy Norton’s construction projects.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Noel says, as calmly as he can make it sound, but his head is racing. Who else knows about this? No one. Except for Dermot Flynn of course. Noel got the report from Flynn early last week, looked it over and immediately swore him to secrecy. He then brought it to Paddy Norton – in retrospect, he now sees, probably the last person he should have brought it to. But why did he bring it to Norton and not to someone else? Noel doesn’t have to think about that for very long. He wanted to impress him – it was that simple, that venal, that stupid. However, instead of the expected pat on the back, what he got was a barrage of abuse, followed by a torrent of arguments for suppressing the report.

  And in among these arguments, now that he thinks about it, he also heard a few threats of physical violence.

  None of which – even for a second – he took literally.

  He looks back at Norton, and then blurts it out, ‘You can’t be serious, Paddy.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve never been more serious in my life,’ Norton says, and runs a gloved hand over his head, trying to settle his wispy hair. ‘Well, maybe once.’

  Noel swallows. He stares at Norton. ‘But … I mean … did …’

  ‘What? What? Your nephew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Norton nods his head in Fitz’s direction. ‘It was a mistake. This gobshite here. Whoever he outsourced it to was meant to hit you and then the spin would be that that was the mistake, that it should have been your high-profile bloody nephew. Same name, you know. Comedy of errors kind of thing.’ He turns his bulky frame towards Fitz and shakes his head. ‘Some bloody comedy, what?’

  Fitz shrugs but remains silent.

  ‘It would have been the perfect smoke screen,’ Norton goes on. ‘Gangland cock-up. But too subtle for some people, it seems.’ He shakes his head again. ‘If you want something done in this life, am I right?’

  Noel is paralysed and can’t respond. The notion that this man in front of him is responsible for having his nephew killed is simply grotesque, bizarre, too much to take in. Paddy Norton, Noel finds himself thinking – and as though in some desperate plea to logic – is a pillar of respectability … he owns racehorses, he goes to Ascot every year, his wife sits on committees …

  ‘Anyway,’ Norton says, ‘we’re now into a damage-limitation phase, I’m afraid.’

  Noel just stands there, still processing the information, still incredulous. He and Norton first met professionally about ten years ago – through Larry Bolger. The older man was an industry legend by that stage, a survivor from the eighties – and, it seemed, untouchable, his name never once having come up in evidence given to the tribunal of inquiry into planning irregularities.

  ‘Damage limitation?’ Noel suddenly asks, at least one part of his brain working at full tilt. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means,’ Norton says, tipping his head backwards again, ‘that I want you to get in the car.’

  Noel looks at him. He understands how reluctant Norton must be to let anything jeopardise the project, but …

  He swallows.

  Or maybe he doesn’t understand at all. Maybe as an engineer he’s been too close to the detail. Maybe he hasn’t been seeing the bigger picture. In a sudden rush of clarity he starts to see it now, though. Because the thing is, in relative terms, Ireland itself has seen nothing on the scale of Richmond Plaza since the early sixties. Back then the country was in the throes of a belated industrial revolution, and something like Liberty Hall, an eighteen-storey glass box, was a very big deal indeed. But what’s been going on in the country recently, what’s been going up, is mould-breaking by contrast, and for Paddy Norton, despite the deepening recession, or perhaps even because of it, Richmond Plaza – forty-eight storeys and in with a shout to be one of the tallest buildings in the whole of Europe – is beyond big, beyond important, it’s … it’s to be his legacy.

  Noel looks around him. He’s boxed in here. A wall to his left, his own car behind him, Norton and his car ahead, Fitz to the right.

  ‘Paddy,’ he says, a brittle tone entering his voice, a tone he hates, ‘why don’t you just try and, I don’t know, bribe me or something?’

  ‘Oh, that’s a good idea,’ Norton says, and laughs. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. But you know what? You’re too much of a self-righteous prick to take a bribe.’

  Noel starts to feel dizzy.

  ‘And besides, no matter how much I paid you, the problem wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t trust you to leave it alone.’ He taps the side of his head with his forefinger. ‘It’s peace of mind I’m looking for here.’

  Then something occurs to Noel. ‘What about Dermot Flynn?’

  As soon as he says the name, he regrets it – not that he believes there’s even the slightest chance that Norton hasn’t already thought of this.

  Fitz, in any case, pipes up from the right. ‘We had a word with him this afternoon.’

  Noel looks around. A word? What is this, some kind of sick euphemism? ‘What do you mean, a word?’

  ‘We spoke to him. Gave him a few bob and a couple of Polaroids. It’s sorted.’

  Noel doesn’t know what this means. He’s confused. He turns back to Norton. ‘For God’s sake, Paddy, maybe I could –’

  ‘Noel, listen to me,’ Norton says, and then pauses, looking down at the ground again.

  ‘What?’ Noel says. He takes a step forward. ‘What?’

  Norton exhales, his mood visibly changing. ‘Look,it’s too late. We both know that.’

  Noel sees the dots joining up properly for the first time. His stomach starts jumping. He can taste something in the back of his throat. It feels like he’s been standing here for a hundred years.

  ‘Because my nephew’s dead, right?’ he says, almost in a whisper.

  Norton nods. ‘Yeah. Obviously.’ He exhales again. ‘Now. Get in the fucking car.’

  7

  The house is quiet, at last. Everything is still. The girls are asleep. Claire has just gone up. The TV is turned off and the phone is unlikely to ring. Dermot Flynn gets off the sofa and goes into the kitchen. He opens the fridge and takes a bottle of vodka out of the freezer. He pours a large measure from the bottle into the nearest glass he can find. Standing at the counter, he raises the glass to his lips and knocks the clear, filmy liquid back in three quick gulps.

  He looks out the window, into what should be the garden, but it’s late, and dark, and all he can see is his own reflection staring back in at him.

  His heart is pounding.

  After a few seconds, the vodka burns a welcome hole through his stomach – and his fear. Pretty soon it’s in his bloodstream, shooting warm, happy signals to his brain.

  He never thought this moment would come.

  He’s been looking forward to it for hours, since the middle of the afternoon in fact.

  Which was when it happened. Out of the blue. On the street in front of where he works. As he was coming back to the office. With a can of Diet Coke in his hand.

  Flynn pours another large measure of vodka and replaces the bottle in the freezer. He knocks the vodka back, two gulps this time, and puts the glass into the sink.

  He wanders into the living room again.

  Not saying anything to Claire all evening was hard, but he did need some time to think – and needs this time now to work out what they’re going to do. He could have had a drink earlier, but he didn’t want to get sloppy and stupid and maybe blurt something out.

  He only hopes he didn’t transmit his panic to the girls.

  He looks around. The place is a mess. Normally, he would tidy it up – the crayons and colouring books, the Barbies, the discarded items of clothing, the empty Shrek and Wizard of Oz DVD boxes – but tonight he just leaves it all and goes through the double doors into what is rather g
randly called the dining room. You couldn’t fit a proper dining table in here, but it’s perfect for what they’ve done with it, which is convert it into a study.

  Closing the doors behind him, he goes over to the desk and sits down. When he got home earlier, he came straight in here and put his briefcase under the desk. Now he reaches down and retrieves it. He elbows the laptop aside and places the briefcase in the middle of the desk.

  His heart is still pounding.

  After downing five shots of vodka in the space of two or three minutes he should be well on, no question, but apparently the alcohol and adrenaline in his system haven’t finished slugging it out yet for pole position.

  He holds the briefcase, ready to click it open, and takes a deep breath. But he hesitates. He looks up, and around. On the wall above his desk is a framed poster for a design exhibition. Bookshelves cover the remaining three walls. On the floor there are magazines and periodicals stacked precariously high. Ninety per cent of what’s in here is engineering and architectural stuff – manuals on technical drawing, books on skyscraper construction, copies of American Architect and Advanced Structural Review.

  He clicks the briefcase open.

  The man who came up to him in the street this afternoon was pale and thin. He wore a denim jacket and had small, beady eyes.

  ‘Dermot Flynn?’ he said.

  Flynn nodded. The man had an air of menace about him, but when he spoke he was disconcertingly soft-spoken and polite. He smiled as he handed over the thick brown envelope.

  ‘This is for you, boss,’ he said. ‘A little something.’

  Flynn took the envelope in one hand and fumbled with it as he used his other hand to put the can of Diet Coke into his jacket pocket.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m a messenger,’ the man said. ‘And here’s the message. That report, yeah? You know the one I mean. Destroy it. Delete any files you have relating to it. Never talk about it again, to anyone, ever.’