Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  Bolger closes his eyes.

  There was a touch of that whole Kennedy thing to it, the royal succession, the passing on of the baton, of the flame – though over the years Larry has never been able to figure out if his relationship to Frank was more like Jack’s relationship to Joe Jr., or Bobby’s to Jack, or maybe even, and most likely, Teddy’s to Bobby.

  He opens his eyes.

  Just ahead is the Carlton Hotel, where he’s giving the press conference. He nudges Paula awake.

  ‘Oh … oh shit. Where are we?’

  ‘At the gates of hell,’ he says. ‘Look.’

  She leans forward.

  Dozens of reporters and photographers, jostling for position, are gathered at the entrance to the hotel.

  Paula whips a compact out of her pocket, flicks it open and examines herself.

  ‘Oh God,’ she says, making a lame attempt to adjust her hair. ‘Look at the state of me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Bolger says. ‘I don’t think you’re the one they’re interested in.’

  As the car pulls up at the hotel, the photographers and reporters surge forward.

  ‘Remember,’ Paula says, like a ringside coach slipping in his plastic mouthpiece, ‘you’re indignant about all of this, you’re bewildered, you’re hurt.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bolger says, nodding his head.

  He takes a deep breath and reaches for the door. Then, as he steps out of the car and into a hail of clicks, whirrs and flashes, he repeats to himself, over and over, mantra-like, indignant, bewildered, hurt … indignant, bewildered, hurt …

  2

  It takes Gina no more than ten minutes to locate Mark Griffin. When she gets into the office that morning she sits at her desk, pulls out the phone book and simply looks up his name. There are six Mark Griffins and over twenty M. Griffins. She starts with the Marks. Most of the previous night she lay awake thinking about how hard this would be, anticipating all sorts of obstacles, dead ends, trails gone cold – but now she’s surprised at how easy, and obvious, it is.

  With the first and second Marks she’s a little awkward in her approach, a little too direct, but by the third one she’s got it right.

  ‘Hello, may I speak to Mark Griffin please?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Hello. I hope I’m on to the right person. I’m, I’m looking for a Mark Griffin who lost family members many years ago in a road accident, I –’

  ‘No, no,’ comes the immediate response, ‘no, no, sorry … you must be looking for someone else.’

  The next response, number four, is very different – a silence that goes on so long Gina eventually has to interrupt it.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes,’ the voice says, ‘I’m here.’

  Gina swallows.

  This is him. She can tell. She glances at her watch.

  Ten minutes.

  She didn’t think it would happen so fast, and now she’s not prepared. What does she say next?

  ‘Thank you.’

  Thank you?

  ‘Look, who is this? Are you a journalist?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. My name is Gina Rafferty and I … I lost someone myself, two weeks ago, a brother, in a road accident, I …’

  She doesn’t know how to proceed.

  Then it’s Mark Griffin’s turn to interrupt the silence.

  ‘You have my condolences,’ he says, ‘really, but listen, I’m not a grief counsellor, I –’

  ‘I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but I do have a specific reason for calling you.’ She pauses. ‘I wonder if we could meet somewhere and talk.’

  He exhales loudly and then says, ‘How did you get my name? How do you know about me?’

  ‘Can I explain all of that when we meet?’

  Somewhat reluctantly he agrees, at first saying he’s busy and that it’ll have to be sometime later in the week. But then, as he flicks through what Gina imagines to be a diary or a notebook, his attitude seems to shift.

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘what are you doing now?’

  ‘Now? This morning?’

  ‘Yeah.’ There is a new urgency in his voice. ‘In the next hour or two.’

  ‘Well … nothing, I suppose.’

  ‘OK then.’

  They arrange to meet in a café on South Anne Street at eleven.

  Before he leaves the house, Mark stops for a moment in front of the hall mirror. He looks awful. He didn’t shave this morning and his eyes are puffy. If it wasn’t for the Italian suit he’s wearing, he’d probably look more of a shambles. He doesn’t care, though.

  He gets in the car and pulls out onto Glanmore Road.

  It’s just after ten o’clock. Rush hour in Dublin never really ends, but if he’s lucky he should be able to make it into town in twenty-five, thirty minutes, get parking and be at the café on South Anne Street just before eleven.

  He needs a little time to get his head together.

  Mark has no idea who Gina Rafferty is or what she wants, but in the half hour since she called he’s come as close to having a panic attack as it’s possible to get without actually, technically, having one – the only thing holding it in abeyance, in fact, being a blind and unreasonable expectation that this woman, whoever she is, is going to be able to tell him something.

  The traffic through Drumcondra is light enough, and once he crosses Tolka Bridge it loosens up even more.

  Mark looks in the rearview mirror – at himself. His eyes are still puffy … and red and rheumy. This is the first hangover he’s had in a very long time. It was the first drink.

  Half a bottle of Bombay Sapphire.

  He’d resisted for days. But eventually there didn’t seem to be much point. It’d been so long since he’d had to confront head-on the reality of the accident – and it turned out to be more of a strain than he could bear, sifting through his memory like that …

  The thing is, Mark thinks he can remember the crash happening, but the truth is he probably can’t. No doubt, in retrospect, his imagination has filled in a lot of the detail – provided colour, splashes of red, a wash of orange, a rotating blue light, as well as sound effects, screeches, screams, groans – but the reality of it all, buried deep somewhere in his subconscious and effectively inaccessible to him now, may have been quite different. What he can picture in his head, and what shows up unbidden every once in a while in dreams, is a serviceable version of the event. It may not be an accurate representation of what actually happened, but this ‘memory’ accords with the facts as they’ve been handed down to him, and anyway, it’s all he’s got.

  He finds a parking space on Nassau Street.

  But what is really strange here is that the subject has come up twice, and separately, in the space of a few days.

  Is that just a coincidence, or is there something going on?

  Mark doesn’t know. But either way, this is the single most formative event of his life, and never once – it occurs to him – never once has he had a proper conversation about it, ever … with anyone.

  He looks at his watch and wonders now, nervously, as he walks back towards Dawson Street, if that isn’t about to change.

  Gina leaves the office and walks along Harcourt Street. As she’s approaching the junction with St Stephen’s Green, a silver Luas, bell ringing, glides by. She crosses at the lights after the tram and enters the Green.

  So much about Dublin has changed in recent years, but this great garden square with its winding pathways and formal flower beds isn’t one of them. In fact, if it weren’t for people’s clothes – Gina thinks – and their mobile phones, this could be twenty-five, fifty, even a hundred years ago. There’s something reassuring about that – even if it doesn’t make today, or what she’s about to do, any less real.

  Not that she’s at all clear in her mind what that is.

  A lot will depend on Mark Griffin. He was a kid when the accident – the crash – happened, so how much does he know about it? How much was he told when he was gr
owing up? Is he aware that at the time there was lots of what Jackie Merrigan called ‘talk’? Griffin sounded relatively normal on the phone, but how will he respond to the fact that Gina’s theory, pretty shaky to start with, is not backed up by a single shred of evidence?

  The thing is, for her theory to come into any kind of focus, for a discernible pattern to emerge, there needs to be a stronger connection between her brother and Larry Bolger. What she has is that they played poker sometimes, and apparently weren’t evenly matched. Meaning what? Bolger owed Noel money? He couldn’t pay it back?

  Gina groans.

  That’s pretty weak.

  But then she remembers what Terry Stack had to say and it makes her want to scream.

  She crosses the stone bridge over the pond and heads for the Dawson Street exit.

  There’s something else, too, not a connection exactly, not anything she can use – but a memory … from when she was a kid. It came to her last night after she got off the phone with Jackie Merrigan and was on the sofa taking another look at that two-page spread in the Sunday World.

  It was of the house in Dolanstown … the front room with its old wallpaper, thick carpet and ornaments on the mantelpiece. The TV was on and her mother was in the armchair, cigarette dangling, glass in hand. Gina herself was playing on the floor when out of the blue – and almost shouting – her mother said, ‘Ah Jesus, Mary and Joseph, no.’

  Gina turned around. Her mother was pointing at the TV screen.

  ‘Look at that. Oh God isn’t it awful.’

  Gina looked.

  What she remembers now is more like an abstract image than anything else, because how was she supposed to make sense of what she was seeing – of what must have been a closeup shot of the second car, mangled and crushed out of all recognition? She didn’t understand what she was hearing either, though one thing she does remember is a man in uniform saying, ‘tragic altogether, the mother and father, and their little girl …’

  What sticks in Gina’s mind the most, however, is her mother saying over and over again, ‘That poor little boy, that poor little boy … my Jesus, that poor unfortunate little boy.’ Gina was puzzled at this and wanted to say, No, no, Mammy, it was their little girl, it was their little girl, Mammy … the man said …

  But she remained silent.

  In time, Gina learned how to handle her mother when drink was involved, but back then she just used to keep her head down and stay quiet. Besides, she was the only one left in the house at that stage – all of the others had gone, even Catherine and the baby.

  Or was Catherine still there? Was little Noel still there? Upstairs asleep in his cot maybe?

  The memory doesn’t stretch to that kind of detail, but what seems pretty certain now – as Gina crosses at the light and heads down Dawson Street – is that when she was a kid, six or seven years old, she saw a report on TV of the car crash that killed both Larry Bolger’s brother and the parents and sister of the man she’s about to meet.

  Already scanning the room as she walks through the door, Gina identifies Mark Griffin more or less immediately. He’s sitting alone in a corner. The place is quite busy, but he’s the only person she can see who fits the age profile.

  She goes straight over to him.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘Yeah. Gina?’ He half stands up and puts out his hand.

  They shake and Gina sits down, her back to the room.

  ‘So,’ she says, feeling horribly awkward.

  Their eyes meet for a second. Then he looks over her shoulder.

  ‘What would you like?’ he asks, raising a finger. ‘Coffee, tea, juice?’

  Gina glances down at what he’s having. It seems to be a large black coffee.

  ‘Er …’

  A young Chinese guy appears at her side and says, ‘Hi, good morning. What would you like?’

  ‘Er … I’ll have a double espresso, please.’

  The Chinese guy takes a moment to write this down and then goes away.

  Thankful for that little breather, but sorry now it’s over, Gina looks up and smiles.

  Mark Griffin is dark. He has dark hair, dark eyes and a dark complexion. He’s wearing a very nice dark suit and a plain dark tie. But he’s also unshaven and looks somewhat the worse for wear. Gina doesn’t know what she was expecting – although a small, irrational part of her was expecting a five-year-old boy in short grey trousers and a V-necked jumper.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet me,’ she says. ‘I realise this must be difficult for you, but I just wanted to, er …’ She hasn’t really worked out how to put this. ‘I just wanted …’

  ‘Look,’ Mark Griffin says, leaning forward, ‘it isn’t easy for me, that’s true, but from what you said on the phone I’m sure it isn’t easy for you either.’ He pauses. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me what happened to your brother?’

  Gina nods and says, ‘OK.’

  She intends to go for a slow build, with plenty of context and detail, but by the time the waiter arrives back with her double espresso a couple of minutes later, she finds she’s already blurted most of it out – even to the extent of using phrases like ‘faked accident’ and ‘professional hit’.

  She does stop short, though, of mentioning Larry Bolger.

  She leans forward and takes a sip from the espresso. She looks at Griffin for a reaction, but there isn’t one.

  After a moment he reaches out and takes a sip from his own cup.

  What is he thinking?

  Gina doesn’t know, but it would seem reasonable to assume that he’s torn between wanting to hear more of her theory and wanting to be told what the fuck any of this has to do with him.

  He looks at her. ‘You didn’t say why you think anyone would want to kill your brother.’

  ‘Well, I don’t really know why. That’s what I’m trying to find out. But the thing is’ – here goes, she looks into his eyes – ‘the thing is, he did some work over the years with Larry Bolger … and I –’

  Griffin blanches. ‘Sorry … Larry Bolger?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s what this is about? Something to do with Larry Bolger?’

  ‘Well maybe. I don’t know.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He exhales. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to –’

  ‘No … it’s OK.’ He exhales again. ‘But I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?’

  Gina feels her stomach sinking. How coherent an answer to this question can she give?

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I’m probably on shaky ground here, and I don’t want to stir up any bad memories or upset you in any way, but I was talking to someone last night, someone who remembers the crash from twenty-five years ago, a cop, and he was saying that the official story was that your father –’ she pauses, swallows, ‘that your father caused the accident. Because he’d been drinking. But that … maybe things weren’t so clear-cut. This guy said that at the time there was a question mark over whether your father even drank at all, and that maybe it was Frank Bolger who was drunk. He said there could well have been a cover-up to protect his reputation … and that Larry Bolger was the one person who had the most to gain from …’

  Gina has never had anyone look at her the way Griffin is looking at her now. It’s a queasy kaleidoscope of disbelief, hurt, confusion, fury. He puts a hand on the edge of the table to steady himself.

  ‘This is insane,’ he whispers.

  ‘Oh God,’ Gina says, ‘I’m sorry.’

  He’s looking away now, over her shoulder, and shaking his head.

  Does she go on or shut up?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says after a moment, the silence unbearable, ‘it just seemed to be a pattern … accusations of drunk driving used deliberately and maliciously to …’

  Her voice trails off.

  Twenty-five years apart, different circumstances, the link with Bolger tenuous at best and probably just a coincidence – is that a pattern? Gina has a sudden s
ense of how flimsy all of this is, and of how irresponsible she’s being in presenting it to someone who has such a profound emotional involvement in what she’s talking about.

  ‘All my life,’ Griffin says, still whispering, still staring into the distance, ‘all the time I was growing up and in all the years since, I have lived with the horror, with the shame, of knowing that my father was responsible for that crash, and for the deaths of four people … including my sister and my mother …’ He looks directly at Gina now. ‘It was like some sort of black creation myth. And I never talked about it to anyone, I never discussed it with anyone … but it was always there.’

  Gina swallows again. She wants to retract and apologise. She wants to get up and leave. She wants to reverse time.

  ‘And now,’ Griffin goes on, ‘after all these years, out of the blue, I’m faced with the possibility that maybe it wasn’t his fault? That it could have been someone else’s fault? That there was … that there was even some uncertainty at the time? Jesus Christ.’

  The edge in his voice unnerves Gina. The thing is, this is only a theory, and her impulse now is to play it down a little.

  ‘Mark,’ she says softly, ‘I can’t prove any of this.’