Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  Gina doesn’t answer.

  ‘I mean, come on,’ Sophie continues. ‘The time you got here, the state you were in.’ She pauses. ‘The blood on your shoes.’

  Gina’s eyes widen.

  Sophie points. ‘They’re over there on the kitchen floor. I cleaned them.’

  Gina nods, and then sits on the edge of the sofa. After a long silence, she says, ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I called in sick.’

  Sophie takes off her jacket and places it over the back of a chair. She turns the chair to face the sofa and sits in it. ‘I didn’t like leaving, and then when I stuck my head in the door to check up on you before heading out, I noticed your shoes.’ She shrugs. ‘And well, on top of what I’d just heard on the radio …’

  Gina nods again. Then she does her best to explain. She goes through it in detail, and in sequence – from her earliest suspicions on that awful Tuesday morning to everything she endured, and witnessed, last night.

  Sophie is pale by the end of it.

  ‘Holy God, Gina. Jesus Christ. You’ve got to go to the Guards.’

  ‘I can’t. I –’

  ‘But you’re still –’

  ‘Look, I brought Terry Stack in on it, I called him, I encouraged him to …to interrogate that guy. I mean, listen to me.’

  Sophie leans forward. ‘But Gina, you’re still … it sounds to me like you’re still in danger.’

  ‘Yeah. I suppose I am.’ She shrugs. ‘Yeah. But listen … do you have any coffee?’

  Sophie nods. She gets up at once, heads over to the kitchen and with all the focus of a staff nurse preparing to dress a wound or give an insulin injection, she gets busy filling the kettle and then her cafetière.

  Gina stands up and walks back over to the spare room. She sits on the end of the bed and picks up her jacket. She goes through the pockets and extracts whatever doesn’t belong to her. Mark Griffin’s mobile. Fitz’s mobile. Fitz’s gun. The three photographs.

  She spreads all of these items out on the bed.

  She glides a hand over the photos.

  I finally saw them today. For the first time. Saw what they looked like. My family. I’m looking at them now. Lucy was so small, she –

  Gina turns away, and stares at the floor.

  Jesus. Poor Mark. Seeing these … these faces, after so many years, and then …

  Then whatever happened to him. Getting shot …

  Though she wonders now when exactly that happened, and where. Because something occurs to her. Mark sounded very weird on the phone. Out of it. Delirious almost. So could he actually have been shot before they spoke?

  Then something else occurs to her. Sophie is right. Gina herself is still in danger. This isn’t going to stop just because Fitz is no longer around. And if she keeps on asking questions the way she has been, she’s probably going to wind up seriously injured – or even dead – herself.

  Unless she gets some real answers first.

  ‘I’m stunned.’

  Gina looks up. Sophie is leaning against the doorjamb with her arms folded.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Sophie exhales. ‘I’m in total shock, Gina. At all of this.’

  ‘I know. I know. Me too.’

  Gina tugs the jacket towards her to cover the items on the bed.

  Out in the kitchen, the kettle whistles to a boil and then clicks off. Sophie steps away from the door. ‘So,’ she says over her shoulder as she moves off, ‘what are you going to do?’

  Gina flips the jacket back. She looks down at the charcoal-grey gun lying on the bed. It is dense and angular, and radiates an undeniable seriousness. Next to it, the mobile phones, metallic and shiny, look like trinkets. She picks the gun up, holds it in her hand, feels it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, her voice a notch or two louder, ‘but I think I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing all along.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Closing one eye, Gina raises the gun and points it at the wall. ‘Asking questions.’

  2

  Norton feels a little dizzy as he steps out of the elevator onto the third floor. His secretary greets him with a list of calls he absolutely must return, but when he gets to his desk the first call he makes is to Dr Walsh’s surgery.

  But Dr Walsh won’t talk to him.

  Prick.

  Norton then looks at the list of names his secretary gave him, stares at it. He has no interest in returning any of these calls. He looks at his watch. Twenty minutes to go before the Amcan meeting. He’s finding it hard to drum up any interest in that either. What he really wants to do is to reach into his pocket and take out his pills. He wants that sensation, that little ritual, with its attendant promise of …

  But he’s done it already, that’s the problem – less than an hour ago he took three of the bloody things. He can feel them in his system all right, just not in the way he’s used to. It’s very frustrating.

  No less frustrating was his attempt to find Gina Rafferty. He cruised along by the quays four times, then parked and walked around for fifteen minutes. But he didn’t see any sign of her.

  The Amcan meeting passes in a blur. He pretty much agrees to everything on the agenda and proposes that the contract be signed tomorrow. He can see that the chief negotiator, a fortyish RFK wannabe from Boston, is a little perplexed – but Norton doesn’t care. Besides, this is what he wants, and where’s the point in breaking their balls just for the sake of it? With Amcan on board, and the name of the building officially changed to reflect this, the project’s success isn’t exactly guaranteed, but it stands a pretty good chance. And all those people who predicted that thirty or forty floors would remain unoccupied, thus making a mockery of Norton’s ambitions … well, they can now go and fuck themselves.

  Soon after the meeting concludes, Norton gets a call from Ray Sullivan in Vienna. He’ll be back in Dublin tomorrow for the signing.

  Norton welcomes the news.

  ‘… and what’s more, my friend,’ Sullivan goes on, ‘get a load of this. Mr V. is in London at the moment, so he’s going to fly over, too. All informal, of course, and strictly private. He’d just like to have a look around. Do the tour.’

  When he hears this, Norton bucks up a little in spite of himself. James Vaughan? In person? Of course he’ll keep it informal and strictly private – though that won’t stop him from making damn sure the right people hear about it all the same …

  Norton savours the moment. But it doesn’t take long for the excitement to abate. Because where the bloody hell, it occurs to him, is Gina Rafferty? Running scared? Waiting in the long grass? He tunes in to Newstalk at 12.30 and listens to the headlines. There are no developments.

  Then, as he’s considering his options, a courier arrives with a package from High King Security. Norton rips open the envelope and empties its contents onto his desk.

  He can only imagine the panic they’re in over there, but he’s glad they decided not to destroy these documents, because within less than a minute he has in front of him Gina Rafferty’s full address and telephone number.

  He’s still not sure what to do, though.

  He thinks calling her up might be the wrong move. It might frighten her into making a wrong move. He’ll go down by the quays again later, go to her building, confront her in person, and find out what he can.

  He wishes now that he hadn’t been so bloody self-controlled that day up on the forty-eighth floor of Richmond Plaza. He could easily have got away with it, spun some story. She was upset, I suppose, about her brother – depressed you might even say. Anyway, I got alarmed and stepped forward … I tried to grab her, but …

  It strikes him as extraordinary now that if he had, all of this could have been avoided.

  At one o’clock he switches on the radio again – to a breaking news story. An exclusive RTÉ report is claiming that the source last Wednesday for the original leak to the media about Larry Bolger’s private life was som
eone in the Taoiseach’s office. Hardly an exciting development next to the multiple killings in Cherryvale, but to any self-respecting news junkie the story’s significance is unmissable.

  Norton reaches for the phone and tries Bolger’s mobile, but it goes straight into voicemail. He tries the Department but is told the Minister is unavailable. Then he tries a number he has for Paula Duff.

  ‘Mr Norton.’

  ‘Paula, how are you? I’m trying to reach Larry. Do you know where he is?’

  She sighs loudly. ‘Oh, don’t ask. He’s gone AWOL for the afternoon.’

  ‘What do you mean? I thought with all this –’

  ‘I know, I know, tell me about it. We were trying to keep the story on hold until tomorrow but somehow it got out. A bloody leaked leak about a leak, can you believe it? Anyway, Larry chooses this afternoon, God knows why, to go off and bond with his old man.’ She pauses. ‘Out in Wicklow somewhere.’

  ‘He’s going out to the nursing home?’

  ‘Yeah. I suppose that’s it. I don’t really –’

  ‘Why? What did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything, Mr Norton.’ She pauses. ‘But for the last few days he’s been in the weirdest mood. I don’t know if it’s –’

  Norton cuts her off. ‘Soon as you hear from him, get him to call me, would you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He puts the phone down, slowly, onto his desk.

  He leans back and takes a couple of deep, calming breaths.

  *

  After coffee and a shower, Gina phones BCM. She talks to the receptionist for a few minutes, mainly about Noel, and then asks if she can get a number for Dermot Flynn’s widow.

  ‘Of course, Gina, no problem. I have it here somewhere.’

  ‘Thanks. What’s her name?’

  ‘Claire. She’s lovely. The poor thing. The removal is tomorrow, by the way.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Here it is. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the call.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  But Gina waits a while before actually making the call. She and Sophie sit together and drink more coffee. They talk things through but end up going around in circles – so when Gina picks up the phone again it’s nearly eleven o’clock. As the phone rings, she gazes out the window. The day is starting to cloud over.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Claire? Hi. My name is Gina Rafferty. Er … my brother and your husband both worked –’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Claire interrupts. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Gina, did you say?’

  ‘Yes. I hope I’m not … intruding.’

  ‘No. Well.’ She clears her throat. ‘What is it? What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’d like to meet up with you, if that’s possible. Soon. I need to ask you something. It’s important. I realise this is not –’

  ‘Ask me what?’

  Gina closes her eyes. ‘I know this is going to sound pretty blunt, but I don’t believe my brother’s death was an accident, and I’m wondering if you have reason to believe … anything similar. About your husband’s death I mean.’ She opens her eyes, stares at the floor, waits.

  Ten seconds pass, maybe fifteen – it’s hard to tell. Then Claire Flynn releases a slow, whispered ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Gina waits for more. In vain. Eventually, she says, ‘Claire?’

  ‘Hhmm.’

  ‘Can we meet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now?’ Another long pause. ‘Later today maybe?’

  ‘OK. This afternoon. I have to, er …’

  ‘That’s fine. Whatever.’

  ‘Three thirty, four? Here?’

  ‘Yeah. The –’

  ‘Forty-seven Ashleaf Drive. Sandymount.’

  Gina is about to say something else, but Claire has already hung up.

  At midday Gina goes out to get an early edition Evening Herald. On her way back to the apartment, she makes a detour into Blackrock Park, where she sits at a bench by the pond and reads through the paper’s coverage. The only thing of significance they can add to what she’s already heard on the radio is the fact that the second man in intensive care, whose name they’re still not releasing, is the owner of the warehouse where the incident took place.

  Which amounts – as far as Gina is concerned – to a confirmation of his identity.

  His condition, on the other hand, remains critical – though what exactly that means Gina isn’t sure at all. But shouldn’t she be doing something to find out? At the very least contacting the hospital to make enquiries? Probably. But something is holding her back, a reluctance, an awful feeling of guilt.

  She gazes out over the pond.

  If she hadn’t dragged Mark into this, he most likely wouldn’t be in the ICU right now, fighting for his life. So chances are the last person he’s going to want to hear from is her.

  And who could blame him?

  Gina puts the newspaper away.

  After a while, to distract herself, she takes out the two mobile phones. She examines them. There are three numbers for Paddy Norton on Fitz’s phone, and she finds her own number on Mark Griffin’s. But nothing else she comes across means anything to her. Then, as she’s leaving the park a few minutes later, she drops Fitz’s phone discreetly into the pond. Because these things can be detected, can’t they? And located?

  As for the other one, she decides … well, if there’s any chance at all, she’d like to return it in person.

  Back at the apartment, and at Sophie’s insistence, Gina finally gets around to ingesting something other than black coffee. She has half an orange, followed by a poached egg and a slice of toast.

  She turns on the radio and listens to the one o’clock news – and as she does so can’t help feeling increasingly dislocated from reality. Because even though the bulletin presents the two main stories separately, she knows that in some crucial way they are connected. Later on, heading in towards Sandymount on the DART, it occurs to her how like a classic symptom of clinical paranoia this is – seeing a pattern that no one else is seeing, reinterpreting the news, twisting it so it conforms to some personal context or scheme of grievances.

  But she doesn’t care anymore, not after last night. She knows what she knows. And besides, she’s not alone. Claire Flynn, the woman she’s about to visit, seems to know something, too.

  As they pull into the driveway leading up to the Glenalba Nursing Home, Bolger realises that he hasn’t been out here for over three years. He has seen the old man in that time, of course – at his sister Una’s house. She lives in Bray and takes him for Christmas and birthdays and whatnot. Larry lives in Deansgrange, but with the extra distance, and the old man’s condition … well, it never made much sense to do it any other way.

  Besides, he and the old man have never really got on. Larry was always second best, and he was certainly the second choice when it came to a career in politics. After Frank died, the old man pushed Larry hard, schooled him, moulded him, and even though Larry did well, very well, there was always a tension between them. Larry resented how he was being manipulated, and the old man could never really forgive Larry for not being Frank. But by the time Larry made it to the cabinet, the old man’s influence in the party had long since waned, as had his interest – even to the extent that Larry felt he was barely showing up on the old man’s radar screen anymore.

  And Bolger can’t help resenting that. Which he knows is absurd, because apart from anything else, the old man is in the clutches of some form of dementia these days, not quite Alzheimer’s, but not quite anything else they seem willing to name either. He floats in and out of focus. One minute he’s the acerbic old bollocks he’s always been, cutting you down to size, and the next he’s slumped in a chair and staring vacantly at the wall, or worse, at you – decades of the unspoken, and the unthinkable, suspended terrifyingly in mid-air between you.

  When Bolger gets out of the car he is greeted by the director of the home, Mrs Curran, a
severe matronly type in her mid-fifties. They exchange a few words on the steps. When they go inside, the first thing that hits Bolger is the smell: a combination of permanently on heating, cooking odours, carpets and – there’s no other way of saying it – old people.

  Mrs Curran leads him down a corridor to the lounge. This is a large room with perhaps a dozen sofas and armchairs spread about. There is a fireplace, a TV mounted on a high shelf and a sectioned-off area with four card tables in it.

  Mrs Curran indicates an armchair on the far side of the room.

  The old man is sitting alone, facing a window that looks out onto a rolling lawn and the nearby hills.

  Having engaged in small talk up to this point, Mrs Curran lobs a curve ball at Bolger. ‘I should warn you … Liam is in a very, shall we say, isolated place of late. He’s fine really, and seems quite tranquil in fact, but he has very much retreated into himself.’

  Bolger acknowledges this with a silent grimace.

  He makes his way through the maze of sofas, half of which are occupied. He greets people as he passes, but is unsure if anyone is noticing him – and not who he is, but at all. When he gets to the window, his father looks up and nods a hello, as though they’d last seen each other half an hour ago.

  Liam Bolger is in his late seventies and suddenly looks it. As always he’s wearing a suit and tie, but today this old, familiar suit looks too big for him. He seems small in it, shrunken, even since the last time they actually did see each other, which was what … about two or three months ago? At Una’s. A birthday?

  Bolger pulls an armchair over and angles it so that he’s half facing the old man and half facing the view. He sits down.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’

  There is no reply.

  Bolger glances out the window. It’s an oppressive afternoon, dull and overcast. The autumnal view is lovely, but it needs a few shafts of sunlight to animate it. And that’s not going to happen today.

  ‘I spoke to Una last week,’ he says, and immediately feels stupid for saying this, as though speaking to his sister were an actual piece of news.