Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  ‘What are the Guards saying?’ he says eventually.

  Bolger stares back. He hesitates, but then says, ‘That it was his warehouse. That he’s a local businessman. They’re saying it might just be that he was unlucky. In the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘What, like a random victim?’

  Bolger nods. ‘That sort of thing.’

  ‘But no reference to … who he is,to …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK,’ Norton says, considering this, looking at the floor. ‘And of course why would there be? It was a long time ago? If he dies, who’s going to make the connection, right?’

  ‘Ah, now hold on, Paddy, hold on … for the love of Christ, what are you saying to me here?’

  Norton continues staring at the floor. ‘But even if someone did make the connection,’ he says, almost to himself now, ‘even if some industrious hack dug it up, so what? It’d just be a curious fact, with a nice tabloid ring to it.’ He pauses. ‘But it wouldn’t mean anything, it wouldn’t have any further resonance … unless …’

  Norton hears a gentle tap on the door behind him, a creaking sound, and then an obsequious male voice, ‘Er … Minister, excuse me, but –’

  ‘GET OUT!’

  Norton then hears the creaking sound in reverse.

  Visibly trembling, Bolger takes a couple of steps backwards and leans on his desk. ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Calm down, Larry.’

  ‘Unless what?’

  Norton sighs. ‘Unless you keep asking questions about Frank.’

  Silence fills the room, spreading out like a toxic vapour, finding every corner.

  ‘But Paddy,’ Bolger eventually manages to say, leaning forward, pleading, ‘he was my brother.’

  Norton winces and raises a hand to his head. Without saying anything, he then walks across the room. He goes in behind Bolger’s desk and starts pulling at the various drawers, opening one after the other and rummaging through them.

  Bolger turns, still at the front of the desk, and says, ‘Paddy, what are you doing?’

  ‘I need something for this headache,’ Norton says, ‘I need …’

  He pulls a packet of Nurofen from one of the drawers and holds it up. On a shelf behind him there is a tray with glasses on it and half a dozen bottles of Ballygowan. He opens one of the bottles. He fiddles with the packet of Nurofen and knocks four of the tablets back in one go, followed by a long slug of water. He puts the bottle down and rolls his neck a couple of times. When he is ready, he walks back into the middle of the room, turns and faces Bolger.

  ‘Right,’ he says, closing his eyes for a moment and then opening them again. ‘You have a simple choice here. You can either pursue this and keep asking questions – what happened that night, was he drunk, was he pushed, blah, blah. You can go down that road, resurrect shit from two and a half decades ago and feed it to the media on a platter.’ He pauses. ‘Or you can go out that door over there and embrace your destiny. You can take power and run this country for five, maybe even ten years. You can change things, make a difference, fix the Health Service, build infrastructure. You can have access to Downing Street, to Brussels, you can sit on the UN Security Council, you can eat dinner at the fucking White House, whatever. But believe me, Larry …’ – he holds up a finger and shakes it – ‘… you can’t do both.’

  Bolger stares back at him, deflated. The silence is excruciating and goes on for nearly a minute.

  Norton is the one who breaks it.

  ‘I’m going to leave now,’ he says in a quiet, measured voice.

  He turns and heads for the door. ‘By the way,’ he adds, over his shoulder, ‘I’m having lunch tomorrow with James Vaughan. He’s flying in from London. I’m sure you’ll be busy, but maybe you could fit us in?’

  He stops at the door and looks around.

  Bolger hasn’t moved.

  ‘Jesus, Larry,’ Norton says. ‘Look at the bloody state of you. Straighten your tie up at least, would you? Christ.’

  Shaking his head, he turns back to the door, opens it and leaves.

  ‘Still with us, yeah?’

  Gina hops up from her desk. Only half awake, she was lost, eyes closed, in a Technicolor re-enactment of what had happened the previous night.

  At his workstation, Steve is leaning back in his chair, arms outstretched. ‘Got it,’ he says.

  This is the jolt that Gina needs. It wakes her up.

  ‘Excellent,’ she says. ‘You’re a genius.’ She pauses. ‘So what is it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Two PDF files, one long, the other one not so long, and five emails. I’ve copied them and sent them over to you.’ He nods in the direction of her desk.

  ‘Thanks. I really appreciate this.’

  He shrugs. ‘Who do I bill for the time?’

  ‘Oh God, Steve, look, I know things are –’

  ‘Gina,’ he says, holding a hand up. ‘Don’t. I was only messing.’ He turns and grabs a jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Buy me a drink sometime.’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’

  After he leaves, Gina makes herself some coffee, turns out most of the lights and sits at her desk again. She is just about to open one of the PDF files when her mobile rings. She picks it up.

  New number.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’

  More silence, then, ‘Gina?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A click and it goes dead. She looks at the phone, stares at it for a few moments, as though expecting it to talk up, to explain itself. With an unpleasant churning in her stomach, she then goes to Options and presses Reply. It rings. No one answers. There’s no voicemail. It rings out.

  Gina swallows.

  She runs a hand through her hair, and sighs.

  After a few moments, she turns back to the computer.

  So she is alive.

  Norton stands in the phone box with his hand on the receiver. He hasn’t been inside one of these things in ten or fifteen years, not since the days when most of the damn things were permanently out of order.

  He slides his hand off the receiver and backs out through the glass door.

  Anyway, she’s alive. And answering her phone.

  He looks around. He’s on the Long Mile Road. When he got back to his car on Baggot Street, the Nurofen were only just kicking in, so he decided he’d drive around for a while and give them a chance to work. Besides, he had no desire to go home. And in any case after about half an hour Paula phoned – on Bolger’s instructions. The choreography had been set in motion. Three senior ministers were in with the Taoiseach at the moment, and assuming he didn’t put up a fight, which no one expected him to do, his office would shortly be releasing a statement announcing his resignation – after which a statement from party HQ would be released. It should all be wrapped up within the hour, Paula said. So was he coming back in? There’d be celebrations. Champagne.

  Norton declined. He was relieved to hear the news, but what he couldn’t tell Paula was that nothing would be wrapped up until a separate, and hopefully final, piece of business had been taken care of.

  Something that would have to start with a phone call.

  It was another fifteen minutes, however, before he could bring himself to make the call, and it was only at the last minute that it struck him how stupid it would be to make it on his mobile.

  So he pulled over as soon as he spotted a phone box.

  Inside the box, he fumbled for the piece of paper he’d written her number on. He fumbled for coins. Eventually he got through, and when he said her name he tried to disguise his voice. There was no disguising hers, though. He didn’t hear enough to gauge what state of mind she was in, but she was alive, and that was all he needed to know.

  As he steps away from the box now, the phone inside it rings. He turns and walks off, the sound receding into the general din of the traffic. His car is parked on the other side of the road. He waits for an opportunity and crosses.
>
  He unlocks his car from ten yards.

  She’s alive.

  Fuck it.

  *

  Bolger can see it in their faces, the merest flicker of it. He wouldn’t call it panic, not yet, but that’s where it’s headed. It’s as if they’ve woken from a dream and are looking around in bewilderment, not quite sure of anything anymore – of who they are, of where they are, of what they’ve done.

  For his part, Bolger finds it liberating.

  In his office, sitting opposite him, are the Ministers for Finance, Transport and Education. Already being dubbed the Gang of Three, these men are here for a quick strategy powwow before Bolger gives a press conference.

  Outside everyone is waiting. The corridors are jammed, there is a media scrum on the steps of Leinster House and RTÉ is on standby to broadcast a news flash.

  For his part, the Taoiseach-designate is in no hurry.

  In those first few moments after Paddy Norton left his office, Bolger just stood there, immobile, the various implications of what Norton hadn’t said going off inside his head like a series of controlled explosions. And then, as the door opened, unleashing a tidal wave of handlers, advisers, mandarins, functionaries, hangers-on, the awful truth sank in. He actually did have to choose. He couldn’t do both.

  Though the decision, in a certain sense, made itself – since it was all pretty clear-cut when you looked at it, morally, ethically, every bloody way. And he came close a couple of times to articulating this – but only in his head, as it turns out, because at no point did he actually say anything, to anyone, about any of it. Instead, he allowed Paula to stand in front of him and straighten his tie. He accepted a sheaf of papers from his private secretary. He nodded when he was told that so-and-so was outside to see him. He put on his jacket. He went behind his desk and poured himself a glass of water. In all of this he had an air about him that was unfamiliar and slightly self-conscious, an air of calmness, of quiet authority. In fact, with each passing second, with each move and gesture he made, he could feel himself morphing into someone different, into someone new.

  And what he is beginning to discover now, having just casually lobbed the words cabinet and reshuffle at the three men sitting in front of him, is a little something about who that person might be.

  ‘Well,’ the Minister for Finance is saying, ‘I don’t know, maybe we should take it one step at a time.’

  ‘Of course,’ Bolger says. ‘But I’ll definitely be making changes.’

  I’ll be.

  In the absence of a contest, and once the announcement has been made, the ratification process will be a mere formality, but still – he has to be careful.

  ‘OK,’ he adds, ‘you’re right, the press conference is important.’ He pauses. ‘But you know it’ll be one of the things they ask about.’

  The Minister for Transport is squirming. It’s obvious that he’s dying to know what changes Bolger intends making, but is afraid to push it. The Minister for Education, as usual, is stony-faced, but Bolger can tell he’s furious that the subject has come up so soon.

  ‘We can’t let the media dictate our agenda,’ the Minister for Finance goes on. ‘And I really –’

  ‘A cabinet reshuffle is what’s expected,’ Bolger says. ‘It’s what people want, and it’s what they’re going to get. Besides, a reshuffle formalises the honeymoon. Ministers get to throw a few shapes and look good in front of the cameras.’ He shrugs.

  ‘It’s pretty much win-win all around. We’re happy. Louis Copeland is happy. Everyone is happy.’

  It’s amazing how the dynamic in the room has shifted: a few minutes earlier, these four men were fellow conspirators, co-equal plotters, and now they are divided – they’re the kingmakers and he’s the king. And there’s nothing any of them can do about it. It’s the nature of the process.

  Bolger stands up and buttons his jacket. ‘Let me just be clear about this. A show of unity is what’s required out there. At the press conference and talking to journalists afterwards. That’s the script and we stick to it. Absolute, unconditional, one hundred per cent.’ He looks across the room, over their heads, at the door. ‘Anyone displays anything less and there’ll be blood on the walls. Tonight.’

  Ten minutes later, as he sits at another table, in another room, looking out at the assembled media, waiting for the hail of camera flashes to subside, Bolger realises something. Despite what has happened this evening, despite his impressive command of the situation, he doesn’t feel any sense of triumph or achievement. He doesn’t feel nervous or excited or even pleased. What he does feel, all he feels – as he glances down at his prepared statement, and at his gold cufflinks, and at his soft, manicured politician’s hands – is tired, and empty, and numb.

  The bigger of the two PDF files is fifty-four pages long, has no title or table of contents, and from a quick glance looks to be about as incomprehensibly technical as most of the other stuff Gina saw on Flynn’s laptop. She reads a paragraph here and there, but the prose is dense with unfamiliar terminology and her mind quickly glazes over. Throughout the document, too, there are diagrams, charts, figures and equations. Despite the complexity, however, Gina has a general enough idea of what she’s looking at – it seems to be something, a study or report, about some aspect of the structural design of Richmond Plaza. But should this come as any surprise? It’s what Dermot Flynn was working on, after all.

  It was his job.

  The shorter file is very similar and appears to be no more than a draft version of the longer one.

  Discouraged and tired, Gina looks out across the empty, semi-darkened office, at the windows, at the orange wash now coming in from the lights out on Harcourt Street.

  Then something occurs to her.

  She turns back to the screen.

  Claire said that in recent weeks Dermot had been doing a lot of extra work – at home, in his study. Is this what he was working on? If so, she thinks, fine, why not? Except that Richmond Plaza is almost finished. She herself was up on the forty-eighth floor – the top floor. Why at such a late stage in the construction process would he be working on an aspect of the building’s structural design?

  It makes no sense.

  Unless something was wrong.

  Gina feels her insides turning.

  This is what Noel was talking about that night. He said it to her: You don’t want to know, believe me … it’s engineering stuff, an unholy bloody mess …

  She takes a deep breath and clicks on the first of the emails. It’s from Noel, and was sent on Wednesday, 24 October.

  Hi Dermot, Got your message. I’m still looking at your report. I’ll see you when I get back to the office later in the p.m. Please keep this to yourself until we’ve had a chance to discuss fully. N.

  Gina immediately clicks on the second message. It’s from Dermot. Two days later.

  Noel, Given the nature of the situation, shouldn’t we be doing something, showing this to someone? I’m very anxious. Please let me know what’s happening. Dermot.

  The next one is a reply from Noel. Same day.

  Dermot, I’ve already shown it to someone – just this morning – so please, bear with me. We can’t afford to let this get out there – not unless we’re 100% certain of our facts. I’ll talk to you later. N.

  But let what get out, exactly? It’s clear that Gina has hit paydirt here, and she’s excited, but she’s also frustrated, because she isn’t sure what any of it means.

  She clicks on the fourth email. It’s from Dermot. It was sent after the weekend, on the Monday – that Monday.

  Noel, I didn’t see you in the office on Friday, or this morning. I’ve left several messages on your voicemail. I can’t help but question the wisdom of – if not yet the motive for – this delay in taking action. And surely the longer we hold off, the harder it’s going to be to explain? Dermot.

  Noel’s last email, sent that afternoon, is very different in tone from his others. It is, in effect, a memo.

 
; Dermot, Please be advised that I have scheduled a conference call for 10 a.m. tomorrow morning with Yves Baladur in Paris. The purpose of this call is to make an official presentation of the findings in your report. I have scheduled a further conference call for 2 p.m. with Daniel Lazar. N.R.

  Yves Baladur? Gina isn’t sure, but she thinks this is the head of BCM. There’s no doubt in her mind, however, about the second name, Daniel Lazar – he’s the architect who designed Richmond Plaza. She closes her eyes. So. Dermot Flynn gave this report he’d compiled to Noel, and expected him to pass it on, to pass it up. To head office in Paris. To the architect. To someone. Noel dragged his feet on it for a while, made excuses, but then he capitulated.

  And that’s what sealed his fate.

  Gina opens her eyes.

  Because there was someone who didn’t want the report to be seen – the same person, she assumes, who Noel said in his email he’d already shown it to. And it’s pretty obvious to her now who that is. Even though there’s still nothing concrete she can point to, nothing she can adduce, no evidence, no demonstrable link …

  But then she looks at the screen again, at that final email, and she sees it.

  She didn’t spot this the first time, but she’s definitely seeing it now.

  It’s the last field in the message header, right there along with the others, with the sender and the receiver, with the date and the subject line …

  Digital, ineradicable.

  Cc: Paddy Norton.

  He is parked along the quays, not far from her building, close enough to see her coming out or going in.

  He looks at his watch.

  Maybe he should try phoning her again. But what would he say this time if she answered? He doesn’t want to scare her off.

  Outside, it’s cold and blustery, and there’s hardly anyone about, the odd pedestrian maybe, some traffic, but not much. An articulated truck rumbles by.