Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  It wouldn’t have been his style anyway.

  And yet … and yet …

  There was one thing Griffin said that was right.

  It may be irrational, it may be illogical, but Norton feels that if anyone could tease it out of him – what he did do that night – if anyone could pick at it, worry it apart, conjure the whole thing up out of smoke, Gina Rafferty could. And now that he’s given her Dunbrogan House as well, she’ll never leave him alone.

  She will fucking crucify him.

  He glances over at the glove compartment.

  So what choice does he have?

  There is a wide curve in the road ahead. As he takes it, the sparkling city, spread out below, reveals itself. There in the distance, in the bay, imposing, magnificent, like a flourish – like a signature – is Richmond Plaza.

  Norton feels an unexpected rush of pride, and it strikes him that maybe all hope is not lost. OK, Amcan is pulling out, other clients have already pulled out, and the building may well stand empty for a considerable period of time. But when the hysteria dies down, and the repairs are done, when further studies prove that there was never any danger in the first place, and when the economy picks up again – people will come around. The building will get a second chance. He’ll get a second chance. He’ll be able to rebuild his reputation, and to end his career on a high.

  He stops at a red light.

  But again, not if she starts tugging at the other end of it …

  With his left hand he picks up the blister of Nalprox tablets from where he tossed it on the passenger seat. There are five left. He quickly takes three, swallows them dry. Then he turns on the CD player – that clarinet thing … or is it an oboe? Or a cor anglais? He stares at the dashboard, listening.

  The car behind beeps its horn.

  Norton looks up. The light has turned green. He’s in the middle lane, traffic on either side already surging forward.

  Shit.

  He accelerates, his heart racing.

  What he’s doing tonight …

  His mind wandering.

  What he did that night …

  The thing is, there on the stairs, when Miriam handed him the phone, Norton felt the weirdest mix of emotions – irritation, but with a tinge of curiosity … fear, but with this undeniable throb of longing …

  The Stillorgan Park Hotel flits past on the right.

  It was almost like a homecoming.

  Soon he’s approaching Booterstown Avenue.

  Sort of in the way this is …

  He indicates, and turns. Then, before he knows it he’s on the Rock Road, heading for Merrion Gates.

  His insides lurch.

  There’s no way around it, is there?

  He glances over at the glove compartment again.

  She was depressed … unhinged really. She should have been in therapy, or on medication …

  He tries to imagine how it will be … Gina there beside him on the bench, talking … it’s windy and cold, traffic rumbles past in the background. There aren’t that many people about, almost no one in fact. The sea is in front of them – shadowy, vast, heaving. He looks around, chooses his moment, turns to her, puts the gun right up against the side of her head and pulls the trigger.

  Then he steadies her as best he can, settles her on the bench, puts the gun into her right hand, and walks away.

  It’s not exactly how he wants it, but what choice does he have?

  At the end of Booterstown Avenue, he turns left, onto the Rock Road, his mind in turmoil now, spinning, flipping … forwards, backwards, conjuring it all up …

  What he’s going to do tonight.

  What he did that night …

  Mark pulls the covers back, moves his legs to the edge of the bed again and slides them over. He shunts up into a sitting position and eases himself off the bed. He picks the mobile phone up and slips it into the pocket of his gown. Then, without giving it a second’s thought, he yanks off the catheter tube from below. There is immediate and considerable pain involved in this, but Mark does his best to absorb it. He then takes a hold of the mobile drip stand and starts moving across the room with it, wheeling it slowly, focusing all his attention on getting as far as the door.

  When he’s almost there, he notices that there are spots of blood on the floor and on his feet.

  But he has to keep moving, because …

  How could he have been so fucking stupid?

  He opens the door.

  The guard, who is on the bench draining a mug of tea or coffee, sees him and is immediately up on his feet.

  ‘Whoa!’

  He puts the mug down and reaches out in support.

  ‘Jesus, what are you doing there?’ He looks around. ‘Nurse!’

  Mark takes the support for a moment, then pulls away.

  The alarm on the guard’s face is curiously reassuring. At least, Mark feels, it’s not going to be him.

  Up and down the corridor there is a ripple effect as people take notice and react – but after the guard, the closest person, and quickest on the move, is his own nurse.

  What did she say her name was?

  Helen?

  ‘Mark, my God, what are you doing?’

  She moves in front of the guard and takes Mark by the elbow. She guides him to the bench, making sure to keep the drip stand, with its various dangling bags of fluid, in position. She sits down next to him. Then, noticing the splats of blood on the floor, she takes a couple of deep breaths.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she says slowly, ‘we have to get you back inside. We –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No.’

  He looks up. The guard and some others, a nurse, a doctor or two, are standing around watching.

  ‘I need to get a number, a mobile number,’ he says, in a half whisper, and wincing now from the pain. ‘I need –’

  ‘Yes, yes, we’ll get whatever you want, Mark, but you have to get back inside, into bed –’

  ‘No, I said.’

  The guard takes a couple of tentative steps forward. ‘Easy on there, pal, all right? There’s no problem here. There’s no problem.’

  Mark watches him, feeling dizzy suddenly, and weak.

  ‘In a few minutes,’ the guard goes on, ‘the detectives will be here to see you. They’re on their way …’ – he waves his walkie-talkie – ‘… and we can sort it out then, whatever it is –’

  The detectives …

  Mark shoots a look up and down the corridor.

  Everyone is watching. No one is moving. The light is harsh and uncomfortable, the atmosphere unnaturally still.

  ‘NO,’ he says.

  Lifting his hand – and almost before he knows what he’s doing – he takes a hold of the strip on the side of his neck and starts trying to rip it off.

  ‘My God, STOP!’ the nurse screams, and grabs him by the wrist. ‘What are you doing? Jesus. That’s … that’s your jugular.’

  Mark pauses, allowing her to hold his wrist. She’s leaning in close now, their faces inches apart.

  ‘You can’t just …’ She hesitates.

  He looks into her eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘Those tubes,’ she says. ‘You can’t just remove them like that. You’ll bleed. You’re bleeding now. You could give yourself an embolism. You could die.’

  He nods.

  He can already feel a trickle of blood on his neck.

  ‘Well, Helen,’ he whispers, ‘it’s either that, or you get me the number.’

  ‘Mark,’ she pleads, tightening her grip on his wrist, ‘this is crazy –’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘it isn’t,’ and with his free hand he reaches around her and punches one of the bags of fluid on the drip stand. The bag bursts and its contents splat loudly onto the floor.

  There is a general gasp of disbelief.

  The nurse, in shock, releases her grip on Mark’s wrist and pulls away. But as she’s doing this Mark reaches along the bench and grabs the mug. Taking i
t by the handle, he swings it around and smashes it into the wall behind him. Pieces fly everywhere. Then he brings what’s left – a jagged shard of ceramic earthenware – up to the side of his neck.

  ‘Get away … move.’

  Slowly, reluctantly, people comply. The nurse does too, but looks appalled, her arms held out in a desperate appeal to reason.

  ‘Mark, you can’t –’

  ‘MOVE.’ He jerks his head sideways. ‘I’ll tear right into the vein.’

  She nods quickly and takes another few steps back.

  ‘You,’ Mark then says, addressing the guard, ‘stay.’

  The guard freezes.

  Apart from the constant drip-drip to the floor of what remains from the infusion bag, there is now an eerie silence all along the corridor.

  Mark leans his head back against the wall. There are spots of blood on the front of his gown.

  ‘OK,’ he says, nodding at the guard, at his walkie-talkie. ‘You’re going to get me that number, and right now.’

  When they get to Strand Road, Gina asks the taxi driver to pull over. Her hands are shaking as she pays him. She wonders if he’ll remember her later.

  Yeah, that stuck-up bitch who didn’t want to talk.

  She gets out and starts walking along by the low stone wall. It’s freezing cold, the wind cutting through her like a knife. To her right, cars stream past in a steady flow. To her left, the bay seems shrouded in a murky orange darkness. There is a lot of cloud, a gathering mist, and no moon. The tide is in. The lights of Howth and Dun Laoghaire are just about visible.

  She is sick to her stomach.

  She comes to the end of the stone wall. She goes through the small parking area – which is almost empty – and onto the promenade.

  An elderly man with a dog approaches, nods, passes.

  There is no one sitting on any of the first few benches.

  She can’t tell if she’s shaking from nerves or shivering from the cold.

  Why is this so different from Friday? She was extremely nervous then, too, and even had a gun in her pocket. But she still managed to stay calm. There was no plan of course, and that was it – everything just happened, unfolded, second by second, none of it anticipated.

  This evening is different. She has a sense of foreboding. She also has a sense of purpose, an almost visceral need to engage head-on with this, and to close it down, even if it means bashing someone’s head in – his, her own, it barely seems to matter anymore.

  She approaches a bench that has four or five teenagers on it. They are huddled together, smoking and laughing.

  She goes by, half hearing a comment one of them directs at her.

  The next few benches are empty. Then there is the Martello Tower. On the other side of it the promenade continues, and although they didn’t say where they’d meet exactly, or at which bench, that’s probably where she’ll find him. It makes sense. It’s the direction he’ll be coming from.

  She keeps moving.

  Towards him, into his orbit.

  Earlier, Jackie Merrigan asked why she couldn’t be satisfied with having destroyed Paddy Norton’s reputation, and she said because it was nothing compared to the damage he had caused to others.

  It’s only now that Gina is beginning to see how she herself is one of these others, how Norton is like a virus she has contracted, or a toxic substance in her system she may never be able to eliminate. With each step, it becomes a little clearer … how he has influenced her behaviour, twisted her emotions, choked her sense of who she is … how he has turned her into the crazy lady, the mad bitch who can’t be stopped …

  But what Gina is most afraid of now, as she pushes on against the wind, past the Martello Tower, is that Norton is pulling her towards something else again, something awful – a confession she doesn’t want to hear, a revelation she doesn’t need to know about. She’s afraid that he is pulling her towards a place from which there can be no route back, that he is pulling her towards annihilation.

  She looks ahead, along the remaining stretch of promenade, and thinks of the two Noels. She thinks of Dermot Flynn, of Mark Griffin’s parents and sister. She thinks of all their lost, stolen futures.

  Then she thinks of Mark himself, of his uncertain future, and of her own future, the reality and promise of each diminishing, slipping away with the passing hours, and as a plea, almost as a prayer, she gazes up and asks out loud what it will take, if anything, to save them.

  *

  What he did that night …

  As Norton approaches the level crossing, the light turns red and the gates come down.

  He waits, feeling overwhelmed all of a sudden – exhausted, short of breath.

  What he did that night barely seems real to him anymore. It was so long ago now, and seems less like a sequence of concrete actions than a fragment from a dream – and a half-remembered, misremembered one at that.

  He stares through the gates, over to Strand Road.

  But he was only doing what had to be done … to protect his interests, his family, his business. Just like tonight. Just like that other night, a while back, with Fitz.

  In a sudden burst, the DART train, an illuminated streak of green, hurtles past along the railway line, click-clacking, click-clacking, the force of it seeming to correspond to – seeming to be commensurate with – the sudden force now pressing in on Norton’s chest.

  He closes his eyes, and the pain subsides.

  Frank Bolger came to the house that night. The house on Griffith Avenue. He was on his way to a meeting in Drogheda and stopped by to have a quick word with Norton about the proposed rezoning of the Dunbrogan estate. Standing at the front door, he said he wanted to clarify his position – and face to face, man to man, not through the usual, twisted, sniping back channels that were so typical of local politics. He felt that Norton was a reasonable man and would respect Frank’s position if it was presented to him in a proper and honest fashion. Norton invited him in. He was alone in the house. Miriam was out for the evening, at the theatre. They went through to the kitchen and sat down. Frank was nervous, but coming here like this showed he had balls.

  Norton actually admired him.

  Click-clack, click-clack …

  No compromise was going to be possible between them, though – because there was nothing new in Frank’s much-vaunted ‘position’. Dunbrogan House was a part of our heritage, he argued, and taking the wrecking ball to it would be nothing less than a tragedy. Blah, blah, blah. He then added – his voice a little shaky, but desperately earnest – that he wasn’t going to be bullied or intimidated. He knew his old man wasn’t happy about the stand he was taking either, but this was a matter of principle for him. So not only did he intend lobbying further against the rezoning, and speaking out about the dubious voting records of certain councillors, he also intended to publicly berate Miriam’s father for selling off the property in the first place. And he made no apology for the fact.

  Norton stared at him in disbelief.

  Click-clack, click-clack …

  ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,’ he remembers saying.

  Frank was the one who laughed, but nervously. Then he looked at his watch.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to get that straight, put it on the record.’ He cleared his throat and made a move to get up. ‘Right. I’d better be going. I don’t want to be late.’

  Norton waved a dismissive hand at this.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘The roads will be quiet at this hour. You’ll fly up.’

  It was in that moment – panic rising in his throat, like bile – that it came to him.

  Click-clack, click-clack …

  What he could do.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to argue with you, Frank. I can see there’s no point. But I want to thank you for coming, I respect you for it.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, you’ll have a drop for the road? Call it a peace offering.’

  Frank hesitated, and then said, �
��Sure, why not?’

  ‘Good. I’ll … just be a minute.’

  Click-clack, click-clack …

  Norton left the kitchen. The drinks cabinet was in the living room. But he went upstairs first, and into the bedroom. He went over to Miriam’s bedside table. He picked up her bottle of sleeping pills. He opened it and shook one out into the palm of his hand. He went back downstairs. In the living room he poured out two drinks, whiskey with a splash of soda water. He crushed the pill between his thumb and forefinger and sprinkled it into the glass for Frank. He watched it dissolve. He had no real idea what he was doing, if it would work or not, or what effect it would have – but it was something, and he was desperate, because although Frank Bolger was earnest and naive, he was popular, he had that sheen to him, people listened, they paid attention …

  Click-clack, click-clack …

  Norton brought the glasses into the kitchen, handed one to Frank and raised his own.

  ‘Your health.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  A few minutes later, Frank Bolger left. Got into his car. Took the airport road.

  Click-clack, click-clack …

  Drove north. Then came, at one point – drowsy, dreamy, seeing double – to a sharp bend in the road, where another …

  Click-clack, click-clack …

  Norton opens his eyes.

  As suddenly as it appeared, the DART train is gone … and he’s staring through the gates again at Strand Road.

  But staring vacantly, distractedly.

  Because it’s a long time since he’s done that, recalled it in sequence, recalled it whole. It’s a long time since he’s even thought about it at all.

  But then, as the gates lift, the pain in his chest returns …

  How easy it would be, Mark thinks, to surrender here, to drift off, to lose consciousness …

  Which he probably would do, if it weren’t for the incredible tension in his right arm and wrist, and the effort it’s taking to hold this sharp-edged piece of ceramic tightly against the side of his neck.