Bloodland

by Alan Glynn

  Still.

  Can you trust these bastards? Because what he’s also reticent about is exposing his inner demons – not to mention his indolence, and indiscipline – to a complete stranger . . .

  For all his notoriety, Bolger considers himself a very private person, even a shy one, and there’s nothing about this situation that he finds reassuring.

  He looks into his coffee.

  And then glances at the time on one of the displays.

  9:47.

  He looks over at the drinks cabinet.

  What do the Italians call it? Caffè corretto. A corrected coffee.

  Leave it to the wops.

  A coffee with manners on it.

  How civilised can you get?

  After a moment’s hesitation he goes over to the cabinet. He opens it and takes out the bottle of Jameson’s. He unscrews the cap and pours a drop into his mug of coffee. Then a second drop, a slightly extended one, a glug really.

  He tastes it. It’s nice. Though the coffee has gone a bit cold.

  He knocks the whole thing back in one go.

  Start again.

  He pours another substantial measure of whiskey into the mug, puts the bottle away and closes the cabinet. He goes into the kitchen and turns on the kettle. There’s some coffee left in the cafetiere. He pours this into the mug. When the water in the kettle boils, he adds some of that into the mix.

  He takes a sip.

  Hhmm.

  It is just as he’s coming away from his second visit to the drinks cabinet a few minutes later that the phone rings.

  It’s reception.

  ‘Mr Bolger, there’s a Mr Gilroy here to see you.’

  ‘Right,’ Bolger says, passing the mug under his nose, as though it were a fine claret. ‘Send him up.’

  *

  The first thing that strikes Jimmy is how small Bolger is. He’s smaller than he looks on TV. He’s also a little heavier, but that could well be a more recent development.

  Bolger extends a hand and they shake. Then he waves Jimmy in. ‘Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like something, tea, coffee?’

  Jimmy enters a large, expensively furnished living room, lots of chintz, lace and mahogany. A deep-pile carpet. Some antiquey-looking stuff. No books. Above the fireplace there is a huge wall-mounted plasma TV screen.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he says, ‘I’ve already had enough coffee this morning to do me for a week.’

  He sits at one end of a long sofa.

  Bolger retrieves a mug from the dining table and carefully lowers himself onto a sofa directly opposite the one Jimmy is sitting in.

  He crosses his legs and takes a sip from the mug.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Jimmy Gilroy. I knew your father.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, I met him a few times. I did one of those media courses. At Marino Communications. He was pretty good, I have to say.’

  Jimmy nods. Most of the guys of Bolger’s vintage would have passed through Marino at one point or another and had at least some dealings with the old man – though they’d all have known Phil Sweeney much better.

  Walking up here from Sandymount, Jimmy thought about turning back more than once. If he’d been struck earlier by how tawdry the Susie Monaghan story was, out on Ailesbury Road he couldn’t shake the idea that this story was potentially even worse, a spider’s web of cheap connections and called-in favours, of nods and winks, of underhand deals and impenetrable lies.

  With various forms of collateral damage being par for the course.

  The hurt he himself has ended up inflicting on Maria, for instance, is something that won’t easily be eradicated, and he’s seeing now that it won’t easily be contained either.

  Because he’s looking at Bolger in the light of it.

  And hates him already.

  Nor will it be long before he starts hating himself too, spinning his own little web of compromises – can’t turn back, must play along, need the money.

  ‘He was very thorough,’ Bolger is saying. ‘Very intense. He had quite a clinical approach, as I remember.’

  ‘Well, he came from a clinical background,’ Jimmy says, knowing that that isn’t exactly what Bolger meant. ‘He trained as a psychiatrist.’

  Can we please not talk about my old man?

  Bolger laughs. ‘A psychiatrist? I’ll tell you what, we could have done with a few more of those back in my day.’ He laughs again. ‘Could do with a few now, am I right?’

  Jimmy smiles in response. But is he . . . is he imagining it, or is there something slightly loose, almost intemperate, in the way Bolger is speaking, as if –

  No –

  Bolger takes another sip from his mug.

  No, Jimmy thinks, it couldn’t be.

  But as they continue chatting nothing happens to dispel this impression.

  For a while Bolger discusses his ideas about how to shape the book – he has some grandiose notion of dividing it into three volumes – but as he’s doing this Jimmy gets it.

  The smell of alcohol.

  Whiskey fumes.

  They aren’t exactly wafting across the room, but he’s in no doubt about what his nose is telling him. And it just corroborates what he’s seeing and hearing anyway.

  If the whole thing wasn’t so alarming, so weird, it’d be hilarious.

  Larry Bolger is pissed.

  Well, maybe not pissed, but he’s tight. He’s sipping whiskey from a mug.

  Jimmy shifts his position on the sofa.

  What the hell is he supposed to do now? He can’t work with someone who’s drunk at ten o’clock in the morning, can he?

  ‘So, I don’t know,’ Bolger is saying, beginning to slur his words a little, ‘anything less than seven or eight hundred pages and it’s just not at the races as far as I’m concerned. Gravitas wise. You need bulk, a good heft to it. What do you think?’

  ‘Yeah, I agree.’ Jimmy swallows. ‘Hit nine and I think you might be pushing it. Definitely not a thousand. But yeah, seven or eight sounds good.’

  Get me the fuck out of here.

  Bolger drains the mug, leans his head right back. Then he places the mug on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘So,’ he says, after a long pause. ‘Jimmy Gilroy. Tell me who Jimmy Gilroy is.’ He flicks his hand back and forth between them. ‘Tell me why this is going to work.’

  What Jimmy needs to do here is stay calm. He needs to extricate himself from the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Then he can go and talk to Phil Sweeney, clear things up. Not that that will leave Jimmy in any great position of strength. The Susie Monaghan book he can return to – he hasn’t talked to the editor who commissioned it yet – but as far as Maria is concerned . . .

  ‘Ever since the economy tanked,’ he says, feeling deflated all of a sudden, ‘I’ve been working freelance. Picking up bits and pieces here and there.’ At this stage no point in holding back. ‘It hasn’t been great.’

  ‘What have you worked on recently? Anything I might have seen?’

  ‘I doubt it. Unless you read trade magazines, stuff aimed at the pharmaceutical and automotive industries.’ He shrugs. ‘Though for the past few weeks I’ve been doing a bit of . . .’ He pauses. ‘Research.’

  Bolger stares at him, waiting for more. ‘Well? Research into what? Jesus, it’s like trying to get blood from a stone here. You’d want to up your game a bit, son. If you want to work with me.’

  Jimmy feels horribly self-conscious. It’s as if he has been cornered at a family gathering by a drunk uncle he hasn’t seen in years.

  ‘Er, I was commissioned to write a book. A biography. Of Susie Monaghan.’ He hesitates, then adds, ‘the actress.’

  Bolger nods. ‘Oh, I’m aware of who Susie Monaghan is all right. Of who she was. Well aware.’

  There’s something in the way he says this.

  Jimmy leans forward. ‘Did you know her?’

  Bolger shakes his head. ‘Not exactly, no. She was a
gorgeous-looking bird, though, wasn’t she?’

  Jimmy stares at him. A gorgeous-looking bird? How is he supposed to respond to that? Yeah, she was a ride. Will that do? He nods. ‘Actually, I find her very interesting,’ he says. ‘Her story, that whole crash-and-burn dynamic. She was a real product of the times.’

  Bolger looks at him for a second and then bursts out laughing.

  Jimmy is taken aback. He bristles. ‘What?’

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ Bolger says, still laughing. ‘Don’t get me wrong, but I can see what you’re doing, I can see the temptation to mythologise her, to make her into some kind of an emblem. Death and the maiden sort of thing. To conflate the economy with . . .’ He stops and gives a firm shake to his head. ‘Because . . .’ Suddenly he’s not laughing any more. It’s as though a dark cloud has passed over him. ‘Because you see that isn’t what happened. I was there. Not at the crash site, of course. I was at the conference. I was at Drumcoolie Castle.’ He puffs his cheeks up and exhales loudly. ‘There’s an untold story there, my friend. Holy God.’

  Jimmy doesn’t move a muscle. He waits. Bolger seems to be lost in thought now, staring into space. Every couple of seconds he gives another little shake to his head.

  Jimmy isn’t sure what he should say here, but he desperately wants to say something, anything.

  Just as he thinks the moment might have passed, Bolger continues. ‘And do you know what the ironic thing is?’ He picks the mug up from the arm of the sofa. Jimmy shakes his head, though Bolger isn’t even looking at him, not directly. ‘It was supposed to be a conference on corporate fucking ethics. Can you believe that?’ He tilts the mug towards him and peers into it. What does he see in there? A tiny dribble? A golden droplet of deliverance? Is it worth the effort? He goes for it, knocking his head all the way back again. The sigh that follows tells its own story. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘I went down on the Saturday, just to put in an appearance. Have dinner with the big guns. Ha. The Clark Rundles and the Don fucking Ribcoffs. The boys.’

  Jimmy knows all about this conference from his research. It was held one July weekend over three years ago at Drumcoolie Castle in Co. Tipperary and was attended by executives from companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Shell, Nike, Dell, Paloma, Chipco, Sony and BRX. Executives from several Irish companies were also in attendance. One of these was Gary Lynch, a recent ex-fiancé of Susie Monaghan’s.

  The break-up, apparently, hadn’t been Susie’s idea, and she’d tagged along to see if there might be any chance of negotiating – or indeed, of engineering – a reconciliation.

  Bolger makes another puffing sound. ‘Wish to fuck I’d never gone.’

  ‘Why?’ Jimmy hears himself ask.

  ‘Because then I wouldn’t have . . .’ He leans forward on the sofa. ‘I wouldn’t have been present when certain conversations took place, when certain things were said.’ He looks Jimmy in the eye now. ‘I wouldn’t know what I know.’

  ‘Certain things,’ Jimmy says slowly, tentatively, not wanting to break the spell, ‘about Susie Monaghan?’

  Bolger’s eyes widen and a pained expression comes over his face. ‘Susie Monaghan? No. Jesus Christ, have you not been listening to me? This has nothing to do with Susie Monaghan.’ He flops back onto the sofa and stretches his arm out over the side of it, the mug dangling from his hand. ‘Did you never hear the expression “collateral damage”? That’s what she was. A nice piece of misdirection is all.’

  Jimmy is speechless. He scrambles in his head for the next question to ask, the right question. ‘So who does it have to do with?’

  Bolger makes a loud guttural sound, somewhere between a harrumph and a belch.

  ‘Well, not Susie,’ he says finally. ‘That’s for sure. Not poor little Susie.’ He drops the mug. It falls silently onto the shag carpet. ‘Suzi Quatro . . . Sweet Sue.’ He’s gazing off into space again. ‘A boy named . . .’

  ‘Mr Bolger,’ Jimmy says. ‘Who?’

  Bolger looks back, stares at him for a second. ‘Think about it. She wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘The only one what?’

  ‘The only one who died in the fucking crash, you gobshite.’

  Two

  Ashes was always wound pretty tight but this is something else. This is insane . . .

  Tom Szymanski shifts over to the passenger seat and puts his hand on the open door, ready to jump out if necessary.

  ‘Deep Six,’ Tube is whispering over the radio, ‘defcon fucking one here, man, what is going on?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I . . .’

  That’s all he can come up with, at least for now, though one or two theories are definitely forming in his brain.

  He leans out a bit and when he sees where Ashes is aiming his weapon, he whispers loudly, ‘Kroner, Jesus, are you fucking crazy?’

  Ashes glances back at him, this strange look in his eyes, no shit, but after a second he turns away and looks at the middle car, in at the package, then up ahead again.

  Szymanski retreats into the SUV.

  It’s not that Ashes has been acting weird lately, it occurs to him, he’s been acting weird since the day they first met, which was what, three, four months ago now? Though in this context ‘weird’ is certainly a relative term. Szymanski has seen all kinds of weird himself, been all kinds of weird, but he has also been equipped to deal with it, blessed or cursed with the kind of intelligence that can process shit, transform it, sit on it till the time is right, keeping any unpleasant consequences at bay or at least to a minimum. He knows he has this exterior, too, that he comes over all chilled-out, like nothing fazes him, but that’s a shell he’s developed down through the years and of course every shell has an interior, his being stuffed full of crazy just like anyone else’s.

  And for crazy, for weird, read PTSD.

  The acronym of choice among the private military companies.

  The PMCs.

  Because on the menu of symptoms you can just take your pick: depression, guilt, nightmares, alienation, isolation, psychic numbing, denial, fear of intimacy, dependence, abuse, startle reflex, panic attacks, compulsive behaviours, high-risk behaviours – we’re getting there, we’re getting there – suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation . . .

  ‘RAY.’

  Oh God.

  ‘Tube . . . DON’T.’

  So he’s not saying Ashes doesn’t fit in with the unit, or is a loner, or a loser or anything, which would actually be fine in the 3rd Infantry Division or the 82nd Airborne or whatever – you’re in with who you’re in with there, it’s not like you have a choice in the matter, the sad sacks line out with the best and the brightest, no questions asked – but in the PMCs it’s a bit different, they like you to fit in, they like you to get along, because having some freak of nature in the unit everyone can pick on is all very well, but it’s not exactly cost-effective, and Gideon Global is supposed to be a business operation, tight, well-oiled, not some toxic dumping ground for the twisted and the dispossessed.

  Which he’s not saying Ashes is, but –

  What the fuck is the guy up to? He needs to blow off a little steam or something? Scare the shit out of everyone?

  Really?

  The first shots are unlike any Szymanski has ever heard, and he’s heard thousands of the motherfuckers. These have a quality to them, an unreality, it’s like even they don’t believe they’ve been discharged.

  But the second burst is business as usual, as is the third.

  At which point, no more than about three seconds into this, with Tube’s radio voice crackling ‘STOP HIM, STOP HIM’ in the background, Szymanski piles out of the passenger side of the SUV, hits the ground and rolls forward into the back of Ray Kroner’s legs, bringing the dumbass cracker down in an awkward pile on top of him.

  And right in front of the passenger door of the middle car.

  The handle of which Ashes uses for leverage to get himself up again.

  But also, in the process, manages to pull toward him.

/>   So that from below, through the open door, Szymanski gets to see the terrified package flailing inside, one hand gripping the headrest in front of him, the other hand holding onto the door jamb.

  Ashes facing him now, the muzzle of his M4 pointing in.

  And as Szymanski scrambles to get up, his arm hurting like shit, he catches a flash of someone through the lowered window of the car door . . . Tube . . . rushing forward . . . kicking the door shut again, raising his hand with a Sig Sauer pistol in it and putting a bullet point blank into the side of Ray Kroner’s head.

  There is silence, but only for a second. What follows it isn’t the delayed wailing of women and children, as Szymanski might have expected, it’s the agonised screaming of their executive package here who’s just had his hand badly crushed in the car door . . .

  When Tube slammed it shut with his boot.

  But hey, fuck him.

  Szymanski staggers backwards a few feet – away from Ray Kroner’s crumpled body, and his twisted face, away from what at first you might be forgiven for thinking was the ‘primary scene’.

  But then he gets it, gets why there’s no screaming other than that of the suit in the car, why there’s no wailing of women and children.

  They’re all fucking dead.

  Up ahead, and everywhere around him, he sees it.

  Three short bursts of fire.

  Over to the left, splayed against the wall of the concrete structure, his skull fucking daubed against it, is the tall skinny man with the bloodshot eyes. Over to the right, the wooden huts look all riddled to shit. And there, directly in front of the convoy, in a heap, along with their baskets of spilled produce, rivulets of blood trickling out in different directions, are the two women and the three small children.

  4

  ‘So,’ Dave Conway says, ‘what do you think of our chances?’

  As he considers how to respond to this, Martin Boyle swivels his chair from side to side. He’s in his early-sixties, grey and paunchy, a solicitor for forty years, third generation, the law ingrained in his face, in his posture, in his syntax.