Winterland (17 page)

She nods.

‘The lads I have working for me are focused, you know what I mean?’

Gina wants to say,
Yeah, yeah, get on with it
.

‘So there was no reason for anyone to do Noel, no reason
I
know of, no reason at all in fact.’

Gina swallows. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, like I said, I talked to some people and … I’m getting some fairly fucking strange reports back. There’s rumours going around.’

‘What kind of rumours?’

‘Well.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I heard this from a couple of different people. They’re saying that the hit was really meant for your brother, that there was a mix-up –’

‘
What?
’

‘– with the names being the same and all. The whole thing was arranged in a big rush, apparently –’

Gina leans forward.

‘– and wires got crossed. It was just assumed that a hit on Noel Rafferty had to be, well, a hit on
our
Noel.’

Gina feels like she’s been punched in the stomach.

‘Now whoever done the job was a pro,’ Stack goes on. ‘There’s no denying that, but they could only act on the basis of information they were given, and that information –’

‘No, no,
wait
–’ Gina is shaking her head at this, and vigorously, as though trying to brush aside anything that isn’t one hundred per cent relevant. ‘I don’t understand –’

‘What?’

‘
Who would want to kill my brother?
’

Stack pauses and grunts.

‘You tell me. I don’t fucking know.’

‘I don’t know either. How would
I
know?’

‘He was
your
brother.’

‘Yeah, but –’

Gina is lost here. For a week she’s been contending that there was more to what happened than met the eye – and now, faced with a possible confirmation of this, she finds herself unable to accept it. She assumed there was some connection between the two deaths, a causal link – but in her mind it all remained vague and non-specific.

What Stack has just posited, by contrast, is shockingly specific.

‘I mean …’ She doesn’t know what to say. ‘It was still an accident, the way
he
died, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Stack says. ‘Maybe.’

‘
Maybe?
What are you saying?’

‘I’m not saying anything. Just that this … well, it changes things.’

‘Are you saying that maybe it
wasn’t
an accident?’

‘I don’t know. It still could have been, I suppose. But not necessarily.’

‘
How?
He was over the limit, that’s in the autopsy. His car ran off the road. Everyone
says
it was an accident.’

‘Gina, love, you can
fake
an accident. You can hold someone down and reef a naggin of Power’s down their throat. You can fiddle with the brakes of their car. There’s a million different things you can do.’

‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Look, if your brother was the target of the original hit and they fucked
that
up, then it makes sense that they’d try again.’

‘But do it differently.’

‘Yeah. Probably. Chances are there was a bit of panic in the air.’ He takes a sip from his pint. ‘Of course, there’s no way of proving any of this now. Because he’s gone, he’s buried, and the forensics are gone, too. Not that anyone would believe it in the first place.’

‘Oh God.’ She lowers her head.

‘Listen to me, Gina,’ Stack says. ‘This is still only speculation. No one knows who the shooter was, not yet anyway. So what
you
should be doing is trying to find out if anyone had it in for your brother.’

She looks up. ‘But he was … he was an
engineer
.’

‘Ah go on, would you. These professional cunts are no different from anyone else.’ He pauses. ‘Think. Did he owe money to anyone? Did anyone owe
him
money?’

Gina shakes her head. ‘How would I know?’

‘Believe me,’ Stack says, lifting his pint again, ‘with this kind of thing it’s nearly always about money.’

Gina looks around her in exasperation.

The place is almost empty. Two old-timers are sitting at the bar, and there’s a group of middle-aged women in the far corner.

It’s early, though.

This is the second time in a week that Gina has been in Kennedy’s, and she’s finding the experience unutterably weird. It’s a quiet suburban pub now, carpets and dark wood everywhere, at least four TV screens that she can see, and a blackboard menu with stuff on it like seafood chowder and toasted paninis. But when she was growing up, Kennedy’s was a very different place. What it
was
, in fact, was an awful dive.

Guinness, Harp, Woodbines, King crisps.

Spit, piss, vomit.

Her father used to drink here.

Gina remembers coming in as a kid – being
sent
in – to get him or to give him a message.

Her mother used to drink at home.

‘And if it isn’t about money,’ Stack is saying, ‘chances are it’s about sex.’

Gina looks at him. He has what could develop into a smirk on his face.

‘Noel was a happily married man,’ she says, immediately realising that to someone like Stack this might sound naive.

‘But sure they’re the worst,’ he says on cue. ‘I see blokes like that all the time, gagging for it.’

Gina doesn’t want to get into this. Taking a sip from her Corona, she tries to think of a neutral response. But then, luckily, Stack’s mobile phone goes off.

He takes the phone out of his pocket and puts it up to his ear. ‘Yeah?’

Gina looks away – over at the bar. She’s still in shock and feels a little sick. She turns back and stares down at the table.

‘When did he ask?’ Stack is saying, and in a loud whisper. ‘Was it this morning?’

Up to now Gina’s been assuming that her brother’s death was some form of collateral damage, a messy, possibly unintended consequence of her nephew’s murder. But now she has to deal with the fact that maybe the reverse is true: that her nephew’s death was the unintended consequence of her brother’s murder.

She lifts her head again. Stack is tapping his fingers against the side of his pint. His brow is furrowed. He is listening intently.

To avoid looking at him, she glances around.

Three of the TV screens are showing snooker. The fourth screen, mounted above an alcove near the door, is showing the six o’clock news. The sound is down, but Gina watches it anyway. After a few seconds it cuts from the newsreader in the studio to a reporter outside. Talking directly to camera, the reporter is across the street from a large hotel in what looks like Manhattan. Gina can’t hear him, but she senses an urgency in the way he’s speaking. Then it cuts to another man entering an office, sitting at a desk and picking up a pen to sign a document. This is one of those staged and fairly stilted archive clips they use to identify government ministers.

In this particular instance the government minister is Larry Bolger.

Gina finds this a little strange. Not strange that he’s in the news – Larry Bolger is frequently in the news – but strange because she actually had a brief conversation with the man only last week.

‘
He’s a little prick
.’

Startled, Gina turns back and looks across the table at Stack.

‘I gave him the details yesterday,’ he’s saying into his phone, ‘so he knows what the story is. He’s a scabby
bollocks
. Look, don’t let him leave. Keep him talking. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

He closes the phone and puts it away.

Gina wishes she hadn’t heard that.

‘Have to go,’ Stack says. ‘Sorry.’

‘Er … that’s OK. Thanks for the information.’

‘No problem.’

Gina takes a Lucius business card out of her wallet and hands it to him. ‘If you hear anything else, will you let me know? My mobile number is on there.’

‘Sure. Yeah. Of course.’

As he gets out of the booth, Stack produces a business card of his own and places it on the table. Without picking it up Gina can see what’s printed on it.

Terry Stack, Electrical Contractor
.

‘Feel free,’ he says, ‘if you ever want to contact
me
.’

She nods, but doesn’t say anything.

‘Any time of the day or night,’ he adds. ‘It’s a twenty-four-hour service.’ He winks at her. ‘Emergency call-out.’

She nods again and says, ‘OK. Whatever. Thanks.’

Then she slides his card off the table and puts it into her wallet.

Stack picks up his pint and drains it. ‘Right, love,’ he says, putting the glass back down. ‘Take it easy.’

He walks off. He nods at the barman as he passes. Three guys in hoodies follow him out.

Gina’s stomach is jumping. She wants to leave now, too, but decides to hang on for a couple of minutes.

She takes a sip from her Corona.

She rubs her eyes and wonders if she shouldn’t go back and speak to everyone again. If so, who does she start with?

Eventually she puts her wallet away and slides out of the booth. On her way over to the door, she glances up at the TV screen above the alcove.

The news is still on. The German Chancellor is standing at a podium, addressing a press conference.

As Gina opens the door, she braces herself for the cold night air.

Mark is
that
close to calling the waiter over and ordering a drink.

Just to make this bearable.

The atmosphere tonight at Roscoe’s is lively – but not at this table. At
this
table, to put it mildly, things are a little strained.

Mark picks at his rocket salad. The building contractor, a small, muscular Corkman in his early sixties, moves asparagus tips around on his plate and tells a rambling story about his early days in London. The fat accountant concentrates on his fish cakes in blue-cheese sauce.

There is a bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water in the centre of the table and Mark stares at the label on it.

How could he have been so naive?

It has taken him until this, his third meeting with the building contractor, to realise that the elaborate dance of negotiations they’ve been involved in so far has really been about getting Mark to pay some money up front before any agreement can be reached. The builder hasn’t said anything explicit, but with one of his accountants sitting beside him this evening it’s clear he wants to take the matter to the next level.

He probably assumes that Mark has been playing some kind of hardball. It won’t have occurred to him that Mark is actually an
idiot
. In fact, it’s only when the figure of twenty thousand euro is mentioned – albeit in a suitably ambiguous context – that it dawns on Mark what is actually happening. He can’t believe he didn’t see it coming.

And they’re only on their starters.

Which is why he’d kill for some neat gin – and served, preferably, in a pint glass. But the builder and the accountant aren’t drinking, so Mark isn’t going to risk it.

He concentrates on his salad, the fat accountant mops up what’s left of his blue-cheese sauce and the builder goes on talking. It soon becomes obvious, however, that the builder is one of those people who can’t rein in irrelevant detail when telling a story, because he’s now caught up in establishing exactly when in 1969,
to the week
, some event – which is unrelated to the main part of the story – occurred.

Mark goes on staring at the bottle of San Pellegrino.

He doesn’t know what kind of signals he’s sending out here, but he’s pretty sure they’re mixed. Given that he really wants this contract but appears unwilling to pay for it, you’d think he’d be a little more concerned.

But the truth is Mark has been distracted of late.

He looks up.

The builder’s story is drawing to a close. Then the waiter appears and starts clearing away their plates.

‘Are you all right there, Mark?’ the accountant says. ‘You’re very quiet this evening.’

‘Yeah, no, I’m … I’m fine.’

An awkward silence follows. Sensing Mark’s apparent unwillingness to engage with the substantive issue, the accountant clears his throat and says, ‘So, did you see that about Larry Bolger?’

Mark tenses.

The builder whistles and says, ‘Yeah, Jesus, I reckon it’s going to be wall-to-wall fucking Larry for the next week at least.’

Mark is aware that
something
happened today, but he isn’t sure what.

‘They’re already calling for his resignation,’ the accountant says, ‘but I can’t see him giving in that easily, can you?’

‘No,’ the builder says, ‘especially as I’d say the leak came from within the party.’

‘Would you?’

‘Oh God yeah.’ He waits for the waiter to move off before he continues. ‘There’s an element in HQ trying to undermine him. It’s this crack he’s taking at the leadership. I’d lay even money on it.’

Mark’s impulse here is to remain silent. But he doesn’t. ‘What happened?’ he asks. ‘I missed it.’

‘It was in the
Independent
this morning,’ the builder says. ‘Ken Murphy is claiming that Bolger owes some bookie ten grand. Now he could probably get around that, but he was apparently having it off with the bookie’s
wife
as well.’

‘He’s a gouger,’ the accountant says. ‘He always was.’

‘Well, he’s had his fair share of controversies down through the years, that’s for sure.’

Mark’s pulse quickens. ‘What controversies?’

‘Oh, different things, gaffes, putting his foot in it, a fondness for the gargle, nothing major.’ He pauses. ‘Though it really goes back to the beginning, I suppose, the
whiff
does – if you know what I mean.’

‘No,’ Mark says, shaking his head, ‘I don’t.’

The builder clicks his tongue. ‘Well …’ He draws the word out. ‘Neither of you would remember it, but when Larry was first elected there was quite a bit of …
talk
.’

He stops and looks around, as though to check if anyone behind them or next to them is listening. Then he looks at Mark, and perhaps in that moment realises they don’t know each other well enough to be having this kind of conversation.