Winterland (25 page)

They sit in silence for a while.

Over the fifteen years that these two men have known each other they have become mutually dependent in ways neither of them is keen to dwell on. Not long after they met, and with Norton’s financial backing, Fitz set up High King Security and emerged from his pre-ceasefire chrysalis of republican activism into the open air of so-called legitimate business. The firm specialised in on-site security for the construction industry, and Norton quickly became its principal client. But when new developments in technology nudged High King in the direction of private investigations and electronic surveillance, Norton found himself relying on the company quite a lot, and on Fitz in particular.

Lately, of course, things have moved to another level. They both know this but have yet to have a proper discussion about it. Nevertheless, the two men
do
understand each other: Fitz is no choirboy and still has his connections from the old days; Norton is a hard-nosed pragmatist and not someone to let fools stand in his way.

A vehicle passes behind them, and the interior of the car darkens over momentarily.

All the same, it
is
a little awkward sitting here like this. Because the most glaring aspect of what they haven’t discussed yet, and very pointedly, is the terrible fuck-up that led to things getting so complicated in the first place. OK, it was rushed and frantic, no one’s arguing with that, and it was Norton who came up with the idea originally – so he’s prepared to accept
some
of the blame at least …

But my Christ.

There was serious money involved as well.

He stares straight ahead at the dull concrete wall in front of them.

Now isn’t the time, though. He needs Fitz. He can’t just replace him.

‘OK,’ he says, ‘first the skinny lad, Flynn.’

‘Yeah,’ Fitz says, shifting his weight in the seat. ‘Do you want me to have another word with him? From what I understand he’s been acting up a bit lately. Maybe he needs a stronger message. We could take one of his kids for a couple of hours, go for a drive sort of thing, up the Dublin Mountains.
That’d
scare the shit out of him.’

‘I don’t know.’

Left on his own, Norton thinks, Flynn would probably be safe enough, but with Gina Rafferty
at
him, asking questions, probing, he could easily crack.

She’s
the problem.

‘Leave the kids alone,’ he says after a long pause. ‘It’d be messy. You’d only be asking for trouble.’

‘Right.’

‘Keep it simple. But have a word with him all the same.’

‘Right.’

‘So.’ He exhales. ‘The sister. What’s the story there? Any joy with the mobile calls?’

‘Yeah, I finally got this new piece of kit I was telling you about, it’s amazing, about the size of a laptop. You target someone’s phone, right? Then you can listen in, record calls, download texts and emails. It’s fucking brilliant.’

‘How does it work?’

Fitz shrugs his shoulders. ‘I dunno. How does anything work these days? You install the software and that’s it, off you go.’

‘Yeah, but … do you have to insert anything in
her
phone, or get –’

‘Ah, Jaysus no, no. It’s all remote. It picks up the signal. It’s got this sniper antenna thing on it. For long-distance use. So you can be anything up to seven or eight hundred yards away.’

‘OK. Good.’

Norton is still annoyed about the Narolet, and as a result is feeling massively irritated by everything – by Fitz here beside him, by the texture of his own suit, by the colour of the car’s leather upholstery, by the fact that it’s Tuesday. He
needs
his pills. As soon as he has a chance, he thinks, he’s going to have to drive out home and get them.

‘Anyway,’ he goes on, still looking straight ahead, ‘I want you to keep a
very
close eye on her from now on.’

‘Yeah. No problem.’

‘And listen. There’s someone else I want you to keep an eye on. I think it might be that other fella you mentioned, the one she met earlier.’

Norton’s voice has a slight tremor in it. He finds this, in equal measure, embarrassing and annoying.

He’s not sure how noticeable it is.

‘Right,’ Fitz says, seemingly oblivious, and taking a small notebook out of his pocket. ‘What can you tell me about him? Shoot.’

The Dáil chamber is packed for Leaders’ Questions, and there’s an air of excitement about the place that you normally wouldn’t get unless something major was in the offing. In the front row of the government benches, three seats along from the Taoiseach, Larry Bolger sits stony-faced, keenly aware of the cameras, keenly aware that he’ll be in frame whenever the Taoiseach is speaking. On the other side of the chamber, opposition party leaders limber up, consult their notes, confer with colleagues.

These will be key exchanges this afternoon and may even have a bearing on the outcome of the next election. They’ll certainly have a bearing on Bolger’s future. A lot will depend, of course, on how the Taoiseach chooses to play it. Most commentators agree he’s in a very difficult position and has only two options. In the first, he comes on strong and hangs the minister out to dry. This addresses the issue at hand
and
sees off a challenger, making him look strong and decisive. But it’s also quite risky because what if he comes on
too
strong? What if he appears disloyal or even vindictive? As well as bringing Bolger down, he could very well take a serious hit himself. In the second option – the path of least resistance – he gives his unequivocal support to the minister. But this is also inherently risky for the Taoiseach because it means he’d be throwing a lifeline to someone who everyone knows has been plotting against
him
for months. And that would only make him look weak.

Clearly, this second option is what Bolger wants, and needs – though there isn’t much he can do to bring it about now. Apart, that is, from sitting there with a serious look on his face. And regardless of how he does
that
, he’ll still be perceived in a variety of different ways – as defiant, or contrite, or reflective, or baffled, or bored even.

All of which, in a sense, he is.

Not to mention exhausted, and anxious, and
angry
.

As the leader of the main opposition party gets to his feet and starts framing a predictably labyrinthine question for the Taoiseach, Bolger fixes his gaze on a section of carpet in the middle of the floor. To look at him you would think he was concentrating hard on the question being asked, analysing and parsing it, but in fact his thoughts are elsewhere. What he’s doing – and has been doing all day – is analysing and parsing the brief, cryptic conversation he had the previous evening in Buswell’s Hotel.

Because he’s extremely upset about it. It’s not the fact of being accosted in a toilet that’s troubling him; it’s the shocking and downright scandalous reference to his brother. Initially, and after speaking to Paddy Norton, he dismissed it as a tabloid hack’s calculated attempt to provoke him. But later on he wasn’t so sure. On reflection, the young man didn’t seem like a hack at all. There was something odd about him, something tentative, a nervousness that didn’t square with the lizardlike weariness you get with most working journalists.

Later still, when he was in bed and unable to sleep, Bolger gave some thought to the charge itself. Once again, he dismissed it out of hand – but as he lay there in the dark, as he tossed and turned, it kept reforming in his mind.

Inevitably, it gained a certain traction.

The thing is, Bolger’s recollection of that whole period is patchy at best. He wasn’t even around when the accident took place – he was a junior associate for a legal firm in Boston, a job he’d got through a cousin of his mother’s a couple of years earlier – so his take on the event is the received one,
i.e.
what happened was a simple road accident, a tragedy, a statistic. He was very upset of course, but by the time he got back from the States pretty much everything had been settled and it was straight into the funeral. Almost immediately after that, he was taken in hand by the party, and the grooming process began.

At the time, Bolger had a sense that he was being shielded from certain things, that information was being carefully managed, not to say manipulated. Nevertheless, he does have a vague recollection of someone mentioning alcohol, and in reference to the driver of the other car.

But then last night in the toilet of a hotel, and according to this total stranger … it was
Frank
all of a sudden?
Frank
was the one who was drunk? The one who caused the accident?

It was certainly the first time Bolger had ever heard this. Even though the idea, if he thinks about it, is hardly outlandish. Back in those days it was common practice for people to drink and drive – three, four, five pints, whatever – it was almost expected, and Frank, like anyone, was fond of a jar, so …

Bolger stops.

He knows full well what’s at work here. It’s the insidious nature of rumour and hearsay. It’s the impulse to believe, the instinctive rush to judgement, the feeling that if someone says something to your face, and with conviction … then it
must
be true.

It’s a dynamic, after all, that on a professional level Bolger is familiar with.

He glances around the chamber. The opposition leader is shaking a finger in the direction of the government benches.

‘And
furthermore
, let me put
this
to the Taoiseach …’

Bolger can see the sprays of spittle from here.

His own mouth feels thick and grainy. He didn’t get much sleep last night, and he’s been drinking coffee non-stop since he got up.

He shifts his weight in the seat.

In any case, if it
is
true about Frank, he can understand why they kept quiet about it, at least on one level – because
he
wouldn’t be sitting here in this chamber today if they hadn’t.

But what if the story gets resurrected now? It would be awful, a PR disaster. Even though it’d be impossible to prove, a story like this, a sort of Chappaquiddick by proxy, would in all likelihood scupper any chances Bolger had of bouncing back from the current crisis.

But what he
really
can’t get his head around – and it’s been working on him like a slow burn since late the previous evening – is how this rewrites everything, and not just the facts, the circumstances surrounding a terrible tragedy; it rewrites his own personal history, his reasons for going into politics in the first place.

Actually, talk about a slow burn.

That
one’s been working on him for the best part of twenty-five years – resentment of his father for putting so much pressure on him, frustration at a career he never truly ‘owned’, a sense of loss for the life he could have led, and in fact
had
been leading, over there in Boston.

It pains him to think of it even now, of how young he was, and idealistic, and of how
stimulated
by everything he was: the summer heat, the atmosphere around Cambridge, the exotic fare on offer at Faneuil Hall (exotic back then, to
him
), his apartment on Comm Ave, his colleagues at the law firm, the conversations, the women he met.

To say nothing of the money he could have earned.

Larry really wanted to stay, and if he had known the truth, the alleged truth at any rate, about Frank – that he got into his car that night drunk as a fucking lord and killed all those people as well as himself, he
would have
stayed. He would have had the moral advantage, the leverage to resist, the courage to stand up to his old man.

It could all have been so different. So is it any wonder that along the way he went off the rails a bit?

Across the chamber, the opposition leader concludes what one editorial will later call ‘not so much a question as a Kalashnikov-hail of bullet points’.

He sits down. The Taoiseach gets up.

In a reflex reaction, Bolger and others around him adjust themselves in their seats.

The Taoiseach clears his throat.

Bolger braces himself.

Regardless of which way it goes for him here today, he intends to follow this other business up. He intends to make discreet enquiries. Look at the records. Talk to people. Maybe he’ll even go out to Wicklow, to the nursing home, and talk to the old man.

He needs to know the truth.

He turns his head slightly to the right and refocuses.

‘Before I answer your, er, question, Deputy,’ the Taoiseach begins, ‘I’d like to state for the record that Laurence D. Bolger is a public servant of the highest calibre, a man of integrity and an esteemed colleague …’

He sees them approaching from the other end of Ashleaf Avenue and his heart starts pounding. It’s nearly nine o’clock and already quite dark, but it’s the suburbs, and in the orange glow of the streetlights the two figures are clearly visible.

Dermot slows down and swallows.

Something like this was inevitable, and in a weird, alternative-universe kind of way he almost welcomes it. He recognises the guy on the left. He’s the one with the small beady eyes and the denim jacket – except he’s not wearing the denim jacket this evening, he’s wearing an overcoat. The guy on the right is tall and is wearing a tracksuit.

Dermot is walking home, briefcase in hand, up the few hundred yards from the DART station. These days he leaves work as late as he can to minimise contact time with Claire and the girls – which he knows is ridiculous, and unsustainable, but it’s a survival mechanism.

He quickly looks behind him, and then around. The road is quiet. Leafy. Deserted.

Oh God.

Just up ahead there is a right turn off Ashleaf Avenue – onto Ashleaf Drive – where Dermot lives, halfway down, on the left.

He can’t believe this. If he maintains his current pace, they’re all going to converge on the corner.

So … should he turn around? Should he head back towards the train station?