Winterland (29 page)

Mark goes over to the office, which is bare and strictly functional. There is a small bathroom to the left and a kitchenette to the right. He eases himself onto the hard plastic chair behind the metal desk in the middle. He leans forward for a moment and rubs the back of his neck. His skin feels clammy even though he’s cold.

His heart is thumping. His mouth is dry.

He sits up and holds his jacket back to feel the wound again. It seems to have stopped bleeding.

Is that good or bad? He isn’t sure.

It hurts like fuck, though.

He works to get his shivering under control. He stares at an irregular mark scratched onto the surface of the metal desk.

What happened this afternoon?

He finds it hard to believe. Quite clearly, his intention had been to attack, to lash out, to exact some form of revenge – and who could blame him for that – but
he
hadn’t acted,
they
had.

He shakes his head.

They
attacked
him
. They intimidated him, provoked him, and when he finally tried to defend himself,
they fucking shot
him in the back …

And clearly by
they
he still means Larry Bolger. The Bolger family. Someone
in
the Bolger family. Up to now – at least since he spoke to Gina – that’s been the working assumption.

Jesus
.

He gets up from behind the desk. He limps out of the office, looks around and picks up the nearest object that catches his eye – a crowbar lying on a wooden crate. He holds it up and imagines what he could do with this, imagines how much more satisfying it would be to use than a knife … imagines the whoosh of air, the solid …
contact
, the sinew and muscle, the brain tissue and bone … blood spurting …

As he walks across the warehouse floor, swinging the crowbar, Mark feels a rush of energy. But this lasts only a few seconds.

It is followed by a blinding wave of dizziness.

He staggers forward, losing his footing. He reaches out to grab on to something and finds the side of the small forklift truck. After he regains his balance and catches his breath, he looks at the crowbar again, examines it.

Who does he think he’s kidding?

Where? When?
How
?

He tosses the crowbar onto the plastic seat of the forklift truck and takes a few more tentative steps forward, each one causing him to wince. He stops at the first row of stacked pallets. Next to them is another wooden crate. He leans his back against the pallets, puts a hand onto the crate for support, and slides down into a sitting position on the floor.

In his mind’s eye, he tries again to picture what happened earlier, to retrace his steps, but it’s all out of sync now and won’t settle down. There’s a feverish, shape-shifting quality to it, the quality of a nightmare.

A while later, he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out the three photographs. He lays them side by side on the cold concrete, next to the wooden crate. He passes his eye over each one of them in turn, does this again and again, quickly at first, but then less so, lingering a bit longer each time – a few seconds, then more – on the faces of his father, his mother and his sister …

The tide is out and it’s very cold, but the sky is spectacular – red, painterly streaks of cloud are all that is left of the day’s storms.

It’s going to be a clear night.

Norton is sitting on a wooden bench, legs crossed, hunched into his overcoat. A few isolated figures are visible out on the strand, people with dogs, throwing sticks. Behind him is a small parking area. Directly behind him is his own car. He hears another car pulling up beside it.

A minute later, Fitz appears from the right. He sits down next to Norton and grunts.

Norton pauses and then takes a deep breath. ‘What the fuck is going on, Fitz? I mean, sweet holy suffering mother of
Jaysus
.’

‘I know, I know. But let’s face it, Paddy, this isn’t exactly everyday stuff we’re dealing with here, is it? I mean, High King is more used to –’

‘Oh, what, all of a sudden this isn’t your … your métier? Is that it?’

‘What?’

‘Because that’s not what you told me before. Piece of piss you said.’

‘Yeah, but –’

‘And it’s not like you were shy about taking my fucking money –’

‘Ah, Paddy, come on, would you?’

‘No,
you
come on.
You
come on. For
fuck’s
sake.’

The first of the three calls that day came early in the morning. Norton was at home, in the kitchen, fighting to keep down dry toast. He was also shivering, and not just because of the arctic chill that had developed between himself and Miriam. When the second call came, much later, he was in the middle of his frantic search for a new, more pliant GP. Then, not too long after that – about an hour ago now – the third call came. He was in his car at the time, driving out to a doctor’s surgery in Milltown.

But it was only as he was leaving the surgery – scrip safely in hand at last – that the gravity of the day’s developments hit home, and that he found any space in his head to think about them.

Taking a deep breath, Norton fills his lungs with healthy sea air. In front of them, two seagulls flap past, squawking. Out on the horizon there is a ship, a tiny dot, one of the ferries.

Anyway.

About Dermot Flynn, he’s ambivalent. What happened was a mess and should have been avoided – though in the heel of the hunt no real harm was done, and in a way they’re lucky to have him out of the picture.

But as for the second situation, Norton is barely able to get his head around it. Mark Griffin stalking Larry Bolger with a kitchen knife? Going around stabbing people in the
leg
with it?

It’s not an image he can dwell on for too long.

Eventually, and as calmly as possible, he says, ‘Look, there’s nothing we can do about Flynn now, but this other guy … you’re going to have to find him. You’re going to have to
stop
him.’

‘Stop him? Jesus, Paddy, I don’t know. This is all getting –’

‘What? Out of hand? And whose fault is that?’

Fitz doesn’t answer.

There is a long silence. An elderly couple stroll past. The man nods at the two gents on the bench and says, ‘Grand evening.’

The two gents nod back.

‘None of this would have happened,’ Norton then says, ‘if the original hit on Noel had gone according to plan. All the focus now would be on gangland crime, and how
it’s
getting out of hand. Your one Gina wouldn’t be going around asking awkward questions.’

Fitz grunts again but doesn’t speak.

‘Right,’ Norton goes on. ‘The phone call. What did she say exactly?’

This was arguably even more serious than the Mark Griffin situation. Because it was clear that Mark Griffin was traumatised, disturbed, whatever. He was weak, and wounded. He could be dealt with.

But Gina Rafferty?

No.

Leaving messages on Mark Griffin’s answering machine?

Putting a call through to Harcourt Street?
Talking to a
journalist?

No fucking way.

Fitz exhales. ‘Well,’ he says, his voice thick with reluctance, ‘basically she asked him if they could meet. He asked why. She said she had a story. He asked what it was and she said she didn’t want to go into it over the phone. Then he said he was busy and did she know how many calls like this he got in a week, that she’d have to give him
something
. So then she went on for a bit about the two Noels, but by this stage she was sort of rambling, and I don’t think your man was too impressed.’

‘Did she mention any other names?’ Norton says. ‘Terry Stack? Larry Bolger?’

‘No. I think she was going out of her way to be, what’s it, circumspect?’

‘Right.’

Norton swallows. He feels a sudden tightness in his chest. This Nalprox stuff is supposed to be the same as the Narolet, but he’s not so sure – he’s detecting subtle variations, little wrinkles in the texture of it.

‘So, how did it finish up?’

‘O’Driscoll said that unless she could come up with some hard evidence she was wasting her time.
And
his. Then your one went all quiet. And that was it.’

That’s
not
it, of course, Norton thinks. He looks at his watch.

‘Something has to be done,’ he says. ‘Tonight. This can’t be allowed to spill into another day.’

‘Jesus, Paddy.’

‘
What
?’

‘I don’t know, I mean … another two –’

‘What’s the
alternative
, Fitz?’ This comes out in a loud, desperate whisper. ‘Tell me. Because it’s only a matter of time. A few more
bloody
questions from her, to the wrong person, and we’re at the tipping point. This could all fall apart.’

After a long pause, Norton then says, ‘Look,Fitz,things have got out of control here, I know that. And I take some of the blame. I do. But if you can contain this tonight,
end
it …on top of what I owe you already I’ll give you five hundred grand. Offshore account. No traceability.’

Fitz turns to look at Norton. He makes a whistling sound. ‘You serious?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Fuck’s sake.’

Norton stares out at the horizon, waiting.

Fitz runs a hand through his hair. Eventually he says, ‘Yeah. Fair enough.’

‘Do it any way you want, just take care of it. And
you
do it, do you hear me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No operatives, no outsourcing.
You
do it.’

Fitz nods.

After another long pause, Norton says, ‘Where is she? At the moment?’

‘Er … at home. In her apartment. She’s been there all day.’

Norton stands up. It’s darker than when he sat down, and chillier. City lights are shimmering now along the bay.

He looks at Fitz. ‘Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Get back there. Stay on top of her. Maybe she’ll phone Griffin again. Maybe
he’ll
phone
her
.’

Gina’s mobile rings at a quarter to eight. She’s on the sofa watching an old episode of
Seinfeld
. Half watching it. Not really watching it at all. She presses Mute on the remote and looks over at the desk, at her phone, stares at it – disinclined, though, to get up and answer it. She’s not in the mood for dealing with anyone.

Earlier in the day her incipient panic gave way to despondency, then torpor. After a brief but humiliating conversation with that journalist she threw her mobile on the desk, went into the bedroom – still dressed for work – and lay down. She was fuming.

But she knew he was right.

If she’d been more explicit and mentioned people by name, he still would have said what he said, which was, ‘Yeah, fine, great, but where’s the evidence?’

Later, in the afternoon, she changed into jeans and a T-shirt. She made coffee, sat at her desk and went online in the vague hope of … she didn’t really know what. She googled BCM and found out as much as she could about the company her brother worked for. She followed links to other engineering companies. She read an official report on an EU website about corporate malfeasance. She read an article somewhere else about a recent scandal in Greece involving bribery, blackmail and a couple of supposedly accidental deaths – which, when she first came across it, sent a little pulse of excitement through her system, as though the story might actually provide her with some sort of corroboration. But the excitement didn’t last, because none of it was relevant. It wasn’t evidence of anything. It was stuff on the Internet. It was stuff she’d have to be out of her mind to imagine could have any bearing on anything.

And as she waits now for the phone to ring out – hours later, slumped on the sofa – she thinks, Yes, out of my mind,
that
feels about right. Eventually, though, when the phone does stop, she can’t help getting up off the sofa and going over to it.

One missed call. New number.

She presses Reply. She stands there, waiting. She is out of her mind.

It answers. ‘Gina?’

She recognises the voice straightaway. ‘
Mark?
’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you OK? Where are you? Did you get my message?’

‘No, I’m …
message
?’

‘I left a message on your home phone this morning, I didn’t have your mobile number.’

‘I –’

‘It’s just, I was saying … I think I’m maybe on the wrong track, about Bolger. I mean, it doesn’t seem –’

‘I went … after him today –’

‘
What?
’

‘At least tried to. I didn’t come close.’

‘What do you mean
went after him
?’

Silence.

‘Mark?’

‘I tried to …
attack
him.’

‘
Jesus
.’

‘I really wanted to, but … I didn’t even …’ He stops here, struggling, it seems, to get the words out.

Gina turns and looks at the TV, as though for assistance on this, as though it should be running a news flash or something, a crawl,
anything
. What she sees instead is Kramer hurtling through the door of Jerry’s apartment.

She looks away again.

‘You didn’t even
what
?’

‘I had a knife. I –’

‘Oh God.’

‘I didn’t even take it out. I couldn’t. I was just standing there, looking at him, and –’

‘Where
was
this?’

He explains, but his voice is shaky, and he pauses constantly to take deep breaths. When he gets to the part about sticking the knife in the guy’s leg, Gina flinches.

‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘What happened then? Did
you
get hurt? You sound –’

‘No,’ he says quickly. ‘I didn’t. I’m … I’m fine.’

‘Well, you don’t
sound
fine. At all.’ She waits, but he doesn’t respond. ‘You actually sound awful, Mark. Spacy. Are you OK? Where
are
you?’