Winterland (52 page)

‘I don’t know,’ she says.

And it’s true.

She has turned around again, and is in shock. Whatever that was is just up ahead.

She hesitates, trying to make sense of it.

‘But look,’ she says, starting to move. ‘I’m OK, Mark. Really. Give me a few minutes and I’ll call you back on this number.’

Slumped over the wheel now, Norton can’t feel a thing.

He can’t move.

It’s all very weird – one second she’s approaching, coming within range, and the next she’s … what?

Slowing down?
Stopping?

She’s fucking turning around?

Un
believable, he thinks.

So he loses it, starts rocking back and forth in his seat, banging his fists against the steering wheel, shouting, ‘
Move, move, MOVE
’ – but it turns out he mustn’t have put the hand brake on, because suddenly the car itself is moving, sliding forward, only a few feet, but knocking into the car in front, smashing its rear lights and triggering the alarm.

Triggering the pain again, too, it seems, and the white light … the pain even more severe than earlier, the light even more blinding …

But it’s OK now. He doesn’t
feel
the pain.

Not anymore.

Except, of course, that he
does
.

Because as everyone knows, there are different kinds of pain.

Like the pain of remembering.

Because back then, you see, he
did
know what he was doing – it’s just that nothing was ever confirmed about it afterwards, nothing was ever said, no one ever used the words
autopsy
or
toxicology
. In those days there was no such thing as the Serious Accident Unit, and in any case the party handlers, for their own reasons, weren’t slow in putting it about that the other man was to blame – so it wasn’t long before Norton was able to convince himself that what
he’d
done … well, that maybe the two things, the pill and the crash, weren’t directly connected after all …

The pill and the crash.

There’s always been a part of his brain that has resisted joining
those
particular dots …

But not anymore.

The pill and the crash, the pill and the crash … the pill … the
crash
… the pill, the
crash
, the pill, the
crash …

In his head, these words and the shrill, piercing tone of the alarm fall into alignment, merge, and become something new, a sound with a certain feel of permanence to it, a sound that might never ease, that might never subside …

On the edges of his vision, he can just about detect movement, flitting shapes, patterns. Is someone there? Maybe he could ask them to make the sound stop, or at least to turn it down, just a bit, just a
little
…

He tries to speak, tries with all his might, tries to utter even a single syllable, but in the end it is useless.

In the end no sound comes from his mouth.

Mark leans his head back against the wall, relaxes his arm and slowly lowers his hand from his neck.

He drops the fragment of the mug and it falls to the floor.

His hand is smeared with blood.

The guard, hovering at a discreet distance, seems reluctant to tackle Mark, but is probably already suspecting that when he’s talking about this later in the pub he’ll regret
not
having tackled him.

Or maybe, Mark thinks, he was ordered not to.

Like everyone else here, it seems.

Turning his head now to the left, weary beyond measure, struggling to focus, Mark sees them approaching – two men, striding with purpose, parting the ways. Doctors, nurses, admin staff, the guard … they all stand aside.

Mark then glances downwards and sees that the pool of clear fluid on the floor has become infused with the blood, and that streaks and rivulets of red are spreading outwards and making their way across the floor to the opposite wall.

Streaks and rivulets of
his
blood.

It’ll make it easier for them, he thinks, easier in whatever way they have it in mind to finish him off.

A hurried struggle, some use of necessary force, a bullet even.

He starts to reduce, to shrink into himself.

He did his best. At least he tried.

Head down, he waits, listens.

Closes his eyes. Senses them standing there now.

Come on. Get it over with
.

‘Mark? Are you OK there? Mark?’ The voice is calm, solicitous. ‘
Mark?
Look at me.’

He looks up.

Standing directly in front of him is a tall man with a stoop and silvery white hair.

‘Mark,’ the man says, ‘I think we need to talk. I’m a detective superintendent. My name is Jackie Merrigan.’

Gina recognises the car at once.

It’s
his
.

She walks slowly, approaching the scene with caution.

The alarm is still wailing, but in the strong east wind it sounds a little wobbly, a little plaintive. There are already people about – from the surrounding houses, from the line of cars now backed up to the level crossing.

Norton’s car – however it happened – is lodged into the back of the car parked in front.

As she gets nearer, Gina sees a man coming out of a house on the left. His arm is outstretched and he is pointing something at the parked car.

The alarm stops ringing.

The silence that follows, at least for a few seconds, seems vast and dense with significance.

But this doesn’t last.

More and more people appear, and by the time Gina gets right up to Norton’s car, it is surrounded and she can’t see a thing.

But she can hear the comments.

‘
Yeah, he’s dead
,’ someone says, ‘
for sure … must have been a
heart attack …
’

She leans against the garden railings behind her and glances around.

When the ambulance appears a few minutes later, and is inching its way down from the level crossing, she hears another comment. It comes from one of two young men who are taking turns peering in through the window of Norton’s car.

‘
Oh my God
,’ she hears him say, ‘
What’s that in his hand?
Jesus, I think … I think it’s a gun …
’

This piece of information passes like a lick of flame out of the window and spreads, almost visibly, from person to person, until the whole scene is engulfed with it.

A gun … a gun … a gun …

Gina swallows.

She sways from side to side now, gently, rhythmically, waiting for the ambulance to get as far as the car and stop.

When it does, the onlookers quickly disperse, and from where she’s standing Gina catches a glimpse of the body.

It’s a really strange scene, simultaneously pathetic and eerie. Norton is just slumped over the wheel. Everything is drenched in a wash of orange and blue, a combination of the streetlights and the slowly rotating beacons on top of the ambulance.

Gina wonders if he has the photographs on him, or in the car somewhere. Not that it matters anymore. Though if they
are
found, and identified, who knows what may yet transpire?

That’s something she’ll have to tell Mark about. It mightn’t be easy to explain, but at least she now has the chance to try.

One of the paramedics opens the door of the car, and it’s not long before Gina hears the first mention of Paddy Norton’s name. She’s not sure who says it; the words just seem to be floating on the air.

‘
Isn’t that … I think … isn’t that your man … it
is
… Paddy
Norton …
’

Then someone mentions Richmond Plaza.

At this, Gina immediately leans back against the railings, as far as she can, and looks to the right. There’s a curve in the road, and from the angle she’s standing at the building is just about visible in the crook of the bay. As she gazes at it now a tiny flash of light, a Roman candle effect – what at this distance she can only assume is a gush of welding sparks – seems to shoot off the side of it and into the night-time mist.

It’s as though the building, like a wounded organism, is busy renewing itself, carrying out its own repairs, determined to survive.

Reverting – of
course
– to Noel’s original specs.

And with this dawning realisation comes an acute sense of relief. Because among other things it means that she can stop now, finally – she can
stop
.

And maybe even carry out some repairs, engage in a renewal process of her own.

She closes her eyes for a moment.

When she opens them again, a garda squad car is approaching from the seafront section of Strand Road.

Before it pulls up, Gina takes off – and without a further glance at the building, at Norton’s car, or at Norton himself. She passes through the crowd of assembled bystanders and walks along the pavement towards the level crossing.

As she moves, she reaches into her pocket to get the phone out. Her hand is shaking a little. She looks for the number and presses Call, and as she waits, in the background, from over the houses to her left, she can hear seagulls squawking and the faint sound of the tide lapping up onto Sandymount Strand.

Alan Glynn is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where he studied English Literature, and has worked in magazine publishing in New York and as an EFL teacher in Italy. His first novel,
The Dark Fields
, was published in the US in 2002. He is married with two children and lives in Dublin.