Winterland

1

The next morning there is saturation coverage in the media, with newspaper headlines ranging from the hysterical – BLOODBATH! – to the soberly informative – THREE DEAD, TWO INJURED, IN GANGLAND FEUD. On one of the radio breakfast shows the Minister for Justice declares all-out war on the city’s criminals and drug barons. Among commentators a consensus about what happened quickly emerges: it was a dispute between a senior gangland figure and an ex-paramilitary activist, with its roots possibly going back many years. It was also quite clearly an incident that got way out of hand. Live reports from the scene of the discovery – the result, it appears, of an anonymous tip-off to Gardaí – are shocking enough, but as usual it’s in the tabloids that the truly gruesome stuff is to be found.

The dead men are named as Terry Stack, Martin Fitzgerald and Eugene Joyce. One of the injured men – both of whom are still in intensive care – is named as Shay Moynihan. The other one has yet to be identified.

Investigations are ongoing.

‘I mean, honestly,’ Miriam says, flicking off the radio with one hand and pouring freshly brewed coffee into her husband’s cup with the other, ‘what are these people anyway, savages?’

‘Yes,’ Norton says, ‘they are, they’re animals, pure and simple.’

He and Miriam’s rapprochement started late last night and he doesn’t want to do or say anything now to endanger it – such as disagreeing with her, or pointing out to her that one of these savages may actually have been in this kitchen once, may have sat where she’s sitting, may even have drunk from the very cup she’s holding in her hand.

Norton stares into his coffee.

Since first hearing the news this morning – and on the radio like everyone else, though probably earlier than most – he’s been trying to visualise the scene, to conjure it up in all its graphic horror. But he can’t. More sober calculations keep getting in the way.

He raises his coffee cup and takes a sip. Miriam is concentrating on peeling an orange.

These two men in intensive care, for instance – he can only assume that the unidentified one is Mark Griffin… in which case he can only hope that the little fucker doesn’t make it. Terry Stack’s being out of the way, however, is a major plus, his involvement even breathing new life into Norton’s original strategy of trying to make the whole thing seem gang-related. Fitz himself – who clearly couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery – wasn’t much of a threat, but he was the one direct link between Norton and pretty much everything that’s happened recently.

There are variables, of course. Knowns and unknowns. What happens if Mark Griffin does make it? And what kind of a trail did Fitz leave behind him at High King? Documents? Recordings? Transcripts? Probably. But Norton’s not too worried, because it would hardly be in High King’s interests to compromise the confidentiality of their single most important client.

No, the biggest variable in all of this, the least predictable one – the great unknown known – is Gina Rafferty. She wasn’t mentioned in any of the radio reports, so… where is she? Weighed down at the bottom of a river somewhere? Hidden in the boot of a car? Would that be too much to hope for?

Miriam places a few segments of orange before him on a plate. ‘There you are,’ she says. ‘Vitamin C.’

‘Thank you, darling.’

What kick-started the rapprochement last night was an email from their daughter in Chicago. At the very end of it, and almost as an afterthought, she mentioned that she’d be home for Christmas. This was great news, and enough to alter Miriam’s entire mood, taking her in seconds flat from chilly to warm, from clipped monosyllables to a torrent of chatter. Patricia’s last visit over two years ago hadn’t gone at all well, and here would be a rare chance for mother and daughter to regain some lost ground.

For his part, Norton was – and still is – relieved. But he knows from experience that this will now become a major project for Miriam – doing up rooms that don’t need to be done up, organising lunches and drinks parties, as well as endless shopping. He knows her propensity to obsess. He also knows from experience that ten minutes off the plane and Patricia will be choking on all the attention. Ten minutes inside the house and she’ll be on the phone to see if she can’t bring the date of her return flight forward.

But at least it means that for the moment Miriam will no longer be giving a shit about him and his supposed dependency on prescription painkillers.

Vitamin C?

Thanks a lot.

Half an hour later he’s in the car on Pembroke Road – but instead of going straight on to Baggot Street, to the office, he turns right at the canal and heads down towards the quays.

He phones his secretary and tells her he’s going to be late.

‘But not too late, I hope,’ she says, ‘because you have -’

‘I know, I know.’

He has an eleven o’clock meeting with the Amcan people to iron out the final details of the tenancy contract. He gave in to Ray Sullivan last night on the question of the additional security measures, and there’s no reason now why they can’t close the deal, and soon – the beginning of next week or maybe even as early as tomorrow.

‘I’ll be all right,’ he says, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ve plenty of time.’

It’s a crisp late-autumn morning, calm and clear after the high winds of last night. As he moves along South Lotts Road, Norton glances to the left. Dominating the city skyline, defining it, is Richmond Plaza. Then he looks to the right. It used to be that wherever you happened to find yourself in Dublin, you could pretty much rely on the red-and-white-striped twin chimneys of the Poolbeg power station to find you. Situated in the bay, these were a sentimental reference point for many people – they defined the city, they were the first thing you saw, through mist and cloud, on the flight path into Dublin Airport. But that has all changed. Because what immediately catches the eye these days is the considerably taller glass and steel structure rising up out of the docklands. It’s a more appropriate structure anyway, in Norton’s opinion. Better to have office and retail space, a hotel, condominiums – he thinks – than a brace of ugly industrial smokestacks.

Stopped at a red light on Pearse Street a few minutes later, he reaches into his pocket and takes out his Nalprox. He wasn’t sure about these yesterday. Compared to the Narolet they seemed weaker somehow, but at the same time… stronger? Is that possible? Differently calibrated? He doesn’t get it. They’re all he’s got, though. He pops two of them into his mouth, hesitates briefly, and then pops a third one in as well. For good measure.

The traffic moves and he turns right onto Tara Street. They crawl along and stop at another red light. He reaches over with his left hand and opens the glove compartment. He waits a moment and then looks. There it is, the grey barrel sticking out from under his pouch of AA documents. Before leaving the house earlier, he got this from the safe in his dressing room. He’s never used it, nor does he have a licence for it – but he’s always liked the idea of having a gun. Fitz got it for him some years back after there’d been a spate of burglaries in the neighbourhood.

Apparently it can’t be traced.

The light changes. Norton flips the glove compartment closed.

He crosses the river and turns right onto Custom House Quay.

Gina Rafferty has an apartment down around here somewhere – that’s what she told him the day they met – and he’s guessing it’s in one of these new complexes.

Fitz would have been able to give him the exact address.

But even with the address – and assuming she’s still alive – how likely is it that he’ll just see her here, spot her walking along the pavement or coming out of her building?

Not very.

In any case, the traffic is moving at quite a clip, and in seconds he has already gone too far. He cruises past Richmond Plaza. At the end he takes a right and goes over the toll bridge. He’ll loop around through Ringsend, make his way back to the other end of the quays and start again.

At this point, he doesn’t know what else to do.

As Larry Bolger steps into the shower, he wonders if this delay isn’t going to scupper everything. If the moment isn’t going to pass.

Bracing himself, he turns on the water and lets it run cold for a while.

The plan was hatched late last night in a fug of nervous exhaustion – with Bolger himself and a few others working the phones to drum up support. But then, at the last minute, there was a complication.

Isn’t there always?

Just after 2 a.m. news broke of a horrific gangland massacre in the west of the city, three dead apparently – so they decided at once to abort. There was no point in going head to head with a story like that. It would dominate the news cycle and upstage any other story, especially a political one, for at least twenty-four hours.

He adjusts the temperature of the water and reaches for the soap.

But in a way he’s relieved – because although he’s been working up to this for years, now that it’s within his grasp he feels deeply uneasy about it. Over these last two days he hasn’t had a chance to make any enquiries into the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death, but he’s determined to rectify that. What he’d really like to do, in fact, is to visit the old man out in the nursing home in Wicklow – and today, if possible. When else is he going to be able to do it? This may be the last chance he gets for a while.

He’ll have a look at his schedule.

As he scrubs away the anxiety and tension of a long night, it occurs to Bolger that there’s something else he should be relieved about, too – the ease with which he appears to have seen off this recent so-called scandal. The affair part of it was a non-starter – in post-Catholic Ireland no one had the stomach to get into that. And as for the gambling debts, well, they were eventually seen as just a personal-finance issue, nothing that could be spun as improper ‘contributions’ or that involved any obvious conflict of interest. So although the media gorged themselves on the story and wanted more, the opposition parties folded quickly.

He puts the soap back in the dish, turns, closes his eyes and lets the jet of hot water massage the back of his neck.

Besides, as often happens in politics, the story moved on all by itself, in this case mutating over the space of forty-eight hours into a full-blown backbench revolt. The thing is, while the Taoiseach’s spineless performance in the Dáil on Tuesday may not have been enough to trigger the long-anticipated leadership crisis, an imminent leak to the media revealing the source of the original Bolger story almost certainly will be.

He turns off the water, steps out of the shower and puts on his towelling robe.

An official in the Taoiseach’s own department? The irony is too rich.

Bolger looks at himself in the mirror.

So, a plan was hatched.

The idea was that once this new angle on the story got fed to the media – and preferably this morning – senior figures in the party would persuade the Taoiseach to stand down and cede power. To none other than the Minister himself. There’d be no need for a divisive leadership contest.

It was perfect – a bloodless coup.

But then someone decided to turn on the radio.

Bolger picks out a shirt, and as he’s putting it on, his phone rings. He looks at the display. Paula. He puts the phone on his shoulder, cocks his head to one side and starts buttoning up his shirt. ‘Paula, yeah, what is it? I’m tired.’

In the brief moment before she answers, Bolger can picture Paula rolling her eyes and thinking, Jesus, Larry, we’re all tired.

‘Have you heard any of the details of this thing?’

‘What, the shooting?’

‘Shoot-out more like. Bloody OK Corral stuff. And fifty euro says at least one subeditor sticks that in a headline somewhere.’

‘Do they know who’s involved?’ All Bolger heard on the early bulletin was the body count. No names had been released at that stage.

‘Yeah, the main players seem to be Terry Stack and someone else called… er… Martin Fitzgerald.’

Bolger stops, hands poised to do up the top button of his shirt. He looks at himself in the mirror again. These two names… there’s a resonance here, an echo…

‘Larry?’

‘Is that the Martin Fitzgerald who owns High King Security?’

‘I think so,’ Paula says. ‘But they’re playing up a paramilitary angle. I don’t know, ex-INLA, some crap like that. Two scumbag smack dealers blowing each other away obviously isn’t sexy enough for them.’

Bolger doesn’t quite know what to make of this.

‘But I’ll tell you one thing,’ Paula goes on, ‘we were right to hold off, because it’s going to be wall to wall today, the law-and-order agenda for breakfast, dinner and bloody tea.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Bolger says, doing up the button. ‘But anyway, listen.’ He slips the phone from his shoulder into his hand. ‘This little delay actually suits me. Because there’s something I need to do this afternoon.’

‘Oh.’ Suspicious. ‘What’s that?’

He tells her about how he intends going out to the nursing home in Wicklow to see his father. But as he speaks – still staring at himself in the mirror – his unease deepens.

What’s he expecting to find when he gets out there?

He doesn’t know. Maybe nothing. Clarification. If he’s lucky.

Answers.

Though how much he thinks the old man will be able to tell him – in fact how much he thinks the old man will be able to remember, and about anything – well, that’s another matter altogether.

When Gina wakes up, it takes her a moment to remember where she is. Leaning on one elbow, she raises herself up a little in the bed and looks around.

She’s in the spare room of Sophie’s new apartment.

But…

Oh God. Of course.

She throws the duvet back and swings her legs out.

After what happened last night, she can’t believe she actually slept.

Sitting on the edge of the bed now, she runs her hands through her hair and tries to pull everything into focus. But there’s really only one point to consider here, one central fact: no Mark Griffin. The warehouse, Fitz, Terry Stack, those other guys who came, the awful carnage that ensued…

But where the hell was Mark through all of it?

Where is he now? She’s got to -

Then a stab of panic hits her as she registers the morning sunlight and realises that hours must have passed – six, seven, eight hours – since she left the warehouse.

She looks at her watch.

A quarter past nine.

Jesus, how did she sleep so -

What did Sophie give her?

She stands up but feels weak, her movements sluggish, her limbs heavy.

She sits back on the bed and closes her eyes.

Once beyond the roundabout last night she hailed a cab and came directly out here – because there was no way she could face going back to her own place. But she needed somewhere to regroup, to think, to work out a strategy. Once inside the door, though, she made it plain that she didn’t want to answer any questions, and Soph went along with that. She offered Gina a drink, which Gina didn’t want, and then offered her a Valium.

Gina opens her eyes.

Maybe that explains why she’s still so groggy, why she was able to sleep. She just took what Sophie gave her and didn’t check its strength. But it’s obvious now that it wasn’t a tranquilliser; it was a bloody sleeping pill.

She looks down. She’s still in her clothes, black jeans and a sweater. Her leather jacket is on the end of the bed, folded neatly.

She looks around.

Where are her shoes?

She has to get out of here. She has to find out where Mark is and what happened to him.

She stands up and walks over to the door in her bare feet. The door opens directly onto the living room, and there, sitting on a leather couch, dressed for work, looking up at her a little nervously, is Sophie.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ Gina says back, and shrugs. ‘What the hell was that you gave me, Soph? It knocked me out.’

‘You asked for something. Do you know how upset you were when you got here last night? You were…’

Gina shakes her head. ‘I don’t really remember, not in any detail, but look, I… I have to get out of here. I’ve got -’

‘You were bordering on hysterical,’ Sophie says, leaning forward on the couch. ‘But you wouldn’t talk to me, you -’

‘I’m sorry, Soph, I didn’t mean to put you through that. You were the only pers-’

‘I didn’t mind, you idiot. But I was worried. I figured that maybe you’d…’ She stops here and stands up. ‘Look Gina,’ she says, as though about to make a formal announcement. ‘There was something on the news this morning.’

Gina looks at her. Oh God. Of course there was. Media coverage. It had never occurred to her.

But then something else occurs to her, and she looks over at the main door of the apartment. What kind of a trail did she leave behind her last night?

She swallows.

Should she even be here? Is it safe for Sophie? Is it safe -

‘Gina.’

She looks back. ‘What?’

‘On the news. There’s been this, I don’t know, gangland thing. In a warehouse somewhere. Three people are dead, including that guy who was at your nephew’s funeral.’

Gina stares at her, nods. ‘Three? You sure?’

‘Yeah.’

The hoodie must have made it.

‘Anything else?’

‘Anything else? Christ, Gina, didn’t you hear what I just said?’

‘Yeah, Soph, I heard. Now what else was there?’

‘OK, OK. Let me think.’ She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. ‘They also said there are two guys in intensive care.’

Gina looks at her.

‘Two?’

‘Yeah, one of them was stabbed and the other one was shot. I can’t believe I’m even saying this. The one who was shot they found in an alleyway or something. Nearby.’

Mark.

It has to be.

Gina feels simultaneously sick and relieved.

Then Sophie takes a step towards her and says, ‘You were there, weren’t you, last night?’

Gina doesn’t answer.

‘I mean, come on,’ Sophie continues. ‘The time you got here, the state you were in.’ She pauses. ‘The blood on your shoes.’

Gina’s eyes widen.

Sophie points. ‘They’re over there on the kitchen floor. I cleaned them.’

Gina nods, and then sits on the edge of the sofa. After a long silence, she says, ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

‘Don’t worry. I called in sick.’

Sophie takes off her jacket and places it over the back of a chair. She turns the chair to face the sofa and sits in it. ‘I didn’t like leaving, and then when I stuck my head in the door to check up on you before heading out, I noticed your shoes.’ She shrugs. ‘And well, on top of what I’d just heard on the radio…’

Gina nods again. Then she does her best to explain. She goes through it in detail, and in sequence – from her earliest suspicions on that awful Tuesday morning to everything she endured, and witnessed, last night.

Sophie is pale by the end of it.

‘Holy God, Gina. Jesus Christ. You’ve got to go to the Guards.’

‘I can’t. I -’

‘But you’re still -’

‘Look, I brought Terry Stack in on it, I called him, I encouraged him to…to interrogate that guy. I mean, listen to me.’

Sophie leans forward. ‘But Gina, you’re still… it sounds to me like you’re still in danger.’

‘Yeah. I suppose I am.’ She shrugs. ‘Yeah. But listen… do you have any coffee?’

Sophie nods. She gets up at once, heads over to the kitchen and with all the focus of a staff nurse preparing to dress a wound or give an insulin injection, she gets busy filling the kettle and then her cafetière.

Gina stands up and walks back over to the spare room. She sits on the end of the bed and picks up her jacket. She goes through the pockets and extracts whatever doesn’t belong to her. Mark Griffin’s mobile. Fitz’s mobile. Fitz’s gun. The three photographs.

She spreads all of these items out on the bed.

She glides a hand over the photos.

I finally saw them today. For the first time. Saw what they looked like. My family. I’m looking at them now. Lucy was so small, she -

Gina turns away, and stares at the floor.

Jesus. Poor Mark. Seeing these… these faces, after so many years, and then…

Then whatever happened to him. Getting shot…

Though she wonders now when exactly that happened, and where. Because something occurs to her. Mark sounded very weird on the phone. Out of it. Delirious almost. So could he actually have been shot before they spoke?

Then something else occurs to her. Sophie is right. Gina herself is still in danger. This isn’t going to stop just because Fitz is no longer around. And if she keeps on asking questions the way she has been, she’s probably going to wind up seriously injured – or even dead – herself.

Unless she gets some real answers first.

‘I’m stunned.’

Gina looks up. Sophie is leaning against the doorjamb with her arms folded.

‘Sorry?’

Sophie exhales. ‘I’m in total shock, Gina. At all of this.’

‘I know. I know. Me too.’

Gina tugs the jacket towards her to cover the items on the bed.

Out in the kitchen, the kettle whistles to a boil and then clicks off. Sophie steps away from the door. ‘So,’ she says over her shoulder as she moves off, ‘what are you going to do?’

Gina flips the jacket back. She looks down at the charcoal-grey gun lying on the bed. It is dense and angular, and radiates an undeniable seriousness. Next to it, the mobile phones, metallic and shiny, look like trinkets. She picks the gun up, holds it in her hand, feels it.

‘I don’t know,’ she says, her voice a notch or two louder, ‘but I think I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing all along.’

‘What’s that?’

Closing one eye, Gina raises the gun and points it at the wall. ‘Asking questions.’

2

Norton feels a little dizzy as he steps out of the elevator onto the third floor. His secretary greets him with a list of calls he absolutely must return, but when he gets to his desk the first call he makes is to Dr Walsh’s surgery.

But Dr Walsh won’t talk to him.

Prick.

Norton then looks at the list of names his secretary gave him, stares at it. He has no interest in returning any of these calls. He looks at his watch. Twenty minutes to go before the Amcan meeting. He’s finding it hard to drum up any interest in that either. What he really wants to do is to reach into his pocket and take out his pills. He wants that sensation, that little ritual, with its attendant promise of…

But he’s done it already, that’s the problem – less than an hour ago he took three of the bloody things. He can feel them in his system all right, just not in the way he’s used to. It’s very frustrating.

No less frustrating was his attempt to find Gina Rafferty. He cruised along by the quays four times, then parked and walked around for fifteen minutes. But he didn’t see any sign of her.

The Amcan meeting passes in a blur. He pretty much agrees to everything on the agenda and proposes that the contract be signed tomorrow. He can see that the chief negotiator, a fortyish RFK wannabe from Boston, is a little perplexed – but Norton doesn’t care. Besides, this is what he wants, and where’s the point in breaking their balls just for the sake of it? With Amcan on board, and the name of the building officially changed to reflect this, the project’s success isn’t exactly guaranteed, but it stands a pretty good chance. And all those people who predicted that thirty or forty floors would remain unoccupied, thus making a mockery of Norton’s ambitions… well, they can now go and fuck themselves.

Soon after the meeting concludes, Norton gets a call from Ray Sullivan in Vienna. He’ll be back in Dublin tomorrow for the signing.

Norton welcomes the news.

‘… and what’s more, my friend,’ Sullivan goes on, ‘get a load of this. Mr V. is in London at the moment, so he’s going to fly over, too. All informal, of course, and strictly private. He’d just like to have a look around. Do the tour.’

When he hears this, Norton bucks up a little in spite of himself. James Vaughan? In person? Of course he’ll keep it informal and strictly private – though that won’t stop him from making damn sure the right people hear about it all the same…

Norton savours the moment. But it doesn’t take long for the excitement to abate. Because where the bloody hell, it occurs to him, is Gina Rafferty? Running scared? Waiting in the long grass? He tunes in to Newstalk at 12.30 and listens to the headlines. There are no developments.

Then, as he’s considering his options, a courier arrives with a package from High King Security. Norton rips open the envelope and empties its contents onto his desk.

He can only imagine the panic they’re in over there, but he’s glad they decided not to destroy these documents, because within less than a minute he has in front of him Gina Rafferty’s full address and telephone number.

He’s still not sure what to do, though.

He thinks calling her up might be the wrong move. It might frighten her into making a wrong move. He’ll go down by the quays again later, go to her building, confront her in person, and find out what he can.

He wishes now that he hadn’t been so bloody self-controlled that day up on the forty-eighth floor of Richmond Plaza. He could easily have got away with it, spun some story. She was upset, I suppose, about her brother – depressed you might even say. Anyway, I got alarmed and stepped forward… I tried to grab her, but…

It strikes him as extraordinary now that if he had, all of this could have been avoided.

At one o’clock he switches on the radio again – to a breaking news story. An exclusive RTÉ report is claiming that the source last Wednesday for the original leak to the media about Larry Bolger’s private life was someone in the Taoiseach’s office. Hardly an exciting development next to the multiple killings in Cherryvale, but to any self-respecting news junkie the story’s significance is unmissable.

Norton reaches for the phone and tries Bolger’s mobile, but it goes straight into voicemail. He tries the Department but is told the Minister is unavailable. Then he tries a number he has for Paula Duff.

‘Mr Norton.’

‘Paula, how are you? I’m trying to reach Larry. Do you know where he is?’

She sighs loudly. ‘Oh, don’t ask. He’s gone AWOL for the afternoon.’

‘What do you mean? I thought with all this -’

‘I know, I know, tell me about it. We were trying to keep the story on hold until tomorrow but somehow it got out. A bloody leaked leak about a leak, can you believe it? Anyway, Larry chooses this afternoon, God knows why, to go off and bond with his old man.’ She pauses. ‘Out in Wicklow somewhere.’

‘He’s going out to the nursing home?’

‘Yeah. I suppose that’s it. I don’t really -’

‘Why? What did he say?’

‘He didn’t say anything, Mr Norton.’ She pauses. ‘But for the last few days he’s been in the weirdest mood. I don’t know if it’s -’

Norton cuts her off. ‘Soon as you hear from him, get him to call me, would you?’

‘Of course.’

He puts the phone down, slowly, onto his desk.

He leans back and takes a couple of deep, calming breaths.

After coffee and a shower, Gina phones BCM. She talks to the receptionist for a few minutes, mainly about Noel, and then asks if she can get a number for Dermot Flynn’s widow.

‘Of course, Gina, no problem. I have it here somewhere.’

‘Thanks. What’s her name?’

‘Claire. She’s lovely. The poor thing. The removal is tomorrow, by the way.’

‘Right.’

‘Here it is. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the call.’

‘Yeah.’

But Gina waits a while before actually making the call. She and Sophie sit together and drink more coffee. They talk things through but end up going around in circles – so when Gina picks up the phone again it’s nearly eleven o’clock. As the phone rings, she gazes out the window. The day is starting to cloud over.

‘Hello?’

‘Claire? Hi. My name is Gina Rafferty. Er… my brother and your husband both worked -’

‘Yes, I know,’ Claire interrupts. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’

‘Gina, did you say?’

‘Yes. I hope I’m not… intruding.’

‘No. Well.’ She clears her throat. ‘What is it? What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like to meet up with you, if that’s possible. Soon. I need to ask you something. It’s important. I realise this is not -’

‘Ask me what?’

Gina closes her eyes. ‘I know this is going to sound pretty blunt, but I don’t believe my brother’s death was an accident, and I’m wondering if you have reason to believe… anything similar. About your husband’s death I mean.’ She opens her eyes, stares at the floor, waits.

Ten seconds pass, maybe fifteen – it’s hard to tell. Then Claire Flynn releases a slow, whispered ‘Jesus Christ.’

Gina waits for more. In vain. Eventually, she says, ‘Claire?’

‘Hhmm.’

‘Can we meet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now?’ Another long pause. ‘Later today maybe?’

‘OK. This afternoon. I have to, er…’

‘That’s fine. Whatever.’

‘Three thirty, four? Here?’

‘Yeah. The -’

‘Forty-seven Ashleaf Drive. Sandymount.’

Gina is about to say something else, but Claire has already hung up.

At midday Gina goes out to get an early edition Evening Herald. On her way back to the apartment, she makes a detour into Blackrock Park, where she sits at a bench by the pond and reads through the paper’s coverage. The only thing of significance they can add to what she’s already heard on the radio is the fact that the second man in intensive care, whose name they’re still not releasing, is the owner of the warehouse where the incident took place.

Which amounts – as far as Gina is concerned – to a confirmation of his identity.

His condition, on the other hand, remains critical – though what exactly that means Gina isn’t sure at all. But shouldn’t she be doing something to find out? At the very least contacting the hospital to make enquiries? Probably. But something is holding her back, a reluctance, an awful feeling of guilt.

She gazes out over the pond.

If she hadn’t dragged Mark into this, he most likely wouldn’t be in the ICU right now, fighting for his life. So chances are the last person he’s going to want to hear from is her.

And who could blame him?

Gina puts the newspaper away.

After a while, to distract herself, she takes out the two mobile phones. She examines them. There are three numbers for Paddy Norton on Fitz’s phone, and she finds her own number on Mark Griffin’s. But nothing else she comes across means anything to her. Then, as she’s leaving the park a few minutes later, she drops Fitz’s phone discreetly into the pond. Because these things can be detected, can’t they? And located?

As for the other one, she decides… well, if there’s any chance at all, she’d like to return it in person.

Back at the apartment, and at Sophie’s insistence, Gina finally gets around to ingesting something other than black coffee. She has half an orange, followed by a poached egg and a slice of toast.

She turns on the radio and listens to the one o’clock news – and as she does so can’t help feeling increasingly dislocated from reality. Because even though the bulletin presents the two main stories separately, she knows that in some crucial way they are connected. Later on, heading in towards Sandymount on the DART, it occurs to her how like a classic symptom of clinical paranoia this is – seeing a pattern that no one else is seeing, reinterpreting the news, twisting it so it conforms to some personal context or scheme of grievances.

But she doesn’t care anymore, not after last night. She knows what she knows. And besides, she’s not alone. Claire Flynn, the woman she’s about to visit, seems to know something, too.

As they pull into the driveway leading up to the Glenalba Nursing Home, Bolger realises that he hasn’t been out here for over three years. He has seen the old man in that time, of course – at his sister Una’s house. She lives in Bray and takes him for Christmas and birthdays and whatnot. Larry lives in Deansgrange, but with the extra distance, and the old man’s condition… well, it never made much sense to do it any other way.

Besides, he and the old man have never really got on. Larry was always second best, and he was certainly the second choice when it came to a career in politics. After Frank died, the old man pushed Larry hard, schooled him, moulded him, and even though Larry did well, very well, there was always a tension between them. Larry resented how he was being manipulated, and the old man could never really forgive Larry for not being Frank. But by the time Larry made it to the cabinet, the old man’s influence in the party had long since waned, as had his interest – even to the extent that Larry felt he was barely showing up on the old man’s radar screen anymore.

And Bolger can’t help resenting that. Which he knows is absurd, because apart from anything else, the old man is in the clutches of some form of dementia these days, not quite Alzheimer’s, but not quite anything else they seem willing to name either. He floats in and out of focus. One minute he’s the acerbic old bollocks he’s always been, cutting you down to size, and the next he’s slumped in a chair and staring vacantly at the wall, or worse, at you – decades of the unspoken, and the unthinkable, suspended terrifyingly in mid-air between you.

When Bolger gets out of the car he is greeted by the director of the home, Mrs Curran, a severe matronly type in her mid-fifties. They exchange a few words on the steps. When they go inside, the first thing that hits Bolger is the smell: a combination of permanently on heating, cooking odours, carpets and – there’s no other way of saying it – old people.

Mrs Curran leads him down a corridor to the lounge. This is a large room with perhaps a dozen sofas and armchairs spread about. There is a fireplace, a TV mounted on a high shelf and a sectioned-off area with four card tables in it.

Mrs Curran indicates an armchair on the far side of the room.

The old man is sitting alone, facing a window that looks out onto a rolling lawn and the nearby hills.

Having engaged in small talk up to this point, Mrs Curran lobs a curve ball at Bolger. ‘I should warn you… Liam is in a very, shall we say, isolated place of late. He’s fine really, and seems quite tranquil in fact, but he has very much retreated into himself.’

Bolger acknowledges this with a silent grimace.

He makes his way through the maze of sofas, half of which are occupied. He greets people as he passes, but is unsure if anyone is noticing him – and not who he is, but at all. When he gets to the window, his father looks up and nods a hello, as though they’d last seen each other half an hour ago.

Liam Bolger is in his late seventies and suddenly looks it. As always he’s wearing a suit and tie, but today this old, familiar suit looks too big for him. He seems small in it, shrunken, even since the last time they actually did see each other, which was what… about two or three months ago? At Una’s. A birthday?

Bolger pulls an armchair over and angles it so that he’s half facing the old man and half facing the view. He sits down.

‘How are you, Dad?’

There is no reply.

Bolger glances out the window. It’s an oppressive afternoon, dull and overcast. The autumnal view is lovely, but it needs a few shafts of sunlight to animate it. And that’s not going to happen today.

‘I spoke to Una last week,’ he says, and immediately feels stupid for saying this, as though speaking to his sister were an actual piece of news.

It’s not even true.

The old man turns to him and their eyes meet.

In the next couple of seconds, Bolger feels a rapid succession of things: he feels accused, rebuked, ridiculed even. He wants to say, ‘What?’

‘They’re in the cupboard,’ the old man whispers.

Bolger leans forward, as though he’s been thrown a lifeline, something he can work with.

‘The cupboard? What’s in the cupboard, Dad?’

The old man’s watery eyes widen, revealing crimson rims. He doesn’t look tranquil at all. He looks terrified.

‘That’d be telling you.’ He shakes his head. ‘Do you think I’m a fool? That’s what they want.’

Bolger swallows. He’s lost here. He says nothing. He studies the old man’s face and sees flickers of himself, flickers of Frank. He thinks of the questions he came out here to ask… and all of a sudden asking them seems about as plausible as asking a two-year-old to explain string theory.

But he decides to ask them anyway, to throw a curve ball of his own. Maybe it’s a brutal thing to do, but he figures he might be able to shock the old man up onto some higher level of awareness.

‘Dad,’ he says, hunching forward, ‘I want to ask you something. The night… the night Frank died, was he responsible for what happened? Did he cause the accident?’

There.

He remains hunched forward, tense, waiting for a response.

The old man stares at him.

Bolger feels strangely liberated. They’ve never talked about this before. In fact, all they’ve ever talked about over the years is constituency stuff, or the North, or Gaelic football.

But as the seconds tick past, Bolger begins to suspect that nothing is going to happen here, that the grenade words Frank and accident might still be lying on the floor of his father’s mind, undetonated.

‘Dad?’

‘They’re in the cupboard, you eejit. I told you.’

Bolger sighs. He leans back in the armchair, resigned, impatient.

‘What are, Dad?’

The old man bends forward.

‘The paratroopers.’

The word is delivered in a loud whisper, and with such urgency and desperation that Bolger is alarmed. But what can he do?

After another twenty minutes or so, most of which passes in silence, he stands up. He says goodbye, trying hard to make leaving like this seem normal. He avoids eye contact with anyone as he crosses the lounge area.

Walking back to reception, along the corridor, he is upset and distracted, and has to make a huge effort to compose himself when he hears someone calling out his name.

‘Hello Gina, come in.’

Claire Flynn holds the door open and Gina steps into a narrow hallway. The two women proceed through a door on the left into the living room. Claire takes Gina’s jacket, invites her to sit down, offers her something to drink – coffee, tea. It’s all very formal and awkward. Gina can hear voices from another part of the house – young voices. The girls?

‘I’ve been drinking coffee all day,’ Gina says, ‘so maybe just a glass of water?’

‘Fine.’

Claire retreats. Gina sits down in an armchair and looks around. It’s an attractive room, with wooden floors, an old-fashioned fireplace, a coffee table and a very comfortable three-piece leather suite. It’s also very much a family room. There are a couple of beanbags, bookshelves in an alcove and a home cinema system in the corner. From what she can see the DVD collection is dominated by Disney and Pixar titles.

There are double doors leading to another room, but these are closed.

Claire returns carrying a glass of water in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. Gina reaches up and takes her water. Claire steps backwards and sits on the sofa, nestling in at one end, resting her mug on the edge.

‘So,’ she says.

Gina nods and half smiles. She takes a sip of water from her glass. This is the first chance she’s had to focus, to get a proper look at Claire Flynn, who’s probably about the same age as Gina is, but seems slightly older. Is this because of that extra little touch of seriousness and maturity that comes – Gina imagines – from being a married woman and a mother? And now a widow? Maybe. She’s a redhead in any case, pale, with freckles and green eyes. It’s a very particular look – and Gina’s prepared to bet that if she gets to see either of the daughters, it’s a look she’ll see replicated. Dermot Flynn, as she remembers – a little uncomfortably now – was fairly nondescript-looking, featureless.

‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ she says.

‘I didn’t have a choice, really. After what you said.’

Gina nods. ‘I’m sorry about your husband. You have my sympathies.’

This is something she hates saying, and hates hearing, but it’s a formula and a necessary hurdle to get over.

‘Thank you.’

‘How are your girls?’

‘OK. They don’t really understand yet. I’m trying to keep things as normal as possible for them, at least until the removal tomorrow. And then the funeral.’ She shakes her head. ‘After that, I don’t know. It’s going to be hard.’

‘Of course.’

There is an awkward pause.

Claire says, ‘I’m sorry about your brother.’

Gina looks into her glass. ‘Thanks. I haven’t come to terms with it yet. I haven’t even started. The thing is, since it happened I’ve been in the grip of this awful suspicion I mentioned to you on the phone. Though it’s more than a suspicion now, a lot more, which is why I wanted to talk to you.’ She looks up. ‘But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me try and explain.’

Claire nods. She takes her mug of tea, wraps her hands around it, and holds it in front of her.

Gina unconsciously does the same thing with her glass of water, then notices and shifts position again.

She starts talking.

It’s an edited version of what she told Sophie, with a slight change of emphasis. She leaves out Mark Griffin and Paddy Norton. She leaves out most of last night. She concentrates on Terry Stack, on the two Noels, on Fitz, on BCM – the essentials, context.

‘So look, Claire,’ she says, finishing up. ‘I don’t know. If you have any grounds for suspicion, any grounds at all, it should be possible to get to the bottom of this.’

Claire stretches forward and puts her mug, untouched, onto the coffee table. As she’s leaning back, tears come into her eyes. She makes a sound, a sort of primal whimper, and all of a sudden she’s crying.

Gina watches. She feels awful, but at the same time knows there’s nothing she can do. She demonstrates her understanding, in fact, precisely by doing nothing – by not moving, by not resorting to the false comfort of easy words. The impulse to join in, to cry herself, is immense, but she resists. Instead, she drinks the water in her glass, finishes it in one go, and then stretches forward to put the empty glass onto the coffee table.

Eventually, the tears subside. Claire extracts a tissue from the sleeve of her sweater and blows her nose. When she has finished, she looks at Gina.

‘What you’re saying is… it’s horrible.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, does stuff like this really go on?’ There’s still a tremor in her voice and she’s doing her best to suppress it.

‘Because I’m as capable of being cynical as the next person, I really am, but I mean… Christ.’

Gina shrugs, as if to say I know, me too.

‘But Claire,’ she then says, leaning slightly forward, nowhere left to go with this. ‘Your husband’s death? Is there anything that makes you think it wasn’t an accident?’

‘There is now,’ Claire says at once. ‘Absolutely.’ Her eyes widen. ‘In the context of what you’ve just told me. I mean, I just thought I was… well, I didn’t know what I thought. But I’ve kept it to myself. I haven’t told anyone.’

‘Haven’t told anyone what?’

‘In the two weeks before the accident, before the… the…’ – she waves it away – ‘before he died, Dermot was not himself, he was acting weird, he was hyper, he was distant, he was evasive, I even thought he was… I even thought he was’ – the second time she utters the phrase, her voice cracks slightly – ‘having an affair. Which was ridiculous.’ She emits a quick, mirthless laugh to show just how ridiculous. ‘I loved Dermot, Gina, but he wasn’t the type. Women scared him. He wouldn’t have known where to begin. But anyway, looking back, I think he was freaked out about something, and that breaks my heart. That I couldn’t help him. That he couldn’t tell me, because we told each other everything -’

‘Freaked out about what?’ Gina says, jumping in here, trying to pre-empt the next surge of emotion.

‘I don’t know. Jesus. If I knew. But -’

‘Yeah?’

‘The other weird thing, and I’m only connecting it up now, is that there was some…’ – she seems barely able to say the word – ‘… cash. Hidden in a box at the bottom of the wardrobe. Ninety-something thousand euro.’ She pauses. ‘I found it yesterday. I also found some jewellery, earrings and a gold chain. Still with the receipt. Worth over two grand.’

They leave that hanging. Gina tries to square it up in her mind with everything she knows.

But can’t.

‘What about the way he died,’ she then says, ‘the actual… the…’

‘Again, that’s weird,’ Claire says. ‘On the face of it he was crossing the road and was run over. But I’m sorry. What was he doing there in the first place? In that laneway? It’s not a route he would ever take. Coming out onto Bristol Terrace? On his way home? It makes no sense.’

‘Any witnesses?’

‘No. Just the driver. Who said Dermot was running.’ She pauses. ‘But why would he be running? He never had occasion to run. He wasn’t the running type.’

‘What about work? BCM? Did he mention anything unusual going on there?’

‘No. He didn’t talk that much about work. It was very technical what he did, so it wasn’t stuff we chatted about. But still…’

‘What?’

‘In the last month or so he seemed to be doing a lot of extra work. And not at the office. At home.’ She points at the closed double doors. ‘In there.’

She gets up off the sofa, walks over and opens the doors. Gina gets up as well.

‘This was originally a dining room,’ Claire says. ‘But we made it into a study. For Dermot.’

They go in.

The room is small and cluttered. It is lined with books and there are piles of magazines on the floor. There is a desk – an old-fashioned escritoire – above which there is a poster for some kind of design exhibition.

Lying on the desk is a laptop.

Gina stares at it. ‘That,’ she says to Claire, pointing. ‘His laptop, have you… checked it out?’

Claire gives a quick shake to her head. She is obviously very uncomfortable standing here.

‘In that case,’ Gina says, ‘would it be OK if I took a look?’

Claire turns to her, brow furrowed. ‘Why?’

‘There was something going on at BCM, Claire. It’s what links them, Noel and Dermot. It’s the key to this. I don’t know. Maybe I can find something… a clue, relevant information.’ She shrugs. ‘I know my way around computers. I work in software.’

Claire considers this, and nods. She holds a hand out. ‘Please.’

Then she turns around abruptly and leaves the room.

Gina hesitates. She feels a bit like an intruder, but she goes over to the desk all the same, sits down and opens the laptop.

Bolger looks around.

Coming towards him along the corridor of the nursing home is a man in an electronic wheelchair.

‘I’m right,’ the man says, ‘amn’t I? It’s Larry Bolger?’

Bolger nods, ever the politician, and extends a hand. It’s only at that point that he recognises who this is.

‘Romy?’

The man in the wheelchair shakes Bolger’s hand vigorously and then refuses to let it go. ‘Jesus, Larry,’ he says, smiling. ‘Look at you. Come a long way, what?’

Jerome Mulcahy. Contemporary of the old man’s.

Bolger smiles, too. ‘Yeah’, he says, ‘it’s been a long road, right enough.’

‘I just heard the news,’ Romy says. ‘At lunchtime. It’s looking good for you.’ His smile disappears and is replaced by a frown. ‘But it’s a pity,’ he says, flicking his head in the direction Bolger has just come from, ‘it’s a pity that His Nibs is in no condition to appreciate it.’

‘Indeed.’

Bolger tries, but fails, to retrieve his hand.

‘You see, the thing is,’ Romy goes on, ‘physically, I’m fucked, but I’m grand mentally. He’s the opposite. Cruel, isn’t it?’

‘It is, yeah, but I have to say, that’s quite a grip you have there.’

The smile returns. The hand is released.

‘He can walk and eat and go to the jacks, but he couldn’t tell you his own name. I’m stuck in this yoke, all I can eat is puréed vegetables, and I’ve got a bag attached to my arse. But I could repeat to you conversations I had twenty years ago, and practically fucking verbatim.’

Bolger stares at him. ‘How about twenty-five years ago?’

‘Try me.’

Bolger had forgotten, but this place, the Glenalba, was a sort of unofficial rest home for party members of a certain vintage, mainly the old Talbot Road gang. Quite a few of them had passed through here and he imagines that Romy and his father must be among the last. He remembers the two of them, along with a few others, and his uncles – even from when he was a kid… meetings at the house, summers in Lahinch, Paddy’s Day parades, All Ireland finals. They really were a gang. And later on, when he came back from Boston, they really were, at least at a local level, the party machine, too.

‘Is there somewhere else we can go, Romy?’ Bolger asks, glancing up and down the corridor.

‘Over here,’ Romy says, whirring his wheelchair around and heading for a door to Bolger’s right. ‘This used to be the smoking room. That’s a laugh.’ They enter what looks like a waiting room in a dentist’s surgery. ‘They’ve done nothing with it since the ban. It’s like a shagging mausoleum.’

Bolger looks around. There are a couple of low tables in the middle of the room with empty ashtrays on them. He walks past these and sits down in a hard plastic chair, one of several lined up against the back wall. Romy follows and positions himself directly in front of Bolger. Despite his obvious frailty and limited mobility, this pale, stick insect of a man is restless and full of nervous energy.

‘So,’ he says with a smirk, his eyes like tiny caged animals. ‘What do you want to know, Taoiseach?’

Bolger gives the barest nod of acknowledgement to this, liking the sound of it – at any rate allowing himself for half a second, in the safe confines of this private room, to like the sound of it.

He clears his throat.

‘The night Frank died,’ he then says, jumping right in – and knowing he doesn’t have to say much more than that. ‘Er…’

‘What about it?’

In the pause that follows, Romy’s demeanour changes. Proximity to power, this unexpected blast from the past, the little bit of company – whatever it was that was animating him a moment before is now gone.

Bolger speaks very quietly. ‘I was never really told what happened.’

‘You never asked.’

‘I did, and was told, but I don’t think I was told the truth.’

Romy makes a face. ‘The truth? Would you fuck off, would you?’

‘Romy, you were around at the time. I wasn’t.’ He leans forward. ‘Did Frank cause that accident? Was all that talk about the other fella being drunk just a… just a -’

‘Jesus Christ, are you out of your mind?’

Bolger shakes his head. ‘Romy -’

‘What are you asking me this for? And today of all days? We may not have had spin doctors back in my time, Larry, but even I can tell you that asking a question like that…’

‘I’m asking you, Romy, not some journalist.’ He waves an arm around, indicating the empty room, the empty chairs. ‘I’m not posting this on the bloody Internet. I wanted to ask my father… but it seems…’

Romy studies him for a moment, then says, ‘What difference does it make anyway?’

‘Well, who knows, but maybe there could have -’

‘No, no, Larry, no. It doesn’t make any difference. And let me tell you why. I don’t know what happened, I really don’t, I wasn’t at the actual scene, you’d have to look up the, the what’s it, the toxicology reports for that, but even if Frank was the one who was drunk, it wouldn’t bring anyone back, it wouldn’t change a fucking thing.’

‘I mightn’t have got elected.’

‘There you go.’

‘But would that have been so bad?’

‘Ah, for -’ Romy jerks his head backwards in a gesture of disbelief. ‘I think you’re the one who’s fucking drunk now.’

Bolger takes a deep breath. ‘Listen, I know it broke Dad’s heart when Frank died. I know all his real hopes, his ideals, died with Frank, and that I was only -’

It’s the look on Romy’s face that stops him.

‘What?’

Romy shakes his head. ‘What are you talking about?’

Bolger pauses, unsure of himself now. ‘I thought -’

‘Of course it broke his heart,’ Romy says. ‘Jesus Christ, his son died.’ He hesitates. ‘But the fact of the matter is, Larry… Frank broke your old man’s heart a long time before that…’

After about fifteen minutes, Gina turns the laptop off and closes it. She unplugs its various cables, lifts it up and carries it into the living room. There’s no one there. She goes out to the hallway and there’s no one there either. But she can still hear voices coming from the back of the house. She walks along the hallway to a door, which is ajar, and nudges it open.

Sitting at a long table, huddled over colouring books, are two small… replicas of Claire. They look up. One smiles, the other doesn’t. Claire herself is standing behind them, leaning back against a counter. Standing next to Claire is yet another replica – though this one’s hair is grey rather than red.

‘Hi,’ Gina says, waving at everyone. ‘Claire?’

As Gina retreats into the hallway, she notices the older girl eyeing her suspiciously, and then hears her whispering, ‘That’s my daddy’s computer,’ and the grandmother saying, ‘Ssshh, pet, it’s OK.’

When Claire appears, Gina gets straight into it – both of them standing there in the hallway. She holds up the laptop. ‘Lots of technical stuff, like you said. Papers, drafts of papers, articles. Going way back. But the thing is, I checked out the activity logs and he… he didn’t throw much stuff out, did he? Tended to hang on to -’

‘To everything, emails, letters, magazines, total magpie. You saw the floor there in the study.’

‘Yeah, so, the day after Noel died… Dermot seems to have deleted some stuff.’

‘Oh.’

‘Well, a couple of files anyway. And some emails. Maybe it’s nothing, but… the timing is strange.’

‘Yes.’

Gina hesitates, and then says, ‘Claire, if you let me take this away, I can probably retrieve the stuff he deleted.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

She won’t actually be able to do it herself. She’ll have to get one of the guys in the back room to do it. But that isn’t anything Claire needs to know.

‘It’s what the company I work for does,’ she goes on. ‘And it’s actually pretty straightforward. We have software back at the office, applications that can -’

‘OK. Take it.’

Gina looks at her. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes. If there’s something there… well.’ Her eyes are glistening. ‘We need to find it, don’t we?’

‘Yes. We do.’

Up close like this, Gina can see that Claire is barely keeping it together. She reaches over, places a hand on her arm and gives it a gentle squeeze.

On the DART into town, she phones the office and talks to one of the guys in the back – Steve, her favourite, a lanky, laconic programmer from Cork. She asks him if he could do her a favour. ‘OK,’ he says, a little cagey, ‘I suppose, yeah. What is it?’ Looking out at a sombre, overcast Ringsend and clutching the laptop to her chest, Gina says she’ll see him in twenty minutes and will explain it to him then.

‘How?’ Bolger says, after a long pause. ‘I don’t understand what you mean. Broke his heart how?’

‘Well…’ Romy exhales. ‘You know. It was a long time ago now, and maybe -’

‘No, no, tell me. Explain what you mean.’

Romy shifts his position slightly in the wheelchair, wincing as he does so. The move looks uncomfortable but is clearly a delaying tactic.

Eventually, he says, ‘Our party stands for certain things, right? You embody those things. Frank didn’t. It’s that simple. He started out OK, and he was a natural, he had charm, he appealed to people, but pretty quickly he became an embarrassment to the party. He started shifting his position on things. He took up, what’ll we call them, inconvenient causes. He was using the word environment a lot. Back then that was bordering on the radical. I don’t know what he was reading or who he was talking to, but I can tell you one thing, if he’d survived he wouldn’t have got renominated, to say nothing of getting re-elected. And if he was alive today… well, more than likely he’d be wearing a woolly jumper and canvassing for the bloody Greens.’

Bolger looks past Romy now, to the wall on the far side of the room.

What he’s hearing here flatly contradicts what he has always understood, but he doesn’t dispute what he’s hearing either, not for a second – because there’s something in Romy’s voice, a weary, resigned authority, a convincing absence of the need anymore to lie or dissemble. And in a weird way it even accords with Bolger’s own memory of Frank as a kid. He was a contrary little fucker. He’d twist everything around until it was on his own terms. But he got away with it because he was also a star.

‘Look,’ Romy says, ‘when you came back from the States, right, you were wet behind the ears, you were bloody clueless – and I don’t mind telling you that now, because this time tomorrow you’re going to be the fucking Taoiseach – but you had no idea what’d been going on here, and in fairness you had no time to find out either. Because it was all about moving forward. You were thrown straight into the campaign, knocking on doors, tramping through housing estates in the rain.’ He pauses. ‘That must have been quite a shock to the system after Boston.’

Bolger nods, still not looking Romy in the eye, still not speaking.

‘Anyway,’ Romy goes on, ‘in those last couple of weeks before the accident things were chaotic here. Frank got into a row about the rezoning of a piece of land out beyond the airport. He started making threats, saying he’d expose the voting records of a few of the councillors who were in favour of the rezoning – the implication being, of course, that they were on the take.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘After more than ten years of the planning tribunal up in Dublin Castle I think we all know how that one goes, but back then you simply didn’t talk about it. There was consternation in the party. These were councillors your old man sat with, people he’d known for twenty, thirty years.’

Bolger is white now.

‘And he was mortified. Because there was nothing he could do about it.’ Romy pauses, and sighs. He looks exhausted all of a sudden, his skin virtually translucent, like rice paper. ‘So if you have issues with your old man, as they say nowadays… I think it might be less about anything you ever did or didn’t do, and more about the fact that he has issues with himself.’

Bolger finally turns his head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, this is difficult,’ Romy says, speaking in a whisper now. ‘Liam suffered a lot of guilt because… he adored Frank, you’re right about that, but he also had to live with the knowledge that a small part of him was actually relieved when he heard the news that Frank had died. He was saved any further embarrassments in the party. That’s how he felt. I know it. I was with him. I saw it in his face. And I saw him try to bury it. But he never succeeded. And that tormented him for the rest of his life.’

Bolger gets up out of the chair and walks across the room. He stands motionless, staring at the beige wall, trying to process what he has just heard, trying to steady his nerves, his heartbeat, the ripple of chemical reactions in his brain.

After a few moments, Romy says, ‘Your old man thought the world of you, too, you know. He did. He was just never able to say it. He was probably afraid to. Afraid how it’d sound, to himself. Afraid that putting it into words might be another act of betrayal.’

Bolger exhales loudly and then turns around.

‘My God,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘we all think we know what’s going on, but we haven’t a bloody clue, have we?’

‘Not really, no.’ Romy shifts his wheelchair so that he’s facing Bolger again. ‘Listen, Larry. That all just came spilling out there. I’m sorry. Ten minutes ago I was trying to decide whether I preferred turnips or parsnips. I’m not used to adult company anymore.’

Bolger shakes his head. ‘I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. I’m sorry.’

Romy shrugs.

Bolger then takes a deep breath. He hesitates before speaking. ‘Three other people died that night, Romy.’

‘I know. It was awful. And there was that kid who survived.’

Bolger stares at him, remembering, making the connection. ‘Yes, yes… of course.’

‘There was a whip-around done for him, you know. In the party. Some sort of fund was set up. He was looked after. It was actually your old man who organised it.’

Bolger nods.

After a while, he looks at his watch. ‘Look, I have to go,’ he says, his voice a little shaky. ‘Thanks for talking to me.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Romy says. ‘And good luck.’ There is an awkward pause. ‘Keep the head, won’t you?’

‘I’ll try.’ Bolger walks towards the door, but stops halfway. ‘As a matter of interest,’ he says, still facing the door, ‘that land you mentioned, the land that was up for rezoning?’

‘Yeah?’

‘What happened to it?’

Romy snorts. ‘Well, Taoiseach, what do you think?’

‘Right.’ Bolger turns around. ‘And where’s this you said it was again?’

Romy narrows his eyes. ‘Beyond the airport somewhere. It was one of those old ascendancy piles. On a few hundred acres. It’s probably a bloody golf course now, or an estate.’

Bolger narrows his eyes. ‘Hang on a second,’ he says, staring at Romy. ‘You’re not talking about Dunbrogan House, are you?’

‘Er…yes.’

Bolger immediately sees it on Romy’s face, the merest hint of confusion, a flicker of doubt, as though he’s just given something away but doesn’t quite know what – and the feeling seems to be as unfamiliar to him as it is unwelcome.

Bolger’s pulse quickens.

‘Yes,’ Romy repeats, in a smaller voice now, ‘Dunbrogan House, that was it.’

3

The programmer from Cork is one of those geeky obsessives who can sit at a computer terminal for hours on end and seem to move only the muscles in his eyeballs and fingertips – except for one or two, now and again, in his eyeballs maybe, or his fingertips. It’s a level of concentration that Gina envies. She watches from the other room, through the open doors, and wonders how he doesn’t need to fidget, squirm, stretch, yawn – all things she’s been doing non-stop herself since she sat down here.

She looks around. Everyone else has left, and the place is eerily quiet.

It’s already dark outside.

Gina was a little self-conscious walking into the office with a laptop under her arm, given that she’s effectively been using her bereavement to justify not coming to work, but she didn’t have any choice. She got a bewildered, slightly frosty reception from Siobhan, and was relieved to discover that P.J. was in Belfast for the day. She went straight through to the back and over to Steve’s workstation. When she apologised for taking him away from whatever he was working on, he shrugged and said, ‘Same difference sure’ – the implication no doubt being that it didn’t matter what he was working on since the company was going down the tubes anyway. Which was maybe true, but Gina didn’t want to get into it. She handed him the laptop and explained what she needed. At first he was reluctant; then he started to focus – as she knew he would – and before long he was totally absorbed.

Gina tried to get busy at her own desk, organising work stuff and answering emails, but she couldn’t concentrate and after a while fell into idly monitoring Steve through the open doors.

She looks at her watch now, and something occurs to her.

She reaches back over the chair to one of the pockets of her jacket. She pulls out the three photographs she found in the warehouse and puts them on her desk. She switches on her printer and scans the photos. Then she puts them together in a file and emails the file to her own address as an attachment.

After that, she leans back in the chair and looks over at Steve. ‘So, how’re we doing?’

‘Yeah.’ He doesn’t look up. ‘We’re getting there.’

‘I’ve never seen him like this before,’ Paula says, and chews her lower lip for a second. ‘I think he’s getting cold feet. Or something.’

‘No, he’ll be fine,’ Norton says. ‘He’s probably just tired.’

‘Well, he should get some caffeine into his system then, and plenty of it, because the next couple of hours are going to be crucial.’

Norton has a headache and is finding Paula’s voice grating. They are in the corridor outside Bolger’s offices in Government Buildings. There are two people ahead of them, with three others already inside, camped in the Private Secretary’s office. Behind them, and all along the corridor, little groups are huddled – whispering, texting, shuffling, waiting. Everyone is hoping for five minutes with the Minister.

The atmosphere around Government Buildings this evening – and around Leinster House, and even out on Kildare Street – is electric. Speculation is rife that a major development is imminent.

The Taoiseach is isolated. The numbers stack up. The prize is there for the taking.

So what’s wrong?

Alarm bells rang for Norton when he got the message, through Paula, that Bolger wanted to see him in his office – and this evening, straightaway, A-S-A-fucking-P. Because that isn’t how it works between them. Larry doesn’t summon Norton. Though maybe he’s trying to mark out his new turf, establish a new set of ground rules. Maybe. But Norton doubts it. He suspects it has more to do with this trip Bolger made out to Wicklow earlier.

The door of the Secretary’s office opens and a current of expectancy ripples down the corridor.

Bolger himself appears. His shirtsleeves are rolled up and his tie is loose. He looks frazzled. He points at Paddy and indicates inside with his head. Gritting his teeth, Paddy follows Bolger into the Secretary’s office and then through to the inner sanctum. They pass anxious-looking party officials and civil servants. At the door, Bolger turns. He allows Norton in but puts a hand up to block Paula.

‘Ten minutes,’ he says, not looking at her, and shuts the door.

Bolger’s office is spacious, all mahogany panels and red leather. Norton has been in here only a couple of times – because again, if they have business to do, it tends to be on Norton’s terms, and on Norton’s turf.

‘Jesus,’ Bolger says, pacing up and down in front of his desk, ‘I don’t know if I can handle this. They’re like fucking vultures out there.’

‘Come on,’ Norton says, forcing a smile, ‘you can tell your grandchildren about it someday.’

Bolger ignores this.

The smile drops from Norton’s face. His head is pounding. He’s about to say something when Bolger stops moving and turns to face him. ‘Paddy, I was out in Glenalba this afternoon.’

‘So I gather. How is he?’

‘Shite. Awful. He didn’t know who I was. He’s… he’s gone.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

Norton wasn’t aware that the old man’s condition was as bad as all that, and he shakes his head. At the same time, he’s mildly relieved at the news. It’s one more thing out of the way, one more little dose of closure.

But Bolger doesn’t seem to be finished. He takes a step forward.

‘I ran into someone else, though.’

‘Oh, you did? Who was that?’

‘Romy Mulcahy.’

Norton releases a barely audible groan.

Bolger says, ‘You remember him then?’

‘Yeah. I do. Very much.’ Norton pauses. ‘So. The old bollocks hasn’t kicked it yet?’

‘No. In fact, he’s very much alive.’ Bolger points a finger at the side of his head. ‘Upstairs, anyway. We were raking over some ancient history.’

‘I see.’

Romy Mulcahy and Liam Bolger. That whole crowd. Norton shakes his head again. They were among the first people he ever had dealings with in his business career, and the strange truth of it is, in some ways he’s still dealing with them.

‘He had a couple of interesting things to say, Paddy.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. A couple of very interesting things.’

Bolger lets that hang in the air for a moment. But Norton snaps. He’s had enough.

‘OK, Larry,’ he says, ‘get to the fucking point, would you? I don’t appreciate being dragged in here like this. You’re not the only one who’s busy, so come on, what is it?’

‘It’s Frank,’ Bolger says, getting red in the face now. ‘It’s Dunbrogan House. It’s you.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve been on the phone,’ Bolger says, and points at his desk. ‘I’ve been talking to people, checking some facts. Dunbrogan House and estate, that was the site Frank didn’t think should be rezoned, wasn’t it? It was the site that he kicked up a stink over.’ He pauses. ‘That he became a right pain in the arse over.’ He pauses again. ‘The hundred-and-fifty-acre site that you owned.’

Norton rolls his eyes.

Bolger holds up a finger. ‘No, no, Paddy, not so fast. You bought it off Miriam’s old man for a few thousand quid and then sold it after it was rezoned for a quarter of a fucking million. It was the deal that made your fortune. It set you up, it -’

‘So fucking what?’ Norton roars.

‘It was -’

‘It was perfectly legitimate is what it was. A bloody land deal. I’ve made hundreds of them. What’s so -’

‘Frank dies in a car crash days before a county-council meeting on the issue, a meeting he’s declared he’s going to disrupt? Come on.’

‘Ah, would you fuck off, Larry. Really. You’re losing the run of yourself here.’ Norton’s head is ready to burst.

‘I’m not,’ Bolger says. ‘I’m not.’ He turns and slaps the palm of his hand down on the desk. ‘Something weird went on back then, Paddy, and there’s something weird going on now, too. Because that young fella the other day in Buswell’s Hotel? I know who he was. He was the kid who survived the crash. He was Mark Griffin. He had to be. I thought he was just some journalist looking for a story, but a couple of hours ago -’ he motions back at his desk again, at the phone, ‘I get a call, and do you know what? The Guards have identified that second guy who’s in intensive care out in St Felim’s, from last night, from that thing in Cherryvale. It’s going to be on the news at nine o’clock.’ He pauses to let that sink in. ‘And do you know who it is? They said he’s in a bad way and mightn’t make it, but it’s him, Paddy. Mark Griffin.’ He holds up his hands. ‘Explain that to me.’

Norton stares at Bolger for a long time.

‘What are the Guards saying?’ he says eventually.

Bolger stares back. He hesitates, but then says, ‘That it was his warehouse. That he’s a local businessman. They’re saying it might just be that he was unlucky. In the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘What, like a random victim?’

Bolger nods. ‘That sort of thing.’

‘But no reference to… who he is,to…’

‘No.’

‘OK,’ Norton says, considering this, looking at the floor. ‘And of course why would there be? It was a long time ago? If he dies, who’s going to make the connection, right?’

‘Ah, now hold on, Paddy, hold on… for the love of Christ, what are you saying to me here?’

Norton continues staring at the floor. ‘But even if someone did make the connection,’ he says, almost to himself now, ‘even if some industrious hack dug it up, so what? It’d just be a curious fact, with a nice tabloid ring to it.’ He pauses. ‘But it wouldn’t mean anything, it wouldn’t have any further resonance… unless…’

Norton hears a gentle tap on the door behind him, a creaking sound, and then an obsequious male voice, ‘Er… Minister, excuse me, but -’

‘GET OUT!’

Norton then hears the creaking sound in reverse.

Visibly trembling, Bolger takes a couple of steps backwards and leans on his desk. ‘Unless what?’

‘Calm down, Larry.’

‘Unless what?’

Norton sighs. ‘Unless you keep asking questions about Frank.’

Silence fills the room, spreading out like a toxic vapour, finding every corner.

‘But Paddy,’ Bolger eventually manages to say, leaning forward, pleading, ‘he was my brother.’

Norton winces and raises a hand to his head. Without saying anything, he then walks across the room. He goes in behind Bolger’s desk and starts pulling at the various drawers, opening one after the other and rummaging through them.

Bolger turns, still at the front of the desk, and says, ‘Paddy, what are you doing?’

‘I need something for this headache,’ Norton says, ‘I need…’

He pulls a packet of Nurofen from one of the drawers and holds it up. On a shelf behind him there is a tray with glasses on it and half a dozen bottles of Ballygowan. He opens one of the bottles. He fiddles with the packet of Nurofen and knocks four of the tablets back in one go, followed by a long slug of water. He puts the bottle down and rolls his neck a couple of times. When he is ready, he walks back into the middle of the room, turns and faces Bolger.

‘Right,’ he says, closing his eyes for a moment and then opening them again. ‘You have a simple choice here. You can either pursue this and keep asking questions – what happened that night, was he drunk, was he pushed, blah, blah. You can go down that road, resurrect shit from two and a half decades ago and feed it to the media on a platter.’ He pauses. ‘Or you can go out that door over there and embrace your destiny. You can take power and run this country for five, maybe even ten years. You can change things, make a difference, fix the Health Service, build infrastructure. You can have access to Downing Street, to Brussels, you can sit on the UN Security Council, you can eat dinner at the fucking White House, whatever. But believe me, Larry…’ – he holds up a finger and shakes it – ‘… you can’t do both.’

Bolger stares back at him, deflated. The silence is excruciating and goes on for nearly a minute.

Norton is the one who breaks it.

‘I’m going to leave now,’ he says in a quiet, measured voice.

He turns and heads for the door. ‘By the way,’ he adds, over his shoulder, ‘I’m having lunch tomorrow with James Vaughan. He’s flying in from London. I’m sure you’ll be busy, but maybe you could fit us in?’

He stops at the door and looks around.

Bolger hasn’t moved.

‘Jesus, Larry,’ Norton says. ‘Look at the bloody state of you. Straighten your tie up at least, would you? Christ.’

Shaking his head, he turns back to the door, opens it and leaves.

‘Still with us, yeah?’

Gina hops up from her desk. Only half awake, she was lost, eyes closed, in a Technicolor re-enactment of what had happened the previous night.

At his workstation, Steve is leaning back in his chair, arms outstretched. ‘Got it,’ he says.

This is the jolt that Gina needs. It wakes her up.

‘Excellent,’ she says. ‘You’re a genius.’ She pauses. ‘So what is it?’

‘I’ve no idea. Two PDF files, one long, the other one not so long, and five emails. I’ve copied them and sent them over to you.’ He nods in the direction of her desk.

‘Thanks. I really appreciate this.’

He shrugs. ‘Who do I bill for the time?’

‘Oh God, Steve, look, I know things are -’

‘Gina,’ he says, holding a hand up. ‘Don’t. I was only messing.’ He turns and grabs a jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Buy me a drink sometime.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

After he leaves, Gina makes herself some coffee, turns out most of the lights and sits at her desk again. She is just about to open one of the PDF files when her mobile rings. She picks it up.

New number.

‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘Hello?’

More silence, then, ‘Gina?’

‘Yes.’

A click and it goes dead. She looks at the phone, stares at it for a few moments, as though expecting it to talk up, to explain itself. With an unpleasant churning in her stomach, she then goes to Options and presses Reply. It rings. No one answers. There’s no voicemail. It rings out.

Gina swallows.

She runs a hand through her hair, and sighs.

After a few moments, she turns back to the computer.

So she is alive.

Norton stands in the phone box with his hand on the receiver. He hasn’t been inside one of these things in ten or fifteen years, not since the days when most of the damn things were permanently out of order.

He slides his hand off the receiver and backs out through the glass door.

Anyway, she’s alive. And answering her phone.

He looks around. He’s on the Long Mile Road. When he got back to his car on Baggot Street, the Nurofen were only just kicking in, so he decided he’d drive around for a while and give them a chance to work. Besides, he had no desire to go home. And in any case after about half an hour Paula phoned – on Bolger’s instructions. The choreography had been set in motion. Three senior ministers were in with the Taoiseach at the moment, and assuming he didn’t put up a fight, which no one expected him to do, his office would shortly be releasing a statement announcing his resignation – after which a statement from party HQ would be released. It should all be wrapped up within the hour, Paula said. So was he coming back in? There’d be celebrations. Champagne.

Norton declined. He was relieved to hear the news, but what he couldn’t tell Paula was that nothing would be wrapped up until a separate, and hopefully final, piece of business had been taken care of.

Something that would have to start with a phone call.

It was another fifteen minutes, however, before he could bring himself to make the call, and it was only at the last minute that it struck him how stupid it would be to make it on his mobile.

So he pulled over as soon as he spotted a phone box.

Inside the box, he fumbled for the piece of paper he’d written her number on. He fumbled for coins. Eventually he got through, and when he said her name he tried to disguise his voice. There was no disguising hers, though. He didn’t hear enough to gauge what state of mind she was in, but she was alive, and that was all he needed to know.

As he steps away from the box now, the phone inside it rings. He turns and walks off, the sound receding into the general din of the traffic. His car is parked on the other side of the road. He waits for an opportunity and crosses.

He unlocks his car from ten yards.

She’s alive.

Fuck it.

Bolger can see it in their faces, the merest flicker of it. He wouldn’t call it panic, not yet, but that’s where it’s headed. It’s as if they’ve woken from a dream and are looking around in bewilderment, not quite sure of anything anymore – of who they are, of where they are, of what they’ve done.

For his part, Bolger finds it liberating.

In his office, sitting opposite him, are the Ministers for Finance, Transport and Education. Already being dubbed the Gang of Three, these men are here for a quick strategy powwow before Bolger gives a press conference.

Outside everyone is waiting. The corridors are jammed, there is a media scrum on the steps of Leinster House and RTÉ is on standby to broadcast a news flash.

For his part, the Taoiseach-designate is in no hurry.

In those first few moments after Paddy Norton left his office, Bolger just stood there, immobile, the various implications of what Norton hadn’t said going off inside his head like a series of controlled explosions. And then, as the door opened, unleashing a tidal wave of handlers, advisers, mandarins, functionaries, hangers-on, the awful truth sank in. He actually did have to choose. He couldn’t do both.

Though the decision, in a certain sense, made itself – since it was all pretty clear-cut when you looked at it, morally, ethically, every bloody way. And he came close a couple of times to articulating this – but only in his head, as it turns out, because at no point did he actually say anything, to anyone, about any of it. Instead, he allowed Paula to stand in front of him and straighten his tie. He accepted a sheaf of papers from his private secretary. He nodded when he was told that so-and-so was outside to see him. He put on his jacket. He went behind his desk and poured himself a glass of water. In all of this he had an air about him that was unfamiliar and slightly self-conscious, an air of calmness, of quiet authority. In fact, with each passing second, with each move and gesture he made, he could feel himself morphing into someone different, into someone new.

And what he is beginning to discover now, having just casually lobbed the words cabinet and reshuffle at the three men sitting in front of him, is a little something about who that person might be.

‘Well,’ the Minister for Finance is saying, ‘I don’t know, maybe we should take it one step at a time.’

‘Of course,’ Bolger says. ‘But I’ll definitely be making changes.’

I’ll be.

In the absence of a contest, and once the announcement has been made, the ratification process will be a mere formality, but still – he has to be careful.

‘OK,’ he adds, ‘you’re right, the press conference is important.’ He pauses. ‘But you know it’ll be one of the things they ask about.’

The Minister for Transport is squirming. It’s obvious that he’s dying to know what changes Bolger intends making, but is afraid to push it. The Minister for Education, as usual, is stony-faced, but Bolger can tell he’s furious that the subject has come up so soon.

‘We can’t let the media dictate our agenda,’ the Minister for Finance goes on. ‘And I really -’

‘A cabinet reshuffle is what’s expected,’ Bolger says. ‘It’s what people want, and it’s what they’re going to get. Besides, a reshuffle formalises the honeymoon. Ministers get to throw a few shapes and look good in front of the cameras.’ He shrugs.

‘It’s pretty much win-win all around. We’re happy. Louis Copeland is happy. Everyone is happy.’

It’s amazing how the dynamic in the room has shifted: a few minutes earlier, these four men were fellow conspirators, co-equal plotters, and now they are divided – they’re the kingmakers and he’s the king. And there’s nothing any of them can do about it. It’s the nature of the process.

Bolger stands up and buttons his jacket. ‘Let me just be clear about this. A show of unity is what’s required out there. At the press conference and talking to journalists afterwards. That’s the script and we stick to it. Absolute, unconditional, one hundred per cent.’ He looks across the room, over their heads, at the door. ‘Anyone displays anything less and there’ll be blood on the walls. Tonight.’

Ten minutes later, as he sits at another table, in another room, looking out at the assembled media, waiting for the hail of camera flashes to subside, Bolger realises something. Despite what has happened this evening, despite his impressive command of the situation, he doesn’t feel any sense of triumph or achievement. He doesn’t feel nervous or excited or even pleased. What he does feel, all he feels – as he glances down at his prepared statement, and at his gold cufflinks, and at his soft, manicured politician’s hands – is tired, and empty, and numb.

The bigger of the two PDF files is fifty-four pages long, has no title or table of contents, and from a quick glance looks to be about as incomprehensibly technical as most of the other stuff Gina saw on Flynn’s laptop. She reads a paragraph here and there, but the prose is dense with unfamiliar terminology and her mind quickly glazes over. Throughout the document, too, there are diagrams, charts, figures and equations. Despite the complexity, however, Gina has a general enough idea of what she’s looking at – it seems to be something, a study or report, about some aspect of the structural design of Richmond Plaza. But should this come as any surprise? It’s what Dermot Flynn was working on, after all.

It was his job.

The shorter file is very similar and appears to be no more than a draft version of the longer one.

Discouraged and tired, Gina looks out across the empty, semi-darkened office, at the windows, at the orange wash now coming in from the lights out on Harcourt Street.

Then something occurs to her.

She turns back to the screen.

Claire said that in recent weeks Dermot had been doing a lot of extra work – at home, in his study. Is this what he was working on? If so, she thinks, fine, why not? Except that Richmond Plaza is almost finished. She herself was up on the forty-eighth floor – the top floor. Why at such a late stage in the construction process would he be working on an aspect of the building’s structural design?

It makes no sense.

Unless something was wrong.

Gina feels her insides turning.

This is what Noel was talking about that night. He said it to her: You don’t want to know, believe me… it’s engineering stuff, an unholy bloody mess…

She takes a deep breath and clicks on the first of the emails. It’s from Noel, and was sent on Wednesday, 24 October.

Hi Dermot, Got your message. I’m still looking at your report. I’ll see you when I get back to the office later in the p.m. Please keep this to yourself until we’ve had a chance to discuss fully. N.

Gina immediately clicks on the second message. It’s from Dermot. Two days later.

Noel, Given the nature of the situation, shouldn’t we be doing something, showing this to someone? I’m very anxious. Please let me know what’s happening. Dermot.

The next one is a reply from Noel. Same day.

Dermot, I’ve already shown it to someone – just this morning – so please, bear with me. We can’t afford to let this get out there – not unless we’re 100% certain of our facts. I’ll talk to you later. N.

But let what get out, exactly? It’s clear that Gina has hit paydirt here, and she’s excited, but she’s also frustrated, because she isn’t sure what any of it means.

She clicks on the fourth email. It’s from Dermot. It was sent after the weekend, on the Monday – that Monday.

Noel, I didn’t see you in the office on Friday, or this morning. I’ve left several messages on your voicemail. I can’t help but question the wisdom of – if not yet the motive for - this delay in taking action. And surely the longer we hold off, the harder it’s going to be to explain? Dermot.

Noel’s last email, sent that afternoon, is very different in tone from his others. It is, in effect, a memo.

Dermot, Please be advised that I have scheduled a conference call for 10 a.m. tomorrow morning with Yves Baladur in Paris. The purpose of this call is to make an official presentation of the findings in your report. I have scheduled a further conference call for 2 p.m. with Daniel Lazar. N.R.

Yves Baladur? Gina isn’t sure, but she thinks this is the head of BCM. There’s no doubt in her mind, however, about the second name, Daniel Lazar – he’s the architect who designed Richmond Plaza. She closes her eyes. So. Dermot Flynn gave this report he’d compiled to Noel, and expected him to pass it on, to pass it up. To head office in Paris. To the architect. To someone. Noel dragged his feet on it for a while, made excuses, but then he capitulated.

And that’s what sealed his fate.

Gina opens her eyes.

Because there was someone who didn’t want the report to be seen – the same person, she assumes, who Noel said in his email he’d already shown it to. And it’s pretty obvious to her now who that is. Even though there’s still nothing concrete she can point to, nothing she can adduce, no evidence, no demonstrable link…

But then she looks at the screen again, at that final email, and she sees it.

She didn’t spot this the first time, but she’s definitely seeing it now.

It’s the last field in the message header, right there along with the others, with the sender and the receiver, with the date and the subject line…

Digital, ineradicable.

Cc: Paddy Norton.

He is parked along the quays, not far from her building, close enough to see her coming out or going in.

He looks at his watch.

Maybe he should try phoning her again. But what would he say this time if she answered? He doesn’t want to scare her off.

Outside, it’s cold and blustery, and there’s hardly anyone about, the odd pedestrian maybe, some traffic, but not much. An articulated truck rumbles by.

He switches to another station. There’ll be a news bulletin on in five minutes.

He rubs his chest.

Ten minutes ago, he got out of the car and walked up to the entrance of her building. He found her name and rang the bell. He waited, but there was no answer.

He came back to the car.

He looks around again now. Then he looks at his watch again.

Gina’s brother was that dangerous animal, a man of principle – so Norton wonders what she is like. He knows she’s stubborn and determined, but is she smart? Will she listen to reason?

On reflection, he doesn’t think she will. He’s been turning this over in his mind all day. He knows from what Fitz said that her software company is in financial difficulty and it occurred to him that he could offer to bail her out – he could provide some capital investment, or just give her the money he’d promised to pay Fitz.

But somehow he doesn’t see it.

What if he talks to her tonight and makes her an offer, and she accepts, but then in the morning she changes her mind?

There’s too much happening right now to justify that level of risk.

The news bulletin comes on. The reporting – live from Leinster House – is breathless, almost hysterical. He listens, but any sense of satisfaction or achievement he might have expected to feel is muted. In ‘other news’, it is reported that Gardaí have established the identity of the last victim of last night’s gangland shootout. He is thirty-year-old Dubliner Mark Griffin. Gardaí, however, don’t believe that the local businessman, who is still in a critical condition, has any criminal connections, and they are operating on the assumption that he may simply – and tragically – have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Norton groans.

How is Gina Rafferty going to react when she hears that?

He looks around, checks out the street, ahead and behind. The place is deserted. It would be so perfect if she were to turn up now.

He reaches across to the passenger seat, to where he impatiently tossed the gun when he got back into the car a few minutes earlier.

He picks it up, turns it, studies it, rests it in his lap.

Where the bloody hell is she?

From O’Connell Bridge the taxi makes a right onto Eden Quay.

Gina’s main reason for going back to her apartment is that she needs a change of clothes. Sophie tried to convince her to stay another night at her place, but it seems intolerable to Gina – as well as absurd – that she should be denied access to her own wardrobe.

It’s clear from the anonymous call she received that someone is keeping tabs on her. They have her mobile number, and no doubt have her home address as well. But Gina refuses to be intimidated.

She has Fitz’s gun in her pocket.

The taxi passes under Butt Bridge and along by the Custom House. A moment later, they stop at a traffic light, and the driver says, ‘That’s a blustery one.’

‘Yeah,’ Gina responds, distracted, and then adds, ‘awful night.’

‘Not a bad one for your man Larry Bolger, though.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You didn’t hear? It was on the news there. He’s going to be taking over. A palace coup, they’re calling it.’

Gina is stunned. This was expected, but somehow it doesn’t feel that way. Pressing back against the leather of the car seat, she senses new, subterranean levels of activity in all of this, like little tremors, previously undetected, but now growing stronger.

She puts her hand into her jacket pocket. ‘Listen,’ she says, leaning forward, ‘there wasn’t anything else on the news, was there, about that thing in Cherryvale?’

The taxi driver whistles. ‘Jaysus, that was shocking, wasn’t it?’ A nanosecond before the light turns green, he accelerates. ‘Anyway, they’ve named your man, the one in hospital, the last one. Seems he’s in a bad way. Internal bleeding, organ failure, what have you.’

‘You don’t happen to remember the name, do you?’

Gina is keenly aware of having asked this same question not so long ago.

‘Owhhh,’ the driver says, as though in pain, ‘come here, what was it… Mark something, I think. Yeah, that was it.’

Gina closes her eyes.

‘Apparently, he had nothing to do with it,’ the driver goes on. ‘They said he was just unlucky to be there.’ He laughs. ‘I lost a hundred euros on the gee-gees last weekend. That was unlucky, but I mean your man? A bullet in the back? For fuck’s sake.’

Gina opens her eyes.

The reality of this hits her hard, as does an inescapable corollary: the bullet concerned almost certainly – well, very probably – came from the gun she’s now holding tightly in her hand.

The taxi begins to slow down. ‘So, here on the left somewhere, is it, love, yeah?’

Gina looks around her and out of the window. She sees her building up ahead. As usual at this time of night the place is more or less deserted – a pedestrian or two, a few parked cars, but that’s it.

‘Er… yeah,’ she says, releasing her grip on the gun. ‘But you know what? Keep going. If you don’t mind. Change of plan.’

‘No problem,’ he says, picking up speed again.

They cruise past her building.

‘So,’ the driver says. ‘Where to?’

Gina feels foolish, and even considers getting him to turn around and go back, but what she eventually says is, ‘Take the toll bridge, would you? Thanks. Then head for Blackrock.’

4

The sight of the parsley-flecked potatoes, the poached salmon, the yellowish sauce, it’s all making him a little sick – as is everything else on this large round table in front of him… the silverware, the curlicued edges of the condiment sets and serving tureens, not to mention the wider room’s busy, crimsony, five-star decor…

There is a mildly hallucinatory aspect to everything.

James Vaughan, sitting opposite him, concentratedly guiding his fork towards his mouth, looks like a wizened, hundred-year-old baby. Ray Sullivan, in his shiny grey suit and silver hair, reminds him of the Tin Man.

Norton is exhausted. From lack of sleep, and possibly from not having eaten for… at least since breakfast yesterday, now that he thinks of it.

In fact, did he eat at all yesterday? He can’t remember.

Last night he stayed outside Gina Rafferty’s building until 2 a.m., to no avail, and when he finally got home to bed he couldn’t sleep. Not for ages anyway – though he must have dozed off at some point, because when the alarm clock went off at 6.30 he woke up. From a muddled dream. And with a blinding headache.

He immediately took three Nalprox tablets – his new standard dose.

‘And what about the press,’ Vaughan says, taking a breather from his food. ‘What kind of a ride do you think they’ll give him?’

‘I haven’t looked at the papers today,’ Norton says. ‘But they did their best to crucify him recently, and failed, so I’d say they might just go all out and canonise the man this time.’

‘It’s been quite a turnaround.’

‘Yeah, but Larry’s a survivor. He’s got the human factor as well, vulnerability, people tend to like that. The thing is, he never really lost public support, which I think is crucial.’

Norton is waffling here. He wishes he could just go somewhere and lie down.

‘Ray, old sport,’ Vaughan then says, dabbing his lips with his napkin. ‘Pour me some more wine there, would you?’

Sullivan obliges, and Norton idly watches as the golden liquid passes, glugging loudly, from bottle to glass.

Norton could probably do with some coffee or something, but doesn’t think he’d be able to hold it down.

‘Sure you won’t have something to eat, Paddy?’

‘No, no, I’m fine. Thanks.’

He’s about to pat his stomach and say something moronic like Watching my figure, but he manages to restrain himself.

It’s going to be a long afternoon. After they leave the hotel here, they’re heading down to the site for a quick tour and then Norton and Sullivan will be officially signing the tenancy contract. They’ll hang around the newly named Amcan Building for a while, and then Vaughan and Sullivan want to play some golf, so it’ll be out to the K Club.

Norton is their host for the afternoon, and won’t have time for anything else.

He’s about to ask Vaughan a question when he detects some kind of a commotion behind him.

‘Ahh,’ Vaughan says, raising an arm, ‘here he is, the man of the moment.’

Norton turns around in his seat. Entering the dining room with his entourage, like a Roman emperor, is Larry Bolger. When he gets to the table, he stretches out his arm and shakes hands with Vaughan and Sullivan in turn. He nods at Norton but doesn’t look him in the eye.

A waiter pulls out a chair and Bolger sits down. His entourage – Paula Duff and various others, secretaries, advisers – hover in the background and look busy with their PDAs and mobile phones.

‘It’s great to see you again, James,’ Bolger says. ‘Everything is to your satisfaction, I hope?’

James.

Jesus.

Norton knows for a fact that people call Vaughan either Mr Vaughan or Jimmy. There is no James.

‘Oh, excellent, Taoiseach, excellent. But tell me, how are you?’

‘I’m fine, but let’s not jump the gun. There is a ratification process to be gone through.’

Vaughan waves this away.

Norton leans back in his chair and exhales. He barely listens to the ensuing conversation, but he can tell from the body language that it’s all good-humoured banter – skilful and professional. Norton’s in a foul mood, OK, but he can’t deny that Bolger is carrying himself very well here. He also has to remember that this is what they’ve both been working towards, in one way or another, for many, many years. The thought helps to elevate Norton’s mood a bit, and he even allows himself, fleetingly, to speculate that Gina Rafferty poses no real threat… that she knows nothing of substance, or is too stupid to act on what she does know – or too frightened.

After about ten minutes, Bolger rises, as do Vaughan and Sullivan, and there is another flurry of formal handshakes. The imperial party then sweeps out of the dining room.

Vaughan remains standing. He picks up his napkin, wipes his mouth with it and then throws it back down.

‘OK, fellas,’ he says, ‘let’s get this show on the road.’

They move out of the dining room and into the lobby, where Sullivan stops by a marble pillar to take a call on his mobile. Norton and Vaughan stand and wait. Near the reception desk, by a large potted plant, a burly man in a grey suit and dark glasses is flicking through a brochure or guidebook. Ostensibly. This is Jimmy Vaughan’s bodyguard. The lobby is quite busy. At the reception desk, there are a few obvious stragglers from the media, hovering, trying to pick up crumbs of information in the wake of Bolger’s brief visit.

‘I have to hand it to you, Paddy,’ Vaughan says. ‘You’ve done a good job here. I only wish things were this easy over in London.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Oh.’ Vaughan’s face contorts briefly. ‘Please. Dealing with the Brits? It’s hard work, believe me. Same language, OK, but you still need an interpreter, and I’m not talking differences in vocabulary – elevator, lift, that kind of thing, cell, mobile.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘It’s approach I’m talking about. In this country I feel we understand each other.’

Norton nods in agreement. He can’t help feeling pleased at this, and encouraged. ‘Absolutely,’ he says. ‘Fifty-first state and all that. Now if we could just do something about the weather.’

‘Yeah.’ Vaughan laughs. ‘That’d be something. But you know what? I remember Jack Kennedy once telling me that if you…’

He stops.

‘Paddy?’

Norton is staring across the lobby, the spike in his mood reversing rapidly. Standing at the entrance to the hotel, glancing around, is Gina Rafferty. Behind her, the revolving door is still in motion. Slowly, like a roulette wheel, it comes to rest.

She spots him.

Before he can do anything, she’s on her way over.

As she gets closer, Gina sees that the man beside Paddy Norton is elderly. He is small and slightly stooped. She’d prefer it if Norton were alone, but for the moment this’ll have to do. What she wanted was to take him by surprise, and she can see from the expression on his face that she has accomplished that.

‘My dear,’ Norton says as she arrives, ‘how lovely to see you.’

The smile is clearly forced. It doesn’t make it to his eyes. The elderly man is smiling, too – but his eyes are sparkling.

‘Mr Norton,’ Gina says, not smiling at all, ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Paddy. Please. Call me Paddy.’

She has already decided on a policy. She’s going to remain calm and take this in stages.

‘Paddy,’ she says. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Yes, of course, but -’

‘I need to talk to you now.’

‘Fine, fine. But… how did you track me down?’

‘I’ve just been to Baggot Street. They told me you’d be here.’

‘I see.’

He doesn’t like this.

‘So, er…’

The elderly man, who is standing to Gina’s right, clears his throat. She turns to look at him. He extends a hand in her direction.

‘Jimmy Vaughan,’ he says. ‘Enchanted, I’m sure.’

Gina shakes his hand.

‘Er…’ She’s distracted now, not certain that she’s heard this right. Did he just say enchanted? ‘… Gina Rafferty.’

His hand is soft, like silk.

‘Er… Gina here,’ Norton says, addressing the old man, ‘she’s the sister of our, er…’ – this is an awkward way of phrasing it, and he isn’t comfortable – ‘… er… she’s the sister of our chief structural engineer, Noel Rafferty -’

‘Oh?’

‘- who, who died unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago, in a car accident.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ Vaughan says, turning back to Gina. ‘That’s dreadful. I’m very sorry to hear that. You have my deepest sympathies.’

He’s American.

‘Thank you.’

‘Gina, may I ask how old your brother was?’

‘Yes. He was forty-eight.’

‘Oh,that’s just terrible.’ He shakes his head. ‘You know, I had a brother who died, many years ago now, in Korea actually, but it’s not something you ever really get over, is it, the death of a sibling? I mean in the sense that it affects your identity, it… it redefines you in a way.’ He reaches across and pats her gently on the arm. ‘I hope I haven’t spoken out of turn.’

‘No, not at all,’ Gina says. ‘That’s very perceptive actually.’

She feels slightly snookered here. Who is this old guy? He has a courtly and at the same time quite commanding presence. She needs to refocus.

‘Paddy?’

She turns back to Norton, but he’s looking off to his right. In the next moment, he is joined by someone else, a tall silver-haired man in a grey suit.

‘Paddy,’ this man says, taking Norton by the arm, ‘come here, I need to ask you something…’

‘Er…’ Norton turns back to Gina and Vaughan. ‘I’ll just… er -’

‘Go,’ the old man says, ‘go. Allow me to have the pleasure of this charming young lady’s company for a few minutes.’ He beams at her.

Moving off with the other man, Norton glances over his shoulder. Gina can see that he’s extremely agitated. She isn’t sure what to do and considers just going after him. But then it occurs to her that maybe the reason he’s so agitated – in part, at least – is because he’s had to leave her alone with this old guy.

Gina turns back to Vaughan, who is still beaming at her. ‘Hi,’ she says, and smiles.

‘Hi.’

‘So. Tell me. Who are you?’

‘Who am I? Oh my.’ He breathes in sharply, as though the challenge of answering such a question by close of business today might be beyond him. ‘Well, for starters, I suppose, I’m the chairman of a private-equity firm called the Oberon Capital Group.’

Oberon?

Gina’s heard of it – usually in lists, along with other names such as Carlyle, Halliburton, Bechtel, Chipco. She can see the old man trying to gauge how impressed she is.

‘Wow.’

‘Yes, I have many interests, many lives, you might say. I advise governments. I broker deals.’

She nods along silently.

‘In the early eighties,’ he goes on, gazing into her eyes, ‘I was Deputy Director of the CIA. Before that, among other things, I was Assistant Treasury Secretary under Jack Kennedy.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’

This is bizarre. He is trying to impress her. He must be nearly eighty – though he does have, she has to admit it, a certain charisma.

‘Interesting times they were, I can tell you.’

‘I’m sure.’

There are questions she could ask him about this, but now is hardly the time.

‘So what are you doing here?’ she says. ‘How do you know Paddy?’

‘Oh, well, yes.’ He pokes a finger in her direction, as though he knows she’ll find this interesting. ‘Richmond Plaza. I have a sizeable stake in it…’ – turns out he’s right – ‘… and I’m just here, basically, to have a look.’

‘I see.’

‘We’re heading down there now, actually.’

Gina glances over at Norton, who is standing about thirty feet away, still listening to the man in the grey suit but staring directly at her.

‘I’ve been up it,’ she says, turning back to Vaughan. ‘Only once. But it’s certainly impressive. I know my brother was very proud to have worked on it.’

As she says this her voice cracks a little – which may, at some level, be deliberate. Or not. She can’t really tell. She’s nervous, and confused, but also aware of a certain element of gameplay here.

‘Listen,’ Vaughan says, ‘I don’t know if you’re free, but… would you care to join us?’

She seems to consider this for a moment. But given the circumstances there’s nothing really to consider.

‘Yes, Mr Vaughan. I would. Thank you.’

‘Mr? Oh come now, Gina,’ the old man says, tilting his head in Norton’s direction. ‘If he’s Paddy then I’m Jimmy. I insist.’

‘OK. Jimmy.’

‘Wonderful.’ He smiles again. ‘So, let’s go. There’s a car waiting outside.’

He extends an arm, which Gina takes.

‘Now, young lady,’ he says, ‘you must tell me all about yourself.’

‘Oh sure. Well, where to begin? I ran the State Department under FDR…’

Vaughan laughs at this, and as they start to move towards the exit, Gina glances over at Norton.

‘What’s the matter, Paddy? You’re not listening to me.’

‘I am, Ray, but come on, let’s go.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Sullivan says. ‘In a minute. Now take it easy, will you?’

Norton watches as Vaughan whispers something to his minder and then disappears with Gina through the revolving doors.

The minder walks over, informs Sullivan that Mr Vaughan will meet them at Richmond Dock in twenty minutes.

‘OK, Phil,’ Sullivan says, ‘thanks.’

The minder turns and leaves.

‘Yeah, so, er… it’s two per cent, or two and a half, three tops, but the point is it’s doable.’

‘Whatever, Ray. Can we go now?’

‘Take it easy. We’re going.’

Outside, as they climb into the back of a silver Merc, Sullivan asks about the girl.

‘She’s just… the sister of a… a colleague,’ Norton says. He doesn’t want to get into it.

Though he is going to have to do something here.

Sullivan laughs, and Norton looks at him. ‘What?’

‘Jimmy. He’s fucking incorrigible. Chasing skirt at his age? He can’t resist a pretty face. The man’s had four wives, and who knows how many affairs.’

They’re on Nassau Street.

Norton stares out the window. The other car can’t be too far ahead.

What could they possibly be talking about?

As the Merc glides onto College Green, Norton begins to feel a thumping in his chest and stomach. He’s used to feelings of anxiety, but this is a level – almost of panic – that he’s unfamiliar with.

‘Look, Ray,’ he says, staring straight ahead, unsure what he’s about to say next – and surprised when he hears the words coming out of his mouth – ‘I think she might be dangerous.’

‘Oh, that’s the kind he likes. He comes over all old-school, but believe me, deep down he’s really -’

‘No, no, I mean dangerous, a threat, security-wise. I’m not sure that she’s quite… stable.’ Once he starts he can’t stop. ‘She has a history. She… she’s been sort of, well, more or less stalking me, and making claims, outrageous stuff.’

‘What? Jesus Christ,’ Sullivan says. He pulls out his mobile phone. ‘Is she a psycho? Who the fuck is she?’

Norton explains. He mentions about Noel, and adds that she’s possibly delusional, paranoid, deranged with grief. This is the best he can manage by way of a pre-emptive strike.

Sullivan has the phone up to his ear. ‘Phil? Yeah. Woman you’ve got there in the car with you? Keep an eye on her. When you arrive, don’t let them out of your sight. Stick close by the old man. We’ll be there a few minutes after you.’

He closes the phone.

‘Jesus,Paddy,’ he says. ‘If this bitch pulls anything, I swear I’ll…’ He sighs. ‘Christ. How did you let this happen?’

‘You took me aside,’ Norton says. ‘You distracted me. And anyway, I’m the one she has the problem with, and I don’t think…’

But Sullivan isn’t listening. ‘Hey, driver,’ he’s saying, ‘step on it there, would you?’

They turn onto Custom House Quay.

Norton wonders if this Phil in the car up ahead is armed.

‘… so we’re in this hotel suite, at the Plaza I think, and I’m left standing there waiting. Bobby’s in front of me, shirtsleeves rolled up, on the phone. He’s pacing back and forth. Behind him, at a table, five or six aides are sorting through campaign leaflets. One of them is working a telex machine. TV’s on in the corner.’

Gina nods along, finding this more than a little bizarre. In 1960, her parents had just moved to Dolanstown, part of the city’s new suburban frontier. Noel was still a baby, with no sisters. She herself – his fourth sister – wouldn’t be born for another fifteen years.

‘On the far side of the room,’ Vaughan continues, ‘there’s a closed door. It opens, just slightly, and Jack appears. He lingers in the doorway and straightens his tie. He looks as if he’s still talking to someone in the room he’s just come out of. Then Bobby goes over to him, holding the receiver to his chest, and as they’re speaking the door opens a little further, and who do I catch a glimpse of? Sitting at a vanity table? Looking into the mirror, applying lipstick?’ Vaughan laughs. ‘My goddamned wife is who.’

‘Wow.’

‘My first wife, that is,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Though not for long, of course.’

Gina stares at Vaughan, intrigued, but also wondering if she’s going to get a word in edgeways, and what it will be if she does.

‘Anyway, the penny soon drops and all of a sudden Bobby starts waving his arms about. Then in seconds flat the door is slammed shut and I’m being scuttled out of the room.’ He laughs again. ‘Six months later I’m at the Treasury.’

‘Incredible.’

‘Yeah, I laugh about it now, but at the time… boy.’

Her opportunity comes a couple of moments later when the building looms into view.

‘So,’ she says, pointing ahead, ‘how big a stake?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You said you have a stake in Richmond Plaza. How big is it?’

Vaughan stiffens. She can see that he’s a little taken aback by the directness of this. He turns to look at her, and hesitates, holding her gaze, as though trying to calculate something.

Gina is nervous now, and acutely aware of the two men up front.

But it seems to be OK.

‘Fifteen per cent,’ Vaughan says eventually, still holding her gaze. ‘Of course, we have Amcan, too, as the anchor tenant.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s going to be their European headquarters.’ He pauses. ‘Ray Sullivan? Tall guy back at the hotel? He’s their CEO. Good man.’

‘I see,’ she says again, nodding her head.

‘And I don’t know if you know it,’ Vaughan continues, almost in a whisper now, as though telling her something intimate, ‘but we’re changing the name as well.’

‘Oh?’ she says, matching his whisper. ‘I didn’t know. What to?’

He whisks a hand through the air in front of her, conjures it up. ‘The Amcan Building.’

‘Of course,’ Gina says. ‘The Amcan Building, what else?’

She is suddenly irritated, and unable to hide it.

Vaughan stiffens again. ‘Well, it was a strategic decision -’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt,’ she interrupts him. ‘None at all. But the thing is, Jimmy, what’s happening now? I mean, you’re here, and this Ray Sullivan is here.’

‘So?’

She shrugs. ‘The big guns are in town.’

It’s as if she’s thinking out loud.

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Gina. I wouldn’t exactly -’

‘And everyone’s on their best behaviour. Or supposed to be.’

Vaughan furrows his brow. He’s irritated now, too – she can see it. He’s confused by her tone, and at the same time put out that their flirty little exchange has gone flat.

She needs to be more careful.

What’s to stop Vaughan from having her thrown out of the car before they hook up again with Paddy Norton?

‘I’m just sorry,’ she then says, turning to him, ‘that my brother can’t be here.’

She feels her face going red.

‘Of course, of course.’

It’s funny, Gina thinks, how you can be lying to someone and telling them the truth at the same time.

The car pulls up at Richmond Plaza.

Before the second car – the silver Merc – has come to a complete stop alongside the kerb, Ray Sullivan is reaching over to get the door open.

He climbs out.

Norton waits. From where he is, he can see Gina Rafferty and Jimmy Vaughan standing in the middle of the concourse at the foot of the building. Phil is a few feet behind them. Vaughan is pointing upwards and Gina is nodding. They seem to be having a reasonable, normal sort of conversation. It’s just not obvious what they are saying exactly, what she is saying.

Norton slides across the seat to the open door of the car. He gets out. The driver closes the door behind him.

It’s cold today and quite breezy, but not unpleasantly so. As he stands on the pavement, Norton watches Ray Sullivan hurry over to join the little grouping in the middle of the concourse.

Waiting on the far side of it, at the entranceway to Richmond Plaza, there is a second little grouping – two men and a woman. This is the reception committee he has organised for the visit. It consists of the project manager, Norton’s own director of development and his senior operations manager. They are all wearing yellow hard hats and protective jackets. Over to the left, in front of the wooden hoarding, a few construction workers are standing around watching the scene unfold.

The one incongruous element in all of this, however, the one thing that makes Norton feel like he’s in the middle of an anxiety dream – the middle of a nightmare – is the presence of Gina Rafferty.

He walks to the centre of the concourse, a little unsteadily, almost as though he’s drunk. He doesn’t feel as frantic as he did earlier, which is good. But maybe that’s because he surreptitiously popped another three Nalprox tablets in the car as they were approaching Richmond Dock, and as Sullivan was occupied with his BlackBerry.

‘Ah, Paddy,’ Vaughan says, holding an arm out in a gesture of welcome to Norton. ‘Come along, come along. I was just saying to Gina here… when I was a kid, do you know who my heroes were?’

Norton shakes his head.

‘Not Batman, not Superman, not Buck Rogers, no, no, the labourers who built the Empire State, that’s who, the “sky boys” they were called.’ He waves a hand in mid-air. ‘Those young fellas in overalls, you know, the ones who stood on bare girders a thousand feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan.’

‘That so?’

‘Oh yeah. Man, those guys were incredible.’

Norton nods his head, thinking, How does this old fucker do it? If I had half his energy…

He glances around.

Standing very close to Vaughan now, right next to him, is Ray Sullivan. Phil has moved in a little closer, too.

Gina is standing there, slightly apart from the others, in her leather jacket – exposed, vulnerable.

He tries to catch her attention, but she won’t look him in the eye.

What is she thinking?

‘You see a part of the problem,’ Vaughan is saying, ‘I think, is that people don’t get the romance of it anymore, the romance of the skyscraper.’

‘No?’

‘Not in the States anyway, because we’re jaded, we’ve done it already.’

‘Done what?’ Gina says, her tone hard to gauge.

‘Look,’ Vaughan says, ‘you’ve got the Woolworth Building, the Wrigley Building.’ He checks them off on the fingers of an outstretched hand. ‘Tribune Tower, the Chrysler, the Empire State, on and on, the World Trade, Sears, whatever the next one’s going to be. No one cares anymore. But what’s happening now in Dublin, with this,’ he throws an arm upwards, in a voilà flourish, ‘well,it makes the whole thing exciting again. It’s like a return to those earlier days, it’s like… what is it Fitzgerald calls it? A fresh, green breast of the new world?’

‘Though of course,’ Gina says, ‘in reverse.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Well, it is like the frontier, I suppose, except that this time you’re heading east, back across the ocean.’ She pauses. ‘I just hope for your sake, Jimmy, that you’re not in for too much of a shock.’

Vaughan gives a little shake of his head. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Why don’t you ask our friend Paddy here?’

Norton’s insides turn.

‘Ask him what? I don’t…’

He stops.

There is a long tense silence, broken only by the hum of passing traffic, the sound of a distant pneumatic drill, the intermittent whistling of the wind blowing in now from the Irish Sea.

‘Please, Gina,’ Norton says eventually, ‘for God’s sake, you shouldn’t be out like this -’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re not well, we know that, and -’

‘What?’

‘Your doctor, he’s advised -’

She leans forward. ‘Fuck you.’

‘OK, OK,’ Ray Sullivan says, stepping forward, arm outstretched, ‘enough already. Come on, miss, whoever the hell you are.’

Gina recoils. ‘Get away from me.’

Sullivan stops. ‘Phil?’ he says, quietly, over his shoulder.

‘What’s this?’ Vaughan asks. ‘What’s going on?’

Phil steps forward. Sullivan turns and stands in front of Vaughan, blocking his view.

‘It’s nothing, Jimmy,’ he says. ‘Let me handle it.’

Norton stares at Gina. ‘Don’t make a scene,’ he says. ‘It’s not worth it.’

Phil approaches her. ‘Come on, lady,’ he says, holding out an arm. ‘Let’s go to the car.’

She pulls away again. ‘Don’t you touch me.’

Norton swallows. Sullivan looks around. They’re very exposed here, but -

All very quickly, it happens. Phil lunges for Gina. It’s like a rugby tackle. He goes for her waist. He tries to restrain her by binding her arms together inside his own and then lowering her to the ground. But she manages to get one arm free and to wallop him on the side of the head a couple of times. The extra leverage this gives her causes Phil to lose his balance. Locked together in a wrestle, they turn and fall.

Norton looks on in horror.

Still trying to block Vaughan’s view, Sullivan catches a glimpse, over his shoulder, of what is happening.

‘Paddy,’ he says, ‘Jesus, do something.’

But Norton is paralysed. He watches Phil and Gina struggle on the ground, hears grunting, heavy breathing, is aware, too, on the edge of his vision, of an alarmed stirring – one or two of the construction workers rushing forward, the reception committee in sudden disarray.

Then there is a sharp, loud crack. It is followed by a single, brief yelp of pain. The construction workers pull back, as though reacting to the force of an explosion. The two bodies on the ground prise apart. Phil rolls sideways, remaining on the ground, and clutches the lower part of his left leg. Gina rolls the other way, but faster, with more purpose, and rises to her feet. She takes a few steps backwards, both arms held out.

In her right hand she is holding a gun.

Sullivan is saying, ‘Oh Christ, oh Christ.’ Vaughan is pale and looks confused.

Norton takes a couple of tentative steps over to where Phil is and bends down as though checking to see if the man is all right. ‘Have you got a gun?’ he whispers.

Phil nods, his face contorted with pain.

‘Then shoot her.’

Gina is looking around, and behind her. It’s clear to Norton that she has no idea what she is doing.

‘In the head,’ he says to Phil, ‘and quick.’

He withdraws.

‘Tell me,’ Vaughan is saying to Sullivan, ‘tell me… what’s going on?’

‘I don’t know, Jimmy, I don’t know. Let’s just get you back to the car.’

Slowly, Sullivan starts manoeuvring Vaughan around.

‘Don’t move,’ Gina shouts.

They stop.

Out of the corner of his eye, Norton sees Phil struggling to get something out of his pocket, then turning and raising his arm.

But in that same moment, Gina rushes over and flicks her leg up. She manages to kick the gun out of Phil’s hand and send it flying across the concourse.

Phil yelps in pain once more and collapses back onto the ground.

Gina then grabs Vaughan by the arm and sticks the gun into his side. Ray Sullivan steps backwards, arms up.

‘No,’ he says. ‘For Christ’s sake.’

Norton steps away as well. He can’t believe what’s happening. He’s right there, watching it, but feels detached from it.

The two construction workers in the distance remain frozen – undecided, terrified, useless.

Gina moves, taking Vaughan with her.

‘You, too,’ she says to Paddy. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘What?’

‘Come on.’

‘Where?’

‘Inside.’

Norton follows.

They walk across the concourse towards the building. Vaughan is an old man, so progress is slow and tense. As they approach the arched glass entranceway, the reception committee disperses, left and right. Norton is aware of the others behind him, following at a discreet distance. He glances over and sees one of the construction workers talking on his mobile.

They go through automatic doors, along the entranceway and into the vast atrium.

Still pale and a little shaky, Vaughan nevertheless seems to be OK. He stares ahead, very intently, and remains silent. Gina has a drawn, anxious look to her, as if she knows that this act of stupidity and desperation can only end badly for her.

Which, of course, it will.

Because soon enough the Special Branch and Emergency Response Units will be here, and they’ll all be armed, and seeing as how she’s already shot someone and taken two hostages, one a frail old man – what kind of a chance does she stand?

Norton only hopes that it’s quick and efficient – and final.

They move across the vast atrium, which has been cleaned up since he was last here. Shimmering, pristine, the place is ready for occupation by an army of consumers and office workers – but right now it feels eerie and uninviting.

Gina stops and looks around. ‘Those over there,’ she says to Norton, pointing to a bank of six elevators. ‘Are they working?’

‘Gina, look, this is insane. What do you -’

‘Are they working?’

He is struck, and a little disturbed, by how calm she sounds.

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’

They move towards the elevators.

Norton looks over his shoulder and across the atrium. There are five people standing just inside the entranceway now – three construction workers, Ray Sullivan, and Norton’s director of development, Leo Spillane.

No one is moving or speaking.

Gina looks quickly at the elevator cars. Norton can see at once that she’s confused. Each car has a touch-screen terminal in front of it and operates on a digital control system that depends on traffic patterns, but since these patterns have yet to be established, the system hasn’t been fully programmed. She steps forward to one of the terminals and enters a number, but nothing happens. She’s about to get annoyed, and turn to Norton, when she sees that the last car doesn’t have a terminal in front of it. On the wall to the side, there is a plain silver push-button marked ‘Express.’

She steps over and presses it.

The door opens immediately.

Norton’s heart sinks. This could get very complicated.

‘GINA!’

Norton looks around.

Leo Spillane is stepping forward. He worked closely with Noel and would have met Gina at the funeral.

‘Gina,’ he says, ‘please… whatever this is -’

‘Stay back.’

Spillane stops.

Gina shunts Vaughan and Norton into the elevator car. She leans her back against the door to hold it open. Standing half inside the car and half out, she raises a hand up into the air – the one with the gun in it.

‘Pass this message on to the police,’ she says, speaking directly to Spillane – and again Norton is alarmed by how composed she sounds. ‘Tell them I want to speak with Jackie Merrigan. Detective Superintendent Jackie Merrigan.’

Then she withdraws into the elevator car. The door automatically whispers shut.

She presses a button.

Vaughan clears his throat. ‘Gina,’ he says, ‘I don’t und-’

‘Shut up.’

Vaughan hesitates, looks as if he’s about to continue, but thinks the better of it.

Norton’s heart is racing. His palms are sweaty. As the car starts its rapid, hushed ascent, he closes his eyes.

When they step out of the elevator car into the middle of Level 48, Gina looks around and tries to get her bearings. The tower’s main elevator shafts are located in its central core. But the last time she was up here – with Norton, two weeks ago – they used a service elevator that was located at the end of the building, and the back end, the one facing north.

Behind where they are now.

She waves the gun at Vaughan and Norton, directing them to move forward.

Vaughan hesitates.

‘I’m not sure,’ he says, turning to her, ‘that you fully appreciate who I am.’

Gina raises her arm and points the gun at his head. ‘I told you to shut up. Now move.’

‘OK.’ He holds a weary hand up. ‘OK.’

As she follows the two men, she looks around – left, right, ahead, behind. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else up here. She notices, too, that a great deal of work has been done since that last visit. All the windows, floors and ceiling panels have been fitted, and the place no longer looks like a building site. It’s still an open space, but it’s a lot closer to becoming the teeming ecosystem of reception areas, office suites and conference rooms the architect no doubt intended it to be.

At the end they stop next to a tall stack of what look like prefabricated wall or partition units. The windows are floor-to-ceiling, and the view, as before, is spectacular.

But also a distraction.

Gina turns around. She leans her head back onto the glass and immediately starts wondering how thick it is, and how easy it would be for a trained marksman perched outside on the jib section of the crane to pick her off. Then again – she thinks – someone in here could probably do the job just as easily. They’d come up in the service elevator and position themselves on either side of the central core, or behind any one of the nearby supporting columns.

All of which means one thing: she doesn’t have much time.

‘Right,’ she says, turning to Vaughan. ‘Where were we?’

Norton glares at her.

Vaughan sighs peevishly. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Well then,’ Gina says, ‘let me remind you.’ She taps the floor with her right foot. ‘This building you have such a big stake in, that you’re here to inspect? I was saying I hope you don’t get too much of a shock when you do.’

Vaughan looks at Norton and shrugs.

‘What’s she talking about?’

‘I don’t know, Jimmy. She’s deranged. Look at her. I feel sorry for the bitch.’

Gina says nothing. There is a long pause.

‘Oh, what is this?’ Vaughan says eventually. ‘Listen, I’m not a well man. I have a blood condition.’ He looks at his watch, and then at Gina. ‘I have meds to take. Can we cut to the chase here, please?’

‘Sure,’ she says, nodding her head in Norton’s direction. ‘But it has to come from him.’

‘Paddy?’

Norton shakes his head. ‘I told you, Jimmy, she’s disturbed. She can’t come to terms with her brother’s death. She’s been making these wild allegations. It’s… it’s all bullshit.’

‘What kind of allegations?’

‘I don’t know. She thinks someone had her brother killed, but -’

‘Why?’

Norton pauses. ‘Sorry, what… why does she think -’

‘No. Why would someone want to kill her brother?’

‘But that’s the thing, you see, she -’

‘No, no, wait a second. He was the chief engineer on this, right? So if there was a reason for someone to want to kill the man, I think we should know about it, don’t you?’

Gina is about to say something when she hears a siren in the distance. She freezes, afraid to look, but does it anyway. She turns to the window and peers down. Three police cars, blue lights flashing, speeding along the quays.

From up here they appear tiny.

She turns back.

Neither of the two men has moved.

Vaughan is old and frail, but Norton? He could easily have lunged at her, twisted her arm back and wrenched the gun from her. So why didn’t he? Maybe he was unwilling to take the risk. Or maybe he’s assuming, hoping, that the Emergency Response Unit guys, when they get here, will waste no time and simply take her out with a clean shot to the head.

‘Paddy,’ she says, looking behind him, ‘why don’t you tell him about the report?’

There is movement up ahead, behind the core section that houses the elevator shaft and stairwells – one person at least, possibly more.

But it won’t be the police, not yet.

She looks Norton in the eye, and sees a flicker of panic.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says.

‘Fine,’ Gina says, ‘whatever.’ She looks past his shoulder again, just for a second, and then turns to Vaughan. ‘Listen carefully because here it is, Mr Vaughan. A man named Dermot Flynn who worked with my brother at BCM wrote a report about this building we’re in. He showed the report to my brother, who showed it to him.’ She waves the gun in Norton’s direction. ‘Now I don’t know what’s in the report exactly – it was too technical, I couldn’t understand it – but for some reason Mr Norton didn’t want anyone else to see it. And now, as a consequence, my brother is dead and Dermot Flynn is dead.’

‘This is nonsense,’ Norton says. ‘I told you she was crazy. They both died in accidents. There is no report.’

The sirens have stopped.

Vaughan is staring at her. It’s clear that he doesn’t know what to think.

‘Would you like to see it?’ she says.

‘What?’

‘The report.’

‘Jesus, Jimmy -’

‘Shut up, Paddy.’

Gina reaches into her jacket pocket and takes out her mobile phone.

‘What’s your email address?’ she says.

There is a pause. Vaughan tells her. She keys it in.

‘Gina,’ Norton says, a hint of desperation entering his voice, ‘what are you doing?’

She hesitates. Her stomach is jumping. ‘I’m emailing him a copy of the report,’ she says. ‘Just like I emailed it this morning to Yves Baladur and Daniel Lazar.’

‘What?’

‘I retrieved it yesterday from Dermot Flynn’s laptop -’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘- and stored it in my email account.’

She waves the phone at him.

He glares back.

She looks at the display for a moment and then says to Vaughan, ‘Yep. There. It’s gone. Now you have it too.’

As Vaughan turns to Norton, he takes out his own mobile. ‘What the hell’s this all about, Paddy?’

Norton says nothing.

Vaughan looks at the phone, squints at it, presses something and waits.

Over his shoulder, Gina can see Ray Sullivan now – in the distance. He’s standing in full view, near the elevator. There is someone else behind him.

She turns to the window again and glances down to check out what’s happening at street level. Traffic has been halted and is backed up along the quays. People are gathering everywhere in little clusters. Some appear to be pointing up, others to be talking on their phones.

The jumping in her stomach is relentless.

She turns around again.

Norton is standing very still, staring at the floor.

‘Yep,’ Vaughan says. ‘I got it.’

He folds his phone shut and puts it away.

Gina holds hers down by her side.

‘I don’t know, Paddy,’ Vaughan says, shaking his head, ‘but it seems to me that she’s got you by the balls here.’ He pauses. ‘So you want to tell me what’s in this report?’ Sensing the activity behind him, he half looks over his shoulder. ‘And you might want to hurry.’

Gina watches as Ray Sullivan moves out of view and a uniformed guard takes his place. A second guard appears, and then a third.

She moves her own position, just slightly – closer to the stack of partition units.

‘Paddy,’ Vaughan snaps. ‘Are you going to make me read this damn thing? Or have me hear about it from someone else?’

Norton looks up. He is pale. He shakes his head.

‘It was purely theoretical,’ he says slowly, almost in a whisper. ‘He’d made these ridiculous calculations based on a set of theoretical conditions. Believe me, you’ll see.’

‘What do you mean, conditions?’ Vaughan says impatiently. ‘What conditions? Weather conditions?’

‘Yes.’

‘So we’re talking, what… wind?’

‘Yes. But quartering winds, tropical winds, stuff that doesn’t apply here, stuff that isn’t relevant.’

‘Shit,’ Vaughan says. ‘I don’t like the sound of this.’

Gina looks at him.

‘What?’

‘It’s the most significant calculation you have to make. How much wind stress a building can absorb. Testing is exhaustive. It’s done in controlled tunnels. Everything is computer simulated, checked a thousand times.’ He turns to Norton. ‘Jesus, what are you telling me, there’s a mistake somewhere?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Then what?’

Norton exhales, struggling. ‘Noel’s design for the wind-bracing system included a series of diagonal steel girders, and for some reason it came to Flynn’s notice, don’t ask me how, that the joints of these girders were bolted together, and not welded, as Noel had specified -’

‘Jesus -’

‘No, no, bolting them together was fine. Welded joints would have been stronger all right, but the contractor decided, and legitimately, that welding them was too expensive, too time-consuming and, in fact, unnecessary. For here. But Flynn went ahead anyway and did all these additional load-bearing calculations, extrapolating this, that and the other – what’d happen if we had a tropical cyclone or a hurricane. Wild stuff. It was pure speculation. So don’t be under any illusion, the building complies with all required codes and regulations -’

‘But?’

Norton swallows, looks around, exhales loudly.

Gina is crouched down now – phone in her hand resting on one thigh, gun on the other – looking up at the two men. With the stack of partition units in the way, she can no longer see what the guards are up to, but nor can they see her.

‘What he found was that the increase in stress to the building in the switch from welding to bolts was negligible for local weather conditions… but not when you took quartering winds into consideration.’

‘What are quartering winds?’ Gina says.

Vaughan looks down at her. ‘They’re winds that come in at a forty-five-degree angle and hit two sides of the building at once.’

She nods, barely understanding any of the words in isolation, let alone the complete sentence.

‘In that scenario,’ Norton goes on, ‘the difference is marked, and from then on… it’s exponential.’

Vaughan closes his eyes.

‘A simple increase of twelve or fifteen per cent could translate into an increase of… more than a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty percent.’

‘Jesus -’

‘But only in conditions that are never going to happen, that’s the whole point. It’s like removing a safety net you don’t need in the first place. He fed in all this speculative data that was based on projected climate-change scenarios and the possible long-term consequences of global warming. It was ridiculous.’

Gina looks up, glares at him. ‘You’re like a fucking child, do you know that? Trying to talk your way out of trouble. If the report was so ridiculous, then what was the problem? Why bury it?’

Norton shrugs. ‘It was… not a problem as such, I mean, you couldn’t really -’

‘Look,’ Gina says, holding up the gun, ‘enough.’ She points it directly at him. ‘Do you want me to shoot you, too? In the fucking head?’

‘OK, OK. There was a problem. It was with his conclusion. He recommended that repairs be done immediately, that steel reinforcements be welded onto each of the building’s three hundred joints.’

Vaughan whistles. ‘That would be expensive.’

‘Yes. Very.’

‘And best-case scenario you’d be looking at a… what, a six to nine-month delay?’

‘Easily, and with huge knock-on penalties for going over agreed completion dates. Plus, we’d miss the tax-incentive deadline.’

‘Not to mention what a PR catastrophe it’d be.’

There is silence for a moment.

‘And if the repairs aren’t done?’ Gina then says.

Norton stares down at her now with naked contempt. ‘You’re not going to let it go, are you? You’re like a dog after a bone. Like Flynn, like your brother.’ He pauses. ‘What is it you want, the bottom line in all of this, is that it?’

She nods.

‘Right. Fine.’ He takes a deep breath and holds it in for a moment. ‘According to these calculations, without the repairs, and in storm conditions so rare you might only see them in this country once every hundred years, the building has a fifty per cent chance of, let’s say… of withstanding the pressure.’

Gina shakes her head. ‘No.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s not say that. Let’s say it another way. Let’s be as explicit as we can, shall we?’

She gives the gun a little shake.

Norton rolls his eyes and breathes out sharply.

‘OK, yeah, let’s. In certain extreme weather conditions, this building, Richmond Plaza, has a fifty per cent chance of collapsing. Are you happy now?’

‘Fifty per cent?’

‘According to these calculations, yes.’

‘And given the potential for loss of life and damage to surrounding property, you think that’s an acceptable level of risk?’

‘Absolutely. I’m not worried at all.’ He pauses. ‘Because what I don’t accept is the data he was working with. I just don’t believe it would ever happen. But none of that would matter if the report got out, you see. Perception would be everything.’

‘Perception?’

‘Of course. The sound bite. Fifty per cent chance of collapsing? You think anyone’s going to see beyond that?’

Gina presses her head back against the glass. ‘And that justifies having people killed? For completion dates, for tax purposes, for fucking PR?’

Norton throws his hands up, as though in exasperation or despair.

‘There you go again with this crap,’ he says. ‘I didn’t have anyone killed. What do you take me for?’ He turns to Vaughan. ‘Jimmy, look -’

‘Save it, Paddy. I’m not interested.’

‘What?’

‘This is… I’m having a hard time believing this is actually happening. I just…’ He looks at his watch. ‘I just want to get on the next goddamned plane out of here.’

‘But what about -’

Vaughan holds up an admonitory hand.

Norton stops, his frustration palpable.

As the two men stand there in silence, Gina checks something on her phone. Then she looks up at Vaughan. She waves the gun at him.

‘Go.’

‘What?’

‘Go. Now. Get your meds. Catch your flight.’

Five minutes after Vaughan has left, Gina’s mobile rings.

‘Yeah?’

‘Gina? Are you all right there?’ A Kerry accent, the voice soft and instantly reassuring. Whoever this is has been trained in the subtle art of hostage negotiation. ‘Listen, can we maybe -’

‘I said. I want to talk to Jackie Merrigan. In person.’

‘Yeah, Gina, we were looking for him, but he’s on his way now. So, I don’t know, in the meantime -’

She cuts him off.

Norton sighs impatiently.

She looks up at him. ‘What?’

‘You’re a very stupid girl, do you know that?’

‘I’m not a girl, Paddy. And we’ll see who’s stupid.’

Hunkered down at the window, facing the partition units, she doesn’t have a direct view of the rest of Level 48 and can’t tell what is going on. Norton can, and keeps looking around. At one point she catches him trying to gesture or signal to someone.

‘Face the window,’ she says. ‘Now.’

He does.

‘There’s a whole bloody army back there,’ he says. ‘They’ve got flak jackets, machine guns, the works.’

‘I can hear them, but I’ve got this.’ She points the gun directly at him. ‘I’ve used it once. I’ll use it again.’

Norton says nothing. After a while, he asks if he can take something out of his pocket.

‘What?’

‘Tablets.’

‘You as well? Go on.’

He takes out a packet, fumbles with it and swallows two – maybe three – tablets.

‘What are they for?’

He looks at her. ‘What do you care?’

She sighs. ‘You’re right. I don’t.’

She starts keying something into her mobile.

‘You know, Gina,’ Norton then says, ‘this is not going to end well for you. It can’t.’ He clears his throat. ‘Any credibility you might have had before, you cashed in by doing this. So no one’s going to listen to you. And if you think sending that report to Baladur and Lazar is some kind of a trump card, you’re wrong. They’ll close ranks now, everyone will, Vaughan, the contractors, everyone. The spin merchants will be out in force. Coming from Noel, the report might have carried some weight. It was his design. People would have had to listen. But not anymore. No one will endorse it now.’

She looks up at him. ‘What, no one will admit what you just admitted a few minutes ago?’

‘Of course not. And no one has to. No codes or regulations have been broken. The arguments in the report can be torn to shreds in five minutes, and they will be. Because no one’s going to want to be associated with this carry-on.’

She shrugs, and goes back to what she was doing on her mobile.

‘The media won’t take it seriously either,’ Norton continues. ‘They won’t understand it for one thing. And if you persist in making those claims about how I had something to do with your brother’s death I’ll have a restraining order slapped on you so fast you won’t know what hit you.’ He shakes his head. ‘Believe me. I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks. I’ll tie you up in legal knots for years.’ He laughs. ‘But sure that won’t matter anyway, because you’ll be in prison.’

Gina ignores him.

Behind her, faint at first, but growing louder, is the sound of a helicopter.

‘You see, you’re going to be the story in all of this, Gina, not some stupid fucking report. What they’ll be interested in’ – he nods his head forward, indicating the helicopter – ‘is the crazy lady who shot some poor innocent bastard in the leg and then took two hostages. You’ll be tabloid fodder for days, weeks.’ He laughs again. ‘You see, like I said, it’s all about perception.’

‘Jesus, Paddy,’ she says, not looking up from her mobile. ‘Would you ever shut up?’

Fifteen minutes later, her mobile rings again.

‘Yeah?’

‘Gina? It’s Jackie Merrigan.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m here. Over at the elevator. Do you want me to approach?’

‘Yes. Alone.’

Pressing back against the window, she eases herself up into a standing position. Over the stack of partition units she sees Merrigan walking slowly towards her. ERU personnel are positioned everywhere.

She glances over her shoulder and down at street level. There is no traffic at all now. Parked alongside the concourse are squad cars and police vans. There are also several large trucks. These are probably Outside Broadcast Units. A couple of hundred yards down the quays barriers have been set up, behind which a sizeable crowd appears to have gathered.

The helicopter is still out there, cruising a wide area. Every now and again it comes in close and circles the building. When it does, the sound is almost deafening.

She turns back around.

Norton is standing a few feet away from her, staring straight ahead.

Merrigan comes to a stop in front of the partition units. ‘Hello, Gina.’

She nods.

He is as she remembers, tall, stooped, white hair. He’s got a heavy overcoat on. From where he’s standing she can’t see his hands. But he was a close friend of Noel’s. She’s not expecting him to pull out a gun and shoot her.

‘Thanks for coming.’

Norton turns around. Merrigan looks at him.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Well what do you think? I’ve got this deranged bitch -’

Gina raises her hand. ‘Shut up.’

‘Take it easy, Gina,’ Merrigan says. ‘Let’s all stay calm, yeah?’

It’s only then that Gina sees it. Merrigan is nervous. And of course why wouldn’t he be? This is a volatile situation, and probably not the sort of thing he’s ever had to deal with before. Besides, he doesn’t really know her…

‘Look,’ she says in a hurry, ‘I don’t want to drag this out. I just… I need some assurances from you.’

He nods.

‘One, I saw security cameras on the way in here. At the entrance. One of them was trained on the concourse out front. I don’t know if they’re working, but if they are you’ll see that I was attacked first. The shot I fired was in response to that, to being assaulted. Anyway, there were witnesses, a couple of builders, I think.’

‘Fine. Of course. We’ll check it out.’

‘Second, I want you to look into Noel’s death. The circumstances. His mobile-phone records. Where he went after he left Catherine’s. Check the brakes on his car.’

Merrigan hesitates. ‘OK, Gina. I’ll… I’ll do my best.’

‘Third thing.’

She holds up the gun. Merrigan flinches.

‘This?’ she says. ‘I’m telling you in advance: it isn’t mine.’

Merrigan swallows. ‘I didn’t imagine it was.’

‘No, but I’ll bet you don’t know whose it is.’

He shakes his head.

‘It belonged to Martin Fitzgerald.’

Merrigan’s eyes widen. ‘That Martin Fitzgerald?’

She nods, and brings her hand down. ‘I’m not sure, but I think it might be the gun he used to shoot Mark Griffin with.’

‘What?’

Merrigan stops, and for the first time the focus of his attention shifts. Gina can see it in his face, in his eyes.

He is making connections.

‘The thing is,’ she says, ‘I want you to know, before I’m arrested, that this is a complicated situation. I need to know that I’ll be listened to.’

‘You will be.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Norton says, ‘there’ll be no shortage of sound bites if that’s what you’re after.’

She looks at him. ‘And what about you?’

‘What about me, love? I’m not the one with the gun.’

‘No, but…’

She stares at him for a moment in silence, then looks back at Merrigan. ‘Last thing. I’ve got an email I need to send.’ She holds her phone up to him. ‘Yeah?’

He nods.

‘It has an attachment,’ she says. ‘I’m sending it to RTÉ and to Sky News. And to YouTube.’

She presses a key on the phone and waits for a few moments.

‘OK. Gone.’

‘What was that?’ Norton says, glaring at the phone.

‘It’s very short, only about ten seconds. I hope it’s enough of a sound bite for you.’

She holds the phone up high, so they can all see the display. The view is of Norton, from a low angle. Gina’s voice is heard first. The sound is tinny.

Let’s be as explicit as we can, shall we?

After a pause, Norton’s voice is heard.

OK, yeah, let’s. In certain extreme weather conditions, this building, Richmond Plaza, has a fifty per cent chance of collapsing. Are you happy now?

Shock registers on Merrigan’s face.

Fifty per cent?

According to these calculations, yes.

‘Oh my God…’

And given the potential for loss of life and damage to surrounding property, you think that’s an acceptable level of risk?

Absolutely. I’m not worried at all.

Gina flicks the phone closed and brings her hand down.

Norton lunges forward. ‘Jesus, I’ll -’

Merrigan’s arm shoots out. He holds it against Norton’s chest to block him.

‘Easy.’

Norton resists for a second and then backs off, shaking his head. He turns around and moves away, along by the window.

Gina looks at Merrigan. She feels relieved, but also – she can admit it now, if only to herself – a little insane, a little psychotic. Every muscle in her body is rigid. Every thought in her head is conditional. It’s as if she’s been holding her breath non-stop for the last three weeks.

She hands him the gun.

Within seconds armed police officers have swarmed the area and taken full control.

Gina leans her head back against the glass, and breathes out slowly.

At the same time, several miles away, in an isolated ward of the intensive care unit of St Felim’s Hospital, Mark Griffin is breathing slowly, too.

Sixteen times a minute, in fact.

Unconscious but stable, the thirty-year-old victim of the city’s latest gangland shooting is hooked up to a ventilator. A second machine monitors his heart rate and blood pressure. He also has three IV tubes attached to a strip on his neck. These provide medication for pain control, fluids to keep him hydrated and sedation to prevent him from making any extreme involuntary movements.

When he was brought in on Wednesday night the first thing they did was give him an X-ray. This showed he had a single perforating wound caused by a bullet that is now lodged in his abdomen. He was then rushed to an operating theatre for an exploratory incision, the results of which showed extensive damage to his liver. Next, they stanched the internal bleeding and stabilised his BP.

Since then he has had two further operations, one to repair essential organ functions, the other to close the entry wound. And although doctors are concerned about the possibility of his contracting an infection, by this afternoon most of his vital signs seem to be showing a marked improvement.

Mark’s aunt Lilly spent all of yesterday and several hours this morning at his bedside, but the whole thing has proved so stressful for her, and so exhausting, that one of the doctors took a look at her and recommended that she go home to her own bed – unless she wanted to end up in one of theirs.

After lunch, the nurse on duty phoned Lilly and reassured her that there was no change, and that Mark was stable. A ten-year veteran of the ICU, this nurse has always found that the word ‘stable’ has a remarkably stabilising effect on those who hear it.

In any case, she prefers it when there are no visitors – because they get in the way. It’s not called intensive care for nothing.

Staring at Mark now, she wonders if he is aware of her presence. His eyelids flutter on occasion, but they don’t open, so she can’t be sure. It’s one of the recurring mysteries of her job.

She chooses, nevertheless, to talk to him.

‘It’s me again,’ she says. ‘Helen. How are you? I’m going to take your temperature now, if that’s all right.’

It seems to be.

Outside the room, sitting on a bench in the corridor, a full-time guard is on duty. He is listening to a news update on his small pocket radio.

He stares at the floor.

There’s a breaking story.

After a moment, he looks up, takes in the calm, anodyne surroundings of the hospital, and sighs.

He can’t believe this.

He’s stuck here and right now, in that new skyscraper down on the quays – apparently, according to the bulletin – there’s a full-blown hostage crisis unfolding…

5

And in the twenty-four hours following this so-called crisis, the clip of an Irish property developer’s breathtaking admission – caught on a camera phone during the crisis – has been viewed all over the world, on computers, on mobile phones and on TV news bulletins. The incident is seen as the latest example of how digital technology is driving the definition, generation and delivery of today’s news content. Outside of Ireland, the story has a kind of train-wreck fascination, and proves irresistible to cartoonists and joke writers. But at home the whole business is seen as something altogether more urgent – because as far as the public at large is concerned, and despite numerous assurances to the contrary, this shiny new forty-eight-storey glass box is, in the words of one vox pop contributor, ‘just sitting there waiting to keel over’.

So it’s no surprise that action is taken quickly. On Saturday afternoon, the tower and surrounding area are evacuated and cordoned off. Emergency meetings are held. The nature and cost of the repairs are discussed and hammered out. Schedules are drawn up, with work to start almost immediately.

Then on Sunday morning, in the papers and on blogs and radio phone-ins, the affair is parsed endlessly for its cultural and sociological significance. It becomes a kind of template for everything that is wrong with the country, a forum for pofaced investigations of national identity, a vessel for people’s moral outrage, for their feelings of powerlessness and disenfranchisement.

On the lunchtime news, Taoiseach-in-waiting Larry Bolger says that although he’s been personally assured there’s no immediate danger, he nevertheless regards it as appalling and unconscionable that such a thing could have been allowed to happen in the first place.

The individual involved, he says, must be held accountable.

And naturally enough, it is on this ‘individual’ that most of the media attention is now heaped. Who is he? What other buildings has he put up? Where does he live? How rich is he?

The degree of media attention Gina receives, by contrast, is surprisingly limited. In all, the ‘hostage crisis’ lasted less than an hour, so the story didn’t have time to breathe. No sooner had coverage started than the whole thing came to a head – only to be superseded by the business with the camera phone.

Legally, she’s not in as much trouble as she expected to be either. She learns on Sunday evening that for some reason Paddy Norton is refusing to press charges, and that the same goes for Phil Mangione. It turns out that Mangione, whose injury was not serious – the bullet just grazed his shin – has already left the country, accompanied by James Vaughan and Ray Sullivan. So the only thing Gina is charged with in court on Monday morning is illegal possession of a firearm.

She is then released on bail.

Outside the courthouse, flanked by Yvonne and Michelle, she manages to get away and down the street without having to stop and talk to any reporters. The three sisters go to the lounge of a city-centre hotel, where Gina does her best to give a clear account of what happened. But it’s not easy. Yvonne and Michelle are sceptical. They’re also, to some extent, embarrassed. It reminds Gina of when she was a teenager and they were in their twenties.

Except it’s different.

Except it’s not.

Leaving the hotel after about an hour – frustrated and tired – Gina gets a call on her mobile. It’s from Jackie Merrigan. Where is she? Can they meet? Can they talk? She says she needs to go back to her apartment, that she hasn’t changed her clothes in more than four days – but that yes, they can meet.

How about later? Early afternoon?

They make an arrangement for two o’clock.

Over in Government Buildings, at around the same time, Larry Bolger is preparing for a meeting of the parliamentary party at which it is expected his colleagues will choose him as their new leader. This will automatically qualify him to become Taoiseach. He will then travel to Áras an Uachtaráin in the Phoenix Park and receive his seal of office from the President.

Sitting at his desk, in his best suit, he feels the way he remembers feeling when he was about to make his First Holy Communion – stirred by the promise of plenty, and yet uneasy about it all, vaguely humiliated somehow.

He’d love a drink.

His secretary buzzes in to say he has a call from Paddy Norton on line one. Bolger hesitates and then says he’ll take it – unlike all the other calls from Norton he’s declined to take since Friday.

He has to speak to the man sometime.

He picks up the phone. ‘Paddy?’

‘The individual involved? The fucking individual involved? Is that what I am now?’

Bolger throws his eyes up. ‘Hold on there, Paddy, what did you expect?’

‘What did I expect? A bit of loyalty, that’s what.’

‘Oh come on, be realistic. With all this stuff going on, and all these questions being asked… no public representative in his right mind would -’

‘And what does held accountable mean?’

Bolger stares at a folder on his desk.

‘I think that’s pretty obvious, Paddy, isn’t it? There’s a lot of hysteria at the moment, a lot of anger, and even if it is all bullshit, there’s an election coming in the next twelve to eighteen months. People need to see some action, you know? They’re not going to let this slide.’

‘So you’re going to give them my head on a plate, is that it?’

‘It’s not me.’ Bolger laughs. ‘I think you’ve taken care of that yourself.’

There’s a pause.

‘Fuck you, Larry.’

Bolger says nothing.

‘You’re a two-faced bastard, do you know that?’

‘Right.’

‘If it wasn’t for… Jesus, I put you where you are today.’

‘Of course.’ Bolger clears his throat. ‘Listen, I have to go. I have a meeting, a pretty important one, as it happens.’

‘Grand, keep your distance, don’t answer my calls, cut me off, be a prick, fine, but I can ruin you, Larry. There’s all that financial stuff, going way back, the loans, the dig-outs. And that’s just for starters.’ He pauses. ‘I can, and I will.’

Bolger swivels his chair from side to side.

‘You know what, Paddy?’ he says. ‘I couldn’t care less. Do what you have to do. I’m going to be the leader of this country in about an hour’s time and no one can take that away from me. My name will be entered into the history books. So whatever happens afterwards… scandals, enquiries, tribunals…’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t care. These days that stuff is almost par for the course anyway. It comes with the territory.’ He pauses. ‘So… whatever. I’ll be seeing you, Paddy.’

He puts the phone down.

‘Minister?’

He looks up. His secretary is standing in the doorway. She’s pointing at her watch.

‘Er, yeah.’

Bolger gets up from the desk. He gives a quick shimmy to his suit, gets it into shape. He straightens his tie. He clears his throat.

‘OK,’ he says, ‘I’m coming.’

He heads for the door.

About an hour later, in the ICU ward of St Felim’s, Mark Griffin opens his eyes.

His mind is blank, and it remains that way for several seconds.

Then… bed.

I’m in a bed.

He concentrates.

In a hospital… and that’s a nurse.

She’s at the foot of his bed, filling in a chart, concentrating herself.

He stares at her. She glances up and gets a start.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Mark.’

She reattaches the chart to the end of the bed and comes around to the side.

He follows her with his gaze.

She then leans in closely and examines his eyes with a penlight – first the left one, then the right.

She stands back.

‘It’s Helen,’ she says. ‘I’m Helen. How are you feeling?’

He gives a slight nod to his head, and then frowns.

He’s confused.

‘You’re under sedation,’ she says, apparently reading his confusion. ‘Movement will be slow. For a time. Don’t worry about it.’

He opens his lips to speak, but nothing comes out. He nods again, still confused.

‘It’s Monday,’ she says. ‘Monday afternoon. You’ve been here for more than four days.’

His mind goes blank again.

Four days? Is that what she said? Fine. Whatever.

Then it hits him.

Four days?

It’s like getting whacked on the head with a baseball bat.

Evidently, the panic shows.

‘Look,’ the nurse says, ‘I’ll… I’ll call one of the consultants. They’ll want to have a look at you anyway.’

He watches her leaving and then stares at the door.

Four days?

Was that… the alleyway, the warehouse, and then earlier … was all of that four days ago?

Jesus.

What’s happened since then?

He looks around the room, struggling to focus. Fighting the narcotic sludge. There are machines next to the bed, humming and beeping. There’s a wall-mounted TV.

No windows.

What happened?

Fear pulses through his system. He looks over at the door again.

What’s happening now?

‘You know… you’re a very lucky girl.’

Gina bites her lip, holds back. She’s exhausted. She’s been awake, more or less, since she got up on Friday morning in Sophie’s apartment. Over the weekend, while in garda custody, she lay down a few times and closed her eyes, but she never sank far below the threshold of consciousness.

‘I don’t feel it,’ she says eventually.

Merrigan lifts his coffee cup and holds it in front of his mouth. ‘Believe me, you could have faced charges a lot more serious than illegal possession of a firearm.’

He takes a sip from the coffee, blows on it and then takes another sip.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘But I really don’t think luck comes into it.’

‘What do you mean?’

She glances around. They’re in Neary’s on Chatham Street, at a table towards the back. The place is almost empty. Halfway along the bar two burly middle-aged guys are nursing pints and talking. Every now and again a word or phrase from their conversation breaks loose and carries down the room, director’s cut, salad dressing, gigabytes.

‘Well,’ Gina says quietly, ‘for one thing, he should be facing charges, not me.’

‘What he will be facing is litigation, and plenty of it.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not -’

‘Gina, listen.’ He puts his cup down and sits back in the chair. ‘You’ve destroyed the man’s reputation. You’ve held him up to ridicule. His career is finished. He’ll never get another project off the ground. Literally. But that other stuff? The emails you showed us? The phone calls? His association with Martin Fitzgerald? What Terry Stack said? It’s all circumstantial.’

‘What about -’

‘Noel’s SUV was a total write-off. Nothing’s going to come out of that either. There’s no evidence.’

She looks at him. ‘What do you think?’

He exhales loudly. ‘I’ve investigated a good few murders in my time. You learn to be pretty resigned about it. If you haven’t got the evidence, you move on. You can’t go by what something looks like. Not if it’s all you’ve got. Not if you’re unsure there’s even been a murder.’

She nods, eyes focused now on the low table between them, on the arrangement of objects on it – the coffeepot, her own untouched cup, his cup, the milk jug, the sugar bowl. After a few seconds, and in her exhausted state, it takes on the character of a weird, phantasmagoric arrangement of chess pieces.

‘You also learn to be dispassionate,’ Merrigan goes on. ‘Though having said that, Noel was a good friend of mine. I knew him for nearly twenty years and I hate the idea that… that…’

He waves a hand in the air, dismissing the thought, banishing it.

She looks back over at him. ‘No, say it, go on, you hate the idea that he might have been murdered. Is that what you actually think?’

He is silent for a moment. Then he says, ‘OK,I’ll admit it… it doesn’t look good.’

‘He just gets away with it then?’

‘Well, not technically.’ Merrigan drums his fingers on the side of the chair. ‘Because technically, you see, legally, the man hasn’t done anything to get away with. He hasn’t been -’

‘Oh come on.’

‘Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, Gina, but I can’t ignore my professional training, my -’

‘Fine, but that’s not something I have to struggle with -’

‘Oh I know.’ He pauses. ‘That’s what has me worried.’

‘What do you mean?’

Merrigan sighs. He seems exhausted, too – though not from lack of sleep. His face is lined. He looks drained, weary, ready to retire.

‘I think you’re a lot like Noel,’ he says. ‘You’re tenacious. You don’t give up easily. But you’re also very foolhardy, you’ve shown that already, and if you push this any further you could get into serious trouble, more trouble than you’re in now.’

‘But if he’s guilty -’

‘Even if he isn’t, Gina, there are libel laws in this country. You can’t just go around making accusations against people like that. This is a wealthy man we’re talking about. He could make life very difficult for you.’

‘So his wealth protects him? Is that it? This fat murdering bastard?’

She looks away, shaking her head.

Merrigan takes in a long, deep breath.

He leans forward in his chair. ‘Suppose for a moment he is guilty, and that everything you say is true. Think how dangerous that makes him. Then think how much you’ve pissed him off already. What is there to protect you from him?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Exactly. I can’t protect you. The Gardaí can’t protect you. Not without reasonable cause. You’d be on your own.’

‘I’ve been on my own all along.’

Merrigan sits back and shrugs his shoulders. ‘Norton has taken a very serious hit here, and where it hurts. Why can’t you be satisfied with that?’

‘Because it’s nothing compared to the damage he has caused.’ She sighs. ‘Paddy Norton has destroyed people’s lives. I mean, apart from the others… look at Mark Griffin, on a bloody ventilator.’ She pauses. ‘And you know, to be honest, I don’t even know what happened there, or why, the background, the history… but Norton’s prints are all over that, too.’ She pauses again. ‘I should have asked him about it when I had the chance.’

Merrigan holds her gaze. ‘I can see this becoming an obsession with you, Gina, do you know that? I can also see it destroying your life.’ He pauses. ‘So I’m asking you – in fact, as a senior police officer, I’m telling you – leave this alone. Don’t ever go near Paddy Norton again, or make contact with him. Yeah?’

Gina’s impulse here is to push it, but what’s the point? It would be futile. She knows the arguments. She doesn’t want to hear them from him. She doesn’t want to hear them from herself.

Nothing would change.

He is staring at her.

‘Yeah?’ he repeats.

After a few moments, she nods her head.

‘Anyway,’ she then says, and smiles – her first in quite some time – ‘you knew Noel for twenty years?’

‘Yes.’

She is almost alarmed to see the effect her smile has on Merrigan. The reaction is instant. He moves, shifts his position in the chair, all but wriggles.

She smiles again. She can’t help it.

It’s like administering a small jolt of electricity.

‘Yes,’ he repeats, nodding vigorously, ‘I did.’

‘So,’ she says. ‘Talk to me about him.’

Norton turns right onto the Dual Carriageway from Eglinton Road. He’s been driving around for a while, an hour or two, and doesn’t want to stop – or go home, or go anywhere – but he’s tired and definitely getting a little woozy.

He went into the office this morning but stayed only twenty minutes. Then he turned his mobile phone off. It was after that conversation with Larry Bolger. But he was getting too many calls from people he didn’t want to talk to anyway – Daniel Lazar, Yves Baladur, Ray Sullivan, someone from the Department of the Environment, someone from the bank, various investors, journalists… Miriam…

He passes the RTÉ studios at Montrose.

Those bastards in there have been running the same identifying clip of him in all their news bulletins since Friday. It shows him, some months back, entering the Fairleigh Clinic, taking the front steps two at a time – but over and over again. The repetition of the clip has become something of a joke, with one smart-arse on the radio today even remarking that after so much exercise Mr Norton should probably expect to lose at least a little weight.

It’s humiliating.

The box and torn packaging on the passenger seat beside him is what’s left of the Nalprox. He’s been popping them indiscriminately all weekend and is going to have to arrange a repeat scrip soon.

He flicks on the CD player.

Jarring, dissonant brass and a demented string section. He goes on to the next track. It’s more soothing, some clarinet thing, but after a minute he flicks it off anyway.

He keeps replaying Friday in his head.

He just didn’t see it coming, not like that.

He didn’t have her pegged for such a scheming, devious bitch.

Stopped at lights, he reaches over and opens the glove compartment. If he’d had this bloody gun with him on Friday, he would have used it and dealt with the consequences later.

But he didn’t. It was sitting here in his car, gathering dust.

He’d still like to use it, though – and will, if he ever gets the chance.

If she ever comes near him again…

A few minutes later, as he’s pulling into the gravel driveway of his house, he has a momentary lapse of concentration – or maybe even of consciousness – and swerves a bit to the left. He scrapes the side of his car against the iron gate and then mounts a rock-bordered flower bed, crushing a row of crocuses. It takes him a few awkward moments to manoeuvre the car off the flower bed and park it properly.

When he gets out of the car, he stands for a moment on the gravel and takes a couple of deep breaths. He looks up at the sky, which is grey and overcast. Then he inspects the side of the car, swears under his breath, shakes his head. Turning to go into the house, he notices two men standing at the gates.

One of them has a camera.

‘Fuck off!’ he shouts, and raises his fist in the air.

He hadn’t noticed them on the way in.

Miriam is waiting at the bottom of the stairs. For the last three days she has been struggling to maintain some kind of equilibrium. But conflicting forces have made this very difficult. One side of her wants to be loyal and supportive to her husband. The other side, it appears, wants to insult and belittle him.

The best she can manage is a sort of tense neutrality – severe, clipped.

No make-up.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Out. Driving around.’

‘I see. Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

‘I didn’t feel like it.’

‘Did you check your messages?’

‘Oh Jesus, Miriam.’

He walks across the hall and into the main reception room. He goes over to the drinks cabinet and pours himself a large Bushmills.

Then he stands, looking at nothing in particular, and sips the drink. He has his back to the door and doesn’t know if Miriam is there or not.

But she doesn’t have to speak. He can hear her voice in his head.

Whiskey? For goodness’ sake, Paddy, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon.

He turns around.

She isn’t there.

Keeping a close eye on the door, Mark tries to piece everything together in his mind – but the pieces keep shifting position and changing shape. At the end there, in the warehouse, something happened, it’s just that he doesn’t know what exactly. Because he wasn’t in any condition to take it in. What he does know is that Gina was supposed to show up, but someone else was there, someone who knew he’d be there… and then, after a while, seemingly, all hell broke loose…

But what happened to Gina? Where is she now? How is she now?

One way or another he’s going to have to find out. He’s going to have to ask the nurse if she knows anything, or if she can arrange to buy him a phone, or get him a newspaper – or, at the very least, turn on the TV.

Assuming he can trust her, that is. Assuming he can trust anyone.

Because there was that guy at the warehouse, and the guy earlier, the one in the car park, the one who shot him.

So presumably there’ll be others.

Mark’s stomach turns.

Not to mention the police. The police will definitely want to interview him. But given that he almost tried to kill a government minister, well… the police are probably the very last people he should trust.

Then, as if on cue, the door of the room flies open and a tall man in a blue suit barges in.

Mark flinches and turns his head to the side, expecting the worst.

‘So, Mr Griffin,’ the man says in a booming voice, ‘Nurse here tells me that you’ve decided to rejoin us.’

Mark looks up.

The man in the suit is about fifty and has the air of an ex-rugby player.

The nurse is standing behind him.

‘Henry Dillon,’ the man says, producing a penlight from his breast pocket and clicking it. ‘Shall we?’

He then proceeds to examine Mark thoroughly, prodding, probing, moving him on his side, testing his reflexes.

He makes adjustments to the various IV drips.

Mark remains anxious, but at the same time – for the moment, at least – he’s relieved.

‘So,’ the consultant says, folding his arms, ‘that bullet? Looks like it had your name on it all right.’

Mark’s eyes widen. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, just that you may have it for life. We can’t take it out. Well we could, but it wouldn’t be worth the extra damage the operation would cause. But you’ll be fine. It’s more common than you might think. People leave hospitals with foreign objects in their bodies all the time.’

Mark stares at him, unsure what to think. Foreign objects? Is this some kind of code? Is he being threatened here? Or warned?

He remains silent.

‘Well, you seem to be making a remarkable recovery,’ the consultant says, heading for the door. ‘We’ll probably move you to a step-down unit later today or tomorrow. By the way, there are some people who want to have a word with you and I’m going to go ahead and authorise them to pop in for a chat. Is that OK?’

Mark swallows.

Some people? A chat?

‘Yeah, but… what people?’

Halfway out the door, the consultant glances back.

‘Why, the police, of course.’

As Gina walks down Grafton Street, around College Green and onto the quays, she hears Merrigan’s words in her head.

I can see this becoming an obsession. I can see it destroying your life.

She doesn’t think he’s wrong.

She knows she’s under the influence of a compulsion that she doesn’t understand or currently have the energy to resist. She thought after Friday that it would dissipate, that she could settle for how things had turned out, for a lesser form of justice.

But it only intensified.

And hearing last night that Norton was refusing to press charges actually made it worse. Something crystallised for her in that moment. It was the realisation that she needs to press some form of charges against him.

But now, in the cold light of day, that seems like a remote possibility. Because how does she pursue this? How does she even approach him after everything that has happened?

Walking along by the river, Gina looks up at Richmond Plaza and finds it hard to believe that she’s not still up there, not still holding a loaded gun in her hand, not still pointing it at Norton’s head, because compared to the intensity of that experience, everything else seems unreal to her, pallid and insubstantial.

But at the same time she can’t give up.

That’s not an option.

So when she arrives at her building, gets upstairs and through the door of her apartment, she walks straight over to the desk in the corner. She takes off her jacket. She puts down keys, wallet, phone.

And stares for a while, first at the wall, then at the keyboard of her computer.

She could call him on his mobile.

But that might be too direct. What if he doesn’t answer? What if he decides to alert the guards?

She needs something that will give him pause, something to provoke him.

Sitting down, Gina pictures Mark Griffin lying in an ICU ward, on life support, and it occurs to her again that his involvement in all of this is something she has never challenged Norton on. It’s actually the one aspect of the whole business that doesn’t fit, that she doesn’t understand.

So with the queasy self-awareness of a compulsive gambler about to place one more – one last – bet, she taps the centre of the keyboard and activates her computer. She opens the file. She turns on the printer.

She looks at her watch: 4.25.

I can see this becoming an obsession. I can see it destroying your life.

Then she picks up her mobile and calls a local courier service.

When Mark mentions Gina Rafferty’s name to the nurse, she recognises it immediately and is able to inform him that not only is Gina all right, she’s been in the news and has made quite a splash…

Mark finds this alarming, and then confusing. It just doesn’t make sense.

Richmond Plaza? Paddy Norton?

He is relieved to find out that Gina is OK, that she’s alive, but he doesn’t get what she is up to, he doesn’t -

Which is when the nurse suggests that she might try and get a hold of one of yesterday’s newspapers for him, an Independent or a Tribune. There was plenty of coverage in all the Sunday papers, and at least one of the patients in the next ward along is sure to have something left over.

She’ll go and have a scout around when she gets a chance.

But maybe in the meantime Mark might like to watch some TV?

‘There’ll be news on in a while.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Fine. Thanks.’

The nurse switches on the TV and hands him the remote.

‘Er, Nurse,’ Mark then says, ‘look, there isn’t any chance I could get my hands on a mobile phone, is there?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. You could borrow mine if you really need to make a call… or -’

‘Do they sell them downstairs, at reception? Is there a shop? Could -’

She nods. ‘Yes, don’t worry about it. I’ll arrange something.’

After she leaves, Mark stares up at the screen for a while but is unable to focus on anything.

He keeps glancing over at the door.

When are the police going to show up? And what are they going to ask him when they do?

He exhales loudly.

But let’s face it, are they really going to bother asking him anything at all? Because in whose interest is it to hear what he has to say?

It’s in his interest. And in no one else’s.

Mark may no longer be a threat to anyone physically, but he is still a threat, just of a very different kind. The mere fact that he’s alive and has a story to tell not only threatens Bolger’s advancement in the party, it may also seriously threaten the reputation and stability of the great party itself.

Mark feels as though he’s emerging from a dense fog, which he puts down to a combination of the adjustments the doctor made to his IV drips and what he imagines to be a natural surge in his own adrenaline levels. But the result is that he’s now extremely agitated and doesn’t know how much longer he’s going to be able to just lie here like this.

Doing nothing, waiting for…

For what?

He looks at the door, and then up at the TV again.

The news is coming on.

The programme’s signature tune rises portentously, and fades.

He tries to focus.

The doorbell rings.

Norton doesn’t move.

He has no intention of answering it, given that it’s probably a journalist out at the front gate. They’ve tried this on a few times over the past three days.

He’s been drinking coffee and his heart is racing. The whiskey earlier made him sick. For the first half an hour he felt fine, even a little exhilarated – which was probably due to the mix with the pills – but then he got nauseous and threw up. The switch to coffee was fine at first, too – but now he feels jittery and anxious and has a tightness in his chest.

He should eat something, but… maybe later.

The TV is on. He’s not focused on it, though.

Then the phone rings. In the hall.

He has no intention of answering that either.

It can ring out. Or Miriam upstairs will answer it. There were several calls earlier, which he’s assuming she did answer. But if so, she never passed on any messages. And some of the calls had to have been for him, because he hasn’t been getting back to people. Voicemail, text messages, emails – he’s been ignoring them all.

He’s not in the mood.

A few moments later, he hears Miriam coming down the stairs.

He tenses, not in the mood for her either.

She opens the hall door. He hears her stepping out onto the gravel.

He waits, listens.

What is she doing?

She’d better not be going out to talk to a journalist, because that’d be really stupid. Though on reflection it’s not something he can see Miriam doing. With her it’d almost be like breaking a religious taboo.

She comes back in and slams the front door shut. Then she comes into the living room. Without saying anything, she walks over to the sofa where Norton is sitting. She has a large brown envelope in her hand. She drops it in his lap.

‘What’s this?’

‘I don’t know, Paddy. I’m not in the habit of opening other people’s packages.’

She turns and leaves.

Norton looks at the envelope for a moment and then tosses it down beside him on the sofa.

He turns back to the TV. The six o’clock news has just come on, and guess what – for the first time since Friday evening Norton is not the lead story.

Larry Bolger is.

Norton grunts. He wants to turn the TV off or switch to another channel, but he can’t. He stares at the screen – fascinated, mesmerised, but also disgusted. It’s not so much that he thinks he should be there, in the background, basking in the reflected glory – of course he should – it’s more that Larry’s arrogance is so breathtaking, his casual assumption that he can cut old ties so… so deluded.

They show clips of Bolger leaving Áras an Uachtaráin, then arriving back at Leinster House, and then – at which point Norton presses the Mute button on his remote – addressing the chamber. After that, in a quick résumé of his career, various photos appear on the screen: a schoolboy in front of a grey institutional building, Liam Bolger flanked by his two teenage sons, the mangled car, a campaign poster… then Larry wearing an election rosette, Larry sitting at the cabinet table, Larry standing in front of the main stage at an Árd Fheis… on and on, the young man Norton first knew, slim and with an implausibly bushy head of jet-black hair, morphing into the greying, stocky middle-aged bollocks he is today.

Taoiseach Larry Bolger.

Give me a fucking break.

Whatever it is Mark is expecting to see on the news, it’s not what he gets, because the lead story isn’t about Gina Rafferty or Richmond Plaza – though it was hardly likely to be – it’s about Larry Bolger and how he has taken over as…

Taoiseach?

But -

How could this have happened so fast? Last Wednesday the man was just a minister, getting over a personal scandal. There was talk all right, speculation, but -

Gazing at the screen, Mark feels as if some kind of cosmic trick is being played on him.

His stomach is jumping.

He feels like Rip van fucking Winkle.

In utter disbelief, he watches as they show footage of Bolger leaving Áras an Uachtaráin, returning to Leinster House and addressing the chamber, after which they go back over his career and show photos from the archives, old black-andwhite ones… of a small child in a school uniform, of Bolger’s father flanked by his teenage sons, and then -

Mark flinches, rears back in horror.

– of a crushed and mangled car by the side of a country road.

He grabs the remote and turns the TV off.

Holy fuck.

Holy fuck.

He takes a few deep breaths, and then, unwilling to linger on the image in his mind’s eye – unable to linger – he flicks the TV back on.

Bolger at a press conference, flanked by senior ministers.

Mark can’t believe it.

Can’t believe any of it.

And as he stares at the man on the screen he is seized by this awful, queasy sense of himself as an inconvenience, as a piece of someone else’s unfinished business. Twenty-five years ago his family was wiped out, taken from him physically, which was bad enough, but then they were taken from him emotionally as well – and now the person responsible for that is trying to wipe him out, too? And why? Because he’s apparently looking for… what? Some kind of closure?

Well, so be it.

Mark pulls back the covers of the bed.

So be it.

He moves his legs to the edge, slides them over and manoeuvres himself into a sitting position.

If he wants closure, then he can fucking well have it.

But it’s only at that point that Mark realises he has a catheter attached to him, and that the catheter is, in turn, attached to a drainage bag hanging from the side of the bed. What does he do? Yank it off? He then tugs at the lumen strip on his neck from which the various IV drips connect to bags mounted on a mobile unit next to the monitors. Does he yank this off, too?

He should try and stand first.

He glances up at the TV. They’re in a studio now, dull voices droning on about momentous events, the big day, history.

He eases his feet down onto the floor, aware for the first time in a while of a dull pain in his back – a pain that seems to be rapidly intensifying.

He raises his hand up to his neck and is about to tear the strip loose when suddenly his eyes well up with tears.

What does he think he’s doing? Is he insane? What’s his plan here, to breach government security wearing a hospital gown and then strangle the new prime minister with his catheter tube?

It’s beyond pathetic.

He leans back against the bed and groans, the pain getting worse.

Across the room, the door opens.

The nurse is backing in with a trolley, but she stops halfway and addresses someone outside, maybe the guard, maybe another nurse.

‘Ah go on, he’s not, is he?’

Mark lifts himself up onto the edge of the bed. He turns, wincing, and eases himself into position again.

‘Listen, don’t believe everything you hear.’

He pulls up the covers, leans his head back against the raised pillows and closes his eyes.

‘See ya.’

He listens as the nurse wheels the trolley in through the door and across the room.

His heart pounding, his eyes stinging.

After a moment, the nurse comes over to the bed, picks up the remote control and turns off the TV.

Mark then feels her tossing something onto the end of the bed.

A while later, when she has left the room once more, he opens his eyes.

At the end of the bed there is a copy of the Sunday Tribune.

To distract himself from what’s on the TV, Norton picks up the envelope beside him on the sofa and examines it. He doesn’t recognise the handwriting. He tears the envelope along the top. Inside it there is a single page of glossy photo paper. Printed on the page are three photographs.

One each of a man, a woman and a small girl.

At first he is puzzled. He looks inside the envelope again and sees a business card. He takes this out and examines it.

The name on the card is Gina Rafferty.

His heart lurches.

If she ever comes near me again…

He looks back at the photographs and…

Of course.

Jesus, she has a nerve. But what is she up to? Is this meant to be some sort of coded message – a veiled threat? He thought that by not pressing charges he’d at least be eliminating her from the equation. He thought she’d go away and leave him to deal with the fallout, with all the shit she’d stirred up… but now this…

He reaches forward, straining to breathe, and places the page of photos on the coffee table. He picks up his mobile and flops back. He switches the phone on, enters his PIN and waits.

Then he looks for her number, finds it, calls it.

It rings.

There is an ad on the TV, a silver car speeding across a desolate moonscape.

‘Yes?’

‘This is harassment. I could get the Guards to have you -’

‘Then go ahead. Call them. They know where I live.’

He pauses, glances at the photographs again – at the three faces, with their alien, remote expressions.

‘What am I supposed to do with these pictures?’ he says. ‘What’s your point?’

‘My point?’ She almost laughs. ‘That no one has made the connection yet.’ She pauses. ‘But they will, sooner or later, and probably sooner.’

‘What connection?’

‘Oh come on. All it takes is one journalist to see it, to remember the name from the other night. Or one phone call.’

He grinds his teeth. He stands up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

This sounds weak, even to him.

‘No?’

‘No.’

He waits. She doesn’t respond. The silence goes on for quite a while. During it, he walks across the room and stands at the window. The curtains are half open. It’s dark outside, except for the security lights on the front lawn, and the streetlights in the distance, and all the lights of the city, thrown up, reflected, falling back like snow.

‘Listen,’ Gina says eventually, ‘those three people died unnecessarily. And it wasn’t his fault, Tony Griffin’s, like everyone said it was at the time. Now, I can’t prove it, of course, what was going on. No one can. Mark couldn’t. But maybe it’s time that someone bloody well admitted it, yeah?’

‘Jesus. What was going on? I don’t…’ He is barely able to suppress his rage. ‘Meaning what exactly? Dunbrogan House? Is that it?’

She says nothing.

‘Been doing your homework, have you? You bitch.’ He puts a hand up to his chest and rubs it. ‘Very well,’ he goes on, wincing, ‘you want to talk about this, yeah? About Frank and Larry? About the accident? Let’s talk about it then.’

‘Yes… let’s.’

‘But not over the phone.’ His voice is hard now, and controlled, almost a whisper. ‘Somewhere outside. Somewhere neutral. And right now.’

If she ever comes near me again…

‘Fine,’ Gina says without hesitation. ‘Tell me where.’

The main story on the front page of the Sunday Tribune is about Larry Bolger and his imminent coronation. However, there is a piece at the bottom – and two more inside, on page 8 – about Richmond Plaza.

Mark reads these, a little impatiently at first, but then with growing interest.

It is not stated explicitly – nothing is, presumably because of the country’s strict libel laws – but with the report by that engineer, what Gina seems to have uncovered here, theoretically, reading between the lines, is a motive for the murder of her brother.

Or what she sees as the murder of her brother.

And this Paddy Norton, the developer, is the focus of all her attention. She seems to have pursued the man with a ferocious determination, and…

Mark puts the paper down for a moment, and as he gazes at the wall opposite, and listens to the monotonous beeping of the monitors, a thought occurs to him.

She was going to tell him something.

It was their last conversation. The one on the phone. She was talking and he interrupted her.

What had she been going to say?

He tries to remember. He was…

I think I’m maybe on the wrong track.

That was it.

About Bolger.

He closes his eyes.

I think I’m maybe on the wrong track, about Bolger. I mean, it doesn’t seem –

He opens his eyes again.

But what? It doesn’t seem what?

It doesn’t seem that Bolger…

He’s confused. He takes up the paper again and scans the final paragraphs of the article he was reading.

Paddy Norton… Paddy Norton…

He’s barely able to focus on the words.

… started out over twenty-five years ago… web of business and political connections… soon established as a leading… party affiliations… the Bolger brothers…

Mark feels dizzy.

But what does this mean? Has he been wrong all along? All his life?

He goes back a few pages, to another article, one about Bolger and scans that.

… called back from Boston… funeral arrangements already in place… reluctant to run…

Mark closes his eyes.

It hits him now with the force of a religious revelation.

Bolger wasn’t even in the country when the accident happened …

By the time he got back from America, everything had been taken care of, everything had been set in train.

Jesus Christ.

He has always just assumed…

The name… it was always the name, Larry Bolger, looming like a dark cloud over everything he ever did.

Larry Bolger… Larry Bolger…

But he never questioned it, never talked to anyone about it. No one ever talked to him about it…

He shakes his head, a surge of anger now rising through him.

He needs to know.

He needs to know.

Paddy Norton.

Billionaire property developer.

The name is familiar, of course, but Mark can’t put a face to it. Then it occurs to him that given how the construction industry works here, he might actually have met Norton at some point, or at least have seen him at functions, trade fairs.

And he definitely knows people who have met him. Just a while back, in fact – there was that developer from Cork. Didn’t he say he’d been ‘talking to’ Norton?

Jesus.

How many degrees of separation? Never too many in this fucking town, that’s for sure.

Never enough.

As a politician, Bolger had always seemed a distant figure to Mark – in a numb, mediated sort of way. But this? This is too close to the bone.

Way too close…

They might have shaken hands.

Through his anger, and now revulsion, Mark steels himself, does his best to concentrate, to focus.

Winterland Properties. Their head office is on Baggot Street. But Norton himself… he has that huge spread out in…

He’s read about it.

Foxrock.

It shouldn’t be too hard to get his number. It might even be listed.

When the nurse comes back, before she’s even through the door, Mark calls out to her.

Startled by the urgency in his voice, she comes straight over to his bedside.

‘Yes, love, what is it?’

‘That phone?’

‘Oh yes, I haven’t… er, I’ll -’

‘Can I borrow yours then? You said I could borrow yours. Can I? It’s just for minute. It’s just… Can I? It’s important.’

Gina stands at the door of her apartment and looks back in. She switches off the light and steps out into the hallway. She closes the door, locks it. She takes the stairs, just to be moving.

What is she up to? Is she insane?

Don’t ever go near Paddy Norton again…

But she needs to know.

She needs to hear him say it, and if she can get him talking, and keep him talking, then maybe he will.

Down on the street, it’s cold and forbidding, a mid-November evening. They’ve arranged to meet on the seafront at Sandymount. On a bench. Somewhere neutral, somewhere outside. But also somewhere potentially – in this weather – quite isolated… a person here or there, but only maybe, and walking their dog, huddled into their overcoat, shivering, staring straight ahead, distracted…

She doesn’t care, though.

If Norton is prepared to talk about Larry Bolger and his brother, then maybe he’ll talk about hers.

She takes her mobile out of her jeans pocket, checks it, switches it to vibrate and then puts it back.

She looks up and down the quays. With this traffic diversion in place, it’s not so easy to get a cab anymore.

She starts walking back towards town, towards the IFSC.

It’ll be easier up there.

Standing in the hall, Norton puts on his Crombie coat. He folds up the page with the photographs on it and slips it into his pocket.

He also puts on a scarf and gloves.

He looks at himself in the mirror. His face has a greyish pallor.

He was stupid on the phone. He shouldn’t have mentioned Dunbrogan House. He knew the moment he said it that she had no idea what he was talking about.

But what was the point of the photographs then? Were they a taunt? Some sort of sentimental plea? All along he’s been saying she knows nothing, and all along he’s been right.

But she refuses to go away.

Norton reaches his hand towards the door and is about to open it when the house phone rings.

As before, he has no intention of answering it, but something makes him stop and listen all the same. The ringtone continues for a bit and then cuts off.

Miriam.

Again, something holds him back, gives him pause.

He turns around.

Miriam appears at the top of the stairs. She’s holding the phone in her hand.

She looks at him strangely – and he guesses it’s not just because he’s leaving the house without having said a word. Her reproach of the past hours and days, her contempt, seem to have fallen away and been replaced by something else, something that goes much deeper, something he’s finding it difficult to read.

She comes down a few steps and holds the phone out.

Quietly, almost in a whisper, she says, ‘It’s Mark Griffin.’

‘Hello?’

Mark draws in a deep breath.

It’s as though he’s been waiting all his life to draw in this particular breath, and he holds on to it. The words are ready – in whatever combination they may see fit to arrange themselves, they always have been – but there’s something unique, and mysterious, about the brief moment of silence before they take over.

It is a bridge, already in flames, between his past and his future.

‘It was you,’ Mark says eventually, his voice, when it comes, sounding strange to him, almost like someone else’s. ‘Wasn’t it?’

And then, as he waits for a response, afraid he might miss something, a phrase, a word, even a syllable, he presses the phone tightly against his ear.

He stares at the door.

His heart is pounding.

For his part, Norton is standing in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs, barely able to comprehend what is happening – not least the banality of it, how the simple, physical act of taking a telephone into his hand can belie the enormity, the significance, of what he’s about to do.

Which is talk to Mark Griffin.

Little Mark bloody Griffin.

But what does he say? How does he respond? In the circumstances, words seem not only inadequate and puny, but also potentially dangerous, because he mightn’t be able to control them. If he starts in here – even with a rational, innocuous Excuse me or I beg your pardon – who’s to say what torrent of less innocuous words might follow? He’s acutely aware, too, of Miriam, who’s still halfway up the stairs, and staring at him, listening, but for what? Some formula of words as well? The answer to a question from twenty-five years ago? A question that she never asked? A question that has remained unasked, and unarticulated, and in the air between them all this time, like interference, like a dense wall of radioactive dust particles, sometimes visible, sometimes not?

He could just hang up here, tell her it was some tabloid scumbag fishing for a quote, but -

‘Wasn’t it, Norton?’

The option recedes.

Quickly, he moves across the hall and back into the living room. With his foot, he nudges the door closed behind him.

Words, words…

He’s always been good at using them, to negotiate, to obfuscate, to deny, to bludgeon.

‘Sorry… what did you say your name was again?’

‘Oh Jesus.’ Mark, in his overheated, airless hospital room, shakes his head. ‘Let’s not do this, Norton,’ he whispers, and glances up at the ceiling, ‘please.’

But Mark’s mind is almost blank now, a hundred different ways to proceed fanning out bewilderingly before him.

Rage his only constant.

‘Because you know who I am.’ He swallows. ‘You fucking made me who I am.’

‘OK, calm down there. Just take it easy. I… I thought you were in intensive care. I read -’

‘Oh, I am, you needn’t worry about that.’ Mark moves his neck slightly and feels the tug of the various IV tubes. ‘But the point here is… I always thought it was him, all these years, but it wasn’t, was it? It was you.’

‘It was me what?’

‘Jesus.’ Mark leans forward in the bed. He almost wants to laugh at this point, but knows if he does it won’t sound anything remotely like a laugh. ‘It was you who covered it up that night,’ he says, ‘and it’s you who’s trying to cover it up again now. Because it’s come back at you. And you’re freaking out.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

Norton stops in the middle of the living room, faces the TV screen on the wall above the fireplace, sees his reflection in the grey darkness – this prosperous middle-aged man in an overcoat and scarf, talking on the phone.

Business as usual.

‘I didn’t cover anything up.’

But he is beginning to feel rattled. And a little flushed. The novelty wearing off. He taps at his coat pocket with his free hand, fumbles for the pack of Nalprox.

A part of Norton wishes this weren’t happening over the phone, that they were face to face, that he could at least picture the young man on the other end of the line. But he can’t. All he’s got are images left over from long ago, images assembled from reports, from scraps of conversation, from dreams.

Images of a five-year-old boy with a bloodied face, and puzzled, vacant eyes, walking over shattered glass… and walking towards him, towards Norton…

Who wasn’t even there.

‘You may think I’m some kind of fucking idiot,’ Mark is saying, ‘and that’s fine, but let me tell you this.’

Mark has no idea what this is, what it is he’s supposedly going to say next, but he can’t stop it, any more than he could stop a surge of reflux rising up from his stomach.

‘I’ve survived this far, OK? The crash, getting shot, whatever, and I’ll go on surviving, because sooner or later I intend to make you pay for what you did to my family… what you’ve gone on doing to them.’ He gets a flash of the three photographs he found and wonders where they are now. ‘But that’s all finished,’ he continues. ‘It’s over. I’m not taking any more of it. I’m here, Norton, I’m here now, and I’m not going away.’

He’s pressing the phone so hard against the side of his head that it hurts.

He holds up his other hand. It’s shaking.

Norton remains silent, but as fascination gives way to impatience, and guilt to indignation, he has to make a conscious effort not to lose it.

Because how dare this little bastard talk to him like that? How dare he even call him in the first place, and at home?

It’s outrageous.

Norton manages to pop one of the pills from the blister, but it slips from his hand and falls to the carpet.

Shit.

From his bed, Mark strains to hear, to interpret the silence – but is unable to match it.

‘So if you send anyone near me again,’ he says, ‘in here to the hospital, a cop, some visitor, whoever…’ He pauses, keenly aware of the absurdity of what he’s about to say next, but again, unable not to say it. ‘I’ll kill them with my bare fucking hands, is that clear? And then I’ll come after you myself.’

Norton tries to bend down to get the pill from the carpet, but gives up. Out of breath, wheezing, he fumbles with the blister again for a replacement.

Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything.

‘Look,’ Mark goes on, forcing himself to concede a little, but still desperately struggling to deliver a killer blow, ‘maybe… maybe I can’t do anything to get you now, realistically, maybe it’s too late… but we both know I’m not the only one out there. And if you’re thinking, well, this clown will eventually give up, do you really think she will?’ He pauses, waiting, eyes wide open. ‘No,’ he then says, ‘I don’t either, and I hope she doesn’t, I sincerely hope she fucking crucifies you.’

As Norton raises his hand with the pill in it to his mouth, he knows that that’s it, any appeal to willpower, to self-discipline, is futile now – he’s going to let go, he can feel it inside.

It’s like a loose bowel movement about to explode…

But that’s fine. He doesn’t mind. He almost welcomes it.

He places the pill on his tongue and swallows.

‘You know what, you little prick?’ he then says. ‘-You’re absolutely right. And I’m not going to let that happen. Because I think I’ve taken enough shit from her already, don’t you?’ Deliberate implication here being, of course, that he’s not in the market for any from him. Which is maybe a little too subtle for this… this what? This child? But the person he’s talking to is no longer a child, not by a stretch – and in any case, fuck subtlety. ‘I mean, Jesus Christ, Mark,’ he says, and clears his throat. ‘Come on. Let’s face it. Why the hell do you think I’m heading out the door right now to meet her?’

Mark flinches. ‘What?’

His brain automatically rescans the last few seconds. Then it short-circuits, scrambles, cuts for a moment to white noise.

Norton unassailable now.

‘Yeah, to discuss who might be in the new cabinet? I don’t think so.’

Oh God…

And with that, every solid object around Mark seems to start moving – the bed he’s in, the drip stand, the walls, the very room itself – all of them, like tectonic plates, shifting, sliding in different directions…

Why did he have to mention her? Why did he have to bring her into it?

He closes his eyes to block it all out, but the sudden, frenetic darkness is worse, coloured patterns flickering and multiplying in a queasy kaleidoscope.

Why did he have to open his fucking mouth?

Which he tries to do again now, but his voice catches.

‘I’ll -’

It’s as if having used all his energy and resolve to cross this bridge before it collapses, he inexplicably finds himself turning around and rushing headlong back through the flames… back to the other side, to the past, to that desolate, all-too-familiar landscape of guilt and shame and self-loathing.

‘I’m sorry?’ Norton says, looking at his watch now, and over at the door. ‘You’ll what? You’ll do what? I didn’t hear you.’ He starts walking. ‘But anyway, Mark, let me remind you of something, yeah? Little detail.’ He pauses. ‘You’re in the hospital.’

He doesn’t say anything else.

For Mark, the silence that follows is awful. It becomes worse with each passing second.

It becomes unbearable.

He opens his eyes.

He is two or three words into a last, desperate attempt at a sentence when he realises that Norton has already hung up.

Let’s talk about it?

Gina crosses the street and takes the boardwalk.

But talk about what? Dunbrogan House? She has no idea what that refers to. Saying she couldn’t prove what was going on implied she knew something was going on. But she didn’t really.

She was bluffing.

The river is dark and glistening, and moving at speed. Clouds reflected in the water ripple past.

Back in the apartment she considered taking something with her, just in case, a weapon of some sort, a carving knife, a pair of scissors, a skewer – but she felt foolish, standing there in the kitchen, staring into an open cutlery drawer.

What did she imagine was going to happen?

At the last minute, however, picking up her keys and phone from the desk in the corner, she also picked up a glass paperweight that she’s had for years. It’s in the shape of a star, with a millefiori design. It’s made of Venetian crystal. It’s solid, and heavy, and has sharp angles.

She dropped it into the pocket of her leather jacket.

At Matt Talbot Bridge she sees a passing taxi. She hails it. The taxi stops. She gets in.

Her stomach is churning.

‘Sandymount, please. The seafront.’

The car pulls away.

‘That’s a chilly one to be -’

‘Please,’ she says, clutching the paperweight in her pocket. ‘No talking.’

She looks out of the window.

As soon as Norton puts the phone down he leaves the house. He gets in the car, turns it on the gravel driveway, activates the electronic gates and flies out onto the main road.

Moments later he’s turning at the light and joining the Dual Carriageway.

Thinking, for fuck’s sake.

Mark Griffin.

But also thinking, calculating, and quickly coming to the conclusion that Mark Griffin knows nothing, poses no real threat and is clearly deranged – not to say hysterical, not to say out of his fucking mind.

Going by that performance, at any rate.

But he’s not a threat.

No one will listen to him. In fact, if anything, Mark Griffin resurfacing in the public consciousness after all this time will only get people wondering about Larry Bolger, asking questions about him, speculating – the way Griffin himself obviously was.

But that’s not something Norton cares about anymore.

Because no one knows the truth. No one knows what really happened that night.

Only he does. And he’s not telling.

He taps his fingers on the steering wheel.

Of course it’s true what he said on the phone. He didn’t cover anything up. He had nothing to do with it. Larry’s old man, Romy Mulcahy, the party hacks – as far as he knows, they were the ones who did it.

It wouldn’t have been his style anyway.

And yet… and yet…

There was one thing Griffin said that was right.

It may be irrational, it may be illogical, but Norton feels that if anyone could tease it out of him – what he did do that night – if anyone could pick at it, worry it apart, conjure the whole thing up out of smoke, Gina Rafferty could. And now that he’s given her Dunbrogan House as well, she’ll never leave him alone.

She will fucking crucify him.

He glances over at the glove compartment.

So what choice does he have?

There is a wide curve in the road ahead. As he takes it, the sparkling city, spread out below, reveals itself. There in the distance, in the bay, imposing, magnificent, like a flourish – like a signature – is Richmond Plaza.

Norton feels an unexpected rush of pride, and it strikes him that maybe all hope is not lost. OK, Amcan is pulling out, other clients have already pulled out, and the building may well stand empty for a considerable period of time. But when the hysteria dies down, and the repairs are done, when further studies prove that there was never any danger in the first place, and when the economy picks up again – people will come around. The building will get a second chance. He’ll get a second chance. He’ll be able to rebuild his reputation, and to end his career on a high.

He stops at a red light.

But again, not if she starts tugging at the other end of it…

With his left hand he picks up the blister of Nalprox tablets from where he tossed it on the passenger seat. There are five left. He quickly takes three, swallows them dry. Then he turns on the CD player – that clarinet thing… or is it an oboe? Or a cor anglais? He stares at the dashboard, listening.

The car behind beeps its horn.

Norton looks up. The light has turned green. He’s in the middle lane, traffic on either side already surging forward.

Shit.

He accelerates, his heart racing.

What he’s doing tonight…

His mind wandering.

What he did that night…

The thing is, there on the stairs, when Miriam handed him the phone, Norton felt the weirdest mix of emotions – irritation, but with a tinge of curiosity… fear, but with this undeniable throb of longing…

The Stillorgan Park Hotel flits past on the right.

It was almost like a homecoming.

Soon he’s approaching Booterstown Avenue.

Sort of in the way this is…

He indicates, and turns. Then, before he knows it he’s on the Rock Road, heading for Merrion Gates.

His insides lurch.

There’s no way around it, is there?

He glances over at the glove compartment again.

She was depressed… unhinged really. She should have been in therapy, or on medication…

He tries to imagine how it will be… Gina there beside him on the bench, talking… it’s windy and cold, traffic rumbles past in the background. There aren’t that many people about, almost no one in fact. The sea is in front of them – shadowy, vast, heaving. He looks around, chooses his moment, turns to her, puts the gun right up against the side of her head and pulls the trigger.

Then he steadies her as best he can, settles her on the bench, puts the gun into her right hand, and walks away.

It’s not exactly how he wants it, but what choice does he have?

At the end of Booterstown Avenue, he turns left, onto the Rock Road, his mind in turmoil now, spinning, flipping… forwards, backwards, conjuring it all up…

What he’s going to do tonight.

What he did that night…

Mark pulls the covers back, moves his legs to the edge of the bed again and slides them over. He shunts up into a sitting position and eases himself off the bed. He picks the mobile phone up and slips it into the pocket of his gown. Then, without giving it a second’s thought, he yanks off the catheter tube from below. There is immediate and considerable pain involved in this, but Mark does his best to absorb it. He then takes a hold of the mobile drip stand and starts moving across the room with it, wheeling it slowly, focusing all his attention on getting as far as the door.

When he’s almost there, he notices that there are spots of blood on the floor and on his feet.

But he has to keep moving, because…

How could he have been so fucking stupid?

He opens the door.

The guard, who is on the bench draining a mug of tea or coffee, sees him and is immediately up on his feet.

‘Whoa!’

He puts the mug down and reaches out in support.

‘Jesus, what are you doing there?’ He looks around. ‘Nurse!’

Mark takes the support for a moment, then pulls away.

The alarm on the guard’s face is curiously reassuring. At least, Mark feels, it’s not going to be him.

Up and down the corridor there is a ripple effect as people take notice and react – but after the guard, the closest person, and quickest on the move, is his own nurse.

What did she say her name was?

Helen?

‘Mark, my God, what are you doing?’

She moves in front of the guard and takes Mark by the elbow. She guides him to the bench, making sure to keep the drip stand, with its various dangling bags of fluid, in position. She sits down next to him. Then, noticing the splats of blood on the floor, she takes a couple of deep breaths.

‘OK, OK,’ she says slowly, ‘we have to get you back inside. We -’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘No.’

He looks up. The guard and some others, a nurse, a doctor or two, are standing around watching.

‘I need to get a number, a mobile number,’ he says, in a half whisper, and wincing now from the pain. ‘I need -’

‘Yes, yes, we’ll get whatever you want, Mark, but you have to get back inside, into bed -’

‘No, I said.’

The guard takes a couple of tentative steps forward. ‘Easy on there, pal, all right? There’s no problem here. There’s no problem.’

Mark watches him, feeling dizzy suddenly, and weak.

‘In a few minutes,’ the guard goes on, ‘the detectives will be here to see you. They’re on their way…’ – he waves his walkie-talkie – ‘… and we can sort it out then, whatever it is -’

The detectives…

Mark shoots a look up and down the corridor.

Everyone is watching. No one is moving. The light is harsh and uncomfortable, the atmosphere unnaturally still.

‘NO,’ he says.

Lifting his hand – and almost before he knows what he’s doing – he takes a hold of the strip on the side of his neck and starts trying to rip it off.

‘My God, STOP!’ the nurse screams, and grabs him by the wrist. ‘What are you doing? Jesus. That’s… that’s your jugular.’

Mark pauses, allowing her to hold his wrist. She’s leaning in close now, their faces inches apart.

‘You can’t just…’ She hesitates.

He looks into her eyes. ‘What?’

‘Those tubes,’ she says. ‘You can’t just remove them like that. You’ll bleed. You’re bleeding now. You could give yourself an embolism. You could die.’

He nods.

He can already feel a trickle of blood on his neck.

‘Well, Helen,’ he whispers, ‘it’s either that, or you get me the number.’

‘Mark,’ she pleads, tightening her grip on his wrist, ‘this is crazy -’

‘No,’ he says, ‘it isn’t,’ and with his free hand he reaches around her and punches one of the bags of fluid on the drip stand. The bag bursts and its contents splat loudly onto the floor.

There is a general gasp of disbelief.

The nurse, in shock, releases her grip on Mark’s wrist and pulls away. But as she’s doing this Mark reaches along the bench and grabs the mug. Taking it by the handle, he swings it around and smashes it into the wall behind him. Pieces fly everywhere. Then he brings what’s left – a jagged shard of ceramic earthenware – up to the side of his neck.

‘Get away… move.’

Slowly, reluctantly, people comply. The nurse does too, but looks appalled, her arms held out in a desperate appeal to reason.

‘Mark, you can’t -’

‘MOVE.’ He jerks his head sideways. ‘I’ll tear right into the vein.’

She nods quickly and takes another few steps back.

‘You,’ Mark then says, addressing the guard, ‘stay.’

The guard freezes.

Apart from the constant drip-drip to the floor of what remains from the infusion bag, there is now an eerie silence all along the corridor.

Mark leans his head back against the wall. There are spots of blood on the front of his gown.

‘OK,’ he says, nodding at the guard, at his walkie-talkie. ‘You’re going to get me that number, and right now.’

When they get to Strand Road, Gina asks the taxi driver to pull over. Her hands are shaking as she pays him. She wonders if he’ll remember her later.

Yeah, that stuck-up bitch who didn’t want to talk.

She gets out and starts walking along by the low stone wall. It’s freezing cold, the wind cutting through her like a knife. To her right, cars stream past in a steady flow. To her left, the bay seems shrouded in a murky orange darkness. There is a lot of cloud, a gathering mist, and no moon. The tide is in. The lights of Howth and Dun Laoghaire are just about visible.

She is sick to her stomach.

She comes to the end of the stone wall. She goes through the small parking area – which is almost empty – and onto the promenade.

An elderly man with a dog approaches, nods, passes.

There is no one sitting on any of the first few benches.

She can’t tell if she’s shaking from nerves or shivering from the cold.

Why is this so different from Friday? She was extremely nervous then, too, and even had a gun in her pocket. But she still managed to stay calm. There was no plan of course, and that was it – everything just happened, unfolded, second by second, none of it anticipated.

This evening is different. She has a sense of foreboding. She also has a sense of purpose, an almost visceral need to engage head-on with this, and to close it down, even if it means bashing someone’s head in – his, her own, it barely seems to matter anymore.

She approaches a bench that has four or five teenagers on it. They are huddled together, smoking and laughing.

She goes by, half hearing a comment one of them directs at her.

The next few benches are empty. Then there is the Martello Tower. On the other side of it the promenade continues, and although they didn’t say where they’d meet exactly, or at which bench, that’s probably where she’ll find him. It makes sense. It’s the direction he’ll be coming from.

She keeps moving.

Towards him, into his orbit.

Earlier, Jackie Merrigan asked why she couldn’t be satisfied with having destroyed Paddy Norton’s reputation, and she said because it was nothing compared to the damage he had caused to others.

It’s only now that Gina is beginning to see how she herself is one of these others, how Norton is like a virus she has contracted, or a toxic substance in her system she may never be able to eliminate. With each step, it becomes a little clearer… how he has influenced her behaviour, twisted her emotions, choked her sense of who she is… how he has turned her into the crazy lady, the mad bitch who can’t be stopped…

But what Gina is most afraid of now, as she pushes on against the wind, past the Martello Tower, is that Norton is pulling her towards something else again, something awful – a confession she doesn’t want to hear, a revelation she doesn’t need to know about. She’s afraid that he is pulling her towards a place from which there can be no route back, that he is pulling her towards annihilation.

She looks ahead, along the remaining stretch of promenade, and thinks of the two Noels. She thinks of Dermot Flynn, of Mark Griffin’s parents and sister. She thinks of all their lost, stolen futures.

Then she thinks of Mark himself, of his uncertain future, and of her own future, the reality and promise of each diminishing, slipping away with the passing hours, and as a plea, almost as a prayer, she gazes up and asks out loud what it will take, if anything, to save them.

What he did that night…

As Norton approaches the level crossing, the light turns red and the gates come down.

He waits, feeling overwhelmed all of a sudden – exhausted, short of breath.

What he did that night barely seems real to him anymore. It was so long ago now, and seems less like a sequence of concrete actions than a fragment from a dream – and a half-remembered, misremembered one at that.

He stares through the gates, over to Strand Road.

But he was only doing what had to be done… to protect his interests, his family, his business. Just like tonight. Just like that other night, a while back, with Fitz.

In a sudden burst, the DART train, an illuminated streak of green, hurtles past along the railway line, click-clacking, click-clacking, the force of it seeming to correspond to – seeming to be commensurate with – the sudden force now pressing in on Norton’s chest.

He closes his eyes, and the pain subsides.

Frank Bolger came to the house that night. The house on Griffith Avenue. He was on his way to a meeting in Drogheda and stopped by to have a quick word with Norton about the proposed rezoning of the Dunbrogan estate. Standing at the front door, he said he wanted to clarify his position – and face to face, man to man, not through the usual, twisted, sniping back channels that were so typical of local politics. He felt that Norton was a reasonable man and would respect Frank’s position if it was presented to him in a proper and honest fashion. Norton invited him in. He was alone in the house. Miriam was out for the evening, at the theatre. They went through to the kitchen and sat down. Frank was nervous, but coming here like this showed he had balls.

Norton actually admired him.

Click-clack, click-clack…

No compromise was going to be possible between them, though – because there was nothing new in Frank’s much-vaunted ‘position’. Dunbrogan House was a part of our heritage, he argued, and taking the wrecking ball to it would be nothing less than a tragedy. Blah, blah, blah. He then added – his voice a little shaky, but desperately earnest – that he wasn’t going to be bullied or intimidated. He knew his old man wasn’t happy about the stand he was taking either, but this was a matter of principle for him. So not only did he intend lobbying further against the rezoning, and speaking out about the dubious voting records of certain councillors, he also intended to publicly berate Miriam’s father for selling off the property in the first place. And he made no apology for the fact.

Norton stared at him in disbelief.

Click-clack, click-clack…

‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,’ he remembers saying.

Frank was the one who laughed, but nervously. Then he looked at his watch.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to get that straight, put it on the record.’ He cleared his throat and made a move to get up. ‘Right. I’d better be going. I don’t want to be late.’

Norton waved a dismissive hand at this.

‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘The roads will be quiet at this hour. You’ll fly up.’

It was in that moment – panic rising in his throat, like bile – that it came to him.

Click-clack, click-clack…

What he could do.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to argue with you, Frank. I can see there’s no point. But I want to thank you for coming, I respect you for it.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, you’ll have a drop for the road? Call it a peace offering.’

Frank hesitated, and then said, ‘Sure, why not?’

‘Good. I’ll… just be a minute.’

Click-clack, click-clack…

Norton left the kitchen. The drinks cabinet was in the living room. But he went upstairs first, and into the bedroom. He went over to Miriam’s bedside table. He picked up her bottle of sleeping pills. He opened it and shook one out into the palm of his hand. He went back downstairs. In the living room he poured out two drinks, whiskey with a splash of soda water. He crushed the pill between his thumb and forefinger and sprinkled it into the glass for Frank. He watched it dissolve. He had no real idea what he was doing, if it would work or not, or what effect it would have – but it was something, and he was desperate, because although Frank Bolger was earnest and naive, he was popular, he had that sheen to him, people listened, they paid attention…

Click-clack, click-clack…

Norton brought the glasses into the kitchen, handed one to Frank and raised his own.

‘Your health.’

‘Cheers.’

A few minutes later, Frank Bolger left. Got into his car. Took the airport road.

Click-clack, click-clack…

Drove north. Then came, at one point – drowsy, dreamy, seeing double – to a sharp bend in the road, where another…

Click-clack, click-clack…

Norton opens his eyes.

As suddenly as it appeared, the DART train is gone… and he’s staring through the gates again at Strand Road.

But staring vacantly, distractedly.

Because it’s a long time since he’s done that, recalled it in sequence, recalled it whole. It’s a long time since he’s even thought about it at all.

But then, as the gates lift, the pain in his chest returns…

How easy it would be, Mark thinks, to surrender here, to drift off, to lose consciousness…

Which he probably would do, if it weren’t for the incredible tension in his right arm and wrist, and the effort it’s taking to hold this sharp-edged piece of ceramic tightly against the side of his neck.

A few feet away, leaning against the opposite wall, the guard is chewing his lip, jigging his right leg, waiting.

After he’d frantically fed Mark’s instructions into his walkie-talkie and then listened for a moment, he’d held the walkie-talkie up and said, ‘Couple of minutes. Two or three. Tops.’

But a hundred and eighty seconds?

That’s an eternity.

And it’s already been longer than that.

Farther down the hall, people are hovering, watching. Mark can’t see them clearly.

He can’t see anything clearly.

At his feet, the trickle of blood is inching forward and will soon be making contact with the pool of clear fluid from the burst infusion bag.

Mark glares at the guard.

‘Tell them to hurry up.’

This time the pain is in Norton’s shoulder, too, and all down his left arm.

He struggles to release the handbrake. Then he struggles to get a firm grip on the gearstick. When the bastard in the car behind beeps him several times in rapid succession, Norton rallies briefly and somehow manages to shunt the car forward – over the tracks and around to the left.

But once he is on this short tree-lined stretch of road that leads to the seafront, the pain intensifies, and is so severe for a couple of seconds that all he can see is a blinding flash of white light.

But he rallies again.

He spots a parking space on the right, in front of a large grey house, and on the spur of the moment – but awkwardly, without indicating – swerves over and pulls into it.

The car behind beeps him once more as it passes.

Closing his eyes, Norton heaves a long, nervous sigh.

At the end of the promenade, Gina turns around and starts walking back towards the Martello Tower. Behind it, looming in the distance, is that other tower, Richmond Plaza. Glimmering through the mist, white points of light dotted here and there, the building looks ghostly and insubstantial – though Gina understands that teams of welders are already in place, busily working around the clock to make headway on the repairs.

She looks away, a little queasy at the thought of her direct involvement in all of this. It’s like an anxiety dream, one in which she has somehow – improbably, and with disastrous consequences – got mixed up in her brother’s affairs.

She glances out across the bay, and then looks at her watch.

But it’s not a dream, is it?

She stops at a bench and sits down.

In the background, she hears a car horn – a quick, impatient series of beeps.

She takes the glass paperweight out of her pocket, holds it in her lap, looks at it.

Millefiori.

A thousand flowers. What’s she going to do? Hit him over the head with a thousand flowers?

Oh God, she suddenly thinks.

This is hopeless. It’s insanity.

She gazes out into the heaving darkness.

Then she gets up, replaces the paperweight in her pocket, walks back towards the end of the promenade and passes over to the pavement running along by the main road.

Norton opens his eyes, tries to focus.

A few feet ahead of him there is another parked car, and several more beyond that. Farther on again, he can see the promenade.

But he can also -

He leans forward and stares for a second.

He can also see… Gina…

She’s maybe a hundred yards away, at the end of the promenade, and walking in this direction.

He’s pretty sure it’s her.

Jesus.

He reaches across to the glove compartment and opens it.

With any luck he mightn’t even have to get out of the car. He could be gone from here in minutes, before anyone…

He presses the button for the window. It hums open.

He looks ahead. She’s getting closer, but slowly.

He puts a hand up to his chest.

Jesus, woman, come on.

There is a crackle of static and the guard holds the walkie talkie up to his ear.

‘Yeah?’

Mark leans forward on the bench, straining to hear, every nerve end in his body alert now.

The guard fumbles in his breast pocket for a notebook and pen.

Mark takes a deep breath.

He glances down the corridor.

There is some activity at the far end, through a set of double doors, but he can’t make out what’s going on.

He looks back at the guard.

‘Come on.’

The guard tears a page from his notebook and steps forward, nervously, arm outstretched, as though feeding a lion through the bars of a cage.

Mark grabs the piece of paper with his free hand and puts it down beside him on the bench.

With the same hand he fishes the mobile phone out of his gown pocket. He glances around and then quickly starts punching in the number.

Where the hell is Norton?

This is the direction he should be coming from.

She keeps moving.

Up ahead there are some parked cars, but somehow she doesn’t feel good about this.

After another few paces her mobile starts vibrating in the pocket of her jeans.

She slows down.

Maybe it’s Norton.

She stops, extracts the phone.

Looks at the display. New number.

Shit.

She hesitates. Not now. But still brings the phone up to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Gina?’

It takes her a second.

‘Mark?’ She spins around to face the sea again, something inside her also turning. ‘Thank God. You’re OK.’

Grinding the nurse’s phone into the side of his skull, Mark wonders if this is true, if he is OK, because he doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel he has the strength to go on.

But all he has said so far is her name.

And that’s not enough.

‘Listen to me,’ he then says, each syllable on its own taking so much effort he can’t even be sure they’re coming out in a logical sequence. ‘Stay away from Paddy Norton. Don’t go to meet him.’

Gina is taken aback by this – not so much by the fact that Mark seems to know where she’s going, but by his tone. It’s a command, and for weeks that’s all she’s been hearing, commands, and negative ones, don’t do this, don’t do that…

Not something she responds well to.

And yet… and yet…

Isn’t there something different about this one? Isn’t he someone, of all people, she should listen to?

For his part, Mark – hanging on by a thread, waiting for some kind of reaction from Gina – can’t help suspecting that he might be seriously deluded here, or insane, or just too late – a feeling that is compounded when he suddenly hears, down the phone line, a dull thud… followed by shattering glass and the sound of an alarm…

He freezes.

Waits.

Is she there? Please. Let her still be there, let her say it -

‘Gina?’ he whispers, unable to bear it any longer. ‘What was that?’

Then, for what feels like ages, but can be only a few seconds, there is silence, nothing, just the muted, filtered wailing of the alarm.

He is about to erupt when Gina speaks, her voice muffled and quiet.

‘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?

Unbelievable, 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.