Winterland (44 page)

‘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,
un
necessary. 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.