Winterland (46 page)

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
som
e
time.

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 …