Winterland (20 page)

‘Yeah.’

It’s the more abstract lies that he hates, though – the emotional lies, trying to pass his fear off as despondency, trying to make it seem as if he’s burned out and needs a change of scene.

That
stuff is really hard to maintain.

Because Claire isn’t stupid. Far from it. In fact, from the look she’s giving him right now, he even thinks she might have her suspicions about what’s going on.

At
some
level, anyway.

‘Dermot,’ she says, and shrugs, ‘I’m not sure what’s happening here, the weird behaviour … Australia,
this
.’ She spirals a forefinger in the air to indicate their immediate surroundings. ‘I’m really not, but –’

‘Yeah?’

Now he
hopes
she has her suspicions, and that she’s smart enough to work it out, because he’s getting desperate here. He needs to be able to share this. He looks her in the eye, willing her to see, to understand.

‘– the
thing
is,’ she says, and hesitates.

‘Yeah …
yeah
?’

It’s almost as if he’s panting.

‘Look, I hate myself for even asking you the question,’ she goes on finally – and all of a sudden his heart sinks – ‘but, I don’t know … are you having an
affair
or something?’

On the way into town from Dublin Airport the next morning Larry Bolger skims through the statement he’s going to be making at a press conference in twenty minutes.

Paula is slumped in the seat next to him. She has fallen asleep and is snoring lightly. Bolger himself hasn’t slept in over thirty-six hours and probably won’t for at least another twelve.

On the plane, he revised the statement endlessly, each time making amendments, but now he’s more or less satisfied with it. On Saturday he issued a bald statement from Chicago denying all of the charges. This is merely a clarification of that denial with some specifics thrown in.

But it’s the Q&A part of the press conference that he’s dreading.

It’s not that he’ll have a problem answering any of the questions they throw at him – he won’t – but getting tied up in Jesuitical knots over his personal finances, justifying expense sheets and unauthorised credit-card use – it
looks
bad. It’s undignified and will dent his credibility.

Of course, he’ll do his level best to turn things around by focusing on what the trade mission accomplished and by constant use of the phrase ‘going forward’, but they, the media, will drag it
back
– inevitably, inexorably – to the race meetings and the assignations, to what he ordered from room service on such and such a date … to the betting slips and the Cristal and the lobster and the porcelain veneers.

It will be a war of attrition.

He looks out of the window to the left. They pass the Bishop’s Palace and approach Binn’s Bridge.

He hates the media. Some of the stuff they dug up in the papers yesterday was despicable. Two of the articles he saw online went as far back as Frank’s accident and even included archive photos of the crash scene.

He shakes his head.

They’re a shower of bastards.

Because of them, as well, he now has to explain to his wife and daughters what he was doing five years ago with some woman they’d never heard of until last week. He has to work on convincing the party that he’s not a loose cannon. He has to maintain his composure and pretend to his supporters that his chances of taking over as leader haven’t been seriously compromised.

He can’t
begin
to imagine how all of this is looking from the fifth floor of the Wilson Hotel. According to Paddy Norton, who phoned again yesterday evening, no one’s been in touch about it yet – though of course they will be.

Bolger looks down and straightens his tie.

It has certainly raised his profile
here
, though. Nationally. Bolger is in the cabinet and gets interviewed a lot, he’s well known, but
this
level of name recognition is something else again. It’s the kind most politicians only ever dream about.

That is, of course, if you accept that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

They take a left at Gardiner Street.

Beside him, Paula is muttering something. He turns to look at her. She’s still asleep.

‘… but my phone isn’t charged … yes, I know … nine point seven …’

Different parts of her are twitching. It’s as though she has a low-level electrical current running through her body.

Deciding not to wake her up just yet, Bolger turns away again. He glances out of the window, at Mountjoy Square.

He wonders what Frank would have made of all this – or, if he wasn’t so unwell, the old man? What would
he
make of it? Politics was big in their house when they were kids. Liam Bolger was a local councillor for many years, and two of his brothers – Larry’s uncles – were in the trade-union movement. All of them were fierce party loyalists. Frank showed an interest from the beginning, and the old man encouraged him, took him to meetings, got him involved. Larry showed little interest, and if he wasn’t a disappointment to the old man, it was never exactly clear what he was. Frank, in any case, was the golden boy, and all of the family’s hopes for a successful political career – all of the old man’s hopes – were pinned on him. But then came that awful night … the trauma and grief of a fatal car crash, the horror of losing a son, the crushing blow of seeing your dreams die. Afterwards, in a desperate attempt to regroup – and with unyielding determination – the old man turned the spotlight onto his next son down.

Bolger closes his eyes.

There was a touch of that whole Kennedy thing to it, the royal succession, the passing on of the baton, of the
flame
– though over the years Larry has never been able to figure out if his relationship to Frank was more like Jack’s relationship to Joe Jr., or Bobby’s to Jack, or maybe even, and most likely, Teddy’s to Bobby.

He opens his eyes.

Just ahead is the Carlton Hotel, where he’s giving the press conference. He nudges Paula awake.

‘Oh … oh shit. Where are we?’

‘At the gates of hell,’ he says. ‘Look.’

She leans forward.

Dozens of reporters and photographers, jostling for position, are gathered at the entrance to the hotel.

Paula whips a compact out of her pocket, flicks it open and examines herself.

‘Oh God,’ she says, making a lame attempt to adjust her hair. ‘Look at the state of me.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Bolger says. ‘I don’t think you’re the one they’re interested in.’

As the car pulls up at the hotel, the photographers and reporters surge forward.

‘Remember,’ Paula says, like a ringside coach slipping in his plastic mouthpiece, ‘you’re indignant about all of this, you’re bewildered, you’re
hurt
.’

‘Yes,’ Bolger says, nodding his head.

He takes a deep breath and reaches for the door. Then, as he steps out of the car and into a hail of clicks, whirrs and flashes, he repeats to himself, over and over, mantra-like,
indignant,
bewildered, hurt … indignant, bewildered, hurt …

It takes Gina no more than ten minutes to locate Mark Griffin. When she gets into the office that morning she sits at her desk, pulls out the phone book and simply looks up his name. There are six Mark Griffins and over twenty M. Griffins. She starts with the Marks. Most of the previous night she lay awake thinking about how hard this would be, anticipating all sorts of obstacles, dead ends, trails gone cold – but now she’s surprised at how easy, and obvious, it is.

With the first and second Marks she’s a little awkward in her approach, a little too direct, but by the third one she’s got it right.

‘Hello, may I speak to Mark Griffin please?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Hello. I hope I’m on to the right person. I’m, I’m looking for a Mark Griffin who lost family members many years ago in a road accident, I –’

‘No, no,’ comes the immediate response, ‘no, no, sorry … you must be looking for someone else.’

The next response, number four, is very different – a silence that goes on so long Gina eventually has to interrupt it.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes,’ the voice says, ‘I’m here.’

Gina swallows.

This is him. She can tell. She glances at her watch.

Ten
minutes.

She didn’t think it would happen so fast, and now she’s not prepared. What does she say next?

‘Thank you.’

Thank you?

‘Look, who is this? Are you a journalist?’

‘No, no, of course not. My name is Gina Rafferty and I … I lost someone myself, two weeks ago, a brother, in a road accident, I …’

She doesn’t know how to proceed.

Then it’s Mark Griffin’s turn to interrupt the silence.

‘You have my condolences,’ he says, ‘really, but listen, I’m not a grief counsellor, I –’

‘I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but I do have a specific reason for calling you.’ She pauses. ‘I wonder if we could meet somewhere and talk.’

He exhales loudly and then says, ‘How did you get my name? How do you know about me?’

‘Can I explain all of that when we meet?’

Somewhat reluctantly he agrees, at first saying he’s busy and that it’ll have to be sometime later in the week. But then, as he flicks through what Gina imagines to be a diary or a notebook, his attitude seems to shift.

‘Look,’ he says, ‘what are you doing now?’

‘
Now?
This morning?’

‘Yeah.’ There is a new urgency in his voice. ‘In the next hour or two.’

‘Well … nothing, I suppose.’

‘OK then.’

They arrange to meet in a café on South Anne Street at eleven.

Before he leaves the house, Mark stops for a moment in front of the hall mirror. He looks awful. He didn’t shave this morning and his eyes are puffy. If it wasn’t for the Italian suit he’s wearing, he’d probably look more of a shambles. He doesn’t care, though.

He gets in the car and pulls out onto Glanmore Road.

It’s just after ten o’clock. Rush hour in Dublin never really ends, but if he’s lucky he should be able to make it into town in twenty-five, thirty minutes, get parking and be at the café on South Anne Street just before eleven.

He needs a little time to get his head together.

Mark has no idea who Gina Rafferty is or what she wants, but in the half hour since she called he’s come as close to having a panic attack as it’s possible to get without actually, technically, having one – the only thing holding it in abeyance, in fact, being a blind and unreasonable expectation that this woman, whoever she is, is going to be able to
tell
him something.

The traffic through Drumcondra is light enough, and once he crosses Tolka Bridge it loosens up even more.

Mark looks in the rearview mirror – at himself. His eyes are still puffy … and red and rheumy. This is the first hangover he’s had in a very long time. It was the first
drink
.

Half a bottle of Bombay Sapphire.

He’d resisted for days. But eventually there didn’t seem to be much point. It’d been so long since he’d had to confront head-on the reality of the accident – and it turned out to be more of a strain than he could bear, sifting through his memory like that …

The thing is, Mark
thinks
he can remember the crash happening, but the truth is he probably can’t. No doubt, in retrospect, his imagination has filled in a lot of the detail – provided colour, splashes of red, a wash of orange, a rotating blue light, as well as sound effects, screeches, screams, groans – but the reality of it all, buried deep somewhere in his subconscious and effectively inaccessible to him now, may have been quite different. What he can picture in his head, and what shows up unbidden every once in a while in dreams, is a serviceable version of the event. It may not be an accurate representation of what actually happened, but this ‘memory’ accords with the facts as they’ve been handed down to him, and anyway, it’s all he’s got.

He finds a parking space on Nassau Street.

But what is really strange here is that the subject has come up twice, and separately, in the space of a few days.

Is that just a coincidence, or is there something going on?

Mark doesn’t know. But either way, this is the single most formative event of his life, and never once – it occurs to him – never once has he had a proper conversation about it,
ever
… with anyone.

He looks at his watch and wonders now, nervously, as he walks back towards Dawson Street, if that isn’t about to change.

Gina leaves the office and walks along Harcourt Street. As she’s approaching the junction with St Stephen’s Green, a silver Luas, bell ringing, glides by. She crosses at the lights after the tram and enters the Green.

So much about Dublin has changed in recent years, but this great garden square with its winding pathways and formal flower beds isn’t one of them. In fact, if it weren’t for people’s clothes – Gina thinks – and their mobile phones, this could be twenty-five, fifty, even a hundred years ago. There’s something reassuring about that – even if it doesn’t make today, or what she’s about to do, any less real.

Not that she’s at all clear in her mind what that is.

A lot will depend on Mark Griffin. He was a kid when the accident – the
crash
– happened, so how much does he know about it? How much was he told when he was growing up? Is he aware that at the time there was lots of what Jackie Merrigan called ‘talk’? Griffin sounded relatively normal on the phone, but how will he respond to the fact that Gina’s theory, pretty shaky to start with, is not backed up by a single shred of evidence?

The thing is, for her theory to come into any kind of focus, for a discernible pattern to emerge, there needs to be a stronger connection between her brother and Larry Bolger. What she has is that they played poker sometimes, and apparently weren’t evenly matched. Meaning what? Bolger owed Noel money? He couldn’t pay it back?