Winterland (23 page)

She then asks him a few questions about what Noel was like to work with. It’s neutral enough territory and he answers as best he can. He actually talks for quite a while – though at one point he finds himself in the middle of a long sentence and realises he has no idea how he got there. He also has a headache. He starts massaging his temples.

After a few moments of this, Gina says, ‘Dermot, are you OK?’

He looks up. ‘Yes.’ He puts his hands down on the table. ‘I’m fine.’

But the truth is he isn’t. He hasn’t been sleeping lately, or eating, and he’s lost a lot of weight. He’s also been bickering constantly with Claire, something they never used to do, and he isn’t able to look either of his girls in the eye anymore without having his own eyes well up with tears.

He starts massaging his temples again.

Then he looks at Gina.

‘I have to go,’ he says.

Mark throws the remote onto the sofa, turns away from the TV and goes back into the kitchen. It doesn’t surprise him that Aunt Lilly is busy – that she’s over at the counter sieving flour into a bowl. Without saying a word, he walks right past her. He goes out the front door, pulls it behind him and heads straight for his car. As he’s backing out of the driveway, he puts on his seat belt.

He checks the rearview mirror, but the front door of the house remains closed.

Driving along the coast road, he glances left, at the sea, and across the bay to the mountains. It’s cloudy, but the sun is beginning to break through in patches.

He doesn’t have a specific destination in mind, but he’s feeling a gravitational pull towards the city centre.

He turns back to face the traffic. His heart is pounding.

So what
did
happen?

Mark doesn’t know, but the questions are multiplying in his head. Was Frank Bolger the one who got into his car that night with a few too many pints on him? Was he the one who lost control at the wheel and ended up killing himself and three other people? Was talk of drunk driving causing multiple fatalities considered too damaging, too toxic, for such a high-profile TD? In such a key constituency? With a brother waiting in the wings to take the seat? If so, were certain measures then taken? Was the ‘talk’ hushed up? Was evidence suppressed? Were new rumours – this time concerning the driver of the other car – put into circulation?

And what happened next?

Mark’s head is spinning.

Did Des Griffin start voicing objections, saying they had it all wrong, that his brother didn’t even drink? Was he told to shut up – for the sake of the boy? Was he intimidated, threatened, informed he might lose his job in the civil service, or be transferred – or
worse
? Is that why he was always so …?

Mark passes through Fairview and onto the North Strand Road.

Is this really how it all happened?

Jesus
.

If it is – and increasingly it makes sense to him – then surely Gina Rafferty is right. The one person who had anything, indeed
everything
, to gain from this cover-up … was Larry Bolger.

Gina is reluctant to let Dermot Flynn go, but she can’t very well stop him.

When he stands up to leave, he fumbles for his wallet.

Gina waves him away. ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I’ve got it.’

He doesn’t argue.

She watches him go out the door and into the street.

When he’s gone, she takes a deep breath. She stares into space and tries to reconstruct the last twenty minutes in her head.

For some reason Flynn was deeply uncomfortable. He was nervous and jittery. He was evasive. He kept staring at other people in the café. He kept interrupting himself, hesitating, not finishing his sentences.

But why was he like this?

Was it something to do with Noel?

That’s the first thing Gina thinks of, not surprisingly – but maybe she’s got it wrong. Maybe Flynn is a nervous
type
. Maybe he’s bipolar and forgot to take his meds. Maybe she caught him on a bad day.

She can only speculate.

On the short walk back to her own office, she chides herself for not being more aggressive, for not putting Flynn more on the spot.

But she’s tired, she’s confused, and it was such a painful interlude that she just wanted it to end.

As she goes in the door and walks up the stairs, Gina finds herself wishing this whole
thing
would end – the way sometimes, half consciously, in the middle of one, you want a dream to end.

Mark finds a parking space on Merrion Square. As he walks up towards Baggot Street he makes a couple of calls on his mobile. The first is to directory enquiries and the second is to the press office of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

The minister, it seems – not that Mark asked – has made his statement and isn’t available for further comment. In any case, he will be busy all afternoon in the Dáil, and later he’ll be –

‘That’s fine,’ Mark says, ‘thank you.’

He puts away his phone. He walks by the Shelbourne and turns right onto Kildare Street. In less than a minute he is standing in front of Leinster House. He looks in through the tall railings of this Georgian mansion that was originally built as a town house for the Earl of Kildare and is now the seat of both houses of the Oireachtas. There are two gardaí standing sentry at the gates, but they seem to be spending a lot of their time redirecting tourists to the National Library or the National Museum, which are located on either side of the parliament building.

Mark looks at his watch. He wonders what Larry Bolger is going to be so busy with all afternoon. An urgent debate on some vital piece of legislation? Leaders’ Questions? But then he remembers it’s Monday and that when the Dáil is in session they don’t commence business until Tuesday. So what’s Bolger doing in there? Hiding from the media after his press conference? Trying to make himself look busy?

Mark would like to find out, but you can’t just swan in through the gates here. You need clearance or a visitor’s pass. He looks up and down the street. Apart from pedestrians and tourists, there is a bedraggled man with a placard pacing back and forth in front of the sentry box and another man circling idly on the pavement, talking into his mobile.

Farther up the street, people are waiting at a bus stop.

Inside the gates there is an occasional flurry of activity as someone comes or goes or a car passes in or out. It’s not busy though, and after a while Mark begins to feel self-conscious. One of the guards in the sentry box has glanced over at him a couple of times, and it can’t be long, he supposes, before an approach is made.

Eventually he moves away. He wanders up the street a bit, towards the bus stop.

He doesn’t know why he came here. It just seemed like his only option.

But about twenty minutes later – and as though to dispel any doubts he might have had – three men walk out through the gates of Leinster House. They wait to let traffic pass and then cross the street. They enter Buswell’s Hotel on the corner of Molesworth Street.

Mark is pretty sure, even from this distance, that one of the men is Larry Bolger.

Back in the office, Gina sits and stares at her screensaver. There is plenty of work she could be doing, but her heart isn’t in it, not least because she knows the company’s days are numbered. P.J., by contrast, is a lot more positive and talks up the company’s prospects every chance he gets. Siobhan in reception is playing her part as well – though in the room at the back, where the designers and programmers operate, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.

Gina rubs her eyes.

Either way,
she’s
been out of the equation since her brother died, and no one is expecting anything of her just yet. P.J. could do with the support, but he also knows her well enough not to push it. In any case, it doesn’t take Gina long to realise that sitting around the office in a trance isn’t much of a help to anyone.

She gets up from her desk again. As she’s walking towards the door, she looks over at Siobhan. ‘I’m just …’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m …’

But that’s it. That’s all there is.

On the way down the stairs she wonders how unhinged that must’ve seemed – how unhinged
she
must seem.

Even though, actually, it isn’t how she feels at all.

Outside, she looks down the gentle curve of Harcourt Street towards the Green, and hears the bell of an approaching tram. There is a slight breeze blowing.

Actually, she thinks, if anyone is unhinged here it’s surely the two men she met this morning, both of whom seemed to be under a great deal of pressure.

Though presumably for different reasons.

Or maybe not.

She starts walking.

If there
is
a connection between them, it’s not as easy to see right now as the contrast. Because Dermot Flynn – she’s pretty sure – was afraid of something or someone, and seemed vulnerable, whereas Mark Griffin was more like a wounded animal, and seemed, quite frankly, a little dangerous.

He waits for a van to pass, and then a bus, before striding across the street himself. It may be a stroke of luck that Bolger appeared when he did, but that’s certainly not how it feels. Walking down to the corner, heart pounding, Mark feels a keen sense of inevitability about what’s happening. It’s as though the confrontation ahead could no more be avoided than the setting of the sun.

He turns the corner and goes up the steps of the hotel. Before going inside he takes out his mobile phone and switches it off. He enters the lobby and immediately spots Larry Bolger, who is over to the left, standing at the entrance to the bar with the two men he came in with. It strikes Mark how amazingly informal all of this is. Bolger is a government minister, and yet he doesn’t seem to have any security around him, or an entourage.

Maybe it’s the place. This small hotel opposite Leinster House does have that kind of reputation. It’s known to be a sort of home away from home for politicians.

Mark walks across the lobby, and as he does so Bolger and the two men he’s with separate. The two men turn towards the bar, and Bolger heads for a corridor to the right of the reception desk.

Mark follows him – and continues to follow him, seconds later, into the men’s room.

Which is empty.

‘Er … Mr Bolger, can I have a word?’

Mark’s voice is quite shaky and even in danger of sounding a little hysterical.

Two feet away from the urinal, hands already working his fly, Bolger stops and turns around. He looks alarmed. ‘What?’

‘I want to ask you a question.’

‘Hold on a second … who are you?’

Bolger looks smaller than he does on TV. He’s quite a dapper little man, all groomed and primped. He’s wearing a silk suit, cuff links, a gold watch. Even from across the room Mark can smell his cologne.

‘The crash,’ Mark then says, ‘the one … the one your brother was killed in, did you –’

‘
Jesus
,’ Bolger interrupts. ‘Are you fucking serious? In
here?
Get the –’

Mark holds a hand up. ‘No, no, simple question. Did you cover it up? Did –’

‘Cover
what
up? I don’t –’

‘The fact that
he
was the one who was drunk,
he
was the one who caused the accident, your brother, and not –’

‘That’s outrageous. Jesus Christ. That’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever –’

‘Is it? Things worked out pretty well for
you
though, didn’t they?’

‘How
dare
you. I –’

Sensing movement from behind, Mark spins around.

A young guy in uniform – a hotel staff-member presumably, a bellhop or a porter – is coming through the door.

Mark freezes.

The guy in uniform stops and looks around for a moment. ‘Mr Bolger,’ he says, a little suspiciously, ‘are you –’

‘I’m grand, Tim,’ Bolger says. ‘But I think this gentleman here might have lost his way looking for the exit.’

Mark turns back to Bolger. ‘Well, did you?’

‘Did I
what
?’ Bolger snaps. Then he shakes his head. ‘You fucking journalists are a breed apart.’

‘I’m not a journalist, I’m –’

‘I don’t give a shite
what
you are, you’re only a scumbag as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Come on, sir,’ the bellhop says, ‘
this
way.’

As Mark turns again, he glances into the large mirror above the row of washbasins. All of a sudden the room seems crowded, and the situation a little trickier than he’d imagined. At the same time, Mark can’t believe who he’s standing next to. This man’s name – the word, the very
sound
of it – is something he has lived with all his life, as he has lived with ambivalence, confusion, shame …

And anger.

‘Sir.’

An emotion he has always managed to repress.

‘
Sir
.’

Mark holds a hand up, a warning hand.

But he hesitates.

This isn’t the time or the place.

He steps around the bellhop and quickly makes it over to the door. Avoiding eye contact with Bolger, he leaves.

Less than an hour later, he is pulling into his driveway on Glanmore Road.

In the hall he sees that there’s a message on his answering machine. It’s from Susan. She wants to know if he’s on for tonight. They had a semi-arrangement to go for dinner. ‘… so anyway, Mark, call me when you get this. I did try you on your mobile, but it was –’

Before the message ends, he reaches down and presses the Erase button.

He takes out his mobile and throws it down, along with his keys, onto the hall table.

He goes into the living room and looks around. The bottle of Bombay is still on the coffee table from the night before. He goes over, picks it up and takes a slug – neat, straight from the bottle. Then he holds the bottle up and examines it.

There’s only half of it left, less even – which is not going to be enough.