Winterland (49 page)

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.