Winterland (33 page)

But Norton has never heard of the veteran adman and is barely listening anyway.

By the time their coffees arrive, Sullivan Jr. has moved on to another story and is getting quite animated. There are gestures involved, and funny voices. For his part, Norton occupies himself with the cream and sugar. At one point, noticing a sudden lull, he looks up. Sullivan is staring at him, and has also – it quickly becomes apparent – asked him a question.

Norton just stares back.

Then he gets up from the table. ‘Ray, I’m sorry. I have to go outside for a minute. I’ll … I’ll be back.’

He strides across the dining room. When he gets out to the reception area and is heading for the main exit he reaches into his jacket pocket.

The sound Gina hears as she takes the next drag on her cigarette is short, shrill and penetrating. She looks up and remains still for a few seconds, listening.

She really can’t be sure that the sound wasn’t just some form of distortion carried here from a distance by the wind.

She closes her eyes.

But neither can she be sure that it didn’t come from nearby, from directly behind her, and that it wasn’t a scream.

She moves quickly, out into the middle of this windswept, floodlit yard.

The cigarette in her hand is a welcome distraction – though in normal circumstances a second one of these and she’d be on all fours, ready to puke.

After a while, feeling a little too exposed, she heads towards the opposite side of the yard. The units here are larger. They have more elaborate loading docks, with metal awnings and concrete ramps.

She huddles in a corner, by the side of one of these ramps. She stubs the cigarette out, and immediately starts shivering.

How long will this take?

She has no idea. It’s not as if she has a frame of reference. But one thing she does know for sure: things are beginning to unravel.

And a couple of seconds later, as though on cue, she hears another weird sound.

She steps forward.

It definitely isn’t a scream this time. It’s also too close to be coming from the other side of the yard.

So what is it?

The direction of the wind changes. For a second or two the sound becomes clearer.

A bloody
ring tone?

She looks down and sees it, Fitz’s mobile. It’s on the ground in front of her, a few yards away, emitting the theme music from a spaghetti western, one of the Clint Eastwood
Dollar
movies.

Rolling her eyes, she walks towards it, this tiny object, its backlight pulsating electric blue.

As she reaches down to pick it up, blood rushing to her head, Gina thinks she sees what is on the display – the caller ID – and her heart stops. She stands up and tries to steady herself. She holds the phone out and looks at it, squinting. But then, in the split second before the phone rings off and goes dark again, it comes into focus for her.

Very clearly.

But not just the two words on the display, not just the name.

Everything does.

He decides not to leave a message. What’s the point? He knows it’ll come up as a missed call.

Standing under the portico, he gazes out over the hotel’s front lawn and beyond it to the hushed suburban tranquillity of Ballsbridge.

Why didn’t Fitz answer just now?

Norton turns right and takes a few steps along a manicured pathway.

He really wants to believe it’s because Fitz is
busy
– that he’s being thorough and scrupulous.

But something won’t let him.

An angsty thrumming in the pit of his stomach.

He looks at his watch, and mouths the word
fuck
.

The problem is, there’s no one else he can call. He has no choice but to wait.

He turns back towards the portico.

His phone rings.

He freezes, thinking,
Well thank Jesus
. He fumbles in his pocket, but when he gets the phone out he sees at once from the display that it’s Miriam.

‘
Damn
,’ he says, and loud enough to draw a surprised look from the uniformed porter at the entrance to the hotel.

He stares at the display and decides not to answer it. They’re still not speaking face to face, so why should they speak on the bloody phone? If he wants a review of the Friel play, can’t he read the
Irish
fucking
Times
in the morning?

He puts the phone away and storms back inside.

As Gina is standing there, gazing across at Unit 46, a vertical slit of light appears. It’s the steel door opening, a fraction at first, then wide. Terry Stack comes out and looks around.

‘Gina?’

She takes a few steps forward. ‘I’m here.’

Stack sees her and starts walking across the yard, his shoes click-clacking on the concrete. He huddles into his overcoat and shivers loudly.

Gina stands, waiting. She’s still in shock from seeing that name on the caller ID of Fitz’s phone.

Paddy Norton?

She’d been so convinced by him that day – by his indignation at what had happened, by his impatience with
her
. He’d seemed hurt as well, and sad. She tries in vain to remember if there was anything about him that might have been suspicious. But she can’t.

Terry Stack comes to a stop directly in front of her. ‘Right,’ he says.

Gina looks at him, her mind swimming now with other stuff she
is
remembering – questions about Norton and her brother, for instance. They had a drink that evening in town. But where? At what time? And what did they talk about?

‘Gina?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Quick update. Little fucker in there is a former INLA man, Martin Fitzpatrick, a republican –’

‘Republican socialist?’

‘Socialist me
hole
, love,’ Stack says, laughing. ‘He owns about twenty apartments all over town and runs a private security outfit. High King. They do construction sites, that sort of stuff.’

‘Construction sites?’

‘Yeah. Mainly.’

Gina nods along. Sagely. She feels light-headed. She feels
drunk
.

‘Anyway,’ Stack goes on, ‘he arranged the job on Noel. I got that much out of him.
And
he did your brother.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Yeah, both of them. He’s a cunt.’

‘
How?
How did –’

‘The brakes. He did something with the brakes in his car. Got him loaded and then …’

‘Oh my God.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘
Why
?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. Give us a bit more time.’

‘Mark Griffin?’ Gina then says, almost in a whisper.

‘I haven’t got that yet either. He’s holding out, says he doesn’t know where he is, that no one was here when
he
arrived, but that’s bollocks. We’ll get it out of him, don’t worry. It’s all about pacing, this is … the build-up –’

Gina swallows.

‘– the threshold, if you know what I mean.’

She does, in theory, of course, and wants to tell him
enough
, wants to be the one to end this, even though she’s the one who started it. But what she says instead is, ‘Get him to tell you about a man called Paddy Norton.’

Stack furrows his brow. ‘Paddy Norton? He owns Winterland Properties, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s … that’s the crowd High King does most of its security work for.’

‘Yeah well,’ Gina says, ‘I’m pretty sure you’ll find he’s also the one Che Guevara in there is answerable to for
this
job.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Stack says. ‘How do you know that?’

The phone is in Gina’s pocket, but she doesn’t want to give it to him. She ignores the question. Besides, isn’t it obvious now? ‘Just get him to tell you the reason for all of this, will you?
Why?
What did Noel ever do?’ She pauses, then adds, ‘
My
Noel,’ and gets a stinging sensation behind her eyes as she says it. But now isn’t the time. She stares into Terry Stack’s eyes. ‘Will you do that for me?’

‘Of
course
I will, love. Jesus.’

He holds her gaze for a moment. It’s a long moment, and she doesn’t look away or even blink. But she feels unreal doing it, numb, like she’s on smack.

‘Look,’ he says eventually, and a little too excitedly, ‘I’ll be as fast as I can.’ He glances at his watch. ‘Are you going to wait here?’

She nods.

‘Probably just as well.’ He clicks his tongue, and winks at her. ‘I won’t lock it.’

He turns and walks back to the other side. Gina watches him disappear behind the steel door. Then she retreats to the concrete ramp and huddles down into the corner, shivering. After a moment, she takes the packet of Major out of her pocket, looks at it and flings it away. She does the same with the Zippo lighter. Then she takes Fitz’s mobile out but doesn’t look at it. She wants to throw this away too, but resists. It might contain evidence, numbers, messages.

She tosses it from one hand to the other.

Paddy Norton
.

She pictures him – this portly respectable man with his pinprick blue eyes and soft, chubby features, his thin wisps of grey hair, his expensive overcoat. She remembers his smell, too – cologne, mints, cigars, the smell of money. Then she thinks of Martin Fitzpatrick. She looks across at Unit 46. Did this burly, bottom-feeding former INLA piece of
shit
take his orders directly from Norton? Did he carry them out
himself
?

She lowers her head and closes her eyes.

If that turns out to be the case, and she suspects it will, probably already
has
… then what happens next?

Here. Tonight.

Terry Stack vowed that whoever killed young Noel would pay the price. Is
that
what will happen next – and as a direct consequence of
her
actions?

Suddenly she feels sick.

Get him to tell you
.

Would you do that for me?

Oh God.

Taking a deep breath, fighting the nausea, she opens her eyes. But the first thing she sees makes her heart jump. It’s what’s on the dimmed display of the phone in her hand. She presses a key and the backlight activates.

Five missed calls.

The most recent of these was from Norton, just a short while ago. And the others? She doesn’t know, but wonders if they could
all
have come in the last twenty minutes. Is that possible, or likely? Of course it is, and as the full significance of this hits her, she also realises that it’s too late to do anything about it. Because what she’s hearing now, from her left, is the unmistakable sound of an approaching vehicle.

She turns to look, and freezes.

It’s a small white van. It comes screeching to a halt next to the Saab. Driver and passenger doors open simultaneously and two guys get out, then a third. They’re carrying things – she can’t see them clearly, but they look like … sticks or bats.

There’s no point in Gina’s moving or trying to hide – she may be visible here, but these guys are in a hurry and unlikely to look in her direction.

She thinks of using the phone to warn Stack, but there isn’t time – this is all happening too fast.

The three men converge on the steel door, kick it open and pile in.

The door remains wide open.

Immediately, from across the yard, and through the wind, she hears voices … shouting … roars … then a loud crack, followed by more shouting, followed by two more loud cracks.

Gina is paralysed, not shivering anymore.

She is barely breathing.

The shouting continues. Then it stops.

There is silence for … what … ten seconds? Fifteen seconds? She doesn’t know, her ability to gauge non-existent. She’s about to lean forward and get up when she sees something. There’s a shadow at the doorway. It’s moving. Remaining still, Gina stares across the yard as one figure, then two, emerge from the warehouse into the orange light. The first figure is limping. The second one is doubled over and clinging to the first one.

‘Ow …
jay
sus …
fuuuuuuck
.’

This comes from the one with the limp. The other one is groaning, or crying.

It takes them a while, but they eventually make it to the passenger side of the van. From the way the van is parked, Gina can’t see clearly, but she hears the door being opened. Then she hears the door being slammed shut again. A moment later the first guy comes around, hopping on one foot, and gets in on the driver’s side.

The van starts up immediately. It reverses, seems as if it’s about to back right in on top of Gina, but then turns suddenly, tyres screeching, and speeds off, heading in the direction of the exit and the main road.

Mark opens his eyes, stirred, it seems, by this awful silence, this rude stillness. Moments before, he was lost in a dream, and an ugly one – hellish, frenetic, noisy, and … of course, he’s now realising, not actually a dream at all.

Which means those must have been gunshots he heard just now, real ones, and the screams too, and the screeching tyres. As well as the voices he heard earlier – from the open window six feet above him …

Talking, shouting, arguing.

Those also must have been real.

He tries to move, responding to the panicky signals coming from his brain, but he can’t. The pain is too intense, and all-pervading. Like the freezing cold. It’s as if he’s set in cement.

But what about Gina?

Is she …?

He parts his lips to say her name – not even to call it out, because he knows
that’s
not going to happen – but in the end nothing happens anyway. He makes no sound at all.

What is going on?

He closes his eyes again, squeezes them shut.

Kaleidoscope eyes.

He
dragged Gina out here.
He’s
responsible for …

Newspaper taxis … appear on the shore.

This is
his
fault.