‘So when the Senator wakes up, Herb, tell him we spoke, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And tell him to call me.’
Rundle closes the phone and puts it back on the counter. He looks around.
What does he do now?
He can either put on some coffee and work for a bit – send a few e-mails, read the online editions of the morning papers – or he can go back to bed and just lie there tormenting himself with different shit until it’s time to get up.
He looks at the display on the cooker.
5:01.
He knows what the old man would do. Or, at any rate, would have done. Taken advantage of the situation. Maximised it.
Rundle reaches up to an overhead shelf and takes down the coffee grinder.
Though no doubt old Henry C. would have been up at five in any case, so it’s a moot point.
He puts beans in the grinder and switches it on.
But to be fair – he thinks, holding the grinder down – fair to himself… hasn’t he always maximised his opportunities? Hasn’t he transformed BRX Mining & Engineering out of all recognition, way beyond anything the old man, if he were alive today, would even comprehend?
Yeah, yeah.
He releases the grinder. Its whirr slows gradually, then stops.
So does that mean he can go back to bed?
He actually considers it for a moment.
But what would be the point? It’d only lead to more dreams. More Irishmen and Chinamen.
Forget it.
He looks around for the coffee filters.
From the moment he wakes up Jimmy Gilroy is aware that things are different, that there’s been a fundamental shift – tectonic plates, paradigm, take your pick. Yesterday he was working his way in isolation through a mountain of research material. This morning – bloodied, in full view – he’s caught in the barbed wire of human contact.
He gets up and goes over to the bathroom. He didn’t sleep well and he’s tired. He looks in the mirror, holds his own gaze for a moment, sees the old man, then looks away. Everyone says it, and it’s true… after a certain age you’re never alone in front of a mirror.
Sitting on the toilet, he wonders what Phil Sweeney is up to. Is he really representing the family of one of the other victims? It’s not implausible and is certainly the sort of thing he might do for a client – though it could just as easily be a strategic move, a ruse.
But if so, what’s behind it?
He gets in the shower.
Then there’s Maria. If she decides to talk to him, to trust him, what will she say? And how much of what she does say will she allow him to put in the book?
After his shower Jimmy gets dressed, puts on coffee, checks his e-mails.
Distracted throughout.
Sweeney pulling him one way, Maria the other.
Then he logs on to the Bank of Ireland website and checks his current account. He knows what he’s going to find here, but seeing it on the screen, the column of figures, is always a shock – and that’s just what he needs. Because whatever arguments there might be for not doing the book, there’s no arguing with this – no arguing with the fact that he has spent half of the advance and would have to return all of it if he abandoned the project.
And then have none of it.
He looks away from the screen, over at the window.
But Phil Sweeney buying out the advance is unthinkable, too. He’d rather pack it in, and starve. It’s a matter of… principle maybe, of self-respect – but also, to be honest, of what the old man might think.
If he were still here.
Jimmy leans back in the chair.
Phil Sweeney and Dec Gilroy were partners for a time, co-founders of Marino Communications, and good friends, but as basic types they were very different. The old man was a political junkie. He grew up on the Arms Trial and Watergate, on GUBU and Iran-Contra. He was interested in what made public figures tick, psychologically, which meant that the move from clinical work into PR and media training shouldn’t have been that much of a stretch for him. You would think. But it turned out that he was markedly better at analysis than he was at manipulation, and it wasn’t long before the new job started wearing him down.
Phil Sweeney, on the other hand, was a natural and in many ways a more skilled politician than a lot of the people they were dealing with. He’d studied in the US and worked there for years before coming back to set up Marino. The organisational brains behind the outfit, he was also the one with big plans, and this led to a certain amount of friction. In fact, by the time Jimmy’s old man got sick and had to start withdrawing from the business, the process of expanding it beyond all recognition had already begun.
Which maybe explains why Dec Gilroy was so happy when his teenage son first expressed an interest in journalism. He felt that here was a possible route back, a second chance almost. As a result, he pulled down his battered, dog-eared Penguins and Picadors and turned Jimmy on to Mencken, Woodstein, Hunter S. Thompson, Seymour Hersh, Jonathan Schell, others. More than just a crash course in journalism, however, in styles and approaches, this was a declaration of values, a sort of retro-active mission statement.
It’s something that Jimmy has never forgotten, and hopes he never will.
He gets up now, walks over to the window and gazes out. The bay is shrouded in mist.
But that’s not the only reason he won’t be taking Phil Sweeney up on his offer. There’s a second dynamic at work here, and it has to do with Maria.
The thing is, now that they’ve met, and talked, it’s not so much that the story has gone from uncomplicated black and white to ambivalent grey, it has gone from dreary monochrome to full-on colour, from one dimension to three, from glossy pixels to flesh and blood. Maria’s perspective in the mix, her intimate knowledge of Susie, always had the potential to take the project from a showbiz cut-and-paste job to something a bit more substantial – that’s why he wanted to meet her in the first place.
But this is something else.
The fact is he liked her. He enjoyed her company. And now he’s excited at the prospect of seeing her again. The only problem is, last night at the top of Grafton Street they sort of semi-agreed that next time she should be the one to make contact.
If, and when – that is – she felt ready.
Jimmy turns around.
But that mightn’t be for days, weeks even.
He looks over at the research material laid out on his desk, at the folders, notes, printouts – all of it generated from secondary sources, all of it useful… but all of it fairly limited. So his impulse is to pick up the phone right now and call her.
He could rationalise this in six different ways.
But it’d still be ridiculous.
She only agreed to meet him last night because he’d been so persistent. If he pushes it now, she mightn’t ever talk to him again.
He leans back against the window and surveys the room. The bookshelves to the left contain those Penguins and Picadors he inherited, along with hundreds more, and hundreds of his own. To the right is his cluttered workspace, desk, computer, printer, and then a music system of stacked stereo separates – another legacy of the old man’s and about as anachronistic-looking as a Bakelite telephone. Two leather sofas in the middle, and a coffee table. Kitchen at the back. Kitchenette. Adjoining bedroom and tiny bathroom.
Fourth floor. Small seafront apartment building.
Thirty-two years to go on the mortgage.
For that money he could have got a slightly bigger place somewhere else, but as far as Jimmy was concerned the living space wasn’t what mattered. His apartment could just as easily have been a tent, or a nice arrangement of cardboard boxes. What mattered was the view, the ability at any time of the day or night to look out of his window and behold – to open his window and breathe in – the sea.