‘That’s not why he did it, Phil.’
‘What?’
‘I was there last night. I was with him. Not when he jumped, but up to a few minutes beforehand.’
In the silence that follows, Jimmy slows down and stops. Standing now by the side window of Brown Thomas, he waits. But the silence goes on so long that he eventually has to interrupt it.
‘Phil?’
‘Yeah. I’m here. Look, this is weird. We have to meet.’
‘I’m not so sure about that, Phil. I’m in the -’
‘Jimmy -’
‘I don’t have -’
‘JIMMY.’
‘OK. Fine.’ He clears his throat. ‘Of course.’
There is silence for a moment, and then in quiet tones, almost whispering, they make an arrangement to meet.
Tomorrow evening. The Long Hall on George’s Street.
Jimmy’s head is reeling as he puts his phone away.
Ten minutes later he’s in Rastelli’s sitting down opposite Maria Monaghan.
It takes him a while to adjust. He’s also distracted by how Maria looks. There’s something different about her, and he’s not quite sure what it is.
A girl comes over and they order coffees.
Jimmy is hungry, but this isn’t a conversation he wants to have while he’s eating.
‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ he says. ‘I realise it must seem a bit…’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘it does.’ She studies him for a moment. ‘You look like shit, Jimmy.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So what’s going on? You made some pretty big claims on the phone there. You’d better explain yourself, because I’m not staying here any longer than I have to.’
Then it hits him what it is. She’s not dressed for work. She’s in jeans and a zip-up sweater. And she’s slightly paler-looking, too, no sign of any make-up.
She seems more relaxed.
‘Not at work today?’ he says.
‘I’ve taken some time off. I was due a few days.’
He nods, delaying.
‘Jimmy?’
‘OK.’ He launches into it. He may look like shit, and feel like shit, but the one thing he can’t afford to be accused of here is talking shit. What he says has to make sense, and not just to her, to himself as well. Which it does, largely. But as he proceeds, as he talks, as their coffees arrive, it occurs to him that all he’s doing is describing a sequence of conversations he’s had – and private, unrecorded conversations. It doesn’t help that two of the people he spoke to are now dead. Nor does it help that what he got from the others – from Gary Lynch, from Francesca and Pia Bonacci – was little more than conjecture and speculation.
Jimmy wants Maria to believe what he’s saying, partly because he believes it, and partly because he hopes the knowledge that Susie wasn’t to blame for what happened will bring Maria a certain degree of solace.
But he’s not going to convince her with this.
What’s to stop her from thinking he’s deluded and has made it all up?
Nothing.
It’s only when he gets to the end that he sees a flicker in her eye, a response to something he’s just said.
He leans forward. ‘What?’
Maria doesn’t answer.
He glances around, thinking back for a second, going over it in his mind. He’d been telling her about the mine in Congo, about Dave Conway trying to sell it, about the deposit of thanaxite they’d discovered.
About Buenke.
And BRX.
Clark Rundle.
Gideon Global.
‘What?’ he says again, looking directly at her.
She’s pale, even paler than before.
‘Maria?’
She swallows. ‘Did you say thanaxite?’
‘Yes.’
She holds his gaze, but doesn’t speak.
‘What’s wrong? Have you heard of it?’
She nods her head very slowly. ‘Susie mentioned it in that text she sent me from the hotel, before she left. I had no idea what it meant. It seemed like nonsense. I mean, the whole text, it was -’
‘What did it say?’
Maria hesitates. This clearly isn’t easy for her. Some of the texts that Susie sent to people that morning were leaked to the media and quickly became infamous – evidence that she wasn’t in a stable frame of mind. She sent one to her agent screaming, Get me a decent fucking job before I go completely FUCKING insane!!!! She also sent a couple to a friend in Dublin in which she said some fairly scurrilous things about a well-known broadcaster who had recently interviewed her.
But the text she sent to Maria that morning has always remained private.
She leans back in her chair. ‘It said, I can’t remember exactly, it was about going on the helicopter ride with some of the guys, along the coast, and then, Thanaxite baby, that’s where it’s all at, we’re heading for the blood-soaked motherlode.’ She shrugs. ‘I never knew what that meant. But it was just so Susie, you know, it was typical, she was a messer, she spoke in code, yo this and yo that, rhyming slang, song lyrics, made-up Dublin rap, whatever. It could have meant anything. Plus she was clearly high as a kite. So it didn’t strike me as significant at the time. And after the crash, what did anything matter? She was dead.’
Jimmy nods, ‘Yeah. Sure.’ He lowers his voice a notch. ‘But doesn’t this corroborate what I’m saying? What Dave Conway told me?’
Maria nods back, reluctantly.
Jimmy can see it in her face. She was sceptical before, impatient even. Now she’s putting the pieces together and they seem to fit. ‘If what you’re telling me is true,’ she says eventually, ‘then this whole chain of events, from Susie’s death right up to what happened last night, it’s all the result of a desperate scramble to protect ownership of a mining concession?’
‘Yes.’
She holds her hands out in disbelief. ‘Is that… could that possibly be true? I mean…’
‘Well, there seems to be an awful lot of money involved, so on balance I’d say yeah, it could.’
But Maria is barely listening. ‘My God. Poor Susie. You know, I think I’m almost glad Mum and Dad didn’t live to hear this. It’s too awful. It’s -’
And then she stops, as something obviously occurs to her. She looks at Jimmy. ‘What happens now?’
He isn’t sure what to say here. He looks down at his coffee, which he hasn’t touched. ‘I don’t know, Maria. I wanted to tell you this, and I wanted you to believe it. That was important to me. Who else is going to believe it, though? On what conceivable basis could any official investigation of this go forward?’
‘On the basis that…’ She stops, trying to think it through, the ramifications.
But he sees it dawning on her.
‘There’s no evidence, Maria. Nothing at all. Two of the principal witnesses are gone. If Susie hadn’t sent you that text, with that word in it, which in itself hardly qualifies as evidence, would you believe it? Would you even still be sitting here?’
Maria considers this, looks at him. ‘You’ve described a conspiracy to murder six people, Jimmy. Including my sister. That’s insane. Can these bastards simply be allowed to get away with it?’
‘Well…’
‘What?’
Jimmy clicks his tongue. ‘Leaving aside for a minute the issue of resources, and the fact that I don’t have the backing, the protection, of an official news organisation, there is another avenue of approach here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Two of the people who were at the table that night in Drumcoolie Castle are gone, yeah? Larry Bolger and Dave Conway.’
Maria nods.
‘But there were three others. The ones who actually had the incriminating conversation, and who presumably carried through on it.’