She leans forward and puts her glass back onto the table.
Jimmy looks at his untouched coffee, which is probably lukewarm by now.
He should have ordered a drink.
‘Maria,’ he says, ‘all I can do is try to reassure you. I don’t work for a tabloid. I’m not out to trap you. This is a book, commissioned by a publisher. And yeah, there’s a sales and marketing aspect to it, of course there is, but I want to do a good job, and your insights can only help to round it out, give it substance.’
Maria looks at him, holds his gaze for what feels like a long time. She seems to be calculating something. Then she says, ‘You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid something will come out.’
Jimmy swallows. ‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, but… the crash? There was never really any explanation for it, was there? There was no faulty or missing bit they could find, nothing mechanical, the weather wasn’t particularly bad. It was just a crash, a disaster. What was the verdict at the inquest? Accidental death? Then, case closed. Just like that.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ll be honest with you, Jimmy, I knew Susie better than anyone, and she was wild, she liked to make scenes and kick up a fuss for no apparent reason. So my darkest fear, what I’m afraid might come out, is that in some way…’ She stops for a moment and takes a deep breath. ‘Look, it was a helicopter, right, a small, confined space, six people, she was probably coked out of it, even at that time of the day, plus she’d been sending those weird texts, and clearly wasn’t in a stable frame of mind, so… who knows?’ Maria’s eyes well up again. ‘Maybe she made some kind of a scene, maybe she got hysterical about something, went crazy. Maybe the accident was her fault.’ Maria pulls the tissue out of her sleeve again. ‘There, I said it.’
Jimmy’s heart is racing. ‘This is just… speculation, right?’
‘Yes. Of course. But I can see it. I can visualise it. It’d be so typical, so… Susie.’
‘Jesus.’
‘This idea has haunted me for three years, Jimmy. I still have nightmares about it.’ She pauses, wipes a tear from her cheek. ‘Though you could never write that I said that. I’d sue you if you did -’
‘I wouldn’t.’
She looks him in the eye again.
‘But then with that… that image in my head, how could I possibly co-operate on a book with you, how could -’
‘Maria -’
Jimmy doesn’t know what to say, blindsided himself by what she has conjured up.
‘Look,’ Maria goes on, ‘I know I’m probably not being very rational here, but -’
‘No, no, you are. Jesus. You’re fine. You’re allowed.’
She nods, then blows her nose again. As she does so, Jimmy looks down at the floor, gazes at a pattern in the carpet.
Some sort of commotion in the cockpit? Instigated by Susie? It’s a tantalising idea. But even if that’s what happened, who could prove it now?
Who would want to?
He would. That’s for sure. And Maria, if it ever came to it – the thing is – probably wouldn’t.
See?
This is how it goes. You get talking to someone, you interact, and it all starts to fall apart.
Then something occurs to him.
‘Those texts,’ he says. ‘Did Susie send one to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘From the actual helicopter?’
She shakes her head.
‘It was before. From the hotel. From her room.’
Jimmy waits. He wants to ask her what was in the text, but he’s assuming that if she’s prepared to tell him she will. When she doesn’t, he says, ‘In all the documentation there is reference to four texts she sent that morning. Yours would make it five.’
Maria shrugs. ‘It was just a text. It was no smoking gun, believe me. Susie was a text head. She would have loved Twitter.’
‘She sounded kind of hysterical in the one she sent to her agent.’
‘Yeah.’ Maria pauses, and almost smiles. ‘Look at you. You’re all intrigued now, aren’t you? I’m sorry. This is precisely the opposite of what I wanted to happen.’
‘Intrigued by this or not, Maria, I still want to write the book. There’s enough there as it is. But it’d be great if you went on the record.’
She studies him for a moment.
‘You know,’ she says, ‘you do have a sympathetic face. But I actually don’t think you’re trying to hustle me.’
Jimmy remains silent.
She picks up her glass of wine again and takes a sip from it. ‘Nothing in life is easy, is it?’ she says.
Jimmy smiles. ‘No. So does that mean you’ll talk to me?’
Flanked by two senior civil servants, he emerges from Government Buildings and steps out onto the landscaped courtyard, where a car is waiting. But something isn’t right… it’s one of the civil servants… he turns to look…
The man is bleeding from his eyes…
Bolger grunts, shifts in the armchair.
‘What?’
The door clicks shut. He opens his eyes. The TV is still on, Frasier Crane, looking harried.
What time is it?
He turns. ‘Mary?’
‘Hi, were you asleep?’
She approaches, stands over him.
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘What time is it?’
‘Not late. Just after ten, I think.’
‘Why are you home so early?’
He has the feeling of being caught out. She wouldn’t normally be home before eleven, and by that time he’d have ensconced himself in the study with a cup of hot chocolate.
To make it seem like he’d been slaving away all evening.
‘I had a bit of a headache,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t in the mood.’
He feels guilty, slumped here in the armchair, watching television.
‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ she then asks, turning and unbuttoning her coat.
‘Yes, thanks.’
He rubs his eyes. How long was he asleep?
A civil servant bleeding from…
What is wrong with him? He stands up and walks around the room, trying to get his circulation going. Mary is in the kitchen now. He can see her through the door filling the kettle.
‘Did you get any work done?’ she asks over her shoulder.
‘A little, yeah.’
He throws his eyes up.
Chapter a hundred.
He has barely started is the truth. He doesn’t know where to start.
Chapter one. I grew up in the shadow of my older brother, and despite how things may have come to seem in later years – I never really got out from under it…
Yeah. Fuck off.
‘How are the crowd anyway?’ he says, deflecting a follow-up question.
‘They’re grand. Everyone asking for you.’
Mary comes out of the kitchen, smiling, grabs her coat from the back of the chair where she left it and heads into the bedroom.
Bolger stands in front of the fireplace, looking down at the carpet, listening as the dull hum of the kettle in the next room ascends to a muffled roar.
He is sick with anxiety, and that’s about the size of it.
Meeting Dave Conway tomorrow is supposed to make him feel like he’s taking some kind of action. But he won’t be really. All he’ll be doing is asking Dave if he saw that thing in the paper last week.
Saying, I saw it. Did you see it? I saw it.
And I haven’t been right since.
Reading the Irish Independent that morning, alone in the apartment, Bolger came as close as he has in nearly ten years to falling off the wagon.