This is too much.
‘Are you feeling ill?’
‘What?’
Miriam is tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Are you feeling ill?’
‘Yes.’
‘Those pills won’t help, you know.’
‘Yes they will.’
They already are.
‘You’re not in pain, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Then how can they help? They’re meant to be painkillers, aren’t they?’
‘There are different kinds of pain, Miriam.’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He pauses, regroups. ‘Anyway, look who’s talking.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh come on, the sleeping pills? You’ve been taking those for as long as I’ve known you. So don’t talk to me about -’
‘That’s entirely different. They’re for a diagnosed, clinical condition.’
‘Hhnm.’
They drive in silence for a while along the Dual Carriageway.
‘Look,’ Miriam says, ‘do you want me to stop off at Dr Walsh’s?’
‘No. I’m fine. I’m just a bit stressed at the moment.’
‘But -’
‘All I need is some peace and quiet.’
‘Yes, but -’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Miriam -’
There is a pause.
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that. I don’t care how you feel, there’s no call for language.’
She reaches down and aggressively flicks on the CD player. Lush sounds fill the car. Adagios to Die For, Volume 3.
Norton sits back and exhales.
What is he going to do? Should he call Fitz? Should he wait? He has to do something. He’s too deep into this to let it unravel now. But what does Gina want? Is she going to blackmail him? Is she linking what she knows – or thinks she knows – with her brother’s death? Is she as much of a threat as he was?
Norton closes his eyes. He sees drizzle falling in a beer garden and a young man slumped over a wooden table. He sees an SUV skidding off the road and hurtling down a ravine. He sees a Merc and a Toyota, one concertinaed into a tree, the other merged with an old brick wall. Through a pervasive rain-drenched orange glow, he sees speckles of red – everywhere – and a continuous rotating blue light. He sees carnage, one body in the Merc, three in the Toyota, mangled, misshapen. He sees a little boy, his face streaked with blood, eyes vacant, but walking somehow – walking across shattered glass and strips of metal towards the flashing blue light and his own mangled, misshapen future. He sees a catalogue of panic, of fuck-ups, of near misses – and he’s tired of it, tired of having to piece together in his mind what he was never there to see, tired of having to confront these dark shards of imagining, these little glimpses into hell.
The Narolet has been building steadily, and now, like the music coming from the speakers – aching strings, sweet, swirling woodwinds – it reaches a crescendo, rises up in a tide of emotion and washes over him.
As it ebbs away, he opens his eyes – drained, spent. He glances to the right.
It takes him a moment to refocus.
He has always liked the way Miriam drives – fast, but very controlled. She really concentrates. She changes gears with the determination of a Formula One driver.
He’s such a fool.
‘I’m sorry, darling.’
They’re speeding down through the underpass.
‘When we get home, you should go to bed,’ Miriam says, after an appropriate pause. ‘Or at least,’ she goes on, more tenderly, ‘at a decent hour. For once.’
‘You’re right. I will.’
They remain silent for a while. The sound of a single violin, lonely and resonant, carries them forward.
Fifty yards ahead, the traffic light turns and they come gliding to a halt.
‘Who was that girl you were talking to?’
‘Gina Rafferty. One of the sisters.’
‘She seems young.’
‘Yeah. Big family apparently. She must be the youngest. She was quite upset, of course. She wanted to talk about her brother.’ He stares at the dashboard. ‘About what he did, and the building and stuff.’
‘Poor thing.’
‘I’ve asked her to come and see me at the office.’
The light turns green and they surge forward – as does Norton’s stomach. He detects a slight chemical shift, somewhere deep inside the dense, woolly fug of the Narolet.
‘You should take her to see it,’ Miriam says. ‘If she’s so interested.’
‘See what?’
‘The building. Give her a tour. Bring her up to the top. Show her the view.’
‘Hmm,’ Norton says, feeling a bit queasy now. ‘Maybe.’ He closes his eyes, and a rapid sequence of images flashes by, like frames of celluloid spooling to the end of a reeclass="underline" the top floor of Richmond Plaza… howling winds, tarpaulin sheets flapping, sunlight flickering through the grid of interlocking steel girders. The scene is spectacular, with the city spread out below – Liberty Hall, the Central Bank, the spire of Christ Church Cathedral, and then, farther out, the parks and greenbelt areas, the housing estates that look like electronic circuit-boards, the gigantic shopping centres, the new ring roads and motorway extensions, languid and serpentine, laid out in every direction…
The new city.
His city.
‘Yes.’ He nods, opening his eyes again and placing a firm, steadying hand on his stomach. ‘Maybe that’s what I’ll do.’
Four
1
As Mark is letting himself in the front door, he calls out his aunt’s name. He does this so that she won’t get a fright when he suddenly appears in the kitchen or the living room. She isn’t used to being alone yet and the least thing seems to spook her. Of course, it’s been only six months since Uncle Des died, which is nothing, Mark supposes – especially if you’ve been married to someone for more than forty years.
He takes a few steps along the hallway and calls her name out again. ‘Aunt Lilly?’
From behind the kitchen door, he hears a sharp, panicky intake of breath.
Shit.
‘It’s only me, Aunt Lilly. It’s Mark.’
‘Oh. Oh.’ Then, ‘I’m in here.’
Mark opens the door and walks into the kitchen. His aunt is sitting at the table. There are piles of documents spread out in front of her. Through a door on the left he can see into the living room. The TV is on, but the sound is down.
His aunt looks up at him and smiles nervously.
‘Thanks for coming, Mark. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘Oh, you’d be fine, Aunt Lilly, believe me.’
He goes over and kisses her on the forehead. He then pulls out a chair next to hers. He sits on the edge of the chair and leans forward, hands together, like a doctor about to begin a consultation. He even says, ‘Now, what seems to be the problem?’
Aunt Lilly is in her late sixties but looks older. Her hair is grey and she is small and bony. Mark can see that the last few months have taken a lot out of her.
‘It’s these Eircom bills,’ she says, pointing to the pile directly in front of her. ‘I don’t understand them, and they seem so high.’
‘I barely understand mine, Aunt Lilly. I think you’d need a degree in accountancy to understand the average Eircom bill.’
He takes a page from the top of the pile and examines it. After his uncle Des died, it quickly became apparent that Aunt Lilly had no idea about money or bills – ‘that was always his department,’ she said – so Mark ended up dealing with the solicitors and processing all of the necessary paperwork. He’s been helping her out ever since, with little things: setting up standing orders at the bank, cancelling subscriptions to magazines and, not least, interpreting the runic complexities of her utility bills.