Norton declined. He was relieved to hear the news, but what he couldn’t tell Paula was that nothing would be wrapped up until a separate, and hopefully final, piece of business had been taken care of.
Something that would have to start with a phone call.
It was another fifteen minutes, however, before he could bring himself to make the call, and it was only at the last minute that it struck him how stupid it would be to make it on his mobile.
So he pulled over as soon as he spotted a phone box.
Inside the box, he fumbled for the piece of paper he’d written her number on. He fumbled for coins. Eventually he got through, and when he said her name he tried to disguise his voice. There was no disguising hers, though. He didn’t hear enough to gauge what state of mind she was in, but she was alive, and that was all he needed to know.
As he steps away from the box now, the phone inside it rings. He turns and walks off, the sound receding into the general din of the traffic. His car is parked on the other side of the road. He waits for an opportunity and crosses.
He unlocks his car from ten yards.
She’s alive.
Fuck it.
Bolger can see it in their faces, the merest flicker of it. He wouldn’t call it panic, not yet, but that’s where it’s headed. It’s as if they’ve woken from a dream and are looking around in bewilderment, not quite sure of anything anymore – of who they are, of where they are, of what they’ve done.
For his part, Bolger finds it liberating.
In his office, sitting opposite him, are the Ministers for Finance, Transport and Education. Already being dubbed the Gang of Three, these men are here for a quick strategy powwow before Bolger gives a press conference.
Outside everyone is waiting. The corridors are jammed, there is a media scrum on the steps of Leinster House and RTÉ is on standby to broadcast a news flash.
For his part, the Taoiseach-designate is in no hurry.
In those first few moments after Paddy Norton left his office, Bolger just stood there, immobile, the various implications of what Norton hadn’t said going off inside his head like a series of controlled explosions. And then, as the door opened, unleashing a tidal wave of handlers, advisers, mandarins, functionaries, hangers-on, the awful truth sank in. He actually did have to choose. He couldn’t do both.
Though the decision, in a certain sense, made itself – since it was all pretty clear-cut when you looked at it, morally, ethically, every bloody way. And he came close a couple of times to articulating this – but only in his head, as it turns out, because at no point did he actually say anything, to anyone, about any of it. Instead, he allowed Paula to stand in front of him and straighten his tie. He accepted a sheaf of papers from his private secretary. He nodded when he was told that so-and-so was outside to see him. He put on his jacket. He went behind his desk and poured himself a glass of water. In all of this he had an air about him that was unfamiliar and slightly self-conscious, an air of calmness, of quiet authority. In fact, with each passing second, with each move and gesture he made, he could feel himself morphing into someone different, into someone new.
And what he is beginning to discover now, having just casually lobbed the words cabinet and reshuffle at the three men sitting in front of him, is a little something about who that person might be.
‘Well,’ the Minister for Finance is saying, ‘I don’t know, maybe we should take it one step at a time.’
‘Of course,’ Bolger says. ‘But I’ll definitely be making changes.’
I’ll be.
In the absence of a contest, and once the announcement has been made, the ratification process will be a mere formality, but still – he has to be careful.
‘OK,’ he adds, ‘you’re right, the press conference is important.’ He pauses. ‘But you know it’ll be one of the things they ask about.’
The Minister for Transport is squirming. It’s obvious that he’s dying to know what changes Bolger intends making, but is afraid to push it. The Minister for Education, as usual, is stony-faced, but Bolger can tell he’s furious that the subject has come up so soon.
‘We can’t let the media dictate our agenda,’ the Minister for Finance goes on. ‘And I really -’
‘A cabinet reshuffle is what’s expected,’ Bolger says. ‘It’s what people want, and it’s what they’re going to get. Besides, a reshuffle formalises the honeymoon. Ministers get to throw a few shapes and look good in front of the cameras.’ He shrugs.
‘It’s pretty much win-win all around. We’re happy. Louis Copeland is happy. Everyone is happy.’
It’s amazing how the dynamic in the room has shifted: a few minutes earlier, these four men were fellow conspirators, co-equal plotters, and now they are divided – they’re the kingmakers and he’s the king. And there’s nothing any of them can do about it. It’s the nature of the process.
Bolger stands up and buttons his jacket. ‘Let me just be clear about this. A show of unity is what’s required out there. At the press conference and talking to journalists afterwards. That’s the script and we stick to it. Absolute, unconditional, one hundred per cent.’ He looks across the room, over their heads, at the door. ‘Anyone displays anything less and there’ll be blood on the walls. Tonight.’
Ten minutes later, as he sits at another table, in another room, looking out at the assembled media, waiting for the hail of camera flashes to subside, Bolger realises something. Despite what has happened this evening, despite his impressive command of the situation, he doesn’t feel any sense of triumph or achievement. He doesn’t feel nervous or excited or even pleased. What he does feel, all he feels – as he glances down at his prepared statement, and at his gold cufflinks, and at his soft, manicured politician’s hands – is tired, and empty, and numb.
The bigger of the two PDF files is fifty-four pages long, has no title or table of contents, and from a quick glance looks to be about as incomprehensibly technical as most of the other stuff Gina saw on Flynn’s laptop. She reads a paragraph here and there, but the prose is dense with unfamiliar terminology and her mind quickly glazes over. Throughout the document, too, there are diagrams, charts, figures and equations. Despite the complexity, however, Gina has a general enough idea of what she’s looking at – it seems to be something, a study or report, about some aspect of the structural design of Richmond Plaza. But should this come as any surprise? It’s what Dermot Flynn was working on, after all.
It was his job.
The shorter file is very similar and appears to be no more than a draft version of the longer one.
Discouraged and tired, Gina looks out across the empty, semi-darkened office, at the windows, at the orange wash now coming in from the lights out on Harcourt Street.
Then something occurs to her.
She turns back to the screen.
Claire said that in recent weeks Dermot had been doing a lot of extra work – at home, in his study. Is this what he was working on? If so, she thinks, fine, why not? Except that Richmond Plaza is almost finished. She herself was up on the forty-eighth floor – the top floor. Why at such a late stage in the construction process would he be working on an aspect of the building’s structural design?