Bolger swivels his chair from side to side.
‘You know what, Paddy?’ he says. ‘I couldn’t care less. Do what you have to do. I’m going to be the leader of this country in about an hour’s time and no one can take that away from me. My name will be entered into the history books. So whatever happens afterwards… scandals, enquiries, tribunals…’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t care. These days that stuff is almost par for the course anyway. It comes with the territory.’ He pauses. ‘So… whatever. I’ll be seeing you, Paddy.’
He puts the phone down.
‘Minister?’
He looks up. His secretary is standing in the doorway. She’s pointing at her watch.
‘Er, yeah.’
Bolger gets up from the desk. He gives a quick shimmy to his suit, gets it into shape. He straightens his tie. He clears his throat.
‘OK,’ he says, ‘I’m coming.’
He heads for the door.
About an hour later, in the ICU ward of St Felim’s, Mark Griffin opens his eyes.
His mind is blank, and it remains that way for several seconds.
Then… bed.
I’m in a bed.
He concentrates.
In a hospital… and that’s a nurse.
She’s at the foot of his bed, filling in a chart, concentrating herself.
He stares at her. She glances up and gets a start.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Mark.’
She reattaches the chart to the end of the bed and comes around to the side.
He follows her with his gaze.
She then leans in closely and examines his eyes with a penlight – first the left one, then the right.
She stands back.
‘It’s Helen,’ she says. ‘I’m Helen. How are you feeling?’
He gives a slight nod to his head, and then frowns.
He’s confused.
‘You’re under sedation,’ she says, apparently reading his confusion. ‘Movement will be slow. For a time. Don’t worry about it.’
He opens his lips to speak, but nothing comes out. He nods again, still confused.
‘It’s Monday,’ she says. ‘Monday afternoon. You’ve been here for more than four days.’
His mind goes blank again.
Four days? Is that what she said? Fine. Whatever.
Then it hits him.
Four days?
It’s like getting whacked on the head with a baseball bat.
Evidently, the panic shows.
‘Look,’ the nurse says, ‘I’ll… I’ll call one of the consultants. They’ll want to have a look at you anyway.’
He watches her leaving and then stares at the door.
Four days?
Was that… the alleyway, the warehouse, and then earlier … was all of that four days ago?
Jesus.
What’s happened since then?
He looks around the room, struggling to focus. Fighting the narcotic sludge. There are machines next to the bed, humming and beeping. There’s a wall-mounted TV.
No windows.
What happened?
Fear pulses through his system. He looks over at the door again.
What’s happening now?
‘You know… you’re a very lucky girl.’
Gina bites her lip, holds back. She’s exhausted. She’s been awake, more or less, since she got up on Friday morning in Sophie’s apartment. Over the weekend, while in garda custody, she lay down a few times and closed her eyes, but she never sank far below the threshold of consciousness.
‘I don’t feel it,’ she says eventually.
Merrigan lifts his coffee cup and holds it in front of his mouth. ‘Believe me, you could have faced charges a lot more serious than illegal possession of a firearm.’
He takes a sip from the coffee, blows on it and then takes another sip.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘But I really don’t think luck comes into it.’
‘What do you mean?’
She glances around. They’re in Neary’s on Chatham Street, at a table towards the back. The place is almost empty. Halfway along the bar two burly middle-aged guys are nursing pints and talking. Every now and again a word or phrase from their conversation breaks loose and carries down the room, director’s cut, salad dressing, gigabytes.
‘Well,’ Gina says quietly, ‘for one thing, he should be facing charges, not me.’
‘What he will be facing is litigation, and plenty of it.’
‘Yeah, but that’s not -’
‘Gina, listen.’ He puts his cup down and sits back in the chair. ‘You’ve destroyed the man’s reputation. You’ve held him up to ridicule. His career is finished. He’ll never get another project off the ground. Literally. But that other stuff? The emails you showed us? The phone calls? His association with Martin Fitzgerald? What Terry Stack said? It’s all circumstantial.’
‘What about -’
‘Noel’s SUV was a total write-off. Nothing’s going to come out of that either. There’s no evidence.’
She looks at him. ‘What do you think?’
He exhales loudly. ‘I’ve investigated a good few murders in my time. You learn to be pretty resigned about it. If you haven’t got the evidence, you move on. You can’t go by what something looks like. Not if it’s all you’ve got. Not if you’re unsure there’s even been a murder.’
She nods, eyes focused now on the low table between them, on the arrangement of objects on it – the coffeepot, her own untouched cup, his cup, the milk jug, the sugar bowl. After a few seconds, and in her exhausted state, it takes on the character of a weird, phantasmagoric arrangement of chess pieces.
‘You also learn to be dispassionate,’ Merrigan goes on. ‘Though having said that, Noel was a good friend of mine. I knew him for nearly twenty years and I hate the idea that… that…’
He waves a hand in the air, dismissing the thought, banishing it.
She looks back over at him. ‘No, say it, go on, you hate the idea that he might have been murdered. Is that what you actually think?’
He is silent for a moment. Then he says, ‘OK,I’ll admit it… it doesn’t look good.’
‘He just gets away with it then?’
‘Well, not technically.’ Merrigan drums his fingers on the side of the chair. ‘Because technically, you see, legally, the man hasn’t done anything to get away with. He hasn’t been -’
‘Oh come on.’
‘Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, Gina, but I can’t ignore my professional training, my -’
‘Fine, but that’s not something I have to struggle with -’
‘Oh I know.’ He pauses. ‘That’s what has me worried.’
‘What do you mean?’
Merrigan sighs. He seems exhausted, too – though not from lack of sleep. His face is lined. He looks drained, weary, ready to retire.
‘I think you’re a lot like Noel,’ he says. ‘You’re tenacious. You don’t give up easily. But you’re also very foolhardy, you’ve shown that already, and if you push this any further you could get into serious trouble, more trouble than you’re in now.’
‘But if he’s guilty -’
‘Even if he isn’t, Gina, there are libel laws in this country. You can’t just go around making accusations against people like that. This is a wealthy man we’re talking about. He could make life very difficult for you.’
‘So his wealth protects him? Is that it? This fat murdering bastard?’
She looks away, shaking her head.
Merrigan takes in a long, deep breath.
He leans forward in his chair. ‘Suppose for a moment he is guilty, and that everything you say is true. Think how dangerous that makes him. Then think how much you’ve pissed him off already. What is there to protect you from him?’