‘Nothing.’
‘Exactly. I can’t protect you. The Gardaí can’t protect you. Not without reasonable cause. You’d be on your own.’
‘I’ve been on my own all along.’
Merrigan sits back and shrugs his shoulders. ‘Norton has taken a very serious hit here, and where it hurts. Why can’t you be satisfied with that?’
‘Because it’s nothing compared to the damage he has caused.’ She sighs. ‘Paddy Norton has destroyed people’s lives. I mean, apart from the others… look at Mark Griffin, on a bloody ventilator.’ She pauses. ‘And you know, to be honest, I don’t even know what happened there, or why, the background, the history… but Norton’s prints are all over that, too.’ She pauses again. ‘I should have asked him about it when I had the chance.’
Merrigan holds her gaze. ‘I can see this becoming an obsession with you, Gina, do you know that? I can also see it destroying your life.’ He pauses. ‘So I’m asking you – in fact, as a senior police officer, I’m telling you – leave this alone. Don’t ever go near Paddy Norton again, or make contact with him. Yeah?’
Gina’s impulse here is to push it, but what’s the point? It would be futile. She knows the arguments. She doesn’t want to hear them from him. She doesn’t want to hear them from herself.
Nothing would change.
He is staring at her.
‘Yeah?’ he repeats.
After a few moments, she nods her head.
‘Anyway,’ she then says, and smiles – her first in quite some time – ‘you knew Noel for twenty years?’
‘Yes.’
She is almost alarmed to see the effect her smile has on Merrigan. The reaction is instant. He moves, shifts his position in the chair, all but wriggles.
She smiles again. She can’t help it.
It’s like administering a small jolt of electricity.
‘Yes,’ he repeats, nodding vigorously, ‘I did.’
‘So,’ she says. ‘Talk to me about him.’
Norton turns right onto the Dual Carriageway from Eglinton Road. He’s been driving around for a while, an hour or two, and doesn’t want to stop – or go home, or go anywhere – but he’s tired and definitely getting a little woozy.
He went into the office this morning but stayed only twenty minutes. Then he turned his mobile phone off. It was after that conversation with Larry Bolger. But he was getting too many calls from people he didn’t want to talk to anyway – Daniel Lazar, Yves Baladur, Ray Sullivan, someone from the Department of the Environment, someone from the bank, various investors, journalists… Miriam…
He passes the RTÉ studios at Montrose.
Those bastards in there have been running the same identifying clip of him in all their news bulletins since Friday. It shows him, some months back, entering the Fairleigh Clinic, taking the front steps two at a time – but over and over again. The repetition of the clip has become something of a joke, with one smart-arse on the radio today even remarking that after so much exercise Mr Norton should probably expect to lose at least a little weight.
It’s humiliating.
The box and torn packaging on the passenger seat beside him is what’s left of the Nalprox. He’s been popping them indiscriminately all weekend and is going to have to arrange a repeat scrip soon.
He flicks on the CD player.
Jarring, dissonant brass and a demented string section. He goes on to the next track. It’s more soothing, some clarinet thing, but after a minute he flicks it off anyway.
He keeps replaying Friday in his head.
He just didn’t see it coming, not like that.
He didn’t have her pegged for such a scheming, devious bitch.
Stopped at lights, he reaches over and opens the glove compartment. If he’d had this bloody gun with him on Friday, he would have used it and dealt with the consequences later.
But he didn’t. It was sitting here in his car, gathering dust.
He’d still like to use it, though – and will, if he ever gets the chance.
If she ever comes near him again…
A few minutes later, as he’s pulling into the gravel driveway of his house, he has a momentary lapse of concentration – or maybe even of consciousness – and swerves a bit to the left. He scrapes the side of his car against the iron gate and then mounts a rock-bordered flower bed, crushing a row of crocuses. It takes him a few awkward moments to manoeuvre the car off the flower bed and park it properly.
When he gets out of the car, he stands for a moment on the gravel and takes a couple of deep breaths. He looks up at the sky, which is grey and overcast. Then he inspects the side of the car, swears under his breath, shakes his head. Turning to go into the house, he notices two men standing at the gates.
One of them has a camera.
‘Fuck off!’ he shouts, and raises his fist in the air.
He hadn’t noticed them on the way in.
Miriam is waiting at the bottom of the stairs. For the last three days she has been struggling to maintain some kind of equilibrium. But conflicting forces have made this very difficult. One side of her wants to be loyal and supportive to her husband. The other side, it appears, wants to insult and belittle him.
The best she can manage is a sort of tense neutrality – severe, clipped.
No make-up.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Out. Driving around.’
‘I see. Why didn’t you answer your phone?’
‘I didn’t feel like it.’
‘Did you check your messages?’
‘Oh Jesus, Miriam.’
He walks across the hall and into the main reception room. He goes over to the drinks cabinet and pours himself a large Bushmills.
Then he stands, looking at nothing in particular, and sips the drink. He has his back to the door and doesn’t know if Miriam is there or not.
But she doesn’t have to speak. He can hear her voice in his head.
Whiskey? For goodness’ sake, Paddy, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon.
He turns around.
She isn’t there.
Keeping a close eye on the door, Mark tries to piece everything together in his mind – but the pieces keep shifting position and changing shape. At the end there, in the warehouse, something happened, it’s just that he doesn’t know what exactly. Because he wasn’t in any condition to take it in. What he does know is that Gina was supposed to show up, but someone else was there, someone who knew he’d be there… and then, after a while, seemingly, all hell broke loose…
But what happened to Gina? Where is she now? How is she now?
One way or another he’s going to have to find out. He’s going to have to ask the nurse if she knows anything, or if she can arrange to buy him a phone, or get him a newspaper – or, at the very least, turn on the TV.
Assuming he can trust her, that is. Assuming he can trust anyone.
Because there was that guy at the warehouse, and the guy earlier, the one in the car park, the one who shot him.
So presumably there’ll be others.
Mark’s stomach turns.
Not to mention the police. The police will definitely want to interview him. But given that he almost tried to kill a government minister, well… the police are probably the very last people he should trust.
Then, as if on cue, the door of the room flies open and a tall man in a blue suit barges in.
Mark flinches and turns his head to the side, expecting the worst.
‘So, Mr Griffin,’ the man says in a booming voice, ‘Nurse here tells me that you’ve decided to rejoin us.’