It can ring out. Or Miriam upstairs will answer it. There were several calls earlier, which he’s assuming she did answer. But if so, she never passed on any messages. And some of the calls had to have been for him, because he hasn’t been getting back to people. Voicemail, text messages, emails – he’s been ignoring them all.
He’s not in the mood.
A few moments later, he hears Miriam coming down the stairs.
He tenses, not in the mood for her either.
She opens the hall door. He hears her stepping out onto the gravel.
He waits, listens.
What is she doing?
She’d better not be going out to talk to a journalist, because that’d be really stupid. Though on reflection it’s not something he can see Miriam doing. With her it’d almost be like breaking a religious taboo.
She comes back in and slams the front door shut. Then she comes into the living room. Without saying anything, she walks over to the sofa where Norton is sitting. She has a large brown envelope in her hand. She drops it in his lap.
‘What’s this?’
‘I don’t know, Paddy. I’m not in the habit of opening other people’s packages.’
She turns and leaves.
Norton looks at the envelope for a moment and then tosses it down beside him on the sofa.
He turns back to the TV. The six o’clock news has just come on, and guess what – for the first time since Friday evening Norton is not the lead story.
Larry Bolger is.
Norton grunts. He wants to turn the TV off or switch to another channel, but he can’t. He stares at the screen – fascinated, mesmerised, but also disgusted. It’s not so much that he thinks he should be there, in the background, basking in the reflected glory – of course he should – it’s more that Larry’s arrogance is so breathtaking, his casual assumption that he can cut old ties so… so deluded.
They show clips of Bolger leaving Áras an Uachtaráin, then arriving back at Leinster House, and then – at which point Norton presses the Mute button on his remote – addressing the chamber. After that, in a quick résumé of his career, various photos appear on the screen: a schoolboy in front of a grey institutional building, Liam Bolger flanked by his two teenage sons, the mangled car, a campaign poster… then Larry wearing an election rosette, Larry sitting at the cabinet table, Larry standing in front of the main stage at an Árd Fheis… on and on, the young man Norton first knew, slim and with an implausibly bushy head of jet-black hair, morphing into the greying, stocky middle-aged bollocks he is today.
Taoiseach Larry Bolger.
Give me a fucking break.
Whatever it is Mark is expecting to see on the news, it’s not what he gets, because the lead story isn’t about Gina Rafferty or Richmond Plaza – though it was hardly likely to be – it’s about Larry Bolger and how he has taken over as…
Taoiseach?
But -
How could this have happened so fast? Last Wednesday the man was just a minister, getting over a personal scandal. There was talk all right, speculation, but -
Gazing at the screen, Mark feels as if some kind of cosmic trick is being played on him.
His stomach is jumping.
He feels like Rip van fucking Winkle.
In utter disbelief, he watches as they show footage of Bolger leaving Áras an Uachtaráin, returning to Leinster House and addressing the chamber, after which they go back over his career and show photos from the archives, old black-andwhite ones… of a small child in a school uniform, of Bolger’s father flanked by his teenage sons, and then -
Mark flinches, rears back in horror.
– of a crushed and mangled car by the side of a country road.
He grabs the remote and turns the TV off.
Holy fuck.
Holy fuck.
He takes a few deep breaths, and then, unwilling to linger on the image in his mind’s eye – unable to linger – he flicks the TV back on.
Bolger at a press conference, flanked by senior ministers.
Mark can’t believe it.
Can’t believe any of it.
And as he stares at the man on the screen he is seized by this awful, queasy sense of himself as an inconvenience, as a piece of someone else’s unfinished business. Twenty-five years ago his family was wiped out, taken from him physically, which was bad enough, but then they were taken from him emotionally as well – and now the person responsible for that is trying to wipe him out, too? And why? Because he’s apparently looking for… what? Some kind of closure?
Well, so be it.
Mark pulls back the covers of the bed.
So be it.
He moves his legs to the edge, slides them over and manoeuvres himself into a sitting position.
If he wants closure, then he can fucking well have it.
But it’s only at that point that Mark realises he has a catheter attached to him, and that the catheter is, in turn, attached to a drainage bag hanging from the side of the bed. What does he do? Yank it off? He then tugs at the lumen strip on his neck from which the various IV drips connect to bags mounted on a mobile unit next to the monitors. Does he yank this off, too?
He should try and stand first.
He glances up at the TV. They’re in a studio now, dull voices droning on about momentous events, the big day, history.
He eases his feet down onto the floor, aware for the first time in a while of a dull pain in his back – a pain that seems to be rapidly intensifying.
He raises his hand up to his neck and is about to tear the strip loose when suddenly his eyes well up with tears.
What does he think he’s doing? Is he insane? What’s his plan here, to breach government security wearing a hospital gown and then strangle the new prime minister with his catheter tube?
It’s beyond pathetic.
He leans back against the bed and groans, the pain getting worse.
Across the room, the door opens.
The nurse is backing in with a trolley, but she stops halfway and addresses someone outside, maybe the guard, maybe another nurse.
‘Ah go on, he’s not, is he?’
Mark lifts himself up onto the edge of the bed. He turns, wincing, and eases himself into position again.
‘Listen, don’t believe everything you hear.’
He pulls up the covers, leans his head back against the raised pillows and closes his eyes.
‘See ya.’
He listens as the nurse wheels the trolley in through the door and across the room.
His heart pounding, his eyes stinging.
After a moment, the nurse comes over to the bed, picks up the remote control and turns off the TV.
Mark then feels her tossing something onto the end of the bed.
A while later, when she has left the room once more, he opens his eyes.
At the end of the bed there is a copy of the Sunday Tribune.
To distract himself from what’s on the TV, Norton picks up the envelope beside him on the sofa and examines it. He doesn’t recognise the handwriting. He tears the envelope along the top. Inside it there is a single page of glossy photo paper. Printed on the page are three photographs.
One each of a man, a woman and a small girl.
At first he is puzzled. He looks inside the envelope again and sees a business card. He takes this out and examines it.
The name on the card is Gina Rafferty.
His heart lurches.
If she ever comes near me again…
He looks back at the photographs and…
Of course.
Jesus, she has a nerve. But what is she up to? Is this meant to be some sort of coded message – a veiled threat? He thought that by not pressing charges he’d at least be eliminating her from the equation. He thought she’d go away and leave him to deal with the fallout, with all the shit she’d stirred up… but now this…