Noel stares at Norton, and that’s when it hits him. He understands now what’s wrong and it’s confirmed for him when he turns to the right and sees someone approaching from the other side of the car park.
There is light from the street and from the back of the pub, but it takes Noel a moment or two to recognise who this is.
‘Fitz?’
‘How are you, Noel?’
Fitz is a short, muscular man in his late forties. He’s wearing jeans and a zipped-up leather jacket. His hair is thinning and he has a round, red, babyish face. He runs a company called High King, which provides on-site security at all of Paddy Norton’s construction projects.
‘I’m fine,’ Noel says, as calmly as he can make it sound, but his head is racing. Who else knows about this? No one. Except for Dermot Flynn of course. Noel got the report from Flynn early last week, looked it over and immediately swore him to secrecy. He then brought it to Paddy Norton – in retrospect, he now sees, probably the last person he should have brought it to. But why did he bring it to Norton and not to someone else? Noel doesn’t have to think about that for very long. He wanted to impress him – it was that simple, that venal, that stupid. However, instead of the expected pat on the back, what he got was a barrage of abuse, followed by a torrent of arguments for suppressing the report.
And in among these arguments, now that he thinks about it, he also heard a few threats of physical violence.
None of which – even for a second – he took literally.
He looks back at Norton, and then blurts it out, ‘You can’t be serious, Paddy.’
‘Oh, I’ve never been more serious in my life,’ Norton says, and runs a gloved hand over his head, trying to settle his wispy hair. ‘Well, maybe once.’
Noel swallows. He stares at Norton. ‘But… I mean… did…’
‘What? What? Your nephew?’
‘Yes.’
Norton nods his head in Fitz’s direction. ‘It was a mistake. This gobshite here. Whoever he outsourced it to was meant to hit you and then the spin would be that that was the mistake, that it should have been your high-profile bloody nephew. Same name, you know. Comedy of errors kind of thing.’ He turns his bulky frame towards Fitz and shakes his head. ‘Some bloody comedy, what?’
Fitz shrugs but remains silent.
‘It would have been the perfect smoke screen,’ Norton goes on. ‘Gangland cock-up. But too subtle for some people, it seems.’ He shakes his head again. ‘If you want something done in this life, am I right?’
Noel is paralysed and can’t respond. The notion that this man in front of him is responsible for having his nephew killed is simply grotesque, bizarre, too much to take in. Paddy Norton, Noel finds himself thinking – and as though in some desperate plea to logic – is a pillar of respectability… he owns racehorses, he goes to Ascot every year, his wife sits on committees…
‘Anyway,’ Norton says, ‘we’re now into a damage-limitation phase, I’m afraid.’
Noel just stands there, still processing the information, still incredulous. He and Norton first met professionally about ten years ago – through Larry Bolger. The older man was an industry legend by that stage, a survivor from the eighties – and, it seemed, untouchable, his name never once having come up in evidence given to the tribunal of inquiry into planning irregularities.
‘Damage limitation?’ Noel suddenly asks, at least one part of his brain working at full tilt. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means,’ Norton says, tipping his head backwards again, ‘that I want you to get in the car.’
Noel looks at him. He understands how reluctant Norton must be to let anything jeopardise the project, but…
He swallows.
Or maybe he doesn’t understand at all. Maybe as an engineer he’s been too close to the detail. Maybe he hasn’t been seeing the bigger picture. In a sudden rush of clarity he starts to see it now, though. Because the thing is, in relative terms, Ireland itself has seen nothing on the scale of Richmond Plaza since the early sixties. Back then the country was in the throes of a belated industrial revolution, and something like Liberty Hall, an eighteen-storey glass box, was a very big deal indeed. But what’s been going on in the country recently, what’s been going up, is mould-breaking by contrast, and for Paddy Norton, despite the deepening recession, or perhaps even because of it, Richmond Plaza – forty-eight storeys and in with a shout to be one of the tallest buildings in the whole of Europe – is beyond big, beyond important, it’s… it’s to be his legacy.
Noel looks around him. He’s boxed in here. A wall to his left, his own car behind him, Norton and his car ahead, Fitz to the right.
‘Paddy,’ he says, a brittle tone entering his voice, a tone he hates, ‘why don’t you just try and, I don’t know, bribe me or something?’
‘Oh, that’s a good idea,’ Norton says, and laughs. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. But you know what? You’re too much of a self-righteous prick to take a bribe.’
Noel starts to feel dizzy.
‘And besides, no matter how much I paid you, the problem wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t trust you to leave it alone.’ He taps the side of his head with his forefinger. ‘It’s peace of mind I’m looking for here.’
Then something occurs to Noel. ‘What about Dermot Flynn?’
As soon as he says the name, he regrets it – not that he believes there’s even the slightest chance that Norton hasn’t already thought of this.
Fitz, in any case, pipes up from the right. ‘We had a word with him this afternoon.’
Noel looks around. A word? What is this, some kind of sick euphemism? ‘What do you mean, a word?’
‘We spoke to him. Gave him a few bob and a couple of Polaroids. It’s sorted.’
Noel doesn’t know what this means. He’s confused. He turns back to Norton. ‘For God’s sake, Paddy, maybe I could -’
‘Noel, listen to me,’ Norton says, and then pauses, looking down at the ground again.
‘What?’ Noel says. He takes a step forward. ‘What?’
Norton exhales, his mood visibly changing. ‘Look,it’s too late. We both know that.’
Noel sees the dots joining up properly for the first time. His stomach starts jumping. He can taste something in the back of his throat. It feels like he’s been standing here for a hundred years.
‘Because my nephew’s dead, right?’ he says, almost in a whisper.
Norton nods. ‘Yeah. Obviously.’ He exhales again. ‘Now. Get in the fucking car.’
7
The house is quiet, at last. Everything is still. The girls are asleep. Claire has just gone up. The TV is turned off and the phone is unlikely to ring. Dermot Flynn gets off the sofa and goes into the kitchen. He opens the fridge and takes a bottle of vodka out of the freezer. He pours a large measure from the bottle into the nearest glass he can find. Standing at the counter, he raises the glass to his lips and knocks the clear, filmy liquid back in three quick gulps.
He looks out the window, into what should be the garden, but it’s late, and dark, and all he can see is his own reflection staring back in at him.
His heart is pounding.
After a few seconds, the vodka burns a welcome hole through his stomach – and his fear. Pretty soon it’s in his bloodstream, shooting warm, happy signals to his brain.
He never thought this moment would come.
He’s been looking forward to it for hours, since the middle of the afternoon in fact.
Which was when it happened. Out of the blue. On the street in front of where he works. As he was coming back to the office. With a can of Diet Coke in his hand.