Alan Glynn - Winterland

Sophie turns, and sees the shock on Gina’s face.

‘What’s wrong?’ She rushes back.

‘It’s my nephew,’ Gina says, putting a hand up to her chest. ‘I can’t believe this. He’s been shot dead.’

Sophie’s eyes almost pop. ‘What?’

Sophie is from Mount Merrion, not a place where people tend to get shot.

‘This is… awful ,’ Gina says. ‘I have to get out to my sister’s.’

She looks around, confused, still in shock.

‘There’s a taxi rank down here,’ Sophie says, taking her by the arm. ‘Come on.’

The two guys are waiting, but Sophie disposes of them with a quick remark that Gina doesn’t hear.

They then walk in silence for a bit, cross at lights, looking left and right, concentrating on that. Eventually, Sophie asks Gina which sister it is.

‘Catherine,’ Gina says.

Sophie nods. After a pause she goes on, ‘Your nephew? God. How old was he? I have one who’s six and another one who’s still in nappies.’

‘Uh…’ Gina scrambles in her head for an answer. ‘He’s only a few years younger than me. Twenty-five, I think, twenty-six.’

‘Oh.’

‘My sister had him when she was very young. It was…’ She trails off here.

Gina is the youngest in the family – what used to be called an afterthought, or even a mistake. She’s only thirty-two, ten years younger than the next one up.

All of her siblings are in their forties.

Growing up, Gina could just about relate to Catherine and Michelle as sisters, but with Yvonne and Noel it was a little different. By the time she was only a year or two old they’d already left home and as a result she didn’t see them that often, so they were really more like an aunt and an uncle to her. She loves them to bits, of course – but it still feels, even today, like they’re from another generation.

‘That’s so sad .’ Sophie says as they approach the taxi rank. ‘Were you close to him?’

Gina is about to respond to this, but she stops. What does she say? The guy is dead.

She shakes her head.

She opens the back door of the taxi and leans against it. ‘OK. Here we are.’

‘Gina, do you want me to come along with you? As far as the house even?’

‘No, you’re grand, Soph. Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

As Gina gets into the taxi, she waves back at Sophie.

‘Dolanstown,’ she says to the driver, and then gives him the full address.

The car pulls away from the rank, swings around and heads back up Dame Street. In order to avoid conversation with the driver, not that this is likely to work, Gina takes out her mobile and starts texting. She quickly rain-checks lunch with Beth, acknowledges P.J.’ s message and then wonders – thumb poised, still staring at the display – if she should call Yvonne or just show up at Catherine’s.

She looks out the window.

But what’s Yvonne going to tell her on the phone that she didn’t say in the message?

‘Miserable night.’

See?

Gina turns, glances into the rearview mirror and meets the taxi driver’s eyes.

‘Yeah,’ she says, and looks away.

That’s all he’s getting.

‘You were out for a few jars yourself tonight, yeah?’

Oh God .

‘Hhnn.’

She gets this a lot with taxi drivers, especially going home at night, but really, what do they expect her to say? Yeah, bud, I’m well locked, me, no self-control at all, so pull in anywhere that’s convenient for you there and off we go?

‘Town’s fairly busy.’

‘Hhnn.’

The taxi driver pauses, regrouping, and then, ‘I see on the news there the Taoiseach’s after putting his foot in it again.’

OK, OK, maybe she’s wrong. Maybe it’s not the erotic charge of her being a young woman on her own, in a short skirt, with drink taken, in his cab. Maybe he’s just bored and trying to make conversation.

Whatever. But not tonight.

‘If you don’t mind,’ she says, ‘I’d prefer not to talk.’

‘ Oh ,’ he says.

Was that a little huffy? She stares at the back of his head. ‘Thanks.’

‘No, no,’ he says, ‘you’re fine, you’re fine.’ But of course that won’t do. After a moment, he has to add, ‘No problem there, miss. None at all. And no offence taken either. Whatever the customer wants. That’s what I always say, always have, and I’m twenty years in this game.’

In order to shut himself up, he reaches down and flicks on his radio. There are speakers behind Gina and the music is quite loud. What’s playing is some awful eighties thing she vaguely recognises – it’s soft rock, FM, irredeemably lite.

What did the Taoiseach say? Suddenly she’s curious.

But in the next moment she’s back with the immediate reality of what’s happened – her nephew, her sister.

For as long as she can remember, Gina’s been hearing stories about young Noel, about how he was always getting into trouble and breaking his mother’s heart. Catherine raised him on her own (with financial help from their brother), and she did her best in difficult circumstances, but the kid was undeniably a handful. He was hyperactive, rebellious and physically very big – so much so that by the time he hit his teens he was pretty much out of control. He got into all the usual shit, joyriding, shoplifting, burglary and, of course, drugs.

Over the next few years, whenever the sisters met, an increasingly weary Catherine usually went out of her way to avoid the subject, and since Gina herself was pretty busy, doing her diploma in computer programming and then starting work, she hardly ever saw her nephew and heard very little about what he was up to. Though lately his name has been cropping up in the papers – and most recently in a Sunday World article she saw about the massive profits being made in DVD piracy.

Biting her lower lip, Gina now looks up and around. St Patrick’s Cathedral flits past on the left, a new apartment complex on the right.

She’s unsure what to think – though really, in Dublin, getting shot in a pub can mean only one thing, can’t it?

As if to confirm this, the song on the radio finishes abruptly and a news bulletin comes on.

‘All the latest for Dublin at eleven,’ the announcer says, sounding as if he’s about fifteen and has just drunk a quadruple espresso. ‘A man in his mid-twenties has been gunned down in the beer garden of a south-side pub. It happened just before nine o’clock this evening. Witnesses claim the gunman fired three shots into the victim at point-blank range and then made his escape on a motorbike. The incident has all the hallmarks of a gangland killing -’

Gina closes her eyes.

‘- and it is believed that the dead man, who hasn’t been named yet, was known to the Gardaí.’

Oh God. Poor Catherine .

Gina shifts around in the seat and tries to shut out the rest of the bulletin. She’d like to ask the driver to turn the radio off, or at least to turn the volume down, but she feels she’s used up any goodwill she might have had with him. She also knows that this is ridiculous. But they’re turning at the KCR now and moving pretty fast – so why rock the boat? When she arrives at Catherine’s house she’s going to need all the composure and self-possession she can muster.

After the sports results, weather report and an ad break the music comes back on, still eighties, but this time a little less grating.

A few minutes later, the cab turns into the road where Catherine lives, a small crescent of semi-detached houses built in the fifties – and barely half a mile from where Gina, her sisters and Noel were all born and grew up. Gina hasn’t been out here for a while and she soon remembers why. Despite growing up in Dolanstown, she has always found the design and layout of the place – as with so many of Dublin’s suburban housing estates – to be soulless and oppressive.