Alan Glynn - Winterland

‘ Mark, you can’t - ’

‘ MOVE .’ He jerks his head sideways. ‘ I’ll tear right into the vein .’

She nods quickly and takes another few steps back.

‘ You ,’ Mark then says, addressing the guard, ‘ stay .’

The guard freezes.

Apart from the constant drip-drip to the floor of what remains from the infusion bag, there is now an eerie silence all along the corridor.

Mark leans his head back against the wall. There are spots of blood on the front of his gown.

‘OK,’ he says, nodding at the guard, at his walkie-talkie. ‘You’re going to get me that number, and right now .’

When they get to Strand Road, Gina asks the taxi driver to pull over. Her hands are shaking as she pays him. She wonders if he’ll remember her later.

Yeah, that stuck-up bitch who didn’t want to talk .

She gets out and starts walking along by the low stone wall. It’s freezing cold, the wind cutting through her like a knife. To her right, cars stream past in a steady flow. To her left, the bay seems shrouded in a murky orange darkness. There is a lot of cloud, a gathering mist, and no moon. The tide is in. The lights of Howth and Dun Laoghaire are just about visible.

She is sick to her stomach.

She comes to the end of the stone wall. She goes through the small parking area – which is almost empty – and onto the promenade.

An elderly man with a dog approaches, nods, passes.

There is no one sitting on any of the first few benches.

She can’t tell if she’s shaking from nerves or shivering from the cold.

Why is this so different from Friday? She was extremely nervous then, too, and even had a gun in her pocket. But she still managed to stay calm. There was no plan of course, and that was it – everything just happened, unfolded, second by second, none of it anticipated.

This evening is different. She has a sense of foreboding. She also has a sense of purpose, an almost visceral need to engage head-on with this, and to close it down, even if it means bashing someone’s head in – his, her own, it barely seems to matter anymore.

She approaches a bench that has four or five teenagers on it. They are huddled together, smoking and laughing.

She goes by, half hearing a comment one of them directs at her.

The next few benches are empty. Then there is the Martello Tower. On the other side of it the promenade continues, and although they didn’t say where they’d meet exactly, or at which bench, that’s probably where she’ll find him. It makes sense. It’s the direction he’ll be coming from.

She keeps moving.

Towards him, into his orbit.

Earlier, Jackie Merrigan asked why she couldn’t be satisfied with having destroyed Paddy Norton’s reputation, and she said because it was nothing compared to the damage he had caused to others.

It’s only now that Gina is beginning to see how she herself is one of these others, how Norton is like a virus she has contracted, or a toxic substance in her system she may never be able to eliminate. With each step, it becomes a little clearer… how he has influenced her behaviour, twisted her emotions, choked her sense of who she is… how he has turned her into the crazy lady, the mad bitch who can’t be stopped…

But what Gina is most afraid of now, as she pushes on against the wind, past the Martello Tower, is that Norton is pulling her towards something else again, something awful – a confession she doesn’t want to hear, a revelation she doesn’t need to know about. She’s afraid that he is pulling her towards a place from which there can be no route back, that he is pulling her towards annihilation.

She looks ahead, along the remaining stretch of promenade, and thinks of the two Noels. She thinks of Dermot Flynn, of Mark Griffin’s parents and sister. She thinks of all their lost, stolen futures.

Then she thinks of Mark himself, of his uncertain future, and of her own future, the reality and promise of each diminishing, slipping away with the passing hours, and as a plea, almost as a prayer, she gazes up and asks out loud what it will take, if anything, to save them.

What he did that night…

As Norton approaches the level crossing, the light turns red and the gates come down.

He waits, feeling overwhelmed all of a sudden – exhausted, short of breath.

What he did that night barely seems real to him anymore. It was so long ago now, and seems less like a sequence of concrete actions than a fragment from a dream – and a half-remembered, mis remembered one at that.

He stares through the gates, over to Strand Road.

But he was only doing what had to be done… to protect his interests, his family, his business. Just like tonight. Just like that other night, a while back, with Fitz.

In a sudden burst, the DART train, an illuminated streak of green, hurtles past along the railway line, click-clacking, click-clacking, the force of it seeming to correspond to – seeming to be commensurate with – the sudden force now pressing in on Norton’s chest.

He closes his eyes, and the pain subsides.

Frank Bolger came to the house that night. The house on Griffith Avenue. He was on his way to a meeting in Drogheda and stopped by to have a quick word with Norton about the proposed rezoning of the Dunbrogan estate. Standing at the front door, he said he wanted to clarify his position – and face to face, man to man, not through the usual, twisted, sniping back channels that were so typical of local politics. He felt that Norton was a reasonable man and would respect Frank’s position if it was presented to him in a proper and honest fashion. Norton invited him in. He was alone in the house. Miriam was out for the evening, at the theatre. They went through to the kitchen and sat down. Frank was nervous, but coming here like this showed he had balls.

Norton actually admired him.

Click-clack, click-clack…

No compromise was going to be possible between them, though – because there was nothing new in Frank’s much-vaunted ‘position’. Dunbrogan House was a part of our heritage, he argued, and taking the wrecking ball to it would be nothing less than a tragedy. Blah, blah, blah. He then added – his voice a little shaky, but desperately earnest – that he wasn’t going to be bullied or intimidated. He knew his old man wasn’t happy about the stand he was taking either, but this was a matter of principle for him. So not only did he intend lobbying further against the rezoning, and speaking out about the dubious voting records of certain councillors, he also intended to publicly berate Miriam’s father for selling off the property in the first place. And he made no apology for the fact.

Norton stared at him in disbelief.

Click-clack, click-clack…

‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,’ he remembers saying.

Frank was the one who laughed, but nervously. Then he looked at his watch.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to get that straight, put it on the record.’ He cleared his throat and made a move to get up. ‘Right. I’d better be going. I don’t want to be late.’

Norton waved a dismissive hand at this.

‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘The roads will be quiet at this hour. You’ll fly up.’

It was in that moment – panic rising in his throat, like bile – that it came to him.

Click-clack, click-clack…

What he could do.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to argue with you, Frank. I can see there’s no point. But I want to thank you for coming, I respect you for it.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, you’ll have a drop for the road? Call it a peace offering.’