Alan Glynn - Winterland

And that’s not enough.

‘ Listen to me,’ he then says, each syllable on its own taking so much effort he can’t even be sure they’re coming out in a logical sequence. ‘ Stay away from Paddy Norton. Don’t go to meet him .’

Gina is taken aback by this – not so much by the fact that Mark seems to know where she’s going, but by his tone. It’s a command, and for weeks that’s all she’s been hearing, commands, and negative ones, don’t do this, don’t do that…

Not something she responds well to.

And yet… and yet…

Isn’t there something different about this one? Isn’t he someone, of all people, she should listen to?

For his part, Mark – hanging on by a thread, waiting for some kind of reaction from Gina – can’t help suspecting that he might be seriously deluded here, or insane, or just too late – a feeling that is compounded when he suddenly hears, down the phone line, a dull thud… followed by shattering glass and the sound of an alarm…

He freezes.

Waits.

Is she there? Please . Let her still be there, let her say it -

‘ Gina? ’ he whispers, unable to bear it any longer. ‘ What was that? ’

Then, for what feels like ages, but can be only a few seconds, there is silence, nothing, just the muted, filtered wailing of the alarm.

He is about to erupt when Gina speaks, her voice muffled and quiet.

‘I don’t know,’ she says.

And it’s true.

She has turned around again, and is in shock. Whatever that was is just up ahead.

She hesitates, trying to make sense of it.

‘But look,’ she says, starting to move. ‘I’m OK, Mark. Really. Give me a few minutes and I’ll call you back on this number.’

Slumped over the wheel now, Norton can’t feel a thing.

He can’t move.

It’s all very weird – one second she’s approaching, coming within range, and the next she’s… what?

Slowing down? Stopping?

She’s fucking turning around?

Un believable, he thinks.

So he loses it, starts rocking back and forth in his seat, banging his fists against the steering wheel, shouting, ‘ Move, move, MOVE ’ – but it turns out he mustn’t have put the hand brake on, because suddenly the car itself is moving, sliding forward, only a few feet, but knocking into the car in front, smashing its rear lights and triggering the alarm.

Triggering the pain again, too, it seems, and the white light… the pain even more severe than earlier, the light even more blinding…

But it’s OK now. He doesn’t feel the pain.

Not anymore.

Except, of course, that he does .

Because as everyone knows, there are different kinds of pain.

Like the pain of remembering.

Because back then, you see, he did know what he was doing – it’s just that nothing was ever confirmed about it afterwards, nothing was ever said, no one ever used the words autopsy or toxicology . In those days there was no such thing as the Serious Accident Unit, and in any case the party handlers, for their own reasons, weren’t slow in putting it about that the other man was to blame – so it wasn’t long before Norton was able to convince himself that what he’d done… well, that maybe the two things, the pill and the crash, weren’t directly connected after all…

The pill and the crash.

There’s always been a part of his brain that has resisted joining those particular dots…

But not anymore.

The pill and the crash, the pill and the crash… the pill… the crash … the pill, the crash , the pill, the crash…

In his head, these words and the shrill, piercing tone of the alarm fall into alignment, merge, and become something new, a sound with a certain feel of permanence to it, a sound that might never ease, that might never subside…

On the edges of his vision, he can just about detect movement, flitting shapes, patterns. Is someone there? Maybe he could ask them to make the sound stop, or at least to turn it down, just a bit, just a little …

He tries to speak, tries with all his might, tries to utter even a single syllable, but in the end it is useless.

In the end no sound comes from his mouth.

Mark leans his head back against the wall, relaxes his arm and slowly lowers his hand from his neck.

He drops the fragment of the mug and it falls to the floor.

His hand is smeared with blood.

The guard, hovering at a discreet distance, seems reluctant to tackle Mark, but is probably already suspecting that when he’s talking about this later in the pub he’ll regret not having tackled him.

Or maybe, Mark thinks, he was ordered not to.

Like everyone else here, it seems.

Turning his head now to the left, weary beyond measure, struggling to focus, Mark sees them approaching – two men, striding with purpose, parting the ways. Doctors, nurses, admin staff, the guard… they all stand aside.

Mark then glances downwards and sees that the pool of clear fluid on the floor has become infused with the blood, and that streaks and rivulets of red are spreading outwards and making their way across the floor to the opposite wall.

Streaks and rivulets of his blood.

It’ll make it easier for them, he thinks, easier in whatever way they have it in mind to finish him off.

A hurried struggle, some use of necessary force, a bullet even.

He starts to reduce, to shrink into himself.

He did his best. At least he tried.

Head down, he waits, listens.

Closes his eyes. Senses them standing there now.

Come on. Get it over with .

‘Mark? Are you OK there? Mark?’ The voice is calm, solicitous. ‘ Mark? Look at me.’

He looks up.

Standing directly in front of him is a tall man with a stoop and silvery white hair.

‘Mark,’ the man says, ‘I think we need to talk. I’m a detective superintendent. My name is Jackie Merrigan.’

Gina recognises the car at once.

It’s his .

She walks slowly, approaching the scene with caution.

The alarm is still wailing, but in the strong east wind it sounds a little wobbly, a little plaintive. There are already people about – from the surrounding houses, from the line of cars now backed up to the level crossing.

Norton’s car – however it happened – is lodged into the back of the car parked in front.

As she gets nearer, Gina sees a man coming out of a house on the left. His arm is outstretched and he is pointing something at the parked car.

The alarm stops ringing.

The silence that follows, at least for a few seconds, seems vast and dense with significance.

But this doesn’t last.

More and more people appear, and by the time Gina gets right up to Norton’s car, it is surrounded and she can’t see a thing.

But she can hear the comments.

‘ Yeah, he’s dead ,’ someone says, ‘ for sure… must have been a heart attack… ’

She leans against the garden railings behind her and glances around.

When the ambulance appears a few minutes later, and is inching its way down from the level crossing, she hears another comment. It comes from one of two young men who are taking turns peering in through the window of Norton’s car.

‘ Oh my God ,’ she hears him say, ‘ What’s that in his hand? Jesus, I think… I think it’s a gun… ’

This piece of information passes like a lick of flame out of the window and spreads, almost visibly, from person to person, until the whole scene is engulfed with it.