Frank, as it turned out, was no use to anyone – so Larry was it.
Norton buzzes out to his secretary and tells her to bring him in a double espresso. In a few minutes he has a meeting with the directors of a UK investment company who are developing a chain of health centres in a joint venture with Winterland, and Norton needs to go over some figures with them.
But he needs some caffeine first.
Because he hasn’t been sleeping too well of late.
The Bolger story calms down considerably on Friday and Saturday, but no one involved takes any consolation from this, or – depending on where they’re coming from – is disappointed. Everyone knows it’s how the Sunday papers play it that will determine if the story has legs or not.
As it turns out, none of the papers on Sunday comes up with a killer blow – it’s more like a thousand little ones, with each paper taking a different angle, each headline a different tone, sanctimonious, analytical, trashy. The effect of this is not to confuse people, however, or to turn them off, but to pique their interest.
Gina, for example, who would normally buy just one paper, ends up buying three. She’s not sure how much of this stuff she’ll actually read, but having a thick bundle of newspapers under her arm as she walks along the quays gives her a vague sense of security, of comfort even.
She’s out early.
It’s a bright morning, cold and windy, and the gusts coming in from the bay are bracing, but that’s exactly what Gina wants. She doesn’t want mild and dull and overcast, she wants fresh, clear, invigorating. She still feels raw from the last two weeks, and her grief, ever present, is like a thumping sensation in her chest.
It’s relentless – like an echo of her heartbeat.
But she’s determined not to let it overwhelm her.
She wanders past her apartment building and walks on for another hundred yards or so. She stops and looks downriver, at Richmond Plaza.
Paddy Norton was adamant that Noel’s death was an accident – caused by stress and too much alcohol. It’s the official view and it’s a fairly convincing one. It’s supported by logic, by common sense and, crucially, by evidence. It’s a view that Gina was on the point of accepting herself.
Until she spoke with Terry Stack on Wednesday evening.
She turns around and heads back to her apartment building.
Since that conversation she has been haunted by the image, conjured up so casually by Stack, of someone forcing whiskey down Noel’s throat.
It’s a horrible idea, but it’s also the only way of explaining the level of alcohol in his bloodstream. Because the simple fact is, Noel wasn’t a heavy drinker. He liked a pint now and again, he drank wine at dinner, but that was as far as it went.
Back up in her apartment, Gina throws the papers onto the sofa and goes over to the kitchen to put on some coffee.
She sorts through her laundry and fills the washing machine.
When she eventually sits down to tackle the papers, she finds herself skipping the Larry Bolger stuff at first. She’s really tired and not in the right frame of mind. Instead, she reads a few book reviews, flicks through a colour supplement, reads a recipe for moussaka, scans the international pages.
But then she gives in.
The first piece she reads calls Bolger gaffe-prone and goes through a series of incidents where he displayed, to say the least, questionable judgement – such as the classic time when as junior minister at the Department of Transport in charge of road-safety initiatives he was conducting a live radio interview on his mobile phone and it became apparent on air that he was driving his car at the same time.
She reads a detailed account of how at the taxpayers’ expense some woman called Avril Byrne accompanied Bolger on various foreign junkets – or ‘fact-finding missions’ – and how the pair routinely stayed in lavish hotel suites. On one occasion Bolger used a departmental credit card to charge € 2,400 for a meal at an exclusive restaurant in Singapore. It is also alleged that when Ms Byrne needed a pricey dental procedure Bolger diverted party funds to pay for it.
Simultaneously, it seems, the minister was running up a huge tab – as yet unsettled – at a bookmaker’s owned by Ms Byrne’s estranged husband.
In another paper Gina reads an analysis of Bolger’s career in politics: his voting record, the various issues he has supported, the crucial role he played in an earlier leadership heave. It also explains how he came to win his Dáil seat in the first place. Gina didn’t know this, but Bolger only decided – or was persuaded – to enter politics after his older brother Frank, the sitting TD, was killed in a car crash.
Gina lowers the paper onto her lap. She stares out across the room for a moment.
People die on our roads every day of the week.
Then she picks up the Sunday World and flicks through it until she finds a two-page spread that she previously only glanced at. At the bottom of the first page there is a small black-and-white photograph of a wrecked Mercedes. The caption reads: frank bolger in road carnage.
She scans the accompanying article, but it contains only a brief reference to the crash.
… outside Dublin… two cars… four people killed…
Gina takes a deep breath.
… including a little girl.
She stares at the photograph for a while.
Then she puts the paper down, adding it to the pile she already has beside her on the sofa. She glances out of the window. The day has become overcast, but it’s still windy. Clouds roll by.
She thinks of Noel’s SUV skidding off a country road, swerving, plunging… then the impact, then Noel crushed and battered inside, surrounded by fumes and burning smells, oil, blood, rubber. She thinks of him lying there half conscious, groaning, dying…
What went through his head in those last few moments?
Tears come into her eyes. She rolls sideways, onto the pile of newspapers, and starts to sob.
After a few minutes, the tears subside. Using her sleeve, she wipes her eyes. She curls up. She gets drowsy. She falls asleep.
About an hour later – in the middle of a confused dream – she wakes up, startled.
The phone is ringing.
She rubs her eyes.
She gets up from the sofa. The phone is on the desk in the corner, next to the computer. She goes over and picks it up. She pulls the chair out and sits down. ‘Hello?’ she says, sniffing.
‘Hello, Gina, it’s Jackie Merrigan.’
Gina furrows her brow. She is puzzled. Does she know any Jackie Merrigan?
But after a second it hits her.
That old friend of Noel’s she met at the removal. The detective superintendent.
‘Oh. Hello. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. I’m fine. I was just ringing to check in and see how you are. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, no, not at all. Thank you.’
‘I was thinking about Noel today and… he was very fond of you, you know. He often mentioned you.’ He pauses. ‘It’s still only sinking in, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It’s hard to believe.’
Gina pictures Merrigan – tall and stooped, silver hair, distinguished-looking. He seemed quite gentle, not at all the stock image of a detective superintendent.
‘And how are your sisters?’ he asks.
‘They’re OK,’ Gina says. ‘Catherine isn’t, of course. She couldn’t be, really.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
As they chat about Catherine and then Noel, Gina has a growing urge to put a few direct questions to Merrigan, to air her theories, but something holds her back. She doesn’t want to be patronised. She doesn’t want to be told, yet again, that there’s nothing mysterious here, that it was just a tragic accident.