He starts massaging his temples again.
Then he looks at Gina.
‘I have to go,’ he says.
6
Mark throws the remote onto the sofa, turns away from the TV and goes back into the kitchen. It doesn’t surprise him that Aunt Lilly is busy – that she’s over at the counter sieving flour into a bowl. Without saying a word, he walks right past her. He goes out the front door, pulls it behind him and heads straight for his car. As he’s backing out of the driveway, he puts on his seat belt.
He checks the rearview mirror, but the front door of the house remains closed.
Driving along the coast road, he glances left, at the sea, and across the bay to the mountains. It’s cloudy, but the sun is beginning to break through in patches.
He doesn’t have a specific destination in mind, but he’s feeling a gravitational pull towards the city centre.
He turns back to face the traffic. His heart is pounding.
So what did happen?
Mark doesn’t know, but the questions are multiplying in his head. Was Frank Bolger the one who got into his car that night with a few too many pints on him? Was he the one who lost control at the wheel and ended up killing himself and three other people? Was talk of drunk driving causing multiple fatalities considered too damaging, too toxic, for such a high-profile TD? In such a key constituency? With a brother waiting in the wings to take the seat? If so, were certain measures then taken? Was the ‘talk’ hushed up? Was evidence suppressed? Were new rumours – this time concerning the driver of the other car – put into circulation?
And what happened next?
Mark’s head is spinning.
Did Des Griffin start voicing objections, saying they had it all wrong, that his brother didn’t even drink? Was he told to shut up – for the sake of the boy? Was he intimidated, threatened, informed he might lose his job in the civil service, or be transferred – or worse? Is that why he was always so…?
Mark passes through Fairview and onto the North Strand Road.
Is this really how it all happened?
Jesus.
If it is – and increasingly it makes sense to him – then surely Gina Rafferty is right. The one person who had anything, indeed everything, to gain from this cover-up… was Larry Bolger.
Gina is reluctant to let Dermot Flynn go, but she can’t very well stop him.
When he stands up to leave, he fumbles for his wallet.
Gina waves him away. ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I’ve got it.’
He doesn’t argue.
She watches him go out the door and into the street.
When he’s gone, she takes a deep breath. She stares into space and tries to reconstruct the last twenty minutes in her head.
For some reason Flynn was deeply uncomfortable. He was nervous and jittery. He was evasive. He kept staring at other people in the café. He kept interrupting himself, hesitating, not finishing his sentences.
But why was he like this?
Was it something to do with Noel?
That’s the first thing Gina thinks of, not surprisingly – but maybe she’s got it wrong. Maybe Flynn is a nervous type. Maybe he’s bipolar and forgot to take his meds. Maybe she caught him on a bad day.
She can only speculate.
On the short walk back to her own office, she chides herself for not being more aggressive, for not putting Flynn more on the spot.
But she’s tired, she’s confused, and it was such a painful interlude that she just wanted it to end.
As she goes in the door and walks up the stairs, Gina finds herself wishing this whole thing would end – the way sometimes, half consciously, in the middle of one, you want a dream to end.
Mark finds a parking space on Merrion Square. As he walks up towards Baggot Street he makes a couple of calls on his mobile. The first is to directory enquiries and the second is to the press office of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
The minister, it seems – not that Mark asked – has made his statement and isn’t available for further comment. In any case, he will be busy all afternoon in the Dáil, and later he’ll be -
‘That’s fine,’ Mark says, ‘thank you.’
He puts away his phone. He walks by the Shelbourne and turns right onto Kildare Street. In less than a minute he is standing in front of Leinster House. He looks in through the tall railings of this Georgian mansion that was originally built as a town house for the Earl of Kildare and is now the seat of both houses of the Oireachtas. There are two gardaí standing sentry at the gates, but they seem to be spending a lot of their time redirecting tourists to the National Library or the National Museum, which are located on either side of the parliament building.
Mark looks at his watch. He wonders what Larry Bolger is going to be so busy with all afternoon. An urgent debate on some vital piece of legislation? Leaders’ Questions? But then he remembers it’s Monday and that when the Dáil is in session they don’t commence business until Tuesday. So what’s Bolger doing in there? Hiding from the media after his press conference? Trying to make himself look busy?
Mark would like to find out, but you can’t just swan in through the gates here. You need clearance or a visitor’s pass. He looks up and down the street. Apart from pedestrians and tourists, there is a bedraggled man with a placard pacing back and forth in front of the sentry box and another man circling idly on the pavement, talking into his mobile.
Farther up the street, people are waiting at a bus stop.
Inside the gates there is an occasional flurry of activity as someone comes or goes or a car passes in or out. It’s not busy though, and after a while Mark begins to feel self-conscious. One of the guards in the sentry box has glanced over at him a couple of times, and it can’t be long, he supposes, before an approach is made.
Eventually he moves away. He wanders up the street a bit, towards the bus stop.
He doesn’t know why he came here. It just seemed like his only option.
But about twenty minutes later – and as though to dispel any doubts he might have had – three men walk out through the gates of Leinster House. They wait to let traffic pass and then cross the street. They enter Buswell’s Hotel on the corner of Molesworth Street.
Mark is pretty sure, even from this distance, that one of the men is Larry Bolger.
Back in the office, Gina sits and stares at her screensaver. There is plenty of work she could be doing, but her heart isn’t in it, not least because she knows the company’s days are numbered. P.J., by contrast, is a lot more positive and talks up the company’s prospects every chance he gets. Siobhan in reception is playing her part as well – though in the room at the back, where the designers and programmers operate, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Gina rubs her eyes.
Either way, she’s been out of the equation since her brother died, and no one is expecting anything of her just yet. P.J. could do with the support, but he also knows her well enough not to push it. In any case, it doesn’t take Gina long to realise that sitting around the office in a trance isn’t much of a help to anyone.
She gets up from her desk again. As she’s walking towards the door, she looks over at Siobhan. ‘I’m just…’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m…’
But that’s it. That’s all there is.
On the way down the stairs she wonders how unhinged that must’ve seemed – how unhinged she must seem.
Even though, actually, it isn’t how she feels at all.
Outside, she looks down the gentle curve of Harcourt Street towards the Green, and hears the bell of an approaching tram. There is a slight breeze blowing.