‘OK, OK, whoa.’ Gina holds a hand up. It’s as though he’s there in the room, standing right in front of her. ‘Please, Mark, listen to me. Don’t do anything rash. Please.’
He doesn’t answer, but she can hear him breathing. She walks back to the sofa and sits down.
His uncle? Is that the Des he mentioned?
‘Mark?’ she says eventually. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can we meet again some time? To talk about this?’
‘OK.’ He pauses. ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you. I need time to think.’
She gives him her mobile number.
‘And call me, OK? Don’t leave it too long.’
‘OK.’
When she puts the phone down, she rolls sideways and stretches out on the sofa.
What if he’s right?
She looks up at the ceiling.
Shit.
Then that means she was right.
Six
1
Norton has put his phone on vibrate, but the noise it’s now making as it rattles on the glass table in front of him is almost as much of an intrusion as any ringtone would be.
He picks it up and looks at the display.
Fitz.
‘I have to take this,’ he says and stands up. There are six people sitting around the table – three tax advisers, two lawyers and a management consultant. As Norton turns away, there is a general redeployment of energy in the room, papers get shuffled, throats cleared, water sipped.
Norton says, ‘Yeah?’
‘How’s it going?’
‘OK.’
He steps out into reception.
‘I got your message,’ Fitz says. ‘Sorry I couldn’t take the call. I was swamped.’
‘Right. Anyway, er… I need -’ Norton glances over at the receptionist. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
‘OK. But listen, I have an update for you.’
‘Oh?’ Norton crosses reception and stands at a window looking down onto Baggot Street. It’s raining. Traffic is at a standstill. ‘What is it?’
‘The skinny fella, yeah? He went for coffee yesterday with your one, the sister.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, she went to the office and then they came out. Went to a coffee shop. About twenty-five minutes in total.’
‘You’re only fucking telling me this now?’
‘Look, I just got the report myself.’
‘Fuck.’
Gina Rafferty talking to Dermot Flynn? Jesus. What is the bitch up to?
‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah, she met some other bloke for coffee as well, earlier, but we don’t know who he is.’
Norton swallows and runs his free hand over his head. ‘A young guy? Old? What?’
‘Thirtyish. Tall, dark. In a suit.’
Feeling as if the room is about to detach itself from under his feet and start spinning, Norton reaches out and leans against the sash of the window. ‘We can’t talk about this on the phone. Meet me down in the car park.’ He looks at his watch. ‘In an hour.’
‘But -’
‘Don’t fucking start with me, Fitz.’
‘Right. Right. OK.’
Norton puts his phone away and walks back towards the boardroom. Since he likes to stay as clearheaded as possible for these financial meetings he didn’t take any Narolet this morning as he normally would have. And now he needs some.
Badly.
Standing at the door, he reaches into his pocket for his pillbox. But it’s not there. Which means he must have left it at home, on the bedside table maybe, or in his bathroom.
Damn, he thinks, totally distracted now as he re-enters the boardroom.
An hour later he’s down in the building’s small underground car park. Fitz is sitting next to him.
They sit in silence for a while.
Over the fifteen years that these two men have known each other they have become mutually dependent in ways neither of them is keen to dwell on. Not long after they met, and with Norton’s financial backing, Fitz set up High King Security and emerged from his pre-ceasefire chrysalis of republican activism into the open air of so-called legitimate business. The firm specialised in on-site security for the construction industry, and Norton quickly became its principal client. But when new developments in technology nudged High King in the direction of private investigations and electronic surveillance, Norton found himself relying on the company quite a lot, and on Fitz in particular.
Lately, of course, things have moved to another level. They both know this but have yet to have a proper discussion about it. Nevertheless, the two men do understand each other: Fitz is no choirboy and still has his connections from the old days; Norton is a hard-nosed pragmatist and not someone to let fools stand in his way.
A vehicle passes behind them, and the interior of the car darkens over momentarily.
All the same, it is a little awkward sitting here like this. Because the most glaring aspect of what they haven’t discussed yet, and very pointedly, is the terrible fuck-up that led to things getting so complicated in the first place. OK, it was rushed and frantic, no one’s arguing with that, and it was Norton who came up with the idea originally – so he’s prepared to accept some of the blame at least…
But my Christ.
There was serious money involved as well.
He stares straight ahead at the dull concrete wall in front of them.
Now isn’t the time, though. He needs Fitz. He can’t just replace him.
‘OK,’ he says, ‘first the skinny lad, Flynn.’
‘Yeah,’ Fitz says, shifting his weight in the seat. ‘Do you want me to have another word with him? From what I understand he’s been acting up a bit lately. Maybe he needs a stronger message. We could take one of his kids for a couple of hours, go for a drive sort of thing, up the Dublin Mountains. That’d scare the shit out of him.’
‘I don’t know.’
Left on his own, Norton thinks, Flynn would probably be safe enough, but with Gina Rafferty at him, asking questions, probing, he could easily crack.
She’s the problem.
‘Leave the kids alone,’ he says after a long pause. ‘It’d be messy. You’d only be asking for trouble.’
‘Right.’
‘Keep it simple. But have a word with him all the same.’
‘Right.’
‘So.’ He exhales. ‘The sister. What’s the story there? Any joy with the mobile calls?’
‘Yeah, I finally got this new piece of kit I was telling you about, it’s amazing, about the size of a laptop. You target someone’s phone, right? Then you can listen in, record calls, download texts and emails. It’s fucking brilliant.’
‘How does it work?’
Fitz shrugs his shoulders. ‘I dunno. How does anything work these days? You install the software and that’s it, off you go.’
‘Yeah, but… do you have to insert anything in her phone, or get -’
‘Ah, Jaysus no, no. It’s all remote. It picks up the signal. It’s got this sniper antenna thing on it. For long-distance use. So you can be anything up to seven or eight hundred yards away.’
‘OK. Good.’
Norton is still annoyed about the Narolet, and as a result is feeling massively irritated by everything – by Fitz here beside him, by the texture of his own suit, by the colour of the car’s leather upholstery, by the fact that it’s Tuesday. He needs his pills. As soon as he has a chance, he thinks, he’s going to have to drive out home and get them.
‘Anyway,’ he goes on, still looking straight ahead, ‘I want you to keep a very close eye on her from now on.’