Mark goes back into the little office room. He turns to the stack of boxes containing the documents Aunt Lilly was sorting through the other week. He opens the first one and pulls out a thick wad of ESB and Bord Gáis bills, hundreds of them. After a moment he drops these back in the box, pushes the box aside and opens the next one down. It contains miscellaneous papers, tax certificates, letters, God knows what. The third box contains the bank statements.
Standing there, Mark thumbs through wads and wads of these, going back ten, fifteen, twenty years. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, and he certainly doesn’t come across anything that jumps out at him – no large, unexplained deposits, for example. But is that really what he thinks? That they paid him off, that they bought his silence? That he accepted their offer… both of the money and of the life sentence that came with it – twenty-five years of silence, of bitterness, of corrosive guilt?
Maybe – except there’s nothing here to back this up. And would he find it anyway? Would that kind of payment show up on a normal bank statement?
Mark doesn’t have a clue.
Probably not, he thinks.
And that’s when he spots it.
The address. It changes. On the bank statements. From one month to the next. In April, Des and Lilly are at an address in Broadstone – and then suddenly in May they’re living here in Clontarf.
The accident happened in January.
Of the same year.
Mark looks around. He looks through the door and along the hallway. He’s always taken it for granted, this place where he grew up. It’s a large, detached redbrick Victorian house. It has four bedrooms, off-street parking, rear access and a substantial back garden. It’s ordinary enough, but twenty-five years ago it would have been a very dramatic trade-up from what had probably been a pokey little terraced house in Broadstone.
Mark feels his stomach lurch again.
There could be a hundred explanations for this, but -
He lets the wad of statements he’s holding slip from his hands. Loose pages fan out and glide, landing everywhere.
Uncle Des was a low-ranking civil servant on a very modest income. So how could he possibly have afforded to buy a house like this?
What happened?
Mark bends down and retrieves a few of the pages. Then he picks up a few more. He examines these closely, looking from one to the next, flicking them back and forth.
He swallows, feeling an uncomfortable lump in his throat.
Before May there were monthly mortgage repayments, presumably on the property in Broadstone. After May – it appears – these just stopped.
Mark lets go of the pages and stands up again.
They could easily have inherited the house from a relative and then sold the other one.
But no. Mark shakes his head. The timing is too much of a coincidence.
They fucking bought his silence.
Come on, Des, they probably said, stop this, would you? Leave it alone. There’s no point. And anyway, think of the boy, think of his future… we could maybe help you out there, you know…
Mark turns to face the window. He stares out at the long garden and thinks back to when he was a kid. He never really wanted for anything, did he? His uncle and aunt sent him to good schools. They took him on all those trips to Italy. Later, when he was at college, they bought him his first car.
He swallows again.
They helped him out when he was setting up his business.
They gave him the deposit on his house.
He closes his eyes.
Jesus Christ.
It was blood money. And they used him as a bargaining chip. Which means that his whole life, his education, his career, everything… it’s all been based on lies, on blood, on his own family’s blood.
He takes out his mobile phone.
And when Mark thinks they, of course he means him. He means Larry Bolger…
Standing there but looking out the window, he calls the number he got the other day from directory enquiries. When he gets through to the department press office he asks – politely, in a controlled voice – if someone could tell him what public engagements the minister has on for the rest of the day.
Then he turns back around and looks down. He selects three of the photos from the table and puts them into his jacket pocket. He walks out of the room and goes downstairs. But instead of leaving straightaway, he hesitates. He stands on the bottom step, with his hand on the banister.
Please, Mark, listen to me. Don’t do anything rash.
After a moment, he turns and goes into the kitchen. Over by the cooker, he pulls open a drawer that contains various trays of cutlery. He rummages around and selects a knife, a big one. It has a laminated wood handle, a long, narrow stainless-steel blade and a curved tip.
It is used – he thinks – for filleting fish.
He opens his jacket, but there isn’t anywhere for him to put it.
Using the blade of the knife, he makes a rip in the jacket’s silk lining. He slips the knife inside and then lets the jacket hang loosely to see how it feels.
It feels fine.
On his way out, he glances at himself in the hall mirror to see how it looks.
It looks fine, too.
‘Oh my God.’
Gina is off the stool now, her free hand flat on the counter, pressing down.
‘Yes, we’re all in shock here,’ the BCM receptionist is saying. ‘I mean, it’s just awful. No one can believe it.’
Gina doesn’t know what to say.
‘And of course, as well,’ the receptionist continues, ‘coming so soon after your brother.’
Gina winces. She turns around and leans back against the counter. ‘So… you’re saying it was an accident?’
‘Yeah, he stepped out onto the road, near where he lives apparently, and didn’t see the car coming.’
People die on our roads every day of the week.
Gina closes her eyes. ‘And did, er…’ This isn’t the first question that occurs to her, but she asks it anyway. ‘Did he have any family?’
‘Yes. A wife and two little girls.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Jesus.’
Gina doesn’t ask any more questions.
When she gets off the phone, she walks over to the window and looks out. There’s been a break in the cloud cover. Crisp sunlight has replaced the grey of a few minutes earlier. But it’s not going to last.
It never does.
Gina shakes her head.
Another accident. What are the odds? Way too long for comfort. Which means that she was right before – this doesn’t fit in with the Larry Bolger scenario. Her whole thing with him was based on… what? Very little really. It was supposition. It was tenuous and fanciful. It was wishful thinking. This is still supposition, but it makes a lot more sense. The two men worked in the same office, they worked on the same projects and they both died a couple of weeks apart in what appeared to be road accidents. There is good reason to believe, however, that Noel was actually murdered. And it also seems clear to Gina – in retrospect anyway, from the little she saw of him the other day – that Dermot Flynn was walking around in fear for his life.
She turns away from the window.
So there must have been something going on at BCM. Big international firm? Contracts worth billions every year? They’d go to any lengths to protect their interests, wouldn’t they?
She holds her breath. The idea is simultaneously horrifying and exciting.
But then, letting go, she deflates.
Because…
What? Sensitive information got leaked? By accident? Deliberately? There was an ‘impropriety’ – something financial, something personal even? The scandal had to be covered up, and not everyone was prepared to cooperate?