He’s used to getting them in a bottle, and from Dr Walsh. These are a different brand – Nalprox – but it’s the same stuff. When he got home on Monday he couldn’t find his Narolet anywhere, and it transpired that Miriam had flushed them down the toilet. Then he went to Dr Walsh, and it transpired that she’d more or less flushed him down the toilet, too – scaring the man off with talk of overprescribing and of possible complaints to the HSE.
Norton didn’t argue with him – though he did argue with Miriam later, when he got home.
They haven’t spoken since.
Which is a major pain in the arse. Plus it’s taken him all day, and endless phone calls here, there and everywhere, to organise this.
But now that he has it, a fresh supply, he is walking on air.
He checks the box again. Three blisters, sixty pills, minus the two he’s just taken, that’s fifty-eight. Four a day, give or take.
So two weeks. More maybe. Or less.
OK.
He puts the packet away, into his pocket, and then looks at his watch: 4.15.
By the time he meets Fitz – in about twenty minutes, down on Strand Road – the tablets will have kicked in, and his rage will have subsided somewhat. So he’ll have to… well, act it, he supposes. Put it on. From memory.
Not that it’ll be any less authentic for that.
Mark turns left off the Cherryvale roundabout and heads for the industrial estate. He’s been driving for more than an hour now, aimlessly – south-side, north-side, the M50 – sitting in traffic for most of it. The pain in his side is intense, but steady. If he sits in a particular position and keeps a very tight grip on the steering wheel, it’s just about bearable. He should really head for the nearest A &E, or see a doctor – but he’s not going to. Because without having examined the wound or even looked at it properly, he knows what it is. It’s a bullet wound, and how’s he supposed to explain that? Or the fact, which would inevitably surface, that before getting shot, he stabbed the other guy with a kitchen knife – an action he’s been replaying over and over in his head as he cruises around… the split second of contact, the pressure he applied, the resistance he can still feel in the form of tiny spasms, like nerve ends twitching in his hand and wrist…
Mark doesn’t know how this stuff works, the neurology of it, but it’s giving him something to focus on when the broader picture gets too chaotic, when the questions start multiplying, and the answers mutating – like, for instance, where does he go? Where is it safe to go?
He exhales.
Not home, certainly, and not the showrooms. But why not? Because they know where he lives? Where he works? Is that it?
Multiply, mutate.
Because maybe Bolger had him followed the other night from Buswell’s? And now realises who he is? Or maybe knew him anyway? Realised who he was straight off? Recognised him somehow? Had been expecting this for years and isn’t going to stand for it?
Stopped at a red light, Mark leans sideways, puts a hand inside his jacket and dabs at the wound as gently as he can. Then he withdraws his hand and holds it up to look at. His fingertips are smeared with blood – though it doesn’t seem too bad. Maybe the bullet just grazed him, and the wound is superficial. Or maybe there’s an actual bullet lodged in there, and most of the bleeding is internal. But what does he know?
The light changes.
So. Where does he go? Where is it safe to go?
Eventually, because he can’t drive around for ever, he decides on the warehouse – his unit at the Cherryvale Industrial Estate. It’s down the road here, and is anonymous, unmarked, safe as anywhere. Most of Tesoro’s business is conducted from the showrooms in Ranelagh, and Mark comes out this way only a couple of times a week, whenever there’s a shipment in or a delivery to be organised.
He comes to the estate and drives into the yard. He turns right and then takes the third left. He goes past several of the larger units – past busy loading docks, freight trucks, forklifts – and arrives at his own unit, about halfway down. He parks in front of a rolling steel shutter. When he gets out of the car – which ends up being quite a struggle – he immediately feels dizzy. It also seems really cold. But at least the rain has stopped.
Holding the car door open, shivering now, he looks down at the seat and sees that it’s smeared with blood. He looks away.
Was it this cold earlier?
He pushes the car door shut and locks it. He glances around the yard. A few units back, towards the entrance, a freight truck is reversing and pulling away. At the far end of the yard there is a graffiti-covered wall, and beyond that is Cherryvale Downs, an irregular grid of nearly four hundred identical houses.
At his feet there is a pool of rainwater. Scraps of cloud drift across it. For some reason looking at this makes him feel vaguely hysterical. At the same time, he feels weak, and wonders if he wasn’t better off driving around – though all of a sudden the notion of being at the wheel of a car and negotiating traffic seems implausible to him, remote in its complexity and danger.
Moving slowly, he makes his way over to the black metal door next to the rolling steel shutter. He pulls a bunch of keys out of his jacket pocket and holds them up.
It takes him a while, but he eventually manages to get the door open. Inside, he clicks the door shut again and reaches out for a switch on the wall. A second after that fluorescent tube lights flicker and stutter into life overhead. He looks around. On one side of the warehouse there are rows of wrapped pallets stacked on raised wooden platforms, as well as some loose boxes and crates and a small forklift truck. On the other side, there is an area of unused floor space, and in the far corner there is a modular office unit.
Mark goes over to the office, which is bare and strictly functional. There is a small bathroom to the left and a kitchenette to the right. He eases himself onto the hard plastic chair behind the metal desk in the middle. He leans forward for a moment and rubs the back of his neck. His skin feels clammy even though he’s cold.
His heart is thumping. His mouth is dry.
He sits up and holds his jacket back to feel the wound again. It seems to have stopped bleeding.
Is that good or bad? He isn’t sure.
It hurts like fuck, though.
He works to get his shivering under control. He stares at an irregular mark scratched onto the surface of the metal desk.
What happened this afternoon?
He finds it hard to believe. Quite clearly, his intention had been to attack, to lash out, to exact some form of revenge – and who could blame him for that – but he hadn’t acted, they had.
He shakes his head.
They attacked him. They intimidated him, provoked him, and when he finally tried to defend himself, they fucking shot him in the back…
And clearly by they he still means Larry Bolger. The Bolger family. Someone in the Bolger family. Up to now – at least since he spoke to Gina – that’s been the working assumption.
Jesus.
He gets up from behind the desk. He limps out of the office, looks around and picks up the nearest object that catches his eye – a crowbar lying on a wooden crate. He holds it up and imagines what he could do with this, imagines how much more satisfying it would be to use than a knife… imagines the whoosh of air, the solid… contact, the sinew and muscle, the brain tissue and bone… blood spurting…
As he walks across the warehouse floor, swinging the crowbar, Mark feels a rush of energy. But this lasts only a few seconds.