Puzzled, Gina casts her eye around – down at the floor, beside the crate, in behind it. She finds two more photos, one of a man, the other of a woman. She also finds a mobile phone, which she puts on the crate beside the gun. She holds the three photos up together and studies each one in turn.
My family… I’m looking at them now…
Gina slides the photos together and puts them down on the wooden crate. With a sinking feeling, she then reaches into her pocket and pulls out her own mobile. She calls the number for Mark Griffin, waits, and a few seconds later the phone on the crate starts ringing. She presses End and puts the phone back into her pocket.
What does this mean?
Before she has time to think about it, however, there is another, more immediate demand on her attention.
Ratface is groaning, and moving – or at least trying to.
Gina walks around him in a wide arc. She keeps her distance but notices something straightaway. It’s just beneath his head, on the floor… blood, a few crimson drops glistening against the dull grey of the concrete. She hunkers down to see a little better, to see what condition the side of his face is in. There’s a nasty gash there, all right – but she’s having a hard time connecting it to anything she might have done.
Then Ratface opens his eyes, and Gina starts back in fright.
‘Jeeeesus,’ he groans. ‘What the fuck?’
Gina keeps her balance. She remains hunkered down and watches as he struggles to move. She watches him squirm and wriggle and slowly realise what’s going on.
Up to this point he hasn’t looked at her, but now their eyes meet.
‘You…’
‘Where’s Mark Griffin?’
‘… cunt…’
‘Where is he?’
He groans again and wriggles vigorously for a while. ‘Let me go,’ he then says, seeming to accept that there’s no chance he’ll get loose on his own. ‘For Jaysus’ sake.’
Gina stands up. ‘Tell me where Mark Griffin is.’
‘I don’t fucking know where he is.’
‘Yes you do. You heard him giving me directions on the phone and then you rushed out here before I arrived and you took him somewhere, now where?’
She feels like punctuating this with a kick to his abdomen, or his crotch, but she resists.
‘Fuck off.’
Gina takes a deep breath. She knows that if he keeps stonewalling here she’ll start to fall apart. She’ll lose the advantage.
‘If you won’t answer my questions,’ she says, taking out her mobile again, ‘maybe you’ll answer a few for the police.’
‘Ha.’
What does that mean?
She waits for him to say something else and when he doesn’t she holds her phone up and tries to focus.
‘Go ahead,’ he says. ‘Brilliant. Call the cops.’
Gina hesitates. ‘I’m going to,’ she says.
‘Great. Because I’d love to hear how you’re going to explain this.’ He yanks his head sideways at her, exposing his wound. ‘I’ll have an army of bleedin’ lawyers up your arse and down your throat so fast you’ll be wishing I was the one who fucked you. Which I then will, after they let you out on bail.’
He’s playing for time here – because why would he try to dissuade her from making the call, if what he says is true?
But then again, what he says probably is true. The cops arrive – but who do they arrest? Him? Why? What do they charge him with? Being tied up and assaulted? And how does she avoid coming across as deranged and hysterical?
She puts the phone down by her side.
‘You’re right.’
‘What?’
‘You’re right. It’s not the Guards I should be calling.’
She puts the phone into her jacket pocket and takes out her wallet. She searches through the wallet and extracts a business card. She puts the wallet away and takes out the phone again. Looking down at him, business card held up in one hand, phone in the other, thumb poised, she says, ‘Where is he?’
‘Get stuffed, would you?’
Gina keys in the number, spins on her heels and walks away. By the time she’s a couple of yards across the warehouse floor the number is ringing. She looks at the business card again, and swallows.
Electrical Contractor.
She waits. There’s a click. Then, ‘Hello?’
She slips the card into the back pocket of her jeans.
‘Terry? It’s Gina Rafferty.’
There is a pause.
‘Well, well. How’s it going, love?’
‘OK.’ She closes her eyes. ‘Listen, I think I might need your help with something.’
Because of the way he is sitting – fully forward, elbows on the table – Norton can feel his mobile phone pressing against his ribs. It’s in the inside breast pocket of his jacket, and he wishes it would ring.
‘… so we’d like you to consider it,’ Sullivan is saying. ‘I mean, we think in the current climate it makes a lot of sense.’
Sullivan is proposing a last-minute design modification to the lobby of what will soon be called the Amcan Building – the installation of optical turnstiles with infrared sensors.
‘Basically, it’s an ID-card verification system,’ he says, ‘but they can also be fitted with barriers, either a steel arm or a retractable wing. The barriers aren’t essential, but they do add a measure of psychological, what’ll we call it… comfort.’
Norton looks across at Sullivan, trying to focus. ‘I don’t know, Ray. Fine, you’re the anchor tenant, but there’s at least a dozen others, and I doubt if any of them will agree with your assessment of the threat level. They certainly won’t want to share the costs.’
‘Believe me, Paddy, in the long run this shit will be cost-effective. All it takes is one security alert, one nut job, and you’re ahead of the game. Back home, since 9/11, installing these things has been standard practice.’
Norton can see a certain logic to this, and how it might work here as a marketing tool to woo US companies jittery about investing in what they perceive as an increasingly vulnerable Europe, but he isn’t in the appropriate frame of mind to tease the issue out tonight.
He looks at his watch again, this time openly.
When is Fitz going to call him?
‘Paddy?’ Ray Sullivan says, leaning forward. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Somewhere else you’d rather be?’
‘No, of course not.’
Norton busies himself with what’s left on his plate, a last piece of monkfish and some fennel.
Should he call Fitz?
When Gina comes back and resumes her position at the wooden crate, she is overwhelmed by a sudden wave of exhaustion. She gazes down at Ratface. It’s clear that he’s in severe pain now, his supply of adrenaline surely, by this stage, pretty much depleted.
‘You’re in over your head here,’ he says after a while, struggling to get the words out. ‘I’m telling you. Don’t be making things worse for yourself than they already are.’
But not in any mood to be listening to this, Gina looks around, spots something on the floor beside the forklift and goes over to pick it up. Holding it behind her back, she approaches Ratface, hunkers down again and says to him, ‘Where is he?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘You’re not going to tell me, no?’
‘No.’
‘Or who you’re working for, no?’
‘No.’
‘Or who killed my brother, no? No? NO?’
‘No, you fuck -’
In a single swift movement she brings the dirty, oily, bunched-up piece of rag around and stuffs it hard into his mouth. To the sound of him gagging, she stands up again and walks back to the wooden crate.