Norton just stares back.
Then he gets up from the table. ‘Ray, I’m sorry. I have to go outside for a minute. I’ll… I’ll be back.’
He strides across the dining room. When he gets out to the reception area and is heading for the main exit he reaches into his jacket pocket.
The sound Gina hears as she takes the next drag on her cigarette is short, shrill and penetrating. She looks up and remains still for a few seconds, listening.
She really can’t be sure that the sound wasn’t just some form of distortion carried here from a distance by the wind.
She closes her eyes.
But neither can she be sure that it didn’t come from nearby, from directly behind her, and that it wasn’t a scream.
She moves quickly, out into the middle of this windswept, floodlit yard.
The cigarette in her hand is a welcome distraction – though in normal circumstances a second one of these and she’d be on all fours, ready to puke.
After a while, feeling a little too exposed, she heads towards the opposite side of the yard. The units here are larger. They have more elaborate loading docks, with metal awnings and concrete ramps.
She huddles in a corner, by the side of one of these ramps. She stubs the cigarette out, and immediately starts shivering.
How long will this take?
She has no idea. It’s not as if she has a frame of reference. But one thing she does know for sure: things are beginning to unravel.
And a couple of seconds later, as though on cue, she hears another weird sound.
She steps forward.
It definitely isn’t a scream this time. It’s also too close to be coming from the other side of the yard.
So what is it?
The direction of the wind changes. For a second or two the sound becomes clearer.
A bloody ring tone?
She looks down and sees it, Fitz’s mobile. It’s on the ground in front of her, a few yards away, emitting the theme music from a spaghetti western, one of the Clint Eastwood Dollar movies.
Rolling her eyes, she walks towards it, this tiny object, its backlight pulsating electric blue.
As she reaches down to pick it up, blood rushing to her head, Gina thinks she sees what is on the display – the caller ID – and her heart stops. She stands up and tries to steady herself. She holds the phone out and looks at it, squinting. But then, in the split second before the phone rings off and goes dark again, it comes into focus for her.
Very clearly.
But not just the two words on the display, not just the name.
Everything does.
He decides not to leave a message. What’s the point? He knows it’ll come up as a missed call.
Standing under the portico, he gazes out over the hotel’s front lawn and beyond it to the hushed suburban tranquillity of Ballsbridge.
Why didn’t Fitz answer just now?
Norton turns right and takes a few steps along a manicured pathway.
He really wants to believe it’s because Fitz is busy – that he’s being thorough and scrupulous.
But something won’t let him.
An angsty thrumming in the pit of his stomach.
He looks at his watch, and mouths the word fuck.
The problem is, there’s no one else he can call. He has no choice but to wait.
He turns back towards the portico.
His phone rings.
He freezes, thinking, Well thank Jesus. He fumbles in his pocket, but when he gets the phone out he sees at once from the display that it’s Miriam.
‘Damn,’ he says, and loud enough to draw a surprised look from the uniformed porter at the entrance to the hotel.
He stares at the display and decides not to answer it. They’re still not speaking face to face, so why should they speak on the bloody phone? If he wants a review of the Friel play, can’t he read the Irish fucking Times in the morning?
He puts the phone away and storms back inside.
As Gina is standing there, gazing across at Unit 46, a vertical slit of light appears. It’s the steel door opening, a fraction at first, then wide. Terry Stack comes out and looks around.
‘Gina?’
She takes a few steps forward. ‘I’m here.’
Stack sees her and starts walking across the yard, his shoes click-clacking on the concrete. He huddles into his overcoat and shivers loudly.
Gina stands, waiting. She’s still in shock from seeing that name on the caller ID of Fitz’s phone.
Paddy Norton?
She’d been so convinced by him that day – by his indignation at what had happened, by his impatience with her. He’d seemed hurt as well, and sad. She tries in vain to remember if there was anything about him that might have been suspicious. But she can’t.
Terry Stack comes to a stop directly in front of her. ‘Right,’ he says.
Gina looks at him, her mind swimming now with other stuff she is remembering – questions about Norton and her brother, for instance. They had a drink that evening in town. But where? At what time? And what did they talk about?
‘Gina?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Quick update. Little fucker in there is a former INLA man, Martin Fitzpatrick, a republican -’
‘Republican socialist?’
‘Socialist me hole, love,’ Stack says, laughing. ‘He owns about twenty apartments all over town and runs a private security outfit. High King. They do construction sites, that sort of stuff.’
‘Construction sites?’
‘Yeah. Mainly.’
Gina nods along. Sagely. She feels light-headed. She feels drunk.
‘Anyway,’ Stack goes on, ‘he arranged the job on Noel. I got that much out of him. And he did your brother.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Yeah, both of them. He’s a cunt.’
‘How? How did -’
‘The brakes. He did something with the brakes in his car. Got him loaded and then…’
‘Oh my God.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. Give us a bit more time.’
‘Mark Griffin?’ Gina then says, almost in a whisper.
‘I haven’t got that yet either. He’s holding out, says he doesn’t know where he is, that no one was here when he arrived, but that’s bollocks. We’ll get it out of him, don’t worry. It’s all about pacing, this is… the build-up -’
Gina swallows.
‘- the threshold, if you know what I mean.’
She does, in theory, of course, and wants to tell him enough, wants to be the one to end this, even though she’s the one who started it. But what she says instead is, ‘Get him to tell you about a man called Paddy Norton.’
Stack furrows his brow. ‘Paddy Norton? He owns Winterland Properties, doesn’t he?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s… that’s the crowd High King does most of its security work for.’
‘Yeah well,’ Gina says, ‘I’m pretty sure you’ll find he’s also the one Che Guevara in there is answerable to for this job.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Stack says. ‘How do you know that?’
The phone is in Gina’s pocket, but she doesn’t want to give it to him. She ignores the question. Besides, isn’t it obvious now? ‘Just get him to tell you the reason for all of this, will you? Why? What did Noel ever do?’ She pauses, then adds, ‘My Noel,’ and gets a stinging sensation behind her eyes as she says it. But now isn’t the time. She stares into Terry Stack’s eyes. ‘Will you do that for me?’