‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ she says.
‘I didn’t have a choice, really. After what you said.’
Gina nods. ‘I’m sorry about your husband. You have my sympathies.’
This is something she hates saying, and hates hearing, but it’s a formula and a necessary hurdle to get over.
‘Thank you.’
‘How are your girls?’
‘OK. They don’t really understand yet. I’m trying to keep things as normal as possible for them, at least until the removal tomorrow. And then the funeral.’ She shakes her head. ‘After that, I don’t know. It’s going to be hard.’
‘Of course.’
There is an awkward pause.
Claire says, ‘I’m sorry about your brother.’
Gina looks into her glass. ‘Thanks. I haven’t come to terms with it yet. I haven’t even started. The thing is, since it happened I’ve been in the grip of this awful suspicion I mentioned to you on the phone. Though it’s more than a suspicion now, a lot more, which is why I wanted to talk to you.’ She looks up. ‘But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me try and explain.’
Claire nods. She takes her mug of tea, wraps her hands around it, and holds it in front of her.
Gina unconsciously does the same thing with her glass of water, then notices and shifts position again.
She starts talking.
It’s an edited version of what she told Sophie, with a slight change of emphasis. She leaves out Mark Griffin and Paddy Norton. She leaves out most of last night. She concentrates on Terry Stack, on the two Noels, on Fitz, on BCM – the essentials, context.
‘So look, Claire,’ she says, finishing up. ‘I don’t know. If you have any grounds for suspicion, any grounds at all, it should be possible to get to the bottom of this.’
Claire stretches forward and puts her mug, untouched, onto the coffee table. As she’s leaning back, tears come into her eyes. She makes a sound, a sort of primal whimper, and all of a sudden she’s crying.
Gina watches. She feels awful, but at the same time knows there’s nothing she can do. She demonstrates her understanding, in fact, precisely by doing nothing – by not moving, by not resorting to the false comfort of easy words. The impulse to join in, to cry herself, is immense, but she resists. Instead, she drinks the water in her glass, finishes it in one go, and then stretches forward to put the empty glass onto the coffee table.
Eventually, the tears subside. Claire extracts a tissue from the sleeve of her sweater and blows her nose. When she has finished, she looks at Gina.
‘What you’re saying is… it’s horrible.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean, does stuff like this really go on?’ There’s still a tremor in her voice and she’s doing her best to suppress it.
‘Because I’m as capable of being cynical as the next person, I really am, but I mean… Christ.’
Gina shrugs, as if to say I know, me too.
‘But Claire,’ she then says, leaning slightly forward, nowhere left to go with this. ‘Your husband’s death? Is there anything that makes you think it wasn’t an accident?’
‘There is now,’ Claire says at once. ‘Absolutely.’ Her eyes widen. ‘In the context of what you’ve just told me. I mean, I just thought I was… well, I didn’t know what I thought. But I’ve kept it to myself. I haven’t told anyone.’
‘Haven’t told anyone what?’
‘In the two weeks before the accident, before the… the…’ – she waves it away – ‘before he died, Dermot was not himself, he was acting weird, he was hyper, he was distant, he was evasive, I even thought he was… I even thought he was’ – the second time she utters the phrase, her voice cracks slightly – ‘having an affair. Which was ridiculous.’ She emits a quick, mirthless laugh to show just how ridiculous. ‘I loved Dermot, Gina, but he wasn’t the type. Women scared him. He wouldn’t have known where to begin. But anyway, looking back, I think he was freaked out about something, and that breaks my heart. That I couldn’t help him. That he couldn’t tell me, because we told each other everything -’
‘Freaked out about what?’ Gina says, jumping in here, trying to pre-empt the next surge of emotion.
‘I don’t know. Jesus. If I knew. But -’
‘Yeah?’
‘The other weird thing, and I’m only connecting it up now, is that there was some…’ – she seems barely able to say the word – ‘… cash. Hidden in a box at the bottom of the wardrobe. Ninety-something thousand euro.’ She pauses. ‘I found it yesterday. I also found some jewellery, earrings and a gold chain. Still with the receipt. Worth over two grand.’
They leave that hanging. Gina tries to square it up in her mind with everything she knows.
But can’t.
‘What about the way he died,’ she then says, ‘the actual… the…’
‘Again, that’s weird,’ Claire says. ‘On the face of it he was crossing the road and was run over. But I’m sorry. What was he doing there in the first place? In that laneway? It’s not a route he would ever take. Coming out onto Bristol Terrace? On his way home? It makes no sense.’
‘Any witnesses?’
‘No. Just the driver. Who said Dermot was running.’ She pauses. ‘But why would he be running? He never had occasion to run. He wasn’t the running type.’
‘What about work? BCM? Did he mention anything unusual going on there?’
‘No. He didn’t talk that much about work. It was very technical what he did, so it wasn’t stuff we chatted about. But still…’
‘What?’
‘In the last month or so he seemed to be doing a lot of extra work. And not at the office. At home.’ She points at the closed double doors. ‘In there.’
She gets up off the sofa, walks over and opens the doors. Gina gets up as well.
‘This was originally a dining room,’ Claire says. ‘But we made it into a study. For Dermot.’
They go in.
The room is small and cluttered. It is lined with books and there are piles of magazines on the floor. There is a desk – an old-fashioned escritoire – above which there is a poster for some kind of design exhibition.
Lying on the desk is a laptop.
Gina stares at it. ‘That,’ she says to Claire, pointing. ‘His laptop, have you… checked it out?’
Claire gives a quick shake to her head. She is obviously very uncomfortable standing here.
‘In that case,’ Gina says, ‘would it be OK if I took a look?’
Claire turns to her, brow furrowed. ‘Why?’
‘There was something going on at BCM, Claire. It’s what links them, Noel and Dermot. It’s the key to this. I don’t know. Maybe I can find something… a clue, relevant information.’ She shrugs. ‘I know my way around computers. I work in software.’
Claire considers this, and nods. She holds a hand out. ‘Please.’
Then she turns around abruptly and leaves the room.
Gina hesitates. She feels a bit like an intruder, but she goes over to the desk all the same, sits down and opens the laptop.
Bolger looks around.
Coming towards him along the corridor of the nursing home is a man in an electronic wheelchair.
‘I’m right,’ the man says, ‘amn’t I? It’s Larry Bolger?’
Bolger nods, ever the politician, and extends a hand. It’s only at that point that he recognises who this is.
‘Romy?’
The man in the wheelchair shakes Bolger’s hand vigorously and then refuses to let it go. ‘Jesus, Larry,’ he says, smiling. ‘Look at you. Come a long way, what?’
Jerome Mulcahy. Contemporary of the old man’s.