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‘Look at you. You’re all intrigued now, aren’t you? I’m sorry. This is precisely the opposite of what I wanted to happen.’
    ‘Intrigued by this or not, Maria, I still want to write the book. There’s enough there as it is. But it’d be great if you went on the record.’
    She studies him for a moment.
    ‘You know,’ she says, ‘you do have a sympathetic face. But I actually don’t think you’re trying to hustle me.’
    Jimmy remains silent.
    She picks up her glass of wine again and takes a sip from it. ‘Nothing in life is easy, is it?’ she says.
    Jimmy smiles. ‘No. So does that mean you’ll talk to me?’
    *   *   *
    Flanked by two senior civil servants, he emerges from Government Buildings and steps out onto the landscaped courtyard, where a car is waiting. But something isn’t right … it’s one of the civil servants … he turns to look …
    The man is bleeding from his eyes  …
    Bolger grunts, shifts in the armchair.
    ‘What?’
    The door clicks shut. He opens his eyes. The TV is still on, Frasier Crane, looking harried.
    What time is it?
    He turns. ‘Mary?’
    ‘Hi, were you asleep?’
    She approaches, stands over him.
    ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘What time is it?’
    ‘Not late. Just after ten, I think.’
    ‘Why are you home so early?’
    He has the feeling of being caught out. She wouldn’t normally be home before eleven, and by that time he’d have ensconced himself in the study with a cup of hot chocolate.
    To make it seem like he’d been slaving away all evening.
    ‘I had a bit of a headache,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t in the mood.’
    He feels guilty, slumped here in the armchair, watching television.
    ‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ she then asks, turning and unbuttoning her coat.
    ‘Yes, thanks.’
    He rubs his eyes. How long was he asleep?
    A civil servant bleeding from …
    What is wrong with him? He stands up and walks around the room, trying to get his circulation going. Mary is in the kitchen now. He can see her through the door filling the kettle.
    ‘Did you get any work done?’ she asks over her shoulder.
    ‘A little, yeah.’
    He throws his eyes up.
    Chapter a hundred.
    He has barely started is the truth. He doesn’t know where to start.
    Chapter one. I grew up in the shadow of my older brother, and despite how things may have come to seem in later years – I never really got out from under it …
    Yeah. Fuck off.
    ‘How are the crowd anyway?’ he says, deflecting a follow-up question.
    ‘They’re grand. Everyone asking for you.’
    Mary comes out of the kitchen, smiling, grabs her coat from the back of the chair where she left it and heads into the bedroom.
    Bolger stands in front of the fireplace, looking down at the carpet, listening as the dull hum of the kettle in the next room ascends to a muffled roar.
    He is sick with anxiety, and that’s about the size of it.
    Meeting Dave Conway tomorrow is supposed to make him feel like he’s taking some kind of action. But he won’t be really. All he’ll be doing is asking Dave if he saw that thing in the paper last week.
    Saying, I saw it. Did you see it? I saw it.
    And I haven’t been right since.
    Reading the Irish Independent that morning, alone in the apartment, Bolger came as close as he has in nearly ten years to falling off the wagon.
    He glances over once again at the corner of the room, at the drinks cabinet.
    Takes a deep breath, holds it in.
    Couple out walking their dog. In Wicklow. Remains of a body in a ditch – just bones really, and a set of clothes. Reckoned to have been there for at least two years. Unidentified, but no shortage of speculation.
    He breathes out slowly.
    Mary emerges from the bedroom in her at-homes and goes back into the kitchen.
    Bolger stands there, not moving.
    Couple out walking their dog.
    In Wicklow.
    Is this it? Is this beginning?
    *   *   *
    It’s nearly eleven thirty.
    Too late to phone now, but then again maybe the perfect time to phone. Catch