Chapter 405 — A Nation on Edge I

Chapter 405: Chapter 405 — A Nation on Edge I

The phone would not stop.

It buzzed against the bedside table, stopped, buzzed again, and kept going. James surfaced through it slowly with his face in the pillow, and his first thought was Maeve. Or Finn. Something about yesterday, about Ciara, about the thing they had left on the table in the founders’ room without deciding.

He reached out and turned it over.

The lock screen was full. There were news alerts stacked on top of each other, RTé, the BBC, the Irish Times, and the Guild Zero staff channel showing forty-one unread. Messages had come in from people he had not heard from in months. *Are you ok. Are your family ok. James are you all safe. Tell me you weren’t in town last night.*

He sat up.

The top alert said: *EXPLOSION AT DUBLIN FESTIVAL. MULTIPLE CASUALTIES.*

The one under it said: *MINISTER FOR DEFENCE FOUND DEAD IN CITY HOTEL. GARDAí TREATING DEATH AS MURDER.*

He read them both twice. They did not make more sense the second time. They were on the same night, in the same city, hours apart.

He opened the first one.

The video loaded slowly. It showed a square he half-knew from the centre of town, at night, filmed from a balcony across the street. There were blue lights everywhere, at least a dozen vehicles. There was smoke still hanging under the floodlights. People were walking slowly through grey dust, holding phones up, calling. A woman stood at the edge of the cordon with her hands on her head, turning in a circle. Someone in a green high-vis bib was sitting on a kerb with her head between her knees.

The camera panned up.

On the side of the wrecked stage, a big screen was still lit. It was all black, with three words on it in white letters taller than a person.

**FOR THE KING**

James stopped the video and sat there with the phone in his hand.

He knew whose King people would think of first. Everyone in Ireland would.

England had come for him before. It had come through Langford, a man in a good suit trying to make him sign a transfer he never wanted. It had come through Ganner Corp’s contracts. It had come through Irish officials who had quietly opened doors for people who were not supposed to be in the building. He had watched O’Shea pull it apart, piece by piece, and seen how hard it had been even then to pin anything on anybody.

But all of that had been aimed at *him*. It had been about Challengers and records and contracts. People in suits had done it to people in suits.

That square had been full of families.

He did not know who had done it. The words on a screen did not tell him that. All they told him was what someone wanted him to think.

He got dressed.

---

His mother and Nyra were already in the front room with RTé on.

Nyra was on the sofa with her knees up and her phone in both hands, completely still. James could not remember the last time he had seen Nyra sit still. His mother was in the armchair. There was a cup of tea on the arm of the chair, full, with a skin on it.

"Did you see?" his mother said.

"Some of it."

"They’re saying—" She looked at the screen. "They don’t know how many yet. They keep saying they don’t know. There was a man on earlier from the hospital and he said they were still bringing people in at four this morning."

On the television, the reporter was standing at the cordon in the grey light of morning. Behind her, men in white overalls were moving slowly across the square. A strip along the bottom of the screen said *GARDA APPEAL: FAMILIES SEEKING INFORMATION SHOULD CALL*, with a number.

Then the picture cut to photographs, one after another. There was a young man in a GAA jersey, grinning. There was a woman in her forties at a wedding, and a teenage girl in a school uniform. Under each one there was a name, and *Family appealing for information*.

James stood behind the sofa and watched them go past.

The coverage cut to the square again. A fire officer was talking about the search still going on through what was left of the east side, and about how careful they had to be, because there might still be people under it.

"James," said Nyra.

She held her phone up to him without looking round.

It was a video somebody had posted at about seven o’clock the night before, with nine hundred thousand views. It had been filmed on a phone from somewhere near the front of the crowd. A band was on, four lads with fiddles, playing something fast. The square was packed. Right in front of the camera, two little kids were dancing, really dancing, the way kids do when nobody has told them yet that they look silly. A girl in a yellow raincoat was up on her father’s shoulders, clapping on the wrong beat. People were laughing. Somebody off-camera was singing along badly.

At forty-one seconds the picture went white and jumped, and the video ended.

James looked at the frozen last frame for a long time.

He had watched people die in the Tower more times than he could count. He had watched four people he knew die on one floor three weeks ago. He had been killed himself. But every one of them had walked through a gate knowing what was on the other side. They had signed something and trained for it, and chosen it.

The kids in that video had come out for a puppet show.

He handed the phone back.

His mother was watching his face.

"What do you think it is?" she said. "Those words. Is it—"

"I don’t know yet."

"But you think it’s—"

"I think somebody wants us to think it’s England," he said carefully. "That’s all I actually know. Maybe it is. I don’t know." He did not want to put anything in her head that he could not stand behind. She had spent enough nights afraid of things that had come for him. "Let’s wait until someone knows something."

She nodded. She did not look reassured.

His phone rang. It was Maeve.

---

"Are you all right?" said Maeve. "Your mam? Nyra?"

"We’re fine. We’re all here."

"Okay." He heard her let out a breath. "Okay. Good."

She told him what she had.

The staff line had been ringing since half five. At least six staff had family or friends who had been at the festival. Two had not heard back from people yet. Others were calling to ask if they should come in, if the building was safe, and whether there was going to be more. She had already put security on a full sweep of the headquarters and the training annex. The medical department was working out what it could actually offer the hospitals and the emergency services, and was doing it through the proper channels so it did not get in anyone’s way.

"Anyone of ours hurt?"

"Not that we know of. Not yet. We’re still waiting on a few people." She paused. "One of the operations staff, her cousin was there. We haven’t heard."

"Finn? Cillian?"

"Both on their way in."

"I’ll come in."

"I thought you might."