Bloodland: A Novel Read Free

were announced. Eighty-five jobs across the board, last in, first out. Among the thirty or so editorial staff affected Jimmy was in the middle somewhere and didn’t stand a chance. He eventually found a part-time job covering the Mulcahy Tribunal for City magazine, but after six months of that not only did the tribunal come to an end City magazine itself did as well, and the work more or less dried up. He did a few bits and pieces over the next year and a half for local papers and trade publications, as well as some online stuff, but nothing that paid much or was regular enough to count as a real job.
    Then, about a month ago, this came up.
    It was through an old contact at City who was running the Irish office of a London publisher and looking for someone, preferably a journalist, to slap together a book on Susie Monaghan in time for the Christmas market. Jimmy didn’t have to think about it for very long. The advance was modest, but it was still a lot more than anything he’d earned recently.
    He turns away from the window.
    But what is this bullshit now with Phil Sweeney? Did he even understand it correctly? Was Sweeney asking him not to do the book? To drop it? It seems incredible, but that’s what it sounded like.
    Jimmy glances over at his desk.
    The advance. How much is it? I’m sure we could come to some –
    Oh God.
    – to some what? Some arrangement?
    On one level, Jimmy shouldn’t even be questioning this. Because it’s not as if he doesn’t owe Phil Sweeney, and owe him big. He does. Of course he does. But dropping a story? That’s different. Being paid to drop a story? That’s fucking outrageous.
    And why?
    He doesn’t understand. Is Phil representing someone? An interested party? A client? What’s going on?
    Jimmy walks over to the desk.
    All of the materials laid out here – transcripts of interviews, old Hello s and VIP s, Google-generated printouts, endless photos – relate directly to Susie.
    He selects one of the photos and looks at it.
    Susie in a nightclub, champagne flute held up, shoulder strap askew.
    She looks tired – wrecked, in fact – like she’s been trying too hard and it’s not working anymore.
    But Jesus, that face … those eyes.
    It didn’t matter how tawdry the setting, how tacky or low-rent the gig, Susie’s eyes always had this extraordinary effect of making everything around her seem urgent and weighted and mysterious.
    As he replaces the photo, Jimmy wonders what the sister will be like. He’s spoken to her on the phone a few times and they’ve exchanged maybe a dozen e-mails – his focus always on getting her to say yes.
    To talk to him.
    The primary operating system of the universe.
    Jimmy sits down and faces the computer. He looks at the words on the screen. Drums his fingers on the desk. Wonders how he got from investigating a ministerial expenses scandal, and doing it in a busy newsroom, to writing about a dead actress, and in a one-bedroom apartment he can barely afford the monthly repayments on.
    But then something more pressing occurs to him.
    How did Phil know what he was working on in the first place? Who did he hear it from? In what circumstances would Phil Sweeney be talking to someone – or would someone be talking to Phil Sweeney – where the subject might possibly come up?
    Jimmy doesn’t like this one bit.
    Nor is it the kind of thing he responds well to, being put under pressure, nudged in a certain direction, told what to do or what not to do. And OK, an unauthorised showbiz biography isn’t exactly Watergate, or uncovering My Lai, but still, he should be free to write whatever he wants to.
    That’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it?
    He stares for another while at the block of text on the screen.
    But he’s no longer in the mood.
    He checks his coffee. It has gone cold.
    He looks back at the screen.
    Shit .
    He reaches over to the keyboard, saves the document and puts the computer to sleep.
    *   *   *
    ‘I watch a lot of