Free Bloodland: A Novel by Alan Glynn Page B

overnight.
    The rows of detached houses on the right and left – the only residential units to be completed so far – seem forlorn, as though abandoned after some environmental catastrophe. Windows have been smashed and walls have been daubed with slogans and graffiti. The other houses – the ones on the far side of the so-called town square – have been abandoned, too, but not by their occupiers. These have been abandoned midway through construction by the very people who were building them – the contractors, the bricklayers, the electricians. From what Conway can make out, most of these houses are roofless and surrounded by half-erected scaffolding. Diggers and cement mixers lie awkwardly on the roads in front of them, entrenched in gullies of dried mud, like dinosaur skeletons.
    Conway walks along the left-hand pathway of what was to be called Tara Boulevard. At the end of it lies the town square. They hadn’t decided on an official name for this and had been toying with the idea of simply calling it the Piazza. Or the Plaza. Conway still thinks of it – from the early design and development days – as the Concourse, which is how the architect always referred to it.
    It’s an impressive space – airy and adaptable, at least in theory. Surrounding it are the completed ‘civic buildings’, what were to be the heart of this new urban development – a town hall, a hotel, two apartment blocks and a shopping mall. It’s short on the ‘civic’ perhaps, but all of that stuff was grandiose brochure-speak in any case. The truth is that Tara Meadows was never intended to be much more than an upscale commuter-belt housing development (with an expected first phase of buyers feeding in from the nearby Paloma Electronics and Eiben-Chemcorp industrial plants).
    He walks across the eerily deserted Concourse. It’s midday and this place should be buzzing. There should be cafés open, restaurants, a hairdresser’s, a multiplex.
    There should be people .
    Busily crisscrossing the square.
    With money in their pockets.
    Driving our economy forward.
    Yeah, right.
    Conway approaches the entrance to the as yet unnamed two-hundred-and-fifty-room hotel.
    As yet unfurnished, unfitted, unwired.
    He wanders across the lobby area, glancing in at the vast darkened ballroom over to the right.
    As he enters the stairwell he takes the torch out of his pocket and uses it to light his way.
    He goes up six flights of stairs and comes out onto a long dim corridor. There are no carpets or skirting boards. Cables hang from the ceilings. The air is simultaneously dank and dusty. A few doors are open and these let in enough light from the outside for him to put the torch away.
    He walks along the corridor, slowly, and stops at the first open door he comes to. He looks inside.
    It’s just an empty hotel room. Concrete floor. Plastered walls. Bare, fitted windows. Sliding glass door leading to a balcony. Nothing else.
    He nudges the door fully open and goes inside. He crosses the room, opens the sliding door and steps out onto the balcony. He looks directly down onto the deserted Concourse, and then beyond it to the entire development.
    Tara Meadows has imprinted itself on the landscape, no question about it. From this perspective the whole thing is stunning – so much more than just another soulless grid of housing units.
    Which is why he comes up here every now and again. To see the big picture – quite literally. It gives him a degree of satisfaction, of reassurance.
    He leans forward now, hands on the balcony rail.
    But there’s nothing of that sort on offer today. How could there be? Conway Holdings borrowed a total of two hundred and twenty million euro for this project, with the promise of a further eighty million to keep the wheels turning. One of the banks he borrowed from, however, North Atlantic Commercial, is looking for its money back, and none of the other banks are lending anymore. The problem is, without the further eighty