service you really believe in. It’s only as good as the image your potential customers have of it. That’s where we come in.’ Michael leaned forward. ‘Everything from letterheads to launches, from the design of the product to the look of your offices, the packaging, the clothes your people wear to work, the music the customers listen to when they’re put on hold. We enhance your presence in the market, using the sensibilities of the artist.’
Michael paused, as if suddenly aware that he was giving his father a ready-made marketing line. ‘It’s cool, dad. We take a humdrum business, we give it all the style of a brand, we make it stand out from the herd.’
Synnott said something about college and Michael waved that away. ‘That’s for drones – initiative and blue-sky thinking, you can’t learn that kind of thing in a lecture hall.’
Now Synnott lifted the phone and tapped in the first four digits of Michael’s number before he hung up.
Not tonight.
Synnott had had similar conversations with Michael over the past year. Never a product, never a skill, never a consumer service at the heart of the latest plan, always a fresh angle on how to interface with something, or how to get in on something, or behind it or intervene or connect or transform. Synnott found such conversations difficult. It was as though they were speaking the same language, but in different dialects.
Not tonight.
He’d call his son tomorrow.
*
Joshua Boyce wasn’t crazy about La Pontchartrain, but Antoinette got to choose the restaurant tonight. The lighting was too dim, the food was too – fussy was as close as he could come to putting a word to it. Boyce didn’t like places that made a drama out of producing a meal.
‘To us.’ Antoinette was drinking white wine, and Boyce returned her toast with mineral water.
It had become a custom for Joshua Boyce and his wife to dine out the night before he did a job. If something went wrong tomorrow it would be a long time before they did anything together. And although the jewellery shop was a safe enough job, once there were guns involved things could get hairy very quickly.
Antoinette was the prettiest woman in the room, no doubt about that. Long straight hair, pale blue eyes. She was wearing her newest dress, a dark blue Marc Jacob that she had picked up on a weekend trip to New York with a couple of friends. It used to be London for shopping trips, but New York was better and cheaper and more fun. Joshua Boyce didn’t see the need for such excursions, given the arrival in Dublin of every consumer delight from Harvey Nichols to Louis Vuitton, but Antoinette got a kick out of her shopping adventures.
Things are as they should be.
Boyce allowed his fingertips to brush the walnut handle of the fork in front of him. Touch wood.
*
As Dixie came awake she could feel the pulse in her neck, as strong as if her heart had pushed its way up into her throat.
Stay calm.
Panic attack’s the last thing we need.
Stupid. In here. Trapped in a box.
She pressed her face into the pillow. The monotony of the day and a half that she’d spent so far in Mountjoy had left her exhausted, but her sleep was shallow and repeatedly broken. She turned over onto her back.
‘Friday will tell the tale.’
Tomorrow.
Another prisoner, a woman with a sing-song voice, was talking somewhere not too far away. Just the one voice, no reply, and occasional hoarse laughter from the same voice. Dixie welcomed the diversion that the noise provided. A long time later it stopped: the woman must have dozed off and that made it easier to think, which Dixie didn’t want to do.
Tomorrow would be the end of everything there was and everything there was to be, and from this cell Dixie could no more change that than she could fly to the moon.
‘Friday will tell the tale.’
In search of distraction and comfort, Dixie said one prayer and then another.
Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for . . .
Our Father, who
Michael paused, as if suddenly aware that he was giving his father a ready-made marketing line. ‘It’s cool, dad. We take a humdrum business, we give it all the style of a brand, we make it stand out from the herd.’
Synnott said something about college and Michael waved that away. ‘That’s for drones – initiative and blue-sky thinking, you can’t learn that kind of thing in a lecture hall.’
Now Synnott lifted the phone and tapped in the first four digits of Michael’s number before he hung up.
Not tonight.
Synnott had had similar conversations with Michael over the past year. Never a product, never a skill, never a consumer service at the heart of the latest plan, always a fresh angle on how to interface with something, or how to get in on something, or behind it or intervene or connect or transform. Synnott found such conversations difficult. It was as though they were speaking the same language, but in different dialects.
Not tonight.
He’d call his son tomorrow.
*
Joshua Boyce wasn’t crazy about La Pontchartrain, but Antoinette got to choose the restaurant tonight. The lighting was too dim, the food was too – fussy was as close as he could come to putting a word to it. Boyce didn’t like places that made a drama out of producing a meal.
‘To us.’ Antoinette was drinking white wine, and Boyce returned her toast with mineral water.
It had become a custom for Joshua Boyce and his wife to dine out the night before he did a job. If something went wrong tomorrow it would be a long time before they did anything together. And although the jewellery shop was a safe enough job, once there were guns involved things could get hairy very quickly.
Antoinette was the prettiest woman in the room, no doubt about that. Long straight hair, pale blue eyes. She was wearing her newest dress, a dark blue Marc Jacob that she had picked up on a weekend trip to New York with a couple of friends. It used to be London for shopping trips, but New York was better and cheaper and more fun. Joshua Boyce didn’t see the need for such excursions, given the arrival in Dublin of every consumer delight from Harvey Nichols to Louis Vuitton, but Antoinette got a kick out of her shopping adventures.
Things are as they should be.
Boyce allowed his fingertips to brush the walnut handle of the fork in front of him. Touch wood.
*
As Dixie came awake she could feel the pulse in her neck, as strong as if her heart had pushed its way up into her throat.
Stay calm.
Panic attack’s the last thing we need.
Stupid. In here. Trapped in a box.
She pressed her face into the pillow. The monotony of the day and a half that she’d spent so far in Mountjoy had left her exhausted, but her sleep was shallow and repeatedly broken. She turned over onto her back.
‘Friday will tell the tale.’
Tomorrow.
Another prisoner, a woman with a sing-song voice, was talking somewhere not too far away. Just the one voice, no reply, and occasional hoarse laughter from the same voice. Dixie welcomed the diversion that the noise provided. A long time later it stopped: the woman must have dozed off and that made it easier to think, which Dixie didn’t want to do.
Tomorrow would be the end of everything there was and everything there was to be, and from this cell Dixie could no more change that than she could fly to the moon.
‘Friday will tell the tale.’
In search of distraction and comfort, Dixie said one prayer and then another.
Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for . . .
Our Father, who
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