Death at Christy Burke's (22 page)

“You’re askin’ after the man in the picture, are yeh, Father?”

“Yes, I am. You recognize him, do you?”

“Sure I’ve seen him here, and more than once.”

“Would he be by himself on these occasions?”

“Nobody with him whenever I saw him. He’d only buy the one ticket, so.”

“Ticket for where, do you recall?”

“Belfast.”

Belfast. Well, this merited a closer look.

“The only reason I remember,” Colm said, “is that one of the days he went, there was a bombing at one of the hotels in Belfast and I said, ‘Are yeh sure yeh want to head up there today?’ and he just said he’d be goin’ anyway, and I sold him his ticket. Said he’d not be staying in any of the hotels, just passing through.”

“Oh? He was going somewhere else?”

“Derry.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said. I suppose he’d hop on the bus in Belfast and travel on to Derry.”

“I wonder what he was doing there.” Colm just shook his head. “All right, then, Colm. I thank you for your help. Good day to you now.”

The young man nodded and went back to his work.

So. Belfast and Derry. Well, Michael would be travelling to Belfast the next day. Maybe he would fit in a little trip to Derry as well. He would give it some thought.

Brennan

Brennan and Monty took a taxi through Drumcondra to Croke Park and entered the stadium along with sixty-five thousand other spectators for Saturday’s match between Cork and Dublin. In accordance with Finn’s instructions, Brennan had stopped in at Christy’s, and Sean Nugent had handed him an envelope with two tickets. Nugent told him Sammy Coogan would be waiting for him at the edge of the pitch right after the match. Brennan asked Sean what the missing persons list had to do with the manager of the Cork Rebels, and Brennan believed the young barman when he shook his head and said he had no idea. Nugent said he had met Coogan on a few occasions but, about this specific matter, Nugent was in the dark. Were his previous get-togethers with Coogan related to football? No. Well, that was that. Brennan wasn’t about to pester the lad. He had two tickets to Croke Park and was looking forward to the afternoon.

He gave Monty a bit of commentary about the stadium on the way in. “That’s Hill 16,” he said, pointing to the terrace at one end of the stadium, “named after the Rising of 1916. There’s a bunch of rubble buried beneath it, stuff taken from Sackville Street after the battles. Sackville is O’Connell Street now. They say there’s even a car under there, belonging to the O’Rahilly.”

“The O’Rahilly?”

“One of the men killed in the Rising. His car was used in the building of a barricade in the street. And that’s Hogan Stand, named after Michael Hogan, the Tipperary footballer who was shot during the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1920 here in the park. Bloodiest single day of the Tan War.”

“Shot by?”

“The Black and Tans or the Auxiliaries; they were both in on it.”

“What set that off? There were killings the night before, was that it?”

“Your man Michael Collins had sent his squad out the night before to assassinate a bunch of British undercover agents known as the Cairo gang. Fourteen of them were shot dead. In retaliation, the British forces entered this park and opened fire on the crowd. They killed fourteen people. Innocent people, not spies or combatants in the war. One of them was a man named Thomas Ryan, who knelt beside Hogan and began saying the Act of Contrition in the young fellow’s ear.” Brennan’s voice dried up for a few moments after that. Then he said, “But we’re here for the football. And maybe a pint or two while we’re at it.”

“But you’re on a mission of some sort as well.”

“Afterwards. One thing at a time.”

The sun came out, the stands filled up with fans in blue for Dublin and red for Cork, Monty and Brennan added their voices to the tens of thousands of other Dublin supporters shouting encouragement to the home side and bawling at Cork, and the two sides went at it until Cork battered the home team into defeat. As the crowd began to file out, Brennan and Monty headed down for their rendezvous with the victor.

Sammy Coogan stood just under six feet tall and was muscular without being bulky. His cropped dark brown hair was going grey, and his face was flushed red, from either exertion or exultation.

“Congratulations, Sammy. Well done. I’m gone nearly hoarse from giving out to your players hoping for a different result, but credit where credit is due. Do you remember me at all?”

“Brennan! Not sure if I’d know you on sight. It’s been a few years. But I was told to expect you. Good to see you again. Got my start chasing you for the ball.”

They shook hands, and Brennan made the introductions. “Sammy Coogan, Monty Collins.”

Coogan examined Monty as if trying to place him. “From Cork, would you be?”

“Originally, maybe.”

“Chances are,” Coogan said. “Collins is a big name in County Cork.”

“You said a mouthful there,” Brennan agreed. “Could I leave the lad in your care, Sam? Take him home, see if you can find his uncles and his cousins? He hasn’t been all that good in finding them himself.”

“I’ll be happy to take him under my wing, Brennan. Now that I’ve got myself accepted in Cork.”

“Two All-Ireland championships will do that.”

“That seems to have done the trick. But staying with Dublin for a bit, I understand you have some information for me.” Coogan picked up the end of his jersey, gave his face a quick wipe. At the same time, he looked about him to see who was nearby. Players stopped by for a word and then went in to the dressing room.

Brennan produced the list of men missing from Dublin and handed the pages to Coogan, who read through them quickly. “That’s got to be Clancy,” he said.

Brennan waited.

“The dates are right. It’s got to be him.” He looked up. “Still no word?”

“Em, word about . . .”

“How recent is this list?”

“I got it yesterday.”

“So Clancy hasn’t been seen since the sixth of July.”

The sixth. That meant Clancy was the twenty-three-year-old man on the list. Was Clancy the fellow who’d been shot twice in the head, stuffed in a freezer, and then moved to an unmarked grave? All of it stemming from an ill-conceived desire to spray his discontent over the walls of a Northside pub? Who had reported him missing? His parents? Wife or girlfriend? Did he have children?

“So we have a name for our vandal now?” he asked.

Coogan looked at him. “Vandal?”

“The fellow who sprayed the messages on the pub.”

“What pub was that? Burke’s, you mean?”

“Sorry, Sam, I’d better back up here. You said Clancy.”

“I don’t know what paintwork Clancy might have done. ‘Up the Republic,’ I suppose, or ‘Brits out.’”

“The dates are right, you said . . .”

“Yes. Just around the time the American was snatched. Was young Clancy all they could get in return, as a hostage? Or was Clancy taken first, and then the American? And why haven’t we heard anything?”

What the . . . ? This wasn’t about Christy Burke’s; this was about the American minister. Odom had disappeared on the eighth of July, and this fellow on the sixth.

“This Clancy, who is he?”

“Well, he’s just a young fellow of no particular prominence. Not much of an employment history or anything like that.” Coogan looked around again to see who was nearby. “But he’s a vocal supporter of the struggle in the North, and he’s anxious to make a name for himself in Republican circles. The thinking here is that he’s a little too vocal, and he draws unwelcome attention to, em, certain bases of support here in Dublin. Support for the armed struggle. People in Dublin don’t want that sort of . . . recognition of their efforts.”

“No, I don’t suppose they do. Why haven’t we heard about him in the press, about his disappearance?”

“Probably because his family’s smart enough to know that the stakes rise in proportion to the publicity; harder for people to back down. They’ve put it about that he’s on holiday. Not that he’s ever been overburdened with work-related duties, as far as I know. But they’re probably right: keep it low-key and maybe a low-key solution can be found. And we in the South can be grateful for that. We don’t want this to rebound on us in some way we can’t possibly predict.”

The three men were silent as they contemplated what this might mean.

“This is all guesswork, though, really,” Coogan said. “We don’t know what’s going on.”

Something else we don’t know,
thought Brennan,
is where Sammy Coogan fits in here
. Coogan must have assumed that Brennan had come from Finn Burke or Sean Nugent fully informed about Coogan and his connections. Typically, though, Brennan was flying by the seat of his pants.
Thank you, Uncle Finn!
Well, he wasn’t about to reveal to Coogan the depth of his ignorance. Back to Clancy.

He said to Coogan, “But this — the young fellow’s role in the Republican movement — would account for the fact that he’d stand out as a target; he’s made himself known.”

“That, and the fact that he’s the nephew of Pádraig Aloysius Clancy, the Bishop of Meath.”

Michael

The peace concert was scheduled for Sunday night, the twenty-sixth of July. Michael, Brennan, Monty, Leo, and Kitty boarded the train in the early afternoon and headed north. Signs posted in the coach warned passengers not to leave packages unattended and not to attend to any packages they might themselves find unattended. They pulled in to the train station a little over two hours later and decided to rent a car for their stay in Belfast. That arranged, they struck out for the Antrim Road with Leo at the wheel. He had reserved rooms for them all at the St. Clement’s Retreat Centre, which, their hosts said, welcomed people of all religious faiths to enjoy a bit of calm in the otherwise strife-filled city. They checked into their rooms, went for a stroll around the lovely tree-lined grounds, then huddled together to plan their itinerary. The concert was not until eight that evening, which left them the afternoon to see the sights.

It was soon apparent that Michael knew the city better than anyone else in the group except Leo, who was staying behind at the centre to meet an unnamed party for an unspecified purpose as a prelude to other mysterious appointments later on. He would catch up with the others that evening at the concert. Kitty and Brennan had been to Belfast the odd time but did not know the city well. Monty had never set foot in the place. So it fell to Michael, who had brought his bus tours here numerous times, to resume his accustomed role as tour guide. They set off again, with Michael at the wheel, Kitty beside him, and Monty and Brennan in the back seat.

Everyone knows Belfast is a city divided. This is true not only figuratively but literally. All around the city are high barriers, made of metal or wire or brick or fencing, separating the Catholic neighbourhoods from the Protestant. George Orwell couldn’t have pegged it better: the barriers are known as “peace lines.” Michael pointed them out as he chauffeured his companions around the city. Nobody had to ask which side of the peace line was which. Catholic/Republican/Nationalist houses flew the Irish tricolour and, depending on the degree of militancy, some had pro-IRA murals or graffiti on display. Protestant/Loyalist/Unionist areas flew the Union Jack or the Ulster Red Hand; their murals showed machine-gun toting members of the UDA, the UFF, or the UVF, various paramilitary groups dedicated to maintaining union with Britain and defeating the IRA.

“You’ll be interested in that place, Monty,” said Michael, slowing down and directing their attention to a neoclassical building with eight Corinthian columns topped by a pediment. “That’s the Crumlin Road Courthouse. Don’t expect a jury of your peers if you’re being tried on charges relating to terrorism.”

“Right,” said Monty, “the Diplock system. Judge alone.”

“They figure jurors will be subjected to intimidation, so no juries.”

“The barbed wire’s intimidating enough!” Monty remarked, pointing to the coils of wire atop the building’s fence.

“If you think that’s bad, wait till you see the high court.”

Michael drove through the city streets until he came to another impressive-looking building, this one made of Portland stone with multi-paned windows and, again, Corinthian columns as part of its design. The high court was surrounded by a massive concrete structure that must have been twelve feet thick. “Blast wall, to protect the place from car bombs.”

“And I thought we had a rough crowd back home at the courthouse on Spring Garden Road.”

“The police station is insulated by a bomb wall, too. Not without reason.”

The B-word came up again when Michael took a cruise past the Europa Hotel in Great Victoria Street, the hotel where the Reverend Merle Odom had been staying before he disappeared. Brennan spoke up then with a little tidbit about the place. “It has the distinction of being the most frequently bombed hotel in Europe.”

Organizers of the peace concert, which was to be held outdoors, had rejected the obvious venues, such as the Windsor Park football stadium and the cricket ground at Stormont. They wanted a grittier setting for the event; they wanted to hold the peace concert in the war zone itself, on the site of a bombed-out building beside the Lagan River. The rubble, the burnt, twisted plumbing, the cables and wires and misshapen structural steel, all were to remain in place. Stadium seats were brought in for the expected three thousand attendees. Awnings were on standby for the performers in case of rain; spectators were advised to bring umbrellas.

Michael and his friends stood outside the gates, taking it all in, as they waited for Leo Killeen. There was a massive security presence: hundreds of British soldiers and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary armed with pistols, rifles, and machine guns. There were armoured cars and tanks around the perimeter of the site, and a helicopter flew low over the crowd. Everyone had to undergo a body search to be admitted. Was it Michael’s overactive imagination, or did some of the army and police personnel look askance at the Roman collars on Fathers Burke and O’Flaherty? And here came Father Killeen. Leo affected to ignore the armed forces deployed all around him, and greeted his friends. They submitted to the required pat-downs, the men by a man, Kitty by a woman, and made their way to the bleachers. Michael headed into the row first and sat down, followed by Kitty, Monty, Leo, and Brennan. Soldiers and police patrolled between the rows of seats.

“I suppose you need this kind of security to keep the fans at bay when you perform at home, Monty,” Kitty said.

“We have all this and more, Kitty, and still the groupies get through. My life on the road . . . you don’t want to know.”

But the banter died out; nobody’s heart was in it. The soldiers, the wreckage around them, the tension that accompanied any public event in Belfast battered them into silence. The relief was palpable when the concert got underway. There was a variety of music, from peace songs in the folk tradition to classical pieces by the Ulster Orchestra. There was nothing Michael would have called traditional Irish music and, God forbid, nothing that touched upon politics or sectarian strife. About an hour into the concert, Brennan rose and walked down to the stage. Another man was introduced before him, a minister in one of the Protestant churches in Belfast. He sang “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” and did a lovely job in Michael’s opinion; he was met with heartfelt applause. Then it was Brennan’s turn and, accompanied by the orchestra, he gave a magnificent performance of “Comfort Ye, My People,” from Handel’s
Messiah
:

Comfort ye. Comfort ye, my people, saith your God.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem.

And cry unto her . . .

There was a sudden rat-tat-tat sound. Michael gave a start of fear. Distant, it seemed. But there it was again. Closer this time? People in the audience shifted in their seats and looked about them. Michael put his arm around Kitty and drew her to him, wondering even as he did so what good it could possibly do her. A group of soldiers on the periphery of the stadium ran out into the darkness. The orchestra faltered for a beat or two. Not so Brennan. No beats missed on his part. His head turned slightly, towards the orchestra conductor. “The show will go on” was the message.

. . . that her warfare, her warfare is accomplished.

That her iniquity is pardoned.

There was an extra degree of warmth in the applause as Brennan gave a slight bow and walked up to his seat in the bleachers. The distant guns had fallen silent. Michael let out a sigh of relief and withdrew his arm from Kitty’s shoulders. She spoke to him in a quiet voice. “Try to imagine what it’s like to live with this every single day and night.” He just shook his head.

There were a few more performers and then, as the late summer twilight descended on the city, the master of ceremonies announced the star of the show, the highlight Brennan said he had been anticipating from the minute he got wind of the concert, the person he described as the great Verdi soprano: Leontyne Price. A black American woman, brought up in segregated Mississippi, would no doubt bring a certain gravitas to the quest for sanity in a city where the “peace line” still separated the Catholic from the Protestant parts of town.

Before Miss Price came on, a screen lit up at the side of the stage, and the face of Martin Luther King appeared. The slain civil rights leader had been an inspiration to those seeking civil rights in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Now the Irish audience, sitting in the ruins of a bombed-out building in Belfast, heard Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he cast his mind forward to the day “when all of God’s children — black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics — will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

The crowd rose to its feet and erupted in cheers. The King image faded, and Leontyne Price took the stage. It must have been ten solid minutes before the applause subsided.

Her voice soared into the sky over Belfast as she sang a mix of spirituals and hymns for peace. But the climactic moment of her performance, and of the concert itself, was the aria “Pace, mio Dio” from Verdi’s
La Forza del Destino
:

Pace, pace, mio Dio, pace, mio Dio.

Chi profanare ardisce il sacro loco?

Maledizione! Maledizione! Maledizione!

Peace, peace, my God, give me peace.

Who dares profane this sacred place?

A curse! A curse upon you!

The crowd was on its feet again. The high note in which the diva cursed those who had profaned the sacred place gave Michael the chills. But he felt a stab of genuine fear when he looked at Brennan and saw the expression on his face. Brennan’s lips were parted, and his face was as pale as a spectre; his eyes were not focused, at least not on anything Michael could see. Brennan had his hands up as if to ward something off. Kitty hadn’t noticed; she was still applauding the great soprano. Leo seemed to be scanning the crowd: the enraptured audience and the people milling around outside the makeshift stadium. Monty turned to Brennan to make a comment, but whatever he was about to say died on his lips.

“Wasn’t she brilliant?” Kitty exclaimed.

When Michael glanced at Brennan again, it was a relief to see him looking more like himself.

The five of them made their way out and stood by the fence, regarding the scene around them: the massive crowd, the police, the soldiers, a British Army vehicle looking fearsome and threatening on the other side of the road, the still waters of the Lagan, the giant Harland and Wolff shipyard cranes rising over Queen’s Island to the east of them.

Michael could hear Monty speaking quietly to Brennan. “What happened in there? I got the impression there was more to it than the high B-flat.”

“I don’t know. A terrible feeling. I don’t know . . .”

That wasn’t like Brennan, not to know.

“Did you see something?” Michael asked him.

Brennan shook his head. “Nothing clear, nothing I can identify. Maybe I’m just a little too sensitive to music. I know I am.”

Michael could see him making an effort to return to normality. Or what passed for normality in Belfast after dark.

A pair of cops hightailed it down the street. Michael peered after them. They bore down on a group of young men, who suddenly scattered. Two of the young fellows came running in the direction of Michael and his friends. The two looked nearly identical, with round shaven heads and light blue eyes. They tossed off some insults on their way by:

“Fookin’ Taigs!”

“Fenian bastards!”

An RUC man came along and eyed the three priests. His gaze rested on Leo Killeen, then he spoke in a thick Belfast accent, “Where did I see you?”

“High Mass at the Pro-Cathedral?”

“Not likely. You’re not a TV preacher, are you? No, that was somebody else. It’ll come to me. See you around.” It sounded like
arynd
.

Michael found it all too easy to believe what Archbishop O’Halloran had suggested to him, that someone up here had snatched a Catholic in revenge for the kidnapping of the TV evangelist. Of course, Protestant anger over the matter was understandable. But there was nothing in that understanding that gave Michael any comfort.

Leo Killeen glared daggers at the cop; then he led the group in silent procession from the concert site. Brennan strode ahead to walk with Leo as they made their way to the car.