Death at Christy Burke's (36 page)

“You might be surprised to hear that a few young ladies have given old Monty the eye over here, and I have been a model of decorum.”

“You’re right. I would be surprised. But let’s get on with the program. What is Brennan going to say to Abigail?”

“Are you people daft?” Brennan remonstrated.

Monty ignored him. “He’s going to say he’s an inspector with the Dublin police, the Garda Síochána. How about Detective Inspector Jack McGuire?”

“Yes!” MacNeil concurred. “Put him in a trench coat, stick a fedora on his head and a cigarette in his mouth, and he’s definitely a Jack McGuire.”

“And he’s investigating Edward Madigan on another matter. A sensitive matter but not an international one. We don’t want her running to the authorities over there if we can help it. How about this? Madigan is being investigated for a series of incidents that took place over a period of several years in the mid- to late 1980s. We have heard that he may have been out of the country, that is, in England, at the time of one of these episodes. Her name, and that of the Public Record Office, came up in the investigation. We’re trying to determine exactly where he was at that time. The whole point is to get her talking about him, see if we can find out what happened, if anything. Think you can handle that, Burke?”

“Do I get to take Motor Mouth McCrum by the throat and squeeze if all this turns out to be for nothing? Which I suspect it will?”

“The witness is being unresponsive, My Lord. Please answer the question.”

“Let me answer your question this way: I don’t think there will be anything to handle, and I’ll be out of there in five minutes. The reason I’m willing to take part in this absurd little pantomime is that my sister is in London this week, and I’ll have a visit with her.”

“Brigid?” Maura asked.

“Maire, better known as Molly.”

“Where does she come in the family? She’s the oldest, isn’t she?”

“That’s right. She teaches history at the University of London but has been in Monserrat all summer doing research.”

“Remind me to put in for a sabbatical studying the legal system in Monserrat when I get home,” Maura said. “She’s obviously got a good thing going.”

“True enough,” Brennan agreed. “Now she’s home in London for a few days, so I’ll have a night on the town with her.”

Michael

Michael caught up on all the latest news when he dropped in to Christy’s early Monday evening. He knew of course all about the vandal’s body being discovered, knew that the amateur investigation Brennan was conducting with Michael’s assistance had become a murder investigation, and that he and Brennan were way out of their league. The Garda Síochána were on the job. But Michael had had a little chat with Brennan about it all. Brennan’s understanding of his uncle’s wishes in the matter was that, whatever was behind the graffiti and the murder, Finn wanted to know about it before the police did. So, in that way at least, nothing had changed. One of the things that piqued Michael’s interest was the report that the guards had been spotted in the Bleeding Horse. The way he heard it, they went in looking for someone but did not ask anyone where the person was. A sensitive matter? Maybe, maybe not. It could be something minor or routine. But Michael knew one of the regulars at the Bleeding Horse, so why not stop in for a casual visit and do a little probing? He looked at his watch. Six-fifteen. He knew Bill McAvity worked during the day at his auto repair shop and arrived at the pub after that. Michael decided to take a walk across the Liffey to the Southside.

The barman at the Bleeding Horse recognized Michael and nodded when he entered the pub. Michael looked around, but McAvity was not in his usual spot. Delayed at work, perhaps. Michael sat at the bar and ordered a pint of Smithwick’s, which he knew was brewed on the property of a Franciscan abbey in Kilkenny. Wouldn’t that be a nice sideline to develop back home at St. Bernadette’s! He drank his pint slowly, nursed it so to speak, while he waited for Nurse McAvity to make his appointed rounds. But by seven forty-five there was no sign of him. Michael asked the barman whether Bill had been in. No, he had not. Michael thanked him and went on his way.

He took a turn in the confessional at the Aughrim Street church when he got back to Stoneybatter. A smattering of penitents came and went, absolved of the minor transgressions they believed had besmirched their immortal souls. Some of the words, deeds, thoughts, and omissions reported were so mild that even Michael, with his overdeveloped conscience, would not have taken the trouble to confess them. But then came the Dark Lady of Drimnagh. She was a single mother who got caught peddling drugs and went to jail. Her four children were put in foster care as a result. The day she was released on parole, she went on a bender and got picked up for disturbing the peace. This was a breach of her parole, so she went back in the slammer. When she got out the next time, she attended a meeting with her social worker to arrange the return of her children to her council flat. She left the meeting to walk home and get the place ready for the return of her family, but she stopped into her local, met an old boyfriend, got drunk with him, and they got into a row. She belted him in the eye, and he hit her back, knocking out a front tooth. She stumbled away, spotted a car with its engine running and nobody in it, hopped in, and stole it. Inevitably — it was inevitable to Michael, if not to her — she got stopped by the gardaí and was charged with theft and with drink driving. When she finally served all her time and was reunited with her children, she struck one of them in anger, and the child fell down the stairs; the woman was charged with assault, and the whole cycle started up again. The only surprise to Michael was her presence in the confession box, her apparently sincere craving for forgiveness. In addition to his spiritual guidance, he urged her to seek help and offered a number of suggestions.

Nobody came into the confessional after the Dark Lady left. Michael wondered, as he always did at times like this, how people could let their lives spiral so far out of control, how they kept making the same bad decisions over and over again. Every time there was a fork in the road, they chose the wrong way. Every single time. He said a prayer for the woman but, as strong as his faith in God was, his faith in the poor, sad penitent was fragile. God would rain down His grace upon her, but she was a creature with free will and, if Michael had learned anything about human nature in his long, long life, he knew she would keep taking the wrong fork in every road ahead of her until she died as she had lived, in squalor.

It was part of his job, his vocation, to hear such life stories, but that did not mean he enjoyed it. As he sat there in the silence, gazing into the darkness of the confessional, he thought of the people he had come to know at Christy Burke’s. And he felt a twinge of guilt, more than a twinge. He felt guilty because he had probed into these men’s lives, behind their backs, and had discovered things they found deeply painful. Oh, it was true that people slagged Father O’Flaherty, saying he was too curious for his own good. Nosy, in fact. But Michael was nosy only for good news, or at least harmless news. He always wanted to know who people were, who their families were, where they came from. He loved to hear there was a wedding in the offing and, all the more, a christening. And he enjoyed a puzzle and a mystery. Hence his nickname, Sergeant O’Flaherty. But he abhorred gossip. He most definitely did not want to hear that one of his parishioners was cheating on his wife, or on his income tax. Michael did not want to hear about “personality conflicts” in parish offices or on committees. Luckily, he and Brennan Burke were a match there. You’d have to pull Brennan’s fingernails out with a pair of pliers to get a word out of him about other people, and even then maybe he’d keep his gob shut. How long had it taken for Brennan to reveal that Monty and Maura, his closest friends, were living separate and apart? Come to think of it, Michael had learned that from Monty himself, not from Brennan at all. So neither pastor nor priest was a gossip.

But back to the Christy Burke Four. Michael’s part in the investigation had provided him with information he had no right to possess. He had learned their secrets even though, he realized, the regulars at the pub never said a mean-spirited word about one another; they spoke of the troubles each had suffered, but always in a sympathetic manner. They stuck up for each other, in fact, when that man Blair McCrum hissed his malicious gossip into their unwilling ears. They would not have been happy with the insinuations spray-painted on the pub walls but, try as he might, he could not imagine any of them dispatching the painter with two bullets in the back of his head.

Still, Michael had information about the Four, and he wasn’t all that pleased with himself on account of it. Was there perhaps something he could do to make up for it, or to ease in some way the distress each of the men was feeling over the turn his life had taken? Michael had tried to step in and assist Tim Shanahan, but his plea to the archbishop had fallen on deaf ears. What about Frank Fanning? Frank had a lot to atone for. There was no way of knowing how he coped with the memories of his foiled plan to blow up the Apprentice Boys Memorial Hall in Derry. But it was clear that the man wasn’t callous about what he had done to Donal Fegan; he had been making monthly visits to Fegan’s bedside for eight years. That showed remorse. And that opened the door to repentance and absolution. And then there was Jimmy O’Hearn. What could Michael do for Jim? He thought back to his visit with Jim’s sister, Sarah, in Donegal. The heartbreaking story of the family business being stolen by the unscrupulous lawyer. The beloved older brother, Rod, a broken man living in poverty in the Antipodes. Well, there it was: Michael knew what he could do for Jimmy and Sarah. He could bring their brother home. That was not beyond the realm of possibility, surely. There must be an economical flight, a seat sale at some time of the year, from — where was it, Australia or New Zealand? If necessary, Michael could pass the hat discreetly to raise money for Rod O’Hearn’s flight. Michael envisioned the reunion and smiled. That just left Eddie Madigan. A harder case, no question — a man who had been sacked from the Garda Síochána. Was it because of drugs, corruption, or some covert mission in London?

Michael

Michael could scarcely believe what he was doing, even as he stood on deck with the wind whipping his hair and clothing, and scanned the Irish Sea all about him. He was standing next to Brennan on the ferry to England on the morning of Wednesday, August the fifth. Brennan was on his way to see his sister Molly and, with any luck, to interview the Mata Hari called Abigail at the Public Record Office in London. Michael would like to have accompanied Brennan to London so he could meet Molly — they had enjoyed friendly chats on the telephone a few times when she had called Brennan at the rectory back home — but that would have to wait; Michael had business to attend to in Cambridgeshire.

Michael’s cover story for the trip was that he thought it would be fun to accompany Brennan on the ship to England and have a little look around. He’d always wanted to see Cambridge, so they would part company when they got onto English soil. They would meet up and catch the ferry back on Friday. But Michael had a hidden agenda. He intended to have a word with the infamous lawyer Carey Gilbert in the hope of obtaining information that might bring the O’Hearn family back together again. If he could accomplish this, at least one good thing would have come out of all the inquiries into the lives of his drinking companions at Christy Burke’s.

Michael put the investigation out of his mind for the duration of the ocean voyage and the train ride through Wales, with its green hills and valleys and castles. His first stop, after a series of train connections, was Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. It was a lovely English town with beautiful old stone buildings that looked mellow and timeless in the honey-toned light of evening. He took a little stroll around the town centre, then checked into his hotel, the George. There was a bit of an awkward moment when the man at the desk began to wax eloquent about the town’s historic link to Oliver Cromwell and the various Cromwell sites Michael could visit. Did Michael know the hotel had once been the home of Cromwell’s grandfather? No, he did not. Something in Michael’s expression or tone of voice, or perhaps it was the Irish-tinged accent, caused the man to falter in the midst of his Cromwellian oration, and he handed Michael his key and directed him to his room. Why, Michael wondered, would anyone promote the Puritan Cromwell to an Irishman, when that same Cromwell and his army had landed in Ireland for the purpose of putting down a rebellion, massacred thousands of Irish men, women, and even children, had singled out Catholic priests for slaughter, had destroyed churches and confiscated the lands of Irish Catholics and turned them over to Protestants? And then called his actions “the righteous judgment of God on these barbarous wretches”! Well, Michael didn’t want to start the war all over again. There was nothing for it now but to go to his room, get some sleep, and pursue his inquiries in the morning. Not until he headed out of his room the next morning did he notice there was a portrait of the old war criminal facing him from across the corridor!

But he had a pleasant night and awoke refreshed. He had a shower, donned his clerical clothing, and enjoyed a filling breakfast. The morning staff were more than happy to accommodate his requests for a telephone directory and a town map, and it didn’t take him long to find the address of Mrs. Augusta Gilbert. It was only a short walk from the hotel, and Michael was soon at the door of the small, immaculately kept house of the Gilbert family.

He rang the bell and waited for Mrs. Gilbert to answer. Instead, when the door opened, he found himself dwarfed by a man who was about six and a half feet tall and weighed probably two hundred twenty pounds. He had short, dark, curly hair, going grey, and a pair of fashionable eyeglasses.

“Oh! I was expecting Mrs. Gilbert,” said Michael.

“Sorry. My mother is over at the vicarage. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Em, you would be . . .”

“I’m Carey.”

“Ah. Well, it really is you I came to visit.”

The man looked perplexed, as well he might.

“What I mean is, I looked up your mother’s address — or I hoped it was your mother — with the goal of finding you through her. Anyway, here I am.”

“You want to see me? Well, please come in then.”

He stood aside and let Michael enter the house, then directed him to a comfortable-looking front room and bade him sit.

“Tea, Father, um . . .”

“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is O’Flaherty, Michael O’Flaherty.” He would have loved a cup of tea, but he could hardly accept the hospitality of the man he was about to confront with his crimes against the O’Hearns. “I’ll decline the tea, thank you. I won’t be staying long.”

“Very well. How may I help you, Father O’Flaherty?”

“I am here as a friend of Mrs. Sarah Duffy, formerly Sarah O’Hearn. I believe you know the family.” The lawyer’s expression was as bland as if Michael had commented on the rose garden outside. “They are understandably concerned that they have lost contact with their brother Rod. I don’t believe they ever saw him again after the boat company . . . changed ownership.”

The reference to the boat company had no apparent effect on the lawyer; his expression was unreadable. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? How many stories had Monty Collins recounted of calamities in the courtroom, when Monty had to maintain an unruffled appearance even while his case was falling apart in front of him? Why would this fellow be any different? And Gilbert had had years to perfect a look of innocence to mask any guilt he might have felt about swindling a family out of the business it had built and nurtured through five generations. Guilt? He probably didn’t feel an inkling of remorse.

Well, Michael was not about to let it go. “The boat business, O’Hearn Yacht Company, was a very successful and profitable venture, as I understand it.”

“Oh, it was indeed. Still is. More so now, of course, with American capital behind it.”

The gall of the man! “It’s a shame, isn’t it, that the O’Hearns are out of it now?”

“It is, I suppose. But with the brother’s problems, it seemed the only thing to do at the time.”

“The brother’s problems?”

“Yes, the fact that he was mentally incompetent. Well, I expect you know all about that.”

What was Gilbert talking about? Was this how he had covered up his deed? By painting the victim of his scam as mentally incompetent? Wherever Rod O’Hearn was, did he know that his former lawyer, who had cheated him out of the family business, was also slandering him and calling him incompetent?

“Are you saying, Mr. Gilbert, that Rod O’Hearn was not competent to manage his affairs, and that is why —”

“No, no, you’ve got the names mixed up, Father. Not Rod. James of course is the brother who is mentally incompetent. He lives in Dublin, I believe.”

“James. Jimmy.”

“Oh, you’re acquainted with him? So I guess you know what I mean.”

Michael stared at the lawyer. Jimmy O’Hearn was no more incompetent than was Michael O’Flaherty himself.

“And the brother-in-law,” Gilbert continued. “That would be the sister in Donegal . . . what was her name?”

“Sarah.”

“Right. Sarah’s husband. With his history, Rod didn’t see he had much choice in the matter.”

Michael was at sea. “Her husband?”

“Well, you know. Bit of a dodgy character. Criminal history and all that.”

No, Michael didn’t know. What was this man talking about? The look he gave Michael was shaded with suspicion.

The lawyer said, “I’m surprised you don’t know all this, Father, since you say you’re a friend of the family. I fear I’ve said too much. And I’m asking myself whether there’s something else motivating this visit.”

Michael felt he had nothing to lose at that point. “I’m here because the O’Hearn family was defrauded of its rightful ownership of the O’Hearn Yacht Company. Nothing can be done about that now. But at the very least I would like to help bring about a family reunion. In fact, I’ll be looking for contributions towards poor Rod’s airfare so he can visit his brother and sisters in Ireland. Naturally, I won’t be asking
you
to contribute to the fund.”

Carey Gilbert was looking at Michael in open astonishment. “Poor Rod? Is that what you said, Father? You think Roderick O’Hearn can’t afford a plane ticket back to Ireland?”

“Well, I understand he was never the same after being cheated out of —”

“What’s this about being cheated? I’ll grant you this much: Rod was never the same after selling the boat business. And glad of it. But he’d have no trouble paying his way to Ireland if he had a mind to go there. Probably has his own Lear jet, for all I know.” Gilbert peered at Michael. “You didn’t know any of this, did you? Somebody has sold you a bill of goods, by the sound of things.”

There was no point in trying to bluff it out. Michael sat there, mortified. He had blundered into this with the story all wrong. It served him right to be humiliated in front of this man. Quietly, he asked, “What’s the real story, Mr. Gilbert?”

“Rod O’Hearn retained me to handle the sale of the yacht company to American investors for what was then, and would be now, a very, very good price. Rod’s father had left the company to his two sons. Not to the daughters. We wouldn’t do things that way now, but the older generation, well, that’s how things were done. Rod showed me documents from the Republic of Ireland certifying that his brother, James O’Hearn, had been declared mentally incompetent. Rod had a power of attorney from James, which gave Rod authority to manage James’s affairs and to sign in his name. Rod described in considerable detail the criminal history of his brother-in-law in Donegal, who was a con artist and a small-time crook, and he was afraid this fellow would try to make trouble for the company, for the family. Rod was not willing to continue trying to operate the company with these people cocking things up all the time. The company was Rod’s by that time, to do with as he wished. He sold it to the U.S. consortium and made a fortune in doing so. How he compensated his siblings, if he did, was up to him. Rod O’Hearn walked away a very wealthy man. Last I heard he was well set up in New Zealand, living like a country squire. I have not heard from him, or about him, for many years.”

Michael sat there, gripping the arms of his chair. There was no question in his mind that the lawyer was telling the truth. It was Rod O’Hearn, not this lawyer, who had made a bundle by stealing the boat business from his family. And he had done so by portraying his brother as mentally unfit and his sister’s husband as a crook. Jimmy O’Hearn was an alcoholic, but Michael had never detected anything wrong with his mental capacities beyond that. And Michael had met Sarah’s husband, Niall, in Donegal. He was a music instructor who went out of his way to provide free lessons to a child who could not afford to pay. His wife worked in a pub. They lived in a little house that needed work, and they drove an old banger of a car that should be on the scrap heap; clearly they could not scrape together the money for repairs. Niall Duffy was not a con man. Jimmy and Sarah adored their older brother and had spent all these years fretting over his well-being. When in fact he was doing very well for himself, and not sharing a bit of his good fortune with his family. Well, how could he? He had been putting on the poormouth all these years to hide the fact that he had stolen from them their rightful inheritance.

Michael told Gilbert what he knew about Jimmy O’Hearn and Niall Duffy. Should he turn around and tell Jim and Sarah how their beloved big brother had betrayed them? They had a right to know. But was there any point in breaking their hearts with the news? Would they be any better off? Would they be able to confront their brother and demand their share of the fortune? Did they have any legal grounds for doing so? Michael had no idea, and he was not about to prevail upon Carey Gilbert for legal advice! Gilbert didn’t owe anyone a thing, and Michael owed him an abject apology.

“Mr. Gilbert, you have been the soul of patience with me today. I am most undeserving of your kindness. I came here today convinced that it was you who had defrauded the O’Hearns of their livelihood.”

“Me?” Gilbert stared at him wide-eyed.

“I’m so very sorry. That is what the family believes. That is the story Rod spun for them to cover his own shameless deeds. I thought that’s why you left England. Please accept my apology for thinking ill of you and confronting you in your mother’s home today.”

“No, no, it’s not your fault, obviously. I’m reeling from what you’ve told me. Roderick obviously set me up, too, with falsified papers from Ireland and a series of lies to mask what he was doing. The sale of the company to the Americans was separate from all that; it was in Roderick’s name, and so the purchasers have nothing to answer for. I have to make that point. But what he did to his family in order to get to that stage, well, he’ll have to answer to them, I guess. No wonder he never set foot in Ireland again! As for me, I immigrated to Canada because I met a Canadian woman, married her, and decided to try life in her hometown. Somebody’s gone into hiding, but it isn’t me!”

Brennan

Brennan enjoyed his train trip through the magnificent countryside of Wales and England and wondered what the hell he was doing, hunting down Abigail Howard at the Public Record Office. The train was held up for nearly a full hour outside Euston station. The whispers throughout the railcar suggested the station had been evacuated because of a bomb scare; the whispers further suggested this was a common occurrence. Fine irony there, if the thing blew up. “Son of well-known Irish Republican family . . .” Never mind all that. The train rolled in, Euston station was still standing, and Brennan left the station for the short walk to the Harlingford Hotel in Bloomsbury, where he had stayed on occasion before while en route to or from Ireland. He registered at the desk, took his things to his room, washed up and changed his clothes, and then went out and across Marchmont Street to see whether Judd Books was open. He was in luck. As always when in London, he emerged from the bookshop with two armloads of books. He dropped them off in his room and headed out to the North Sea Fish Restaurant for supper.