Death at Christy Burke's (38 page)

Mirabile dictu!
The excursion to the Public Record Office had not been a wasted effort after all. Brennan had met with success, most unexpectedly; he would have to think it all through. Later. He put it out of his mind for the rest of the afternoon, as he walked around London and took in the sights of the great city.

Now, as evening descended, he had a most pleasant event ahead of him: dinner with his sister Molly at her flat. He stopped in at his room, washed up a bit, called Molly on the phone, then made the short walk to her place in Gower Street. She was standing outside the enormous white stone and red brick building when he arrived. Molly was the eldest in the family, not quite two years older than Brennan, but the two of them could be mistaken for twins. They were both tall and had black hair with silver strands at the temples, dark eyes, though his were black and hers a deep blue, and similar features, including a typically Irish curve of the upper lip and a somewhat beaky nose. She broke into a big grin when she saw him approaching.

“Bren, my darling, it’s pure bliss to see you!”

“Same,” he said, kissing her cheek and enfolding her in his arms. He held her for a long time before releasing her.

“Come on up. I’ve got dinner on.”

She led him up the stairs to her modest second-floor flat, with its tiny sitting room and kitchen, bright with the early-evening light coming through the west window. Her few bits of furniture had the patina of age, and the walls were fitted with bookshelves nearly up to the ceiling. She opened a press, pulled out a bottle of John Jameson, and poured them each a shot. She handed Brennan his and sat with her own in hand.

“You’re welcome to stay over, as I told you on the phone, but I know you might find it a bit cramped. I took this place when Neville and I parted company. Close to the university, but space is at a premium.”

“No, I’m perfectly content at the Harlingford. What are you cooking? It smells wonderful.”

“A jolly old English fry-up. Organ meats and all that.”

“I said it smells wonderful, not like an abattoir.”

“Farfalle al sugo rustico.”

“With lamb?”

“With lamb.”

“Brilliant! Why don’t I go out and get us a bottle of red?”

“No need. I have quite the wine cellar here, which boasts a couple of bottles of excellent plonk you brought here on your last trip.”

“Oh?”

“You said a good Barolo should be allowed to age.”

“Well! Bring it on.” He looked around.

“It’s in the cupboard under the sink. If I had the space for a wine cellar, or even for a decent wine rack, I’d have to pay two hundred pounds more a week!” She bent down, rummaged about, then produced the Barolo. She opened it, and left it on the counter to breathe.

“So,” she said, when she got seated again, “wouldn’t you know I’d be off on a field trip the summer you’re on this side of the Atlantic? Otherwise, I’d have gone over to join you in Dublin.”

“I know, but at least you’re here now. How long will you be in London?”

“Just this week for a conference. Then I fly back to Monserrat for my research.”

“How did you manage to snag that assignment?”

“Purely academic reasons. You’ve heard the expression ‘publish or perish.’ I’m due to produce another article. So I searched and searched for a topic that would connect Irish history with a tropical climate.”

“I thought your area of expertise was women warriors in Ireland.”

“Sure it is, from Queen Maeve to the Cumann na mBan and the IRA.”

“Have they taken the struggle to the southern hemisphere for some reason?”

“Em, no, they haven’t. So I’ve had to seek out new areas of study.”

“What did you come up with?”

“Irish slavery in the Caribbean.”

“Will you be studying us as slaves or slaveholders?”

“Both. Though, with respect to the former, the term ‘servant’ is preferred!”

“Well. That should prove interesting.”

“It should. But if it doesn’t, if I don’t find anything new to say on the subject, who cares? I’ll just shove my paper in a drawer. The point is to get me down there in the sun!”

“Good for you. You’re enjoying it then.”

“Immensely. Terry flew down to Monserrat to see me, and we lifted a few at the local guzzling den.” Terry was their brother, an airline pilot who lived in New York. “We were nearly wetting ourselves when we got into the old family stories. You featured in many of them, having been the black sheep of the family for so long. Starting with your first day of school in the U.S.A. The new boy in class, right off the boat from Ireland. Remember the note the teacher sent home? You were doing geography, and Sister Mary Dolores asked you to read aloud. You did fine until you came to a certain lake in South America.

“‘I can’t say that,’ you told her.

“And she said, ‘It’s pronounced Lake Titicaca.’

“‘Like fuck it is!’ exclaimed the little gurrier from Dublin.

“That was only the beginning of your career as the boy least likely ever to prostrate himself before the bishop and be ordained a priest. They didn’t know what to make of you at the school; you looked and sang like an angel in the choir but you were such a little hellion. Well, really, that’s still you, isn’t it?”

“The subject of our conversation, I believe, was Monserrat.”

“Right. Terry and I in the bar. Once he got oiled up, he started regaling the locals with all manner of tall tales about his adventures in the cockpit. He had them sitting there with their gobs hanging open in disbelief.”

“And rightly so. Every word out of him past a certain point in the evening would have been a lie.” Terry was renowned for his barroom bullshit.

“Yes, it was great gas. Now, how about you, sweetheart? How have you been?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“Good. Although you’d say that even if you’d had three limbs lopped off in the morning. You’re like that knight in the Monty Python movie. Everything with you is ‘only a flesh wound.’”

“No flesh wounds here.”

“What’s the news in Dublin? Fill me in while I tend to my cooking.”

Molly busied herself with oven and stove, plates and pans, as Brennan gave her a rundown of the summer’s events. She was well aware of the missing preacher found dead in Carlingford Lough, and the eruptions of violence in the North as a result. Brennan had to hedge a bit on that. He was not about to reveal that he had seen the video of the man being executed by Desmond somebody in the presence of Clancy, nephew of the Bishop of Meath. Brennan would be forced to live with that secret for the rest of his life. The people of Northern Ireland and the United States, and sympathetic observers like Michael O’Flaherty, would be left wondering till Judgment Day who had killed the evangelist. Without anyone to put on trial, who would be made to bear the brunt of Protestant rage? Brennan was powerless in the matter. All he said to his sister was “I’ve heard there’s a Dublin connection.”

“Republicans of Dublin, take cover! Is there anybody in our family mixed up in this? I don’t mean any of us would be so stupid as to snatch the man, but I hope there aren’t any Burkean shadows flitting about behind the curtains.”

Brennan hesitated for a moment, then said, “There may be a degree of Burkean knowledge after the fact. But, as far as I know, nothing more than that.”

She waited for more, but he turned the conversation to the summer’s other developments: the tank-and-barricade Mass, the graffiti and the Christy Burke Four, the Japanese land scheme and Finn’s stint in the Joy.

“Can’t you just take a nice, relaxing holiday, Bren? I’m sure you could use one.”

“I’d probably be bored rigid.”

“But all that carry-on in Dublin and the North . . . And the time you took a trip back to New York, our oul fellow got shot in the chest and nearly died.”

“My good friend Monty made a similar observation about holidays spent with the Burkes. He was on hand for the New York debacle as well.”

“And he’s here for all this now?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Whatever does he think of us?”

“What we’ve got going for us is that he’s seen worse. He defends thieves and killers for a living. Defence lawyer.”

“Maybe we don’t look so bad compared to his clients.”

“Well, there again, you may recall, I was one of his clients.”

“Of course.” She sighed, then stood up. “Let’s eat. Give us a Latin grace before we start. Or maybe an exorcism to clear the room of all the dark shades that seem to have come amongst us in the twilight.” He made the sign of the cross over her and over the offerings she had prepared, and said a prayer of thanksgiving in the ancient tongue before sitting down, whipping his napkin off the table and putting it in place on his lap, and digging in.

The pasta and lamb, served with a loaf of hard-crusted bread and a green salad, was brilliant, and so was the wine, and he told her so. They clinked their glasses and smiled at one another.

“Darling, tell me, how is life in Halifax? Are you enjoying it?”

“Very much.”

“What is your church like? What music are you doing? You composed a Mass, and that went over well, I believe.”

He spent the next few minutes, between bites of food and sips of wine, describing his life as a priest and choirmaster in Nova Scotia.

“Good. Work is going well. Now, what about friends? Do you have people to talk to, if you should ever feel the need to talk? Which I suspect would be a rare event.”

“Amn’t I talking to you?”

“You only see me once every two or three years. So let’s hope you have somebody to fill that gap! As tough as you are, or make yourself out to be, Bren, you need other people in your life. It can’t just be you and the Almighty.”

“You say that as if the Almighty is less than all mighty, less than complete, and needs to be supplemented by earthly —”

“Go on out of that and answer my question. Tell me about your friends.”

“Well, there’s Michael O’Flaherty. You’ve spoken with him on the phone. Probably more frequently than you’ve spoken with me.”

“You always seem to be out on the town when I call. Michael says, ‘Yer man’s at the Grafton Street Mission,’ which, upon interrogating Michael, I discover is an institution called the Midtown Tavern.”

“I minister to the drinking community there.”

“You lead by example, I assume, Father. God bless you. So, there’s Michael. A lovely man, if his telephone conversations are anything to go by.”

“He is a lovely fellow. And in fact he was caught in a cleft stick coming over here.”

“Here, meaning England?”

“Yes, he’s here, but not in London. His dilemma is that he would love to meet you, but that would mean blowing the cover story he gave me about his reasons for the voyage to England in the first place. He would have me believe he’s always wanted to explore Cambridgeshire. So I kept a straight face on me and went along with it. The man is incapable of deception.”

“What is he really getting up to?”

“It has to do with this vandalism at Christy’s. One of the pub regulars was swindled, or his family was, by an English lawyer. I suspect the lawyer is in Cambridgeshire somewhere, and Michael is on his trail.”

What Brennan didn’t say was that he had long held the suspicion that O’Flaherty had a bit of a crush on Molly, arising from their telephone chats; if Michael hadn’t made a point of coming to London to meet her in the flesh, that suggested Kitty Curran had turned his head. All the Barolo in Europe wouldn’t be enough to make him say that aloud.

“This graffiti business,” Molly said, “wouldn’t you think it’s most likely a comment on Finn himself?”

“It’s hard to avoid that suspicion, even though Finn dismisses it out of hand.”

“That’s Finn’s version of events, but keep in mind he was so convincing that enough Japanese to fill an airliner took his word that they owned land in the Republic of Ireland.”

“True. But, whatever the case, Michael O’Flaherty is keen to assist in the graffiti investigation, so I’ve left him to it. I’m sure whatever he learns here in the U.K. will be of no value — the lawyer is hardly going to confess to unethical or illegal conduct — so Michael will have missed meeting you for nothing.”

“No worries. We’ll make a point of meeting another time. And you told me a while back that he’s your confessor. You were a little hesitant when you first arrived there from New York.”

“It was just that Mike is so, well, innocent. I didn’t want to disillusion him about his new curate.”

“You’re not a saint. How could you be? Michael’s been around long enough to understand that.”

“True. It’s turned out fine. He’s a wonderful priest and a very astute confessor.”

“So, you have Michael as a friend. Who else?”

“Some of the other priests are mensches. Good company.”

“And this Monty you mentioned. He’s a good pal as well. So, you have some blokes to go about with. Now, what about women?”

“What about them?”

“Well, I hope your circle isn’t limited to men. Do you have some women friends as well? And I don’t mean a gaggle of church ladies who incessantly contrive to attract your attention and who worship the very soil on which you tread.”

“You may rest assured that all of my acquaintances fall into the category of not worshipping me or my footsteps or the sacred ground over which I pass. That being said, there are a couple of women at the choir school, teachers, I’m friendly with. And, em . . .”

“Em, what?”

“There’s the MacNeil.”

“And that would be who? Head of a Scottish clan or something?”

“You could say that, I suppose. She’s Monty’s wife. Or, well . . .”

“Well what? She’s Monty’s wife, or she isn’t. Which is it?”

“I’ve descended into gossip here.” He picked up his glass of wine, drank it almost to the dregs, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He was about to light one, then remembered his manners; he looked to his sister for permission.

“Go ahead.” She reached behind with her left arm and grasped a small plate, which she offered as an ashtray. Brennan lit up and inhaled a lungful of smoky relief.

Molly then took up where she had left off. “Brennan, identifying a person as someone’s wife, or even ex-wife, if that is the case, hardly qualifies as vicious gossip. It is simply a fact. Neville is my ex-husband. So this couple . . .”