The Death of an Irish Tinker

by Bartholomew Gill

  On one such morning a telephone call came through to the Murder Squad that was fielded by various staffers and finally routed to Detective Sergeant Bernie McKeon, the squad’s chief of staff, who dealt with most difficult callers.

  A rotund but powerfully built man of middle age, McKeon listened for a while, asked a few questions, then turned his head to glance into the cubicle where Chief Superintendent McGarr was presently staring down at a cup of coffee, as though attempting to divine some secret from its rising vapors.

  McGarr had slipped his hands into the pockets of his dark suit, and his hat—a bowler now in winter—was still on his head, even though he had arrived a full half hour earlier.

  Seated to his immediate left with an arm on the desk and a newspaper opened in his lap was a much larger and older man who was nattily attired in a pearl gray vested suit and black brogues. Superintendent Liam O’Shaughnessy—McGarr’ s second-in-command—was also wearing a hat, a magnificent homburg that matched the suit.

  True, it was chilly in the old building that had once served as a barracks for the British Army, but the early-morning scene—the coffee, the staring, the newspaper, the hats—was a ritual that McKeon knew better than to disturb without good cause. Or at least until McGarr produced the bottle of malt from the lower right-hand drawer and topped up his coffee. “The Chief,” as he was known to the staff, had been up all night investigating another suspected murder in Lahinch in distant Clare, and he could be…irascible was not quite a strong enough term, when tired.

  Omertà, they called it jokingly: the “code of silence.” Once it was broken, their day of work would begin with a formal meeting in the cubicle and questions from the two that would keep everybody hopping often long into the night.

  “I’m sorry, the chief is tied up. Where are you now? Oh. I realize it’s a long way, but could I ask you to call into our office here in Dublin Castle?” McKeon listened some more, then said, “Yes, he will see you. Personally. It’s just that he’s presently in a, er, planning conference. It’s quite important, but I can assure you he’s most interested in what you have to say. In person would be best, if it’s not too much to ask. Another possibility is for us to send out a detective to interview you. In private, of course.”

  It was the technique McKeon employed to separate crank and scurrilous tipsters from those who truly believed they knew something. Those willing to show themselves at least had the courage of their convictions, which was the operative word in the office.

  An hour went by, then two, then six and eight. Utterly exhausted now, McGarr was about to reach for his hat and drag himself home for a hot meal and a long sleep when McKeon appeared in the doorway.

  “There’s a Tinker woman in the dayroom, Chief, who says she wants to speak to the ‘head shadog and nobody else’ about what she thinks is a murder. She rang up this morning, and she’s come all the way from Ballinasloe. I tried to get the story, but she won’t tell me any more than it’s about two people”—McKeon glanced down at a slip of paper—“Biddy Nevins and Mickalou Maugham.”

  “The bagpiper?” Who was also a Tinker, which was the term McGarr thought more traditional and apt but was now used mainly by people of his own generation and older. “Traveler” was a more recent term that the Traveling people now used to describe themselves. “Itinerant” was used by the media, and “Knacker” by bigots.

  McKeon shook his head.

  Could there be two people with such an unlikely name? Mickalou Maugham was, arguably, the finest musician in the country on the uillean pipes, the Irish bagpipe, which was inflated by means of a bellows under the arm rather than by blowing into a bladder. McGarr’s own grandfather had been a noted piper in his native Monaghan, and McGarr occasionally took out the instrument, which had been left him. But he played only poorly.

  Maugham’s touch, on the other hand, was sweet and deft, and McGarr had a number of his CDs. More to the man’s credit, he had set about at an early age to record the music of his own people, the Travelers, and later to set down in musical notation all the unrecorded bagpipe music in the rural parts of Ireland and Scotland. A series of articles in the Irish Times had detailed the technique he had employed to extract the tunes from bagpipers in isolated areas where people were suspicious of strangers. The effort was nothing short of brilliant.

  Setting himself up in the principal pub in a village or wherever people congregated on market day, he would make a show of pulling his bagpipe from his kit. Then he would take great pains to tune and adjust the instrument—all to make sure that he had an audience. Finally he would begin to play, running through simple songs to more difficult numbers and ending with the most complicated and difficult music that he knew. Only when he could not continue would he stamp his foot on the floor and say in English, Irish, or Scottish—depending on the venue—“Beat that!”

  Some local piper was sure to pick up the gauntlet, and the competition would be on, sometimes lasting for days as word spread of Maugham’s presence and additional pipers appeared. Later on, when the others had gone to bed, Maugham would stay up late into the night, writing down what he had heard. Every now and then for over a decade a small press in Dublin would issue a book in his name titled The Pipe Music of Ulster or of Iona and Mull or the Eastern Highlands, where Maugham would play the Scottish pipes. McGarr had them all.

  But because so much of his time was spent in pubs, where—McGarr supposed—he was bought jars by appreciative listeners, Mickalou Maugham developed a drink problem that later led to drugs, “which are more efficient,” he told The Times. It was a thought that had never occurred to McGarr, and he remembered. Fair dues to the man, however: He put himself into hospital, kicked his habit, and had remained drug-free for a number of years at the time the article was written, which was a good few ago. Four or five.

  He had married another Traveler, a tall, pretty young woman whom he had met in rehab, and she had gone on to become the premier pavement artist in Dublin, always drawing a page from the Book of Kells there at the top of Grafton Street across from the gate into Stephen’s Green. Because the other street musicians called Maugham the King of the Buskers, she became the Queen. Although McGarr had often tossed her a few pence for her drawings, which were remarkable, he had never known her name. But it occurred to him now that he had not seen her or him for quite some time, even though he walked up Grafton Street at least once a week after visiting his tobacconist on College Green.

  “How old a woman?” he now asked McKeon, meaning the woman out in the dayroom.

  “Forty-five, fifty, though she looks like seventy.”

  No, that couldn’t be the wife, who was still only a girl. “Show her in then.” McGarr sorely hoped that nothing had happened to Maugham.

  “Well, I’d say it’s more a matter for Hogan’s which was a pub not far from the Castle that some of the squad frequented. “She looks scared to death, and she’s asked me twice if we ‘do be holding’ her if she was to help us ‘shades.’ Maybe she’d be more forthcoming in another setting. And then…” McKeon glanced at the clock. It was time for him to leave, and his first stop was always Hogan’s.

  McGarr saw no harm in the change, and the woman seemed relieved when McKeon told her she could have her chat with the chief superintendent in a pub. “It’s that time of day, and he thinks you might be more comfortable there. This isn’t much of a room.”

  McGarr asked Ban Gharda Ruth Bresnahan, who was the squad’s newest recruit, to accompany them and take notes.

  “But when will I get this done if I’m off to a pub?” As the least senior and still-uniformed officer she had been assigned clerical duties, which she had railed at, wondering aloud more than once about the implications “of one woman pickin’ up the dorty details for a pack of men. Can’t someone else do a piece of work around this place now and then?”

  By whom she meant Hugh Ward, who had only climbed out from under the mountain of paperwork with her coming and was not about to dive back in.

 
; “Think of it this way, Rut’ie,” McKeon now observed in the pancake accent that marked him as a Dubliner; he was a stocky man with a full head of corn blond hair and dark, mischievous eyes. “It’s an investigation, what you’ve been telling me all along you joined us to do. And afterwards, why, you’ll have the office virtually to yourself—to type up your notes and get on with all that bother. Without us!”

  Which was cruel, really, but every new man (or, here, person) had gone through the unofficial hazing process. And if she could not take it, then she wasn’t fit for the job, and there would always be somebody else willing to fill her…well, shoes.

  McKeon now watched Bresnahan rise reluctantly from her chair and reach for a steno pad and pencil. A big red country girl from Kerry, she filled out her light blue blouse and dark blue uniform dress rather amply. Otherwise she was pretty, and McKeon imagined that with some care taken, the fiery young woman might have some potential in the way of form.

  But far be it from him to suggest it. Father of an even dozen himself, he had met WOMAN enough for one lifetime, and the decision was still in daily doubt as to who would supervene.

  Down in Hogan’s, McGarr ordered three whiskeys and a lemon soda for Bresnahan, who was in uniform and could not drink. The Traveler woman had no qualms. She tossed hers off in a swallow and turned to McGarr.

  “My name is Maggie Nevins, and I was born in Tuam, County Galway, forty-eight year ago come December first. Me da was given a waste house when I was young, and they’ve stayed there ever since.”

  McGarr thought he knew what she meant. During the fifties, emigration from places in the West had resulted in a number of abandoned houses, some of which were awarded to Travelers in an effort—largely successful there in Tuam—to settle them. He tasted his drink.

  “But I married a Travelin’ man who fancied the road, and we’ve been on it ever since.”

  Which was apparent. From sun and wind, the skin of her face was creased and lined and the color of dark tea. Yet it was once a handsome face with clear brown eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a strong chin. Her nose, which was long, was bent to one side, as though from an injury. Battering was an all-too-common feature of many Traveler marriages.

  She was wearing a bright scarf over her head, reminiscent of the full shawls that older Tinker women used to employ. McGarr could just see the glint of thick gold “Gypsy” earrings. Her winter coat was new; her boots were rather stylish and made of some supple leather. In all, she looked like a woman who had spent her life on the road, but those roads, at least in recent days, had been in and around Dublin or some other large city.

  “How long have you lived in Dublin?” McGarr asked Maggie Nevins.

  “Permanent like? Nine year up until ten month ago. Before that we tried to stick to the country. But there’s nothing for Travelers in the country no more. It got so we couldn’t even keep all our own childer.”

  “And how many would that be?”

  “Sixteen in all. Four is dead, six still with me, seven counting me oldest daughter’s daughter.”

  Bresnahan’s head had come up from her notepad, and she regarded the woman down her long, straight nose with unveiled contempt. The daughter of a “strong” farmer from Kerry, she was very much a settled personality in every way.

  “There in your caravan in—Ballinasloe, is it?” It was a city in Galway that was about a hundred miles from Dublin.

  “Aye. But”—Maggie Nevins’s eyes darted timidly at Bresnahan—“it’s not been as bad as the telling would have it. Not by half. I’m alive, amn’t I?” That seemed to cheer the woman for a moment, before her brow glowered. “It’s about her—Oney, the little one—that I come. She do be Mickalou and Biddy’s child, and I’m freckened she’ll be needing a da.”

  “She’s also your daughter’s daughter?” McGarr asked, remembering that the pavement artist had been noticeably pregnant—when?—four or five years back. “The girl, the one who does the Book of Kells at the top of Grafton Street?”

  She nodded, her eyes shying toward the bar. “Biddy. I’m a born Maugham myself, you know.”

  “Here, can I get you another wet?” asked McKeon, now that she had begun her story.

  “That’s grand.” She handed him her glass, and McGarr eased back into the cushions of the banquette, recalling what he knew of Tinkers. A few years before, he had chaired a Garda commission to establish police guidelines for dealing with the over three thousand families that constituted the “Traveling community,” was the current phrase in Ireland, and he was acquainted with their history.

  The word “Tinker”—by which those people had been known until recently—had been taken from the sound a hammer makes when striking metal. But there was only so much work in any given area, and they of needs had taken to the road.

  As early as A.D. 400 smiths were traveling throughout the country, and in later times, when famine, poverty, and evictions swelled their ranks, Tinkers offered other services to the resident population. They became seasonal farm workers, horse traders, minstrels, storytellers, thatchers, and chimney sweeps—whatever it took to get by.

  Contrary to current opinion, they were not shiftless vagabonds. Tinker women brought isolated farm wives news, gossip, and swag—small manufactured items, such as needles, combs, hand mirrors, etc.—that could not be had otherwise in rural Ireland, while their men provided needed skills and services and were, by and large, honest brokers. They had to be. Vigilante justice was swift and harsh, and in most quarrels officials took the side of the settled party, no matter the wrong.

  The pattern of Tinker life, however, changed drastically after the Second World War with the appearance of cheap metal and plastic goods and mechanized farming that replaced seasonal labor. Forced to shift to the cities, Travelers were cramped onto small plots heaped with rusting auto parts, trash, and such. The men went on the dole; the women begged in the streets.

  But the greatest tragedy—to McGarr’s way of thinking—was the effect city life had on Tinker children. Schools for them were segregated and poor, and few attended. With little to do and no place to play, many took to roaming the camps and the city. Vandalism led to more serious crime, drink, and drugs.

  Government efforts to improve the Travelers’ lot had largely failed. Only half of Dublin’s seven hundred Traveling families were housed, usually in squalid, ghettolike neighborhoods, and the percentage and conditions of life for them countrywide were little better.

  But McKeon had returned with the drinks, which he carefully lowered to the table in front of them.

  “You were saying about your daughter and Mickalou Maugham?” McGarr prompted. “Ten months ago.”

  Maggie Nevins nodded and picked up her new drink. “It’s what I come to tell you about. A Thursday last February. The very hardest part of the winter, though we were in great heart—me and the kids—since Ned had come back to our caravan from the Labor with pockets of money and a nice feed for us from the chipper.

  “But I should have known better, for what did I hear when I opened the door”—she paused dramatically—“chatterin’ magpies.” Her eyes swung to McGarr, who shook his head. He did not know what she meant.

  “Trouble comin’, and I should have known. For the truth is, I only got the washup done and the kids in bed when the door opened. Who should it be but Biddy in a huff and Oney in her arms, saying she had trouble and had to shift? Could I take the baby for a while? She’d send for her when she could; she was going to get out of the country as quick as she could.

  “With that Ned, who had nodded off, wakes up and asks her what it’s all about, but she says she can’t say. ‘If they thought you knew, you’d have to run too,’ was her words. And she scarcely said good-bye. ‘Speed it! Put it going!’ she gave out to Ned. And they left in a rush for Rosslare and the ferry to Folkstone.

  “And”—Maggie sighed and looked down at her now-empty glass—“they be no sooner gone than an awful thumpin’ comes to the caravan door, and some man starts roa
rin’, ‘Get out o’ that! Get out o’ that, you Knackers!’ And another thump that fairly knocked the door off its pins.

  “I look out and there’s two big shadogs, uniforms, buttons and all, the one with a big gun pointin’ right at me head. My God, the fret it give me. I was in bits, only half alive. ‘Open up, you Knacker bitch!’ he calls me. ‘Or I’ll blow yeh away!’

  “I see lights goin’ on in other caravans, and I says to meself, says I, ‘If mindin’ me granddaughter be a crime, they can take me off.’ So I opened the door, and didn’t the one peg me from the top step right down into the mud at the feet of the other with the gun.

  “He shoved it against my temple, roarin’ pure savage, ‘She in there? She in there?’ at the top of his Joxer lungs. ‘Who? Who?’ I got out. ‘Biddy, you fookin’ Knacker cunt!’” Maggie Nevins turned to Bresnahan. “Sorry, miss, but them was his words.

  “The other one was already inside the caravan with a big white torch, shinin’ it around and tossing things about. Some of the kids was cryin’; the others was screamin’ for me. But nobody came out from the other caravans to help, and I don’t blame them with the uniforms and the guns and all.

  “When I tried to get up, the one with the gun roared, ‘Down on the ground! Down on the fookin’ ground!,’ then cut me legs out from under me and stood or somethin’ on the small o’ me back. When I howled out in pain, what did he do?”

  The three of her listeners waited—Bresnahan’s pencil poised—while Maggie Nevins, obviously shaken even to recount the incident, tried to gather herself. She shook her head; tears had filled her eyes.

  Suddenly the bar noise was almost palpable.

  “Didn’t he spin me around and punch the bloody gun into me gob, pushing it down until I was chokin’?” With a finger she pulled down her lower lip to reveal two lower front teeth that had been snapped off at the gum.

  “It was then a shadow came between me and the lights in the caravans. Legs it was. Trousers. That was all I could see. Then a voice said, ‘We’ll start with the youngest. Bring the youngest one out.’