Death at Christy Burke's

by Anne Emery

  “No, I mean, yes . . . Em, is there a particular Mass that Leo —”

  “Ah,” Kitty said. “I see. You haven’t heard about the big do happening at the Pro-Cathedral Thursday night. A special Mass for peace. The red hat will be there, and herself from the house in the park” — she meant the president of Ireland, whose official residence was in the Phoenix Park — “and the archbishop and clergy and all the angels and saints. Well, you get the idea, so you won’t want to miss it.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. What a lovely idea.”

  “Anyway, Leo is tied up with the preparations tonight, but he tried to call you and you weren’t there, so he tried me. Thought I might be seeing you.”

  Michael tried to look nonchalant, but he was pleased that someone would relay a message to him through Kitty, pleased that his friendship with her was an established fact in certain circles in Dublin. “Right. So, what’s this about the music?”

  Only then did Brennan give his full attention to the conversation.

  “Leo’s got his knickers in a twist —” Michael’s face must have registered his surprise at Sister’s language, because she laughed and said, “Let me rephrase that, Monsignor. Father Killeen has raised a question about the selection of music for the liturgy on Thursday night. There will be Latin, all well and good, and English, all right again, but there is nothing on the program in Irish. There will be remarks in Irish, but he thought there should be some Irish-language music. The liturgical director was harried and busy and said to Leo, ‘Fine, Ag Criost an Siol, but I don’t have time to rehearse it. Sing it yourself.’ Leo, not being one to back down, said, ‘I will.’ So, he’s on at the Offertory.”

  “And?” Brennan asked.

  “And what do you think? Leo needs you to help him out.”

  “I will. With bells on. And incense wafting about my person.”

  “How about you, Michael? Can you sing?”

  “Well, I —”

  “He can, Kitty,” Brennan answered, “and I don’t say that lightly about anyone.”

  “I can believe it!”

  “I’ve heard Michael and I’ve tried to encourage him to sing parts of the Mass at home. But more to the point, he’s a brilliant Irish speaker. Much better at it than I am. Tell Leo, if I don’t see him first, that the three of us will sing it. I’ll take care of collecting the music, and I’ll call him with a rehearsal time. Killeen, O’Flaherty, and Burke will make their debut together at the Pro-Cathedral.”

  “What’ll you call yourselves?” Maura asked. “The Holy Trinity? I guess that’s taken.”

  “No, that would work,” Brennan replied.

  “Brennan! Say an Act of Contrition before you utter another word!” Michael commanded him.

  “All right, Maura, our work here is done.” Kitty got up, and Maura did the same.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the Abbey, Michael. We have tickets for the theatre.”

  “Oh! What are you going to see?”

  “A Month in the Country. A Turgenev play, adapted by Brian Friel.”

  “Ah.” Michael had no idea.

  “So, gentlemen, we shall take our leave of you,” Maura said. “But we look forward to your performance on Thursday night.”

  Brennan turned back to the Dublin-Kerry match. Michael did the same, but with mixed feelings. He wanted to see the football, but he would love to have tagged along with Kitty and Maura. Not to the theatre without a ticket, though, so the game it would be.

  The peace Mass was something to look forward to, Michael thought as he walked home to Aughrim Street after celebrating Dublin’s victory over Kerry in the final seconds of the match. He hoped to find Leo Killeen at home so he could ask him all about it. But Leo was not in residence when Michael arrived. He would have to catch him later.

  It was not until after confessions on Sunday that Michael finally had a chance to ask Leo Killeen about the Mass. Leo filled him in on the plans and the list of attendees, which, as Kitty had announced, included important figures in the worlds of church and state.

  “If you need any help with the preparations, Leo, just give me the word.”

  “Thank you, Michael. I will. Em, while I have you here, and since you’ll be pestering me about it anyway . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I made a call in relation to the question you were asking yesterday.”

  About Madigan. Good! Who was Leo’s source? A policeman? An intelligence officer? Some kind of Special Branch operative? That was a question Michael was not about to ask. He merely said, “Oh! What did you find out?”

  “Nothing.”

  Michael tried to mask his disappointment. “We know the incident happened, though,” he prompted.

  “Just because something happened doesn’t mean people are willing to blather on about it. The person I spoke to, who is knowledgeable about these matters, left me with the unmistakable impression that this incident was extremely embarrassing to the authorities here, and the fact that they had to give something up to the Brits only underscored how embarrassing it was. Madigan was carrying a false passport, had a whole fictional identity set up, but the British authorities found out who he really was. Inevitably. A garda from Dublin trying to blow up a storeroom full of secret files held in England and pertaining to Ireland, well, it’s just beyond the pale. Get it out of your head. My man had nothing to tell me and I have nothing to tell you.”

  But in fact Leo had told Michael something he hadn’t known. “I understand,” Michael said. “Was there any damage from the attempt to, em, blow things up?”

  “No, security caught him just after he’d lit the fuse. A makeshift effort, some inflammable material he tried to shove under the security door. It likely would have fizzled out before it did any damage. A desperate manoeuvre. We’re not privy to whatever was in that room, so we don’t know what Madigan was after. End of story, Michael. Now, could you do something for me? Could you take my noon-hour Mass tomorrow? I have to go out of town.”

  “Gladly, Leo, certainly. And thank you for your efforts on my behalf.”

  “I’d like to say you’re welcome, but the words would stick in my throat.”

  “I thank you nonetheless. And tomorrow I’ll be at the altar, twelve o’clock sharp. Where are you going?”

  “I’m not telling you!”

  With a curt nod, Leo turned and went on his way.

  Michael now had a new perspective on the Eddie Madigan incident. Madigan had tried to blow up the secret archive! He had done his best to make things go smoothly, establishing a false identity, working on Abigail Howard to admit him to the file room so he could get his hands on the documents. But when it all fell apart, he crossed the Rubicon. He got hold of explosives and went in with the hope that what he couldn’t remove, he would destroy. Or had that been his plan from the beginning? Either way, Madigan must have known he himself would be destroyed in the fallout. What was he so desperate to hide?

  This train of thought brought Michael to something he had heard a while ago about the ex-cop or his family, that there were strained relations between the Madigans and somebody else. Where had he heard it? He tried to recall. It was Nurse McAvity. That’s who had told him. Bad blood, he’d said, between the Madigans and another family. If Michael could find out what that was about, he might be able to explain the bombing attempt. It was time for another interrogation.

  It was early evening when he set out for a brisk walk to the bus terminal in O’Connell Street and found the bus that would take him to Camden Street, to the pub where some of the United Irishmen had gathered to plot the 1798 rebellion. Good. There was Nurse McAvity in the same seat he’d been in when Michael had found him before. “Bill!”

  McAvity looked around and stared at Michael, as if trying to place him. The penny dropped when he focused on the Roman collar.
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  “Monsignor . . . O’Flaherty, is it?”

  “That’s right. Michael.”

  “Of course, Michael. Have a seat. Can I get you anything?”

  “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  Bill signalled to the bartender and pointed to his glass. A half-pint, nearly full. When Michael had his own half pint, he sat beside McAvity and made small talk for a few minutes. Then he got to the point.

  “When we spoke here last time, you were kind enough to provide some background on the people who might be targets of the slander on Christy Burke’s wall. And you told me about the bad feeling between the Madigans and another family, but my old memory is not what it used to be, and I’ve forgotten the name.”

  “I’d hardly expect you to remember it, Michael. I had a moment when I couldn’t recall your own name! The people I was talking about are the Brogans. They and the Madigans would cross the street in front of the airport bus rather than give each other a good morning or a good afternoon. That was the past generation, though. It’s not a big family, and the young Brogans have all immigrated to England.”

  “But did you tell me there’s an elderly woman?”

  “Old Irene. She’s not well at all. She doesn’t put a foot outside the door of her flat. I’m speaking literally now, Michael. She doesn’t leave the flat. She’s in one of the big tower blocks in Ballymun. Her children set her up there before they moved away. It was a good idea at the time. Ballymun was the hope of the future, public housing with central heating. Nothing else around though, so something of a ghetto. Much worse now, with drugs and all the social problems associated with them. Anyway, Irene Brogan stays inside. Has a woman come in and bring her whatever she needs. So that poor soul hasn’t been painting nasty words on the walls of Christy Burke’s pub.”

  “I wonder whether she’d have a word with me.”

  “You never know. She can be fierce, but if you catch her on a good day, well, you never know.”

  “So, Bill. A bit of excitement in here recently. The guards were here, I understand.”

  “Yes.”

  “After that man’s body was found.”

  “Looking for a bit of information,” McAvity said, in a tone that invited no further inquiry.

  Michael was on the buses again the following morning, this time for the ride to the Ballymun public housing estate, which was almost as far out of town as the airport. It took him a while to locate Irene Brogan’s name, but he found it in one of several high modernistic towers, which looked as if they had been constructed in the 1960s. Michael didn’t much like the look of the place, a mix of high, low, and medium-height blocks of flats. The phrase “brutalist architecture” came to mind. And he didn’t like the look of some of the characters lurking about the place, vacant-eyed young people who gave him the impression they’d run a knife into him as soon as wish him good day. He just had to be on the enormous estate for five minutes to know it was a social engineering experiment gone horribly wrong. And five minutes in the elevator — which stalled on the sixth floor on the way up, trapping Michael with a man who had vomited down the front of his shirt — offered some insight as to why Irene Brogan never set foot outside her flat.

  Mrs. Brogan peered out at Michael in answer to his knock. She cast a quick look right and left in the corridor and then returned her attention to Michael. He introduced himself and said he was a friend of a business owner in the city, a man who owned a pub that was being targeted by a vandal. And if he could have a few minutes of her time, he would explain why he had sought her out. She looked at him with the suspicion his story might be said to deserve, and he smiled a bit sheepishly.

  “I’m not here to sell you anything. I’m not even going to quote scripture.”

  She reluctantly admitted him, then banged the door shut behind him. She was a short, wide woman dressed in some sort of lime-green lounging outfit that billowed about her.

  “Welcome to the People’s Republic of Ballymun, Father. I hope none of my comrades treated you to any disrespect on the way in.”

  “No, no, Mrs. Brogan, I had no trouble at all. But yourself, are you all right? How long have you been living here?”

  “I’ve survived here for nearly twenty years. I wouldn’t call it living.”

  “Do you have family in the area?”

  She raised a cynical eyebrow. “I have no one here. I might as well be in Moscow.”

  “Who helps you out then? Brings you things you need? Takes you for appointments?”

  “There’s a young one here. I give her a few bob a month, and she does my errands.”

  “Is there somewhere else you could go? I’d be happy to help you make arrangements —”

  “Would I be here if I had somewhere else to go? I can tell you’re a good soul, Father. Thank you, but I’m all right. There are plenty who are worse off than I am. Now let me make you a cup of tea, and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Michael stood at the window, looking out at the bleak scene below. A jet plane roared by, rattling the windowpanes.

  Mrs. Brogan returned with the tea, and they sat down. “As I explained, I’m helping a friend who runs a pub in the city. A vandal has been spray-painting graffiti on the place, and the messages seem to relate either to the publican himself or to some of the regular customers there. One of the regulars is a man named Eddie Madigan.” Mrs. Brogan’s lips tightened at the mention of the name. “Someone told me, and I don’t have a tactful way of putting this, that your family and the Madigans do not get on very well.”

  “Your informant is correct.”

  “Would you be willing to tell me what lies behind the ill feeling?”

  “I don’t mind telling you. In fact, I’d be happy to broadcast it on RTÉ if they’d let me. It goes back to June 1920, couple of years before I was born. Denny Brogan was my father’s older brother; there was twelve years or so between them. There was Denny and his wife Meg, and Liam and Tippy. They had a place ten miles north of here. The family ran a creamery. Denny was with the Volunteers, who by that time had joined up with the Irish Republican Brotherhood to become the IRA. Denny was a crack shot with the rifle, and he’d just as quickly pin you with his eyes if he heard a foul word come out of your mouth. There was no ‘bloody’ or ‘eff’ or ‘damn’ in the presence of Denny Brogan. If you were staying at his house — and you’d be welcome to stay as long as you needed — you’d not be missing Mass on Sunday. Nor would you be sodden with drink in his presence. You’d have a drop or two and you’d leave the premises walking like a gentleman. That’s what he was, a gentleman and a soldier, fighting under the inspiration of Michael Collins to rid his country of an occupying force.

  “And his most trusted comrade in the world was Eddie Madigan, grandfather to the man you’d know as Eddie Madigan today. Those two stood together, took orders together, planned and schemed and fought together. Denny trusted Madigan absolutely. Denny even let himself be subject to a disapproving blast by Mick Collins over some oversight committed by Madigan, which Collins thought was Denny’s fault. Some little cock-up, I don’t know what, but you couldn’t be too careful in those days, and Mick had to keep a tight rein on them. So Denny stood there in front of Collins, who was giving out to him without mercy, and Denny took it rather than breathe a word of the fact that it was his friend Madigan who had banjaxed things.

  “Denny’s Volunteer service meant he had to be absent from the creamery on a good many occasions. So Meg was left to do the work, and Liam helped as best he could, him being only eleven years old at the time. Heavy work, running a creamery. It’s 1920 I’m talking about, so the Tans were here.”

  “Right,” Michael said. The Black and Tans were a ragtag outfit cobbled together by the British, made up of First World War veterans who had returned to England and Scotland in 1918 only to find themselves surplus to requirements. A bunch of ruffians, they were,
sent over to restore order in the Irish colony. They got their nickname from the patched-together uniforms they wore. In Ireland to this day their name was synonymous with chaos and brutality.

  “Savages!” Irene cried. “Well, they were getting too close for comfort, nosing around for members of the IRA in the village and thereabouts.

  “Liam was Meg and Denny’s only child. Nobody seemed to know the why of it; they just never had any more children. So, as you can imagine, the sun rose and set on Liam Brogan.”

  “Oh, well, who was Tippy then? A cousin?”

  “No, no, he was a beloved part of the immediate family. A little black and white border collie with some other stuff mixed in, the dearest little dog you could ever hope to see, with a dear, sweet face on him and one ear that flopped over.

  “That dog had taken on strange ways with Liam. They had always played together. Liam would throw sticks and Tippy would fetch them, the usual thing, you know. Tippy would run in circles around Liam’s feet when they went out walking, yapping and barking and carrying on, and Liam would bend over and grab him gently by the ears and tell him to get out of the way and let him walk, and you’d swear you could see the dog laughing when he looked up at Liam and started running around his feet again. But in the time leading up to the day when the Tans arrived, Tippy was not nearly as playful. He walked at Liam’s side, almost but not quite brushing against his leg, not a word out of him. Or not a sound, I mean. When the child would sit or lie down, Tippy would curl up beside him. And never sleep, just stare at the boy with those big brown eyes. It only came out later that Liam had something wrong with him, something terrible the medical tests hadn’t been clear on before this happened with the Tans.

  “So it was that on a day in June 1920, a motley crew of Black and Tans in their Crossley tender roared up to the creamery looking for Denny. He wasn’t there. So what does a well-disciplined army of men do when they can’t find the fellow they’re after? Set fire to his barn, of course! Which they did.