Death at Christy Burke's

by Anne Emery

  “The gun Christy fired was a Russian Makarov PM, black with the communist star engraved on the butt of it. Russian bullets lodged in a garda car. Not too much trouble for the gardaí to put two and two together if they ever found that gun, so Da had it buried in the tunnel beneath the pub, and I left it there. Kept it as a souvenir.”

  “How did Christy get hold of a gun like that?”

  “That’s the sort of question you don’t want to be asking, Bren, even to this day.”

  “Well, somebody used that gun, formerly kept on the premises of Christy Burke’s pub, to kill the Christy Burke’s vandal.”

  “You can rest assured it wasn’t me.”

  “I believe you. But that doesn’t mean the guards will, if they connect the gun to the building we’re sitting in right now.”

  Chapter 19

  Michael

  The morning after the gun revelation, Michael was sitting in a taxi, barely listening to the amiable chattering of the driver. Michael was preoccupied. There was someone he had to see. Something he had to know, about a body that was transferred from one place to another and then wrapped for disposal.

  He paid the driver and thanked him, then stood for a minute, getting his bearings and gathering his thoughts. He looked at a truck parked off to the side, then walked towards it. There was something slick in the open cargo area of the truck, a spill of some kind. Suddenly, there was the sound of feet hitting pavement, and Michael whirled around. A man had come up behind him. They stared at each other. Michael could see the anxiety and fear in the other man’s eyes.

  “Is there something you’d like to tell me?” Michael asked him.

  A long moment of silence, then a barely audible, “Yes. Yes, Father, there is.”

  “Where?”

  “In the front.” The man gestured to the vehicle. “Nobody will bother us there.”

  When they were seated with the doors closed, the man said, “I know they’re going to search here. The guards.” He began to tremble.

  Father O’Flaherty waited for what was to come.

  “He was blackmailing me. The vandal. He made an anonymous call to me on the phone and threatened to expose me unless I paid him off. Said he knew the truth about me and would make it public. And he did just that, when I told him to fuck off with himself and burn in hell. He painted a sly accusation on the wall of Christy Burke’s, then called me again. I tried to suss out who he was, but I couldn’t. He hung up the phone and went at Christy’s wall again. A bunch from the pub stood guard but could never catch him at it. Which was fortunate for me; my secret would have been revealed. Anyway, when he telephoned me the third time, I was ready for him. I stayed on at Christy’s after closing time. Went down into Finn’s tunnel. I knew there was a gun there and I knew it was loaded. I took it.”

  Michael looked him in the eye. “Have you heard the latest news? That gun was used in the shooting of two Special Branch detectives in 1969.”

  “I heard.” From the sudden pallor in the man’s face, it looked as if he had just heard it for the first time. After a few moments, Michael prompted him to continue his story.

  “I told him, the blackmailer, to meet me at Christy’s at three in the morning, and I made a promise that I’d finally pay him to leave me alone. I had my vehicle parked nearby, the one we’re using now as a confession box! I stayed inside Christy’s, waiting, and helped myself to a couple of jars of whiskey. Then I went outside, brought the vehicle up onto the little patch of grass by the pub, retreated to the shadows with my glass, and waited. The man arrived and couldn’t see me around the side of the building, so he started to spray-paint the wall again. I put my drink down, brought out the gun, forced him into the back there.” He indicated the cargo area behind himself and Michael. “And I shot him twice in the back of the head. I had planned to take him out in the country and dump him, so I started to drive away from Christy’s. Then I panicked and wanted to get rid of him right away. So I stopped. I knew about the old freezer that had been abandoned beside the black church. It had been there for weeks. People piled their rubbish there. I cleared the stuff off and dumped the body into the freezer. Made sure the lid was on good and tight. I put all the sacks of rubbish back on top of it and took off. Came back here and spent an hour cleaning up the blood. Then I got into bed and got the shakes and stayed awake till it was time to get myself washed and dressed for Christy’s. Took my regular seat and tried to behave in my normal way. And I guess I did. Nobody even knew the fucker had been killed. The young fellow who worked in the pub a couple of mornings a week, Kevin, he came to work and, if he saw anything out of the ordinary, he must have just put things back to normal and carried on.”

  Both men jumped in their seats at the sound of a car approaching. But it turned and went out of sight. The man was silent for a few minutes, then turned to face Michael.

  “How can a person betray the people who love him, Michael, the people who trust and love him most in the world? I can’t begin to fathom it. To me, the sun rose and set in his eyes. I killed him, Father! I launched myself at him and beat the life out of him. He didn’t have a chance, from the time my fist slammed into the side of his head.”

  Michael stared at him. What does he mean? What’s this about a beating, and a betrayal?

  “He played our games, carried us on his shoulders, walked us to school, fought our battles for us, took a bloody nose for us. Taught us to be strong and true. But he was neither of those things, not when he became a man and —”

  “You’re not talking about the blackmailer now, the vandal. You’re talking about —”

  “My brother. Rod. I killed my own brother, Michael. God forgive me!”

  Michael sat there in the cab of the truck, staring at Jimmy O’Hearn. He could hardly grasp what O’Hearn had just said.

  “Our big brother, the man my sisters and I adored all our lives, betrayed us as soon as the opportunity came up to make a small fortune and keep it all for himself. A crowd of rich Yanks were looking at our family boat business. And Rod knew he could keep all the winnings if he knocked the rest of us out of play. He forged some papers that made me out to be mentally defective! He created some kind of criminal record that was meant to implicate my brother-in-law, Niall, in Donegal. All along I thought we’d been victimized by a crooked lawyer, that Rod was a broken, disappointed man living in poverty in New Zealand. But he created a whole new life for himself and a new name. Ted Hannington. We would still write to Rod O’Hearn at the post office address he kept; every once in a while, he’d send us a pathetic little note meant to show us he was living rough. Couldn’t afford to fly home to Ireland. Didn’t want anyone to see what he’d been reduced to. Well, I scraped up enough money to fly to New Zealand. Didn’t tell the rest of the family. I wanted to scope out the situation first. I found Rod. And had my eyes opened in short order. He tried to cover his deeds with a lot of blather, but I knew. I went at him in a fury, killed him with my bare hands. I weighted his body down with stones and threw it into the sea. When they finally found it, they identified it as Ted Hannington. My sisters still think Rod’s alive and unwell in New Zealand.”

  It took an enormous effort for Michael to hide his agitation as the confession unfolded.

  “But then,” O’Hearn said, “the vandal came into the picture. His name, I learned when I confronted him, was Noel Girvan. He was a low sort of person who had left Dublin and gone out to New Zealand to work, and he met some Irish people, discovered I had been there and, with one thing and another, he figured out the whole wretched business. When he lost his job and came back to Ireland, he saw the chance to make a living by bleeding me dry.”

  O’Hearn leaned forward, put his elbows on the steering wheel, and dropped his head into his hands. He remained motionless for nearly a minute, then sat up, looked in his rearview mirror and said, “It won’t take the guards long to zero in on a man who drinks regularly at Chri
sty Burke’s and has marine engine oil in his possession. That’s what their lab tests will show on the dead man’s clothes. From when he was in the back of the truck. Blair McCrum was in the pub a while back, blathering on about traces of something — plant food or fertilizer — that got on a victim’s clothes when he was kept in the killer’s shed or his truck, whatever it was. That was a wakeup call. I’d mopped up the blood but I’ve got marine oil back there all the time. Now I keep cleaning it out. I even poured a bit of regular car engine oil in its place. I changed the oil, so to speak, Michael! I wonder if the guards will be fooled.” He made a sound like a strangled laugh.

  The guards would not be fooled, Michael reasoned, even though they had not seen what Michael had seen on his earlier visit to the Poolbeg Marina. On that first occasion, when Michael had planned to tell Jimmy O’Hearn the truth about Rod’s betrayal, he had noticed Jimmy cleaning the oil from the bed of his truck. Michael hadn’t thought anything of it, until he saw last night’s news report showing the guards collecting oil samples to compare with the substance found on the victim’s clothing. That’s when it clicked into place for Michael. It would not take the police long to determine that it was boat oil, not car oil, that they should be looking for.

  O’Hearn concluded his terrible story. “The man had to die. Girvan. I could not, and cannot, bear the thought of anyone knowing that I killed my own brother, or that we as a family were betrayed from within. I confess to you, Father O’Flaherty, that I killed Roddy, but nobody will ever hear that from my lips again. They’re going to get me for Noel Girvan, but not for Rod O’Hearn.”

  Michael waited with Jimmy until the guards came to take him away.

  Chapter 20

  Michael

  Christy Burke’s pub was in mourning over the arrest of Jimmy O’Hearn. Michael wasn’t about to divulge anything he had learned from O’Hearn; he regarded their entire conversation as a confession. But he listened to the others, and murmured sympathetic replies. The sympathy was genuine despite the dreadful things Jimmy had done. Hate the sin, love the sinner.

  Michael left Christy’s around suppertime to get ready for Mass at the Pro and returned in the evening. There was a note tacked to Christy’s door, announcing a traditional music session that night in the pub. Inside, the mood and the conversation were much as they had been earlier on. But Michael wanted to get away from that. This was a big night, the night of the peace Mass, and he wanted to enjoy it. He also intended to enjoy his last evening with Kitty Curran, who was flying back to Rome the next morning. So far he had avoided thinking of her departure, but now it was almost here. He chose a table at the back and sat by himself until Kitty, Maura, and Brennan arrived. Brennan, like Michael, was in his Roman collar, and the two women were wearing their churchgoing clothes as well.

  Brennan took orders for soft drinks and went to the bar. Finn said he’d bring them over, so Brennan returned to the table. Leo Killeen arrived then, saw the group at the back, and joined them.

  “Leo!” Frank Fanning called out. “I was reading about you today in the papers. They’re still calling you the IRA priest. Nothin’ ever goes away, does it?”

  “And they’re still calling this the IRA pub, so it’s only fitting that I should be able to get a drink in here, and a quick one at that. The press can call me the divil’s priest, for all I care. Bunch of jackals. I pay them no mind.” He turned to Michael. “Congratulations are in order, I hear. Well done, Sergeant O’Flaherty!”

  Maura and Kitty stared at Michael.

  Brennan leaned over and said, “Word’s out, Michael. You were there with O’Hearn when the guards arrived. You solved it. Good job.”

  “I don’t exactly feel elated over it. Jimmy O’Hearn! Just shows you what we’re all capable of.”

  “Of course,” Brennan said, “we don’t know why the vandal singled out O’Hearn in the first place, or what was so grievous about the accusation that Jimmy killed the man over it.”

  Michael avoided Brennan’s eyes and, after an uncomfortable few seconds, he murmured, “It was a personal matter.” He looked at Leo. “Not political, after all. I suppose that’s a relief in a way.”

  “Your intuition was correct, Michael.”

  “Not much glory in being right, Leo. Poor Jimmy. And God bless and save his poor family.”

  “But we have other things on our minds tonight,” Brennan reminded them after a moment.

  “That’s right,” Michael replied. “A beautiful Mass. Something to hold on to when tomorrow comes.” Michael’s eyes rested on Kitty across the table.

  Finn appeared with the drinks and announced that they were all on the house.

  “Thank you, Finn,” said Brennan, as he lit up a cigarette and took a puff. “But I must say I was hoping Kitty would be buying all the rounds, given that it’s her last night with us here.”

  “Is it now, Kitty?” Finn asked. “Where are you off to?”

  “I’m going back to the Vatican City, Finn, to dry out after all my drinkin’ with you lot.”

  “Will you be back to Dublin any time soon?”

  “I’ll make a point of it.”

  Michael was emboldened then to speak of their next encounter. “Let’s stay in touch so we can meet here again, Kitty. It’s been lovely seeing you.” That was an understatement, but what else could he say, really? Best to stick to practical matters. “Dublin’s only a five-hour flight from home. For me, anyway. How long is it from Rome?”

  “I can get here in three hours. Just a short hop.”

  “And there will always be a bed for you at the house in Stoneybatter, Michael,” Leo assured him.

  “There you go then. We’ll meet here. Or maybe I’ll be called to Rome on urgent business for the Holy Father. I’ve never received a call from the papal apartments in the first forty-five years of my priesthood, but there’s always hope.”

  “I’ll have a word with him on your behalf, acushla,” she assured him.

  “Don’t be listening to her, Mike!” Brennan exclaimed. “I’ll bet she says that to all the fellows she hooks up with. The Pope probably doesn’t even take her calls anymore.”

  “Ah, now, Brennan, I’m sure the Holy Father has left standing orders for Kitty’s calls to go directly to his private quarters.”

  “If he has, it’s only because she’s got him bamboozled, too,” Brennan replied. “Look at her.”

  Michael did. Her eyes sparkled at him, and his heart was filled with love for her. How he would miss her when she left for Rome. Well, there was a postal service and telephones, and there was no law, civil or canonical, against making full use of them. To maintain contact with a friend.

  Brennan was still going on, “A woman out with three men in a bar. What does she get up to in Rome? We can only imagine. She’ll leave you with a broken heart, Michael.”

  “What was it Daniel Patrick Moynihan said?” Maura asked. “To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.”

  Brennan took in a lungful of smoke and exhaled it. “He was right. Walk away now, Michael.”

  “About that next visit to Dublin, Michael,” Kitty said, “any chance you’ll be able to get away on your own, without your little brother tagging along?” She gave Brennan the evil eye, then returned her gaze to Michael. “You and I and Father Killeen will have a much more spiritually uplifting sojourn if we don’t have to put up with this unholy reprobate.”

  Michael laughed and looked at Leo, but it was obvious the banter had gone over his head. He appeared to be preoccupied.

  “All right, lads,” Kitty said, “ad altare Dei. Let’s hope the grace of God descends on one and all, so there’ll be an end to the senseless killing on this island.”

  The young barman, Sean Nugent, walked in then and went behind the bar with Finn.

  “Does this mean you’ll be joining us at the Pro, Finn?” Michael asked
.

  Brennan turned to look at his uncle.

  “No,” was all Finn said. He shared a look with Leo, but no words were spoken.

  The five Mass-goers headed out into the soft misty Dublin night: Kitty and Maura, Brennan, Michael, and Leo.

  As usual, O’Connell Street was thronged with people walking, talking, partying, celebrating a football or a hurling victory. But it wasn’t all ceol agus craic, music and fun. Michael couldn’t miss the stepped-up police presence. Everyone was conscious of what had happened to the Protestant minister from the U.S., and the explosion of violence in the North as a result. How many more people would fall victim to it all before it ended? The event in Dublin, the peace Mass, was meant to bring Irish people of all faiths together, but it was obviously first and foremost a Catholic ceremony. A ceremony that might not be seen in a positive light by everyone on the island.

  Brennan was visibly tense as they crossed the wide thoroughfare and headed east to the church.

  Michael asked quietly, “Brennan, are you expecting trouble at the Mass tonight?”

  “I don’t know what to expect,” he answered.

  Michael’s mind returned to the night of the concert in Belfast, the spine-tingling high note at the end of Leontyne Price’s aria, in which she prayed for peace and cursed those who profaned the sacred places. Was that high note still reverberating in Brennan’s mind? What had he seen, or experienced, that night?

  “Brennan, that night in Belfast, what exactly did you —”

  Brennan replied in a voice that was barely audible. “If I knew, don’t you think I’d tell you, Michael? Tell everyone?”

  They walked along Cathedral Street to Marlborough Street, where the police presence was even more pronounced. A large crowd stood outside the church, illuminated by television lights. A stout man with thinning auburn hair and a large silver cross on his chest was speaking to a TV reporter. The man looked exhausted — perhaps he’d been putting a lot of time into this event — but he gamely answered the reporter’s questions.