Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  “I can see that. So there’d be a new priest at Saint Matthew’s now? Is there a full-time secretary?”

  “Yes, and yes. And they are out of the office for the duration of the noontime Mass. So there is the better part of an hour when the place is unoccupied, but — Brennan, in case you suspect I’m going to try to use you to do my dirty work again, I am not.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if it would require me to dress in outlandish garb and affect the dialect and mannerisms of a southern U.S. redneck, so that alone tempts me to offer my services.”

  “Brennan, I am not about to take advantage of your kindness. Or of the fact that there has been drink taken here tonight. I have fond memories of drinking myself, as you know, and not-so-fond memories of some of the decisions I made and the mornings I suffered as a result.”

  “This isn’t the drink talking here, Ronan.”

  “You have worked above and beyond the call of duty in the Dublin bombing investigation. I will not prevail upon you again.”

  “You forget. I have a personal interest in having the Dublin bombers prosecuted, just as you have, and that accounts for the bit of bad theatre I took part in at the Iron Will bar.”

  “True. This, however, is something else altogether.”

  “It may be. But it’s a parish office with a priest and his secretary. It is not a bar full of murderous Loyalist paramilitaries. I survived that; I should be able to deal with a couple of church folk.”

  “No, Brennan. I shall call upon my former . . .”

  “Men who served with distinction with you when you were second-in-command of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA.”

  “They were loyal soldiers. I’m sure one of them will volunteer for the mission, though I’d never be able to reveal the reason for it.”

  “I, on the other hand, would look completely at home in a Catholic church or office. It could be as simple as me appearing at the office a few minutes before Mass time, with some excuse or other and then expressing an interest in attending Mass. Oh, but could I use the phone and make a couple of calls first, before I join you for the Eucharist? I’ll be there as close to twelve o’clock as I can make it.”

  “Then you’d clatter down the stairs to the cellar and set about ransacking the place looking for the weapon, hoping it’s just lying around, not locked away or anything.”

  “That would be my hope.” He got up and went to the bar for one last pint. When he returned to the table, he took up the conversation where he had left off. “Of course if there’s a vault, I have no experience as a safecracker. My only experience has been a bit part as a yokel new in town and wonderin’ where the country music bars are located.”

  “There’s no safe, or so I’m told. Maybe some old filing cabinets, which of course may be locked.”

  “And the new priest may have got rid of the weapon by now.”

  “He hasn’t.”

  “You know that?”

  “He probably doesn’t know it’s there.”

  “Well, if he looked through his new workplace, surely he’d find whatever was there.”

  “It’s hidden, and he’d have no reason to search every nook and cranny for something he doesn’t know exists.”

  “And yet whoever you send in will be able to find it.”

  “Tom is bound and determined that he is going in for it. Which would be the end of him, and I’ve made that clear to him. He doesn’t know anything about the cellar, how to get access to it, whether there is an alarm. If it’s someplace fairly open and neglected, maybe he could get in and root around. But he doesn’t know that, and he can hardly go into the parish house and ask.”

  “There could be two parts to this mission. The first, an innocent visit to Saint Matthew’s, to case the joint without appearing to do so. The second depends upon the first. If the basement is seen to be easily accessible, the search is conducted, and, with a heap of luck, the gun is found and removed.”

  “And luck will abound, inevitably.”

  “O ye of little faith.”

  “I’m more of a Murphy’s Law kind of a man, Brennan. You know, if anything can go wrong, it will. So I’m telling you what I told Tomás: stay away!”

  He was almost certainly right, but Brennan refrained from saying so. Because he knew, as surely as he knew the “Pater Noster” and the “Tantum Ergo,” that Tomás Burke was going to go after that weapon.

  Chapter XIV

  Brennan

  Brennan awoke on Friday morning with a full bladder, a queasy stomach, and the unshakeable perception that the world was spinning around him. The planet was spinning, he knew, but surely with him securely on it and not at the speed of light. How had he got himself into such a fix? Again. Madden’s, that was it. The music was brilliant, the craic was mighty, and the taps did ne’er run dry. Did Brennan have to get up? Could he just pass the day in bed, then wake up refreshed and sober and not the least hungover? But he had to have a slash. Urgently. And once he was on his feet . . . He forced himself out of the bed and into the bathroom, got himself cleaned up, and then returned to his room where he sat at the little desk, head in hands. Wasn’t there something he had to do?

  No, it was all that talk with Ronan about Tom and the murder of that poor young backpacker, killed somehow in self-defence. And Tom’s gun was now stashed in a church basement. How did it get there? Ronan hadn’t answered that question and likely never would. There was nobody home when Brennan went down for his breakfast. A relief, really. He wouldn’t have to look across the table at his cousin and be faced with how worried the man was about the fate of his son.

  Brennan headed out to Ardoyne to do good works at Holy Cross school and put his family’s troubles out of mind for the remainder of the working day. But when he said a private Mass in the empty church before returning home, he was overwhelmed with worry and sorrow, for his own relations and for the van der Meers, the family of the young lad who had been killed, the family that had no idea where their son had gone. Brennan felt compelled to try to assist in some way, but he didn’t know how. Climbing out of a cellar in east Belfast with a gun in his hand was obviously not an option.

  Leaving Holy Cross church he saw the parish secretary, Mary Pat, locking the outside door to the office and preparing to leave. “Hi, Father. I’m leaving a wee bit early today. Appointment with the dentist! I hope no calls come in to the office while I’m gone, but it’s the only time I could get an appointment.”

  “Just say three Hail Marys and a Glory Be, and your sin will be forgiven.”

  She laughed and said, “Thank you, Father, I’ll do that.”

  “I could go in and answer any calls, if you like. Till when? Five?”

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

  “No trouble.” It would just be half an hour.

  “Well, if you’re sure . . .”

  “I’m sure. Just open up and let me in. If anyone rings, I’ll take a message.”

  She unlocked the door and told him just to shut it tight when he left; it would lock. She thanked him and went off to her appointment.

  Brennan went inside the office and sat at the desk. In fact no calls came in, and there was nothing he had to do. He stood up and looked at a display of photos of the church and the Crumlin Road in former times, including some tough times for Ardoyne at the height of the Troubles. At five o’clock he got up and closed the door, making sure it was locked, and he walked out to the Crumlin Road to wait for his bus. On the way to Andersonstown it struck him how easy it would be to pay a friendly visit to the parish office across town at Saint Matthew’s, have a chat with the parish secretary — he had been told there was just the one — and keep her attention on him while someone else had a look at the cellar, and the possible ways to achieve access thereto. And if that someone returned to the cellar at a later date and found a gun there, would anyone connect an unmemorable,
innocent visit from an amiable priest and a later escapade involving a gun? If indeed anyone got caught with a gun? As long as Brennan had no contact with the pistol, and there was a gap in time between the two events, surely there would be nothing to connect him to the weapon, or at least nothing that could count as evidence against him.

  He knew all too well that any plan could go awry but he couldn’t think of any other way to help Ronan in his laudable effort to give the bereaved family the remains of their son, and to put out of circulation the one piece of evidence that would condemn Ronan’s own son to life in the Long Kesh prison.

  * * *

  It was a painful encounter with Tomás Burke that evening which set in motion the Saint Matthew’s church weapon retrieval scheme. They were sitting in Tom’s car, the young man’s head down and his tall frame slumped over the steering wheel. He fought back tears as Brennan told him he knew about the shooting, knew it wasn’t an intentional act of murder, and knew where the gun was located. Even though Tom did not provide any details of the incident, Brennan assured him that he would treat the matter with all the confidentiality of the confessional seal. He then outlined the plan he had in mind.

  “My father can’t know,” Tom said. “He’ll kill me if he finds out what we’re going to do.”

  “You and me both, Tom. He warned me not to get involved.”

  But he was involved; he and Tomás were in it together. Three days later, a few minutes before noon in the bucketing rain, Father Burke washed up at the door of Saint Matthew’s parish office. Dressed in his black clerical suit and white Roman collar under a light-weight nylon jacket, he tried not to look as if he had the janglers. He was not usually a skittish type, but this was east Belfast, a serious crime had been committed, and he was conspiring to make a key piece of evidence disappear. And the whole performance would have to be improvised. He was going in on a wing and a prayer. Not that he had the gall to pray to the Man Above for assistance in this caper.

  The first thing he noted was an alarm system and a keypad beside the entrance to the building. But this was the middle of the day, so he opened the door and went inside. The closest inner door bore a sign “Parish Office,” so he knocked and waited. A few seconds later the door was opened a crack, and a female voice said, “Who is it?”

  Giving his name as Burke was obviously out of question, and he had reasoned that giving a false name could come back to haunt him later. Why engage in deception if he was innocent of any wrongdoing? So he had decided he would lose his voice. And become one of those public sneezers and coughers who were such an annoyance in real life.

  He smiled and pointed at his throat, then held his right fist up to his ear miming the use of a telephone. The door opened an inch or two more, and a pair of watery pale grey eyes looked him over. She took in his collar.

  “Oh, Father! You’re half-drowned!” The parish secretary was a short, stout, grey-haired woman in her late sixties. “This weather!”

  He gave what he hoped was a rueful laugh and nodded in agreement.

  It was precisely because of this weather that he and Tom had waited and embarked on their mission today; it meant that Tom could walk around the church property obscured in a rain jacket and hood and not raise suspicions. His task was to scope out the entrance to the building and the cellar for a later visit.

  “I got soaked myself when I came in at half six. It’s been going on that long!”

  Now he had to get into the office and close the door so Tom could slip into the corridor behind him. Brennan turned away and sneezed a couple of times into his hand, then smiled at her again and tried to look sheepish.

  “Sure you’ve an awful cold.”

  He nodded and mouthed the words, “I’ve lost my voice.”

  “Come in, Father, and get out of that rain.”

  He stepped in and shut the door behind him. Then he mouthed a bunch of words that he knew she couldn’t catch.

  “I’m sorry, Father, I can’t understand you.”

  At that point he reached for his wallet and took out a holy card, which featured a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary ascending into the clouds. He then made a gesture of writing, and raised his eyebrows. Oh yes, she had a pen for him. She went over to the desk and he followed at a respectful distance. She handed him the pen and he bent over and wrote on the card, “Lost my voice. Came to see the cranes. Now need taxi!”

  “Oh, you wanted to look at Samson and Goliath.” The nicknames for the big cranes at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which dominated the skyline of east Belfast.

  There was the sound of a door opening outside. Brennan knew Tom would have made his entrance, silently, well before now. Brennan steeled himself for a new arrival in the office. But the footsteps kept going.

  “That will be himself,” the secretary said, “Father Mulholland here for our noon Mass.”

  Good. The priests use that entrance when they come into the parochial house, or one of them does anyway. And the Mass times posted outside showed there is a Mass at seven in the morning. The sun would not be up then.

  Brennan put the holy card back in his wallet. He thought of something then and directed his eyes over her head at a photo of the Pope. She turned to see what he was looking at and he took the opportunity to rub the pen all over on his wet jacket. Not that he expected his prints to match anything controversial in Belfast! She made a comment about the lovely picture of His Holiness and turned back to Brennan just as he was replacing the pen. He made a gesture to indicate that he had got it all wet.

  “No worries,” she said and laughed, and she dried it off on her skirt. “I’ll ring for a taxi now, Father. Then I’ll be off to Mass. Starts on the stroke of noon!”

  She called the taxi and told her visitor, “He’ll be here in ten minutes. They’re busy today in the rain. You’re welcome to stay in here till he comes. Stand over by the radiator and get some heat on you.”

  He mouthed a “thank you” and moved over beside the radiator. She said goodbye and left for Mass, and he made the sign of the cross over her, mouthing the words, “Bless you.”

  He stayed in the office for three minutes or so, praying in his unworthiness that nobody else would come in before he made his escape, and agonizing over the fact that this pantomime would likely be more memorable to the secretary than just coming in and giving a false name. With the lost-voice skit, though, he could at least later deny an intention to deceive, which he would not be able to do if he lied about his identity. By now he figured that Tom would have had plenty of time to check out the access to the cellar. Brennan got up and walked unhurriedly to the exit and submitted himself once again to what felt like forty days and forty nights of rain coming down all at once on his head. He had no intention of getting into a taxi.

  Chapter XV

  Monty

  After work on Tuesday, the last day of February, Monty headed to the south part of the city where several of his colleagues were meeting some of the law profs and students from Queen’s University. They were gathering for a regular weekly gripe session held in Laverys —no apostrophe — bar. Maybe he should open his own bar, call it the “No Apostrophe.” It would be informally known as Collins. Anyway, in Laverys Monty was soon planted on a barstool and was introduced to a number of professors, law students, barristers, and solicitors, all intent on an evening of serious drinking and conversation. Like their kind everywhere, they got into a groove regaling each other with war stories from their days in the courts or with their clients. Here, of course, there really was a history of war, and some of these people had been close enough to get powder burns on their barristers’ wigs. Then there was the ecstasy of victory and the agony of defeat in the Diplock courts, where juries had been abolished along with some other cherished cornerstones of the justice system. One of the profs at the law school, Bill Akerman, told Monty he had just published a paper on the subject, and Monty said he would make a point o
f reading it.

  “Read it, sure,” the lawyer said, “or go over and talk to that fellow who just walked in. The O’Reilly. He’s a very experienced solicitor, a fixture in the Crumlin Road Courthouse.” He nodded in the direction of a tall, distinguished-looking man with a mane of copper and silver hair, who had just arrived at the bar and was ordering a drink.

  “That’s the famed Reddy O’Reilly. The yellow press calls him ‘the IRA lawyer’ but that’s just the usual slander of identifying the lawyer with his clients.”

  “I guess that would make me the killers’ lawyer back home in Nova Scotia. Or, here, the malingerers’ lawyer, for all the personal injury claims we do at Ellison Whiteside.”

  “Yeah, I know. I had my own practice for fifteen years before I began teaching at the law school, and I used to get the same treatment. You want to say to those people, ‘Just wait till the knock comes on your own door at midnight, peelers or the army there to fit you up for a crime. See how quick you’ll be to plead for my services then.’”

  “Exactly.”

  The O’Reilly was hailed from various tables around the room as he waited for his pint. Then, glass in hand, he made the rounds, greeting people and trading quips, if the laughter was any indication. He caught sight of Bill and came over. A pair of steady hazel eyes took in the new boy in the bar. There were laugh lines around the eyes; Monty guessed he was in his late forties, like Monty himself.

  “I’m Monty Collins,” he said and put out his hand.

  “Redmond O’Reilly,” the man replied, and they shook.

  “Join us?”

  “Thank you.” He took the stool beside Monty’s and held court from there, as a succession of lawyers came in and stopped for a word. Monty and Reddy started in on their stories and stayed on the drink, and by the time Monty left Laverys, he had an experienced solicitor for his IRA client and a recommendation for the two Loyalists. “I’d never work in this town again,” O’Reilly told him, “if I took on a UDA or UVF case. But I’ll send you to someone who’ll do a stellar job for you on those two files. And I’ll give you the ins and outs of briefing a barrister when you get to that stage.”