“After we told Brendan about our predicament, we got a phone call from the planning department telling us to put in for a good site on the brow of a hill.”
She sat down and everyone was quiet again. Several mourners got up and talked. They all told stories about Sweeney’s kindness and generosity. It was as though the old man had bowled through his seventy-one years, flinging out loans and favors like a one-man charity, smoothing out bureaucratic wrangles and ensuring the survival of nearly every Catholic-owned business in the area.
Daly took advantage of a pause in the stories to slip upstairs to the toilet. The IRA man was still blocking the corridor to the front door, forcing people to sneak past him. From downstairs, Daly heard a door being slammed and the sound of stifled laughter. He was surprised there was no queue at the bathroom. Perhaps the mourners were frightened of missing something. But what? he wondered.
When he returned, a group of people had moved their chairs away from where he was sitting, leaving him alone with the woman with the stained teeth. She looked up as he sat down, but this time she did not smile.
She leaned over and nudged Daly. “You’re Frank Daly’s son. Tell us what you remember about Brendan Sweeney.”
“Me?” said Daly. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t let us stop you,” said the man opposite, “we’re all mourners here. Everyone here is free to say what he or she thinks.”
His voice was gentle and encouraging, but it also carried a warning note of authority.
The seriousness of his expression suggested to Daly that this was not an opportune moment to play the stranger. Not for the first time that evening, he wondered how many of the mourners knew he was a policeman. Slowly, he stood up.
“There is one thing I cannot ignore about Brendan Sweeney,” he began. “It happened when I was a young boy. I was playing at the bottom of the lane when he strolled up one evening. He was wearing an old coat and a pair of green wellies. Even though Sweeney was the wealthiest farmer in the parish, he was never happier than in a pair of old boots talking about the price of cattle.
“He said he liked to tell things as they were and wanted to chat with my dad. He gave me a pound note and walked into the house. Dad was having a shave before going to Mass. I think it was the end of Lent. The bathroom window was open and I could hear snatches of their conversation. Dad kept on shaving. He told Sweeney that he was in a hurry to get to Mass. This must have angered Sweeney.
“He began accusing Dad of something. I couldn’t hear the words, but it must have been serious. The tap in the sink kept gushing water.
“‘I won’t give a damn penny to murderers claiming to be Irishmen,’ was all I heard my father say.
“Later when Sweeney had left, I came in and saw Dad phone his solicitor. He was holding a handkerchief to where he had cut himself on his neck. They never spoke to each other from that day on. A few weeks later, an IRA gang hijacked my father’s car. They wore balaclavas and told my father Sweeney had sent them to collect their dues.
“That’s all that I remember.”
When Daly sat down everyone went quiet. The woman beside him nibbled at a leftover sandwich and the man opposite answered his glance with a cold stare.
From an unexpected visitor welcomed to the wake, Daly felt himself become an undesirable element in their midst. The man opposite kept staring at Daly, his cheeks flushed red. It was as though they could not bear to have Sweeney’s reputation questioned in any way. In their eyes, he could do no wrong. Inwardly, Daly groaned.
From the back of the crowd, an anonymous voice spoke up.
“Sweeney was an extortionist and a blackmailer all right. And he bankrupted anyone who had the courage to cross him. He might have been a great Catholic, but he would have shot you as soon as look at you.”
An old man pushed his chair forward in response. Butter dripped down his chin, but he appeared oblivious to it. His rasping voice trembled in his throat.
“What Brendan Sweeney did to my family was a crime,” he declared.
“Tommy was our only son, and he was nineteen. He was never any trouble. He was somebody we could rely on and trust, and he lived for cars. That was his whole life. I never thought he would die pleading for mercy. Brendan Sweeney ordered his execution. Tommy was blamed for causing a car crash that left the daughter of an IRA man badly injured.
“The men who killed Tommy all wore boiler suits and surgical gloves. It was a planned operation, and they broke every bone in his body. Afterwards Sweeney said no one was allowed to speak to the police about what had happened. He said he would take full responsibility for the murder.
“That man was nothing but a coldhearted butcher. Most people if they had to put down a cat or a dog would walk away with some feeling. I wanted to know if he ever felt remorse. Now I’m at his wake. I used to dream about this day, but all I feel is sadness.”
The old man’s voice rolled about in his throat, and tears streamed down his face.
“In this part of the world life is cheap; you won’t find it cheaper anywhere else. Sweeney was a monster. It would take years to list all the terror that bastard waged upon his own people.”
In the tense silence that followed, a young woman stood up, placed a coat over the old man’s shoulders and wiped his chin. “Let’s go home, Granddad,” she whispered. “Don’t cry on his account. It’s too late for that.”
Egged on by the old man’s grief something broke loose among the mourners, a pull of emotion that passed from person to person like an electrical current, bringing a woman to her feet, her chin stuck out defiantly.
“My nephew was kneecapped by Sweeney’s gang for getting into a fight at a pub with a bunch of IRA men. That mistake ruined his life. His mother had just bought him a new pair of football boots. They lifted him from the football ground and took the laces from the boots and tied him up. He’s never kicked a football since.”
She sat down quickly and immediately a man took her place with another story. It was clear Sweeney had a split personality, wronging as many people as he had helped.
The mourners began quarrelling. One side claimed Sweeney had been a generous patron of the parish and a good Republican, the other that he had terrorized his neighbors and turned the parish into his personal fiefdom. Daly got up. He quietly slipped from the room into the kitchen, and out through the back door.
The rain that had been falling all day had lightened, but the drizzle still enshrouded the view from the back door. The mountain behind Sweeney’s house was obscured but a nearby gully and its rumbling water could clearly be heard. Sweeney must have woken to its perpetual roar every day of his life. Perhaps that was where the old man got his edge, Daly thought, that intimidating sense of violence, as he rolled from house to house along the gentler slopes of the valley below.
The latch of the back door clicked shut as someone else left the house. The IRA man slowly moved into view, inspecting the space around him, discreet but without making an effort to be quiet. His steel-tipped boots echoed on the cobbled yard. Too late, Daly realized he had walked into a trap.
“Why are you here?” he asked, squaring up to Daly.
“Brendan was a neighbor of my father’s.”
“No, I mean what are you doing here?”
He prodded Daly in the shoulder.
“I’m a police detective and I wish you’d stop doing that,” said Daly.
“You’re not a detective here. You can be a mourner come to pay his respects but not a policeman. You can’t come here and poke your nose into a dead man’s life.”
“I understand,” said Daly, trying to hold the terseness in his voice. He did not want to signal surrender, only a growing awareness of how complicated the situation was. He glanced tentatively toward the kitchen door, but it was shut. Dusk was advancing, and even though the IRA man had removed his beret and sunglasses, his face was difficult to see in the fading light. He poked Daly again in the shoulder and began circling him, jabbing him here and there as though inspecting what sort of stuffing he was made from.
Before the detective could brace himself against an attack, a cigarette flared in the darkness. Someone stepped out of the shadows and beckoned the paramilitary to return to the house. The new arrival had a peaked cap, and the collars of his coat were drawn up. Dressed to draw the minimum of attention to himself. He pushed his face forward for inspection and Daly recognized the tufty beard and shining eyes of Owen Sweeney.
“Sorry about that,” said the politician, glancing at the retreating back of the paramilitary. “They’re like gun dogs quivering with excitement at the scent of prey. You’re lucky, you know. The next time you saw your face could have been in a mirror on a hospital ward.”
A grimace creased Sweeney’s face and he gestured toward the house. “Typical Irish wake, eh? My father’s not even buried and they’re tearing his reputation to shreds. It’s disgusting.”
He rocked back on his heels, drew heavily on his cigarette, and allowed himself a rueful grin. “All the same, Dad could be a sick old bastard when he wanted to be.”
There was an air of potent self-assurance about Sweeney in the shadowy light. Daly had seen that smug confidence before in senior Republicans, former paramilitaries who had done time in prison and were now celebrated politicians in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Men who believed they held the balance of power, sure that the dealt cards favored them.
Together the two men watched the signal light of a helicopter flash in the murky sky.
“How could the British ever defeat us?” said Sweeney, softly, almost wistfully. “We were stubborn and showed them we meant business.”
He turned and concentrated his gaze on Daly.
“Glad you could make it, by the way, Inspector. Dad would have been pleased to have a policeman praying over his body.”
He tossed away the cigarette. “Also, I’ve something I want to show you.”
Sweeney’s self-satisfaction slowed his voice into an intoxicated drawl.
“But that can wait. You know, at the time of the cease-fire we weren’t losing the battle. British soldiers had to walk backwards on the streets of every town in Armagh and Tyrone. And you don’t do that if you’re winning the war.”
He licked his lips as though the words had left a sweetness behind he desperately wanted to savor. From his pocket, he took another cigarette and lit it.
More smoking and silence.
When Sweeney spoke again his voice was still low but less intimate.
“Let’s get down to business. Tell me what you make of Devine’s murder. I hear it was quite a crime scene.”
“Officially it’s too early to say. Unofficially, I’m working hard on the angle that Republicans were involved,” said Daly.
“I wouldn’t get too excited about that avenue of investigation.”
“Why not? There’s enough about Devine’s past and the way in which he was killed to justify such an inquiry.”
“Republicans had nothing to do with his murder. An incident like that would have far-reaching political consequences. The whole peace process might unravel. Anyway, we had no intelligence that Devine was an informer. He wasn’t even on the radar. If you’re interested in finding his killers, you’ll have to spread your net a little wider. Devine had in his possession sensitive information which could have done damage to a lot of people.”
“You sound well informed, better than Special Branch themselves.”
“Who? Donaldson and his cronies?” said Sweeney derisively. “They couldn’t investigate the whereabouts of their boots.”
He crushed the cigarette, and his face grew animated.
“Since the cease-fire we Republicans and the intelligence organizations have been working by a set of unwritten rules. One of them is that we keep an eye on each other. Trust is in very short supply. We strike a balance, look after our own security, and everyone gets on with promoting peace.”
Sweeney turned his big-boned face at Daly, all trace of enjoyment gone from his features.
“Unhappily, you were assigned Devine’s murder, and ever since you’ve been trespassing on everyone’s territory. It’s time to stop taking an interest in Republicans, Daly. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the ranks and your investigation is stirring up all sorts of conspiracy theories.”
“I’ll suspect anyone I want,” replied Daly.
Sweeney looked at him fiercely and then a twinkle of mirth flashed again in his eyes. From the inside of his jacket, he produced a sheaf of papers.
“You know Devine was kneecapped in his youth. He’d been pestering some girl and the order was put out to give him a little tickle on the knee. I fired the bullet. Looks like I should have aimed it higher.”
He rolled the papers into a baton and smacked them into the fat of his palm.
“These are the legal files you retrieved from Devine’s house. They make interesting background reading. Nobody wants a bloodbath unless it’s really necessary. Devine wasn’t murdered out of blind fury or revenge. He was killed because it was necessary. And the orders must have come from very high up.”
“Who are you talking about? The intelligence services?”
“Who knows? But don’t expect any help from them. Their brief is to ensure the investigation goes ’round in circles until people like you get tired of pursuing it. Devine has no family, so the expectation is there’ll be no campaigning relatives to keep his case in the spotlight.”
He handed Daly the papers.
“Want to know something you’ll never see written down in any report or file? One of your lot tried to recruit me once. A Special Branch officer nicknamed the Searcher.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“His name was David Hughes, the man who’s leading you a merry dance at the minute. I remember him as a self-righteous prat with a strong sense of duty and no mercy. But I hear dementia has made him much more pleasant to get on with.”
It was turning out to be an evening of the strangest questions and confessions, thought Daly.
He glanced at the papers. “What about the pager?”
“The pager?” asked Sweeney. “I had to return it to its rightful owners.”
“Who are they?”