Death at Christy Burke's (18 page)

“I hope those activities didn’t include squiring another young lady around town while Maisie was away,” Maura said.

“Oh, no. There was only one girl for Davey. He was crazy about her. But he was a little on the slow side getting the place done up. Well, word came by telegram that she was coming home a couple of days earlier than expected. Panic set in. He had cupboards to refurbish, floors to refinish, walls to paint, curtains that were supposed to be made from fabric she had chosen in the summer. You can imagine. So Davey drafted all his teammates and his drinking pals and got them to work on the house. He yanked his sister away from her job in a typing pool someplace and set her up with their grandmother’s old sewing machine, trying to get the curtains done. Him standing over her grabbing the pink curtain material as she stitched it up, him going at it with the iron, scorching it no doubt, then trying to get it in place over the windows. Can’t you picture him at the ironing board, breaking into a lather of sweat? And there was drink involved. Half the lads were scuppered and making a bollocks of the job. And the clock was ticking away, and the ship was making its inexorable way across the Irish Sea with Maisie aboard.

“This picture is him standing in front of the place. If you look behind him, you can see the curtain rod and the curtains sagging in the front window. Something had gone wrong there. And here’s Dave with a bouquet of flowers ready to present to her along with all the excuses he had ready to go about why the matrimonial home was a shambles. For now. But how it would be fit for a queen in very short order.”

Everyone had gathered in front of the photo during Finn’s recital of the young bridegroom’s woes.

“Looks as if he maintained his sense of humour, though,” Michael remarked. “You can see a twinkle in those eyes.”

“Oh, she’d forgive him anything, by the look of him. Who wouldn’t? What a sweetheart!” Maura exclaimed.

“God love him,” Finn muttered.

“So, how did it go? What happened when she got home?” Michael and Maura asked at once.

“He was dead.”

“What?” Everyone turned to Finn in disbelief.

“Two hours after that photo was taken, Davey was scraping old paint from the front door, and he was shot in the back.”

Maura had her hand to her mouth; she looked as if she were about to cry. Michael obviously felt the same way. “God rest his soul!” Michael murmured. “A lovely young man like that. What a terrible waste. Who shot him?”

“The Free Staters. It was during the Civil War.”

“How terrible!” Maura exclaimed.

“It was a revenge killing. IRA fellows from Davey’s street had done the same to a Free State man, father of five, the week before. That’s the way things were during the Civil War.”

In a country that had endured its share of tragedy over the course of hundreds of years, the Civil War may have been the worst tragedy of all, as Brennan saw it. The old IRA had fought the War of Independence and, against all odds, prevailed against the British Empire. The British withdrew from Ireland for the first time in seven hundred and fifty years. The country was granted the status of a free state, like the Dominion of Canada. Ireland, at long last, had a government to call its own. But there was a price to be paid. The country was still within the British Commonwealth, and members of the new government were required to swear an oath to King George V of England. Not surprisingly, that was utterly unacceptable to diehard Republicans. And six of the thirty-two counties were excluded from the deal. Michael Collins, in signing the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, believed he had signed his own death warrant. And he was right. General Collins was assassinated by his former comrades in 1922. The Civil War between the anti-treaty IRA and the fledgling Irish Free State — the Irish Republican Army versus the National Army — raged for nearly a year, pitting Irishman against Irishman.

“Your neighbour, your drinking companion, your brother,” Finn said, “you never knew who would be next.”

“Someone fundamental to your world was gone from the world in an instant,” Leo agreed. “Happened all the time.”

Everyone was silent after that. Until the jangle of the telephone made them jump. Finn rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the receiver.

“What?” he barked into the phone. He listened for a few seconds, then said, “No. We haven’t. That ought to tell you something.” He slammed the receiver down.

Leo Killeen’s eyes followed him as he came back into the front room. Finn returned the look, then sat down, picked up his glass, and polished off the whiskey.

“What’s going on?” Brennan demanded.

Finn looked from his nephew to his other guests.

“You can trust everybody here, Finn.”

“I know that, Brennan. It’s . . .” He glanced at Leo. “It’s the Merle Odom situation. The television preacher who was . . . who disappeared from Belfast.”

“What’s happening?”

“Nobody knows where he is.
We
don’t know where he is.”

Brennan had his own speculations as to who was included in that “we,” but he was not about to ask. Not in front of the guests. The implication, though, was that Finn Burke and Father Leo Killeen would be expected to know where the American was, to know who had snatched him from the street.

“So,” Brennan said, “you haven’t heard anything that might explain his disappearance.”

“Not a thing.”

“The repercussions of this —”

“Have already begun. There are pitched battles going on in the streets of Belfast right now. A church near the Falls Road was fire-bombed. People retaliated by setting fire to a shop in the Shankill area. Rival gangs are going at each other all over the city. Leaders on all sides are trying to put a lid on it.”

“All sides?” Leo inquired, with an edge to his voice.

“Well, some of the para leaders are egging their people on. What would you expect? And I hear there is a great deal of pressure being brought to bear on the authorities here and in the North, pressure from the Americans to get this solved.”

“I’m going up there,” Leo announced.

“You’re
what
?”

“Finn, this has got to be contained. The man has to be found. Whoever has him must be convinced to produce him, alive, now! I don’t want to think about the forces that might be unleashed if he’s found dead.”

“If we don’t know who has him, Leo, we can hardly persuade them to do the right thing.”

“But I’m thinking if I go up there, and put the word in a few ears, and the word spreads around, to splinter groups . . .”

He wound down and stared at the wall.

Brennan looked at Michael O’Flaherty. Michael’s eyes were pinned on Leo Killeen. Dying to hear more about Leo’s mission but fearful for his safety; it was all there in Michael’s face. But Mike was smart enough to know he was far out of his element, and wise enough to keep his questions and his fears to himself. Brennan could see that every person in the room felt the same way. Even little Normie appeared disturbed. She was a sensitive child; her eyes went from Finn to Leo and back, seeking understanding, or perhaps reassurance.

Only Dominic was oblivious; the baby was playing happily with a set of brightly coloured plastic rings. He stuffed them in his mouth, found them to his liking, then crawled over to Leo, reached up and offered them to him, with a word that sounded like “Da!” Leo laughed and ruffled the child’s dark hair, and the tension was broken, at least for the moment.

“You’ll be wondering where dinner is, I expect,” Finn said. “It’s due to arrive any minute, from the Greek place down the street. In the meantime, let me refresh your drinks.” He did, and the food arrived and was plentiful. When the meal was over, the dinner guests thanked Finn for the evening and said goodnight. They dropped Maura and the children off at the convent with a plateful of Greek delicacies for Kitty Curran.

Michael

Michael O’Flaherty went to the Aughrim Street church the next day, Friday, for morning Mass. When he got to the
Confiteor
, when he confessed that he had sinned “in what I have done and what I have failed to do,” he thought about himself as a sinner, and about the sinners who came to him to make their confessions. Depending on what he heard in the confession box on any given day, his feelings ranged from amusement to exasperation to outrage, but almost without exception he felt compassion and pity for the people whose transgressions he absolved. He thought about this as he made the short walk home, and he realized he had recently acted in a manner unbefitting a man of his calling. The only person who would understand was another priest. When he got to his room, he gave Brennan a call and asked to see him. He said he’d take a walk over to Brennan’s place, but the younger man quickly offered to come to Michael.

“I failed a man the other day, Brennan,” he told Father Burke when the two were seated together in Michael’s room.

Brennan looked at him and waited for him to continue. “A man came to me for, well, I wouldn’t say he came to me for help. He came to thank me for . . . a small kindness I had shown him. And then he started to tell me something. Something dreadful that had happened, that he had done. And I cut him off, refused to hear it.”

“You’re not saying you were his confessor during this encounter, are you, Mike?”

“No. Or at least I don’t think he saw it that way. He knows the drill and would have made it clear, if that had been his intention.”

Brennan nodded as if he understood. Had he caught on that Michael was talking about Tim Shanahan?

“I can’t condone for a minute what he did, Brennan, but . . .”

“What was his attitude? Was he callous about it? Was it something he was boasting about? Or was he unburdening himself, so to speak?”

“I don’t think he was boasting. If that was his intent, I never let him get that far. But, no, I don’t think so. I think he wanted to talk it through, and he might have thought I would be sympathetic, given the . . . situation I had found him in, and the assistance I had provided. A simple act of goodness that I then repudiated and undid by my arrogance in refusing to let him speak!”

“You couldn’t stomach whatever it was he started to tell you.”

“That’s correct. But now I feel I let him down. I know I did. If it had been a confession, I would have listened to whatever he had to say and then decided whether or not I could grant absolution. Instead, I gave him the brush-off, turned him away. Spoke some harsh words while I was at it. He is so obviously a man in need that, no matter what he has done, I should have heard him out, and tried to direct him as best I could.”

“I know what you’re saying, Michael. We all make mistakes. We all do things we’re not proud of. And there comes a time for most of us when we need someone to hear us out. You’ve done that for me, you’ve done it for thousands of others, and something tells me you’re going to do it for this poor devil as well.”

“I am.” Michael stood up. “I’m going right now.”

Less than twenty minutes later, Michael found himself once again at Tim Shanahan’s door. He knocked and waited. Not a sound from inside. He tried again. This time he heard footsteps, and the door opened wide. Shanahan stood there with a book in his hand. Dante, in Italian. He was wearing a pair of blue gym shorts and a grey UCD T-shirt, which was too big for his thin frame. His black hair was clean but dishevelled, as if he had been running his hand through it while reading. He stared at Michael in silence. After a few seconds, he stepped back and made room for Michael to enter the flat. An armchair was bathed in soft light, and there was a cup of tea on a small table beside the chair.

Tim Shanahan sat in his reading chair, and his guest perched on the couch beside him. Michael said, “Bless me Father for I have sinned.”

Shanahan looked at him in astonishment, but Michael continued: “I committed the sins of pride and anger. And intolerance. I failed to carry out my responsibilities as a priest and as a man. Please forgive me. Grant me absolution, and allow me to make up for what I have done.”

The younger man stared, almost, it seemed to Michael, with apprehension.

“Father,” Michael prompted him.

Shanahan started to raise his right hand, then faltered and let it drop. “I haven’t . . . it’s been years . . .”

“Go ahead.”

The man then sat forward in his seat, raised his right hand, and made the sign of the cross over Michael. He spoke in a voice that was barely audible. “I absolve you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” After speaking, he fell back in his chair as if exhausted, his eyes closed.

“I’m here today to listen,” Michael told him. “Please tell me your story.” He eyed the cup of tea. “Could I, em . . .”

“Tea? Certainly. I’ve a potful out there.” Shanahan seemed relieved to turn to mundane matters, and got up and headed into his tiny kitchen. He was back in a trice with a cup of tea, cream and sugar.

He looked at Michael and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Michael got the conversation going. “You told me about the young girl who was your student, a very engaging little child. Before I cut you off so abruptly that day, you said she was in bed with you.”