The Trust

by Ronald H. Balson

  I knew that Deirdre possessed a wealth of information behind those cautious eyes and I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get her to open up to me. And why should she? Still, I decided to dig a little. “Aunt Deirdre, do you know anyone named Bridget McGregor?”

  She shook her head. “Sounds like a Scottish name. Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. Just a name I’ve heard.” I was immediately sorry I brought it up. That was a mistake. So was my specious answer.

  “Just a name? You’ve heard? And so you ask me? For a private detective, you’re a lousy liar. Is this you casting out a fishing line? Or is this you trying to confront me? Am I expected to break into tears and spill the beans? Well, let me tell you, if Fergus was having an affair with a woman named Bridget McGregor, he must have been Houdini. It’d have to be an out-of-body experience because I was with the man all the time.” She put down her cup. “As a proper woman, I’d ask you to leave right now, except this is not my home anymore, is it? It’s yours more than mine. Until further notice, right, Mr. Trustee?” She got up from the table and walked into the living room. I swallowed. She had surely won that exchange. I trailed her into the living room like a scolded schoolboy.

  “Wait, Aunt Deirdre. I didn’t suggest that Uncle Fergus was having an affair. Her name did not come up in that context.” She gave me an irritated look that told me the conversation was over.

  While I stood there trying to think of something more to say, a late model Mercedes pulled into the drive. Through the window I watched Conor exit the car and walk briskly to the door. His expression wasn’t any better than Deirdre’s. This was bound to be the morning’s winning parlay. He threw open the door and walked directly into the living room.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Good morning, Conor,” I replied as politely as I could, given the circumstances. “Was that intended for me or Aunt Deirdre?”

  “Take your pick.”

  “Well, Aunt Deirdre lives here. And me? I’m just the trustee looking after the estate property.”

  “Don’t smart-ass me, Liam. You have no right to be here, either one of you. This house belonged to my father, not to his girlfriend or to some estranged nephew. And my lawyers are going to throw this bogus trust out the window.”

  I was trying to keep this discourse at a civil level, but I could tell Conor’s teakettle was steaming. “If you’re right, that will relieve me of a lot of responsibilities that I didn’t ask for. But until that day, I’m going to follow your father’s wishes and perform my legal duties as trustee.”

  He pointed a stiff arm in Deirdre’s direction. “She’s no trustee. She has no business in my father’s house.”

  I shook my head. “She, as you so warmly put it, raised you from the time you were in nursery school. She taught you to eat with a fork. It’s within my discretion whether or not to let her live here. She’s lived here for forty years. I’m going to let her stay.”

  “I don’t want her to stay.”

  “It’s not your choice.”

  He moved a step closer. “Let’s stop the games, Liam. Fergus was my father. Riley and I are his sons, his only heirs at law. She’s not an heir; she never married my father. This whole trust business doesn’t mean shit to me. Now, you best step aside. I’m going to go through the house and take whatever I want and then I’m going to put the house up for sale. As for Deirdre, she’s had a free ride for too long. She’s going to pack her things and get out of here so I can clean up the house for sale.” He turned to face Deirdre. “Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s what’s going to happen. Get used to it.”

  Deirdre started to cry and left the room. I knew this was going to be a bad morning and I wasn’t sure I could defuse it. I tried to reason with Conor one more time. “Look, Conor, I’m only doing the job your father asked me to do. The trust was drawn up by your father’s attorney to implement his wishes. You may be an heir at law, but there are other interested parties, other beneficiaries. There are other people who stand to inherit from his estate.”

  He took another step forward. Now he was in my personal space. “What interested parties, what other beneficiaries?” he demanded. “What other people claim an interest in my father’s property?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell you.”

  He grabbed my shoulders and started to shake me back and forth. “What beneficiaries?” So much for my attempts to defuse the situation. I shoved him back into the wall. Hard. But he didn’t get the message. He rushed me. I stepped to the side and hit him flush with a right cross that put him on his back. With his hand on his jaw, he scrambled to his feet. “You’ll pay for this, Liam. You don’t know what kind of trouble you just bought.”

  “Well, I’m already watching my ass. What else should I watch?”

  “You smart-ass son of a bitch. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  The door slammed hard as he left.

  Now to the second half of the daily double. I went looking for Deirdre. I found her sitting at the kitchen table and staring into her cup of tea, a tissue in her right hand. I pulled up a chair, put my arm around her shoulders and the two of us sat wordlessly for a few minutes. I didn’t know how to break the silence. Finally, she spoke without looking up. “It’s astonishing how fast a solid foundation can disintegrate beneath your feet. The very ground on which you stand can dissolve in a matter of hours. Providence decrees, and all frames of reference are hereby held for naught. I’ll pack my things, but I need at least a week.”

  “There’s no need to do that. You don’t ever have to leave this house if you don’t want to.”

  I knew instantly that I shouldn’t have said that. I’d broken the code of secrecy, but I felt bad for her and my emotions seized the moment. To be fair, my trustee’s skills weren’t very good to begin with. Besides, I never applied for this job. She read between the lines, and now she knew that the trust gave her the right to live in the house for the rest of her life. “Thanks,” she said softly.

  “You’re welcome. Keep it to yourself.”

  “Conor’s just like his father, you know? He has a violent streak.”

  “Uncle Robert said Uncle Fergus was a man of peace.”

  “Ha! I lived with him for forty years and I loved him every day, but I’ll tell you, when the situation presented, you best be out of his way. He could summon the thunder—all those Taggart brothers could. The lot of ’em. Even your father. Especially your father.”

  “You knew my father?”

  She looked away. She didn’t want to answer.

  I pressed her for the information. There was a gaping hole in my family narrative and I wanted to fill it. As far as I knew, there were no markers, no evidence, no way to prove, other than by the living, breathing existence of yours truly, that Danny Taggart ever roamed the planet Earth. “Tell me about my father,” I said.

  She firmly shook her head and resumed her stare into her cup of tea.

  For all my life, my father was the unspoken topic. The briefest of references. He died in a car crash. Conversation over. I pressed her for the information and then I wished I hadn’t. As the song goes, “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

  “Tell me, Aunt Deirdre. Tell me about Danny Taggart.”

  She took a deep breath, nodded, then looked me square in the eyes. “I suppose you have a right, though I hate to be the one bringing it all to you. Danny was a hell of a man. You resemble him in many ways. Good-looking, strong, kind, principled. His death hit us all very hard, and no one harder than Fergus. I had never seen him so enraged.”

  “Enraged? At whom? My father died in a car accident.”

  She shook her head. “No son, he was murdered.”

  Oh, hell. I was floored. Wish I didn’t know now. “Murdered? I was always told that—”

  “Because that’s what you’d tell a wee laddie. They weren’t about to tell a lad that his father had his throat cut.”

  I tried to speak, but I had no air. I
stood and hung onto the back of the chair for stability. “They told me a car accident and all these years no one told me any different. No one said he’d been murdered. Didn’t I have a right to know?”

  “It was for your own good.”

  I sat down and wrapped my head in my hands. “Murdered. Jesus.”

  “I’m sorry. But that’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “Why didn’t Fergus tell me when I was here twenty years ago? I wasn’t a wee laddie then.”

  “Because you’re a Taggart. When your father was killed, his death ignited a firestorm. The Taggart brothers went out to avenge his death and avenge it they did. Fergus didn’t want you to go off half-cocked and stir up another war, so your uncles agreed among themselves not to bring it up.”

  “Who murdered him, Aunt Deirdre? Tell me.”

  “Let it lie. Leave it be. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Was it the British soldiers? The UVF? Did he die in prison? You can’t just open the door partway.”

  “Liam, I didn’t want to open the door at all.”

  “But it’s open and I’m his son, and I deserve to know.”

  With her eyes still locked on her tea she said, “I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have left the demons locked away.” Then she raised her eyes. “Before your government sent you here, did you study up on Northern Ireland and its history?”

  “Sure.”

  “In your studies and your briefings, did you ever come across a unionist bunch known as the Shankill Butchers?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. They killed my father?”

  She hung her head and then nodded. “They were a crazed, murderous gang from the Shankill Road. They were all low-life gunslingers, made up of former Ulster Volunteers, drunks, criminals, rapists. From the early seventies until the early eighties, they were the foulest, most notorious gang of killers in all of Northern Ireland. Late at night, in the shadows and the darkness, they would prowl around the Catholic neighborhoods, the pubs and lodges, and randomly kidnap a man or a woman, beat ’em senseless and carve ’em up. That’s why they were called the Butchers. They did their killing with axes, machetes, iron pipes and knives. Their leader was Lenny Murphy, the most heinous of them all. We knew who most of them were and so did the RUC. Because of the way they left their victims, killings were easily attributable to the Shankill Butchers. That was their signature. But they always avoided arrest. The RUC would look the other way and wouldn’t do a damn thing about it. Eye for an eye, they’d say. What do you expect when the Provisional IRA bombs a Protestant restaurant and kills innocent women and children, they would say. The butchers aren’t doing anything different. ’Tis nuthin’ but a street war.”

  “Why did they kill my father?”

  “Well, first of all, there didn’t have to be any reason for the Butchers to kill a Catholic.”

  “And that’s what happened? They grabbed my father coming out of a pub?”

  She shook her head. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this stuff. I can see your temperature rising. You’re a hot-blooded Taggart.”

  “Aunt Deirdre, I need to know. I have a right to know.”

  “Now do you see why your uncles kept it from you? You’ve got that Taggart blood boiling in your veins. Back in the nineties, they didn’t want young, hotheaded Liam running into the same fate.”

  “Aunt Deirdre, please.”

  “Your father wasn’t grabbed coming out of a pub, son, he was killed when he went out to seek revenge for Molly.”

  “My sister?”

  Again she nodded. Her eyes glassed over and she stared into the past. “Your sister was his firstborn and your father loved her with all his heart. She had beautiful red hair that your mum would curl into ringlets. Even though none of us had any money, Molly was always dressed in the cutest little dresses with little ribbons in her hair. When they went to church on Sunday, she would skip along in her little patent leather shoes. She was a darling.

  “It was a sunny morning in June and we had just returned from church. Your mum was fixing breakfast for the Taggart clan like she usually did. Your dad was in the house changing from his Sunday clothes. Molly was sitting on the front stoop, the sun upon her face, playing with a doll. It was then that Murphy’s first lieutenant, Archie Walker, came through the Falls, riding shotgun in Michael Simpson’s car, firing wildly out the window. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, but it was the first time anyone got hit.

  “Your mother heard the gunshots and quickly ran out to grab Molly but she was too late. Molly caught two of the bullets in her little body. She was still alive, her wounds were turning her white dress red and she looked up at us with her innocent eyes that didn’t understand what was happening to her. Danny scooped her up and ran down the street as fast as he could, trying to get her to St. Joseph’s Hospital, your mother right behind him screaming like you never heard anybody scream. Wails came from the very bottom of her soul.” Deirdre shook her head and swallowed. “They didn’t make it in time.

  “Danny went insane and nothing we said could calm him down. ‘Who was it?’ he screamed. ‘Who shot my baby?’ Finally, one of the neighbors told him that he saw Walker shooting out of Simpson’s car. Your father immediately ran into the house, grabbed his rifle and went out to have his payback against Walker and any Shankill Butcher he could find. Shankill Road wasn’t but a few hundred meters away, but it was on the other side of the wall. Danny made his way around the gate and tore through the Shankill screaming for Walker to come out.

  “We got word right away to your three uncles. They knew that Danny didn’t stand a chance alone in the Shankill. Not against the Butchers and their gang. They grabbed their weapons and chased after him, but they had a hard time getting through the gates. When they finally got in, they went from block to block.” Deirdre shook her head and lowered her eyes. “They found Danny lying facedown in the middle of the playground in the back of the Dunberry Primary School. I’m sorry, Liam, but that’s the way it happened.”

  I stood there, dumbstruck. My father and my sister, both killed during the Troubles. On the same day. By the Butchers. No wonder my mother sent me to live in Antrim. But Deirdre wasn’t through.

  “They waited until after the funeral. Then the Taggart brothers went on a savage rampage. They didn’t kill at random, not like the Butchers. They hunted down those responsible. One by one. They set a firebomb to Walker’s house and blew it all to hell along with everyone in it. They hunted the gang members and killed seven of them. They laid Simpson’s body, riddled with bullets, on the doorstep of the 83rd Loyalist Bar with a note pinned to his chest. ‘This is for Danny!’ But they didn’t find Murphy. He escaped. Of course the RUC blamed the Taggarts for the feud. That’s why the whole family moved out to Antrim.”

  It was hard for me to stand there and take all this in. Wish I didn’t know now. “I was told the family moved to Antrim to be close to Fergus’s farm. I guess I don’t really know anything. Was that the end of it?”

  Again, Deirdre shook her head. “Not quite. The vendetta wasn’t finished until 1982 when Murphy was gunned down in Dublin. The papers all recorded that he was murdered by a Provo, but they never really identified the shooter.”

  I was drained. I had pressed her for the information and what good did it do me? Was I better off knowing? Her narrative had raised the possibility of other suspects. It took ten years for the Taggarts to close the book on my father’s death. Did it take another thirty for the Butchers to close theirs? It seemed doubtful, but what about the newspaper stories, the ones in the folder? Did they have a connection with the ancient feud? Was that why Fergus anticipated his death? It seemed unlikely to me that the Butchers or their descendants would wait thirty years or more to retaliate, but I’d witnessed pent-up anger explode when prisoners were released after the Good Friday Peace Agreement. Many of them sought revenge after twenty years in custody.

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” Deirdre said. “I c
an see what’s going through your mind, don’t think I can’t, and you can just put those thoughts away. This feud is over. Done. You have a life in America. If you were smart you’d get on the next plane back.”

  “Who knew, Aunt Deirdre? Who knew about my father and didn’t tell me?”

  “Well, we all knew, but I know what you’re asking.”

  I nodded. “Did she know? Did Annie know?”

  Deirdre hung her head again and answered me in a whisper. “Aye, that she did.”

  This was all too much for me. Annie, my betrothed, the woman who shared my innermost thoughts, knew all about my father and my sister and kept it from me. I started to leave and then stopped. “One more thing, Aunt Deirdre. What ever happened to Fergus’s first wife, Margaret Taggart?”

  “His only wife?” Deirdre waved her hand back and forth. “She was dead before the Shankill Butcher feud. She died before I met Fergus. I don’t know the details, but they say she was killed on her way home from the store. Eamon knows more. Of course, Fergus knew, but he never told me. Maybe there’s lots of things he didn’t tell me. Now, like Fergus, they’re buried away.”

  I took my teacup to the sink. While I washed it, dried it and put it in the cupboard I thought there must be a lot more they didn’t tell me as well. When I returned to the table, Deirdre was weeping.

  “Tell me, Liam, why am I left here without my Fergus? What am I supposed to do now? Forty years. How do I go on without him?”

  I put my arm around her. “You and Uncle Fergus had forty wonderful years. You should cherish the memories.”

  She wiped her tears. “Memories? Shall I look at the pictures? Shall I walk around the house and look at our things, our mementoes? They’re nothing but reminders of what I’ve lost. Pictures of people who no longer share my life. Mementoes to remind me of the grand times that are gone and will never be mine again. People tell me that Fergus still lives in my heart. Maybe he does, but I can’t talk to him. I can’t hold him.”