Death at Christy Burke's

by Anne Emery

  “He came in especially to look for Tim?”

  “No, he stops in once in a while for a quick one. He just mentioned it because he knows we see Tim quite regularly here.”

  “Does Tim live nearby?”

  “He’s not far at all. Corner of Henrietta Street and Henrietta Lane. It’s a little confusing, so I’ll draw you a map.” He grabbed a Paddy Whiskey coaster off the bar and drew a little sketch. “Big red-brick house, second one in, ground floor flat.”

  Perfect. Michael would stop in to see him. He could tell Tim he’d heard that people were concerned. He’d heard as well that Tim was a priest so Michael was naturally interested in his story. Tim would understand that. And if it turned out that he was ill, perhaps there was something Michael could do for him.

  He stayed on for a few minutes longer, then left the pub and headed down Mountjoy Street with Frank’s map. A couple of twists and turns brought him to a row of four-storey brick townhouses that had seen better days. And likely would again. Michael recalled reading somewhere that this had been one of the finest streets in Dublin back in the day. There was a bell push that seemed to go with the lower flat, but nobody answered. He rang again. He heard footsteps, and a hard-looking young woman with blue-black hair came to the door. Loud, insistent music blared from the recesses of her flat.

  “Are yeh lookin’ for Tim?”

  “Yes, thank you. Is he home?”

  “I think he’s in there. Go ahead. Door on the right. It’s never locked.”

  “Em, well, do you think I should?”

  “Sure, go ahead. He never complains.” She turned and trotted back into her apartment.

  Michael opened the door and entered the building. A grubby paper name plate on the right-hand door said “T. P. Shanahan.”

  He knocked. “Tim?” he called out. No response. He opened the door and called again, a little louder. “Tim Shanahan?” By this time, Michael was in the tiny living room. Or, to be more precise, the library. Bookshelves covered every bit of wall space except for the front window and the door. Yeats, Joyce, Synge, O’Casey, Wilde, Heaney, Hopkins, Shakespeare, Dante, Blake, Aeschylus, Ovid. Michael gazed about him. This was the home of a man in love with literature and poetry. He was about to call out again when he heard a sound coming from another room. He followed it. His nose wrinkled up. There was a foul smell coming from somewhere in the flat.

  Then he saw him: Tim Shanahan lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. He was in his undershorts, and they were badly soiled. There was a pool of vomit at the side of his head. His eyes were closed, and his thin, handsome face was shiny with sweat. Michael was about to announce his presence when Shanahan sneezed, and sneezed again. His eyes and nose were runny, and he raised a languid arm to wipe them. All he succeeded in doing was to smear mucus all over his face. His right leg kicked out, and Michael moved away. The leg moved again, and Shanahan’s whole body began to shake. Michael had seen the DTs before — delirium tremens, the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal — but never this bad.

  “Tim!” The man’s eyelids fluttered open, and the dark blue eyes stared vacantly at Michael. “Tim, it’s Michael O’Flaherty. Father O’Flaherty from, well, from Christy Burke’s. I’m going to help you. Let me get a cloth and clean you up a bit, then I’ll put you in your bed. I’ll call a doctor for you.”

  “Call my . . .”

  Michael leaned down to hear him. He thought Tim said “dealer,” but was it “healer”? His doctor?

  “Who should I call, Tim?”

  “Number’s there.” Tim tried to lift his arm. He seemed to be pointing to his bedside table. There were books on the table, and Tim’s eyeglasses were perched precariously on a volume of Yeats’s poetry. There were a few sheets of paper scribbled with notes. One was a phone number. Michael picked it up and recited it. Tim nodded and embarked on another bout of sneezing.

  Michael found the telephone and dialled the number. It rang so long he almost gave up, but then a man answered. “Yeah?”

  “Hello, this is, em, I’m calling from the residence of Tim Shanahan. He asked me to ring you. He’s not well.”

  “How bad is he?” The voice on the phone sounded familiar somehow, but Michael couldn’t place it.

  Michael glanced at the poor man lying in vomit and excrement on the floor. No point in painting a pretty picture. “He’s in bad shape, and he needs help immediately. Are you a doctor? Should I give him water?”

  “I’ll be there. Twenty minutes.” Click.

  “He’s coming right over, Tim. I’ll see what I can do to make you a little more comfortable.”

  Michael found the bathroom. A sickening sight, but this wasn’t the time for housekeeping. He found a small towel and wet it, then picked up a cake of soap and returned to the man and the shambles he had made of himself. Michael had seen a lot of alcoholism over the years and had spent countless hours at the bedside of patients in hospital. He wasn’t squeamish, not like some. He reflected briefly on one of the many differences between him and his fellow priest Brennan Burke. Brennan would rather spend a week ministering to murderers and rapists and drug pushers in the local lockup than a day in a hospital room where people were squatting over bedpans or hawking up gobbets of blood and phlegm. Michael and Brennan complemented each other in that way: Brennan could have the psychopaths; Michael had an affinity for the infirm and feeble, and he put that to work for him now.

  He knelt beside Tim Shanahan and gently wiped his brow and lips. He saw a flicker of recognition in Shanahan’s eyes. Michael wiped his chest and arms, then his legs. On the insides of Tim’s arms, Michael saw reddish marks. A rash? The marks almost looked like puncture wounds from a needle.

  “You’re sweating to death in here, Tim. I’ll open a window for you once I get you cleaned up. I think I should remove your underwear, give you a bit of a scrubbing, and put a clean pair of shorts on you. Would it be all right if I did that?”

  Tim nodded weakly and tried to speak. Michael saw tears forming in his eyes.

  “Don’t you be worried now, Tim. The doctor’s coming over, and we’ll put you to rights.”

  Michael did what he had to do to bathe his patient, and he found a clean pair of shorts in the top drawer of the bureau. He got them on him.

  “Are you able to get up now, Tim? Just to the bed? It looks fresh and clean, and you’ll be comfortable there.”

  Michael pulled down the grey blanket and white sheet. Shanahan’s trembling subsided enough that he could get himself up and, leaning on Michael, made his way to the bed and collapsed. Michael went to the kitchen, found a tumbler, and ran the tap till the water was cold. He held Tim’s head up so he could drink.

  “Thank you,” Tim whispered.

  “Sure you’re welcome, Tim.”

  The floor couldn’t be left in such a state, so Michael rummaged under the kitchen sink for a rag and cleaning fluid. He was just finishing up when he heard the front door open and a man’s voice calling Shanahan’s name.

  Yes, the voice sounded familiar. As indeed it was; into the room stepped the ex-cop from Christy’s, Eddie Madigan. He looked from Michael to Tim and back without speaking. Then he got down to business. He reached into his jacket pocket, produced a syringe, took the protective cap off it, pulled out a rubber tourniquet, wrapped it around Tim’s left arm, and injected something into his veins.

  Within seconds, Tim’s demeanour changed entirely. He looked like a man who was gazing upon the face of God Himself. Michael marvelled at the euphoria the drug had induced in the ailing man. As the seconds passed, Tim seemed to settle into a sense of well-being. He smiled.

  “What is it?” Michael asked Eddie. But he knew.

  “I’ve been trying to get him on methadone,” was all Madigan said.

  Michael had a lot to think about after his visit to Tim Shanahan’s flat. The poor man was a heroin addict. And Eddie Mad
igan, a former officer of the law, was his drug supplier! How could Madigan live with himself? Michael hadn’t taken it up with Madigan before he left the flat; that could wait. Tim had reached up and taken Michael’s hand in his own. “Thank you, Michael. Thank you so very much for your kindness.” Michael had assured him that he was welcome. He made the sign of the cross over him, gave his blessing, and left the apartment.

  He wasn’t in the mood for more drinking at Christy Burke’s, not that he ever indulged in more than two pints of stout, so he headed to his new digs in Stoneybatter. Perhaps Leo Killeen would be in residence, and Michael could probe him for news about the TV evangelist who was missing. Anything to get his mind off Shanahan. And Madigan. Leo wasn’t home, however, and neither was the other resident priest, so Michael had the house to himself. He picked up a book of Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery stories, which he had been meaning to read ever since his holiday began.

  He became engrossed in his reading and didn’t notice the time passing. When the room grew dusky, he reached over and switched on a light and kept reading, abandoning himself to Father Brown and his insights into the criminal mind, which the priest-detective had developed in the confessional. Lights flashed against Michael’s window, and he got up to see if one of his housemates had come home in a car or a taxi. Maybe he’d have company enjoying a nightcap before settling down to sleep. He pushed the curtain aside and peered into the darkness. There was a car idling in the street, but nobody got out of it. After a few seconds, it backed up and continued a ways down the street. Its lights went out. But it stayed there, and nobody emerged. So much for company, Michael thought, and turned away from the window.

  He went into the bathroom, washed his face and brushed his teeth, and was about to get undressed for bed when he heard a sound outside the house. He walked to the window again and peeked out. Was it Leo? No, it looked like Father Grattan, who occupied the room downstairs. Just as Michael was turning away, he noticed the small car he’d seen earlier turn into the driving lane and move slowly along Aughrim Street in the direction of the house. It still had its lights off, which struck Michael as a shade sinister. But then again, he had been reading crime fiction all evening long! The car slowed in front of the house, then moved out of sight. Michael heard Father Grattan come in and open the door to his room. But he would make a point of socializing with Grattan another time; he decided to go to bed and put crime and creeping automobiles out of his mind.

  Chapter 7

  Brennan

  “Can you understand how it might be a little embarrassing for me, Burke? Look at him.”

  Brennan and Monty were in Monty’s hotel room waiting to set out for a stint at the Brazen Head on Wednesday evening. Maura MacNeil had gone out for a mother-daughter shopping excursion with Normie and had dropped little Dominic off with the men. He was sound asleep in a little baby basket of some kind. She had been gone awhile, and Monty and Brennan were most of the way through a bottle of Jameson. Brennan had, perhaps unwisely, launched yet another salvo in the campaign to get the Collins-MacNeil family back together, and to secure a father for Dominic.

  Look at him? Brennan didn’t have to look. The baby boy, with his black hair and black eyes, looked nothing like Monty. He looked like the child of an Italian father, which presumably he was. The MacNeil’s ex-boyfriend, Giacomo. But the baby also resembled . . . Brennan’s mind flashed back to a scene he wished he could purge from memory, a bit of burlesque performed by Beau Delaney in Halifax. Delaney was a client of Monty’s, but he was also a lawyer himself. One day when Brennan was looking after the baby, Delaney showed up at the MacNeil residence. Taking a look at the baby and then at Brennan, Delaney had embarked on a mock cross-examination after Brennan had imprudently let it be known that someone — it was in fact the MacNeil — had accused him of drinking too much. “If you don’t have a problem,” she had said, “prove it. Give the stuff up. For a while, at least.” Which he had done. Without any trembling, withdrawal, or any other symptoms of addiction. No surprise there. He liked a drink, he didn’t need one.

  Yet it was careless of him to have reported that little episode to the lawyer, Delaney, who counted back to the time of the baby’s conception, then said, “And where were you, Brennan Burke, on the night in question? Let the record show that the witness is unresponsive. Father Burke, earlier in these proceedings you admitted that you have been accused, by someone, of heavy drinking. Is that correct?”

  “Have you no other way of amusing yourself, Mr. Delaney?”

  “I’ll ask the questions here, Father. Have you ever, on any occasion, consumed so much Irish whiskey that you blanked out, to use a layman’s term, and were unable to remember what you did whilst under the influence of said alcohol? You have thought of this, haven’t you, Brennan? You see this little dark-eyed, black-haired baby and you wonder . . .”

  Well, no, he hadn’t wondered about that. Not really. What grown man in his right mind would even consider the possibility that such a thing had happened? He had to acknowledge privately that there had been the odd time in his life, his past life, when he had consumed so much alcohol that he could not exactly recall what he had done under its influence. But surely he’d remember if he and the MacNeil . . . Get a grip, Burke, he told himself. Even if he were stocious with drink, he would never have lost all moral sense to the point where he would get up on his best friend’s wife. And, besides, if anything like that had happened, she would have let him know in no uncertain terms. He paled to think how excruciating — “excruciating” from the Latin for “from the cross,” that is, the agony of the cross — how excruciating such a conversation would have been, with her giving out to him without mercy and him sitting there taking it, like a gobshite. Get a grip, he admonished himself again. He eyed the glass of whiskey in his hand. He put it down. That was it for the night, and maybe the next few nights as well.

  He looked at Monty, who had pinned him with his sky-blue eyes. Lawyer’s eyes, which had seen it all. Could he read Brennan’s mind?

  Brennan shook off the idiocy that had come over him and went on the offensive. “Has anyone, friend or relative or colleague, ever made a disparaging remark to you about the baby and his parentage?”

  “Eh?”

  “Has anyone mentioned it?”

  “There is no need to mention it. Res ipsa loquitur.”

  Brennan sighed. The thing speaks for itself. A legal concept, no doubt. He didn’t take Monty up on it. Instead he said, “The pregnancy wasn’t planned. I think we can all agree that’s an understatement. The two of you were separated. She had a relationship, you had female company yourself, so you were both involved with others. Anyone viewing the situation would grasp that reality, so this embarrassment you feel, although a perfectly human response —”

  “I know all that, Brennan. Now, I’ve had enough of this conversation.”

  They sat in silence for a while, then Monty asked about one of the sites he and the family were planning to visit. Glendalough. Brennan was in full flight, describing the ancient monastic settlement where priests had been offering the sacrifice of the Mass as long ago as the sixth century, when mother and daughter returned with their shopping bags. They stayed for a chat before lifting the sleeping baby from his basket and taking a cab to their room in the convent. Brennan and Monty set off for the Brazen Head to take in a session of well-played traditional music. Brennan stayed off the whiskey, though he didn’t say no to the voice of Arthur Guinness calling him from the taps.

  He fell into a boozy sleep and was restless all night. Vaporous images arose in his mind’s eye. A dark-haired infant being baptized. Then the child’s progress through the sacraments. Then the child, who obviously now was Brennan, was standing in a classroom or a hall being called upon to recite the seven deadly sins. His mind went blank except for greed, probably the only one he hadn’t himself committed. He was suddenly grown up, and he had a new assignment: to refute the pr
oposition of his superiors that he was unfit for the priesthood. He stood in a cavernous room before unseen authorities.

  Question 1: Whether Brennan Xavier Burke is fit to be a priest.

  Objection 1: It seems that the man drinks too much.

  Objection 2: Further, the man has made a habit of breaking his promise of chastity.

  On the contrary, with respect to Objection 1: “Too much” drinking would be that which culminates in illness, irrational or abusive behaviour, or alcoholism, none of which consequences have beset Father Burke. He has never claimed to be an ascetic, a monk in a cell. Besides, it is a known fact that the monks themselves make liqueur, some of the finest in the world. And he is not a member of one of those sects that despise the world and its pleasures. Catholics celebrate the physical world; just look at the sensual works of art in the Vatican. Catholics see the created world as a sacrament, revealing the presence of God here on earth.

  With respect to Objection 2: As for the “habit” of unchaste behaviour, “habit” is a word that implies frequency and a regular pattern of behaviour, whilst Father Burke can count on the fingers of one hand (and, if memory serves, still have his thumb left over) the number of women with whom the deadly sin of lust had been fulfilled but the priestly vows had not. Brazil, Rome, New York, Rome again, on that road trip with Montague Collins . . . Father Burke acknowledges that his incidents with women were wrong not only because they represented the breaking of a promise, but because they were acts of selfishness. Taking for himself the most intense of physical pleasures instead of denying himself, as he should have done. Celibacy means that the priest is a person set aside, someone who is to love not just one person or one family, but everyone. He is supposed to live the way the Lord Jesus Christ had done, making a total gift of the self. A daunting task, but Father Burke is working on it. Let it be known that he has spent countless hours on his knees in repentance. After the most recent of his failures, he renewed his promise that he would live up to his vows. And he has done so (though he acknowledges that it has only been half a year since that renewal). He submits therefore that a practice, even if one were, for the sake of argument, to accede to the use of the word “habit” to describe the practice, ceases to be a habit if given up.