Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

“I just happened to be in the neighbourhood.” The strong Belfast voice sounded somehow familiar. Monty turned and saw a tall bearded man with glasses. It took him a moment to realize who he was. The Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams.

  “Is that the real Gerry or an actor playing the part of him?” a man asked.

  “I’m the real thing. You’re allowed to hear my voice now.”

  “And a powerful voice it will be, after a rest for, what, six years? How long were you banned from the airways?”

  “Six years, that’s right. Lot of actors out of work now.”

  Banned? Actors? Monty was about to ask somebody for clarification, when Ronan came by and invited Adams out into the garden.

  “Get out here, Gerry. But not too close to me. I may be running against you some day, and I’ll want to deny I ever knew ye.”

  “Story of my life,” Adams joked.

  “Get down there by the rear end of that animal, Gerry,” said an old fellow who must have been eighty if he was a day. “Two horses’ arses for the price of one.”

  “Have I stumbled into the Shankill by mistake?” Adams asked. “I’ll have to get my glasses checked. Here I was thinking I was amongst my own people.”

  The ribbing continued, and Adams took it in good humour.

  The weather underwent an instantaneous change, which Monty already knew was typical. It started to rain, and the party moved inside. Adams and Ronan signalled to each other with their eyes and moved off to a corner of the room. They began an intense whispered conversation, and Ronan caught the eye of Tomás and another man and beckoned them over. The deliberations continued for a few minutes, then Adams moved through the crowd, shaking a few hands and exchanging pleasantries, and took his leave.

  At that point there was more picture taking, more formal arrangements of the bride and groom flanked by their respective families. Monty took the opportunity to visit the bar table and replenish his supply of Guinness. He was joined by Gráinne Burke’s sister, who introduced herself as Éilis Farrell.

  “You’re Orla’s mother?”

  “I am.”

  “Our two are crazy about her.”

  “Well, I can tell you she loves looking after wee Dominic. And of course Normie, when she comes home from school. Orla plans to become a teacher, and it’s the very young children she wants to teach.”

  Someone in the centre of the room announced that it was time for a toast or two, if people weren’t too bashful to speak up. It turned out that nobody was bashful or at a loss for words, as glasses were raised and toasts offered to the happy couple. When Ronan got up to speak, his glass appeared to contain nothing but water. A little girl and boy hugged him around the legs and looked up adoringly. He began speaking in Irish. Whatever he said caused tears to well up in his wife’s eyes, and she turned and put her arms around him and held him tight. He kissed her tenderly and, when they released each other, he told the crowd, “Roughly translated, I raise my glass of pure water to the lovely bride, Aoife, and to my wife, Gráinne; my daughter, Aideen; my sons Tomás and Lorcan; my new little grandchildren, Catriona and Brian; and to every one of you here. The members of my family know I love and treasure them above all things. For them I would give up anything —” he looked ruefully at his glass, and there was affectionate laughter throughout the room “— anything. I would give my life for them. And I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their understanding over the years, their forgiveness, and their love.” The wedding guests burst into spontaneous applause.

  Monty had no idea what Ronan was referring to. Typically, Brennan had not said a word about whatever troubles the family might have suffered. No ships would be sunk on Brennan Burke’s watch if loose lips were indeed a causative factor in shipping disasters.

  But Éilis Farrell was not as reticent. And it was not a matter of gossip for Ronan’s sister-in-law; she spoke with compassion of a family she knew and loved. “They’ve had their troubles. Ronan was . . . involved in the situation here in Belfast, so he had her worried half to death. He had two spells in Long Kesh, but he never gave up the struggle. A strong man for the fighting, but a weak man for the drink. His drinking got so bad Gráinne took the children and moved out. So he was without his family for nearly three years. But, God be good to him, he packed himself off to a monastery, went on the dry with the help of the monks, and gave it up for good. That was four years ago, and they have been together ever since. Now you couldn’t find a closer family. Or a more loving husband and father.”

  There was music then, a couple of traditional ballads for the bridal couple, and then the tunes got a little rowdier, as fiddles, guitars, a mandolin, and a bodhran were brought out, and various people came forward to perform a number of rebel songs. Monty knew enough Burkean history to know that, when these people sang along with “The Boys of the Old Brigade” and “Rifles of the IRA,” they were no mere barstool revolutionaries.

  Chapter III

  Monty

  Monty spent Tuesday morning at the Canadian Earth Equipment factory on the outskirts of Belfast. It was an enormous manufacturing plant with yards full of tractors, harvesters, harrowers, and all manner of farm implements at various stages of production. He had a short tour inside, where he was given ear coverings to soften the scream of metal slicing through metal. His tour guide, accustomed to the procedure, knew just how loud he had to speak to make himself heard. Monty then sat in the office with one of the managers and discussed the lawsuit, the evidence, and the thousands of documents that would be delivered to him at Ellison Whiteside.

  Back in his office in the afternoon, he got saddled with another file that had tedium written all over it; the client was a shop owner engaged in a dispute with the city over the assessment of his property. Monty couldn’t bring himself to open the folder. He knew there were more exciting cases in the office; anything of a criminal nature would be of greater interest than property tax and minor injuries. The firm had only one criminal lawyer, and it wasn’t Monty. It was Emmet Crowley, down at the far end of the corridor. Monty knew from office chatter that not everybody was enamoured of Crowley’s clients. Some of his cases involved paramilitary activity, offences under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts. Now, something like that would keep Monty awake in the afternoons at his desk. And probably at night in his bed as well. He got up and headed for Crowley’s door.

  The office was jammed with file folders and boxes. Emmet Crowley sat hunched over his desk, running his fingers through his curly brown hair. He was a short, slim man in his late thirties, with black-framed glasses that were slightly askew on his face. He had the appearance of a man under pressure. He looked up, startled, and closed the file he was reading, when Monty showed up in his doorway.

  “Sorry, Emmet, didn’t mean to take you by surprise.”

  “No worries, Monty.”

  “I just wanted to say — well, as you probably know, I have a criminal practice over in Canada — so, if you need help on any of your files, I’d be very happy to pitch in.”

  “Sure, thank you, Monty. If anything comes up . . . I don’t see anything right now, but you never know.”

  “Great then, Emmet, I’ll let you get on with it.”

  “Right. Cheers.”

  Monty returned to his office empty-handed. He knew a polite rebuff when he heard it. An office stuffed with overflowing files, but nary an affidavit to be taken, a witness to be interviewed, a routine court appearance? Well, if Emmet Crowley wanted to keep his criminal practice to himself, that was his prerogative.

  So it was back to the property rate assessment. He was trying to impose some order on the file when he received a call from the receptionist. “Monty, a Miss Flanagan is here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment but . . .”

  Good. A diversion. “That’s all right. Send her in.”

  A young girl, in her mid-teens, walked to his office door and hesitated at the thres
hold. Monty stood to greet her. She was wearing a light blue suit and white blouse with a piece of silver jewellery at the neck. Her skirt was unfashionably long, and Monty formed the impression that the suit might be that of an older woman, perhaps her mother, borrowed for the occasion. She carried a small grey handbag and he tried to remember what his own mother had called bags like that. Clasp bag? He couldn’t remember. The girl’s long brown hair was shining and held back with a silver band. She was pretty in an understated way.

  “Come in and have a seat.”

  She entered the room and sat down, holding the bag on her lap. She took a deep breath and let it out. Monty had the impression that she was preparing herself for an ordeal.

  He sat down again behind his desk and said, “I’m Monty Collins. And your name is?”

  “Katie Flanagan.”

  The name meant nothing. He waited but she didn’t say anything else.

  “What can I do for you, Katie?”

  “My uncle, well grand-uncle, he was here. About what happened on the bridge.”

  He had it now. The old fellow with his theories of a cover-up at the highest level. Monty hadn’t thought of him again in the week that had passed since their encounter.

  “Right,” he said.

  “He . . .” She dug in her bag, pulled out a piece of paper and placed it on the desk. She attempted to smooth out the creases. “He said to give you this.”

  Monty picked it up. An autopsy report on Eamon Flanagan, signed by a Doctor Forster, pathologist.

  “The man who died, he was your father?”

  “Aye.”

  Monty read through the report. Eamon Flanagan was forty-nine years old when he died on November 14, 1992. The cause of death was, contrary to Hughie Malone’s version of events, not drowning but fractures to his head and neck. A scribbled note said the river was shallow and the riverbed rocky where he landed. His neck was broken in the fall, and there were fractures to the occipital and parietal bones of the skull. There were several posterior rib fractures. His left leg was broken as well. The blood alcohol reading was at the “impaired” level.

  Monty picked up the phone and asked his secretary to come in.

  “Would you make a copy of this for me, Laura?”

  “Sure. Back in two ticks.”

  He turned to Katie. “I’m very sorry about your father, Katie. This shows he had a terrible fall.”

  “He didn’t fall.”

  “Why do you say that? Please tell me, so I’ll understand.”

  “My mother got money.”

  “Oh?”

  “Money came in for a while, then it stopped. Mam doesn’t know why. Doesn’t even know where it was coming from.”

  “Your mother . . .” Monty began.

  “She’s been poorly since Da was killed. For days on end, she just sits around and can’t do anything. Can’t make meals or look after the little ones. She’s trying to work at two jobs, cleaning jobs, but sometimes she can’t bring herself to leave the house. So I do her jobs when I can.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “So it’s up to me now to try and take care of things. I’m the oldest.”

  Laura returned with the copy, and Monty set it aside. Katie looked around the office, at Monty’s practising certificate and the bound volumes on the shelves. “I wanted to be a solicitor,” she said, “or a barrister. My teachers at school recommended the classes I should take to give myself the best chance. They said I could do it. That’s what I wanted most of all.”

  “Wanted?” Monty smiled at her. “You’re hardly over the hill yet. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You’ve got lots of time.”

  “No. I’ve finished with school.”

  “Surely not. If you want to study law, go for it.”

  She looked at him as if he was thick in the head. Which of course he was. “We don’t have that kind of money. And I have responsibilities. I’ve a clatter of kids to look after, you know, when Mam can’t do it. My wee sister and brothers. I have to get them through school, or they’ll just sink into . . . I have to make sure there’s a future for them.”

  There wasn’t a trace of self-pity in her voice. Monty then asked himself why he thought that way. What was it about “self-pity” that earned so much rote condemnation? He remembered a sister of Maura’s talking about an aunt who had just been given a bad diagnosis and had undergone disfiguring surgery: “She’s feeling sorry for herself.” Why the hell shouldn’t she be? But he turned his attention back to young Katie Flanagan, who had just laid out the facts of life as they pertained to her family.

  “Anyway, Mam explained to me that there’s a mortgage on the house, which means we have to keep paying for it. And there’s the electricity rates and all that. Da didn’t have a life insurance policy. If we knew who threw or pushed my father off the bridge, we could have sued them and got money to make up for him not working. I mean, for him dying and the family being without his pay. But we don’t know who it was, so we couldn’t. And there was nothing the police could do because there was nobody to arrest; they think he just fell off. There’s no kind of victim compensation or whatever it would be, because it’s down in the records as an accident.

  “Mam never worked after she had me, and then she had some kind of sickness. Then it went away and she was better, so she started having babies again. So she was home with us, not out at a job. After Da died, she went out doing the cleaning. Houses and a butcher’s shop. The pay from those jobs is only a few quid a week; I know because I’m doing that work myself now. I don’t mind the houses but the butcher’s, with all that blood and the guts of animals . . . Ach, I shouldn’t complain.”

  You have every right to complain, Monty said to himself. A lovely young girl like this, who wanted to be a lawyer, slopping out a butcher shop.

  “Our youngest is six. They’re all in school but I have to be there after school, or when they’re sick or on holiday, in case Mam’s not up to looking after them. I can’t be in university and be running back and forth, and missing classes. Well, I can’t afford uni anyway. And I can’t sign on for a full-time job with good pay, because I have to be there for the little ones.”

  “Let’s back up a bit. Tell me about this money.”

  “Mam didn’t even have a bank account before my father died. But she opened one up after. And big amounts of money starting coming into her account, and I don’t know where they came from.”

  “What makes you think it had something to do with the . . . with your father’s death?”

  “It only started after he died.”

  “But your mother didn’t have an account at all before he died, so you might not have had any records . . .”

  “If somebody had been giving her big whacks of money, we would have seen them. Or seen extra things she’d have bought for us or for herself. There wasn’t money in amounts like that. And there were no big payments in Da’s account. All his bank statements were in the drawer at home. Nothing like that in those records.”

  “You’ve spoken to relatives, people in your extended family? Maybe somebody was helping out?”

  “We don’t have many relations, but the ones we do don’t have that kind of money. They’re gutted that they can’t help us that way, but they can’t. And then the money, wherever it came from, stopped coming. The social security — the government, you know — gives us money to live on but just barely. We would be entitled to more benefits but . . .”

  “But?”

  “Well, my mam’s embarrassed about this. But she shouldn’t be! This is the modern world. Or at least it’s supposed to be. You can only get full benefits as a widow with children if you’re married. And after Da died she told me that she and him were never really married, even though she is always called Winnie Flanagan and she and Da were together for nearly eig
hteen years. She felt awful telling me. But I told her she shouldn’t feel bad. We’re a real family even if her wedding ring isn’t the real thing! She told me she got married when she was really young, and the fella was a sleekit wee bastard and she walked out on him. But she never got a divorce, or maybe never got a church divorce. I didn’t want to badger her with questions, the state she was in. So, anyway, the benefits we get don’t go anywhere near covering our house payments. The bank keeps giving us more time, but they’ll have to put us out. Where will we go, the six of us?”

  “I’m so sorry to hear it, Katie.” And he was. With her mother laid low by grief and depression, Katie Flanagan had taken on the role of a single parent at the age of sixteen. If there was any way he could help, he would, but he had next to no hope that her claim for damages would see the light of day. “The police were involved?” he asked. “I mean, it was a fall but a sudden death —”

  “They’re useless, the peelers. Said there was nothing they could do.”

  “Who did they say that to?”

  “My mam when it happened.”

  “What else did they say?”

  “Just that they were sorry, but there’s no evidence of anyone else being involved. All the information they have is my father lying dead under the bridge. Mam was gutted. Not only did they say they couldn’t help, they put it in Mam’s head that Da was on a rip that night, coming home from O’Grady’s bar, and he was legless with drink and that’s why he fell off. They said it in a polite way. Sympathetic, like. But . . .”

  Monty thought back to what Hughie Malone had said. “Mr. Malone is your grand-uncle?”

  “Aye, an uncle to my mother.”

  “He said there was a shooting the same night.”

  “Right. The police haven’t solved that either.”

  “What can you tell me about that?”

  “An IRA man was shot and killed.”

  “I see.”

  “Up the road from the bridge where Da got killed. The police found Da’s body when they were investigating the murder.”