by Anne Emery
“And if there were, so what? It’s not illegal to dress up like yokels and talk in a matching dialect. But there weren’t any cops on the scene. Why are you asking about this?”
“Well, you were in there talking to a man who planted a car bomb and killed and injured a great many people. That caused me some concern.”
“He had no idea what we were up to, Monty, and neither did anybody else. Get it out of your head.”
She was right. If Carrick thought there would be any fallout from that incident, his worries were groundless. Monty did not see how it could rebound on Brennan or anyone else. And the scheme had been designed to ferret out information about bomb attacks that occurred twenty-one years ago. It had no relation, as far as Monty could see, to the events of November 1992.
* * *
Monty was back in the office on the Tuesday after Easter and, just as he was about to leave at the end of the day, he received the memorandum of appearance from the solicitor representing Colman Davison’s insurer. Monty had his statement of claim all ready to go. But warning bells were ringing in the back of his mind, and he formed a picture of Carrick materializing out of the mist with a set of bells in his hand. Monty did not quite know what to make of Carrick. But he had questioned Maura nonetheless and had been reassured by her answers.
He knew he owed it to Brennan to check with him as well. He tried to call him at Ronan’s place, in case he had found monastic life a wee bit too quiet and had come back to Belfast. The ostensible reason for the call would be Monty’s acknowledgement that he had finally seen the light and would be tracing his Collins genealogy. But Brennan had not yet emerged from seclusion. He asked Ronan for the phone number of the abbey in County Waterford, and he made the call. A kindly sounding man told him to hold the line whilst he went in search of Father Burke. Brennan’s voice betrayed concern when he came on the phone.
“Everything’s fine, Brennan, and I’m sorry to interrupt your serenity there.”
“No worries, Montague. What can I do for you?”
“We were in County Cork and I traced my lineage back to a night of drinking and carousing on the part of Michael Collins. There was a blond involved and a secret marriage.”
“Sure, isn’t that always the way?”
“Just wanted you to know, so you could say ‘I told you so.’”
“Consider it said.”
“And while I have you here I just wanted to ask you something.” Monty didn’t care to mention that Carrick had followed him from work one night and issued a bizarre warning about Brennan, given that Monty had — not unwisely, he hoped — laughed it off. But he would go about it another way. “Have you any concerns, Brennan, relating to my lawsuit on behalf of the Flanagans?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just, is there anything you can think of about my case that, well, could cause problems?”
“Well, I wasn’t driving the car. It happened long before I arrived here.” There was a slight pause and then, “You don’t have anyone else by the name of Burke in your claim, do you?”
“No. Far from it.”
“Well, then, how could there be a problem?”
“There couldn’t. I’m just checking all angles. Never know in Belfast!”
“True enough.”
Monty steered the talk to lighter fare after that, and they shared a few laughs. Then, “All right, I’ll let you go. How long do you expect to be cloistered down there?”
“I don’t know. It’s so peaceful I may never emerge at all.”
“I hear ya.”
The conversation left Monty with a feeling of relief. But, he knew, his suit on behalf of the Flanagan family had to go ahead no matter what. The family deserved justice, and he would do his utmost to make sure they got it. Still, it was good to know there was nothing behind the strange encounters with Carrick.
He read over his statement of claim for the Flanagans one last time and headed home.
* * *
First thing the next morning, Monty arranged to have the statement of claim served on the other side. Less than a week later, he received the defence. A circumstance in the Flanagans’ favour was that Davison’s insurer was a relatively new company, started up in London in 1990 and aggressively pursuing new business. The company was billing itself as a caring collective of insurance professionals who would expedite the paperwork and pay out claims without delay. How long the good feeling and timely payments would last was another question but, while the company was still in the process of attracting clients away from the older, established insurers, this would work to the Flanagans’ advantage.
The statement of defence drafted by the defendant’s solicitor was a masterpiece of denial, but that was not unusual. Monty himself used the same boilerplate phrases, bits of text that were used over and over again, in his defences at home.
The defendant denies that he struck the deceased with his motor car as alleged in the statement of claim or at all.
The defendant denies that he was in the area of the Ammon Road or the Ammon Road Bridge as alleged in the statement of claim or at all.
Further, or in the alternative, if the defendant was present in the said area on the date in question, which is not admitted but specifically denied, he was in the area under duress and not of his own free will.
Save as hereinbefore specifically admitted, the defendant denies each and every allegation contained in the statement of claim as though the same were herein set out and traversed seriatim.
Yes, just about what Monty himself would write if he were representing the defendant. But he was interested in the part that said “under duress and not of his own free will.” Was this more boilerplate, or was Davison going to claim he had been forced to go to the Ammon Road that night?
The following day he decided to find out. He called the defendant’s solicitor, and they set up a meeting in Monty’s office. Royden Barrett was tall, slim, and white-haired. They shook hands, and the two sat down at Monty’s desk. They exchanged a bit of small talk and then Monty got down to business. “Royden, I was interested to read in your pleadings that Mr. Davison claims to have been under duress on the night of the incident. Yet I know from witnesses that he was alone in the car.”
It was clear to Monty that if Davison was pleading duress, he had admitted to his lawyer that he was on the scene that night.
Barrett asked, “If he was out there, alone, who are you saying is your witness?”
“I have spoken to a man who was present on the Ammon Road that night and saw Davison in the car.” He wasn’t about to add, not yet at least, that Davison had pulled a knife on Vincent McKeever. He didn’t know where his information might lead, so for now he wanted to keep it to himself.
Barrett replied, “I’m not at liberty to say any more right now, except to tell you we will be issuing third-party pleadings in this matter.”
Well now! This meant they would be making a claim against somebody else, to try and shift the blame on to that other person or persons. Who was the third party against whom Davison would be making a claim? He was obviously taking the position that someone else was responsible for what happened on the road that night. Be that as it may, it was Monty’s task to hold Davison responsible and extract payment from his insurance company for the damages sustained by the Flanagan children. If Davison hoped to recoup some of that from another party, good luck to him, but Monty’s interest was in the impact of Davison’s car on Eamon Flanagan’s leg. He outlined for Royden Barrett the evidence from the doctor, the pathologist, and the auto repair man, linking the injury and death of Mr. Flanagan to Davison’s actions behind the wheel. He also described as eloquently as he could the Flanagan children, their personalities, their grief over the loss of their father, the frightening place where they had been forced to live, Winnie’s depression, Katie’s dashed hopes of becoming a solicitor, her uncomplaining acceptance of
her role in helping to raise four younger children.
Monty was laying it on thick about Katie and her family, and both of them knew it, but there was no denying the fact that Davison had brought all this down on the family by his reckless driving, regardless of whatever had set him hightailing it down the Ammon Road in the middle of the night. Recently there had been a story in the press and on television about a family in Coleraine who had been burnt out of their home. It had not been a criminal attack but an electrical fire or something of the kind, and their insurance company was, so far, denying the claim, leaving the parents and the three children homeless. The negative publicity would not have been lost on the insurance industry. And it would be a boon to a new company portraying itself as a new kind of insurer. Accepting liability and lifting the Flanagan family out of poverty would be good for business. The two lawyers talked for a while longer, and then Barrett left, saying he would be in touch.
Brennan
Brennan found the periods of solitude and the times of companionship with the monks at Mount Melleray so peaceful, so spiritually rewarding, that he felt like a new man, a new priest, in the mountain sanctuary overlooking Cappoquin, County Waterford. There are no grounds theologically or geographically, of course, for feeling oneself closer to God up on a mountain. But the profound silence he found there brought him to an almost mystical state of union with the Absolute, the omnipotent, all-loving God. This feeling intensified when he said or attended Mass, and the lovely interior of the church resounded with the chanting of the ancient tones. He recalled a saying he had heard years ago: “If you have lived your life without touching the sacred, you have done nothing.” On a more earthly plane, he found friendship, intellectual stimulation, and a surprising (to him) amount of wit and humour among the men who had retreated from the world to live and pray in the abbey.
True, he’d had a moment of unease following that call from Monty. What had Monty been talking about? He wouldn’t know — thank God! — about the gun fiasco at the church. The farce at Saint Matthew’s arose out of the shooting of an innocent backpacker from the Netherlands. It had nothing to do with the Flanagans or their father being hit by a car.
But tranquility soon reigned again. So he found himself making one excuse after another to delay his return to the turbulence of Belfast. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t leave his monastic devotions for a little trip to Dublin. After putting off his brothers Patrick and Terry earlier in the spring, telling them that Ronan would be more receptive to visitors after a bit more healing, he now welcomed his brothers’ offers to fly over from New York and enjoy a quick visit with Brennan in the South and Ronan in the North. He rang his sister Molly in London and beckoned her over again, too. They all planned to start off in Dublin, so they agreed to an early evening get-together at the family bar, Christy Burke’s.
But Brennan didn’t wait till evening to come to the city. He had another plan for the afternoon. He took the train from Waterford to Heuston station in Dublin, and then caught a bus through the city centre and across the Grand Canal to the Rathmines Road. His first stop was a large classical stone building with columns and a stately green copper dome. Brennan, like so many other Catholics in Ireland — even those who were lapsed — automatically made the sign of the cross when he came even with the church. He smiled as he read the familiar inscription: Sub. Invoc. Mariae Immaculatae Refugii Peccatorum. This was the church of Mary Immaculate, Refuge of Sinners. Brennan’s mother, Teresa, had made much of the name when she uprooted the family from their former home close — too close, in his mother’s estimation — to Christy Burke’s bar on the north side of the city and planted them here on the south side in a house identical to their old one. The move was made when Brennan was not much more than a toddler and his father was serving a sentence in Mountjoy Prison, not far from the pub and the old house. Brennan entered the church and admired its bright, elaborately carved interior and arched ceiling over the altar. He knelt and said a prayer for Ronan and Tomás and for the families who had been devastated when the cars blew apart on the streets of Dublin and Monaghan.
A few doors away from the church was his own door, or that which had enclosed his early life in Rathmines. And three houses up from that was the Healeys’ place. Both were Georgian houses with demi-lune fanlights above their yellow doors, their brick exteriors bathed in the glow of the springtime sun. There was nothing unusual about visiting his old neighbourhood, and nothing unusual about calling in to see his old neighbours. But this time his visit to the Healey family would be charged with a significance that Brennan would have to keep to himself. He did not want to get their hopes up about a possible arrest and prosecution of one of the Dublin bombers, when there was so much that could go wrong. He lifted the brass knocker and rapped on the Healeys’ front door.
Margaret Healey was short, thin, and tired-looking. It took a couple of seconds before she recognized the man on her doorstep. Then her eyes widened in surprise. “Brennan! Come in, come in. Isn’t this grand now? Come in. Jackie! You’ll never guess who’s here. It’s Brennan! Father Burke, as he is now. Come inside, Father.”
“Margaret, it’s so good to see you.” He followed her inside, shut the door, and put his arms around her.
“You’ll have a cup of tea, Father.”
“I will, as long as you call me Brennan. Remember, the little gossoon who used to peg stones against Paddy’s window to lure him outside when he was supposed to be doing his lessons?”
“Sure I remember. And mind the time your father brought the two of you here by the scruff of your necks after you mitched off school and went swimming in the canal with your uniforms on? You sit down now. I’ll wet the tea.” She got up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “Jackie’s using a walking frame these days, but don’t let on you’ve seen it.”
“I won’t.”
He entered the sitting room and saw Paddy’s father in the corner, with a TV remote control in his left hand and a plate of biscuits on his knees. There was a walking frame beside his chair; Brennan affected not to notice. The old fellow was thinner of hair and more bent over since Brennan had seen him last. But his face lit up when he saw he had company.
“Brennan! Welcome home. I won’t get up or I’ll knock all this stuff onto the floor.”
“Sure you’re grand, Jackie. What’s the craic?”
Jackie gestured with the remote. “I’m after watching the highlights of the hurling. The senior club championship. Brilliant goals by a couple of lads named Murphy and O’Neill for Birr.”
That gave them the opening to talk sports until Margaret arrived with the tea. When they were all settled with their teacups, she filled him in on the whereabouts of members of the family. “Now, will you be stopping with us for a bit, Brennan? Patsy is only over in Ranelagh.” Paddy’s second son. “He’s got a young one working with him now; he can leave the shop whenever he likes. You know he has a shop that sells computers?”
“That’s something new for him then. So I suppose youse have a roomful of computers here now.”
“Divil a one,” said Jackie. “Wouldn’t even know how to turn one on.”
“I’ll ring him now,” Margaret said.
Patsy came in the door twenty minutes later. Greetings were exchanged, and Patsy was handed a cup of tea and joined the others in the sitting room. He was tall and fair-haired, a young-looking thirty-one; he was ten years old when his father was killed. The four of them chatted for a while, and then Patsy said he had to get back to the shop, and would Brennan like to see the place? Sure he would. So they took their leave of Jackie and Margaret, Brennan making a promise to keep in touch. He said not a word about his hopes for a breakthrough in the bombing case.
When they were out in the street, Patsy said, “I don’t have to be back in the shop at all. I’ve an assistant there who can handle it. What I’d really like to do is go down the pub for a pint. Join me?”
“W
ouldn’t say no.”
So they headed for Slattery’s bar, greeted the barman, ordered their pints of plain, and sat down to savour them. “You didn’t know my father only as a little boy in short trousers, Brennan. You kept in touch with each other in later years.”
“Yes, we did. Now, if we were girls I might have a lovely batch of letters carefully preserved and tied up in ribbons. But, boys that we were, I don’t think there were any letters after maybe one or two the first year after I emigrated. And those have not been preserved.”
“Right.”
“But I called in any time I came over here to Dublin.”
“I may have met you then, but I don’t remember. My first memory of you is right after he died.”
“I was in Dublin a couple of weeks after it happened.” He was not about to recount the tales of horror he had heard, or the dreadful images he had seen, or the wreckage it had all made of Paddy’s wife, his parents, sisters, brother, and his bereft and bewildered little children.
Something else, mercifully, came to his mind. “I remember meeting you a couple of years before that, Patsy.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And you gave out to me in front of an entire congregation on the steps of a church.”
“What?!”
“Do you happen to recall your auntie’s wedding? Noreen’s?”
“Was that the one at the Pro?” The Pro was the Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street in Dublin, “pro” meaning “provisional” because the Catholics had lost their “real” cathedral, Christ Church, to the Anglicans at the time of the Reformation. Still provisional after nearly five hundred years. “I remember a picture of me in my First Communion suit, which had been handed down from my brother Jack and was still too long in the legs and arms.”
“Well, that did not deter you from being an authoritative figure that day as a member of the wedding party.”
