Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  Just at the end of the Et in terra pax — and peace on earth — his own peace was shattered by a loud hammering at the front door. He considered ignoring it, but then thought that might not be the thing to do as a responsible guest in his cousin’s home. A knock on the door at midnight: whatever it was about, it didn’t bode well. He knew he had no choice. He got up and turned off the music and headed to the door. Before he reached it, the pounding began again. He looked out the window and saw a police car. Oh God, what had happened now?

  He pulled the door open and was met by two burly coppers. He began to speak, to ask what was wrong, but one of the peelers talked right over him. “Are you Brennan Burke?”

  Oh, Christ. How would they know that?

  “I am.”

  “Brennan Burke, I am placing you under arrest for possession of an offensive weapon in a public place, and for criminal damage, attempting to pervert the course of justice, and making a threat to kill.”

  “Threat to kill?!”

  “Does that mean you’re admitting to the rest of the offences?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  Sweet suffering Jesus! This can’t be happening. How many people had said the same thing when faced with some unexpected, outrageous misfortune? But it was happening. He hadn’t even seen the gun that day at the church, but this was happening. They put him in cuffs and shoved him into their car and drove off with him. He was too bollixed to map out where they were driving, but he knew they’d crossed into east Belfast and kept going. They pulled up beside a long, rectangular building and dragged him out of the car. Before he could get his bearings, they took him to a small, harshly lit room with a table and three chairs and sat him down across from a giant of a peeler, not one of the two who had arrested him. This fellow was balding and had the rest of his hair shaved off. His eyes were a flinty grey. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. Brennan was nearly shaking from the need of one himself, which he suspected was the point of them being flaunted in his face. He fought down the urge to ask, to beg for one.

  The cop wasted no time on pleasantries, not that pleasantries would be expected in such an environment. “What made you go for the gun in the cellar at Saint Matthew’s?”

  Brennan made no reply.

  “What made you decide to get that gun?”

  No reply.

  “You do realize that things will go a lot easier for you if you answer our questions. A lot of flexibility with the charges you’re facing. Answer the questions. Be good to us; we’ll be good to you.”

  Brennan said nothing. He knew from years of listening to Monty Collins that he always, without exception, told his clients — pleaded with them — to keep their mouths shut when questioned by the police. But Brennan had imbibed the same lesson like mother’s milk from his family. His father, his uncles, his cousins, all who were or had been in the Irish Republican Army: give the peelers nothing. Stonewall them. Don’t cooperate. Don’t give them legitimacy. Don’t open your mouth.

  “Who told you where the gun was?”

  Silence.

  “This is your chance right now. Help us, and help yourself while you’re at it. Who told you?”

  Brennan kept his gob shut and stared at the wall above the man’s head.

  “Just like all the rest of the Provie scum, thinking that stonewalling us will win you the day. Well, guess what, Burke, you fuckin’ terrorist? You lose!” Suddenly, the peeler charged at him, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him against the wall. Another man materialized then, and Brennan could smell the booze on his breath. The second cop drove his right fist into Brennan’s gut, and Brennan reeled from the pain. He longed to grab this hate-filled bigot, this sorry excuse for a policeman, and beat him to a pulp. But even in the pain and stress of the interrogation his mind was working clearly: hit one of them, and the story would be that Brennan had struck first, had obstructed the investigation, had assaulted a police officer. More charges on the sheet.

  But, perhaps as a hangover from all his years of studying and teaching in the universities, he attempted to deflect them by engaging them in a seminar. He tried to make them see reason. “You call me a terrorist.”

  “Nothing wrong with your ears, Burke.”

  “I am not a terrorist. But say, for the sake of argument now, that I am.”

  “You call this an argument? Yeah? Well, we’re going to argue you a lot more before this is over!”

  “So. I’m a terrorist. And you are not.”

  “Right. You take the cup for brilliance.”

  “The thing to do with me as a terrorist is to arrest me, follow the procedures of the world-renowned British justice system, let me get a lawyer, let me out on bail or possibly keep me in custody until my case is heard in court and then, if I am found guilty, I serve my time in prison to pay for my crime. Right? I’m the terrorist. You are not. You are better than that. You are the forces of law and order, hired to keep the peace and maintain order, not conduct a reign of terror in this hellish place. So why are you allowing yourself to be carried away in a frenzy of violence? Who’s the terrorist now?”

  This infuriated them even more, as Brennan might have predicted.

  “Would you like some more, ye Fenian bastard?” And with that, the first cop slammed his fist into Brennan’s left jaw. He heard a crack. A back tooth. He prayed to God to give him the patience and strength to endure this without losing the rag and fighting back. That would make it infinitely worse for him. The second peeler delivered another punch to the abdomen, and Brennan crumpled to the floor. He made what felt like a superhuman effort not to let them hear his gasps of pain.

  “Maybe you’ll be a wee bit more cooperative next time I invite you in for a chat.”

  He was then yanked up and taken to a cell, which contained an iron bed and a chair, which were chained to the floor. The door was banged shut. He either passed out or fell asleep. He had no idea how much time passed while he was out, but he found himself in the interrogation room again. It was two different cops this time, and they were both demented with drink. Their questions were slurred at him, and his refusal to answer set them into a fury of violence. He tried to pray for survival, for deliverance, but the prayers wouldn’t come. The soul, the intellect, was unreachable. He had been reduced to the basest of animals, with only one instinct remaining: to avoid annihilation. He twisted and turned to evade the blows. The last thing he remembered was a savage kick between his legs, and him falling over in agony, vomiting onto his shoes. The last thought he recalled was that he had to have a shower. Immediately. And his clothes had to be washed. Cleanliness was, well — he had been slagged about this all his life — an obsession with Brennan. As painful as it would be to stand in a shower, he simply had to . . .

  He regained consciousness in his cell and wished he hadn’t. He was filthy. His clothing stank. And he was sick with pain from all the pounding. Snatches of conversation somewhere beyond his cell told him he was in the Castlereagh detention centre. Thinking of the beatings he had endured at the hands of the RUC barbarians filled him with a murderous rage. How many others had suffered the same abuse and worse in this and other detention centres? Torture chambers. All the stories he had heard over the years had horrified him; how many times had he said he could not imagine what the prisoners had gone through? How many times had he said that no matter what the prisoners might have done to get arrested, they deserved a fair trial and humane treatment by the authorities? Because once the authorities of any state sank to the level of what they thought the prisoners had done, then there was no order left. No civilization. Just what Hobbes had warned of: the war of all against all.

  Brennan knew he had to tamp down the pain and the rage and humiliation. And the longing for revenge. He tried to free his mind. He was a musician; he tried to call up that gift to comfort him now. A line of plainchant, a motet by Mozart, a Mass by William Byrd. But it
was another piece of music that came into his head. What was it? A song that asked the question who the terrorists really are in this conflict. “Joe McDonnell,” that was it. Brian Warfield of the Wolfe Tones had written it after McDonnell died on hunger strike. He wished the Wolfe Tones would materialize in the yard of this hellhole and belt out the song at the top of their lungs. Who indeed should be included in the word “terrorist” here?

  But Brennan understood that he was only in the early stages of a long and terrifying ordeal, the end of which nobody could predict, least of all Brennan himself. He had to gather his wits and make a phone call. Even in this place, he was permitted to do that. But who would he call? A lawyer. Who? He didn’t know any. Well, he knew Monty Collins, but Monty had left for Halifax. Brennan knew he would have to humble himself and confess to Monty what an idiot he had been. Another criminal client picked up for a boneheaded scheme that — inevitably, as Monty would see it — went horribly wrong. He would have to let Monty and Maura know where he was and what had befallen him. But what he needed was a lawyer who knew this legal system from top to bottomless pit, and he needed that lawyer now. Ronan Burke and sons likely had an entire stable of solicitors who had assisted them over the years. Brennan would ask his cousin to find someone for him, and get this sorted.

  Gráinne answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Gráinne, it’s Brennan.”

  “Brennan! Where have you been?”

  “I’m sorry, a chroí, I can’t talk now. Is Ronan there?”

  “He is. You don’t sound good at all, Brennan. Are you all right?”

  “Em, no.”

  “Oh, God. I’ll get Ronan.”

  Two seconds later, Ronan was on the line. “Brennan?”

  “They lifted me last night. The peelers.”

  The reduction in the volume of Ronan’s voice did nothing to hide his alarm. “What?”

  “I need a lawyer. I’m locked up. I’m in fucking Castlereagh.”

  “Jesus.” There was a pause during which Brennan could almost hear Ronan telling himself to keep his reaction to the minimum necessary. “Brennan. I’ll try to get Reddy O’Reilly. One way or the other, I’ll have someone there for you today.” Then, in Irish, “Ní déarfaidh mé a dhath eile anois.” I’ll say nothing else now.

  “Tuigim. Go raibh maith agat.” I understand. Thank you.

  By mid-afternoon he had a solicitor, the fellow Ronan had mentioned. Redmond O’Reilly. The name sounded familiar. Had Monty mentioned him, or had he read about him in the news? He was an impressive-looking man, tall with longish dark-red hair streaked with silver. They met in a prefabricated hut on the grounds of the Castlereagh interrogation centre. A cop watched them through a window.

  O’Reilly introduced himself, narrowed his eyes at whatever Brennan’s face looked like now, and then jerked his head towards the cop at the window. “How bad was it?”

  “Bad enough,” Brennan acknowledged.

  “I’ll take the details of that before I go.”

  “It seems everything you hear about the system here —”

  “Everything you hear is true. Amnesty International got involved in all this a few years back, found that the ‘safeguards,’ whatever they might be, were ‘inadequate to prevent the ill treatment of detainees.’ One of the things they looked at was the case of a young lad who had been abused here at Castlereagh. Now it’s you. Tell me what happened from the time they came for you.”

  Brennan filled him in on the arrest and the charges. O’Reilly listened without taking notes, then outlined what Brennan could expect now. He would be taken to another police station, the Musgrave station, and he would be charged with the slew of offences arising out of the hare-brained gun escapade. Then he would be taken from there into a courtroom, a low-level court of some kind. He would apply for bail. Bail would be refused.

  “Refused? But if we apply and I meet the qualifications for —”

  “You’ll not be getting bail. You’ll be transferred to the Crumlin Road Gaol . . .”

  “The Crumlin jail!”

  “I’m sorry, Brennan. There’s no point in me trying to sugarcoat it; this is what you’ll be facing. You’ll be on remand in the Crum. There will be some procedures to attend to at the courthouse across the way — at the other end of the tunnel — and we’ll try to get you a trial as soon as we possibly can.”

  “Jesus the Christ who died on the cross and descended into hell!”

  “I know. But I’ll do my utmost to make the best of a very bad situation. Now. Tell me what they did to you.” He told O’Reilly what they did to him, and O’Reilly wrote it down.

  “Now, Brennan, this is going to look like a spoof of a bad spy film, but see this other pen I have. It’s a camera. I know, I know. But I’m going to take a picture of your face. Not that it will do any good. But it will be documented: yet another detainee subjected to abuse.”

  “Another hunk of meat in the slaughterhouse.”

  “Standard procedure, unfortunately, Brennan. All our lads are beaten on arrest. All of them.”

  * * *

  Brennan found himself in another circle of hell the following day. Bruised and wracked with pain in face and body, he sat perched on an iron-framed bed, the upper of two bunks, in a cell in the Crumlin Road Gaol. He had, as O’Reilly predicted, been refused bail. He could not believe he had ended up here, in the Crum. High in the narrow wall of his cell was a barred window, which provided the only evidence of reality, of a real world outside this place. Or at least the city of Belfast. The massive Victorian prison in north Belfast was constructed of basalt rock and had four wings radiating out from the centre building, all contained within a five-sided wall. Wasn’t there some kind of occult nonsense about five-sided figures being evil? Maybe there was something to it after all. He tried to recall what the theory was, but he was unable to concentrate. He had more immediate concerns. There was his cellmate, snoring away in the lower bed.

  Brennan was the quintessential “private person,” so sharing a tiny, cramped cell with another person after living in solitary contentment his entire adult life was a trial in itself. But that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was there on the floor, the stuff of nightmares for such as Brennan Burke. A chamber pot! A shit pot, overflowing and stinking of another man’s waste. Brennan had been slagged without mercy for being the most fastidious person in the known universe. But he came by it honestly. He had read somewhere that the Celts invented soap. If this was a matter for debate — and how could it not be, given how old the story was — it was said that they were a fastidious lot. And he embodied that quality. Now he was expected to — no. This could not be happening. Just the thought of it made his flesh crawl. And where the fuck would he be having his showers? And how early in the day could he get in there, and how long would he have to soap himself thoroughly and luxuriously as was his habit? And if he had an active day in the exercise yard and felt like having a second shower . . . Would he be forced to perform his ablutions in some communal, slimy . . . De profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine. Domine, exaudi vocem meam. Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, o Lord. Lord, hear my voice.

  After seeing his cell and his very own shit pot under the bed — in other words, after seeing that life as he knew it was over — he was taken to the basement of the Crum to meet with his solicitor. And now Brennan had a look at the first piece of evidence against him: O’Reilly had obtained a copy of the statement the police had taken from Mrs. McNally, the secretary at Saint Matthew’s parish house. Brennan took the piece of paper and read the words that were going to condemn him.

  “He had lost his voice or, well, he must have pretended he lost it. He mouthed some words at me. Pointed to his throat and he was sneezing. Had a bad cold. Then he took out a holy card from his wallet and wrote a note asking me to ring for a taxi.”

  “Do you have that note, by any chance?”
/>   “No, he put it back in his wallet.”

  “The pen?”

  “I don’t think so. But it was all wet, so I wiped it off. Oh no!”

  “That’s all right. You couldn’t have known.”

  “I believed him! How could I have been so foolish as to let him in there?”

  “Now, Mrs. McNally, you have nothing to be sorry for. Just take your time now, and tell us what else happened.”

  “Well, he seemed to be a very nice fellow, even though he couldn’t talk to me. A lovely priest. The first time he came, that is. But then the second time, when he came all covered up in a raincoat with a hood over his head, well, there he was, bounding up from the cellar, the priest with a gun in his hand! And, as we found after, dust and dirt everywhere from the ceiling being torn open!

  “When he came up and into the hallway I didn’t know what to do. I was terrified he would shoot me! So I said, ‘I heard you down there. I called the police on you. They’re on their way now!’ And of course that was a foolish thing to say; he knew straight away I had made it up. I hadn’t had time to call the police. And he said, ‘No police, and you won’t get hurt.’ And him with a gun in his hand!”

  “What was he doing with the gun at that time?”

  “Well, he was holding it, kind of out like this.”

  “Pointing it at you.”

  “Well, kind of. I’m sorry, I’m just too confounded to tell you properly.”

  “And he said, ‘No police and you won’t get hurt.’”

  “Right.”

  “And did you feel threatened, him with a gun in his hand telling you not to call the police?”

  “Well, yes, in a way. A man with a gun. You know. A man who had impersonated a priest and come in under false pretences! God only knows who he really was! One of the Provos or something! I went back into the office and then of course I really did call the police.”