Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

“Mr. McKendrick?” the judge inquired.

  “No questions for this witness.”

  “That concludes the case for the prosecution, My Lord,” Hull announced.

  McKendrick rose then and announced that the defence would not be calling any evidence.

  Court broke for the day and would resume the next morning for the Crown and defence summations.

  When Brennan was back in the H Block, he had no desire for company. Even O’Morda, his cellmate, was able to sense the mood and spent every permitted free hour out of the cell. All Brennan could do was pace back and forth in his tiny dungeon and ruminate over and over about the events that had unfolded in the courtroom. The gun had been used to kill O’Dwyer, the man who was shot just around the time Monty Collins’s client, Mr. Flanagan, died in the river. Ronan hadn’t said a word about this. But of course he wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to own up to knowledge of a premeditated murder and a connection between that event and the pistol he — no, his son, Tom — wanted recovered from its hiding place at Saint Matthew’s. And, fair play to Ronan, he had done his best to dissuade Brennan from making the fateful trip to the church to act as Tom’s decoy. Brennan had brushed off his cousin’s attempts to keep him out of trouble. Now, in the prison, he needed a cigarette or he felt he would come apart in pieces all over the room, yet he couldn’t bring himself to go out scavenging for a smoke. Couldn’t bring himself to make conversation with the other men. And he craved a drink. It took a superhuman effort to control the shakes and the sweats. When it was time to sleep, that proved to be impossible.

  * * *

  When morning dawned, painfully, the only mercy that came Brennan’s way was a cigarette handed him by one of the screws on the wing. He could not remember when a gift had been more welcome. He could not remember anything at all, except the horrors of the trial.

  He was transported to the city to the courtroom again, and the two barristers wrapped things up with their summations. Osborne Wickersly Hull for the prosecution reiterated all the testimony that, he said, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Brennan Burke was guilty of all the charges brought against him.

  When it was Pearse McKendrick’s turn, he meticulously went through the testimony and the conclusions to be drawn from it and made a passionate plea for his client’s innocence. “The Crown called only one witness on the question of identification of the man with the gun. Mrs. McNally. She was confronted by the man on March the seventh. She saw him in a dimly lit hallway, with no direct lighting on his face. His face was covered by a scarf up to his eyes, and he had a hood over his head. All she saw was a tall man with dark hair and dark eyes. It goes without saying that there are many men fitting that description.”

  Brennan wondered how his barrister was going to skate around the fact that a priest looking exactly like Father Burke had wormed his way into Mrs. McNally’s office with a ruse about a lost voice.

  “Mrs. McNally, when questioned by police, recalled a visit by a priest who had lost his voice and hoped she would ring a taxi for him. She says that was really Father Burke. The defence submits that there is nothing to link the arrival of a priest with a throat ailment and the gun incident eight days later. The defence further submits that this memory of a priest coming to the office coloured her perception of what the gunman must have looked like; she got it into her mind that the two incidents were related and this led her to project the priest’s appearance onto that of the gunman whose face was all but concealed.

  “Moreover, when Mrs. McNally was asked whether she noted anything about the second man’s accent, she answered that nothing stood out. I suggest that this is because the accent was the same as her own Belfast speech, which would not stand out to her at all. She did not say the man had a foreign or a Dublin accent. Father Burke is originally from Dublin and he has lived in America and Canada throughout his adult life. Again, more evidence that this was a different man.

  “We do not know what the brief February twenty-seventh visit was about, but we do know there was no gun that day, no threatening behaviour, no concern on the part of Mrs. McNally, no damage.

  “Then we come to the Crown’s star witness, a man who testified in return for a promise of immunity from prosecution for the murder he has admitted to, the shooting death of Francis O’Dwyer. And yet here is Father Brennan Burke, being prosecuted for an alleged attempt to pervert the course of justice in connection with that same crime. There is no evidence Father Burke was even aware of that killing, and certainly no evidence he knew about a gun, let alone a gun connected to that incident.

  “Colman Davison has given us no explanation of why he would commit a murder for and on behalf of the IRA, the longstanding enemy of the Loyalist paramilitaries with which Mr. Davison is affiliated. So his story makes no sense.”

  It was obvious to Brennan and to everyone in the courtroom that Davison, for some unstated reason, had become a tout, an informer, for the IRA. But that was not part of the testimony; McKendrick had not put the question to him, had not specifically asked him whether he had been an informer, and Davison sure as hell had not admitted it on his own. So it was open to McKendrick to argue that there was no explanation properly before the court that would explain Davison’s actions.

  “We know the gun was used in the murder of Fritzy O’Dwyer. We know Mr. Davison committed the murder with that gun. In other words, what we have is a Loyalist who admittedly killed a member of the IRA. That’s all we have. It is not credible to say that Father Burke, a Catholic priest, would retrieve a gun with the intention of perverting the course of justice, to protect a member of the Protestant Loyalist paramilitary groups and prevent that man from facing justice for the murder of a Catholic Irish Republican like Mr. O’Dwyer. Father Burke is merely visiting our city from his home in Canada. There is no evidence that he knew any of this history between Mr. Davison and Mr. O’Dwyer.

  “There was no evidence called on the criminal damage charge, apart from Mrs. McNally’s observation that there was dust on the floor of the cellar and a few ceiling tiles out of alignment. Hardly the stuff of criminal damage. As for the threat charge, Mrs. McNally’s testimony is that the man, the unidentified man, was merely holding the gun in the normal way one would hold a gun. And that in fact the barrel was pointing downwards; the man was not holding it out towards Mrs. McNally in a threatening manner at all. And, according to her testimony, the man said, ‘I am not going to hurt you.’ And he did not. He left the parochial house without hurting anyone. I respectfully submit therefore that there is no evidence of any offence being committed by Father Burke, and he should be acquitted of all charges.”

  Mr. Justice Rupertson Pound thanked the two barristers and said the court would break until three o’clock, at which time he would give his verdict. Brennan was trembling. His heart was racing and he thought it might give out on him. That might be best. He sent up a prayer beseeching the almighty and merciful God to deliver him from this torment.

  * * *

  When he was brought back into the courtroom, Brennan’s thoughts flew to all the men he had heard of through the years, all the men — women, too — charged with crimes, brought to trial, and facing the verdict of the court. One thing he had always understood, whether the defendant was a petty criminal or a mass murderer, was the debilitating stress and fear of waiting for that verdict. He knew it all too well from his own past, and now here he was again. He felt as if his head was going to explode.

  And here it was. Mr. Justice Rupertson Pound swept into the courtroom and took his seat. He didn’t require notes to say what he had to say. He spelled out the charges and got down to business. “Mr. Burke was on a mission on those two days in February and March of this year.”

  Brennan knew without hearing another word that he was going down. One glance at Reddy O’Reilly’s face showed that he knew it, too.

  “Mr. Burke had knowledge of a Browning Hi-Power nine millimetre pistol hidden in the pre
sbytery of Saint Matthew’s church in east Belfast. We have not been told why the church office was selected as the hiding place. I accept the evidence of Mrs. McNally that she had not placed the gun there and had not been aware of it until this incident with Mr. Burke. So either someone entered the office surreptitiously and opened up the ceiling and slid the gun in above the tiles, or someone at Saint Matthew’s hid it as a favour to the owner or possessor of the gun. The evidence of the expert witnesses and of Colman Davison, which I accept, proves that this gun was used in at least one terrorism-related shooting in the past. Then, on February twenty-seventh, Brennan Xavier Burke comes on the scene.

  “Mr. Burke, even though he did not speak aloud, misled Mrs. McNally, who had shown him nothing but kindness, deceived her about his reason for being there. He won her trust with a ruse designed to allow him to be alone in the building when she went off to the noontime church service. He was ‘casing the joint,’ as the expression goes, finding out about the alarm system, the door to the cellar, whatever else he needed to know to go in later with his face covered and retrieve that murder weapon. He planned to retrieve, and did retrieve, the Browning Hi-Power pistol that had been used in the previous terrorism-related offence or offences. Mrs. McNally recognized him when he emerged from the cellar on March the seventh. The pistol he took, if recovered by the police, would form part of the evidence in future court proceedings related to those previous offences. Clearly, therefore, Mr. Burke attempted to pervert the course of justice in this jurisdiction. In committing this offence, Mr. Burke caused damage, criminal damage, to the property of Saint Matthew’s church in east Belfast.”

  Brennan heard the two convictions the way he would hear a bell tolling the end of his life.

  “And then,” the judge continued, “there is the possession of an offensive weapon in a public place. A public place is any place where the public have, or are allowed to have, access. Nothing more need be said about that. Now: the threat to Mrs. McNally. The evidence shows that Mr. Burke pointed the gun at her. The court takes judicial notice of the fact that Mr. Burke is over six feet tall and Mrs. McNally just over five feet. A gun held by Mr. Burke and pointed directly at Mrs. McNally would, obviously, be ‘pointing down.’ Mrs. McNally tried to protect herself from Mr. Burke by telling him she had called the police, and the police were on their way. His response was that there were to be no police and she would not get hurt. In other words, if the police did arrive or were really on their way and Mr. Burke was in danger of being caught or reported, she would get hurt. Now, what does one do with a gun that is pointed directly at another person? If one fires, we can take judicial notice of the fact that people very often die from a shot or shots fired so close and so directly. It was a threat, and not just a threat of scratches or bruises. Given the nature of the weapon, it was a threat to kill.”

  An involuntary gasp came from Reddy O’Reilly at this interpretation of events. Brennan himself was long past surprise.

  “If,” the judge went on, “if Mr. Burke had another interpretation of these events to offer us, presumably he would have testified in this trial and told us so. From the fact that he did not testify, I am left with the inference that he has no defence to offer with respect to his words and actions that day. In light of all of the foregoing, I find Brennan Xavier Burke guilty of all charges.”

  Brennan had known it would come to this, but he felt he had taken a bullet to the heart nonetheless. He could scarcely breathe.

  “I assume, Mr. McKendrick, that you would like some time before you speak to sentence? You may arrange a time and date at your convenience.”

  O’Reilly came to the dock, leaned over and hissed in Brennan’s ear. “There is no fucking point in delaying the inevitable. He knows exactly what he’s going to do and nothing we say is going to make it any better. The sooner we get the sentencing done, the sooner we can file the appeal of verdict and sentence.”

  Brennan somehow found his voice and said, “Agreed. Let him condemn me, and you start the appeal.”

  “We’ll finish this off first thing tomorrow.”

  O’Reilly returned to the front of the courtroom and had a word with his barrister, who got to his feet and said, “I shall be ready to speak to sentence tomorrow morning at nine.”

  Once again when they were alone, O’Reilly expressed his outrage. “That pointing of the gun downwards, the height differential, that was evidence the judge set up himself! And then he weaves it all into a threat to kill! And of course the negative inference from your not taking the stand; the lawmakers in this statelet were kind enough to provide that for him in the Criminal Evidence Order of 1988. Which applies only to the North of Ireland, by the way. They weren’t getting enough convictions when the hallowed right to silence was in place. Forgive me, Brennan. Forgive me, Father! But every day I spend in these courts fills me with a boiling rage.”

  Brennan was sitting with his head down, massaging his temples. “Little wonder,” he muttered, “that we have people, known to you and to me, who have spent the better part of their lives trying to overthrow this state!” He looked up at O’Reilly. “He’s going to send me away for how long?”

  “We’ll be filing the appeal before the close of day tomorrow.”

  * * *

  If ever there was a dark night of the soul for Brennan Burke, it was the long, black, torturous night between the verdict and the sentence. The next morning he sat in the courtroom, virtually catatonic, while the prosecutor portrayed him as a terrorist or, failing that, a violent, deceitful man who aided and abetted the terrorists who had caused so much death and destruction in this country, a man who threatened and aimed a gun at an innocent woman, et cetera, et cetera. Pearse McKendrick made every effort to rebut the Crown’s submissions on sentencing, to put the best spin he could on the findings of the judge. Father Burke was a priest who had served in Rome, South America, the United States, and Canada. He was a choirmaster who ran a choir school in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He had no criminal record; he had in fact a stellar academic record and a lifetime of service to God and community. McKendrick did his best, God bless him.

  But the steely-eyed judge was having none of it. He knew a lying, murderous, unrepentant Fenian terrorist when he saw one. He sentenced Brennan to six years in prison.

  Brennan wished for something he would otherwise never have desired in a thousand years; he wished he was in the Royal Victoria Hospital, sedated. Permanently.

  Brennan did not live up to the long Irish tradition of making a resounding speech from the dock. But Reddy O’Reilly did, not from the dock but from the steps of the Crumlin Road Courthouse. Brennan, a convict starting his sentence in the Long Kesh prison, watched the speech that evening on the television news. There was a gathering of press and regular protesters outside the courthouse. O’Reilly declaimed, “What we saw in this building yet again was the courts of this state carrying out anti-insurgency policy rather than upholding the rule of law. The rule of law and civil liberties have long been abrogated during the war that has raged across the North of Ireland. Cicero recognized the problem two thousand years ago in Rome. A poetic translation of the statesman’s words: ‘The laws are silent amid the clash of arms.’ But Lord Atkin, in the House of Lords, begged to differ. Answering Cicero in a case heard during wartime in 1941, Lord Atkin famously declared, ‘In this country, amid the clash of arms the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace.’ He went on to say that it is ‘one of the pillars of freedom’ that a judge must ‘see that any coercive action must be justified in law.’ The Diplock courts have once again failed to live up to the ringing words of that illustrious member of the House of Lords. We shall be filing an appeal immediately, an appeal of the verdict and the sentence handed down here today.”

  * * *

  Back in the Kesh once again, this time as a sentenced prisoner, Brennan felt a deep, black despair that he could never before hav
e imagined. Here he was in prison with men who, many of them anyway, had had a rough, rocky road through life before winding up here. Brennan had enjoyed a full and blessed life. Oh there had been some low points, some trouble spots, some sacrifices. He had given up the chance to have a wife and a family of his own, had signed on to a life of chastity and obedience. He had not always lived up to the promises he made, but he had done his best. The Almighty God had given him the gift of music, had shown him at times the sublime and ineffable love that waits on the other side of the veil that shimmers between this world and the next.

  With all this, why was Father Brennan Xavier Burke not able to rise to the challenges that had been handed to him here in Belfast? Look at the grotesque and terrible suffering endured by the saints throughout the ages. And here was Father Burke, unable to function because he was locked up in prison. And why was he not able to minister to his fellow inmates the way he had done in his prison ministry back in Halifax? Shouldn’t he put his own misery aside and place himself at the service of the other men? It didn’t help that he kept coming back to how careless he had been. He had tried to be as clever and as careful as he could, having no contact with the gun. And he had not had an inkling that the pistol had been used in a premeditated murder. He thought it had killed a tourist, somehow in self-defence. Whatever the facts turned out to be, one thing was indisputable: what Brennan had done, he had done for the benefit of others, not for himself. But still . . . how could he, a priest, a teacher, a professor, a PhD, have been so fucking thick?

  Chapter XXXIV

  Brennan

  “I didn’t know any of this going into the trial, Brennan.” Reddy O’Reilly was sitting across from him in one of the H Block meeting areas. “I was aware of two incidents out on the Ammon Road and thought they were likely connected, given the close timing. But I didn’t know about any connection between the Browning pistol and the hit on O’Dwyer until we were sandbagged in the courtroom by Davison. Now that Davison’s role in that incident has been made public and his solicitor has started third-party proceedings against the others involved, documents are being filed and tongues are being loosened. Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together so far.”