Chapter IX

I suppose that the chief cause of bringing in the Irish language amongst them was specially their fostering and marrying with the Irish, the which are two most dangerous infections.

Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland

When they were back in Kilburn, Brennan offered to go out for some take-away fish and chips for the two of them. When he came back with the food, Brennan found Molly sitting in her armchair staring into space.

“Is something wrong?”

She gave him a “not now” signal with her hands. Just then, Finbarr emerged from his bedroom.

“Hi yeh, Brennan.”

“How’s it going, Finbarr?”

“Grand. Something smells good.”

“Help yourself.”

“Well, maybe I will. But before that, I have something for you, Ma. In honour of your work on the intersection of English and Irish history.”

“Oh? What is it, darling?”

He headed for his room and called back, “I designed it myself and had it made up for you. One of a kind. Well, I got one for myself and Shelmalier, too. Not sure if she’ll ever wear it.”

“You’ve got me on the edge of my seat, Finbarr. Bring it out here!”

“Good thing you didn’t have it earlier. You might have done even more time in prison if they’d caught you wearing this.” He came into the room and held something out before him. “Drum roll, please!”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” his mother exclaimed. “Finbarr, that is brilliant!”

The joy on his face was like that of an eight-year-old boy who had finally got it right.

The gift was a black T-shirt, with tan lettering. On the front it said, “CROMWELL IRISH TOUR, 1649–1650!” There was an image of Oliver Cromwell’s face superimposed on a guitar-playing rock musician. In place of the guitar he wielded a musket. At his feet were images of corpses. The back of the shirt advertised the tour again and bore an excerpt from a review: “Rock Fortress Mag predicts: He’ll slay them in Drogheda and Wexford!” Below that was a list of towns on the tour, towns that had suffered the presence of Cromwell’s army, including Drogheda, Wexford, New Ross, Clonmel, and Kilkenny, among others.

Molly’s eyes were enormous as she took in the shirt her son had designed for her. “I love it! And I’ll wear it even if it means risking arrest all over again.”

“I should get one made up for Conn to wear in Brixton.”

“Finbarr,” Brennan said, “that is sheer genius. Where did you come up with the images for the shirt?”

“I did them myself.”

“My son the artist,” said Molly. “He’s forever being asked to make posters for school events and adverts for a group of his mates who are in a rock band.”

“Good on you, Finbarr. Could we get more of the shirts?”

“Sure! The bloke at the shop can print up as many as we want.”

“I’ll want one, and so will Terry. And we’ll get some to bring to New York with us. You can let us know the prices.”

“Super. Just write down the sizes, and I’ll put the order in.”

Finbarr looked as if he had improvised a blistering guitar riff at Wembley Stadium and the fans were on their feet. Then his eyes fell on the fish and chips. “I’m off to see one of the lads in my mechanics course. We’re going to work on his old Mini Cooper, but I’m a bit peckish.”

“Go right ahead.”

The young fellow opened the paper, scooped up a serving of fish and chips, and dumped it on a plate. He wolfed it down and took a bottle of beer from the fridge as a chaser. He had that gone in a few short seconds.

“Finbarr, darling!” his mother said. “There’s no need to hoover the food and drink into yourself at such a speed. Take your time.”

“Got to get going. Takes me a while to get to his place. Since I don’t have an auto. To practice on for my auto mechanics course.”

“To everything there is a season, my lad.”

“Speaking of seasons, this one seems bloody long, seeing how I’m spending it with the old man. Feels like I’ve been there since Christmas.”

“It’s only been since Easter, darling. We thought that, since you’d been staying here so much, it might be good if you stayed with your dad between Easter and the end of the school term. But it’s always up to you, you know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll stick it out and stay the course. I’ll pop in here as usual when I can.”

“Good, Finbarr. I always love seeing you. Nobody pretends this is an ideal situation.”

“Right, right. I know, Mum. I shouldn’t be whinging about it. Anyway, I’m off.”

“Thank you again for the shirt, a chroí.”

“Glad you like it. See yez.” And with that he was out the door.

“He’s in good form this evening.”

“He does have an amiable gene in his makeup even if he doesn’t always show it. Much of the time he puts up a brittle shield, to protect himself, I suppose. From what, I’m not always sure.”

“How is he getting along? Generally, I mean.”

Molly sighed. “When Neville and I were married, and when we had the children, I never dreamed I’d be one of those parents having to jolly the kids into staying with the other parent. That would never happen to us. Now look what’s become of us.”

Brennan searched his mind for a silver, or at least a pewter, lining. “One good thing is that it didn’t happen during their early years. Shelmalier was already in university, Finbarr in his mid-teens.”

“I know, but still …”

“Now,” Brennan said to his sister, “what accounted for the long face when I came in?”

“I had a phone call.” She hesitated, and Brennan waited. “I could hardly hear what the person said. There was a lot of background noise, the sounds of traffic. All I could make out was a man saying ‘Tell him his prints were on the driver’s door.’”

“Tell who? Whose prints?”

She looked even more disturbed than she had when he arrived. “Well, he must have meant Conn.”

“Why wouldn’t he say so?”

“How do I know, Brennan? He may have done. There was so much noise. I had the impression he had said something before I was able to hear him properly. He may have said Conn’s name. I just don’t know. Then he rang off.”

“So this was an anonymous caller, using a call box somewhere outside.”

“Yes.”

“What did he sound like? Young? Old?”

“His voice was raspy. It was obvious he was trying to disguise it.”

“Was there anything at all that sounded familiar?”

“No, nothing. And it was BBC English. Could have been real, could have been fake. It was very hard to make out. And it was over in a second.”

“Why would someone make this call to you?”

“The obvious answer is that someone wants me to believe Conn is guilty. Which is the last thing in the world I want to believe, Brennan.”

“But why you? You’re not his wife. You’re not his mother. Why not call Tess, or Finn?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the man knows I’ve been to see Conn’s lawyer, been out to Brixton.”

“Maybe. Now, who would know about the prints? If this person can be believed. It’s the police who would have this information, obviously. Could it have been yer man from Special Branch?”

“If you mean Detective Sergeant Chambers, he would not be shy about letting me know directly, if he wanted to get that message across.” She imitated the Special Branch man’s superior tone of voice. “‘Sorry to trouble you, my dear lady, but it looks as if your boy is guilty as charged. Pity. We lifted his prints right off the victim’s car door. Perhaps he’ll see the advantage of cooperating with the Crown, favouring us with the names of some of his fellow terrorists. This could do him a world of good at sentencing time on the murder charge.’ Chambers would not disguise his voice and hide behind the noise of a busy street corner in order to deliver his verdict.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“What’s the lawyer’s number? We’d better make an appointment with Lorna and give her the bad news, if she hasn’t received it already.”

†

Lorna MacIntyre had in fact not heard the news. Brennan and Molly were sitting in her office the morning after the disturbing phone call.

“I was just speaking to the Crown Prosecution Service today. Not a word about fingerprints. The official story is that the police are still investigating. I’m entitled to the Crown’s evidence, but it’s early days yet. For the process. Not for Conn. Every day must be an eternity to him, sitting out there in Brixton.”

“And for Tess,” Brennan said. “You know his girlfriend is pregnant?”

“I know,” Lorna replied. “It’s a very tough situation for all concerned. How is she doing with all this?”

“I rang her the other day,” said Molly, “but I just caught her on her way out of the flat. She was going over to Belfast to see her family. She said she was holding up all right, but I can’t imagine …”

“Just like Conn. My client and his girlfriend have been in England long enough to have developed a stiff upper lip!”

“We should all be so fortunate,” Brennan remarked.

“About that call, Lorna,” Molly began. “If it’s true, what the caller said …”

“If it’s true, it places Conn right there at the murder scene with his hand on the victim’s car door. But we don’t know that it’s true. The police have not said, yet, that they have prints. And who else would have that information? And why the cloak and dagger call? The whole thing seems extremely dodgy to me. It may just be someone trying to wind Conn up. The killing of Heath has touched a chord, as we know. There are droves of people who would like to see Conn put away for life. Or worse. They can’t call him in prison. Hence the call to you, as the next best thing. You wouldn’t have to be a member of Special Branch to find the connection between you and your cousin. I know it’s pointless to tell you to put it out of your mind. But really it may be nothing other than a crank call. I’ll see what I can find out. But, as I say, the police tell me the investigation is in the early stages.”

“Not so early that they haven’t got our cousin banged up in Brixton on account of it,” Brennan remarked.

“True. But leave it with me. I’d prefer not to show our hand to the police about the call just yet. I don’t want to be the one to raise the matter of fingerprints. We’ll find out soon enough what they have. Best to play our cards close to our vest. We don’t know who is out there or what is going on.”

†

Brennan didn’t know whether to stand outside the grand Victorian building in Maida Vale and admire the elegant white exterior, with its beautiful architectural detailing, or go inside the place and drink. And have lunch. He lingered for a minute or so, taking in the sight, then went in to find a sumptuous pub in warm gold and reddish colours with a marble fireplace, stained glass, and art nouveau friezes high on the walls. Little wonder his sister was a regular here at the Warrington.

They were sitting with drinks on the table and menus in their hands when Brennan said, “Don’t look now, Molly, but there’s a very proper-looking gentleman giving you the eye from across the room.”

“Of course there’s someone giving me the eye, Brennan. Just as there’s a tall blond Swedish film star giving the eye to you. She’ll be crushed when she learns of your commitment to the celibate state.”

“No, really. Take a couple of moments, then look around to your left.”

Molly spent a bit more time reading the menu, then took a casual look around, and said, “It galls me to give credence to your seemingly preposterous claim, but I think you’re right. I saw him in here the other day. He looked at me as if he recognized me, but I’d never seen him before, so I paid no attention.”

“Well, he’s …”

Approaching the table. Brennan caught the man’s eye and acknowledged him with a nod. The fellow appeared to be in his early fifties with well-cut fair hair going white. Even Brennan, no expert on fabric or fashion, could tell that his dark grey suit was costly; his bearing could only be described as aristocratic.

“I’m awfully sorry to disturb you,” he said, in a voice that could have come down from the House of Windsor, “but you are Molly Burke, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Yes, I am,” she replied, looking up at him.

“I shan’t keep you from your luncheon, but I wanted to say hello and pass along my compliments. I attended a symposium in which you made a presentation, and I was very taken by it.”

“The Cromwell conference, you mean?”

“Cromwell? No, I missed that one.”

Just as well, Brennan thought. But then again, this man was probably more of a royalist than a parliamentarian and so might have had his own beef against the king-killing Cromwell. But such a judgment would be hasty and perhaps completely wide of the mark.

The man was speaking again. “Cromwell’s name did come up, though. I am referring to your paper on Spenser and Milton, and their political views. Milton’s in favour of Cromwell and the revolution. Well, Milton was a civil servant under Cromwell, after all. And Spenser’s less-than-salutary attitudes towards Ireland and its people.”

“Spenser’s advocacy of a scorched earth and famine policy for Ireland.”

“Precisely.”

“He was encouraged by the famine in Munster — Irish people crawling on their hands and knees, eating shamrocks and carcasses in the wild, and how that left very few of them alive. Spenser reasoned that if the Irish could be restrained from cultivating the land, and having their cattle, they would ‘quickly consume themselves and devour one another.’”

‘Yes, quite dreadful, all that. I thought you captured the poets’ thinking brilliantly and made some of the Milton and Spenser scholars distinctly uncomfortable. Oh, where are my manners? Here I am accosting you and your companion, and I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Cedric Mawdsley, and it is my task in life to bore the students on the subject of Spenser and Milton at King’s College, Cambridge. My research brings me home to London frequently, and I come here to the Warrington as often as I can.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mawdsley, and thank you for the kind words about my presentation.”

“Cedric, please. And you are most welcome.”

“Cedric, this is Brennan Burke. My brother is visiting from New York, where we washed up some years ago from our native soil.”

Brennan rose and shook hands with Mawdsley.

“Well, I shan’t impose upon you any longer.”

“It’s not an imposition at all, Cedric. Would you like to join us?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t think of it.”

“Really, you are most welcome. We haven’t ordered yet and would enjoy your company.”

“Well, if you’re sure …”

He pulled out a third chair at the table and sat down. Molly handed him her menu. “I don’t know why I take the menu at all,” she said, “given that I know every item off by heart and I order the same three things over and over.”

“I’m like that myself. Used to drive my wife mad. Same restaurants, same meals, same wine, same clothing. Minor flaws, I thought, but apparently not. But enough of that. Except to say that I have branched out a bit, coming to this place and a couple of other spots. I saw you here the other day but didn’t approach you. I’ve never seen myself as a bashful person, but I must be, a bit.”

“I’m glad you came over and said hello, Cedric.”

Mawdsley then returned to the subject of the English poets of the 1500s and 1600s, and he and Molly gabbed about that. They traded stories about some of the students they had encountered in their years of teaching, Molly at the University of London, Cedric Mawdsley at Cambridge. Mawdsley put on a convincing show of interest in Brennan’s work in Renaissance music with his church choir. When the gathering broke up, after they had all cleaned their plates of everything from salmon to lamb to — Brennan preferred not to dwell on Mawdsley’s choice — devilled kidneys, Brennan was under the distinct impression that the Cambridge scholar would like to see Professor Molly Burke again. Brennan’s only hope was that she would not invite him to dinner and devil a pair of kidneys in her kitchen.

“Molly, haven’t you had enough of these snooty English toffs? Why not get on the boat back to Dublin and find yourself a nice Irish lad?”

“I am not looking for a nice lad of any description, Brennan. I thought I’d made that clear. But,” she said, reverting to the tones of the city where she had been born, “you’re so t’ick you can’t cop on to dat, you feckin’ little gobshite. So why don’t you póg mo thóin.”

Brennan concluded that this might be a subject best left to another day.