Chapter XV

In the street stood Ireland’s hero, brave Republican was he.

All the Staters with their rifles, no surrender would they see.

Then he raised his gun and fired one more round for Ireland true,

And a hail of bullets felled him, our great martyr Cathal Brugha.

Áine Ni Mhurchadha, “Cathal Brugha”

Brennan returned from his parish work early the next day and, after spending a couple of hours loafing in the flat, listening to music and sampling some of Molly’s history books, he answered a phone call.

“Hello, is Molly in?”

“No, she isn’t. I’m not sure where she is, probably at work. Is this Tess?”

“It is, yeah. Are you one of her brothers?”

“Yes, it’s Brennan.”

“’Bout ye, Brennan?”

“How are you doing, Tess?”

“Oh, I’m all right. I’m just back from Belfast, seeing my mam and da and the rest of them. It was good to be home.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“I’m going to Brixton today. Was wondering if Molly might want to come with me. I hate going into that place on my own. But maybe we can go together another time.”

“Why don’t I go with you?”

“Would you?”

“Of course.”

†

Brennan and Tess stood together, waiting to be shown, one after the other, into the visiting area. A warder came towards them and said, “You here for Burke?”

“We’re here for Conn Burke, yes,” Brennan replied.

“Down those stairs, then first door on your right.”

“Both of us?” Tess asked.

“Yes, both.” He gestured for them to go ahead. This was the opposite direction from the visiting area. What was happening?

“Where are we going?” Brennan demanded to know.

“Move along. Down the stairs.”

Brennan took Tess’s arm and moved towards the stairs. He was glad the young woman wasn’t here by herself. If something had gone wrong with Conn in this place, he wanted to be here to help her deal with it.

They went down the stairs and stood by the first room on the right. The warder came up behind them with a ring of keys, opened the door, and ushered them inside. And there was Conn in blue jeans and a T-shirt, sitting with one leg crossed over the other, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He got up and put his arms around Tess, gave her a prolonged kiss, and then spoke softly into her ear. Nobody barked an order at them about “no contact.” When they pulled apart from one another, Conn gave Brennan a quick embrace and they all sat down, including the warder.

“You’ve met Albert Smithson,” said Conn. “Albert, this is my bride-to-be, Tess, and my cousin Brennan.”

Albert leaned towards them and shook hands with both of the visitors. Tess beamed at the benevolent official who had engineered this little reprieve for her and her man.

“Welcome to our guest suite,” Albert said, laughing.

He sounded as if he might be from Liverpool, but Brennan wondered if that conclusion had been influenced by the fact that the man looked like a younger brother to Ringo Starr. The same face and, now that they were out of public view, the same friendly demeanour. Brennan refrained from making a crack about sticks and skins. He was sure the fellow had heard it all before.

“Albert stands out in this place,” Conn told them, “for his kindness and his wisdom. He is wise enough, for instance, to know that I am not going to kill him, or you, Tess, or you, Brennan, if the four of us are in here having a little hooley — if a gathering without a drop of drink to be had can be called a hooley, and I don’t fault you for that at all, Albert — a little party with me unshackled and Albert unarmed, and all of us together. No danger to anyone whatsoever.”

“I’d be sacked if the powers-that-be found out about this gathering even without me setting up a bar in the corner, so …”

“So you’re saying you might as well bring in a slab of beer for us? Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

“It’s the death penalty for supplying liquor to dangerous foreign agitators in the prison.”

“When did they get so humourless?”

“Must have been last week. Did you see Hobson standing there, po-faced, while you insisted on teaching me some of your rebel songs? Good songs, I have to admit. I loved the line ‘He died of lead pyeson o’er Erin Go Bragh.’ Sounds like an old fellow we had in here a couple of years back. Bobby somebody. One of your lot. He talked like that. Poison sounded like pyeson, and he was always singing those songs. Not everybody here appreciates that music, though, I’m sure you’d agree.”

“That must have been what soured them on us foreign agitators. Now, Albert, you’re the best man in this entire godforsaken, soul-destroying complex of buildings, so I think it only right that you be the best man at our wedding. Amn’t I right, Tess?”

“Aye, Conn, you took the words right out of my mouth. I’m so grateful for him arranging this get-together, I’d almost fancy him as the groom!”

“Now, I wouldn’t want to step on any toes,” said Albert.

“Listen, you two, you’ve got me concerned here. If he takes too much of a liking to you, he might just keep me in here for years.”

“I assure you that I shall be a gentleman, Conn.”

“Thank you, Albert. Now if you come as best man to the ceremony in Belfast, you might make a few of our guests nervous, particularly my family from Dublin, you being an Englishman and all. So come prepared to be searched. Patted down. You know the drill.”

“Searched by a bunch of IRA blokes? That might get a bit rough.”

“IRA? What are they saying about me in this place? Don’t be listening to a load of bollocks. No, in Irish tradition, security at a wedding is the responsibility of the bridesmaids.”

“I didn’t know that!” Albert played along.

“Oh yes. And, as best man, it will be your privilege to be searched by the maid of honour. So, something to look forward to.”

“I’m getting keener by the minute.”

“But you can’t show up in your uniform, Albert.”

“What’s wrong with my ensemble? I’ve been wearing the same thing every day, thinking I looked quite dapper.”

“No, mate, it’s all wrong. Everyone in Belfast city will clock you as a screw right away. You wouldn’t want that. And it would reflect badly on myself as well. When someone thinks screw, they think prison, prisoner, criminal. And that’s not the image I’ll be striving for at our wedding. Now Tessie, what have you got there? Is that a bride I see on the cover of that publication? Why has she got such a big enormous head on her?”

“It’s a wedding magazine someone left out there. The latest fashions for brides and grooms. And yer one looks like that because big hair is in style now.”

“And big shoulders by the look of that dress. She looks like an American football player. But let’s see what else is in there. We don’t want to be standing at the altar like a pair of unfashionable gobshites.”

“Here it is about men, Conn. Your hair just won’t do. It was all right yesterday but not anymore. Listen to this: ‘Perms for men will create a wilder, fuller head. And your hair will no longer be controlled by gels and sprays.’”

“I am due for a new perm,” Conn conceded, patting his shaggy auburn hair. “I do look a fright. But I am not, simply not, going to give up my hairspray! A man without hairspray, a man without gel …”

“Is a man on the slippery slope down to hell,” responded Tess.

“But a man with a perm is a man with respect.”

“Not in this place,” the warder declared, “he’s a bloody insect!”

“Well done, Albert. Not only will you be our best man, you’ll be the court poet when we start our noble house. Poets were very important members of the aristocratic households, you know. Well, that would be obvious from the immortal lines we recited here today.”

Tess snickered as she read more diktats from the führers of fashion. “Shoulders are going to get narrow, but hemlines wide. Guess that means I’ll have to toss out everything I own today and buy all new clobber.”

“I suppose that’s the idea,” said Albert.

“But I won’t go along with that. I’ll be a rebel with a narrow hemline and a wide belly. And if they don’t like it, they can get stuffed. Oh. Here it tells you to decide on a theme for your wedding.”

“What will we have for our theme, Tess, a smart young couple like us?”

“The theme will likely be Hurry it up can’t you, Father? Give us your blessing, my contractions are starting!”

“Think you can handle that for us, Father Burke?”

“Conn, my lad, I am nothing if not flexible. If you’d like to have the baptismal font wheeled in for the wedding, you can have two sacraments for the price of one.”

They were startled then by a loud bang at the door. Two uniformed men burst into the room.

“Smithson!” one of them shouted. “What’s going on here?”

Albert Smithson jumped up from his seat and faced the newcomers.

“What is this man doing on this floor?”

The older of the two pointed at Conn, who looked at him with a kind of lazy insolence.

“This is Mr. Burke’s wife-to-be, sir. And this is his priest. Because they are getting married, I thought —”

“You’re not paid to think, Smithson. Your responsibility is to keep order, and to keep the inmates in their proper quarters, not allow them to consort with females whenever they get the itch.”

“They’re hardly consorting, sir. As I said, this is their priest. They —”

“Get these people out of here. Now. Smithson, upstairs and wait for me. Roberts,” he said to his fellow warder, “search him.”

Roberts commanded Conn to get up against the wall with his legs spread and arms up.

Brennan turned to see his cousin being manhandled, not at all gently, by the screw. “There’s no need of that. We didn’t pass anything to him.”

“We’ll decide what’s needed here,” the older warder said to him. “Up the stairs.”

Tess went ahead and Brennan followed her. Just as they reached the top of the staircase, Brennan heard a clatter from the room, as if a chair had been knocked over, followed by “My name’s not Paddy, you fuckin’ Tan.” Then there were more sounds of a struggle before the door at the top of the staircase was slammed shut, and Brennan heard no more.

Conn, for the love of Christ, Brennan pleaded silently, don’t make it any worse for yourself in here.

After their unceremonious ejection from the Brixton Prison, Brennan did his best to offer comfort to Tess as they sat together in the tube. She was in tears. “What’s happening to him in there, Brennan? He didn’t do anything wrong. We were just having a visit. Now he’s being punished.”

“He’ll be all right, Tess,” Brennan said, in an effort to convince them both. “Things will settle down. He did nothing wrong, as you say.”

“And what will happen to Albert? He was so kind. He didn’t do anything wrong either. It’s not as if we were all in there using drugs, or plotting an escape. I hope he doesn’t lose his job, though how he can stand working in a place like that, I don’t know.”

“He’ll probably be disciplined in some way. A note in his file,” Brennan improvised, “and it will all be forgotten.”

Tess was silent for a while. She sat staring at the dark window across from them as the train hurtled along beneath the streets of London. Then she said, “What’s going to happen to us, Brennan? I keep telling myself it will all be cleared up, and Conn will get out, and we’ll have our … our baby and get on with our life together. But what if he never gets out? I’ll be raising our child alone. A child without a father. Or, I mean, a father in prison. What kind of a life would that be for a little girl or boy? Conn will be the most wonderful, most loving father in the world, but what if he loses his chance? What if our child spends his or her whole life never receiving that love, only on weekend visits to that horrid prison? And imagine how the other children will treat our little one, here in England, where I’ll have to stay if Conn is here.”

Brennan reached over and gently wiped the tears from Tess’s cheeks, then put his hand over hers. “Molly and Terry and I are going to do everything we possibly can to get information that will clear him of the charges. But tell me this, Tess.” She looked up and met his eyes. “If there is anything you know about this, anything at all, tell me now.”

“He didn’t do it, Brennan. I’m not one of those girls who thinks her man never did anything wrong in his life. He’s a volunteer. I know that.” In other words, a member of the IRA. “And I know he’s done things he can’t tell me about. That’s exactly what he says. ‘I can’t tell you, love. Don’t ask me.’ But he swore to me on my cross —” she fingered the small gold Celtic cross she wore on a chain around her neck “— he pointed to it and swore he did not kill that policeman. I know he was telling me the truth.”

Brennan experienced relief all over again, at Conn’s insistence that he had not murdered the Special Branch officer. He asked Tess, “Is there anything at all you know about it that could help us? Any name, any fact …”

She was shaking her head. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

He believed her. Whatever Conn knew about the killing, he was keeping to himself. But how long could this go on? Here was a woman who would be giving birth to Conn’s son or daughter in a few months’ time. Were mother and child destined to remain in a foreign country, away from family and friends, making periodic visits to the child’s father under the eyes of the warders of Brixton Prison? This should have been the most joyful time of Tess Rooney’s life, looking forward to her marriage and the birth of the baby, and their life together, the three of them, with maybe more children to come. Instead, she looked young and helpless and miserable. What effect might her emotional condition have on the child she was carrying? Brennan could hardly bear to think about it.

Molly was home when Brennan returned, and he filled her in on the events of the afternoon. The first thing she did was call Tess, and commiserate with her over the situation with Conn and the prison and the months ahead. After the call, Brennan asked Molly about her day, and she confessed to once again taking tea to her Special Branch pursuer in his car outside her flat.

Earlier that day

“People are going to talk.”

“Wouldn’t want that in your line of work, John, unless they’re spilling their subversive secrets into a hidden microphone. Or onto a tape spinning in an interrogation room.”

“How cynical you’ve become, my dear. I hope I’m not to blame.”

“You are. I never had even a moment of paranoia till I came to the attention of the Special Branch.”

“If that’s the case, I shall depart immediately, with apologies for having targeted the wrong person. Case of mistaken identity. We tend to pick people at random and follow them if the traffic lights cooperate. There’s one; let’s follow her. No wait. We have a red light. Turn left and follow that other one instead.”

“Long years of training required for that.”

“No, they use the same random process to select and promote us.”

“So who else have you got on your radar these days, besides us Paddies?”

“Haven’t really looked around for anyone else, you lot keep us so busy.” Then he said, “Molly, I am not an anti-Irish bigot. Honestly. There is so much I admire about the Irish people.”

She stopped herself from making a tart reply. It was obvious that Detective Sergeant John Chambers was absolutely sincere in what he was saying, as awkward as it was in the telling.

He spoke again. “Ireland is renowned for its literature, poetry, music, its rich culture … nobody would deny that. And the Irish people I’ve met — at least those I’ve met unofficially! — splendid people, really.”

“But?”

“No buts. Our work is against individuals who, in their understandable but misguided quest to right the wrongs of the past, kill or maim innocent people. What kind of government, what kind of police force, would sit back and let that happen to its citizens? But, having said that, Molly, let me tell you I have found much to admire even in some of those who waged the war for your country’s freedom from the British yoke. I’ve read a bit of history in my day. Well, we have to know what it’s all about, don’t we? Special Branch, I mean, if we’re going to deal effectively with …”

“Know thine enemy,” Molly put in.

“Yes, yes, I know. But it’s not just that. Really. Britain did some terrible things in Ireland. You’ll never hear me deny it. And some bone-headed things too. How stupid, as well as brutal, how stupid was our government to execute the leaders of the Rising in 1916? I’ve seen documentaries where Irish people have said modern Ireland was born, not in the Rising itself, but in the aftermath when the leaders — teachers and poets, as I understand it — were shot by firing squad. People were so outraged that the tide of public opinion turned against England and in favour of rebellion.”

“That’s right. The grounds of Kilmainham Gaol, birthplace of modern Ireland. They even took one injured man, James Connolly, and strapped him to a chair so they could shoot him.”

“Yes, I had heard that. So I completely understand why there was a rebel movement. And I have to say I was quite taken by the story I read about Cathal Brugha. Forgive me if I’ve mispronounced it — some of those Irish names are impossible for the rest of us. He was wounded multiple times in the Rising. And he lived to fight again. Imagine the man walking about, all those bullets rattling around inside him. Then he fights on the anti-treaty side in the Civil War, holed up with other Irregulars in a hotel in Dublin. When he knew it was all over for him, what did he do? Told his men to surrender. But there was no surrender for him. He walked out of the hotel to face the rifles of the Free State army arrayed against him. He walked out with his gun blazing — in some versions I read, it was a gun in each hand — and went down in a hail of rifle fire. Now there was a man with the courage to die for his country. Hard not to admire a man like that.”

Chambers seemed to have forgotten Molly’s presence. He stared out the windscreen of the police car, imagining perhaps the scene in front of the Hammam Hotel in O’Connell Street, still called Sackville Street back then, when the old IRA warrior went down in a blaze of glory.

Molly lifted her cup to her lips. The movement brought Chambers back to the present. He turned and gave her a searching look. Not knowing what to do under his intense gaze, she mumbled about going back up to her flat, getting things done. A man accustomed to hearing lies, he regarded her with amusement, handed back his teacup, and thanked her for her hospitality. She turned when she got to her door and saw him lighting a cigarette. He watched her through the haze of smoke.

†

“He has the loveliest blue eyes,” Molly said, as if to herself.

“Oh?” said Brennan. “Gazing into his eyes, were you?”

“Just an observation, Brennan, dear. I was about to say that it’s a waste, such lovely eyes being used to peer into the dark corners of people’s lives.”

“Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to keep at bay whatever might slither out of those dark corners. The state needs its policemen.”

“Yes, it certainly does. Only I wish …”

Brennan raised an eyebrow and waited for his sister to elaborate. She did not. What was it she wished, that a certain Special Branch Detective Sergeant could set his sights on other targets, leaving him to meet her as something other than a suspect or a witness or a close associate of the foreign shit-disturbers he was sworn to shut down?

†

On Tuesday, Brennan, Molly, and Terry were being ushered into the office of Lorna MacIntyre. She had called and asked them to come in. Lorna faced them across her desk and filled them in on information disclosed to her by the Crown Prosecution Service.

“The information confirms what you heard from your anonymous caller. Conn’s fingerprints were on the driver’s door of the police car.”

Molly slumped in her seat as if she had been buoyed until now by the hope that the allegation about the prints would be refuted.

“But we all knew he was there, didn’t we?” Lorna said. “He was seen by a witness nearby, and the calls warning of the bombs came from the same area, and the police believe it was Conn’s voice on the phone. The bullets came from a Browning Hi-Power pistol, which many of the IRA have and, according to the disclosure, Conn himself was known to possess.”

“Knowing all that is one thing,” Molly said in a small voice. “But prints on the car are, well …”

“Direct as opposed to circumstantial evidence when it comes to the murder.”

“So Casey’s info was correct after all,” Terry said.

“Casey?” the lawyer asked. Silence from the Burkes across from her desk. “Who is Casey?”

Brennan and Molly looked to Terry, as if to say, You popped your head up out of the trench. Now it’s up to you to rise and walk across the field.

There was nothing to be gained from withholding the information from Conn’s lawyer, and they all knew it. Terry fessed up. “The calls Molly received. We figured out they came from a fellow by the name of Casey.”

“And you’re going to tell me how you know this. And who this man is. Aren’t you, Terry?” Lorna MacIntyre looked perturbed, and little wonder.

“Several years ago, Conn and I arranged to spirit this Casey out of Belfast. He had been wounded. His life was in danger. If he stayed in Belfast, the gunmen would have finished the job.” The solicitor sat stony-faced through the recital. “I wasn’t there when the two calls came in to Molly. Only later did she mention what appeared to be a throwaway line. The man gave Molly a message to pass along to her brother, that is, me, a line about the ‘loopy lady,’ which was a joke about the plane we flew over in. The message was a code of sorts. So these calls …”

MacIntyre held up her hand for silence. “Flew where?”

“Belfast to Manchester.”

“When?”

“In 1983.”

“Who is Casey? An IRA man?”

“No, he was a cop in Belfast.”

This time, surprise was evident on the lawyer’s face. “Casey is a police officer!”

“Was. He was a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.”

“And he was targeted by whom? Provisional IRA? Loyalist paramilitaries?”

“He was a Catholic, and he was targeted by the IRA for joining the Protestant police force.”

“He had joined up,” Brennan put in, “to try to boost the Catholic presence on the force, to improve things for Catholics in terms of law enforcement.”

“The IRA didn’t see it that way,” MacIntyre said.

“They should have. Conn did,” Terry replied. “He saved Jacky Casey’s life and put his own life in danger as a result.”

“Where is Casey now?”

“Never heard from him or about him again. Till now.”

“Till he called with confidential information that only the police had at the time.”

“I guess you’re right. We couldn’t figure out why he called.”

“He knows what’s going on, and he knows you’re in London,” Lorna said to Terry.

“Right.”

She turned to Molly. “You told me the caller sounded English?”

“Yes, but it was very noisy, and I had the impression he was trying to disguise his voice.”

“Casey’s voice when I met him was pure Belfast,” Terry said.

“Which might explain why he didn’t stay on the phone long with Molly. Hard to cover all those Belfast vowels, no matter how hard you work at it. He would be very concerned about being discovered, presumably, if he is working as a police officer again now. A police officer passing along information to help clear an IRA murder suspect.”

“Help clear?!” Molly and Terry both spoke at once. “But he said …”

Lorna raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Well, he made a point of telling us Conn’s prints were on the car.”

“Conn saved his life.”

“But the IRA shot him and left him for dead, so he must have been telling us that, as much as he appreciated what Conn did, the murder of a policeman by an IRA man, Conn or anyone else, was something he could not let go, and he had the smoking gun, so to speak, the prints, and …” Molly wound down, and nobody spoke for a long few seconds.

“The information from the Crown is that Richard Heath was shot from the left-hand side, the passenger side, of his car.”

“Not through the driver’s window,” Brennan remarked.

“That’s right.”

“But they know Conn touched the driver’s door.”

“The driver’s door, yes. The police did not pick up any prints from Conn on the passenger side of the vehicle, inside or out.”

“So that tells us …” Brennan began.

“It provides us with the opportunity to argue that, whatever Conn was doing on one side of the car, there is nothing to put him in the passenger seat whence came the shots that killed Richard Heath.”

“Well, this is good!” If there were straws floating about in the room, Molly was grasping at them.

“And Casey knew it?” asked Terry. “Is that what you’re saying, Lorna? He called to give us evidence of Conn’s innocence, not his guilt?”

“Could be. But it’s not that clear, unfortunately. The indications are that prints were wiped from the passenger side, interior and exterior.”

“Oh, God!” Molly had come crashing down to earth once again.

“This may mean that someone else was in the car,” the lawyer said.

“Yes!”

“Or that Conn went round to the passenger side and got in without leaving any prints.”

“So,” Brennan said, “he, em … whoever it was … wiped his prints off one side of the car but left them on the other. Would anyone do that?”

“Someone might, Brennan, being in a panic to get away.”