Death at Christy Burke's (41 page)

Bill signalled to the bartender and pointed to his glass. A half-pint, nearly full. When Michael had his own half pint, he sat beside McAvity and made small talk for a few minutes. Then he got to the point.

“When we spoke here last time, you were kind enough to provide some background on the people who might be targets of the slander on Christy Burke’s wall. And you told me about the bad feeling between the Madigans and another family, but my old memory is not what it used to be, and I’ve forgotten the name.”

“I’d hardly expect you to remember it, Michael. I had a moment when I couldn’t recall your own name! The people I was talking about are the Brogans. They and the Madigans would cross the street in front of the airport bus rather than give each other a good morning or a good afternoon. That was the past generation, though. It’s not a big family, and the young Brogans have all immigrated to England.”

“But did you tell me there’s an elderly woman?”

“Old Irene. She’s not well at all. She doesn’t put a foot outside the door of her flat. I’m speaking literally now, Michael. She doesn’t leave the flat. She’s in one of the big tower blocks in Ballymun. Her children set her up there before they moved away. It was a good idea at the time. Ballymun was the hope of the future, public housing with central heating. Nothing else around though, so something of a ghetto. Much worse now, with drugs and all the social problems associated with them. Anyway, Irene Brogan stays inside. Has a woman come in and bring her whatever she needs. So that poor soul hasn’t been painting nasty words on the walls of Christy Burke’s pub.”

“I wonder whether she’d have a word with me.”

“You never know. She can be fierce, but if you catch her on a good day, well, you never know.”

“So, Bill. A bit of excitement in here recently. The guards were here, I understand.”

“Yes.”

“After that man’s body was found.”

“Looking for a bit of information,” McAvity said, in a tone that invited no further inquiry.

Michael was on the buses again the following morning, this time for the ride to the Ballymun public housing estate, which was almost as far out of town as the airport. It took him a while to locate Irene Brogan’s name, but he found it in one of several high modernistic towers, which looked as if they had been constructed in the 1960s. Michael didn’t much like the look of the place, a mix of high, low, and medium-height blocks of flats. The phrase “brutalist architecture” came to mind. And he didn’t like the look of some of the characters lurking about the place, vacant-eyed young people who gave him the impression they’d run a knife into him as soon as wish him good day. He just had to be on the enormous estate for five minutes to know it was a social engineering experiment gone horribly wrong. And five minutes in the elevator — which stalled on the sixth floor on the way up, trapping Michael with a man who had vomited down the front of his shirt — offered some insight as to why Irene Brogan never set foot outside her flat.

Mrs. Brogan peered out at Michael in answer to his knock. She cast a quick look right and left in the corridor and then returned her attention to Michael. He introduced himself and said he was a friend of a business owner in the city, a man who owned a pub that was being targeted by a vandal. And if he could have a few minutes of her time, he would explain why he had sought her out. She looked at him with the suspicion his story might be said to deserve, and he smiled a bit sheepishly.

“I’m not here to sell you anything. I’m not even going to quote scripture.”

She reluctantly admitted him, then banged the door shut behind him. She was a short, wide woman dressed in some sort of lime-green lounging outfit that billowed about her.

“Welcome to the People’s Republic of Ballymun, Father. I hope none of my comrades treated you to any disrespect on the way in.”

“No, no, Mrs. Brogan, I had no trouble at all. But yourself, are you all right? How long have you been living here?”

“I’ve survived here for nearly twenty years. I wouldn’t call it living.”

“Do you have family in the area?”

She raised a cynical eyebrow. “I have no one here. I might as well be in Moscow.”

“Who helps you out then? Brings you things you need? Takes you for appointments?”

“There’s a young one here. I give her a few bob a month, and she does my errands.”

“Is there somewhere else you could go? I’d be happy to help you make arrangements —”

“Would I be here if I had somewhere else to go? I can tell you’re a good soul, Father. Thank you, but I’m all right. There are plenty who are worse off than I am. Now let me make you a cup of tea, and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

Michael stood at the window, looking out at the bleak scene below. A jet plane roared by, rattling the windowpanes.

Mrs. Brogan returned with the tea, and they sat down. “As I explained, I’m helping a friend who runs a pub in the city. A vandal has been spray-painting graffiti on the place, and the messages seem to relate either to the publican himself or to some of the regular customers there. One of the regulars is a man named Eddie Madigan.” Mrs. Brogan’s lips tightened at the mention of the name. “Someone told me, and I don’t have a tactful way of putting this, that your family and the Madigans do not get on very well.”

“Your informant is correct.”

“Would you be willing to tell me what lies behind the ill feeling?”

“I don’t mind telling you. In fact, I’d be happy to broadcast it on RTÉ if they’d let me. It goes back to June 1920, couple of years before I was born. Denny Brogan was my father’s older brother; there was twelve years or so between them. There was Denny and his wife Meg, and Liam and Tippy. They had a place ten miles north of here. The family ran a creamery. Denny was with the Volunteers, who by that time had joined up with the Irish Republican Brotherhood to become the IRA. Denny was a crack shot with the rifle, and he’d just as quickly pin you with his eyes if he heard a foul word come out of your mouth. There was no ‘bloody’ or ‘eff’ or ‘damn’ in the presence of Denny Brogan. If you were staying at his house — and you’d be welcome to stay as long as you needed — you’d not be missing Mass on Sunday. Nor would you be sodden with drink in his presence. You’d have a drop or two and you’d leave the premises walking like a gentleman. That’s what he was, a gentleman and a soldier, fighting under the inspiration of Michael Collins to rid his country of an occupying force.

“And his most trusted comrade in the world was Eddie Madigan, grandfather to the man you’d know as Eddie Madigan today. Those two stood together, took orders together, planned and schemed and fought together. Denny trusted Madigan absolutely. Denny even let himself be subject to a disapproving blast by Mick Collins over some oversight committed by Madigan, which Collins thought was Denny’s fault. Some little cock-up, I don’t know what, but you couldn’t be too careful in those days, and Mick had to keep a tight rein on them. So Denny stood there in front of Collins, who was giving out to him without mercy, and Denny took it rather than breathe a word of the fact that it was his friend Madigan who had banjaxed things.

“Denny’s Volunteer service meant he had to be absent from the creamery on a good many occasions. So Meg was left to do the work, and Liam helped as best he could, him being only eleven years old at the time. Heavy work, running a creamery. It’s 1920 I’m talking about, so the Tans were here.”

“Right,” Michael said. The Black and Tans were a ragtag outfit cobbled together by the British, made up of First World War veterans who had returned to England and Scotland in 1918 only to find themselves surplus to requirements. A bunch of ruffians, they were, sent over to restore order in the Irish colony. They got their nickname from the patched-together uniforms they wore. In Ireland to this day their name was synonymous with chaos and brutality.

“Savages!” Irene cried. “Well, they were getting too close for comfort, nosing around for members of the IRA in the village and thereabouts.

“Liam was Meg and Denny’s only child. Nobody seemed to know the why of it; they just never had any more children. So, as you can imagine, the sun rose and set on Liam Brogan.”

“Oh, well, who was Tippy then? A cousin?”

“No, no, he was a beloved part of the immediate family. A little black and white border collie with some other stuff mixed in, the dearest little dog you could ever hope to see, with a dear, sweet face on him and one ear that flopped over.

“That dog had taken on strange ways with Liam. They had always played together. Liam would throw sticks and Tippy would fetch them, the usual thing, you know. Tippy would run in circles around Liam’s feet when they went out walking, yapping and barking and carrying on, and Liam would bend over and grab him gently by the ears and tell him to get out of the way and let him walk, and you’d swear you could see the dog laughing when he looked up at Liam and started running around his feet again. But in the time leading up to the day when the Tans arrived, Tippy was not nearly as playful. He walked at Liam’s side, almost but not quite brushing against his leg, not a word out of him. Or not a sound, I mean. When the child would sit or lie down, Tippy would curl up beside him. And never sleep, just stare at the boy with those big brown eyes. It only came out later that Liam had something wrong with him, something terrible the medical tests hadn’t been clear on before this happened with the Tans.

“So it was that on a day in June 1920, a motley crew of Black and Tans in their Crossley tender roared up to the creamery looking for Denny. He wasn’t there. So what does a well-disciplined army of men do when they can’t find the fellow they’re after? Set fire to his barn, of course! Which they did.

“Tippy was frantic, running back and forth between the barn and the house, where he thought Meg would be. She was down the road, but she saw the smoke and came running. Old Deirdre O’Hagan was a witness to this from her front window. There were no other houses nearby. Deirdre was all crippled up, and unable to move unless her daughter was there. The daughter had gone into the city to the market. No telephone. So Deirdre was helpless to do anything but watch as the whole thing unfolded. And one thing she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: the Tans knew the boy was in the barn. Maybe not when they set the fire, but once it caught, they knew. Deirdre saw one of them standing there, pointing his rifle at the barn door. And his head and his lips were moving. He was talking to somebody inside.

“Tans left, with the child still in the barn. Meg met them on the road. She came running up to the creamery and saw the flames. As soon as she caught sight of Tippy being so frantic, she knew Liam must have been in the barn. Tippy ran ahead of her and they both went into the barn, Meg screaming Liam’s name. She didn’t stop for an instant. Went on in. Meanwhile another carload of Tans had found Denny. They brought him home. They saw what their comrades had done, and let Denny run to the barn. Inside was Liam, trapped in the burning building. Meg and Tippy’s bodies were found over top of Liam’s. Tans went in and shot Denny in the back.

“Why did all this happen to Denny and his family? Because of old Eddie Madigan. Madigan went on to great acclaim as one of the first crop of officers in our new Irish police force. I’ve never been inside the home of the Eddie Madigan you know. But those who have seen it tell me the place is a shrine to their family history. An entire wall is taken up with photographs and news cuttings, notes and citations. There’s a receipt displayed in a frame, a receipt signed by Collins himself for old Eddie’s contribution to the national loan. As you know, Collins raised a loan and everybody got a receipt. He wasn’t just a guerrilla war leader; he was a businessman, and a damned efficient one at that. So Eddie got a receipt, and there’s a note on it scribbled by Collins, acknowledging his work for the cause.

“What neither Collins nor anyone else in the provisional government knew was that Madigan was a spy for the Brits. It’s not known even today. Except by the Brits, I suppose.”

And Eddie Madigan, the grandson
, Michael noted to himself.

“Madigan passed Denny’s name to the Black and Tans, saying Denny was the man who had killed one of their spies, the British spies, the week before. Madigan was an informer and a traitor, and the massacre at Brogan’s creamery was the result. Denny Brogan was shot in the back after seeing his wife and son and dog together in death in the barn, the son having been burnt alive and his mother and dog giving up their lives to go with him.”

Michael had no way of knowing how much the story might have been overlaid with legend in the years since 1920, but if he were a Madigan . . .

Irene Brogan finished the thought for him. “If a traitor like old Eddie Madigan was your illustrious ancestor, would you want the secret to get out? It would serve them right if it did, every one of the bloody Madigans in County Dublin today!”

“Do others in your family feel the way you do about it?”

“Those who gave a shite one way or the other are in their graves. Those who are alive today are more concerned with partying in the disco than how and why their own flesh and blood were betrayed and murdered. Irish people don’t care about their history anymore, Monsignor, especially the young. They go on with their lives as if they just fell out of the sky with no history at all. And don’t even mention language to them. Was there ever another language here before English? They look at you as if you’re a creature with two heads. They don’t care; it’s a joke to them.”