To Keep a Bird Singing Read online

  Hannah smiled but Noelie looked disappointed. Black Gary noticed. ‘Tell you what, I’ll ask around. I’m in contact with a lot of people. Not on the internet – I just go and meet people. Let me write down the names you’re interested in and I’ll make some enquiries.’

  Black Gary made some notes. He asked if he could get a copy of the photo. Hannah said she’d send him on one.

  They were done then but Black Gary suggested a walk. Noelie felt unsure but Hannah seemed keen. Out on the boreen it was pleasant. He had never married, Black Gary volunteered. Just didn’t happen for him. Broke a heart or two though. He asked Hannah and Noelie if they were an item.

  ‘She’s spoken for,’ Noelie parried. ‘Has a fellow that works in Qatar. Perfect set up. Earns loads and only about occasionally.’

  Hannah stuck her tongue out at Noelie.

  The island itself was compact. The main beaches were ahead and as it was July there were more people about than usual. Black Gary pointed to places as they walked. ‘Cape Clear Island, out there on the horizon. Roaringwater Bay is over there.’

  Noelie decided to risk a flyer. He told Black Gary Jim Dalton’s story, about him disappearing and being accused of being a garda informer. Did he know anything about that or have any republican contacts?

  Black Gary didn’t. He had no time for the IRA himself on account of them bombing a pub in Birmingham in 1974 that he himself had occasion to be in once in a while. ‘Too many head-bangers, if you ask me.’

  Noelie carried on to the matter of the human remains found in the Ballyvolane–Glen Park area, on the edge of Cork city. ‘They’ve been identified as Michael Egan, an Irish navvy from London.’

  Hannah explained they were trying to find out if he was in Danesfort or not.

  ‘Not easy at all to get that type of information,’ he pronounced. ‘You’ll have to write to the Rosminians in Clonmel. All the Danesfort records are there now. But they’ll make it very difficult for you if you’re not family. And you’ll have to pay as well.’ Black Gary’s tone turned sarcastic. ‘Don’t you know the Rosminians are fierce short of money these days.’

  They reached the main beach on the island. It was wide and sandy. Noelie spotted the headland where he had camped once before and recalled why the location was so good: it had a great view out to sea and was beside the best beach. Black Gary suddenly stopped.

  ‘Did you say Ballyvolane?’

  Noelie nodded. ‘The Egan remains were found in Glen Park. That’s in Ballyvolane.’

  ‘They had their farm there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Donnellys had their own farm – the Donnelly farm we called it. I was there one time. It was big. Now that was a place where you had to work hard. Harvest time and thinning work. All day long too.’

  ‘Paid work?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘My arse.’

  Noelie wanted to make sure he understood correctly. ‘So the Donnellys had their own farm at Ballyvolane and boys from Danesfort went there to work?’

  ‘It wasn’t unusual,’ clarified Black Gary. ‘A lot of industrial schools had arrangements with local farms. The Donnellys were just availing of a handy situation. Anyway, who was going to object? Not us. Weren’t they giving us good-for-nothings an opportunity in life?’

  Noelie thought about this. ‘Except Ballyvolane’s quite a distance from Danesfort, isn’t it? A good fifteen miles I’d say. Not a small distance in the fifties and sixties.’

  ‘Sure that was an issue. Sometimes if you were sent to Ballyvolane, you went for quite a while. A week would be the shortest time. But there were boys that went there for longer periods as well, months at a time I mean.’

  Noelie nodded.

  ‘It was cosy. Boss man at Danesfort was a Donnelly and Albert sort of consulted at Danesfort too. What could you do? If you were picked you had to go.’

  Black Gary walked down as far as the water’s edge and skimmed some stones. Noelie hung back and Hannah noticed.

  ‘That’s interesting, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Can’t beat Facebook. Always said it.’

  Noelie ran off before Hannah could thump him.

  They ended up back at the pub. They ordered pints and took a seat by a long window looking out over Baltimore Harbour. Black Gary was too well known for his own good though. Almost everyone had a few words with him as they came and went. When Noelie got the opportunity, he asked about the farm again.

  ‘Where exactly was it then?’

  ‘Don’t know the area at all and I’ve not been there since.’

  Noelie thought about this. There had been a lot of development in the Ballyvolane area of Cork. When he was young, it was the countryside but it was far from that now.

  ‘Albert Donnelly, can you tell me anything about him?’

  ‘I’ve done my best to forget Albert.’

  Black Gary was a jolly man, for all his past troubles, but he looked unhappy now. A ferry was coming across and they all watched it for a while.

  ‘He disliked me. Don’t know what it was but he took agin me big time. So I kept out of his way. I knew of a boy who ran away while at that farm and was badly beaten by Albert.’ He stopped as if he was thinking about this. ‘He was always saying that we were what we were because of how we were born. Do you get me?’

  Noelie nodded. ‘Out of wedlock, you mean?’

  ‘He’d say it to your face that you were a bastard. He was very mean. I was afraid of him.’

  Noelie exchanged glances with Hannah. Black Gary continued. ‘He hated how I looked too. But like I say his brother Tony wasn’t that way. He was harmless enough. Strict but harmless.’ Black Gary shook his head. ‘Albert puts me in a bad mood even now.’

  On the ferry back, they huddled close to ward off the breeze on deck. Noelie was quiet.

  ‘We need to find out more about the farm.’

  ‘Yes. Albert too.’

  ‘Is he alive, I wonder?’

  ‘Every chance. He’d be in his seventies now, mind.’

  21

  Noelie found an entry in the phonebook for a Donnelly in the Glen area. As soon as he saw the house, though, he realised that it was unlikely to belong to the Donnellys he was interested in. It was a small suburban house in an estate. He enquired anyway; he was correct. The occupants weren’t from the area and had bought their house just before the Celtic Tiger boom. The owner directed Noelie to a different house on the far side of the green, beside a tall electricity pylon.

  ‘Timmy’s an original. Mystery he’s still alive with that thing standing on top of him.’

  Noelie crossed the green. While he waited at the door for an answer he could hear an unpleasant buzz from the high-voltage lines overhead.

  ‘Ted Toner’s your man,’ said Timmy. ‘Lives in Blackpool. Ask for him down there, everyone knows him and he knows everything about these parts.’

  Noelie found Toner’s house easily; his daughter answered the door. He explained what he was looking for and was shown inside. Toner was one of those prim gents who looked a little too gaunt and frail for his own good. He could easily have been in his nineties. He spoke in a quiet voice and scrutinised Noelie for a long time before deciding that he was interested in talking to him.

  ‘The Donnellys were pig farmers but a good bit of their land was in tillage too. The middle boy was head of the gardaí in town.’

  Noelie knew he had struck gold. ‘Still alive, do you know?’

  The old fellow thought about this. ‘Haven’t seen his death notice yet and I watch for those things. He’d be in his seventies, I guess.’

  ‘Any of the Donnellys in this area now?’

  ‘None hereabout at all. The farm was sold on, ’71 or ’72 I’d say. They made good money from it too. Sold it over the father’s head. We called him Old Donnelly. He would never have given it up. There’s been a Donnelly connection to this area since way back and Old Donnelly was very proud of that. Apparently one of the Donnellys had a run-in with Cromwell too.
He stayed around here, can you credit that?’

  Toner suddenly laughed. ‘Old Donnelly lost a leg in the war we were told. Maybe that was what made him so bitter. But we would see him sometimes and we would be terrified by it, his one leg. In those times an artificial leg didn’t look anything like it does now. It was just a metal peg in fact. He drank a good bit and sometimes to frighten people he would take off his leg and wave it about.’

  ‘What about the original Donnelly house?’ asked Noelie. ‘Is that still there?’

  Toner looked unsure. ‘It was knocked down but there’s something about that too. I have a picture of the original house somewhere. It was a big house.’ He went looking among a stack of books but gave up. ‘She moves things all the time on me,’ he complained.

  The daughter overheard the comment. ‘It that me he’s bad-mouthing?’

  Toner smiled and put a finger to his mouth. ‘The tables are turned. I have to watch what I say.’

  Noelie asked about the Donnelly brothers.

  ‘There was Robert, the garda. Tony was a priest.’

  ‘A Rosminian, right?’

  Toner nodded and recalled that Tony had died in a car crash a number of years back. ‘None of them married.’ He winked.‘They were all too holy for that.’

  ‘What about Albert?’

  ‘Yes, he was the youngest, I remember that. An interesting thing, though – there was no missus in the house that I ever knew of. So Old Donnelly must’ve had some liaison, mustn’t he? Maybe there’s scandal there?’

  Noelie asked about the Donnellys’ connection to Danesfort Industrial School. Toner only knew about Tony Donnelly being one of the priests out there. Noelie enquired about boys from Danesfort working on the farm and if Toner had ever heard anything about all that. He hadn’t.

  ‘Quite possible though. They had a big farm and around here people didn’t stick their noses into the Donnellys’ affairs.’ He added, ‘Did I tell you Old Donnelly was a Blueshirt? He was a big shot in them too.’

  The Blueshirts were Ireland’s home-grown fascists. The movement emerged in the thirties and was particularly strong around Cork. Following its decline, a brigade of volunteers, largely made up of ex-members, travelled to Spain to fight for Franco.

  Toner explained, ‘See, Old Donnelly was in the gardaí first. My father remembered that. Going right back now, I am. He was in the Old IRA, joining the gardaí with the formation of the Irish Free State. He’d have been pro-Treaty. But he was drummed out in the thirties in the purges.’ Toner wrinkled his forehead. ‘You could try the library for more on that. It’ll be there somewhere.’

  He went over to a set of boxes and began rooting in them. Now that he had worked out that Noelie had a serious interest in the past, he was determined to find the information that he knew he had somewhere. His daughter reminded him that he had a doctor’s appointment. Eventually they agreed that Noelie would have to call back another time. He had one last question.

  ‘Do you remember where the Donnelly farm was located?’

  Toner got his specs. Noelie showed him a map. He examined it for a long while. ‘This is a terrible map,’ he said. ‘Where’s Conway’s Cross?’

  Noelie pointed it out.

  ‘So a hundred acres from Conway’s Cross going back as far as the Glenville Road.’

  Noelie found the Glenville Road and they agreed on a rough area that had once been the Donnelly farm. Noelie shaded in the zone on his map.

  He drove to Conway’s Cross. It was all built up now, with rows of houses on the undulating hills. He was generally familiar with the area from when he was young and he realised immediately that Glen Park was close by.

  After looking around, he crossed the busy North Ring road and scaled an embankment. On the far side, below him, stood Glen Park. It was wilderness surrounded by development on all sides. A narrow river ran through it. This joined the Bride which eventually met up with the north channel of the Lee.

  The embankments came in close at one point forming a canyon with steep sides. Noelie knew the Egan remains had been found close to that area. He walked along the embankment ridge until he could just see the dig site. There was fencing around the zone and signs warned that the location was unsafe for walking. Looking in the opposite direction he could also easily see where the Donnelly farm had once been. He called Hannah on his mobile.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘The Donnellys are no longer in the area. The farm was re-zoned and built on back in the seventies. But I’ve been able to work out the rough location of where their farm was and it’s near where the Egan remains were discovered. As the crow flies, I mean.’

  Noelie noticed walkers entering the park, a group of women. He continued, ‘Just saying now, but if you were looking for some place to hide a body, you could do a lot worse than choose the place where I’m standing right at this moment. Everything around is built on, but this spot was never going to be disturbed. Too inhospitable. And a local person would know that.’

  ‘Perfect then.’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  22

  On his way home Noelie called to see his sister. The previous day he had received a message from Byrne, informing him that the investigation into Shane’s drowning had formally concluded. With nothing new or suspicious to report, the file on the teenager had been turned over to the coroner who would, in due course, set a date for an inquest.

  Ellen looked even worse than when Noelie had last seen her, a week earlier. She had lost more weight, her face was drawn and her eyes looked sore and red. He had also heard that she had closed the boutique, albeit temporarily. Given how much Ellen loved her store and how much effort she had put into it over the years, he knew this was bad news.

  They sat in the kitchen. He asked about Byrne and she told him about the conclusion of the police investigation, confiding that she had hoped until the very end that something significant would be discovered. Anything at all would have helped.

  ‘I don’t understand and that’s the worst thing. Maybe I could live with the finality of it if I could work it out.’ She added that things were at rock bottom between herself and Arthur. ‘I don’t know any more how this will all end.’

  Noelie offered to make tea but Ellen didn’t want any. They sat there. When their father died in ’83, following a long illness, it had been a severe blow. Ellen had taken it worse than Noelie, maybe because she was the special daughter. But their father’s death didn’t compare to this.

  Ellen continued eventually, ‘Byrne said that Shane could have been in the water as early as teatime on the afternoon he went missing. So there are a few hours where he’s not visible. No one sees him and he doesn’t show up on any CCTV footage anywhere. So where was he? He must’ve been indoors.’

  Noelie asked if anything had emerged from talking to the teenagers that hung around the skateboard park but Ellen shook her head.

  ‘Byrne claims that they put pressure on a dealer down there but that didn’t yield anything. There’s CCTV footage from the skateboard park but nothing at this Bumhole place. It’s behind trees, out of the way.’

  Shane’s movements on the day he went missing had been examined in great detail, but it was still unclear why he was over near Turner’s Cross, close to Cork City football grounds. Had he met someone there and who? The tip-off that Noelie had got about drugs, from the artist at the Camden Palace, had remained with him. But Noelie didn’t believe it could be anything like that. Or was he being naive?

  ‘Byrne went over everything with us again yesterday. She has your back Noelie, I must say that. Although one thing did come up.’

  Noelie was alert immediately.

  ‘At first I didn’t understand it, so I double-checked. The night that Shane never came home, remember, you arrived here the following morning after getting all my text messages? I remember asking you about the day before, why had you come here so early in the morning. You arrived by taxi and asked about staying the night.’

 
Noelie nodded. ‘I do remember.’

  ‘See the thing is, you told me that the reason you came here was because your place had been broken into. Except that yesterday Byrne said that your place was broken into on the afternoon Shane went missing. So when was your place broken into, Noel? Or are you telling me you were broken into twice?’

  Noelie was caught. He had never fully explained to Ellen the sequence of what had happened in those days before Bonfire Night. He hadn’t really thought there was any point in getting into it during the search for Shane, especially since the police hadn’t thought there was any connection to his disapperance when he’d told them. Afterwards, the family situation deteriorated even more. Ellen and Arthur hardly spoke to Noelie before or during the funeral.

  ‘I’m sorry I came here.’

  Ellen didn’t understand. ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that morning – I’m sorry I came here that morning.’

  His sister moved nearer. ‘Did someone follow you? Did they see you here? Maybe they saw Shane here too.’ Ellen’s voice rose. ‘Noelie?’

  ‘There isn’t a connection.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ his sister screamed. ‘You bastard.’

  Noelie didn’t like where this was going, in part because he was unsure of his own ground. If this was all about a mole inside the IRA, that was bad enough but it was starting to look like it was about more than that.

  He stood as well. ‘I need to go.’

  ‘Do that. Walk away like you always do.’

  That comment got to him – she knew it would. It was very unfair, especially given what was going on with him just now. He turned and faced her.

  ‘Don’t lecture me about walking away or about being a coward. That’s not who I am and you know it.’

  ‘Get out.’

  Noelie walked out without another word.

  At home, he sat on his wobbly sofa. His confrontation with his sister had shaken him but he was also wracked by self-doubt. He should never have gone to his sister’s house that morning after leaving Anglesea Street Station. He hadn’t been thinking straight. The bizarre thing was – and this was even stranger given the argument he’d just had with his sister – he had gone to Ellen’s house precisely because she was family. He was in trouble, but it wasn’t only to do with the records and what he had got himself embroiled in. He hadn’t been feeling great anyway. He had had that stupid argument with Hannah – entirely of his own making – and he was starting to feel the pinch from being so long unemployed. It had been on his mind to emigrate again – a lot of people were doing it – but at forty-nine? He didn’t want to, except what was he to do around Cork? The recession was getting worse. The truth was he had gone to Ellen’s because it was a sanctuary of sorts. She was family, but it had been a mistake.