To Keep a Bird Singing Read online

  He put his head in his hands. ‘I need to stay busy,’ he said aloud. He wondered about going over to Solidarity Books. They were a good crew and they always needed help. Sometimes being around people who just saw things differently – more like how he saw them – was the right medicine. There was also talk about a new anti-water tax campaign getting underway. Maybe that was what he needed; maybe he could put his energies into that.

  He looked around. His place needed fixing up too. He had used the break-in as an opportunity to declutter the sitting room but he realised now that he had gone too far: the flat looked bare. The big job, still pending, was to replace the wall shelves that would hold his collection of books. For now they were stacked in front of his window like a makeshift barricade. He could get started on that, it would keep him occupied, but he lacked the will.

  The Danesfort photo caught his eye. He fetched it from the table and looked at it once more. Was the industrial school the key? Dalton and Danesfort were linked. There was also a connection between Danesfort and the Donnellys. Crucially too there was the car crash involving Father Donnelly and Sugrue. These events were separated by years, decades actually, and yet he felt they could be linked. Why exactly was Jim Dalton killed?

  He thought of Ballyvolane and the Egan remains. Until a few hours ago that bizarre business had made no sense at all to him. It wasn’t that it made perfect sense now, but the proximity of the missing navvy’s burial place to the Donnelly farm could be significant. Especially if it was established that Egan had attended Danesfort.

  He put on coffee. Turning on the radio he chanced on Lyric FM and heard Latin jazz. He turned the volume up higher. When he lived in the States he had made a few trips down to the Mexico border, to Cormac McCarthy country. A different time, a different life. He thought of his long-standing girlfriend from that time, Spade. He had really liked her. Where was she now? They had spent years together and had nearly got married.

  Nearly. That word – Noelie wondered sometimes did it sum him up. Nearly embarrassed Ronald Reagan, nearly completed a PhD, nearly stayed in the States, nearly got married. Now he had just about nearly fucked up everything for himself in Cork too.

  He focused on staying calm. Music always made him happy. He was starting to feel calmer when the window shattered. A sound followed that was so loud and sharp he couldn’t hear for a while. A light flashed too and he was thrown backwards. Landing on the ground, he didn’t know if he lost consciousness or if he simply lost his bearings. When he eventually opened his eyes again all he could see was thick dust and what looked like ticker-tape drifting about in the air around him. There was a horrible acrid smell and something fell, from nowhere it seemed – a piece of hot metal.

  He lay there. An alarm was going off somewhere and he heard a muffled voice calling out, ‘Noelie, Noelie? Are you in there? Noelie?’

  Month’s Mind

  23

  Douglas Street had been Noelie’s home since his return from New York. During the Celtic Tiger years he was nearly in a position to buy his own place – a combination of having steady work and access to easy credit. But in the end he opted not to. He could have afforded a place in the suburbs but he didn’t fancy living there. As a result he had put quite a bit of work into the Douglas Street flat and he had come to see it as his own. Now, he realised, he wouldn’t be coming back.

  The problem was the landlord. Noelie had avoided him over the years but that was impossible after the explosion. He had wandered through the smashed-up living area with his workmen in tow, muttering about the extent of the ceiling collapse and the huge expense he faced. Noelie got an ‘At least you’re okay’ but it was only token. Eventually his landlord informed him that he wasn’t intending to repair the upstairs of the property immediately. Noelie needed to understand that it was a difficult time for landlords. There was a surfeit of properties about and the student market had collapsed. Just in case Noelie was wondering, the landlord didn’t have anything else in his portfolio either.

  Hannah came through for him again. Noelie was kept in hospital for observation on the night of the blast. The next day he went to Hannah’s. Martin was there too but he moved in with his boyfriend in Kinsale until his place was fixed up; the landlord had promised to do that. Hannah told Noelie he could stay as long as he wanted.

  During the tidy-up, in preparation for his departure from the flat, Noelie got plenty of opportunity to think about what had happened and to appreciate how lucky he had been to escape more or less uninjured. The pipe bomb had been filled with nails and screws. These were now embedded in an arc on the walls and ceiling of the flat. Some of the projectiles were no more than a centimetre in length, others were large and long. He found oily nuts, ball bearings and even a four-inch nail. One screw, a stubby flat head, perforated his framed photo of Brooklyn Bridge, embedding itself halfway through the studded partition behind. Another made it half a centimetre into William Trevor’s Collected Short Stories. The shreds of Chomsky’s Deterring Democracy were dispersed throughout his place like confetti. That book and a history of Contra war in Nicaragua had borne the brunt of the blast and were, in effect, no more. In a type of Chinese-fortune-cookie-meets-radical-insight, Noelie recovered one shred that read ‘American imperialism applause’.

  What had happened didn’t really bear thinking about. He had been saved by his books. Stacked in tight formation near the window, they had taken the force of the blast. Without them he would either be dead or maimed.

  He tried to shrug it off, quipping to Hannah that very few people could claim to have been physically saved by their book collection. Hannah, however, wasn’t in a joking mood. She warned Noelie a couple of times to cop himself on. They both agreed about one thing though: if they’d needed proof that they were on the right track, they had it.

  Noelie was carrying crates from upstairs down to the hallway when he heard his name being called. A young woman stood outside his front door. She wore a black cropped jacket and colourful leggings. Her black hair had purple strands woven through it; it was plaited into a single long braid.

  ‘Noel Sullivan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded to the damage. All the windows were still boarded up. ‘What happened?’

  He went to the door to get a better view of his visitor. Her hands were dug into her jacket pockets. ‘Someone tried to kill me,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve been upsetting people.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘My mother does.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  She put a hand out. ‘I’m Meabh, spelled the Irish way. Sean Sugrue’s daughter.’

  Meabh was in her late twenties. She wore lots of eyeshadow and was taller than Noelie.

  ‘My mother said you were asking about my father.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I’d like to know more, about your interest I mean. Is there some place we could talk?’

  He decided on Charlie’s, a pub down on the quayside. It was a short walk away and offered more ambiance than the bomb site that was now his flat. As they walked Meabh explained that she lived in Amsterdam but that her mother had phoned her a few days earlier.

  ‘So you’ve come from there?’

  ‘I have.’

  Noelie was impressed.

  ‘My mother and I don’t speak too often. I’ve been in Amsterdam for a long time. I was surprised. Something you said unsettled her.’

  ‘I showed her a photograph.’

  ‘She didn’t mention any photograph.’

  It was nearly two weeks ago and, although plenty had happened in the interim, Noelie easily recalled the meeting and the sequence of exchanges between him and Mrs Sugrue. He felt sure it was the photograph.

  ‘She say exactly what bothered her?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  They were soon on the quayside. The nearby footbridge was the only crossing for some distance either upriver or downriver. It was thronged with students coming and going from
the nearby colleges. Meabh nodded downriver to the hills in the distance.

  ‘What area is that?’

  ‘St Luke’s Cross. Montenotte. Why?’

  She explained that the last time she was in Cork she had looked for a place her father used to take her. ‘A limestone church with a steeple. It was on a hill. I found a place that I thought was it but it turned out to be a Protestant church, so that wasn’t the right place.’ She looked thoughtful.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘1999, I think. A bit after his death.’

  Noelie pointed out that there were plenty of hills in Cork with churches on them. Did Meabh know the name of the area? She didn’t. Noelie was surprised by her lack of knowledge of the city.

  ‘Didn’t you grow up around Cork?’

  ‘We avoided Cork even though it was close. We lived in Mitchelstown. I even went to college in Dublin.’

  Noelie figured it was probably to do with her father’s occupation. Special Branch officers were often careful about where they lived and socialised. With Sugrue’s interest in the local IRA it was probably a sensible precaution. Mitchelstown was around thirty miles north of the city.

  They arrived at Charlie’s. It was empty apart from two barflies. Noelie suggested a window table and got drinks. A pint of Beamish eventually arrived; Meabh had a glass of water.

  ‘So what exactly brings you to Cork?’

  ‘You.’

  Noelie frowned. ‘I’m a minor celebrity but for all the wrong reasons. What do want with me?’

  ‘My mother told me about the statement that you turned up with. She mentioned Jim Dalton as well. Afterwards I looked online and there were some reports about the Daltons and their allegations. I’d like to see the statement. Do you have a copy?’

  Noelie did but not with him. He told her what it said and explained about the mystery surrounding Jim Dalton’s whereabouts.

  ‘What’s your interest in this?’ she asked. ‘Why did you visit my mother?’

  Noelie took a drink of his pint. There was a directness about his visitor. It was not a trait Noelie disliked but he realised he needed to be careful too.

  ‘I’m happy to explain but maybe first off you should tell me why you’re really here.’

  Meabh looked towards the window. It was lunchtime and staff from nearby City Hall were spilling out on to the sunny quayside.

  ‘A long time ago something happened to me. When my mother called it was because of that. She spoke mostly about you and the fact that you had visited, and she mentioned Dad’s statement. She called it a confession. Then she asked me how I was.’

  Noelie waited. He looked quizzically at Meabh and eventually she continued.

  ‘It was how my mother said it, how she asked. She’s never really asked before and I just knew something important must’ve happened. Someone or something had got to her and that was why she was calling. I guessed it had to be to do with you.’

  Noelie nodded.

  ‘We’re estranged,’ said Meabh. She laughed at her words. ‘Actually it’s more than that, we don’t get on. We haven’t for as long as I can remember.’

  Noelie thought back to his meeting with Mrs Sugrue. ‘She wasn’t my cup of tea either. A bit on the holy side really.’

  ‘She’s devout.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it. When I visited, your brother was running amok. Don’t think he liked working with all those miraculous medals.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a choice. He was in rehab for quite a long time but she took him out of it and now he’s mostly at home with her. Personally I don’t think it’s good for him.’

  There was a further silence.

  ‘I had trouble before. It was pretty bad. My mother didn’t take my side.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘A man did things to me. When I was young.’

  Noelie was taken aback. He hesitated, ‘You mean …?’

  ‘It happened at one of my father’s events … I didn’t tell anyone right away.’

  ‘Your father’s “events”? What were they?’

  ‘My father was very religious. We often went to these gatherings. A priest might visit from France or Germany. A Mass would be celebrated with him. It was quite a big part of my growing up, my early years anyway. When I finally said it to my mother, she accused me of making it up.’

  ‘Was it someone she knew?’

  Meabh shrugged. ‘I was never able to identify who it was. I never saw his face.’

  Noelie thought about this. ‘What did your father say?’

  ‘It was kept from him although I didn’t know that. My mother said she’d told him but she hadn’t. But I was growing up, I knew it had happened. I went through a bad time. I started cutting myself and one day my dad confronted me about it. So I told him. He burst into tears.’

  Meabh stopped; she was upset. ‘The thing is he believed me right away,’ she continued eventually. ‘Afterwards, I often thought he must have known something all along.’

  Meabh excused herself and went to the bathroom. Noelie ordered another round of drinks. When she returned he saw that she had redone her mascara. She looked wan.

  He pushed a glass in front of her. ‘I got you something stronger, with bubbles this time.’

  She smiled.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry,’ he said.

  She sipped her drink. ‘The bubbles are good.’

  They sat for another while. It was almost too quiet in the bar. Eventually Meabh spoke again.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve survived. I’ve come through it and that’s what matters.’

  Noelie nodded. He proposed a toast to surviving.

  ‘Tell me about this bomb,’ Meabh asked.

  ‘I’m lucky to be alive. It was a pipe bomb, one you throw. It’s designed a certain way, using an elbow joint. It came in my window. But my flat was trashed a while back and all my bookshelves pulled down. I have a big collection of books and these were arranged on the floor. The piece of pipe caught on the curtains and landed in front of books. That saved me.’

  ‘Someone tried to kill you.’

  ‘Or maim me at the very least. It was reported in the newspapers that “I’m known to the police”. Some hack or other put that around. The subtext is I’m mixed up in drugs and with druggies. So that’s the official story. However the real reason that that bomb was put in my window has to do with your father, or more to the point with what your father witnessed all those years ago. I’ve been following up on the statement he made and I’ve looked into the main matter your father was concerned with: Jim Dalton’s death. There’s something strange going on.’

  Meabh told Noelie what she knew from reading the news online. They talked about Jim Dalton and he told her about the theory that there was a mole operating high up inside the IRA or Sinn Féin.

  ‘Dalton could’ve been killed to protect this mole’s identity. If that theory is true then there are motives aplenty for the bomb that came through my window. The stakes here are very high, particularly if this person is still in the organisation and above suspicion.’

  Meabh was quiet. Noelie continued.

  ‘Your father admitted to being involved in the death of Jim Dalton but the gardaí are denying that Dalton is dead. They claim he’s in some witness protection scheme. They won’t say anything more. But the Dalton family believe their father is dead.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘With no body it’s very hard to say for sure. But your father’s statement reads as authentic to me.’

  ‘Could I see it? Is that possible?’

  Noelie nodded. He suggested that Meabh call over to Hannah’s later. She could have dinner with them if she wanted.

  A while after, outside Charlie’s, Meabh told him that she was booked into a hotel nearby. To pass some time she was going to have a look around Cork in the afternoon.

  ‘Looking for that church?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Any reason in
particular?’

  ‘Pigheadedness. And that church is the only direct link that I have to what happened to me.’

  Noelie nodded. They exchanged mobile numbers and parted.

  24

  There were shades of Southfork about the property. Although the dimensions were Irish and not Texan, the large modern house with paddocks on two sides had a Dallas feel about it. Noelie had gone to the same national school as its owner. Jerry Casey’s father had been some type of civil servant, whereas Noelie’s had been a factory worker. Casey was good at school but not exceptional. In due course he moved to a private college and for a long time afterwards Noelie never saw him around.

  However Noelie’s sister and the Casey girls stayed friends. So Noelie kept up with his friend’s progress that way. To his surprise Casey became an army cadet. Stints in the Lebanon, Cyprus and Bosnia followed.

  Noelie dithered about whether to make the approach. He needed information badly and Casey might know something or someone who could get it for him. But it was risky and they hadn’t been in touch in years.

  He drove up the manicured driveway. The doorbell was answered by a young woman. Foreign-looking, Spanish or Italian perhaps. He enquired if Jerry was home. The man who came along the hallway had aged a lot. Casey was rounder too, particularly about the face. A smile appeared when he recognised who was calling; Casey’s dimples were so prominent they had earned him the corresponding nickname at school.