To Keep a Bird Singing Page 9

  16

  There was an obituary for Sean Sugrue in the January 1999 edition of the Garda Gazette. Born in County Clare, he joined the police force in 1966 at the age of eighteen. Ten years later, while serving in Tralee in Kerry, he foiled a bank robbery at the main post office and was wounded. Subsequently, he received the Scott Medal for Bravery and two years later, in 1978, he acquired his detective’s badge and moved to Special Branch in Cork. From then on he worked in counter-terrorism. Notable successes included his involvement in two foiled IRA gunrunning attempts – the interception of the Jenny May off Dunmore East in 1980 and The Ottoman near Baltimore in 1989. In late 1997, he took early retirement from the gardaí in order to pursue an ambition to be a lay missionary. The following year, before taking up a post in Romania, he died in a car crash. He was survived by wife, Annette, and children, Tomás and Meabh.

  Noelie looked up Annette Sugrue in the phonebook. It was not a common surname so he phoned around explaining that he was doing research on Scott Medal winners. Bingo on the seventh call – Mrs Sugrue lived in Mitchelstown, about thirty miles from Cork.

  Noelie decided to visit immediately. On Hannah’s advice he dressed up and put on a shirt and jacket for the meeting. At the front door he smiled and explained about the research he was doing. Mrs Sugrue was in her late fifties, grey-haired and thin. She wore a blue cardigan, a white blouse and a black skirt. Noelie was reminded of a nun.

  She didn’t want to talk and she was sceptical. Noelie expanded on the Scott Medal thesis, explaining the importance of a book on courage given Ireland’s present woes. ‘If more people spoke out a few years back this country might not be in the state it’s now in.’ He got nowhere with this angle however and changed tack, asking instead about her late husband’s religious convictions and how they had influenced his life. Mrs Sugrue relented.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, adding as a qualification, ‘my son’s here.’

  Noelie wasn’t sure what that meant. ‘This really won’t take long,’ he assured her.

  He was shown into a front room with sofas arranged around a big empty fireplace. There were a series of professional pictures of Sugrue on the wide mantelpiece. In the main portrait, Sugrue was in uniform wearing his Scott Medal. He looked exceedingly proper and po-faced.

  ‘Fine-looking man,’ Noelie said.

  ‘He was.’

  At that moment Noelie saw the son. He appeared at the doorway looking blankly at Noelie, a large man but younger than Noelie.

  ‘Mammy,’ he said.

  Mrs Sugrue promptly led him away. She returned a few minutes later. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Noelie told her that he knew a good deal about her husband already. He was particularly interested in his willingness to speak out. He produced the statement about Dalton. ‘This was very brave.’

  Mrs Sugrue moved away. ‘Are you a journalist?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘What do you want then?’

  ‘I’m the person who found this document. I know the Dalton family. They’re desperate for information. They still haven’t found their father’s body.’ Noelie moved nearer. ‘This is an extraordinary statement, no? Basically your husband is saying that the gardaí executed …’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  Noelie waited. He expected Mrs Sugrue to say more but she remained silent. She wouldn’t look at Noelie.

  ‘Garda HQ have rejected your husband’s claims. They’re saying this meeting with the commissioner never took place.’

  ‘It took place, I was there. Not at the meeting, of course, but I accompanied Sean to the gates of Garda Headquarters in Phoenix Park. The meeting happened.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ snapped Mrs Sugrue.

  ‘Is there any documentation, something that would support what you’re saying – an appointment card or a letter even?’ Noelie nearly said email but he realised that they hardly existed back in 1997.

  ‘Sean never discussed work with me. But that meeting did take place. It’s not a time or an appointment that I’m ever likely to forget. His retirement came immediately afterwards.’

  ‘Because of how that meeting went?’

  ‘That and other reasons.’

  Noelie waited for clarification but none came. ‘Your husband implied in his statement that there may have been something sinister going on. Did you know anything about that or what he was thinking of?’ He read from the statement, ‘“… the murder of Mr Jim Dalton may have taken place for quite different reasons than those given to me.” What did he mean by that?’

  Mrs Sugrue stared.

  ‘Mrs Sugrue?’

  ‘I have no idea what he meant.’

  ‘Any information might help.’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Yet a few months later he was dead.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Just that he appears to have made a very serious claim, and then within a short period of time he died.’

  ‘God called him home.’

  Noelie frowned. He hadn’t heard that sort of phraseology in quite a long time. ‘A collision with another car, I understand?’

  ‘It was a single-vehicle crash. The car went out of control and they hit a wall.’

  ‘They?’

  Mrs Sugrue didn’t answer. Instead she said, ‘Sean was going to go abroad. He had signed up for a two-year contract. He was attending a meeting to arrange the details.’

  ‘To Romania. It seems like an odd place to go, as a missionary I mean.’

  Noelie’s observation was met by a cold silence. Mrs Sugrue shook her head with the sort of finality that made Noelie think he was about to be shown the door.

  ‘Don Cronin was a friend of your husband’s?’

  ‘He was.’

  Noelie explained that the statement about Jim Dalton’s death had been in Cronin’s possession for quite some time. Did she know anything about that?

  ‘He’s not someone I either like or trust. We never got on.’

  A sudden sharp noise like glass breaking startled them both. Mrs Sugrue left immediately and went down the hall. Noelie followed. The hallway had a musty smell that brought back unhappy memories of aunts in Clonakilty reciting endless decades of the rosary. He went quietly as far as the kitchen door. Mrs Sugrue was outside in the spacious back garden attempting to corral her son, who was dodging her like a rugby player avoiding tackles.

  The kitchen had an ancient feel about it too. Noelie saw glass on the floor near the stove. His eyes were drawn to a neat arrangement of bowls on the table. One contained silver medals, miraculous medals he realised; he had had one as a child. Another held cotton squares and a third, folded prayer cards. On a tray nearby there were hundreds of glossy white boxes neatly stacked. Noelie examined one. It contained a medal and chain carefully arranged on a cotton pad. There was a card with a picture and information printed on it. He put a box in his pocket and returned to the front room.

  Mrs Sugrue came back. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any more time.’

  Noelie smiled graciously. ‘You’ve been very generous – I appreciate it.’ He put away the statement.

  ‘One more thing.’ Before Mrs Sugrue could say anything, Noelie had produced the Danesfort photo and put it in front of her. ‘This picture belonged to Jim Dalton. He’s in it.’ Noelie identified him in the line of boys, adding, ‘Your husband was very interested in this photo. According to Mrs Dalton he recognised someone in it. I was just wondering if you have any idea who that person might be?’

  Mrs Sugrue reluctantly took the photo. There was a long silence.

  ‘Mrs Sugrue?’

  When she looked up Noelie saw that her eyes were glistening.

  ‘Where did this come from?’ she asked.

  ‘It was Jim Dalton’s.’ He explained the background to the photo.

  Mrs Sugrue sat down. Noelie said, ‘I can come back another time.’

  ‘You mu
st leave.’

  ‘Okay.’ Noelie put out his hand for the photo. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Are you doing this deliberately?’

  Noelie didn’t understand. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Please go.’

  Noelie was shown to the front door. At the gate he looked back at the house. He wondered what to do. Clearly Mrs Sugrue knew something but he didn’t want to pester her. Back in his car he called Hannah and got her answering service. She texted a while later to say she’d be home in the late afternoon. She suggested they meet at her place.

  17

  Occasionally Noelie volunteered at Solidarity Books. The shop was run on a shoestring budget and needed all the help it could get. As he had committed most of the next morning to manning the till, he decided to press on and do some more digging around Sugrue’s death. He called into Central Library.

  Noelie found the press reports of Sugrue’s death quickly. The Irish Times piece was brief, stating that the car, a Ford Granada, had gone out of control near Clonmel, a town about sixty miles from Cork. A single-vehicle crash, the occupants were unlucky to hit the only stretch of wall that there was for a few miles in either direction. Sugrue, aged fifty, was declared dead at the scene. The driver of the car, a Father Tony Donnelly, aged sixty-seven, died en route to Cork’s University Hospital.

  The report in the Examiner was more detailed. Road conditions were described as good at the time of the crash; it wasn’t raining. Sugrue’s career in Special Branch in Cork and his Scott Medal for bravery were noted. There was additional information about Father Donnelly. Born in Cork, he attended Farranferris Seminary College, later opting to become a priest in the Fathers of Charity order. After a spell at their school in Omeath he transferred to a teaching post at Danesfort Industrial School, eventually rising to become principal. Father Donnelly was also the elder sibling of retired Cork garda boss, Robert Donnelly.

  Noelie reread the section. When Ethel Dalton showed him the Danesfort photo, she had said that one of the prominent figures in the picture was the principal at the industrial school. He was a Rosminian, she said. So who were the Fathers of Charity? He made a quick trip downstairs to Reference and found a listing for Catholic Orders: the Fathers of Charity were also known as the Rosminians.

  Returning to his seat in Local History he mulled over the coincidence. So was the man killed in the car crash with Sean Sugrue the same Rosminian as the one in the Danesfort photo with young Jim Dalton? Surely not. That would be quite bizarre.

  He realised that he needed to confirm the identity of the priest in the Danesfort photo. One option would be to confront Annette Sugrue again but he wasn’t enthusiastic about doing that.

  Obtaining information about Danesfort Industrial School was easy. The previous year a comprehensive report, the Ryan Report, had been published about the industrial school system in Ireland. It was available online in Reference. Noelie returned downstairs and waited a few minutes for a computer to come free.

  Danesfort had its own chapter. It had been proposed as a reformatory school for the Cork area in the middle of the nineteenth century. A judge came up with the idea. It was situated fourteen miles south-west of Cork, initially on a substantial two-hundred-acre farm. In 1873 it was formally incorporated into Ireland’s mushrooming network of industrial schools and was placed under the control of the Rosminians. The order, named after an Italian priest, Rosmini, ran one other reformatory school in Ireland – at Clonmel in Tipperary. They also ran a number of other educational establishments for boys, dedicated to training novices for service with the order in their missionary work overseas. They were represented in England, Scotland and Wales; also in Tanzania, Kenya, India and the Antipodes.

  Children sent to Danesfort were to receive an education but they also had to work on the farm, which paid for the running of the school. Corporal punishment was systemic and accounts of life at the reformatory school were awash with allegations of brutality and physical abuse. As one survivor put it, ‘You never forgot that you went to Danesfort.’

  Noelie read through a number of personal accounts of life at the school and farm. They made for difficult reading and after he finished the second one he felt he knew quite enough about the punishing regime at the institution. He gathered his notebook and pen and went outside on to Grand Parade.

  It was sunny. He sat on one of the square granite blocks that peppered the wide pavement. Cork’s Grand Parade had been revamped in the noughties. It was pedestrian friendly and there were spaces for hanging out. It was the unemployed who were now making most use of the reconfigured public space. Along from Noelie, a group of men his age were diving into cans of Dutch Gold. A strung-out junkie had propped himself up against a coffee kiosk that had been set up but had never opened.

  Noelie wondered about his own situation. Somehow this recession felt much worse. Back in the eighties when he left for the States it had been with a certain amount of bravado. He wanted to get away from Cork and Ireland and the bleak economic situation back then had given him the impetus to get going and get out.

  Now it was a lot different. People were leaving in droves again but he had no inclination to join them. Been there, done that. He didn’t have it in him to do it all again.

  He texted Hannah to see if she was home from work yet. She replied enthusiastically: Have v interesting news for u. Come over asap.

  18

  Hannah’s apartment was in a block of flats overlooking a section of the Lee’s south channel where the river changed course and fell over a weir. It was an impressive view and atmospheric, especially at night when the quaysides and cathedral were illuminated.

  Noelie sat with a beer taking in the vista. Hannah was on a call to her mother and when she finished she joined him. He told her about his visit to Mrs Sugrue and how she had got upset. He also went over the discovery he had made in the library.

  ‘So Jim Dalton and the head of the industrial school are present in the Danesfort photo, dated 1963. Thirty-five years later, it appears that the same man, Father Tony Donnelly, is in the car when it crashes, killing both him and Sugrue. In the intervening period, in 1990 to be precise, we know that Sugrue played a part, unwittingly it seems, in Dalton’s execution.’

  Hannah took the Danesfort photo from Noelie and looked at it. ‘I agree that is strange.’

  ‘To put it mildly.’

  ‘So has this some connection to Danesfort, to the industrial school?’

  Noelie smiled. ‘Possibly. Except what is “this”?’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘I think we should go to Danesfort. We need to find out who was principal there in 1963. There should be some record that we can check.’

  She noticed the glossy white box that Noelie had taken from Mrs Sugrue’s place lying on the table. She picked it up and took out the miraculous medal, holding it to Noelie’s neck. ‘A lovely Catholic boy you are too.’

  He confessed to his act of theft. Hannah examined the card inside. ‘You do know who this is, don’t you?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Leslie Walsh. He is, was, a prominent developer here. Killed himself a few weeks back, around Bonfire Night actually. I remember because there was quite a bit of talk about it at work. He threw himself off the Elysian Tower.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Which led a posse of people to conclude he must’ve been in financial trouble.’

  The Elysian was also known as the largest glasshouse in Ireland. A luxury, glass-fronted skyscraper, it was completed at the end of the Celtic Tiger era and had remained largely empty following the crash. It was located beside the City Hall.

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘Seems not. There’s been no real explanation about what happened with him. Anyway this card is to do with his month’s mind. It’s next week, at the Mass Rock in Glenville.’

  Noelie knew vaguely that Glenville was in north Cork. He had never heard of any Mass Rock there though.

  Hannah read the prayer on the memorial card.


  Would that I could utter so strong a cry that it would strike all men with terror, and say to them: O wretched beings! why are you so blinded by this world that you make, as you will find at the hour of death, no provision for the great necessity that will then come upon you?

  Noelie frowned. ‘A rap on the knuckles.’

  ‘Sounds like it, doesn’t it?’

  On the page facing it was a picture of Walsh with his hands clasped in prayer. Just behind him was an image of Jesus wearing a bloody crown of thorns.

  ‘He’s twenty, if that, in this photo. He was seventy or more when he died.’

  Hannah turned to the back cover. There was an emblem and the initials LTBL. The emblem showed a white-robed Jesus standing with a hand raised near a mature tree; some branches had leaves, other none. In the background there was a Celtic triquetra.

  ‘Seems like Walsh was serious about religion. Is that his connection to Mrs Sugrue?’

  Hannah stood suddenly. ‘I think it could well be. That reminds me.’ She left and returned with a photocopy of a newspaper article. ‘Keogh came by. He thought we’d be interested in this. He said to tell you that he was sorry about Shane, to give you his condolences.’

  The article was from 1980: ‘Church Group Arrested on Soviet Freighter’. There was a photo with it. Hannah pointed out Sean Sugrue and Noelie recognised him from the pictures in Mrs Sugrue’s house. In the newspaper article, Sugrue was in civvies with three others. They held a banner showing the Virgin Mary and the words, ‘Fatima. I come to call for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart.’

  ‘Cripes,’ said Noelie.

  As far as Noelie knew, the Virgin Mary had appeared to a few sisters at Fatima in Portugal. It was claimed that she had imparted secrets to the girls and one had to do with Russia spreading evil around the world, which was widely interpreted at the time to be a warning about the rise of the Soviet Union.

  ‘So Sugrue was from the weird end of the spectrum.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘I think that’s Keogh’s point too.’

  Noelie put the miraculous medal and the memorial card back in the box. ‘That your news?’ he asked