Ahoy for Joy (14 page)

The couple were married in the summer of 1987 and bought a house by the canal, in the town of Veenendaal, not far from her parents' home in Pijpersboss. By 1989, she had become pregnant with her first child, a boy, whom they named Marcus. Anna quickly gave up her job as a receptionist at a doctor's surgery and became a full-time Mum. Marcus was quickly followed by another boy, Johan in 1991, then the family was finally completed with a girl, Esther in 1994.

The marriage was a happy one. Anna proved to be a loving wife and expert homemaker and Cees provided well for the family in every respect. He built a very successful career, but he was also adept at sharing his time between his work, always his first love, but not his only love, and Anna and the children.

Anna never told Cees about Michael. This was not for any reason other than a lack of relevance. In any case, who would want to hear stories of their spouse's past loves especially ones that never actually materialised. As the children grew up the name of Michael Coglan hardly entered her mind save for occasionally when she heard a word or phrase she had learned from him at the time or when a glint of sunshine reflecting on the water, reminded her of a line or two of his poetry. She would smile briefly, and think back to the shy young man she met only once, wondering where he was and if he was happy but she never allowed the thought to linger long. Then she would get on with family life, picking the children up from school or cooking dinner. She was happy and content and Michael's letters and poems rested silently in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

The two culprits were quickly apprehended. The gun, lodged in the hawthorn bush, had been swiftly traced and the security services already had intelligence linking the two men together and their positions within the terror group.

The older of the two, Patrick Flannigan was already well known to the police and he had previous convictions for more minor sectarian activities. Even those who knew him would have described him as cold. The younger man, Sean Bradley, had cracked easily under police interrogation. Actually, he had really cracked some seconds before the gun went off. He had confessed everything, his position in the active ‘unit', his relationship with Flannigan, though had been wise enough to stop short of providing any further information outside of his own personal involvement. In truth he knew little.

The two men were sent for trial. The proceedings were presided over by Justice Oliver Bailey. The barristers, clerks, police, prison guards, the accused and the convicted, even politicians all called him the ‘Ole Bailey'. He had been born and raised in England but of Irish stock. His great grandfather, Thomas Bailey, had grown up in poverty in Ireland and together with his young wife and baby son, moved to London in the 1870s. He quickly found his feet and became an astute investor in the booming city of the day and developed considerable personal wealth. The couple had many more children and the family prospered, but always retained their Irish roots. There are now over ninety direct descendants of Thomas Bailey littered around the world. Justice Oliver Bailey was one of these.

He had studied law at Cambridge but his minor subject was Irish history and later he participated enthusiastically in the small Irish community in Norfolk, where his family had lived for years. It was here that he met Maria, a young woman from County Down and took the opportunity to move to what he always considered his true homeland. This was in the comparative calm of the early 1950s and while his legal career developed most satisfactorily, so did the tensions and conflicts in the communities where he had now made his home.

Justice Bailey was never known for understatement. Candid and outspoken, sometimes offensive, often controversial, he was a well-known and respected senior member of the legal system in Northern Ireland. Some thought him harsh, others rather too lenient, but none doubted his commitment to the welfare of the people of Ireland. Somehow his early years in England had made him able to see the Irish people in a way they seemed so completely unable to see themselves.

Both men were given life sentences. In summing up Justice Bailey first rounded on the young Bradley who stood in the dock, red faced, his head slightly bowed, shaking.

“You have shown remorse”, he said, “no one doubts that. You claim the gun went off by accident. Some will believe you, others won't, but the fact is that you went to that house that night with very clear pre-meditated intentions. You went to kill. To kill in cold blood. To kill a man you had never met and who had done you no wrong. You went to kill because you were told to by those more powerful than you. This court accepts that, but in its acceptance it cannot absolve you from responsibility for your actions. You
are
responsible for your actions.”

He stopped suddenly then exclaimed;

“Good God man, what were you thinking of? It was a Friday night. Why weren't you out chasing women or drinking beer or listening to music? Why weren't you playing football or hurling or whatever might take your fancy? Can these things only be done in the new different, better Ireland you claim to desire? Instead you and your accomplice went on a mission to murder. And murder you did. In cold blood. Your bullet killed both Susan Coglan and her son. Simple, ordinary people trying to get through difficult lives as best they could. Michael Coglan was but a year younger than you. I know your politics. Jesus Christ, we all know your damned politics, but where was the compassion, the humanity”?

Bradley stood stunned, tears now streaming down his face. Judge Bailey now in full flow paused slightly, his tone lowering a little.

“The truth is, in another world, on another planet, in another universe where sensibility and sanity might triumph over hatred and skewed logic, Michael Coglan might even have been your friend. Who knows how it might have been without the wretched Irish curse. I would have avoided such a notion if anyone from his family had even survived to be appalled by such a thought, but there is no one. They are all gone. You killed his parents. You killed him, his future and his blood line. You killed his family before and after. I am sure there are some who will celebrate such a fact. The man standing next to you is certainly one.”

With that he turned to Gallagher.

“You on the other hand have shown no remorse whatsoever. I have sat before many like you. You were lost many years ago. There is no salvation. You claim your objectives are political. Well, maybe they are. If they are, they are bad politics. The history of the world, not just of Ireland, is full of individuals who claim their ends justify their means. They never do. Murder is murder. There are no politics in shooting an unarmed man, his wife and only child in his own home. But still you do it. You feign enlightenment but deep down, we all know there will always be hatred in your heart and murder on your mind.”

He stopped once more, his own hands shaking with anger as he shuffled the papers on his bench. He sighed.

“Maybe it is not
all
your fault, for the speciality of Ireland is the efficiency with which such hatred is handed down from generation to generation. It's like a cause celebre. All too often, hatred is worn like a mantle by parents and gifted to children in the greatest sadness on earth. Let none forget. This is the cancer in our society. It is not about the one event, the tragedy or the fault, it is about the perpetuity and no generation seems quite capable of escaping it.”

“We exist here in this part of Ireland, but also in the South and where Irish people live throughout the world, as a divided people. We share so much, yet nothing. We just live in our cliques and groups, bitching at each other. Criticising and complaining. Few friendships cross the divide and some that do are disrupted by the judgement of others. The voices of dissent are few. There are some, but they are few. Religion and national identity dominate the psyche.”

“We meet new people, perhaps a new colleague or just the guy who fixes the heating or the local doctor, but we can hardly relate to them till we know what they
are
. We hear of a tragedy, a death, maybe even a murder, but we don't quite know what to feel, not till we know what the victim
is
or in some cases
was
. Yes, we are always appalled, our condemnation sincere, but somehow as if by subtle instinct our feelings are amended and qualified according to what we now know. In which camp did he sit? Our very humanity is tarnished by our culture. Who in this courtroom can say it is not so?
WHO IN THIS COURT ROOM HAS NOT CONTRIBUTED TO THIS MESS?”

Besides the dinning voice of the angry man, you could have heard a pin drop. Even the journalists had stopped scribbling. Bradley's demeanour had turned to a shaking figure in the dock. Even Flannigan now fidgeted as he stood, though his cold stare remained unchanged.

“We, in this city, and on this Island possess a subtlety of humour unmatched throughout the world and a culture others can so easily warm to. Instead we live in tragedy and pedal hate. Branny Coglan, his wife and child lie dead. These two will serve their time in jail. That is just. It will be so. But, perhaps it is also time we all took a long hard look in the mirror. Are the rest of us all quite so innocent?”

The judge was now tired. A large lock of his hair had escaped from underneath his wig and fallen over his face making him look scruffy in appearance. He slammed his gavel hard several times on the bench.

“This court is adjourned.”

*

Patrick Flannigan was an awkward and aggressive prisoner, prone to violent reaction and participating at some level in the various protests that would become part of his incarcerated life. He was released in 2000 as part of the prisoner release programme resulting from the Good Friday agreement.

Sean Bradley served almost 10 years of his sentence. He was released in the Spring of 1989 on a date that is unrecorded in the public records. On that day, an unmarked prison vehicle took him to the airport where he boarded a plane to London. There he was met by a rather podgy, grey haired man wearing a tweed sports jacket and polished brown shoes. He shook his hand warmly and handed him a brown envelope. Inside was a brand new British passport in a name that had not existed until a few weeks earlier, together with a birth certificate and some other notes and documents.

“Where's your luggage” said the man.

“Sure, I haven't got any. There's nothing I want to take from here”

“Ah.” He paused thoughtfully. “OK. Just don't want to arouse suspicions old boy. Airlines can get a bit funny if you have no bags. We can fix it of course, but no point in inviting trouble.”

He shrugged. “Still, not to worry.”

The British government has reciprocal arrangements with several countries around the world to enable resettlement of individuals whose lives have become untenable in their homeland. It is sometimes used for the rehabilitation of offenders but more often for the protection of witnesses in major and controversial trials where there is thought to be a serious danger of intimidation or extermination.

Sean Bradley didn't exactly fit into this category, but he had asked to go. In recent times, various prisoners, perhaps prompted by Flannigan himself (there was no love lost between the two men) had mooted comments that Bradley had been a little too cooperative with the authorities.

At Heathrow, he boarded a plane to Toronto Canada. Within a few months he had adopted a Canadian accent. About five years later in accordance with Canadian law, Sean Bradley applied for Canadian citizenship and in a small ceremony in Ottawa in September 1994 he, rather ironically, pledged allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and of course to Canada, his new country.

He has never had any contact with his old life, except for one day early in the new millennium when a small package arrived at his home. It was post marked London W1. Inside was a hard backed book entitled;
The Troubles in Poems and Prose
.

With it was a short handwritten note, neither signed nor addressed:

I thought this might provide some interest and perhaps comfort to you. I know you will treat it with any discretion required.

Sean Bradley has never married and always lived alone. The book is his only treasured possession. He keeps it in a locked drawer beside his bed. He reads it often.

And so ended Michael's life and the life too of the little family. Like so many before and so many who would follow, they became statistics in the history of Ireland and its relationship with its own people. The house remained cordoned off as a crime scene for several weeks after the murder. No one lived in the property again. The area itself, the surrounding streets and community continued to suffer the havoc and deterioration that follows war and political strife wherever they occur around the world. Eventually the house was boarded up to prevent vandalism and when others in the street were vacated, they were not re-let but boarded too.

In the mid nineteen eighties when plans were drawn up for the new motorway extension to the North of the city, the last residents were moved out, re-housed elsewhere and the demolition process began.

The men arrived with lorries, plant and heavy equipment. They worked diligently along the street, firstly removing lead and slates from the roofs, then rafters and beams before moving inside to remove floor boards and joists. The houses were systematically stripped of their copper pipes, their wiring and anything else of value that could be re-sold or re-cycled, like carrion feeders at a corpse. And corpses they were, as a house, like a life, has a beginning and an end. When the people move out the life is gone and the shell remains standing exhausted and useless, awaiting the inevitable process whereby all life returns at last to its beginning; ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Finally, when the heavy equipment had moved out, the street lay silent once more, like it had done more than a hundred years earlier when Belfast was expanding with hope and expectation as industries developed and new people moved in. The bricks, mortar, stones and dust that had seen so much lay piled in heaps of surprising uniformity, awaiting onward transportation to their final resting places as hard core for the foundations of new developments.

When they had finished, they had removed every last trace of the life of Michael Coglan. It was as if he had never existed. As the dust settled, the demolition workers stood around for a moment as they often did at the end of a job, in a kind of silent reverence to the lives that had now moved on. Had any of them thought or cared to look, just by where Michael's house had once stood, Anna's letter lay still unopened in the dust.