Free Death at Christy Burke's by Anne Emery Page B

nail was likely the key to the building; he took it to the door and tried it out. Yes. He then found a pen, a piece of paper, and a thumbtack, and printed up a note. “Closed till noon. Sorry for the inconvenience.” He scratched out the Latin cross he signed with out of habit, and replaced it with “FB.” Finn would have done better, but there was no time for niceties. Brennan tacked the note to the door, locked up, and looked at the small key Finn had slipped him during confession time. Let the excavation begin.
    He headed for the basement door. He saw a string hanging from a light bulb, and pulled it. The light wasn’t much, but it was better than subterranean blackness. He made his way down a set of crumbling concrete steps, bracing himself with one hand on the damp, cold walls. Down in the cellar there was one window large enough to admit a barrel of stout and clean enough to provide a bit of light.
    It was only when he got to the bottom of the stairs that Brennan remembered being down here as a child, he and two other young fellows. He had sneaked them in when his grandfather was occupied at the bar. Told his friends there were secret items down there, and they could borrow them and play war with them. He hadn’t thought of that in years. When he had led the other two into the tunnel, he heard an ungodly roar come out of his father’s mouth. Declan and Finn were down there with a wrench and a big wooden crate. Brennan didn’t see what was in it because his father threatened to give him a toe in the hole, and no football for a month and a half, if he didn’t get his arse up those stairs and out of this building and take those two little gobshites with him before the oul fellow counted to five.
    Out of that ill wind had come knowledge that stood Brennan in good stead now: he knew where to find the entrance to the tunnel. It wouldn’t have been obvious to a casual visitor to the cellar, if one could imagine a casual trip down here. All that met the eye were kegs, taps, glasses, and other paraphernalia associated with the running of a bar, along with several large pieces of furniture. Nowhere in the walls or the visible parts of the floor was there anything that looked like the door to a tunnel. But Brennan headed right for it. He was grateful to see a flashlight on a shelf near the window. And it worked. He grabbed it and picked his way through the clutter to a filing cabinet resting on a shabby Oriental carpet. The trap door was under there. He shoved the cabinet aside and lifted the carpet to reveal the door, which was made of planks. A padlock secured it to a sheet of metal bolted into the stone floor. He inserted the key into the lock, gave it a twist, got some resistance, and wrenched it around again. The lock sprang open. He lifted the wooden door on its hinges and eased it back against a chair.
    The tunnel was accessible by a ladder, which had seen better days but served the purpose. Brennan climbed down and found himself in a passage about six and a half feet high and five feet wide. He cursed his decision to set out for the day in his black clerical suit, which was now grey with dust. He’d have to send it to the cleaners. But he put it out of his mind for the time being. The walls of the tunnel were made of stones and bricks, and the ceiling was covered with sheets of plywood, propped up by posts along the sides. He shone his light ahead and tried to estimate the tunnel’s length. It was hard to tell. About twenty feet from where he stood, the floor seemed to slope upwards. Not surprisingly it felt damp, and he could hear water dripping somewhere. But he didn’t have time to stand there and soak up the ambience; he had a job to do. Good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic, given that he was enclosed in a jerry-built confined space several feet under the ground. It was like being in the catacombs in Rome, except he didn’t expect to see any saints buried down here. He walked forward a few steps and