It was a young police constable walking his beat who accidentally discovered the body of Frankie Browne beneath sheets of newspaper in an alley at the edge of Chelsea, on a freezing November night. The young man’s body lay frozen in a foetal position on that minus four-degrees night. An autopsy would later reveal a number of facts. For instance that Frankie had died of hypothermia, that he was a long-time drug abuser, and that he had probably not eaten for at least three days. Modern technology was amazing more and more people with the secrets it could garner from a frozen corpse. On this occasion however, there was one secret science could not extract. For the last eight years of his short and tragic life, Francis Browne had lived under the name of Ben Daly. Before burning the dead man’s ragged clothes, an assistant of the coroner’s office went through the pockets in search of anything that might be valuable. They were empty but for a dirty, crumpled envelope upon which was written ‘Dublin Papers’.
If you take on one of Agnes Browne’s children, you take on them all, wherever they are.
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