The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, all three burst out laughing.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not going to bed with you, Paddy,’ said Tommy, carrying a pot of tea over to the table. ‘Ye snore.’

  They laughed again and the atmosphere lightened momentarily.

  ‘Now, lads, you don’t need details, trust me, but Jer needs our help and we all need to be singing out of the same bloody hymn book to do that. Are ye with me?’

  Sean and Paddy picked up their tea and looked at each other. They had both moved onto the four streets at around the same time and between the two families they had attended too many baptisms to count. They had both clasped their arms together and held Jerry upright underneath Bernadette’s dead body as she lay in her coffin on the day they buried her. One of Sean’s daughters was running around the street right now in Angela’s old shoes, and the two girls were best friends.

  Sean took both sets of Tommy’s twins down to the boxing club with him on a regular basis and they had all pooled their resources together on many an occasion to make sure the kids were fed. When Paddy had run out of money before the end of the week, Jerry had often slipped him half a crown.

  It didn’t matter what Jerry had done. They were his mates and they would do whatever was needed, regardless of the danger to themselves.

  ‘I’m in,’ said Sean.

  Paddy felt guilty as he looked at his two friends and drank his tea. Peggy had told him what little Paddy had done and big Paddy had taken his slipper to him. He wouldn’t open his mouth again, the stupid little fecker. Too much like his mother at times. Spoke rubbish before putting his brain in gear.

  He had been home for a full half-hour before Peggy told him what had happened, and the stupid woman had told the lad to hide in the outhouse, out of his da’s way.

  It took Paddy a full minute for what Peggy was telling him to sink in.

  ‘He did what?’ Paddy roared. ‘He did what? Are ye telling me Jer is sat in a police cell, being questioned about the priest’s murder, because that gobshite of a kid wanted to look clever?’

  Shame and anger convulsed Paddy in equal measure. The men had talked about nothing else on the docks other than how ridiculous the police were. They had laughed at the ridiculous notion that Jerry could have anything to do with it.

  ‘Stupid feckers, the bizzies are. Jer didn’t even go to fuckin’ mass since the day he buried Bernadette,’ Brian, his gang mate, had said. ‘He’s even married a Protestant. God knows when the last time was that Jer even spoke to the priest. What a fuckin’ laugh it is.’

  Paddy ran up the stairs as quickly as a man could run who smoked forty a day and had worked nine hours straight. There was no sign of his son.

  He ran back through the kitchen, picked up his slipper from in front of the fire and went out into the yard. Now he could hear little Paddy whimpering in the outhouse.

  Maura could hear the shouts in her own yard as she took down the washing. She stopped unpegging and held onto the line with her eyes closed. Neither Maura nor Tommy ever hit their kids and it made her feel sick to hear poor little Paddy’s pathetic pleas for Paddy to leave him alone.

  ‘No, Da, don’t hit me with the slipper,’ he screeched, as the outhouse door flung open.

  It was too late; his pleas were followed up by loud thwacks, screams and even louder crying. Paddy must have slapped his son at least a dozen times. Maura heard him swear as the slipper flew out of his hand, but that didn’t stop him; he then resorted to his fists. The guilt she felt at hearing little Paddy take a beating made her stomach turn sour. Maura loved little Paddy. She often fed him at her own table and had deloused his hair as often as she had the twins. He was one of life’s innocents and he never failed to make them all laugh with his antics. ‘What has little Paddy done today then,’ she would ask her boys at some stage of the evening. She often pulled him to her for a quick hug each time he said ‘I wish I lived with ye, Maura.’ She wished he did too. Never more than today.

  Maura wanted to lean over the wall and plead with Paddy to stop, but she didn’t dare. The four streets survived in harmony on the basis of unwritten rules and one of them was: you never interfered or stuck your nose in when it hadn’t been asked for.

  ‘I’m in,’ said Paddy, relieved to have the opportunity to compensate for the perceived stupidity of little Paddy.

  Jerry had been in the police station for eight hours and the police were getting nowhere.

  Howard and Simon should have gone home three hours since, but they didn’t want to leave this to anyone else. Neither could say why, they had no evidence other than a witness statement from a ten-year-old, but both knew they were on to something.

  Their trained noses could smell it. They could taste it. The aroma of guilt filled the station. It was at its strongest in the cell in which they held Jerry and yet they didn’t have a single fact to go on.

  ‘Maybe we should let him go, put a watch on him and call it a night,’ said Howard, who was imagining his tea, which was always on the table at six-thirty sharp, sitting there congealing.

  ‘Are you joking?’ said Simon. ‘Look, mate, we both know we are on to something here. That man is playing us like a fiddle. He hasn’t said one flaming word since we handcuffed him. We have to keep going until he cracks first.’

  ‘We are running out of time,’ said Howard. ‘We will have to let him…’

  His words trailed off as, from the window, they saw Tommy, Sean and Paddy march in through the station doors.

  Brigie had just got the youngest off to sleep when Howard knocked on her front door. She looked surprised to see him and with a warm and welcoming smile, invited him straight in. He made no small talk and looked as though he was in a foul temper.

  He opened his notebook and took out his pencil. ‘Would ye like some tea?’ said Brigie sweetly. Howard appeared not to hear and got straight to the point. ‘Did you, on the sixteenth of this month, receive a bottle of whiskey as a gift from the wedding family?’

  ‘Aye, we did,’ replied Brigie. ‘And so did everyone else.’

  ‘Can I see your whiskey, madam?’ said Howard, feeling more officious than usual.

  Neither he nor Simon believed the card-school story. Now they needed to check whether or not the whiskey bottle had been opened. If it hadn’t, it would be their only lead. And a big one too. They would be able to prove that Jerry’s neighbours had been lying and that was a serious offence indeed.

  Brigie looked at Howard questioningly and slowly moved to the sideboard in the front room. Howard followed her.

  Brigie bent down to open the cupboard door, looking sideways at Howard and, as she lifted the bottle of whiskey out, she let out a high-pitched squeal and gasped, ‘Oh Jaysus, someone has drunk the bleedin’ whiskey, there’s nothing here.’ She turned and faced Howard with the empty bottle in her hand. A look of pure amazement sat on her face and took a bow.

  Howard snapped his book shut and stormed out of the kitchen.

  At exactly the same time in Kathleen’s kitchen, Simon was asking the same question.

  ‘Sure,’ said Kathleen as she went to the kitchen cupboard, ‘we are saving it for Christmas mind, here ye are,’ and she took out a full and unopened bottle of whiskey.

  Within an hour, Jerry walked in through his own back door. Everyone had gathered in his kitchen, even Brigie, as once again Kathleen poured out whiskey for all. ‘Bugger Christmas,’ she laughed as she cracked open the seal. ‘Easy come, easy go,’ said Sean.

  He and Paddy had both told the police that there was a card school, playing for money, in Sean’s house that night, well after the women had gone to bed.

  They had embellished the story with the admission that they had drunk almost the whole bottle of whiskey between them. They were both prepared to sign a witness statement to that effect. When Paddy said firmly, ‘Aye, and my lad wants to withdraw his, so he does. Now he thinks it was me he saw leaving the entry, not Jerry,’ Howard’s heart sank.

  Gon
e was his promotion.

  Simon and Howard knew they were back to square one. With no evidence they had to let Jerry go. He had an alibi with two witnesses. He was safe.

  Nellie and Kitty were back together on the comfy chair. Nellie had refused to move from Jerry’s arms until Kitty came back in through the door.

  Everyone lifted their glass to drink in relief, when Kathleen tapped her glass with a spoon and spoke.

  ‘Before we drink,’ she said, ‘we need to say thank you to someone. To Alice.’ Everyone turned and smiled at Alice.

  Alice beamed, feeling swamped by a sense of pride. Her face flushed red and tears pricked at her eyes when everyone lifted their glass and said loudly, ‘To Alice.’

  It was the happiest moment of her life.

  Nellie and Kitty hugged each other, grinning. They had no idea what they were grinning at, or what had just occurred, but everyone was happy and so were they.

  Suddenly, without warning, Kitty leapt from the chair and raced through the back door to the outhouse.

  As Kitty leant over the pan to throw up the first time, she felt someone holding back her hair from the vomit and stroking the back of her neck. She could hear the voices wafting down the yard from the kitchen, laughing and chattering away. Celebrating. Everyone joyous and happy.

  Another shot of whiskey, she thought, and they will be singing next and pushing the chairs back to dance around the kitchen. They wouldn’t miss her. She was shaking with cold and felt clammy as she knelt on the floor and clung onto the wooden seat, a long, polished plank that stretched across the top of the toilet. Next to the seat stood a large pile of cut-up pages of the Echo, to use as toilet paper. The smell from the printer’s ink made her heave again.

  The soothing, ethereal whispers calmed her panic. She knew everyone was in the kitchen, and there could be no one with her in the outhouse, but the nausea made her feel so deathly that she was beyond thinking or caring.

  Just as she leant over to vomit for the second time and felt her own hair being lifted clear, she saw a long strand of red hair sweep past the side of her face.

  Kathleen looked at Maura to see if she had noticed Kitty dashing out of the back door to the outhouse. She had.

  Maura went white. She put her hand to her mouth and held onto the back of the chair to steady herself as the realization hit her with the force of a truck.

  Kathleen moved over to her side and put an arm round her waist.

  ‘Oh my God, Kathleen, ’twas before me very eyes and I never knew. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what next? What will we do?’

  ‘Sh,’ Kathleen replied. ‘Let’s enjoy tonight, Maura. That problem is ours to share, tomorrow.’

  First published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Nadine Dorries, 2014

  The moral right of Nadine Dorries to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB) 9781781857588

  ISBN (XTPB) 9781781858240

  ISBN (E) 9781781857571

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  Clerkenwell House

  45-47 Clerkenwell Green

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.headofzeus.com

  HIDE HER NAME

  Nadine Dorries

  This gripping follow on from The Four Streets finds the community alive with rumours and gossip after the murder which rocked it to the core.

  No one knows – or is saying – who did it, least of all the police, but they are not giving up their search for the truth. Somewhere, in this tight-knit Irish Catholic community, someone must know something. Someone will surely talk one day.

  Meanwhile, 14-year-old Kitty Doherty, pregnant with the dead man’s child, is a living danger to everyone who needs to keep the secret. Her mother, Maura and best friend Nellie’s grandmother, the redoutable Kathleen, decide the girls must be spirited away quietly to Ireland to await the birth of the baby.

  But it isn’t easy to keep a secret that big.

  Start Reading

  Table of Contents

  For my late father George, the gentlest and kindest of all men, and my inimitable and beloved Irish nana, Nellie Deane, who stole me away from Liverpool in order that I would love Eire, as much as she.

  I went out to the hazel wood,

  Because a fire was in my head,

  And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

  And hooked a berry to a thread;

  And when white moths were on the wing,

  And moth-like stars were flickering out,

  I dropped the berry in the stream

  And caught a little silver trout.

  When I had laid it on the floor

  I went to blow the fire a-flame,

  But something rustled on the floor

  And someone called me by my name:

  It had become a glimmering girl

  With apple blossom in her hair

  Who called me by my name and ran

  And faded through the brightening air.

  William Butler Yeats

  selected verses from

  The Song of Wandering Aengus

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  1

  ‘STOP LYING ON his pyjamas now, Peggy, and let yer man out to earn an honest crust!’

  Paddy’s next-door neighbour, Tommy, impatiently yelled over the backyard gate as he and the Nelson Street dockers knocked on for Paddy. They stood, huddled together in an attempt to hold back the worst of the rain, as they waited for Paddy to join them.

  Much to her annoyance, Peggy, Paddy’s wife, could hear their sniggering laughter.

  ‘Merciful God!’ she said crossly. ‘Paddy, would ye tell that horny fecker, Tommy, it’s not us at it every five minutes.’ She snatched the enamel mug of tea out of Paddy’s hand and away from his lips before he had supped his last drop. There was not a second of silence available for him in which to protest.

  ‘The only reason he and Maura have two sets of twins is because he’s a dirty bugger and does it twice a night. I’ll not have him shouting such filth down the entry, now tell him, will ye, Paddy?’

  Peggy and Paddy had spawned enough of their own children, but Peggy had never in her life done it twice on the same night. Every woman who lived on the four streets knew: that sinful behaviour got you caught with twins.

  ‘I wonder sometimes how Maura holds her head up without the shame, so I do. Once caught doing it twice, ye would know what the feck had happened and not do it again
. He must be mighty powerful with his persuasion, that Tommy. Answer me, Paddy, tell him, will ye?’

  ‘Aye, I will that, Peggy,’ said Paddy as he picked up his army-issue canvas bag containing his dinner: a bottle of cold tea and Shipman’s beef paste sandwiches. Rushing to the door, he placed a kiss on Peggy’s cheek, his shouted goodbye cut midway as the back gate snapped closed behind him.

  Each man who lived on the four streets worked on the docks. Their day began as it ended, together.

  It took exactly four minutes from the last backyard on Nelson Street, down the dock steps, to the perimeter gate. The same amount of time it took to smoke the second roll-up as ribald jokes and football banter rose high on the air. When the sun shone, their spirits lifted and they would often sing whilst walking.

  The same melancholy songs heard in the Grafton rooms or the Irish centre on a Saturday night sunk into a pint of Guinness. Melodies of a love they left behind. Of green fields the colour of emeralds, or a raven-haired girl, with eyes that shone like diamonds.

  The Nelson Street gang was often delayed by Paddy at number seventeen and would pause at his back gate and stand a while.

  Each morning, wearing a string vest that carried the menu of every meal eaten at home that week, Paddy sat up in bed, picked up his cigarettes and matches that lay next to an ever-overflowing ashtray on the bedside table, and lit up his first ciggie of the day.

  Paddy smoked a great deal in bed.

  He would often wake Peggy in the middle of the night with the sound of his match striking through the dark, providing a split second of bright illumination.

  ‘Give us a puff,’ Peggy would croak, without any need of the teeth soaking in a glass on the table next to her. Not waiting for nor expecting a reply, she would warily uncoil her arm from under the old grey army blanket and, cheating the cold air of any opportunity to penetrate the dark, smelly warmth beneath, grasp the wet-ended cigarette between her finger and thumb, put it to her lips and draw deeply.