The Girl From the Killing Streets

by David Hough

  “Probably not. And we’re not going to do a house search right now.” McIlroy stared back at the closed front door. “Why do you think she bristled when the name of Jimmy Fish came up? I’m a bit suspicious on that count.”

  “There’s something fishy there, that’s for sure, boss.”

  “All the more reason for us to speak to Bridie Mulveny as well as Sorcha.”

  “Boss, it’s pretty clear now that this must be the Barbara Mulveny you mentioned earlier. What more do you know about her?”

  “Bugger all that’s of any use, Will. But I’ll ask a few more questions in due course.” The DCI looked up and down the street. “I’ve a nasty feeling in the water about that woman. A classic Belfast mammy, the sort that rule their kids’ lives with a rod of iron. If I was her offspring, I’d be very wary of her.”

  “Not your typical Mother Theresa.”

  “And lies come as natural from her as mother’s milk. First she tells us her daughter, Sorcha, was at home all last night, and then she admits she wasn’t here anyway. Away visiting, she said.”

  “Natural liars are better at it than that, boss.”

  “Probably. In the meantime, Will, look that way.”

  McIlroy gestured towards the corrugated iron wall at the end of the street where a gang of youths was gathered. Some were lounging with hunched shoulders, puffing on joints, while others were scrawling obscene graffiti on the barricade. The ‘B’ Specials would have gone in there without hesitation and sorted them out in seconds, Will reflected, but that side of the RUC had been disbanded. Too rough and tough for the average street layabout, so they had to go. Their anti-Catholic bias had also been a problem.

  “I can smell the dope they’re smoking from here,” Will said.

  “We’re being watched and that means trouble. Let’s get out of here while we can. We’ll try finding those Mulveny girls another time.”

  “A sound idea, boss.”

  They kept an eye on the youths as they backed away to the end of the street. McIlroy thanked the soldiers at the road junction when they recovered the Land Rover, but he double checked for a bomb beneath the vehicle anyway. It was a habit and a good one. None of the soldiers looked too happy, but when did a British squaddie look happy on the streets of Belfast? Will sympathised with them.

  He felt some relief as they drove away along Ladysmith Road, between more depressing red-brick terraces. Two lines of dismal homes staring at each other across a miserable street. There were few people out on the road, but curtains twitched as they passed. A police Land Rover here was as welcome as a Jew in Mecca.

  They were halfway along the next street when a hidden gunman opened fire.

  “Jesus!” Will cried as he ducked down.

  The sudden bark of the gun was accompanied by holes exploding across the upper edge of the windscreen. Bullets ripped through the top of the cab and out through the roof. The gunman was aiming from low down.

  “You hit?” McIlroy rammed his foot to the floor, the engine roared and the Land Rover raced on down the road, zig-zagging from side to side to make the target more difficult. Bullets were now hitting the side of the vehicle.

  At first Will dared not raise his head to look for the sniper. “I’m okay, boss. Just get us out of here.” He continued to crouch low in his seat and pulled out his pistol.

  “Stay down!” McIlroy shouted.

  Will said nothing. A few moments passed before he raised his head and risked a peek over the dashboard. More bullets erupted through vehicle, exiting behind the two occupants. Ahead, a figure appeared at an open doorway. He lit a petrol bomb and sent it arching through the air. It burst into flames on the road a few yards in front of the vehicle. Will grabbed his seat tightly as McIlroy swung the Land Rover around the flaming missile.

  “Bloody hell!”

  “Hold tight, Will.”

  More bullets hit the rear of the Land Rover as McIlroy raced on and swung round a corner on two wheels. He rounded another corner and then slowed down.

  “Welcome to Belfast,” he wheezed.

  “Bugger Belfast.” Will felt a shudder of alarm run through him and then his sight began to blur. His head ached. That damned knock on the skull. He leaned back in his seat and waited for the moment to pass.

  “You all right?” McIlroy asked. The Land Rover was passing out of the ghetto area now, but he didn’t look round.

  “Give me a minute. Just a minute.”

  “Reckon we both need some recovery time, and a slug of something hard when we get back, eh?”

  “If you say so, boss.”

  What Will needed most was peace and quiet and he wouldn’t find that anywhere in this area. The image of a tranquil Welsh shoreline flashed through his mind. Water lapping on soft sand. Milly beside him, holding his hand. The girls playing happily nearby. He’d be on his way there now if it hadn’t been for this damned Irish civil war.

  When he was sufficiently recovered, he reported the attack on the radio net and began to relax. They were relatively safe now and neither of them was injured. Thank God for that. His headache eased away as they drove on down the road, putting space between themselves and Mafeking Street.

  Five minutes later they met a roadblock just half a mile from the Antrim road. Cars were backed up in both directions. Drivers had left their vehicles and were milling around in disarray. Another police Land Rover was at the heart of the obstruction; a blue Ford van parked sideways across the road.

  “Damn. Just what we need right now,” Will complained.

  A uniformed police sergeant strode towards them, an older officer with the look of one who had seen it all before and wasn’t going to be panicked this time. He shook his head as he came near and peered in at Will and McIlroy.

  “You guys been fighting a war or something?” He pointed to the bullet holes.

  “Moths eating the furniture,” McIlroy said. “No one hurt. What’s going on here?”

  “An abandoned van. We’ve given it a quick check over. The back doors are locked, but there’s nothing obviously wrong. Probably stolen and left here to make us tremble with fear. My constable is about to move it.”

  “A quick check isn’t enough. You’d better wait until the army take a look at it,” McIlroy said.

  “No. It would take too long. There’s already a big tailback in both directions. Should be safe enough…”

  A loud boom filled the air.

  The van exploded, torn apart amidst a burst of flame and a sudden shockwave. Will shook in his seat as the Land Rover rocked against the blast. The police sergeant was blown to the ground. Long cracks appeared in the Land Rover’s front windscreen where it had been weakened by the earlier attack. Ahead of them, Will saw the top of the van opened up like a tin of beans.

  For some moments the blast was followed by silence. Then pandemonium broke loose. Will staggered from the Land Rover and took in a scene of panic. Some of the drivers standing in the road had been bowled over by the explosion. Some were injured. The cars closest to the van were clearly damaged. Bodies lay beside the wrecked van. A mother clasping a child ran screaming from the scene. A young girl in a bloodied mini dress staggered between the cars, weeping loudly. An elderly man stood in the midst of the mayhem and stared into the distance, his face displaying his total lack of comprehension of what had happened.

  “Call in for help, boss.” Will shouted at McIlroy who was still inside the Land Rover, staring ahead as if he also was in shock.

  Shock? They were all in shock.

  Will made his way towards the front of the line of vehicles. Each one was more damaged than the one behind. The air smelt of cordite, blood and petrol leaking from damaged cars. That worried him. Flames were licking angrily from the wrecked van.

  At first he was able to reassure the people who were left standing, asking them to help others who had been bowled over. But the victims at the front of the queue were in need of serious medical help. As he passed between two cars, a woman grabbed him with
one hand. She was bathed in blood. Young or old, he had no idea. She was trying to say something to him, but no words came from her mouth. One arm hung loose, as if it was almost severed from her body. He put out his hands to help her, easing her to the ground.

  “Take it easy now. We’ll have help in a minute.”

  He used whatever comforting words he could think of. He would have to do something about that arm, he realised. Staunch the flow of blood. Use a tourniquet, if he could find something suitable. There were others nearby also needing help, crying out for help, but he could do nothing for them while attending to the woman.

  The distant sound of sirens alerted him to approaching emergency vehicles. Thank God! He couldn’t cope with all this alone.

  And then the grey mist descended again, and his mind went blank. The last thing he remembered was falling to the ground.

  ***

  Early December 1980

  “That knock on the head playing up again?” I said.

  “That and the stress of the job making things worse. I was too stupid to see it.” The pub was almost empty. When Will stopped talking, the room seemed to go silent, adding an eerie emphasis to his description of the car bomb.

  “You recovered from it?”

  “After a few minutes. Before McIlroy got to see what happened.”

  I saw how pale his face had become. “Enough talking?” I asked.

  “Enough for now. Can we leave it there?” He spoke in a quiet voice. “I don’t want to go into any more of this tonight.”

  “Too many bad memories?”

  “What the hell do you think?”

  “I don’t think I could bring myself to do the things you did, Will. You’re a brave man.”

  “Am I? I’m not so sure.” He shook his head. “McIlroy once told me that life is a death sentence, so we may as well get used to it. You can check out now in a blaze of glory, doing what’s right. Or you can wait until you’re old and decrepit and slide away as a dribbling, incontinent mess. Take your choice.”

  “You set yourself up for a blaze of glory?”

  “No. I put all that out of my mind and simply did my job. You know what I’d like now… before I leave this pub?”

  I nodded, went to the bar and bought him another double whiskey. I figured he needed it… probably deserved it.

  “One more question, Will,” I said when I handed him the drink. “Do you think Sorcha Mulveny really did kill those two men?”

  “Why do you ask me now?”

  “Because I still have my doubts. Right at the start I asked her outright if she did it and she said, ‘You can’t imagine how guilty I felt.’ How guilty she felt, not how guilty she was. And she said it wasn’t how people thought.”

  “She confessed,” he said in a somewhat dismissive tone.

  “That’s an evasive reply, Will.”

  “It’s the only one I can come up with. Is that what your book is all about? Your doubts about who murdered those two men?”

  “No. Not at all. The book is about the suffering people went through that day. And I ask myself, what sort of suffering would make a woman confess to something she didn’t do?”

  “If she didn’t do it.”

  “Yes. If she didn’t do it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  December 1980

  The memory of Will Foster’s words came back to me on an early morning flight into Belfast’s Aldergrove Airport. I was getting much closer to the personal tragedies of Bloody Friday now and I had to steel myself for some dramatic accounts. It didn’t seem to matter that I had been in Belfast when the Bloody Friday bombing began, a reporter on the Belfast Telegraph. I think my boss must have had my best interests at heart that day. He probably felt sorry for me in some ways; an Englishman from the Home Counties trying to make some sort of sense out of Northern Ireland. How could it possibly make sense to an Englishman? Irish people blowing up part of Ireland, killing Irish people, all in the name of bringing Irish people together? Was I mad, or were they?

  “Stay here in the office with me, English,” my editor said. He always called me English, but with no trace of rancour.

  “I should be out there reporting what’s happening,” I protested.

  “No. It’s not your battle and I don’t want you getting hurt because of Irish hatred. I’ll need someone at the end of the phone line as the reports come in, and I’m nominating you for the job. Your family will thank me for it one day.”

  Because of him, I never left the newsroom while the city was torn apart and people died. Eight years later I still had thankful memories of the way he tried to protect me from the full impact of those IRA bombs. He at least had a sense of compassion.

  My next task was to find out from Sorcha more about how she survived that dreadful day.

  I checked in at the Europa Hotel in Belfast and called for a taxi to take me to Armagh. It was an expensive ride, but I excused it by telling myself the cost would be set against my taxable income when the book was published. A weak excuse, but I had vivid memories of that first rain-soaked journey to Armagh on the day Private Atkins died. The weather was just as bad today. As before, I was interrogated at the prison, frisked and then shown to the interview room where Sorcha was waiting for me. The eye that had been bruised was now fully back to normal, and she had another woman seated alongside her.

  “This is Susan Miller,” she said. She gestured to an attractive, dark-haired woman in her thirties, dressed in a green trouser suit. The clean neatness of her clothes gave her fine features and slender figure a strange look of calm authority. She had that enigmatic Irish look about her, a look that reminded me very much of Annie. She would have looked perfect as Sorcha’s solicitor, but I instinctively knew she was not.

  “Prison visitor.” Susan Miller stood up and offered me a firm handshake.

  “And letter writer,” I replied.

  “It did the trick?” When she smiled her eyes seemed to glow. They reminded me of Annie’s eyes; alert and yet filled with good humour.

  “Perfectly,” I said as I sat down opposite the two women and took out my notebook. “Your literary skills do you credit. You deserve my utmost thanks.”

  Sorcha leaned forward and clasped her hands on the table. “I thought it would help if youse met Susan, in case I ask her to write another letter for me.”

  “Good thinking, Sorcha.” I spent a few minutes in general chit-chat aiming to get both of them relaxed before I asked, “Have you been preparing yourself to tell me the next part of your story?”

  “Depends. Where d’youse want me to start?”

  I gave a quick thought to the murders, and then decided not to press home that subject just yet. There would be a more opportune time later. “Where you left off in the letter. What did you do after your argument with Martin?”

  “I went for something to eat,” she said.

  ***

  Friday 21st July 1972

  1145 BST

  Sorcha was still determined to warn people away from the bombs, but first she needed to eat. There was time before the bombing began. Using the last of her cash, she bought herself a sandwich and a large cup of coffee in Anderson and McCauley’s in Donegall Place. She needed the caffeine to counter the effects of a night without sleep. The restaurant was busy, men and women laden with shopping bags, taking the opportunity of lunch in one of the city’s best-known stores.

  She nibbled at the sandwich and then put it aside, less than half eaten. Her hunger faded behind her sadness. Yet again she had made a mess of things. Screwed up her life. Would Martin give her another chance, an opportunity to redeem herself? It seemed unlikely. So what options were left open to her? Maybe she would have to resurrect those pills and a bottle of vodka, put an end to things once and for all. It was a solution, a viable solution, but it seemed less attractive now that she had experienced what Martin had to offer. If only she could heal the rift between them.

  In the meantime, what would Brian Fitzpain have to say if he f
ound out about her relationship with a Protestant? He wouldn’t kill her, of course he wouldn’t, but he would make her suffer. He enjoyed making people suffer. He was good at it.

  It was ironic that she would once have done the same to him, given half a chance. She could even have put an end to his life, given the right excuse. But not now. She couldn’t bring herself to do that now. It was all a matter of who he was.

  She remembered the day he had been sitting in the parlour room in Mafeking Street with her mother, drinking tea and chatting. And something odd happened. Something passed between the two of them, a knowing look; an expression of understanding. They knew something she did not, and it annoyed her.

  Later, when she got him on his own, she confronted him.

  “Brian, how well did youse know me mammy back in those days when youse was fishin’ in Ardglass?”

  “What’re youse getting’ at?” he snapped back.

  “Just what I said. How well did youse know her? Did youse…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.

  “Did I fuck her?”

  “Well? Did youse?”

  “None o’ yer business.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Did youse make her pregnant? Well? Did youse?”

  “Shut up!” He jabbed a fist at her face. “I’ll make youse sorry if youse don’t keep yer big mouth shut. Just see if I don’t!”

  If that wasn’t a confession, she didn’t know what was. Didn’t it confirm what she’d long believed? But she’d have one more try to get an outright admission. This time she’d use a different approach. “Why did me daddy walk out on her? Was it because of youse?”

  He thought for a few seconds and then turned to leave. “I told youse to shut yer mouth! But I’ll tell youse this, Sorcha. Yer mammy was no better than youse in those days. Yer daddy wasn’t the only one to fuck her. Now, don’t ask any more questions or I’ll take me hand to youse good and proper.”

  She long remembered that confrontation in detail. It wasn’t conclusive, didn’t give her clear cut answers, but she was confident she now knew the truth. And that was why she could never kill Fitzpain. Because of who she believed he was.