The Girl From the Killing Streets

by David Hough

Fitzpain paused in mid stride, but he kept looking ahead. He didn’t even bother to check whether had had lost one of the envelopes. He just stared ahead. His voice held a hint of alarm.

  “Don’t panic. Tell me what he’s doin’.”

  “He’s openin’ the envelope. Dear God, he’ll be readin’ the list. What’ll we do now?”

  “Shite! There’s only one thing we can do.” Fitzpain pulled his serrated kitchen knife from inside his coat. “And ’tis youse who’ll have to do it, girl. He knows me, that’s why he was starin’ at us in the first place, but I figure he doesn’t know youse though.”

  “Youse want me to kill him?”

  “Of course I want youse to kill him! Now, Sorcha. Now, before it’s too late.”

  “No! I’m not a murderer, damn you!”

  “’Tis time youse started.”

  “No! I don’t want to.”

  He gritted his teeth and thrust his face up against hers. “Do it! Do it or we’re both gonna land up in gaol. Is that what youse wants?”

  She took the knife gingerly, her heart thumping. She had done many wicked things in her life, but she had never killed a man. Not then. “I can’t…” she mumbled.

  “Do it! Hold the knife behind yer back and just walk up to him. Smile at him like ye’re offerin’ him a quick dip in yer knickers for a few quid. There’s enough whores around here, and he’ll know that. He’ll likely not know what ye’re really up to until ’tis too late.”

  Sorcha would have held back, argued with Fitzpain, but he was already walking away. Within seconds he had rounded a corner and was out of sight. Sorcha was left with no other option than to do as he said. God help her, she hated the thought of it, but she had to do it.

  She began to walk back towards the peeler.

  It all happened quicker than she expected. He gazed at her with a puzzled expression and never gave a sign of comprehension until she brought the knife into view at the last moment. She stared into his face and tensed herself for the one fatal act that would make her a killer.

  But she couldn’t do it.

  She held the knife close to his chest, but she couldn’t bring herself to make that final thrust. She continued to stare into his face, and he stared back as if mesmerised. An intense expression filled his eyes, an expression of fear. He knew he was about to die, and he wasn’t ready for it.

  And still she hesitated.

  “Do it!” The voice bellowed close behind her. It was Fitzpain’s voice. Deep and demanding. “Do it, Sorcha!”

  She had not heard him approach, but she felt his hands clasp about hers: hard, beefy hands, that crushed her slender fingers in a tight grip. Before she could react, he forced the knife forward, deep into the peeler’s chest. The peeler still held the envelope as he fell to the pavement with the knife lodged in him. She stared down at him and gulped back a cry of alarm.

  Dear God, she was now a murderer!

  She turned to face Fitzpain. “Why?”

  “Because you would have let him get away, damn you!”

  She shivered. He had made the final move, but she was the one who held the knife. She tried to focus on the weapon rammed into the peeler’s chest, but her gaze was hazy now. Dear God, what had she done? The guilt was as much hers as his. She had been guilty of so many wicked things in her life, but she had never actually killed anyone. Now she was as bad as Brian Fitzpain and his men.

  It was Fitzpain who leaned over the body and grabbed the bomb list. He also grabbed the knife, wrenching it from the man’s chest with a sudden twist. Bile rose in her throat as he casually wiped it on his sleeve.

  She turned and ran, but her nerve finally failed her at the street corner. She came to a sudden halt, bent double and vomited into the gutter. She had no remaining coherent thoughts in her head when she hurried on. The impact of what she had just done was too much to live with. She couldn’t have done it, surely not! It wasn’t her racing away from the scene. It was some other person pretending to be her. How could she possibly be a murderer?

  When she reached Fitzpain’s dingy backstreet house, she began to recover her senses and she knew then what it felt like to kill a man. What it really felt like in the cold light of understanding. It was Brian’s knife, Brian’s orders, Brian’s strength forcing her to thrust the knife forward. But her hand was on the handle as the blade sank into the peeler’s chest. And she hated herself for it.

  Brian Fitzpain was no help; but how could she expect help from a man for whom killing was just another job? She stripped off her bloodied clothes and used his bath to wash the stains from her skin, soaking in the warm water while her thoughts spun dizzily. The only useful thing Fitzpain did that night was to persuade a local prostitute to give her some clean clothes on promise of later payment. Worn and faded jeans that later became splashed with the blood of the rapist who lost his dick in the back alley.

  She was sitting in Brian’s small sitting room, drinking whiskey to dull the ache in her head when an IRA runner brought a message: a twelve-year-old girl had been raped and the rapist had to be punished. That was when Fitzpain ordered her to confirm the boy’s crime before he was executed.

  Hadn’t she been through enough that night!

  But she did as he ordered. She set up the rapist for a revenge killing.

  Would the butchery never end?

  ***

  February 1981

  “She didn’t do it,” I said. “She confessed to it, and everyone believed it was her. But it wasn’t her at all. She didn’t kill the policeman.”

  The chaplain let out a long sigh. “Her hands were on the knife. She felt the horror of it as much as if she had done it all by herself. That was partly why she pleaded guilty.”

  “Not because she was protecting someone?”

  “That was only one part of it. More importantly, it was her feelings of guilt. It all went back to that list of the bomb locations. She could have taken it to the police and saved lives. She could have, but she didn’t, and that sat heavily on her mind. That was her real guilt. Had she taken the list to the police other people’s lives would have been saved, but her own life would have been sacrificed. The IRA would have got to her, even in prison. They had ways and they would have tortured her and killed her. She thought about it in the first few days of her trial and the guilty feelings became too much for her. That was why she made the decision to confess to something she didn’t do. It was her act of atonement.”

  “You mean she wanted to ease her conscience. Make amends for all the people who died that day.” I struggled to imagine the mental anguish she must have suffered. A young woman who needed help, not prison.

  The chaplain nodded. “Yes. People died. And Sorcha told herself they died because of her. She couldn’t cope with the feelings of guilt, so she made the false confession, knowing she would be locked up here for a long time. She hoped that her gaol sentence would… as you said… ease her conscience.”

  “Do you think she found peace after telling you this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, and that’s the truth.” Reverend Mayfair sat back in his seat and gave me a sad expression. “The only person who knows the answer to that is now dead.”

  “God rest her soul,” I whispered.

  Susan reached across to grasp my hand. “That’s the end of it,” she said. “No more investigation, no more interviews. It has to end here.”

  She was partly right of course. There would be no more interviews with Sorcha. The book would be her epitaph.

  “I shall miss talking to her,” I said as Susan and I walked away from the deputy governor’s office. “I’d grown to like her, for all that she did.”

  “Talk to me instead.” Susan’s voice went hushed. She drew a deep breath before she added, “I’ve emptied my pending tray.”

  I felt a shiver of anticipation run through me. Why was she telling me now, at this solemn time? Did this mean she wanted to cheer me up, or let me down?

  I hesitated and said, “And?”
<
br />   “The answer is yes.”

  “Yes?” There were tears in my eyes and I was unable to reply. It was as if the ghost of Annie was easing itself back into my life. A good ghost, a friendly ghost. Not Annie herself, of course, but a ghost that was encouraging someone who would be every bit as good for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  October 1981

  The summer was long gone, and autumn was already handing over to early winter weather. It had been a busy year getting the book ready for publication. In the middle of that, Susan and I were married at a quiet register office ceremony in Belfast. After that we made plans to sell Susan’s flat in Ireland and my flat in Wimbledon. We would start a new life together in a new place, but we were not too sure where. The decision was put on hold because I had to earn a living to support her and that meant finishing the book. In the meantime, we lived in Wimbledon.

  We decided to make one last foray up to North Wales shortly after I finished reading a proof edition. It wasn’t quite ready for publication because the publishers were keen for me to find out more about what happened in the aftermath. In fact, they wanted another chapter. I wasn’t so keen, but publication of the book depended upon it, so I phoned Will Evans, apologised for breaking my promise, and asked him for that one last chat. I called it a chat rather than an interview as a way of lessening the impact. I felt guilty about it, but I was under pressure from my editor.

  Will said he would think about it, but his initial reaction was that he wanted no more to do with my book. However, he called back an hour later with a compromise. “I won’t talk to you again,” he said. “But Milly will.”

  That surprised me.

  “Don’t come to the house,” he said. “We don’t want the girls to see you. We’re proud of them, but any talk of Belfast still affects them. They clam up and go silent for days.”

  “Where can we meet your wife, Will?”

  “There’s a coffee shop at the end of our road. You can’t miss it. She says she’ll be there at eleven in the morning next Monday. Can you make that?”

  “Yes, certainly.” It was three days away, but we could wait.

  In the event, Milly was there waiting for me and Susan when we arrived just a few minutes before eleven. She was smartly dressed in a cream suit, as if she was attending an important meeting, and she had a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. While I was introducing Susan, my attention was drawn to her glasses. I had never before seen her with glasses.

  She must have seen me focus on her face because she said, “The glasses are new. My eyesight is going downhill. Our doctor says it’s because of my high blood pressure. Hypertension, you see. It affects the blood vessels.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You suffer with…”

  “With my nerves.”

  That was an honest admission I wasn’t expecting. Now I began to see the truth behind Will’s rash assertion that Milly was the strong one. He was wrong. She was just as badly affected as the rest of her family, but she had covered her tracks well.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I blame it on the after-effects of Belfast. Will says I’m wrong, but he can’t even see the full extent of the damage it’s caused him. So what would he know?”

  “And your doctor?”

  “Says he wants more tests. In the meantime he’s got me on these pills.”

  I ordered two more coffees and Susan and I sat opposite her.

  After a few pleasantries, I said, “I appreciate you seeing us, Mrs Evans. I realise this won’t be easy for you.”

  “I’m doing this for Will’s sake.” She took off her glasses and wiped a hand across her brow. “He still has nightmares about Northern Ireland. So do our girls. Eight years since we left, and they’re young ladies now, but they’re still affected. You won’t understand that, of course.”

  I looked sideways at Susan, wondering if she wanted to comment, but she silently shook her head.

  “What are you willing to tell me, Mrs Evans?” I asked. Because, sure as fate, there was something she wanted me to know.

  “I want you to know the reason why Will finally gave in and agreed to leave Belfast.”

  ***

  21st July 1972

  2130 BST

  The hospital ward was full. Eight beds each held a victim of the bombings; a victim who had survived, but not intact. A young nurse was pulling the curtains around a bed where an old man lay groaning. An older nurse was checking the pulse rate of a younger man with both arms in plaster. A doctor stood at the end of another bed, silently examining a chart. This patient seemed to have no legs.

  Milly Foster held the hands of the twins as she picked her way quietly to the end bed where Will lay. His right shoulder was heavily bandaged and his right arm was cased in plaster. He tried to smile at her as she approached, but the left side of his face was paralysed. It gave him an ugly appearance.

  “They told me you’re going to live, damn you,” she whispered, hoping the girls would not hear. They stood in the background looking bemused, unused to the atmosphere of a busy hospital. Milly bent and kissed Will, belatedly wondering if that had been a silly thing to say. Of course he was going to live. They were both going to live, but it would never be the same again. Their lives would have to change.

  “It’ll take more than a mad gunman to get rid of me, love.” He whispered with words that were slurred.

  She wiped a tear from her cheek. “I’ve been talking to the doctor. It wasn’t just about the gunshot. Right at the end you had a stroke. That’s why you collapsed.” She stared at his lopsided face and wondered how much of it would repair itself. No one could tell her.

  “They did a brain scan,” he said.

  “I know. You should have seen the doctor long ago, after that blow on the head. You should have had it investigated then. It might not have come to this.”

  “You’re right, Milly.” He turned his head away and beckoned the girls closer with his good hand. “Come here my pretty ones.”

  “You must be very careful not to hurt daddy,” Milly said as she sat the two girls on the side of the bed and pulled up a chair for herself.

  Patsy asked, “Mummy, why is daddy all bandaged up?”

  “He had an accident at work, Sweetheart.”

  “Why is he making that funny face and why is he talking funny?”

  “His mouth is a bit sore.”

  “Is he going to get better?”

  “Of course he will. If he doesn’t, I shall…”

  “Yes, mummy?”

  “Never mind what I shall do to him.” She leaned closer to Will. “I heard that the girl… she’ll probably go to gaol.”

  He nodded. “But she lived. Too many other people didn’t make it today.”

  “And the IRA man who shot you?”

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “It was the first time I ever killed a man, Milly.”

  She put a finger to her lips. “Not in front of the children…” she said, seeing the wide-eyed look in their faces.

  “Sorry.” He quickly changed the subject. “Reckon we’ll have to put off the holiday until I get out of here. We’ll have a holiday in Wales then.”

  She shook her head, firm resolve forcing her to say what she needed to say. “No, Will. Not just a holiday. Your life is going to be very different from now on. It has to be. And I want a new way of life as well. A life without fear for me and the children. I can’t take any more of this and neither can the girls.”

  A look of understanding crept into his eyes, as if he was taking on a new perception of what he had been through. He said, “I’m sorry, Milly.”

  “Sorry for what?” she said, suddenly wondering if all her hopes were about to be crushed.

  “Sorry for everything. Earlier today DCI McIlroy said something important to me. He said, ‘If you do wrong, don’t say sorry to a priest, say sorry to the person you hurt.’” He reached out his hand and she
saw that it was still bloodied. He squeezed her fingers between his. “Milly, I’m sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused you. I was wrong; we do need to get away from here. For all our sakes: you, me and the girls.”

  It was what she had been longing to hear for a long time, but she held back from saying so.

  “Do you think you could live in Wales?” She asked.

  “Why not? My ancestors did. Reckon I’m up for it.”

  “Finally?”

  “Finally.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Thank God for that, Will.”

  ***

  October 1981

  That was the last time I saw Milly Evans, but not the last time I spoke to her. She telephoned me two weeks later. She sounded like she’s been crying.

  “I want you to know what Northern Ireland has done to our lives,” she said in a rasping hoarse voice. “I want you to know so you can put it in your book; a warning to other people. Make them understand what they’ve done. What they’re still doing!”

  “What is it, Milly?” I asked. “Is it Will? Has he…”

  “It’s Patsy,” she said. “She’s in hospital. Will is there with her. They say she’ll live, thank God.”

  “What happened, Milly?”

  A deep sigh echoed down the line. “One of my cousin’s boys came over on a visit from Belfast. He was only a lad when we lived there. A big brute he is now. Had too much to drink and started on at Will because of his time in the RUC. Told Will he was a traitor and he was responsible for the trouble in Belfast. Shouting at him, he was. Shouting and bellowing. Patsy saw it all and it brought everything back to her. All the bombing and killing; it brought it all back. Sent her into hysterics. She couldn’t cope with it. That night she got hold of some pills and tried to take her own life.”

  “Oh, God, Milly! I’m so sorry.”

  “Put it in your book, damn you! Tell them what it’s really like. Tell them what it’s done to the children. Tell them because they still don’t understand!”

  She rang off, but her words stayed with me. They still don’t understand.