The Liverpool Trilogy

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘God,’ Paddy breathed. Maureen was a lovely girl, but she had a singing voice that might have persuaded the Titanic to accept its fate. ‘What’s she murdering this time?’

  ‘Cockles and mussels alive, alive oh.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘That’s what Granda said.’

  ‘And she’s up?’

  Seamus nodded. ‘She’s up.’

  ‘On the table?’

  ‘On a chair.’

  Paddy delivered a sigh of relief. A chair was easy to deal with.

  ‘The chair’s on the table, and Mam’s on the chair, Gran.’

  She gasped, as if retrieving that mistaken sigh. ‘Jaysus, she’ll be the death of me, Seamus. Your mother’s a lovely woman, but …’

  There was a rule connected to Maureen, daughter of Paddy, mother to Seamus, to the bride and to a pair of sons who had moved south. She would go weeks and months without drinking, then an occasion would occur, and she needed a counter. Once appointed, the counter was in charge of keeping an eye on the intake. Twelve small bottles of Guinness constituted the limit. Once the twelfth empty hit the table, Maureen was handed over by the counter to Gran, who took her home.

  ‘Could be more than thirteen, Gran.’

  She bridled. ‘Oh yes? And what’s your eejit grandfather doing?’

  Seamus swallowed audibly. ‘First aid, I think.’

  ‘Holy Mother. So it’s kicked off?’

  The child nodded.

  It was chaos. Or, as Paddy described it, Bedlam with custard. Chairs had taken to the air, curses flew, while small heaps of people on the floor tried to beat the living daylights out of each other. Maureen, apparently oblivious to the situation she had caused, was balanced precariously on a chair, and the chair was far from steady on its table. The ceilidh band had escaped with its drums, Irish pipes and fiddles, while a clutch of emerald-clad young female dancers huddled in the kitchen doorway. The room, long and narrow when disguised as Scouse Alley, had partitions peeled back to make an L shape, and only the kitchen was separate and behind real walls.

  Paddy risked her unstable daughter’s safety, blew her whistle, and the scene became still life. Maureen, trying hard to balance, stopped inflicting grievous bodily harm on Molly Malone. ‘Thomas Walsh?’ Paddy yelled. ‘Get your stupid wife – my stupid daughter – down from the perch. Any higher and she’ll be having a word with St Peter.’ She waited until Maureen was back on terra firma. ‘Take her home, Tom.’

  ‘But you’re the only one she’ll—’

  ‘Away with your burden. Time you learned to control the mother of your children. Knock her out if you have to, as we ran out of chloroform.’

  A few people giggled, and Paddy’s right foot began a solo tap dance. ‘Do you know what this place is?’ she screamed. She delivered the answer to her own question in a lowered tone, because it fell into total silence. ‘Yes, we have a licence for weekends, but our first duty is to the dockers. This is a teetotal establishment to which anyone of any creed or colour may come for his lunch instead of going to the pub. Right?’

  The congregation murmured.

  ‘So now, fewer dockers meet their maker or a surgeon in the afternoons. That is our primary function, to keep safe and sober our men. Tomorrow, after Mass, the committee gets its hands dirty and Scouse Alley clean.’ Very slowly, she scanned the room with narrowed eyes. ‘Do you know what Orange Lodgers say about an Irish Catholic wedding? Oh, yes. They call it a fight with chairs, a blessing and rosary beads. I want this place spotless by noon tomorrow.’

  She stood her ground while family and guests began their attempt to clear the mess. Most of them were drunk enough to need a map to find their own feet, but she let them struggle on for a while. Even the priest was crawling round in trifle, bits of sausage roll and lumps of wedding cake. He was an old soak anyway, and Paddy was glad to see that he’d finally found his true level in life.

  With arms folded, Paddy maintained her stance. She knew how they talked about her, what they said when she got ‘uppity’. Liver Bird Number Three was one of her titles. Some reckoned she was the one that had taken flight, that she had come down to earth to watch over lesser beings and keep them on their toes. Others had her down as Irish mafia, as an avenging angel from the dark side, as a big-mouthed biddy from Mayo. Till they needed something, that was. Oh, everything changed when they ran out of money, because Paddy O’Neil was no shark, and she treated people well when it came to finance.

  When her gaze lit on her husband, she allowed herself a tight smile. He was one of her better decisions. From a family of fifteen children whose mother had died after delivering one final baby, he had made sure that his wife had not been weighed down by a rugby team. All their married life, he had kept a calendar, and Paddy had given birth only three times. Kev was a good man, the best.

  Her eyes slid sideways to today’s best man, another Teddy-boy idiot in electric socks, crêpe-soled shoes, and trousers that looked as if they’d been painted on. He was spark out on the lino, his carefully cultivated quiff sweeping the floor in its now collapsed state. The world had gone mad.

  Girls were as bad, if not worse. Those who couldn’t afford stiff, multi-layered net underskirts made their own waist-slips from cheap material with wire threaded through the hem. Occasionally such behaviour led to disaster, because a girl would sit on the wire, and the front of her hoop would shoot upwards to reveal stockings, suspenders and knickers. Boys celebrated such catastrophes, but many a girl stayed indoors for weeks after so humiliating an occurrence. Yes, they were all stark raving bonkers, and parents were mystified.

  Maureen was being dragged out by her husband. Her parting shot was aimed at ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’, but she missed by a mile, as usual. Tomorrow, she would be sober; tomorrow, she would make no attempt to sing. The impulse to murder music arrived only with the thirteenth Guinness.

  But tonight, Maureen had taken only six drinks, because tonight she needed to be sober. Remembering how to act drunk had been difficult. It was as if the booze altered every atom of her body and mind; she changed into a different person. ‘Let me go,’ she advised her supportive husband. ‘I touched hardly a drop. Michael and Finbar are back.’

  Tom Walsh ground to a halt. ‘You what?’

  ‘I’m sober.’

  ‘And I’m the pope. What about Michael and Finbar? Why didn’t they come to the wedding? Their sister’s got married just today—’

  ‘They couldn’t,’ she snapped. ‘God knows who’s on their tails.’

  Tom swallowed hard and processed his thoughts. ‘You let the wedding go ahead when you knew it could have been any or all of us? Who is it this time? The bloody Krays, the Bow Boys, the Spitalfields so-called sodding Soldiers?’ Furious now, he grabbed his wife’s shoulders and shook her. ‘Is it the Greeks?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whimpered.

  ‘But you do know all them London bastards go for family. We could have been blown up. You took our lives into your hands—’ His jaw dropped as she took something from her handbag. ‘Who the buggering bollocks gave you that? Is it loaded?’

  ‘Course it is. What use would it be without bullets? Fin gave it me. They’re hiding with Ernie Avago. Well, they’re in his mam’s bedroom, God rest her soul.’ She returned the gun to its resting place.

  Tom groaned. Ernie’s mother would be spinning in her grave. ‘I’ll kill the bloody pair of them,’ he said. ‘My sons are criminals. I suppose Seamus’ll join them in a few years.’

  ‘He won’t. My Seamie’s a good lad.’

  ‘So were Fin and Michael till they went and found the uncles down the East End of blinking London. Come on, let’s sit in the shed for a minute, because my legs don’t know whether it’s Tuesday or dinner time.’

  They had scarcely opened the shed door when it happened. A large, black car slid almost noiselessly to the front of Scouse Alley. Two men emerged with machine guns. It was unreal. The shiny vehicle reflected moonlight, as did the weapo
ns in the criminals’ hands. It was real. Tom pushed his wife into the shed, then hid himself behind the partially open door.

  He grabbed his wife’s bag, pulled out the gun and, with just two bullets, shot the intruders in their heads. He’d been a good sniper, though never with a weapon as small as this one. It was unreal again. But the car door opened once more, and that was very real. Tom felled the third man with professional accuracy; his time in the Lancashire Fusiliers had not been wasted. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor. It was all too bloody real. Never since the war had he killed. Trained for weeks in a firing range, Tom had become an asset to his regiment. He had medals. He had medals for his chest, and British civilian blood on his hands. Yet those machine guns would have killed everyone in the hall. He had saved many lives, but he felt sick to the core.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ his sobbing wife prayed.

  The doors of the main building slammed shut, and lights were turned off. That would be Paddy’s doing. Tom’s mother-in-law was always on the ball, and she was following well-sharpened instincts. ‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered Maureen. ‘There could be a second car. I’ll be with you, so don’t worry.’ He dug in her bag and found spare bullets.

  No second car arrived. When half an hour had disappeared into eternity’s backlog, Tom left the shed and knocked on the door of Scouse Alley. ‘It’s only me,’ he stage-whispered. He entered a silent room lit only by the small red ends of thirty or more cigarettes.

  ‘What happened?’ Paddy demanded. When her son-in-law had supplied the quiet answer, she walked to the door and stepped outside. Three bodies. No visible witnesses. She thanked God for the moon before fetching Maureen from the shed. ‘Not a word,’ she threatened. Inside, she told the audience that an old car could have backfired, but they must all stay where they were just in case something was about to kick off, since it might have been gunfire. Then she shone her torch and picked out Kev and two relatively sober and trustworthy men. Tom led them out. Three nearly sober men, three dead gangsters, three machine guns. Everything was coming in threes. Guns, ammunition, a car and three bodies had to disappear before daybreak. And Paddy’s two eejit grandsons were at the back of it. She would rip the truth out of them even if it took a scalpel to do it.

  People were getting restless. ‘Look,’ she told them.

  ‘We can’t look – it’s too bloody dark,’ replied a disembodied voice.

  ‘Listen, then, Smarty Pants. Very, very quietly, let’s sing “Faith of Our Fathers” in thanksgiving for a lovely wedding on a lovely day. The bride and groom are gone, but the rest of us must stay here until we find out what’s afoot outside.’ She switched on a few of the lights.

  So they sang in an almost whisper the battle hymn of all Catholics: ‘Faith of our fathers living still, in spite of dungeon, fire and sword …’

  Paddy nudged Maureen, who was crippled by near-hysteria. ‘When we don’t want you singing, you fire on all cylinders. Come on, now. Fa-aith of our fa-a-therers, holy faith, we will be true to thee till death. We will be true to thee till death.’ Three dead. Three corpses, three semi-automatic guns, one huge car in front of Scouse Alley. Fortunately, all the blinds were closed, so no one could glance out at the horrible scene. She did, though. Tom was swilling blood off the paths. In the moonlight, it looked black, like thick oil. The car and the bodies were gone, and Kev was searching the ground with a flashlight. She thanked God that ‘Faith of Our Fathers’ was such a long and repetitive hymn.

  ‘Paddy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘Just stack the chairs, then leave through the kitchens. I want to see none of you at the front in case that was a gun firing. We’re not far from bonded warehouses, and some Saturday nighters might have a thirst and no sense. Go on with you. Maureen, pull yourself together and take your son home. Walk with the men. Tom will be back soon, I promise.’

  Maureen blinked stupidly, like a woman trying not to wake on a workday morning. ‘He killed—’

  ‘Shut up. Shut your mouth before I find a padlock for it. He did what he had to do. He saved my life, yours, Seamus’s. Your husband’s a good man, and well you know it. This was never murder.’

  ‘But Mam—’

  ‘I’ve changed me mind. Stay here with me. I don’t want you strolling along and letting your brains pour out through that colander you call a skull. I can’t trust you not to talk out of the holes in your head, especially the one gaping above the jaw.’

  The scraping and stacking of chairs drowned the women’s words. Paddy warned her daughter again. ‘Not a syllable in front of Seamus. And you’d be best off saying nothing when your daughter manages to separate herself from the Teddy boy she married.’

  ‘I’m scared, Mam.’

  ‘And I’m not?’

  They were alone at last when Tom came in. ‘Done and dusted,’ he mouthed. ‘Maureen, your gun’s in Davy Jones’s locker. Car burned well away from here, petrol tank exploded, everyone of ours safe.’

  ‘And the bodies?’ Paddy kept an eye on Seamus, who was picking debris from the floor. ‘Well?’

  ‘Cremated in the car.’

  Paddy, still strong as a horse, suddenly felt her age. A woman in her early sixties should not be needing to worry about delinquent brothers, sons and grandsons. Michael and Fin had gone south to look for work, and they had probably found it with their uncles and great-uncles. Paddy’s brothers, too old now to carry weight in the East End, had passed their unstable crowns to her sons. Those sons, in their forties, were now training their own children and poor Maureen’s boys.

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘Leave me alone a minute, so, Maureen.’ She walked into the huge rear kitchen and leaned on the sink. Descended as she was from a determined Irish clan and from shipwrecked Armada-ists way back in time, Paddy had a temper fit to strip paint. It was bubbling now in her throat like heartburn after too hefty a meal. ‘Ganga,’ she whispered. ‘Ganga, Daddy, Muth, I’ve let you down. I’m sorry, so sorry.’ She hadn’t been the oldest in her section of the huge family, but she’d been the oldest girl – hence her Irish/Spanish name. In the mother country, women kept the men on a path as straight and narrow as possible. But she’d let her brothers go, and they had married southern Protestants. ‘And look at the result,’ she spat softly.

  Her sisters were probably fine. They would have married within the church and were doubtless scattered hither and thither throughout the north of England. A few of the lads were said to be decent and hardworking, so she could be proud of most of the original immigrants. But her brothers Peter and Callum had gone to the bad, and the result had turned life upside down tonight. In her head, she carried a picture of what might have been. She saw Scouse Alley, currently Lights, filled with crumpled bodies, blood and flesh everywhere, no movement, just the odd groan from those who hadn’t died immediately.

  ‘Gran?’

  She dried angry eyes. ‘Seamus, hello.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Gran.’

  She squatted down and held his shoulders. ‘Promise me, lad. Promise me you’ll never go to London.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘They could send me anywhere.’

  Paddy swallowed. ‘Who could?’

  ‘The army. I want to be a crack shot like my dad.’

  A knife pierced her heart. ‘Why would you want to be a sniper, son?’

  He shrugged. ‘I just do.’

  It would be all right, she consoled herself. Last week, he’d wanted to be a train driver, and she remembered from months ago his determination to be a fireman or a bobby. He would grow out of the army idea, had to grow out of it. ‘Go home with your daddy, sweetheart. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Alone except for Maureen in the hall, Paddy began to focus on Finbar and Michael, Maureen’s older boys. Poor old Ernie Avago was lumbered with them. They had brought hell to Liverpool, to their own family, to a lovely old retired dock worker who hadn’t a clue about his lodgers’ true nature. What
was his real name, now? Ernie had been christened Avago by his fellow dockers, because whenever he encountered a man with a difficult task, he always said, ‘’Ere, lad. Let me ’ave a go.’ Avago. He would help anybody, would Ernie. And now, he was nursing in his generous heart two devils from the depths of hell.

  Maureen entered the kitchen. ‘Mam?’

  ‘Did you calm down at all?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Right, well make sure it’s a big bit by morning. I want to go and save Ernie Avago. I can’t have him full of bullet holes courtesy of the Kray twins.’

  Maureen hung her head.

  ‘Well? What are you hiding from me, madam? All your life you’ve been unable to lie to me.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘And? Lift your head this minute.’

  Slowly, the younger woman raised her chin and faced her angry mother. ‘Fin and Michael are with the Spits, I think.’

  ‘The Spitalfields Soldiers? Are you sure? Not the Bow Boys?’

  Maureen shrugged. ‘They’ve stolen something from somebody, and that somebody sent our visitors to get it back or whatever.’

  ‘Whatever? Whatever’s whatever?’

  ‘Blood. They would have shot my sons or members of the wedding party until they got the truth. Fin and Michael must have mentioned the wedding. Each gang has spies in the others. So whatever the Spits know, the Bows, the Krays and the Greeks also know.’

  ‘So who did we kill and cremate?’

  Maureen had no idea.

  ‘And you knew this might happen today? How could you let the wedding go on if you knew what could arrive here?’

  ‘Reen would have been heartbroken if I’d stopped her big day.’

  ‘Heartbroken is better than dead.’

  Maureen straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin. ‘Always so sodding sure, aren’t you, Mother? I stayed sober and did what I could. We can’t all be like you, patron saint of the righteous. Just stay out of my way, because you are getting on my bloody nerves. I’ll deal with this.’ She paused. ‘My husband and I will deal with it. Keep out of our business.’