A Sister's Promise

by Anne Bennett

  ‘You bleeding little wildcat,’ the man growled out and gave her a sudden tug so that she almost fell against him. She raked her nails down his face, feeling the skin tear as he grabbed her so tight she could barely breathe, and she was whimpering in fear as he threatened, ‘You’ll pay for that, you bleeding little bastard.’

  The other man’s hand was still throbbing and dripping blood, and he snarled, ‘Finish her off and be done with it, sodding little bitch.’

  Molly gave a tug at his words and so the karate chop that should have broken her neck landed wide. He wasn’t aware of this in the darkness, especially as the blow did cause her to lose consciousness, and as she folded at his feet, he gave a sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘Job done,’ he said. ‘Whistle up the van and we’ll heave the meddlesome bitch into it and be away. Collingsworth will reward us well for this night’s work.’

  A sudden bellow caused him to peer down the lane. By the light of a wavering torch they saw two figures approaching them at speed as the van began reversing down the lane.

  Daisy having the evening off and a young soldier, Martin Farrader, whom she was dating, had been lying in the field on Martin’s greatcoat for some time, kissing and canoodling. Martin had been trying to persuade Daisy to go the whole way with him and Daisy was resisting with every bit of willpower that she possessed. ‘Go on Dais,’ he’d pleaded. ‘God knows when I will see you again. You know we pull out tomorrow. Give me summat to remember you by,’ and he’d nuzzled her neck, sending her senses reeling. ‘I thought you said you loved me.’

  ‘I do,’ Daisy had panted.

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Daisy’s whole body was aching with desire, and when Martin had urged, ‘Come on, Dais, if you love me, prove it,’ she’d been going to give into him, wanted to give into him, when the first scream sliced through the air. ‘What was that?’

  Martin’s mind was on other things and he said impatiently, ‘Who cares? An animal or summat.’

  At the second scream, the yearning passion had dropped away from Daisy. ‘That ain’t no animal,’ she’d stated. ‘Someone’s in trouble. Get off me, Martin.’

  ‘We can’t stop now.’

  ‘We bloody well can,’ Daisy said, giving Martin a hefty shove and getting to her feet. ‘Someone is in trouble, I tell you. Pull up your trousers, for God’s sake,’ she’d added, adjusting her own clothing. ‘That sounded like some poor soul was being murdered.’

  She wasn’t sure the deed hadn’t been done either as just seconds later Martin’s army-issue torch showed up the shadowy figures up the lane and they saw the girl or woman slumped on the ground beside two beefy-looking men. With a shout, Martin took off towards them with Daisy not far behind, yelling like mad as she ran, for someone to, ‘Help, for Christ’s sake!’

  Martin laid into one fellow, while Daisy launched herself on the back of the other. He was unprepared for this, and as she tugged at the man’s hair with one hand, the other pulled at his nose and gouged at his eyes. The man leaped about roaring, trying to dislodge the mad woman on his back.

  Suddenly, his elbow jabbed Daisy in the side with such force, she released her hold a little and the man gave a jerk of his shoulders. Daisy flew through the air to land on the ground with a thud. She lay there, stunned, feeling as every bone in her body had been loosened.

  ‘Jesus, are you all right?’ Martin cried.

  His assailant took advantage of Martin’s preoccupation to land him a powerful right hook, swiftly followed by a left, and Martin was knocked clean out. The van was nearly up to them, but suddenly there was a shout. In the light spilling from the kitchen, totally against regulations, the two heavies saw a body of people running up from the house. The man leading the way, and gaining on the others, held a meat cleaver in his hand.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ breathed the ruffian who had floored Martin. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  The other went to pick Molly up. ‘Leave her. We haven’t time for that now. They will be on top of us in a minute.’

  The other man saw that he was right. ‘Have this to remember me by,’ he said to Molly’s inert form, and he drove his booted foot into the side of her body before leaping into the van.

  The staff let the van go. They hadn’t a hope in hell of catching it anyway, and they thought the people on the ground needed their attention more. Daisy was struggling groggily to her feet and Martin was sitting up, rubbing his chin, but the girl lay still, and when the chef turned her over, Daisy saw who it was for the first time.

  ‘Ah, Jesus Christ,’ she breathed. ‘Poor sod. Is she dead?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said the head chef, who was examining her with the aid of Martin’s torch. ‘But her pulse is very weak.’ He turned to Lily, standing at the edge of her group, her mouth wide open with shock and said sharply, ‘Pull yourself together, girl. Find the manager and tell him what’s happened and say we need an ambulance here, and as soon as possible.’

  The chef told the manager of Daisy and Martin’s involvement in the fracas that had left Molly so badly injured. Leaving the chef and housekeeper to wait for the ambulance, he insisted they go back to the hotel, for he could see that Daisy was still distraught and even Martin was shaken.

  ‘You should be proud of yourselves,’ he told them. ‘What a mercy you were on hand.’

  Daisy blushed as she recalled why they were on hand and what they had been at just minutes before that first scream. Still, whichever way you looked at it, it was lucky they were there.

  ‘I would be happier if you were both examined by my own doctor,’ the manager told them. ‘He has been sent for and is on his way.’

  Daisy said nothing, but she knew she would welcome being examined, for while her body throbbed and smarted, reaction to the whole incident had set in. She felt as if all her nerve endings were raw and exposed for all to see, and she couldn’t seem to stop crying.

  Martin protested, however. ‘But I need to go back to the camp, sir,’ he said. ‘I have to be in by eleven and it is turned ten now.’

  ‘I will phone through and explain,’ the manager said. ‘The police will want to see you as well as the doctor. Don’t worry, you’ll be all right. I will tell them you are somewhat of a hero.’

  Matty knocked at the door to say an Inspector Norton had arrived and was waiting for the manager in his office, but later, facing the policeman across his desk the manager admitted that there was hardly anything he could tell him about the young waitress.

  ‘And how did she get on with the customers, the staff? Is she a likeable girl?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘I believe so,’ the manager said. ‘I have certainly had no complaints about her. She hasn’t been here that long really. She had come over from Ireland recently, apparently to be closer to her brother after the grandfather, who had been looking after him, died.’

  ‘She has a brother then?’ the policeman commented. ‘He might be able to tell us something more.’

  The manager nodded. ‘He might,’ he said, ‘though he’s only a child, ten or eleven – that sort of age, I believe, and living in Erdington Cottage Homes. I sort of had the feeling that the two were alone in the world.’

  ‘Whereabouts in Ireland did she come from?’

  ‘She didn’t say,’ the manager said. ‘Maybe her roommates know more. Daisy is waiting to see the doctor now. I’ll have her and her young man sent for and she can tell you what she knows about Molly. They were first on the scene, and got involved, so you will need to talk to them anyway.’

  However, Daisy couldn’t help the policeman any further either. ‘She never said where the place was in Ireland,’ she said. ‘In fact she never said much about it at all.’

  ‘And had she had any enemies that you know of?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t the sort of girl to make enemies.’

  ‘Boyfriend trouble?’

  Daisy shook her head. ‘She didn’t have a boyfriend.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

/>   ‘Positive. For one thing, she would probably have said. Girls talk about things like that, but anyroad she never went anywhere. There was only one man in that girl’s life and that was her brother. God, he will be lost if anything happens to her. Molly sees him every weekend. They only have each other, I think.’

  Inspector Norton nodded. ‘The manager said something similar,’ he said.

  ‘She did say once that it was her maternal grandmother she was sent to when her parents died,’ Daisy said. ‘And I think she must be alone in the world, apart from the brother, because I know she hasn’t been here long, but she has never had a letter or anything.’

  ‘We can check that with the brother,’ the policeman said. ‘As he is so young we are leaving that until the morning. In the meantime, the manager said you and your young man became involved. Can you both give me an account of that?’

  ‘I’ll be glad to do that,’ Daisy said fiercely, ‘or anything else that will help catch the murderous thugs who did this to Molly.’

  Kevin was in line ready for the short march to the church wearing his Sunday clothes, dark grey suit, white shirt, grey tie and socks with garters to keep them up when the superintendent came to fetch him.

  ‘There is a policeman to see you, Kevin,’ Mr Sutcliffe said as they walked down together to the Lodge. Then, noticing Kevin’s startled expression, he said reassuringly, ‘There is nothing to worry about. You have done nothing wrong. He thinks you may be able to help him.’

  Kevin’s anxiety did not abate though, because he knew that policemen seldom brought good news, and they walked in silence, the only sound being the tramp of their feet on the path. With each step, Kevin’s trepidation grew.

  The superintendent was thinking back to the news the inspector had given him when he arrived. He had been shocked and upset, but he knew Kevin would be devastated.

  ‘Need we tell him that she was attacked?’ he asked. ‘Could we not say she has been taken ill?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Norton said. ‘The point is, Kevin might know something that he thinks is of no consequence, and which might give us some clue or other, some line of investigation to follow. It’s a long shot, I suppose, but God knows we need all the help we can at the moment. Everyone I talk to speaks well of Molly Maguire, she was liked by colleagues and customers alike, by all accounts, and went nowhere except once a week to see Kevin.’

  ‘She did that, all right,’ Mr Sutcliffe said. ‘Regular as clockwork and always on time. I don’t know her well, but I thought her a fine young woman the times I have met her. She loves her young brother, that I do know, and her coming here has made a vast difference to him.’

  Norton felt a wave of sympathy for the child wash over him and he said, ‘Then I am sure he will like to help me catch the thugs who attacked his sister if he can. To be honest, Kevin is all I have got. Molly is in a coma.’

  Mr Sutcliffe nodded. ‘I will fetch him directly and I sincerely hope that he will be able to help you.’

  When Kevin entered the sitting room, he saw a man sitting on the easy chair, who got up when he saw the boy.

  ‘Hello, Kevin,’ he said heartily.

  Kevin eyed him suspiciously. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Inspector Norton. Why don’t you sit down on the chair opposite me?’

  Kevin continued to stand. He licked his lips before saying, ‘You don’t look like a policeman.’

  ‘That’s because I am in plain clothes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sit down, Kevin,’ Mr Sutcliffe said and Kevin sat down obediently but gingerly on the edge of the seat.

  ‘Why aren’t you dressed like a policeman?’ he persisted.

  ‘That’s just how it is, Kevin,’ Norton said. ‘I am in what they call the plain-clothes division, but I am a proper policeman.’

  Kevin swallowed deeply. ‘Last time a policeman came to see my granddad, it was to tell him my mother and father were dead. Why have you come?’

  Inspector Norton was wondering how to phrase what he had to say when Kevin, feeling as though a lead weight had fastened to his heart, said, ‘It’s Molly, isn’t it? It has to be really, because she is the only one left.’

  Norton nodded. ‘You’re right. This is about Molly.’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘No,’ Norton said, ‘she’s not dead, but she is unconscious and has been taken to the Cottage Hospital in Sutton Coldfield.’

  Kevin felt despair rising in him and had difficulty speaking, but he had to know. ‘What happened?’

  Norton didn’t go into detail, but what he said was enough, and Kevin cried, ‘Why would anyone do that to Molly? She’s good and kind …’ He couldn’t go on. The lump in his throat was threatening to choke him and his voice was husky as he asked, ‘Is she going to die?’

  ‘No, I’m sure she isn’t,’ Norton said, though he wasn’t at all sure. ‘But we don’t know anything about her, you see, or why she was attacked and hope you might help us.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Someone went all out to badly hurt your sister last night,’ Norton said. ‘Someone who went to the trouble to have a van ready to get away in. It doesn’t sound to me like a random attack.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean, it looks as if your sister was targeted, that she was the intended victim.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘That is what we are trying to find out, Kevin,’ the inspector said. ‘Do you know, or did she tell you of anyone that maybe had a grudge against her?’

  Kevin shook his head. ‘No, never.’

  ‘Did you ever meet anyone else on the days Molly took you out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she speak about other people?’

  ‘Only them she worked with, sometimes.’

  ‘And she got on with them?’

  Kevin shrugged. ‘She seemed to.’

  ‘And what about her time in Ireland?’ the inspector said. ‘Mr Sutcliffe told me she went to Ireland with your maternal grandmother after your parents died, and you stayed here with your paternal grandfather?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Kevin said, and a tremor passed all through him as he remembered that time, so awful anyway, and compounded by the arrival of his grandmother.

  Norton saw the tremor, but did not connect it to what he had said about the grandmother, thinking only that Kevin was remembering the death of his parents, and so he went on, ‘And whereabouts did she live in Ireland?’

  Kevin thought about that for a minute or two. One whisper that he had a grandmother still alive, and where she lived, and she could be over here like a shot, that evil woman that didn’t even tell Molly their granddad had died. He knew if it was a choice between living with her, or at the home then the home would win hands down. However, children were not given a choice. One hint of that woman’s existence and his opinion wouldn’t matter a jot.

  ‘I think the woman is dead,’ the superintendent murmured into the silence. ‘Kevin’s sister told me that the first time she came. I presumed that the old lady’s illness and death, and all the formalities that entailed, were the reason she hadn’t come over to see Kevin sooner.’

  What Molly had told Mr Sutcliffe surprised Kevin, but he was glad she had said that. He confirmed, ‘That’s right. She died.’

  ‘Had she a name, this grandmother of yours?’

  Kevin was ready for that one. There was a boy who sat next to him at school and his name was Lenny Brannigan. Without batting an eyelid, Kevin said, ‘Brannigan. Her name was Bridget Brannigan.’

  ‘Are there any other relatives?’

  ‘No,’ Kevin said. ‘We’ve always been short on relations.’

  ‘And where did they live in Ireland?’

  Kevin wasn’t going to say the north, but he didn’t know Ireland very well and so he shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  Norton suddenly knew he was lying. ‘Come now, Kevin,’ he said with force joviality. ‘You must have written to her.’<
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  Kevin hated people talking to him in that false way and so he said, ‘Yeah, course I did, but then I gave the letter to my granddad. He wrote the envelope.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to know where she was?’

  ‘No, not particularly,’ Kevin said. ‘I didn’t want Molly to go in the first place and she never wanted it either. I didn’t really want to look on a map or owt and see just how far away she was. What good would that have done?’

  Norton was well aware that Kevin knew far more than he was prepared to say, but there was no point pursuing it if the woman was dead and gone anyway. ‘Was there anything there that worried Molly, do you know? Did she ever write and say she was afraid of something or someone?’

  ‘Yeah, her grandmother that she was forced to live with,’ Kevin might have said, but that wouldn’t be helpful, so instead he told the policeman, ‘If there was, she never told us about it, but then she wouldn’t, would she? I mean, why would she tell us about summat when we couldn’t do owt about?’

  ‘And there is nothing – think now – nothing that you can tell me that might help us find the people who did this awful thing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Kevin said, ‘honest there ain’t. Till Molly turned up in February I hadn’t seen her for five years. I was just finding out about her. Can I go and see her?’

  Norton shook his head. ‘Afraid not, Kevin. I phoned the hospital before I came here and they said you have to be twelve.’ Kevin wasn’t even surprised. It was the same when his mom was sick. It wasn’t even worth complaining about, but his voice was low and thick with tears as he said, ‘Can I go now?’

  Mr Sutcliffe looked across at the inspector. He knew that Kevin wanted to be away before the tears overwhelmed him, and the policeman guessed this too. ‘Yes, that will be all, Kevin,’ he said. ‘For now, at least.’