‘Tommy,’ Jerry shouted, trying to avert any trouble, ‘your pint’s here.’
Tommy didn’t hear him; his anger towards a man who would leave his children sitting on the pub wall, hungry and half frozen, was rising rapidly.
While he had been speaking to the McGinty kids, he could see his Kitty. The McGinty girl was half frozen, her hands were almost blue, with bright-red chilblains running down her fingers. Her large eyes were filled with tears from the biting wind. The lad, Brian, wore no coat and the girl had nothing more than her mother’s shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders.
‘Aye, I’ve asked everyone whose gone in to tell him, so I have, but he still hasn’t come out,’ Brian had said to Tommy when they walked past.
McGinty’s reactions were too dulled by alcohol and too slow to anticipate what happened next. Tommy took him by the scruff of his neck and, marching him across the sawdust-covered floorboards, propelled him out through the door.
‘How many times do ye need to be told to look after your feckin’ kids?’ he hissed.
McGinty’s protestations were more of a squeak. ‘What the feck are ye doing, yer mad bastard? Me pint, I have me pint on the bar.’
‘Too fecking bad,’ said Tommy, not wanting to raise his voice and scare the kids. ‘Get fecking home to yer missus and take yer kids wit’ ye.’
The two children were nervously walking across from the wall to their da.
‘And if ye lay one hand on them kids, I’ll smash yer bleedin’ face in. Do ye get that, eh, McGinty?’
McGinty was nodding furiously.
‘He had it feckin’ coming,’ said Tommy to Jerry as he re-entered the pub, picked up his pint again and downed what was left in one.
As he slammed his pint pot back down on the table, he looked at Jerry and said, ‘I did that for our Kitty.’
25
STANLEY AND AUSTIN met in the Jolly Miller. It was darts night and the pub was full.
They were downing a quick pint after work and then heading off to meet Arthur in a house in Anfield, an empty property belonging to a landlord friend of Arthur’s.
Their instructions were not to drive, but to take the bus and alight at Lower Breck Road, then walk the rest of the way, down a small entry at the side of the house and in through the back door, which would be left open. Stanley assumed the landlord was in the ring, but he couldn’t be sure, because he didn’t even know his name.
Secrecy, and information that was shared on a need-to-know basis only, ensured they all remained anonymous and safe.
‘Why does Arthur want to see us?’ Stanley asked Austin, as he set his pint pot of mild down on the bar. The drink made Stanley feel better. It wasn’t until he had put the drink to his lips that he realized how badly he had needed it.
He had told the doctor that his nerves were worse again. He couldn’t stop the bouts of shaking.
‘I’d have bad nerves, if I lived with your mother,’ the doctor had said, writing him out another prescription. ‘I’ve seen mothers like yours before. They keep a grip on an only son. You need to break free. It’s not too late. Get yourself a wife.’
Stanley promised he would.
The only people who knew Stanley preferred little boys to girls were Austin and Arthur, plus some of the men they met up with, to exchange pictures and photographs. Quite excitingly, last month there had been a cine film on a camera and projector that Arthur had acquired, which they had all paid towards. But there had been no gathering since the priest, one of their ring, had been murdered. That had put the fear of God into them all.
The priest had been one of the few people running the group that were known to Stanley. He had been told there was a bishop too and some very high-up and important people, a politician even, but he didn’t know who they were.
Stanley kept himself to himself as much as possible and only targeted the poor kids. They were easier to deceive, along with their pathetically grateful parents. Unlike Austin, Stanley took no chances.
‘Right, drink up,’ said Austin, ‘and try to stop the fucking shaking. You will make the others nervous. They’ll think you are unreliable. Here, I’ll get us a chaser.’
Austin moved to the bar while Stanley took another of the pills the doctor had prescribed for him. He didn’t want anyone to be worried about him. The circle was the most important thing in his life. He had to remain a part of it. It stopped him taking risks and kept him safe and out of prison.
Austin put the two shorts on the bar. ‘Here you go, mucker, down in one,’ he said.
Stanley had never drunk whisky before and he spluttered as it burnt all the way down into the pit of his stomach.
Feeling much stronger, they slipped out of the pub and into the dark, moonless night.
As instructed, they stealthily took the steps into the back of the large town house. It was almost pitch-black, apart from a trembling light provided by one flickering candle wedged into the top of a sterilized milk bottle, placed in the range grate.
Arthur was waiting, as were the others, hugging the shadows on the wall. Dark, sinister figures.
Stanley could not make them out. He pulled his cap over his brow and looked at his feet. ‘No idea who the hell is here,’ he whispered to Austin.
‘I have,’ Austin replied, ‘but you don’t fucking want to, believe me.’
Stanley nodded. He already knew one was a politician. He could hear him talking. He knew his voice from the news on the telly. Stanley and his mother watched the news together every single night.
A man began to speak. Stanley did not recognize the voice. His accent was refined, but mingled with a colloquial edge, Stanley couldn’t tell what. It wasn’t Irish. He guessed the man was attempting to disguise his voice, due to the scarf tied across his mouth.
Stanley and Austin squatted down with those who were sitting on the floor.
The man who was speaking stood next to Arthur. He was tall and, in addition to the scarf across his face, he wore a trilby hat, the kind worn by the men on Water Street as they strode towards their offices each morning. The collar of his long, beige gabardine mac was upturned, hugging his face and adding a further layer of disguise.
The mac provided some kind of illumination, as though it had absorbed the sun’s rays during daylight hours and in a ghostly way was emanating a faded light back into the darkest of rooms. As the man moved, the gabardine static crackled and snapped.
‘I know you were all nervous following the murder of the priest,’ he began. ‘That has made you dammed jittery because he was one of our ring. And there has been the additional murder of the old woman.’
He stopped for a moment as though he was weighing up his words very carefully.
‘Arthur has told me that you all have questions. He is worried that any change in your behaviour as a result of your nervousness could make you vulnerable and therefore pose a risk to the rest of the ring. Now, listen to me, all of you. Everything has been taken care of. There will be nothing to lead back to the group. You have to trust me on this. I know what I am talking about.
‘It was a parent who murdered the priest.’
There was a sharp intake of breath from everyone with the odd ‘Fucking hell!’ hissed into the dark.
The man had voiced aloud a consequence that threatened them all. Their worst nightmare was to face the revenge of a parent. Give them the police, any day.
Stanley’s eyes were adjusting to the light and he could just make out that there were about fifteen of them in the room.
The man continued speaking.
‘The priest had become greedy. Too damned full of himself, and as a result he became slapdash and careless. A lesson to you all. I have no idea how the parent caught him, but I can tell you this: he doesn’t want to hang for his actions and therefore won’t tell anyone.’
The shadowy figures sitting on the floor tried surreptitiously to look at one another, natural curiosity getting the better of them. All they could see were the whites of eyes. I
t was enough.
‘We know the parents have been very careful and have shipped the girl away. We believe that she may be pregnant, so they have done the right thing, going to great lengths to hide their connection to the murder.
‘The old woman had to go. She knew who murdered the priest and, unfortunately, that could have opened an infernal can of worms, which may have been very difficult indeed.
‘You may hear on the news tomorrow that a man has been arrested. Stay calm. I can assure you, you will be protected. He has a young family and has no intention of becoming acquainted with the hangman. He will not be making any confession and will be released without charge. You have our assurance of that. Now, any questions?’
There must have been ten of them sitting on the floor and five standing, in the darkest corner of the room. Stanley assumed the five were the group leaders.
Stanley shuffled his foot to a more comfortable position. With a nervous cough, Austin struck a match to light up his cigarette and, for a second, all of those seated round him.
The sudden squeak of a mouse shattered the silence as it scuttled across the floor through discarded and crumpled newspapers, disappearing into its nest at the base of the range. An owl hooted in the large garden at the rear and, from the road, they could hear the occasional car and the squeal of brakes on the bus, as it stopped outside the front of the house.
No one moved. The candle in the milk bottle began to splutter and spit as the wax reached the end of the wick.
Someone spoke, but Stanley had no idea who.
‘What about the girl, Daisy? She was in the police station tonight, being questioned.’
The man who was speaking turned to another disguised man, who was rounder and shorter, as if asking for permission to comment.
‘All organized I tell you; there is no need for concern. She will be sorted in an orderly way. The man who will be taken into custody will be released and, as soon as he is, she will be taken care of. You are all protected.’
A sigh of relief swept across the room.
They all believed him. He was right. One significant breakthrough in the investigation into the murder and it could all come tumbling down. The parent would talk. His child would talk; her friends would talk. There would be digging around and they would all be in danger.
Thank God, no one would know who they were, or what they did. They were free to continue as before.
Stanley wondered what ‘taken care of’ involved. It gave him a thrill. How normal everything sounded and yet, here they were, in a dark and dirty room, discussing a double murder. In their world, this was big time. Now that Stanley was reassured they were not in danger, he found the events exciting rather than threatening.
Austin punched him on the arm and with a grin said, ‘Come on, mate, let’s go. Time for a quick one?’
On the way out Austin whispered to Arthur, ‘Back to our usual time on Saturday, Arthur. I’ve been saving up a stack of camera film I need developing.’
‘Aye,’ said Arthur. ‘Back up and running. We have some great cine film on the projector for you, Stan, see you Sat’day, lads.’
As they turned the corner of the house and walked towards the bus stop, Stanley noticed that two of the men slipped into the back of a car, parked up the road, driven by the chauffeur.
‘Don’t look,’ snapped Arthur. ‘You know that’s not in the rules.’
Ten minutes later they were back in the warmth and bright lights of the pub. Two happy men.
26
SIMON KNOCKED ON the door and waited to be admitted.
He could hear the super talking on the telephone but couldn’t make out what he was saying. He then heard the click as the Bakelite handset was put down and the super called him in.
‘Ah, Simon, my good man. How are things progressing? I take it no one is aware the ladies were downstairs?’
‘No, sir,’ Simon replied. ‘The only people who know are Howard and myself, and one uniformed officer who I believe has received instructions directly from yourself, and the chaperone, Miss Devlin, who is also aware of the need for confidentiality.’
‘Jolly good. Now, what has she said? Is it true she becomes very confused from time to time?’
Simon briefed the super on the interview with Daisy.
When he finished, the super swung round in his new swivel chair and, with his back to Simon, looked out of his window onto the noisy Liverpool street below.
It was rush hour and the traffic was heavy, he noted. People thronged the pavement, rushing and bustling backwards and forwards across the road like mice on the bottom of a cage. Buses queued and jostled to turn the corner. From his window he could hear bells ringing and bus conductors shouting. A constant source of irritation. He loathed the noises of the street. They reminded him of his wartime service, of the distant sound of enemy fire. He loved the peace and quiet of his garden in West Kirkby and resented every hour he spent in Whitechapel.
He turned back to face Simon.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Bring the fellow in for questioning, but don’t arrest him. However, unless he drops an absolute corker, you had better let him go once you have a record on tape. Frankly, an unreliable witness is ten times worse than no witness at all. Neither of us needs the humiliation. We both know that whoever murdered the priest murdered the old woman too, and we know it cannot have been Doherty.
‘If the housekeeper from the Priory struggled when being questioned by you and a chaperone, with kind words and tea, how would she cope with a Liverpool silk, far tougher than any silk from London and that’s a fact?’
Simon nodded. He hadn’t even told the super about Daisy’s ghostly sightings, which would be laughed out of court. If he did, likely he would be laughed out of the super’s office.
‘Go and bring him in now. Do it with the minimum of fuss, there’s a good chap. I will need to speak to the assistant chief constable over this. I’m playing golf with him today and will do it then. Keep the cars on the streets until I report back to you.’
Maura fed the baby in the kitchen while Tommy, in his string vest and long johns, took his shave at the kitchen sink, humming along to the Beatles on the radio. The fire in the range roared its morning high, as if waving its arms in fists of flames at the smog that huddled against the windows.
Only half an hour earlier the kitchen had been quiet and still.
The early light, thick and grey.
Maura thought how this first fire was the best of the day, the strongest, laying down the bed of hot ash for the remainder of the day’s fires to simmer on. She could hear Peggy’s voice through the kitchen wall, shouting to big Paddy to wake up.
She thought how normal everything looked and sounded.
Why then did she feel so restless? What had brought on this feeling of breathlessness? Although the fire roared, she felt cold.
‘Them lads are doing well, aren’t they, queen?’ Tommy said with a nod of acknowledgment at the radio, as he rinsed out his shaving brush under the running cold tap, before shaking it carefully into the Belfast sink and rubbing it hard onto the block of pure white shaving soap in an old chipped cup. ‘Remember when we saw them play in the pub, when Bernadette was alive? They was just kids then.’
‘They still are,’ Maura laughed, lifting the baby onto her shoulder to wind her.
Maura could smell flowers. Strong and heady. Definitely flowers. She put her hand out and pulled it back sharply. Despite the heat from the fire, it had passed through an icy breeze.
In half an hour exactly, she would walk up the stairs to rouse the kids for school and she couldn’t wait to fill the kitchen with the melee of their routine.
‘Aye, I remember that night in the pub with Bernadette,’ she replied in a distracted manner as she rocked the baby from hip to hip. ‘That was the best night out we ever had. The craic, it was fantastic. They were the days, eh, Tommy? What a laugh we used to have. We will never see the Beatles in the flesh again though, never.’
&nb
sp; ‘We will again, queen. They will be going for years yet, those lads, and will be sure to play in Liverpool loads of times,’ said Tommy, lathering his face in soap. ‘’Tis their home crowd, to be sure they will.’
This time there was no knock on the front door.
Neither of them heard a thing until suddenly the back door was quietly opened by a uniformed officer and Simon stepped into the kitchen. Both Tommy and Maura were stunned.
Simon wasted no time, as the officer took the razor out of Tommy’s hand and passed him the shirt that was hanging on the chair next to the sink.
‘Tommy Doherty, we are taking you down to the station for questioning, in relation to the murder of Father James Cameron.’
Maura tried to put the baby back into her box, but she couldn’t. Her legs wouldn’t move. Within seconds, they had gone. Tommy grabbed her hand as he went past and said just two words: ‘Get Jerry.’
They had left the back door open and the wind howled round the kitchen, lifting Tommy’s newspaper up from the table. Maura watched as it floated back down onto the floor.
The wind suddenly slammed the back door shut, startling both Maura and the baby, who began to cry.
‘Sh,’ she said, as she gently rocked her. They stood in the kitchen alone, with only the sound of the radio and the tap still running, pouring cold water all over her day.
Maura ran upstairs, told Angela to wake the kids up and ready for school, then she plopped the baby down on her bed and ran out of the house, down the back entry.
At Peggy’s back gate, the men stood waiting for Big Paddy. Maura just managed to reach Jerry before her knees gave way and buckled beneath her.
‘What the hell is wrong?’ Jerry asked her urgently, but realized at the same time that he already knew, as he shouted to Sean and Big Paddy to run with him to the police station.
‘Pull yerself together and don’t panic,’ Jerry whispered harshly in her ear, as he escorted her back to the gate. ‘They can’t break us or our alibi. Ye have to laugh hard in the face of this, Maura, do ye understand? This has to be the most ridiculous notion the police have ever had and ye have to look as though nothing could bother ye less, because ye know he is an innocent man.’
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