The Irish Connection

by Norma Hanton

  “Don’t tell me what I already know, sergeant, tell me something I don’t.”

  A voice from the doorway cut through the ominous silence.

  “Excuse the interruption, Inspector,” the WPC stammered nervously, “But there’s been a girl murdered in Hawick.” She anticipated the inevitable eruption.

  The frustration of the slippery nature that the case was taking on had left a mood of despondency hanging over the station. Since his return to England Cotton’s mood had left everyone just a little afraid to speak in his presence. The elusiveness of the ‘invisible woman’ as she’d become known, left the WPC feeling as badly as the others about the way Angela Mitchell was shying arrest.

  “For God’s sake,” Cotton snarled, making her jump, “why are you telling me this? It’s not my problem”

  “It’s just that,” she stammered, “I think…”

  “For God’s sake spit it out, I haven’t got all day.”

  Broom stood up and putting a hand on her shoulder said gently,

  “Let’s hear it, Broadbent, before boredom sets in.”

  Pauline pulled herself to her impressive five nine and looked her Inspector straight in the eyes.

  “I think we should get the fingerprint they found on this dead woman’s handbag and compare it with the partial one found on the electric socket in Mitchell’s flat. Whoever killed that woman in Hawick was brutal and uncaring. There was no robbery; they think the print on the handbag was accidentally made when the killer dragged the girl into the cubicle. The killer used the girls own make up to draw a clowns face on her. Doesn’t that sound like something Mitchell would have done?”

  “By God, Broadbent, you’re right. It could quite easily be her. Well done!” Cotton grabbed the phone from its cradle, “Get a car ready and as I think you’ve earned the right to follow this up, you’re coming with us.”

  Grinning from ear to ear Pauline went merrily off to arrange transport.

  Hawick lies just over the border from England and the driver drove skilfully to Carter Bar, passed the rock that stood on the border line marked England on one side and Scotland on the other, and headed for the town. As the road forked off to the right darkness was descending.

  “You’re right you know,” Cotton grinned at Broadbent, breaking the long silence in the car “in fact I’m damn sure you are. She deliberately left that piece in the grate about Glasgow to send us flying off on the wrong track. All she had to do then was follow slowly behind us and make her way to wherever she’s headed. The suspect following us – now there’s a first.”

  Broom turned from the front passenger seat and grinned.

  “It’s clever, I’ll give her that, keeping us ahead of her so she could dawdle along making us think she’d already gone over to Ireland.”

  “Let’s face it, Joe, it worked. I called Inspector Doyle before we left and informed him of our suspicions.”

  “Did he think it possible, sir?” Pauline asked.

  “His guess is as good as yours, Broadbent, but he thinks we could be right.”

  “Inspector Cotton, Sergeant Broom, welcome. Take a seat, you too constable.” Inspector Andrew Morgan smiled at them, “What can I do for you? I’m afraid we back-wood boys know less than you city slickers about murder, so we’d appreciate all the help we can get.” He sat opposite them.

  “Tell the Inspector your theory, Broadbent,” Broom nudged the WPC.

  “Well, sir,” began Pauline - telling herself, ‘I’m not going to be intimidated by a roomful of so called superior officers’, - “I think that the person who murdered the young woman here in Hawick is the same woman that’s wanted in connection with murders in both London and Ireland,” she paused for breath and cleared her throat. “I think we should compare the finger print we have with the one you found on the handbag.” She stopped and looked at Inspector Morgan expecting him to poo poo the idea out of hand. He didn’t.

  “Have you brought a copy of the print, Inspector?” he asked.

  Cotton silently handed him the file and the evidence.

  “Well, Broadbent, let’s put you’re theory to the test shall we?” he smiled at her, “Of course you know that if you’re wrong we’ll never let you live it down.”

  Pauline blushed slightly and nodded.

  “You can always blame it on the fact that I’m a woman, sir.” She grinned.

  “Now would I dare, constable, would I dare?” he laughed.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  In the hour and a half that it took the car with the four Police Officers to travel from Newcastle to Hawick Angela had covered quite a few miles in the direction of Stranraer in the hired Rover, hired using her mother’s driving licence. She hummed to herself as she drove. Happy and calm she let her mind drift, drift back to the happier days she’d spent with George. The cruises around the world travel to, and around, places like Monte Carlo – Italy – Switzerland. Nights of passion in top notch hotels, sultry nights on private, deserted beaches in Hawaii. Times when he’d tell her over and over how much he loved and needed her. She slowed to a stop to let a sheep with a small skittish lamb cross the road.

  Then suddenly she screamed loudly, scattering the frightened flock.

  “Babies!! Why couldn’t you be honest about the bloody things? I was honest with you from the start, wasn’t I? No babies you said, so no babies I had.” Her voice rose, “You told me right away that you did not want children to spoil what we had between us. No brats, you said, to demand attention day and night, spoiling our lives. But poor Georgie Porgie wasn’t honest with me, now was he? No! He went off and had a baby with that bitch.” She began to sing at the top of her voice,

  “Who’s sorry now – who’s sorry now?”

  Then just as suddenly tears filled her eyes and she was forced to pull into the lay by. She sat with her hands gripping the steering wheel until the raging anger passed and she was back in control.

  “Let’s go home, Angela dear, right now.”

  She revved the engine into life and drove calmly and in control for about twenty miles before stopping next to a small church.

  After looking around her she read the blue and white sign,

  St Mary Magdalene Catholic Church.

  She waited a few minutes watching the open door for signs of life. Fishing in the glove compartment she found a black, silk headscarf which she pulled over her hair and fastened under her chin. Then she entered the candle lit interior, genuflected, the stood looking concerned and uncertain until the priest appeared from behind a heavy velvet curtain.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently, “I didn’t realise you were here.”

  For a moment Angela thought he’d been expecting her, then, before he could speak again, she asked in garbled words if he would hear her confession. She began to weep. Tears flowed down her face. She sank to her knees.

  “Please, Father, I need to confess my sins before I die. I can no longer live with the burden of them, alone,” she pleaded.

  The priest led her to the confessional box, not seeing the smile of triumph on her face.

  Kneeling in the confined space opposite the priest, whom she could just make out from behind the latticed worked grill, she made a sign of a cross in front of herself and said. “Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been many weeks since my last confession.” ‘And even that is a lie, priest’, she thought, ‘it’s been many, many years since my last confession’.

  She smiled to herself in the dark interior. She began by telling him how, as a child, she’d killed her pet bird in order to have her own way.

  “Mother tried so hard to stop me having all the lovely things I wanted, so very hard. So I had to show her who was in control, me or her. One sunny Sunday, after church, I took hold of my budgie, Ted, and bit his head off. Then I threw the pieces into her face. May God forgive me, I laughed, I actually laughed. I must be truly evil.

  A couple of years later she tried to stop me going to a party at the neighbours’ house, just
because I hadn’t been invited. The daughter was having it for her tenth birthday and I had never, ever had a party so I was going, come hell or high water.

  Sorry, Father, excuse the pun.

  Mother said, ‘definitely no, and that’s the end of it’, but I went anyway. When she came to drag me away I made her sorry she even tried. I clawed at her face and arms. I screamed and yelled. I begged the other parents to help me, telling them that she would beat me till I bled and then keep me locked in the cellar for days, as usual.”

  The priest gasped in horror at the hate pouring from her mouth, in a moment he was taken by surprise when she rounded on him. “I’ll ignore the interruption this time, Father, but don’t do it again.”

  She then continued, “When we got home it was the usual, sent to bed without another word spoken. I lay awake listening for Daddy coming home. When he got home and, when he didn’t come up to see me as he usually did, I crept down the stairs and listened to their muffled voices as they talked behind the closed door of the kitchen.

  ‘We have to do something, Henry, enough is enough. I can’t stand any more. We need to seek professional help now, before it’s too late. Maybe we should get her into some medical institution?’

  ‘I think your right, dear, she’s getting worse by the day. Her anger is out of control and she’s afraid of no one, not even her teachers. She’s already hurt two of her classmates. We’re lucky their parents didn’t sue’.

  I was so furious, Father, so very mad at my mother. So mad in fact that I planned to take away the only thing in the world I knew she truly loved – my father.”

  A strangled cry escaped through the grill and echoed round the church.

  “Shut the fuck up, Father, I haven’t finished my confession yet. Save the judgments for later.”

  Without the slightest intonation Angela ploughed on. “Well I waited patiently for my chance. One day I asked Daddy to run me to the library. I told him I was going to settle down and study hard because I wanted him to be proud of me.

  He was all smiles as we drove out of our drive and along the road to the nearby town. There was a point where the road narrowed with a steep incline on one side and a long – a very long drop on the other. Suddenly, pretending to be ill, I started to retch, knowing how much he hated sickness, especially in his precious car. He pulled into the narrow lay-by at the top of the hill and told me to get out, saying something about needing ‘fresh air’.

  He just sat there without a backward glance, not a movement of his head, not a twinge, nothing. He did nothing, to see how I was. So I banged once on the car boot and called to him in a weak, sickly voice. Then I lay on the ground just behind the car. At that he got out of his seat and rushed around to the boot. All I had to do was kick his legs from under him, push hard, and over he went.

  Father, you should have heard him scream. He screamed all the way down. There I lay on the ground waiting for someone to come along. As soon as I saw someone I began to scream, I bawled my eyes out; in fact I had total hysterics. I told them how my daddy had jumped over the edge and left me all alone. One look at the woman’s face and it was all I could do not to laugh. After they told my mother she ended up in the funny farm, the very place she wanted to send me, did you know that, Father? Poetic justice don’t you think, rather like the biter bit.”

  “What I think is that you should seek help from your doctor as soon as possible. Think about the things you’ve done – the evil is in you – you need help,” the priest stammered.

  “Don’t you think I’ve heard enough of that kind of rubbish from them? Don’t you start? Just keep your mouth shut and listen to my confession, isn’t that what you’re paid for?

  Pausing for a moment she went on. “Well, Mother knew I’d done it, of course she did, but she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. They had to put me into care for a couple of years as I had no other relatives, while she was in the ‘Funny Farm’. I did enjoy the power I had over the other kids in there. I just had to look at some of them and they handed over their money or sweets. What a scream. Of course, once I reached the age of sixteen I was free and sent out into the big wide world to earn my living. Was I glad? There was nobody telling me what to do, nobody on my back all the time. I was in charge of my life; I could do exactly what I wanted to do.”

  Pausing only for breath Angela went on, “I went to Ireland on a trip and decided to stay there for a while. I managed to get a job at a fish factory. I was there for about three weeks when I heard how rich George, my dead husband, was. I’d noticed him eyeing me up, so I made it my life’s ambition to get him into bed, to make him love me, make him need me so much so that he couldn’t live without me, and I did just that. We married quietly in a small church near his home, no relations from either side, only strangers as witnesses. I still remember how shocked and happy George was to find out I was still a virgin. He was so excited, in fact, that he didn’t make it to the opening ceremony, if you get my drift.” There was a sudden lull. “I hope you’re not getting too excited in there, Father.” There was no answer. “Oh dear, are you too busy with other things? Naughty man!

  Anyways, we were happy, we were in love, Father, truly in love, until she came along, THE MURPHY SLAG! George and I had even visited my, so called, mother in England. We even kissed and made up. He looked after me like I was truly special, made me feel like a queen. Until she arrived out of the blue and wormed her way into his heart, promising free sex and - babies.” She screamed the sound mingling with that of the moaning through the grill. Then the priest went quiet, realising for the first time that his own life could be hanging in the balance. No one would come now, not until the evening Mass and that was some hours away.

  “How did I not realise it was happening – tell me priest – tell me how? How could God let him do that to me? No. Don’t speak a word,” she demanded then there was silence.

  Just as he made up his mind she’d gone, she spoke.

  “Well, to cut a long story short, I killed them both. She died with fear in her sweet blue eyes and God supplied George with a way out. He died of a heart attack when he saw what I had done.

  Their - baby,” Angela screamed again, “and her protectors, I’ve killed them all now, Father, I killed them all.” Then again, Angela went quiet; leaving the listener to feel there was some remorse. Then she laughed, “So what’s it to be, Father, two thousand Hail Mary’s or what? Or is it just ten Our Fathers? Anyways these are my sins – and for my sins I ask God’s forgiveness.”

  Her flippancy and the cackling, uncontrolled, laughter made the priest’s skin crawl as he answered.

  “My child – my child,” he paused wetting his dry lips with his tongue and stammered, “you need to confront these terrible wrongs; you need to tell them to the authorities, go to the police. Go to the police and, if you wish it, I will come with you – I promise, I will give you all the support you need.” Then for a moment there was silence, the sound of which left a ringing in his ears. To an extent he was used to this; his parishioners didn’t normally shout their act of contrition to the rafters. But this, this was a silence more frightening than the voice. It took the old man at least another five minutes to call up the courage to leave his half of the confessional and discover that from where the voice had taunted him was an empty blackness. Slowly and cautiously he looked around the building where he had spent his life’s work in the service of God only to find an eerie emptiness. She had gone.

  He stumbled to the alter steps and for a moment he waited then, catching the edge of the lectern to help him, he struggled to his knees. For a time his mind went round in ever increasing circles. Was it all a dream and where had this poor, tormented woman gone. At that moment all he could feel was the pain in his knees. He was too old to run after her. What could he do? All he had left was God, that All Being that he’d struggled so much to know and love, and in that moment he knew God had protected him.

  True, the authorities needed to know, but it was God this poor, wr
etch of a woman needed and it was to that end, he gave his prayer.

  Chapter Thirty

  The sprung mattress had seen better days, the sheets thin and worn. Cotton found the room airless, very damp and the décor oppressive. He got and opened the window. Pulling a chair close to the opening he sat watching the quiet street below the hotel.

  He’d rang Mandy and, although her voice had lost most of the wariness now, when they spoke it had seemed stilted and polite. He had hoped they were making some progress, getting back to where they once were. But tonight he’d felt it had been wrong of him to presume that she could ever forgive him. Sitting on the edge of his seat with his legs splayed and his head bowed he contemplated their future.

  James was growing by the day and his smiles could melt the heart of a devil. His grandparents thought he had been sent by the angels to lighten their lives in their old age. Their pride in the boy made Cotton’s heart swell with love for his son, and for Mandy. He wanted her to live with him but, although she’d visit him once a month when he was at home, bringing their son with her, she refused to stay overnight. She absolutely refused to live with him permanently. And who could blame her? What could he do to convince her he was a changed man, a man that he loved her, and their son, and needed to be with them?

  His sad thoughts were interrupted by the telephone on the bedside table. The hotel receptionist informed him that he had a call from an Inspector Morgan.

  “Put him through please,” Cotton looked at his watch, eleven thirty four, what was so urgent to make the inspector ring this late at night.

  “Hello, Cotton,” the voice sounded weary, “I’m still working on the interview notes from Hawick High Street.”

  “You’re an eager beaver, Andrew, why don’t you try counting all these bloody sheep you’ve got up here; they’ll make you sleep better than any files.”

  “You won’t be laughing when I tell you, I think that it was definitely your Mrs Moorhead – Mitchell who killed that girl, and I know how she left town.”