Hide Her Name (38 page)

Maura and Kathleen both shook their heads and took a sip of their Guinness.

‘Did ye walk all the way across yerself?’ asked Maura. ‘Because I don’t think it’s safe, so I don’t. We don’t know who the hell did that murder. It must have been a madman. Ye shouldn’t come down the entry alone in the dark.’

‘Are ye kiddin’?’ said Kathleen. ‘There are police cars everywhere out there tonight. The entire Lancashire police force must have come back from holiday, or summat, because I’ve never seen so many police cars in one street as there are tonight, other than on the night we got back from Ireland.’

‘No?’ exclaimed Maura in surprise as she rose from her chair and moved into the parlour to look out from the nets. Kathleen followed her and they stood together at the windows in the dark.

‘I know it’s weird and it’s just all in me mind, but I feel as though they are all watching my house,’ said Maura.

The two women walked back into the kitchen. As they passed through the hallway, both dipped their fingers in the holy water they had brought back from Ireland, which sat in a small ornamental bowl on a table under Maura’s sacred heart on the wall, and crossed themselves.

Kathleen didn’t want to confirm Maura’s worst fears, but she felt the same. The police were indeed all looking at Maura’s house.

‘They say the cat’s distraught,’ said Kathleen. ‘Annie has taken it in and is feeding it, but it keeps sitting at Molly’s back door, making that crying sound, it does. I heard Annie shouting last night, “Tiger, come on, big boy, come and be good for Annie now, I have a nice treat for ye.” Good job we know she’s talking to the bloody cat. The police probably think she’s some kind of wanton woman.’

Both women roared with laughter at the image of toothless Annie, as far from a wanton woman as one could imagine.

After a moment had passed, Kathleen smiled at Maura as she lifted her glass to drain the last drop of Guinness. The police might have been watching the house, but there was no way they could nail Tommy or Jerry for this. They would be all right.

Life was, in a very strange way, getting back to normal.

Jerry talked to Tommy all the way to the pub. Tommy hardly spoke at all, except to tell him he missed Kitty. His own, his favourite, little Kitty. She had patiently taught him to read and, in return, he had let her down so badly. His little Kitty was sleeping in a place where no one loved her best of all and that broke Tommy’s heart in two.

‘It’s the last leg now, Tommy mate.’ Jerry’s words penetrated Tommy’s thoughts. ‘Once Kitty is home we can really begin to move forward and get back to where we were.’

They bought their drinks at the bar and took the table for two next to the fire.

The bar was busy and the noise and smoke erupted out onto the street as they opened the door.

Tommy picked up his pint of black nectar, closed his eyes and, tipping his head back, slowly let the balm pour down his throat, soothing his fractious mood. Putting his pewter pot down with a thud, he wiped the foam from his lips with the back of his hand before he spoke.

‘Jerry, two of the McGinty kids are sat on the wall outside, again. That’s the second time I’ve seen them out there. Is that man a fecking eejit? I told him what would happen if I ever found those kids shivering outside. I’m going to take them a couple of bags of crisps. They don’t look like they’ve been fed tonight.’

Jerry wasn’t surprised. The McGinty kids had a tough life. Their father, an alcoholic, was never out of the pub. They could be without coal for a week, if his wife didn’t manage to catch him on a Friday night and rescue his pay money before it had all been drunk or gambled away.

Jerry watched as Tommy walked back out through the pub door. He could just make out Tommy’s blurred form through the frosted windows, bending down to give the grateful and hungry kids their crisps. McGinty was in the bar, already half cut, and it was only eight o’clock. The children had been sitting on the wall since their mother had sent them down to retrieve their father, and what was left of the housekeeping, two hours since. They were still waiting, unable to extract him and too scared to return home without him.

Tommy strode back in through the revolving door, a look of fury on his face. He glared over at McGinty, who was propping himself up on the end of the counter.

McGinty saw Tommy looking at him and raised his cap in greeting. ‘All right, mate?’ he called across the bar nervously.

Tommy strode purposefully towards him.

‘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

S
TANLEY AND
A
USTIN
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. It 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.’