The Girl From the Killing Streets

by David Hough

  But she never did.

  It was just a few minutes before three o’clock, and the Mini exploded. A flash, a loud boom and the car opened up, torn apart like a can of beans. Flames and black smoke belched out from it. The police sergeant staggered backwards against the blast.

  “Oh, God!” In a moment of sheer panic, Milly threw her gearstick into reverse and floored the throttle. Her car raced backwards and rammed into the Ford van.

  The girls screamed.

  Milly sat stunned while the screaming continued.

  The police sergeant came running. “Is anyone hurt?” He pulled open one of the rear doors and reached in for the twins.

  “I don’t think so.” Milly climbed out and helped the sergeant lift the girls to the ground. They stopped screaming and ran into the arms of their mother, hugging her tightly.

  In the background, Milly heard the crackle of flames. The air was now thick with the smell of burning. But they were alive and unhurt.

  “It’s all right, girls,” Milly told them. “No real harm done. Except to the car.”

  “Your husband won’t like this,” the policeman gestured to the car’s crumpled rear end. “The van driver won’t be too impressed either.”

  “My husband is a detective sergeant at North Castle Street,” she said. “He should be used to motor accidents.”

  The uniformed policeman looked at her with renewed interest. “North Castle Street? One of their men was killed last night. Johnny Dunlop. You knew him?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of him. My husband is Will Evans.”

  “Will? I know him. I saw him earlier today at the York Road railway station.”

  “I hope he’s all right.”

  “Amen to that Mrs Evans. I’ll see if I can get word to him. Let him know what’s happened here.”

  “You’re not from North Castle Street barracks?”

  “No. Oldpark. Name’s Mickey Murphy. Shouldn’t really be here, but I’ve being shunted from one emergency to another, filling in where I can. Been darting around like a blue-arse fly. You wouldn’t believe how chaotic things are.”

  “I think I would Sergeant Murphy. I think I would.” That was when she felt tears trickle down her cheeks.

  ***

  January 1981

  “And that’s all you’re going to get from me! Or Will.” Milly’s voice was emphatic. She put down the telephone, leaving me wondering whether I had got it all wrong. I hadn’t been aware just how much Will’s family had suffered that day. Was Milly the one with the right idea? Was I being unfair on him?

  “What did she say?” Susan asked.

  I leaned back on the bed and she snuggled up beside me while I recounted Milly’s experience.

  “Do you think I ought to back off?” I asked.

  “You’ll never get to the full truth behind the story if you do. Are you willing to sacrifice the book?”

  “That’s a bit of a poisoned cup, isn’t it? I lose either way.”

  “That’s life,” she said. “But I’ll help you, whichever choice you make. You do still need help, you know.”

  “Am I so transparent?”

  “Very. But you’ll be a different person if you choose to finish the book.”

  “I’ll need to speak to Sorcha again.”

  “You could phone the prison in the morning… from my flat.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  January 1981

  The first time I slept with Susan was like emerging from a long period of half-life. The second time was more akin to the way it was with Annie. How such empathy could have grown between Susan and me in such a short period was way beyond my understanding, but it happened.

  After breakfast the following morning I sat at the kitchen table and phoned the prison to ask about Sorcha.

  “Ulster fry up.” Susan set a plate of cooked breakfast in front of me when I put the phone down. “What did they say?”

  “Sorcha is anxious to see me again. I’ve arranged permission to go over there this morning.”

  “Do you want me with you?”

  “Always.”

  She ran her hands through my hair. “Full marks for the right answer. Now eat up your breakfast and show me that my cooking is good enough for you.”

  ***

  We arrived at the prison on the dot of ten o’clock. It was raining; the sort of cold, sleety rain that counted for normal in Belfast. Susan hung onto my arm as we hurried into the building. Sorcha was waiting for us, but the earlier air of determination had gone from her now. She looked drawn and tired. Her voice was muted.

  “I had to see youse again as soon as possible. If I put it off, I think I would have given up.”

  “I sat down opposite her, with Susan beside me. “How do you feel now, Sorcha?”

  “Shitty.”

  I looked at the beefy warder. “Could we have a glass of water for Miss Mulveny. She may need it once we get going.”

  Sorcha smiled weakly at the point. “Youse think of everything, don’t youse?”

  “I want you to be comfortable, Sorcha. Why don’t you begin by telling me your reaction to hearing that Bridie had been killed?”

  “It hit me badly, so it did.”

  “Take your time and tell me.”

  ***

  21st July 1972

  1530 BST

  She had not cried when the peeler told her Bridie was dead. Most girls would have screamed and burst into tears, but not Sorcha. She had kept some outer semblance of control despite the shivering feeling that ran inside her. Despite the peeler’s questions.

  But it was all an act.

  Inside, she was falling apart. Inside, her mental capacity was dying. She couldn’t take much more. Only sheer bloody-mindedness kept her going, forcing her to return to the family home.

  She had no idea who killed Bridie, or why. The peeler didn’t tell her. But she was going to find out, one way or another. She and Bridie never had been close. Sometimes they did not seem to be like sisters. It felt as if they came from different families. Or, at the very least, different fathers. That was something she was able to rationalise because she thought she knew the identity of her own father. If she was right, he was not Bridie’s father. And yet, despite the differences between them, she had enough compassion inside her to be sickened by this particular killing. Her sister or half-sister, it didn’t matter which. In the meantime, she had to get back to her mammy and comfort her.

  She was stopped two hundred yards from a garage in Donegall Street, where a uniformed policeman ordered her to turn back. She was arguing with him when a bomb exploded in a car parked on the garage premises. The blast echoed along the street. Smoke and flames billowed from the building. Sorcha was mentally stunned for a few seconds, but she quickly recovered. She was unhurt and still on her feet as she watched the debris from the building tumble into the street. Firemen raced forward to tackle the flames. Armed soldiers stood nearby to guard them. Where else in these islands would firemen need to be protected from gunmen and rioters? Was the whole world mad? Or just this tiny patch of land called Ulster?

  Another small part of her nerve crumbled to dust.

  She turned away and hurried back the way she had come. She had no wish to see the effect of any more explosions. She found another route home.

  Mafeking Street looked different as she approached it from along Ladysmith Road. It was the new barricade that made the street look impregnable at first glance. Her mental processes were a little more in control by then; she was able to think a little more coherently. She saw that the entrance to the back alley, another twenty yards farther along, was still wide open. The idiots! What was the point of barricading the front of the houses when they hadn’t had the sense to protect the alley?

  She marched straight up to one of the two young gunmen guarding the barricade. Both wore balaclava helmets and both carried rifles, but that didn’t stop her recognising the two Docherty teenagers from across the road. They were not alone. Coleen McTurk had bee
n chatting with them: a fifteen-year-old wearing a flowery dress designed to hide the fact she was pregnant. She would be sent away to be put into the care of nuns any day now. Care? There was no ‘care’ involved. Sorcha knew that well enough. What happened to her would be cruel and painful, harsh punishment rather than compassion. Her baby would be taken away, whether she wanted it or not. Other people had already decided that.

  Sorcha shuddered at a painful memory… a memory of what happened to her.

  Coleen had the boys’ full attention, probably because one of them was the likely father of the unborn child. In all probability, both had bedded her at some time or other. It was what happened in these miserable streets. It relieved the tedium, nothing more than that, and the follow-up was inevitably bad news. The shame and the condemnation. Yet another child taken away from its mother and given up for adoption. Sorcha understood. She had lived with the consequences and the unending mental turmoil. Even now, she lived with it.

  She picked on the weediest of the two young men. “Youse’re a pair of eejits, Tommy Docherty! What are youse?”

  “What d’youse mean, Sorcha?” The boy’s voice was unusually squeaky.

  “That!” She pointed to the unguarded alleyway. “Why ain’t youse got someone standing guard on the alley. Any Prod who wanted to plant a bomb could get down there.”

  “We’d see them,” the boy protested.

  “You wouldn’t. Youse were payin’ attention to Coleen. Neither of youse was watching who might come up behind youse from Rorke Street. Go and find someone to guard the alley, and do it now. Eejits!”

  She brushed past them and strode through the narrow access into Mafeking Street. It looked almost empty. Likely the children had now been taken indoors, a sure sign that trouble was expected. How many times had she heard the mammies with their warning, “Get the children inside!” before any shooting began? Inevitably, some children would get forgotten, usually because they were playing in the alleys, but most would be gathered up.

  She marched on down to number 23 and suddenly realised she had no door key. She had left it in her coat pocket: the coat she gave away to that other girl in Anderson and McCauleys. Giving herself a mild rebuke, she rattled the doorknob. There was no answer.

  She tried again.

  Still no answer.

  Shite! Her mother should have got back from Ardglass well before now. What was she doing away from the house at a time like this? Well, at least Edna McRostie next door would have the spare key. She turned to number 21 and knocked on the door.

  Old Edna poked her head out, looked up and down the street and then focussed on Sorcha. “What the hell are youse wearin’, girl? Ain’t seen youse dressed like that before. Youse look like a Proddy whore, so youse do.”

  Sorcha ignored the comment. “I need our spare key, Edna. Me mammy ain’t answerin’ the door.”

  The old woman pulled a key from a nail in the adjacent wall. “She came home earlier. Saw her, so I did. That was before two peelers came to the house.”

  “Peelers? What did they want?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Bastards!”

  Sorcha took the key and let herself in to number 23.

  “Mammy! Are youse there?”

  There was no reply, so she hurried on through to the kitchen. And stopped dead when she saw her mother. She was blood-splattered and lying on her back with a knife in her chest.

  This time Sorcha did scream.

  “OH GOD! NO!”

  And she wept. Just stood there and wept uncontrollably. She couldn’t help it. Then her weeping turned to screaming. She was still screaming when she ran out into the tiny back yard where the gate into the alley was ajar. Huge gasping cries wracked her whole body as she leaned against a brick wall and allowed the full force of her anguish to pour out.

  She shouted, “NO! NO! NO!” And she went on crying as she had never cried before.

  “What the hell’s the matter, Sorcha?” It was little Tommy Docherty who came in through the open gate, still brandishing his rifle. “I heard youse cryin’, so I did.”

  “SHE’S DEAD!” She screamed at him. Then her voice retracted into sobbing. “I just… just can’t… can’t take any more.”

  She struggled to say what she felt inside, but the words refused to come to her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she pointed to the open kitchen door.

  The boy went in and came out again quickly. He pulled off his helmet and gagged.

  “Oh shite!” he cried. Then he vomited.

  Sorcha clasped her arms about her waist and forced herself to breath long and deep. Slowly, her weeping abated. Slowly, her thoughts began to focus.

  “Fat lot of use youse were, Tommy Docherty,” she snapped, her voice finally coming under control. “Youse must have let the Loyalist bastards in.”

  Docherty’s face was white and filled with alarm. “It’s all right, Sorcha. I’ll go and get the boys. They’ll know what to do. The boys’ll know.” He hurried away, dragging his weapon behind him. A little lost child.

  Sorcha didn’t wait for him to return before she stumbled out into the alley. She stood for a moment in the spot where Fitzpain had cut off the Protestant boy’s penis. In a moment of sudden panic, she saw it again. The vision was as clear as if it was happening right in front of her. There was the boy, and there was Fitzpain cutting him apart with his kitchen knife. And… good God! There was the peeler with the same knife in his chest. And there was Jimmy Fish clasping his little black beret to his chest. And… in the middle of the vision… there was her mammy, dead on the kitchen floor.

  Their ghosts rose up in unison and pointed at her, shouting at her. “It was you, Sorcha! You did this to us!”

  The raucous voices rang in her ears.

  “NO!” She put her hands to her face and turned away, and she saw Bridie standing apart and stabbing a fat finger at her. “It was youse, Sorcha! Youse betrayed us!”

  “STOP IT! STOP IT!”

  She ran, wavering from side to side as she raced along the alley, not seeing where she was going, just running.

  Then she stumbled.

  She fell sideways and scraped down the rough brick wall, tearing her dress. A ripping sound reached her ears as she fell, face-down, onto the cobbles. She lay, stunned for a while, she had no idea how long. When she sat up, she looked back along the alley. No one was in sight. No one was following her. Where the hell were the IRA boys when you needed them?

  She looked down at her chest. The front of her dress was in tatters, shredded and revealing her breasts.

  Slowly, registering pain in her arms and legs, she rose to her feet. Confusion filled her head, like a giant fog which obliterated every attempt at rational thought.

  She staggered on along the alley, clutching her torn dress to her chest. Minutes passed, or was it hours? Where was she now? She wasn’t sure. Out here in the busy streets, people ran along the pavements. Some were shouting, some crying. Cars filled the roads, bumper to bumper. But no one seemed to notice her. She walked along various alleys and roads she did not recognise.

  Until she came to a church.

  She knew then where she was. It was the Catholic Church of Saint Winifred. The church of Father O’Hanlon, the priest she despised because of his bigotry and hypocrisy. The priest who buggered little boys and got away with it.

  The priest’s house was alongside the church building. Could she get help here? Unlikely, but there was nowhere else she could think of. So she climbed the few steps to the front door and rang the bell. It was opened by the parish priest, an obese figure with thick lips, flabby cheeks and a gaping mouth.

  He stared at her. “You? Sorcha Mulveny? What the hell are you doing here?”

  She spoke in a tiny voice. “Please help me, Father.” No matter how hard she tried, she could not bring herself to speak with confidence.

  The priest took on a sneering tone. “Help you? Just look at you, girl. What do you think you look like?”

&
nbsp; “Please. I need help.”

  “Well, you won’t get it here. It’d be a sin for me to let the likes of you into my church. I know all about you, girl. I know all about your vile, sexual sins. Your mother told me all about it. And I know what blasphemy you’ve been spouting. The wicked things you’ve said about holy mother church. You’re a sinner and you’ll go to hell for it. Now get away from here.”

  “Please…” she begged.

  “Go away!”

  He turned and slammed the door behind him.

  Sorcha sat down on the top step and lowered her head into her arms. He was right. She was a sinner, doomed to go to hell. Just like all those Protestants. There was no more weeping in her now, just an aching emptiness. An emptiness that seemed to be drawing her towards the flames where the devil awaited her.

  Yet another bomb exploded not far away. The boom of the explosion reverberated around inside her head. She looked up and saw yet more black smoke rising above the roof tops. Would it never end?

  “No more,” she whispered. “Please, no more.”

  She could not stay here at the church, so she struggled to her feet and walked on, clasping the rags of her dress close to her. People stared at her as they hurried past, but no one spoke to her, no one seemed to care. With so many bombs destroying their city, how could they have any time for the likes of Sorcha Mulveny?

  She came to a row of shops. Most were closed but one remained open. It was a cancer charity shop with used clothes on display. Sorcha leaned against the window. Weariness was all she felt now. Deep, empty weariness. She pressed her face against the glass and stared at the clothes on the other side. Then she saw a woman staring back at her. An old woman in a bright flowery dress. She had snowy white hair.

  Moments later, the woman was at the shop door, beckoning to her. “What on earth happened to you? Was it a bomb?”

  Sorcha lumbered towards her. She forced her voice back to its normal volume. “Me mammy and me sister,” she mumbled.

  “What happened to them?” The old woman put an arm around Sorcha’s shoulders and shepherded her into the shop. There was no one else inside. Who would be buying used clothes on a day like this?