Who Took Eden Mulligan?

by Sharon Dempsey

  Rose looked back over the notes from the original statement and read how Cormac was described: Young boy of thirteen, unkempt and unwashed. Upset about the suggestion his mother had left the family.

  There appeared to be little concern or sympathy. It was as though Eden had conjured herself away, vanishing in a puff of smoke like a magician’s final trick. The showstopper.

  Accounts from the neighbours appeared to offer nothing more than rumour and gossip. Eden Mulligan was not disliked as such, but there was a sense that she was snobby, that she considered herself to be superior to her neighbours. For this reason, she wasn’t particularly tolerated. Within weeks, there were rumours that she had eloped with a British soldier. Other stories circulated that she had been an undercover operative working for the British government. Another told that she had been seen getting the boat at Larne and was thought to be living with the children’s estranged father in England.

  Rose continued rifling through the box of papers that had come from Joel Ellis’s office and found a transcript of an interview carried out with Eamonn Mulligan, the youngest of the children.

  Eamonn Mulligan, speaking to Joel Ellis, 25 June 2015.

  ‘I was six when it happened. Only a nipper. The night itself doesn’t haunt me. No, it’s the days and weeks later, when the realisation seeped in that she was gone and wasn’t coming back. The finality of it was what hurt most. I wouldn’t see her again, feel those hands cup my face or feel the chide in her voice if I did something wrong.

  ‘Jesus, she could scold when she had to – you didn’t want to be caught doing anything wrong. That was the type of her. She used to say, don’t bring shame on our name. Don’t ever do anything that gets you into trouble. It was as if she thought we should be extra good, us being without a proper Da about the place. She sort of held us up to be perfect, as if anything less would make the neighbours talk and prove them all to be right.

  ‘Didn’t matter what they said about her – she didn’t care. But us? We were another story. Our Eileen always said that Ma’s style needled them all. She’d a way about her, you know? Like a film star. Something you’d see in the pictures. She carried herself a certain way. Always dressed well, had her hair styled just right. The other women about here didn’t take too kindly to that, I’d say. Jealous bitches, the lot of them. You could hear the tongues click in disproval as we walked down the street. The net curtains twitched, everyone wanting to catch a look of her.’

  Rose searched through the files, looking for the photographs that had been kept. In the first one, a small, four by six faded snapshot, Eden Mulligan stood, hand on hip, head tilted to the sun with a wide smile. She was wearing a purple, form fitting dress that accentuated her small waist and cut away at the shoulders in a Bardot style. It was like something Sophia Loren would have worn, Rose thought. It looked dated for the time, but Eden carried it off. Her dark hair was mid length, worn in loose curls, reminding Rose of Madonna in the Like A Prayer video. The second photograph showed Eden surrounded by her children. While she looked straight at whoever was taking the photograph, the children were all looking at her, as if she was the centre of their world. Eden liked the camera and the camera liked her.

  There was a folder of old, yellowing press cuttings. Rose picked out one, an old broadsheet-sized Belfast Telegraph page, and unfolded it. The article was on page five and consisted of two columns at the bottom of the page. The accusatory headline blazed out:

  Runaway Mother Abandons Children

  Mrs Eden Mulligan, from Moss Street in the Markets area of Belfast, was reported missing two weeks ago. It is believed she may have left to go to England, where her estranged husband, Geordie Mulligan, is working. Her five children wait anxiously for news, as neighbours rally round to support them.

  A second newspaper cutting suggested that the missing mother had been suffering from depression. The implication was that she had committed suicide, leaving her children behind to fend for themselves.

  Rose wondered why the disappearance hadn’t been taken seriously and why initially there was no investigation. Vital information could have been lost before they even began looking for her. She folded the yellowing newspaper page and placed it back in the file.

  CHAPTER 21

  The next day, Rose was surprised to find a message from Eamonn Mulligan saying he was willing to meet her. Joel had obviously spoken to him and presented Rose’s interest in the case in a favourable light.

  ‘Thanks for coming to meet me, Eamonn. I’m sorry if it seems a bit formal to do it here,’ she said, as she led him into a meeting room in the station. ‘We need to make sure we follow procedures and record everything. I want to make sure that this time, everything is done right.’ She didn’t need to tell him that the initial investigation had been flawed, that while none of the current procedures had been in place at the time, even common-sense approaches had been neglected. This was a man who had been let down before. Who had experienced the worst kind of abandonment by all those who should have protected him.

  ‘When I see cop shows now and realise that every conversation and bit of paper has to be documented, I could laugh at the importance they gave to us back then.’

  ‘I appreciate that the initial investigation was lacking. I know it can’t be easy for you to talk about your mother and the past.’

  ‘No, it’s not easy, but sometimes I think it’s harder not to. At least if I’m talking about her, it means she hasn’t been forgotten.’

  Rose registered the haunted gauntness of his face. She could tell by looking at him that life hadn’t been easy. Pain was etched in every line under his eyes. Even his shoulders were hunched forward, as if a heavy weight was bearing down on his thin body, but he had the muscular leanness of a runner, which made Rose think of a panther ready to pounce.

  ‘Please take a chair and we can make a start,’ she said, moving through the doorway into the pale yellow room furnished with a teak desk, a small sofa and two chairs. Recording equipment sat on the table and a camera sat discreetly in a corner of the ceiling.

  He eased himself onto the chair and leaned back in an exaggerated way, as if to appear relaxed, before placing his hands on his lap. The room was stuffy and smelt of something sweet and yeasty. Rose took her jacket off and placed it over the back of her chair before sitting down and reaching to activate the recording device. She spoke the time and date and then commenced.

  ‘So, what do you want to know? There’s not much I can tell you that I haven’t told the police before.’

  ‘How about you tell me what your mum was like?’

  Eamonn lifted his head and smiled. ‘I didn’t expect you to ask that.’

  He took a minute as if to gather his thoughts. ‘Well, she was my world. When you’re young, you think your mother can do no wrong. That she knows everything.’ He sighed and laced his fingers together, cracking his knuckles as he did so.

  ‘She loved us all right. I never doubted that for a minute. Her hugs were enough to swallow you up. At the same time, she was strict. Whatever she said was the law. You didn’t step out of line for fear she would find out.’ He looked past Rose as if he couldn’t meet her eye.

  ‘Go on,’ Rose said.

  ‘I’d say she was smart too. She wanted the best for us. She believed that we should try hard at school. I remember her bringing me down to St Colman’s on my first day.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘God, I was a skinny wee skitter of a thing, in short trousers with scabby knees. Didn’t want to go to school at all. My brothers had told me the master was a right hard man, and that I’d get the strap for every freckle on my face. Scared me half to death they did. She had to drag me there. When I started to cry she held me by the shoulders and told me off. Said I was a big boy and had to go to school. Well, I told her I didn’t want to be strapped for my freckles. She laughed and promised me that the master would never, ever, strap me for my freckles and she said, “If he ever threatens to, you’re to run home, and get me and I’ll soon sort h
im out.”’ He tried to smile, his mouth twisted with emotion.

  ‘Of course, Master McKee loved her. All the men did. She was a beautiful woman. Even as a child I sensed how the women treated her with caution, looked her up and down, and how the men were always extra nice to her.’ He shrugged, as if proud that his mother’s beauty was worth something in the eyes of others. Rose thought of the photographs and how elegant and glamorous Eden had looked.

  ‘Afterwards, when she was taken, everything I did was wrong. The one person in the universe who cared enough to stop me, was gone. One word from her and I’d have behaved myself. I never liked to make her angry, not because I feared her, but because all I ever wanted to do was to make her happy. See her smile and feel the warmth of her approval. After she was gone, no one cared enough to stop me.’

  Rose could see he was close to tears. He put his head in his hands, the taut sinews of his forearms standing out like cords as he took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself.

  ‘It must have been very hard on all of you.’ Rose couldn’t imagine the pain and fear those children must have felt. The sense of abandonment and a lifetime of questions unanswered.

  The puffy pouches under his eyes showed a lack of sleep, but his clear complexion, and the tight wound-up spring of his body, all spoke of a man who took care of himself. His life had been about survival. Getting by and doing whatever it took to numb the pain. But there was something endearing about Eamonn. Rose couldn’t say what it was, but he made her think of a lost child. A seeker endlessly looking for a part of himself that had been stolen away. Yet, he was entirely without self-pity, whereas Cormac carried his grudges like a weapon, ready to strike out at everyone every chance he got.

  ‘Sorry, it still catches me out. One minute I think I’m doing okay, then the pain of it just crushes me. We all lost so much. Our mother, our childhoods, our home. All gone.’

  ‘Do you keep in touch with your brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Not really. Our Eileen does keep in touch. She’s doing okay. Has a family of her own now. Three girls. They’re all pursuing nursing careers or something similar. And Lizzie, she’s done all right for herself. She’s a nice house and the fancy car but all that means nothing. There’s still pain there, hidden beneath the make-up and the nice clothes. I’d have hardly known her, if it wasn’t for the Mulligan eyes, dark and dead-like. We go for the odd cup of coffee, talk about old times, the days before.’

  ‘Do you need a break?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Nah, I’m just reminiscing. Lost in the memories. Trouble is, we all have so much hurt inside that if you try to share it, you just bring the other person down with you. Some of them have tried to move on with their lives. They’ve tried to make a go of it – life, I mean. I never managed that. Too damaged. Tried to cure myself over the years with drink and drugs. None of it worked though. Only made me worse. But I’m clean now. Trying to get by without any of that stuff. All those pills wreck your head and, believe me, my head’s scrabbled enough as it is.’

  He gave a wry smile. ‘I always think of her, my Ma. Not a day goes by when I don’t think, what would she have been like now? What would we all be like? Whoever took her that night altered six lives forevermore, not one. They handed us a lifetime of heartache.’ He rubbed his hand across his stubbly shaved head, recalling memories gilded with sorrow.

  ‘Every now and then you’d glance up to see her on the news. They would be talking about new enquiries, new sightings, possible leads – all for nothing in the end – and every time they would show that old photo of her standing in the field with us kids all around her. I was only a toddler, sitting on the grass with my face screwed up against the sun.

  ‘Our Eileen told me that we were on holiday when it was taken. Somewhere near the Mournes, she said. Might be Murlough Bay caravan park. She couldn’t remember. Still, it was nice to think that we had gone on our holidays all together, like. Once upon a time we were an ordinary family, with a screw-up for a father, but sure, they were a dime a dozen back then. Nobody had everything. A good Ma was what made a family.’

  Rose nodded. She thought of her own mother and her complicated feelings towards her.

  ‘Over the years there were promises of new enquiries. We even got as far as a dig once. Some farce that turned out to be, they found nothing but old relics.

  ‘At first, there was a lot of attention from the press. It was on every anniversary, then every ten years, until they all lost interest. Funny how I missed the press attention when it was gone. I always thought, at the back of my mind, that one day someone would care enough to get to the truth. If the peelers didn’t solve the mystery then maybe some trench coat wearing journalist would.’ He snorted.

  ‘Eileen used to say maybe she’d run away to Kilburn to be with our Da. That she’d had enough of our complaining and set off for a new life in London,’ he said, half-amused. ‘Wishful thinking. We would have forgiven her anything, just to know she was alive. When I realised that she was gone, and what I had lost, there was a hole inside of me as deep as a canyon. Nothing or no one could ever fill it. Now all I’m left with is nothing. Blank and empty. Spent and used.’ He paused and stared straight ahead. Rose let the silence envelop them. She knew she had to let the story unfold in its own time.

  ‘The Mulligan babies – that’s what the press called us. We were their creation. The pitiful five. At first people were good. We were fed and clothed in hand me downs. We never complained, we knew it was better than nothing. In the end though, they had to split us up. No one family could take on all five of us. The big ones probably had it harder at the beginning. Cormac and Eileen. They were sent to a home in Downpatrick. At thirteen and eleven they were deemed too old for adoption. Paddy and Lizzie, the twins, they were lucky enough. A couple of teachers who had never had kids of their own, took them in. For a while it looked like they had it made. Until we found out what it was really like for them.’ He stopped again and cracked his knuckles.

  ‘And then there was me; six years old and ready to fight the world. I was an angry wee bastard. Hard to place with any family. The few that tried to take me in ended up sending me back to the nuns. I hung around the convent for a couple of years with the nuns on my back every five minutes. I could do no right in their eyes. And then the priest would call, or some rich benefactor, and I’d be scrubbed up and wheeled out like a performing monkey to recite the catechism. Six of the best if I slipped up.

  ‘Eventually they sent me to the Christian Brothers home. You can imagine how that turned out.’ He turned his head, as if he didn’t want to meet Rose’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 22

  Katy Carberry appeared fit and spritely for a seventy-year-old. She welcomed Rose and Danny into her bungalow, and told them to make themselves at home while she bustled off to put the kettle on.

  ‘I haven’t had anyone round here asking about Eden Mulligan for years,’ she called out from the kitchen.

  ‘We’re doing a review of the case and your name was on the list of neighbours from that time,’ Danny said.

  ‘Oh, aye, we lived beside them, all right. Right next door. We were in the row of wee kitchen houses. Jesus, they weren’t big enough to swing a cat in, but sure we were all in the same boat in the Markets in those days. We didn’t have much, but we all looked out for each other. That’s how it was back then. Not like now, when nobody hardly looks at you.’

  She returned with a mug of tea and sat it down on a side table next to Rose. ‘Would you like a wee biscuit? I’ve Jaffa cakes or some of them fancy ones, what do you call them? Viennese Swirls, that’s it.’

  ‘No, thanks, the tea is fine.’

  Katy sat on the sofa opposite Rose and Danny. She appeared eager to talk, all wide-eyed and expectant, as if this was the highlight of her day.

  ‘Well, what do you want to know? I can’t tell you anything I didn’t tell the police and the family back then.’

  ‘You lived in Moss Street, what was it like?’ Danny asked.
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  ‘Awk, what can I say? We lived in the house facing the bigger parlour houses. Ours was a wee two-up two-down, same as Eden’s. Everyone looked out for each other. The boys all went to St Colman’s school, and in the summer months they played out on the street. Not like nowadays, when you can’t let them out the door.’

  ‘Was it a good place to live?’

  ‘We’d our problems, like everywhere in Belfast at that time, but it wasn’t a bad place to live and bring up a family if you can discount the Troubles.’

  Rose felt something sink in her stomach. The Markets community was small. Everyone knew everyone else. She couldn’t help thinking of her own mother, who came from the same area. The chances were that Katy knew Rose’s family.

  ‘Tell me, what was Eden like?’

  ‘Oh, Eden Mulligan was a beauty. She knew it, too. Loved herself they all said, but sure for all the good it did her. I think her looks were her downfall in the end.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rose asked, taking a sip of the weak tea.

  ‘When you look like Eden did, gorgeous figure and style to match, you can attract the wrong sort of attention.’

  Rose said nothing. She knew in certain situations, it was best to hang back, let the subject revel in the telling. The less she intervened, the more Katy would say.

  ‘The thing was, Eden had a bit of glamour and mystery about her. For a woman bringing up her five children, she managed to dress herself like something out of a magazine. God, the style of her.’ Katy smiled, remembering.

  ‘She had this one dress … Oh, we all loved it. Navy it was, with white polka dots and a little red belt that pinched in at her waist. She was gorgeous in it. Like something out of that programme, Dallas. I remember asking her where she’d bought such a dress. You wouldn’t have seen the likes of it round our streets. It was like something sent from America. Well, Eden just smiled, the way she always did – a slow, sleek sort of smile – and said she’d picked it up from the sale rail at Anderson and McAuley’s, the big department store in the town. I don’t know, I never believed her. For starters, where would she have got the money?’