Run to Him (14 page)

‘Well, sergeant clever dick, we have got two hours, so what do you suggest?’

The black Bakelite phone on the desk between them began to ring.

‘There you go, it’s a message from the dead priest.’ Simon began to laugh to himself. ‘He’s sending you a little clue from above.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Howard as he flicked his cigarette stump at Simon. Picking up the handset, he turned to face the wall before speaking into the mouthpiece.

Less than thirty seconds later Simon almost spat out his tea as Howard spoke soothingly into the phone.

‘Now, now, Sister, you must not upset yourself. We will be at the school in less than half an hour. I can assure you, you have done exactly the right thing calling me and we will make sure the bishop knows that.’

Howard replaced the receiver with far more enthusiasm than he had picked it up.

‘That was Sister Evangelista, she’s got news, good news, full of clues news. It sounds as though she has got our motive, mate. Drink up, one very upset nun seems to want to tell us all.’

They both banged their mugs down on the table and two minutes later were whizzing through Liverpool city centre in a pale blue and white panda car, heading up towards Nelson Street school.

2

L
IFE ON THE
four streets had very slowly returned to a normal routine. After all, the women could only last so many days without baking bread.

From the second the news had broken, floor-mop handles had banged constantly on kitchen walls, summoning the women to a conference in whichever home had the freshest piece of gossip first.

As they ran up and down the entry and in and out of one another’s homes, with babies on hips, holding half-full bottles of sterilized milk for the tea or a shovel of coal to keep a fire burning, they became engrossed by the most intense speculation. Who on this earth could have done such an awful thing and why?

The women talked of nothing else and almost wore themselves out.

Even the children playing on the green huddled into groups and repeated the whispered conversations they had heard at home. Rehearsing for the future. Dealing in the currency of the streets.

‘The Pope is in such a rage, so he is, he is coming from Rome to Liverpool to kill whoever did it with his own bare hands,’ said Declan, Maura and Tommy’s little rascal, to his rather serious twin brother, Harry.

‘No,’ said Harry, shocked at the thought of the Pope strangling someone. ‘That cannot be true, ye liar, where did ye hear that?’

‘It is so, I heard Mammy say it to Sheila in the kitchen this morning.’

If his mammy was telling Sheila, then it must be true for sure. Harry gasped and put his fist in his mouth before he ran off to tell his mate Little Paddy, who had been a bit down of late, having caused such a fuss himself.

He had been at the very centre of his own storm in relation to the murder and was now maintaining a low profile.

As a result of what Little Paddy had blurted out, the police had taken in one of their own, Jerry Deane, for questioning. Everyone agreed this was a fanciful notion on the part of the police, who must have been desperate indeed. And all on the back of Peggy and Paddy’s stupid Little Paddy, looking to make a name for himself as the clever one at school. Claiming he had seen Jerry Deane running down the entry on the night of the murder, skulking like a thief in the night.

As if anyone would ever believe anything Little Paddy said.

Jerry Deane had been back at home within the day. Following the beating he took from his da, Little Paddy struggled to sit down for a week.

‘That is one child who will never be described as clever,’ said Molly Barrett to Annie O’Prey, just loud enough for Little Paddy to hear, as they both stood on the pavement to sweep their front steps.

‘As if any child from that family could know anything,’ Annie O’Prey replied, not breaking her stroke with her broom.

Little Paddy’s da might have thrashed the living daylights out of him, but Little Paddy knew what he had seen, and he knew it was true, and no matter how many thrashings he was given, he knew he was right. He had seen Uncle Jerry running down the entry in the middle of the night. How was he supposed to know that he was only off to Brigid and Sean’s house for a card school and to tuck into the wedding whiskey they had all been given as a present by Mrs Keating’s publican in-laws on the morning her daughter got married?

Not that he would ever say it again, mind. Next time his da might use his belt and Little Paddy idolized his da. He didn’t want that to happen. Little Paddy would keep his gob shut in future.

The reaction of the families on the four streets to the murder of their own priest had been powerful and all-consuming.

Some of the women had cried almost constantly since hearing the news. Others had become so upset that Dr Cole had to be sent for to administer a sedative.

‘Sure, it must be the mystery of the century, so it is,’ said Annie to Molly, as they both swept away.

Annie was as skinny as Molly was fat. Both wore the traditional uniform of the four streets: a wraparound floral apron and hair in curlers tucked away underneath a hairnet. Annie possessed no teeth and had long since given up pretending to own any. Like many others, she had dentures that lived in a glass on her bedside table, but one morning, instead of putting them in, she decided to leave them where they were. With her husband long dead and both of her precious boys inside Walton gaol, who was there left to put the teeth in for?

‘Sure, I never liked him meself,’ replied Molly with a flick of the broom as she swept up the dust, across the pavement and into the gutter.

This was the same Molly who had baked the priest a batch of scones every Sunday morning and had dutifully delivered them to the Priory for eighteen years.

As she knelt to pray, the scones would sit on the pew next to her, filling the church with an aroma of fresh baking, competing with the smell of incense.

Some weeks, she barely had enough flour to make a decent batch, or enough coal to heat the oven on the range. Her own children had often gone hungry and didn’t see fresh baking for weeks on end. But she never missed her gift for Father James, her bribe in exchange for a place in heaven.

Now that he was dead, it had all been in vain. He was years younger than she. Who would ever have thought this would happen? Eighteen bloody years of scones, all in vain, she was heard to mutter to herself more than once a day.

‘The biggest mystery to me is what was me cat doing with the father’s langer in his mouth? Now that truly is a riddle – he had been fed twice that day.’

‘Who had? Father James?’ asked Annie quizzically. ‘How do ye know that?’

‘No, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, not Father James, me bloody cat. I have no notion at all what he will bring me next. Sends the shivers down me spine, so he does, every time he wanders into the kitchen. To think, he saw it all. If cats could talk, so.’

Molly had yet to recover from the fact that her cat had proudly returned from his nightly graveyard prowl with a murder trophy.

The news of the priest’s death was already speeding round the streets when Molly realized what the cat had deposited on her kitchen floor. Her screams could be heard as far as the butcher’s and beyond.

‘Aye, true, Molly, if Tiger could talk, we would know who had murdered the priest and ye would be a very rich woman indeed, so ye would.’

They both laughed as they finished sweeping into the gutter and walked back to their respective front doors.

‘Well, Annie, now the cat can’t talk, but I will tell ye this for nothing. There is one woman on this street who I thought we would see being carted off in an ambulance with the grief when she heard that the priest was dead, and yet I saw her more upset on the day Rita O’Neil’s lad was made altar boy and not their Harry.’

Mrs O’Prey shuffled closer to Molly’s step, crossing her arms and looking around furtively before she spoke. ‘Do ye mean Maura Doherty? Because I was thinking the very same thing meself!’

Both women huddled in close.

‘Aye, I do. She looks upset all right, but given that the father was never out of her house and she being all pious, high and mighty so, I thought she might have taken to her bed an’ all, but not a sign of it. Kathleen Deane is the same, but I never would expect her to be upset. It was no secret she didn’t like the priest and never went to mass. She always took herself off to confession with Father Donlan in Bootle.’

For a brief moment, they both lapsed into silence as, leaning on their broomsticks, they watched Kathleen Deane, with her daughter-in-law Alice and the baby Joseph in his Silver Cross pram, head across the cobbles towards the entry, to Maura Doherty’s house.

Once Kathleen and Alice had disappeared from sight, Molly examined her broom head with the bristles almost worn down to the wooden block.

‘Well, Mrs O, a rich woman I am not. But I know this, if I don’t buy a new broom head today, ye’ll be sweeping me step tomorrow along with yours.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Annie replied, ‘and ye has done mine often enough, Molly me love.’

Molly sniffed in acknowledgment and, without another word, wobbled across her step and closed the front door.

‘If ye ate a bit less, ye fat lump, ye could afford a broom head no trouble at all,’ whispered Annie to herself as she closed her own front door.

The police car glided round the corner of Nelson Street almost unnoticed. Just a few short weeks ago, the police had been virtually mobbed by neighbours asking one question after another with children constantly circling every policeman and car.

Howard and Simon each took out a fresh cigarette and lit up, squinting through the haze of blue smoke to survey the houses on both sides of the road.

‘Where shall we start?’ said Simon.

Both men were feeling more confident than they had first thing that morning. That hadn’t been difficult given what little information they had and despite their initial optimism, the sister hadn’t given them a huge amount to go on.

What they didn’t know was that as soon as Sister Evangelista had put the phone down on Howard, she had picked it up straight away and spoken to the bishop, who had been very, very angry when she told him she had called the police. So strong had he been in his opinion, regarding what she should and should not say and do, that he had left Sister Evangelista shaking in fear and in desperate need of something much stronger than a cuppa tea and two Anadin.

Sister Evangelista had no choice but to obey. She answered to the bishop and, much as it went against her better judgment, she would be obedient. Almost. She would not keep to herself her suspicions regarding Kitty. She was fond of the girl and she felt sure that at least must be her godly duty.

It took more than a few slugs of the holy mass wine before she could face Howard and Simon, having hidden the disgusting photographs in her office safe, as the bishop had ordered.

Simon fixed his gaze on Maura and Tommy’s house as Howard spoke.

‘Well, as Sister Evangelista was worried about the eldest Doherty girl in number nineteen and as the priest spent more time in number nineteen Nelson Street than any other, we should visit there last and question all the others first. Let’s not mention the Dohertys or the girl,’ he said. ‘Just ask, did the priest have any favourites around here, that kind of thing, and let’s see what happens. I had no idea priests did home visits, so we have something we didn’t have yesterday. And then if that bloody bishop arrives today and we finally gain entry into the Priory, maybe we will find another clue. If we keep shaking the tree hard enough, Simon, something will eventually fall.’

Before they left the car, they both took another long pull on their cigarettes as they watched Mrs O’Prey and Mrs Barrett bang the dust from their brooms and waddle back indoors.

3

N
ELLIE
’
S BEDROOM WINDOW
, at forty-two Nelson Street, overlooked the backyard. Earlier that morning, as she had drawn back the curtains, she had spotted her Nana Kathleen and Auntie Maura down in the yard, whispering furtively over the gate. They were too engrossed to look up and see Nellie, so she pressed her ear to the cold glass window to catch what they were saying. Their behaviour was unusual and Nellie supposed it was yet more gossip about the priest.

Nellie had never attended Father James’s church, but always took the bus into Bootle with her Nana Kathleen to attend the mass held by a friend’s cousin from back home in Bangornevin.

She felt a strange detachment from the upset, but the fact that someone had committed a murder was truly shocking. None of the mothers had allowed their children to walk to school alone since.

So much had happened of late, it was as though someone had thrown a hand grenade into the midst of their lives and they were all still flying through the air.

Since that awful night when all the Doherty children had piled into Nellie’s bedroom in the dark small hours and she had heard crying and talking downstairs, she had felt as though Nana Kathleen and her da were holding out on her and keeping secrets.

She was especially worried about Kitty who was more of a big sister to Nellie than a best friend. For the past few days she had been so ill and this morning had even thrown up all over the pavement, in front of Sister Evangelista.

She had dropped the poorly Kitty back at Maura’s and had popped home to tell Alice and Nana Kathleen what had happened.

‘Well, glory be,’ shouted Kathleen as Nellie walked in through the back door. ‘Is school on a half-day now or what? Why are ye back home so soon?’

‘It’s Kitty, Nana, I have just taken her to Maura. She is so sick, the poor thing.’ Nellie had leant against the range as she talked and helped herself to a chunk of the hot barm brack freshly removed from the oven.

Nana Kathleen playfully whacked her hand with the end of the tea towel. ‘Away with ye,’ she half shouted. ‘Off to school and stop shirking. There is nothing wrong with ye, miss.’

Nellie’s stepmother, Alice, was sitting on a chair next to the fire with Nellie’s little brother, Joseph, on her knee. ‘How are the sisters this morning, Nellie? Are they still as upset as they were?’