The Irish Scissor Sisters (3 page)

Farah said that he knew a good place that sold cheap rings around Henry Street so they walked up O’Connell Street and turned left onto Henry Street. Kathleen and Farah were holding hands but the thirty-nine-year-old Somalian looked pretty tipsy and was unsteady on his feet.

He couldn’t remember where the shop was and they walked up and down Henry Street a couple of times while he tried to figure it out. Sick of wandering the streets looking for a new lip ring, they eventually gave up.

Instead they headed to Dunnes Stores on North Earl Street. Farah bought a large bottle of vodka from the off-licence and Kathleen went into a newsagent and got four bottles of coke and gave each of them a bottle. They poured half of each bottle of coke onto the road and Farah passed around the vodka bottle as they all mixed the spirit with their remaining cokes. They strolled around, drinking and chatting, with Farah and Kathleen in great form, laughing away.

Farah finally remembered where the lip-ring shop was and they went back to Henry Street, into the GPO Arcade and Linda looked at the rings. She saw a small silver one she liked and paid €7 for it and put it in straight away, slipping the bar into her pocket.

They spent some more time walking around the city centre trying to decide where to go. None of them had much cash so they couldn’t afford to go drinking in a pub. They were all on the dole and the money they got from the Social Welfare didn’t stretch far enough to pay €5 for a pint in a pub in town. Charlotte finally suggested that they should go down to the Liffey Boardwalk and sit on one of the benches there and continue drinking. The Boardwalk had been built to be a walkway that would allow tourists and workers to enjoy a pleasant stroll along Dublin’s River Liffey, but it had been virtually taken over by drug dealers and addicts. They came from the various methadone clinics around the city to do deals there. Most ordinary decent people had been driven away from the Boardwalk but the Mulhalls fitted right in and were comfortable amongst the junkies and alcoholics. They found a free bench and continued to polish off the litre bottle of vodka.

After they’d been there a while, Linda whispered to her sister that she had a load of ecstasy tablets in her pocket and asked Charlie if she wanted one. Charlotte was a heavy drug user and happily dropped an E tablet, or ‘butterfly’, as did her sister. They clinked their bottles and said cheers, as they washed the pills down with vodka and coke.

Kathleen had been watching her daughters and demanded to know what they were up to. Linda confessed about the drugs in her pocket and Kathleen took one, as she didn’t want to be left out. She didn’t want the girls to have all the fun, but as Farah was already very drunk they didn’t give him one. The Somalian had started drinking cans back in their flat at 17 Richmond Cottages, in nearby Ballybough, as soon as he got up that morning. He’d been on a bender for the previous three days, celebrating St Patrick’s Day with Kathleen. He’d got into a fight in a pub on Paddy’s night and the guards had spoken to him but he was still in good form, even though he hadn’t been sober for a while now. Farah had a reputation as a bad drunk and everyone who spent any time with him knew how alcohol could change the man. He became loud and aggressive with booze and wasn’t a nice person to be around. He was in good spirits now though, even if he was a bit drunk. The last thing he needed, however, was drugs, so the women didn’t offer him an E tablet. As Linda gave her mother the pill, they sat back and relaxed, exchanging banter and gently slagging Farah.

Linda had ten E tablets in the little see-through bag in her jacket pocket and over the next few hours the three women took two more pills each, as they sat there drinking. Linda listened to the radio on her mobile phone and Charlotte chatted to Kathleen.

Linda and her mam had a strained relationship and were not that close. Forty-nine-year-old Kathleen had walked out on her husband and six kids three and a half years earlier to be with Farah Noor. This, understandably, had caused war within the family and Linda hadn’t really forgiven her mother, but she kept the peace for the sake of the day out. She didn’t think too much of her mam’s new boyfriend though and couldn’t understand much that came out of his mouth, especially with all he’d had to drink. She barely said two words to him for the whole afternoon.

Charlotte was more easy-going and felt that if her mother wasn’t happy with John Mulhall, then she was right to leave. Kathleen and her ex-husband despised each other. He was furious that she had given up on twenty-nine years of marriage to run off with a black man and he had threatened Farah Noor. The Somalian believed him and had gone to Cork with his new girlfriend to make a fresh start. Unlike her father, Charlotte thought Farah was sound and had been down to visit them in Cork a lot when they lived there for a year or two. Kathleen had hardly spoken to John Mulhall in over three years and they were both happy with that set-up. She missed her children, though, and her two youngest, Marie and Andrew, lived with their father in Kilclare Gardens and she rarely saw them. The couple had decided to leave Cork for good and came back to Dublin in September 2004. They told people that Farah had fallen foul of an IRA man. They had got a flat together a few months before, up in Ballybough.

A few hours had passed by on the Boardwalk, with them happily drinking and relaxing, but the sun that had made the day so pleasant had long since disappeared and it had started to drizzle. The winds were very strong, especially beside the exposed River Liffey and Farah did not have a jacket. He was wearing only his beloved long-sleeved Ireland-away jersey. People rarely saw him without it. The weather wasn’t the only problem though. The three or four days of drinking were finally catching up with Farah. He crossed the thin line between him being a pleasant person and a monster. He started picking fights with Kathleen and getting aggressive. Kathleen’s daughters couldn’t understand what he was saying as he switched between bad English and his native African language. Linda shook her head and turned her radio up higher and Charlotte paid him no attention. Kathleen was obviously well used to Farah’s outbursts and started shouting back, giving out to him for ruining the day. After about half an hour of rowing, Kathleen got fed up and told her daughters to get up, that it was time to leave.

The sisters didn’t even have time to ask their mam where they were going. Kathleen had already pulled Farah by the arm and was leading him up the Boardwalk, to O’Connell Street. As they walked up past the Spire, the fighting continued. The couple shouted and screamed at each other, with little worry for who heard or saw them.

Linda was well pissed off at this point and stormed ahead of the group, listening to her earphones. She’d left her kids to come in to listen to her mam fighting with a drunken refugee. She was not one bit happy.

Even the happy-go-lucky Charlotte was annoyed and left the pair to it. She walked on ahead of them but Linda was still about sixty feet ahead. She was practically galloping up O’Connell Street. Charlie ran after her older sister and put her arm around her shoulders. They stopped walking for a minute and Linda asked Charlotte if they were still fighting each other, but she didn’t have to wait for an answer – she could hear the two of them shouting behind her.

When Farah and Kathleen were only a few feet behind them again, Linda and Charlie linked arms and continued up O’Connell Street towards Ballybough, which is about a ten-minute walk away. They were between Burger King and the Carlton cinema when Farah saw a little Chinese boy, who was out playing with a group of three or four of his friends. He got very emotional and said: ‘That’s my son. That’s my son.’

He grabbed the youngster who got upset and frightened and began to cry. The child was only about five years old. Noor had a six-year-old son named ‘John’, the child of his brief relationship with a then sixteen-year-old, mentally retarded Chinese woman, ‘Lynn’. He had only seen the boy a handful of times and, after his three-day drinking binge, Noor thought that this Chinese boy was his son.

Kathleen started to lose the head and shouted: ‘You’re mental, you’re bleedin’ mental. Leave the child alone. He’s not your fuckin’ son.’

Farah had been thinking about the child for the last few weeks and had mentioned him a couple of times. He’d made Kathleen go with him to ‘Lynn’s’ house on St Patrick’s Day because he wanted to get to know his son. Noor had at least five children dotted around the world and had never shown any interest in being a good father before. Nevertheless he had called around to his former girlfriend’s house three days earlier, wanting to meet the lad. ‘Lynn’ had answered the door and seemed happy enough to see Farah. They hadn’t had a relationship as such. Noor had got her pregnant the first time he slept with her and then left when he found out she was expecting his baby. When ‘Lynn’ had told Farah that the child was not home he handed her €20, turned around and walked away.

The little Chinese boy that Noor was now harassing ran away and the Somalian shouted after him to come back. Kathleen roared at her boyfriend, telling him to stop and cop himself on.

It was about 6 p.m. at this stage and as Kathleen and Farah were fighting, with Linda and Charlotte looking on, a friend of Noor’s from Somalia, Mohamed Ali Abubakaar, spotted the group. He was in the central median on O’Connell Street, looking at a festival stall with his Irish girlfriend, Deirdre Hyland. Thirty-six-year-old Ali came from Kismoyo in Somalia and had been in Ireland for the last ten years. He had worked for Dublin Bus for the previous four years and was friends with Farah, regularly meeting him for drinks.

Ali called over to his friend and crossed the road to meet him. They hugged each other and Ali noticed Farah was with his girlfriend, who he knew as Catherine. She told him that the two girls were her daughters but they just nodded at him and didn’t shake hands or talk. He thought they all appeared to be drunk but that Farah was by far the worst and was struggling. It looked like they were trying to get him up the road. Ali had met Kathleen a good few times before but she stayed with her daughters, who were carrying cans of beer in a plastic bag. Ali noticed that one of the girls was blonde, looked very gaunt and was wearing a leather jacket. The other woman was darker and heavier. Ali was worried about his friend because he knew he could be aggressive with drink on him. He told him to relax and chill out and not to cause any trouble. Farah said he was fine and that he was going home to Ballybough. Ali noticed that Kathleen did not appear to be in good form and kept on pulling her boyfriend, trying to get him to leave. Ali left the group and the four headed off in the direction of Parnell Square. The bus driver noticed that his friend was wearing his favourite long-sleeved Ireland-away jersey. He had one just like it except that his had short sleeves.

Ali and Deirdre started back walking down O’Connell Street and thought no more of the brief encounter.

They would be the last people to see Farah Swaleh Noor alive.

Linda was getting fed up at this stage and told her sister that they should walk ahead. Charlotte had regularly stayed in the flat since they had moved in the previous December and she knew exactly where it was. Linda had only been out to Ballybough once or twice and probably wouldn’t have been able to find the way alone. It was getting dark as Charlotte led Linda in the direction of Ballybough, with their mother and Farah not too far behind.

When the girls arrived at 17 Richmond Cottages, a stone’s throw from the Royal Canal, they only had to wait a couple of minutes for Kathleen and Farah to arrive. Kathleen had obviously calmed down her boyfriend and the tension that had been in the air a few minutes previously had disappeared.

The brick-fronted building was nestled in a row of terraced houses beside Summerhill Parade. Divided into four flats, the two-storey house felt cramped and claustrophobic, although the landlord gave his tenants free reign to decorate the flats to their own style and tastes. As they walked in the front door of the house they took an immediate right to get to Flat 1. Kathleen unlocked the door and they walked into the main living room, which contained a three-foot-long table, two wooden chairs, a red settee and two small armchairs. A filthy kitchen was at the end of the same room and empty cans of beer and vodka bottles littered the sticky counters. The kitchen led into a bedroom measuring just eight feet long. The modest one-bedroom Flat 1 had seen better days.

In the bedroom there were bunk beds on the immediate left-hand side of the room, facing against the wall. A mini-double bed was across the room, beside a small window. The only items of furniture were a wardrobe and small chest of drawers, holding all of Kathleen and Farah’s possessions. They were used to moving and had stayed in five or six different flats when they lived in Cork, and knew how to travel light. They didn’t have that many clothes and used to move their stuff from house to house in sports bags, which were stored under the bunk bed.

As they settled in Charlie put on a CD because Linda wanted music in case the couple started rowing again. They decided to put on Sean Paul. Charlotte had given the CD to Farah as a present a couple of months before. Linda sat on her sister’s lap on the red settee, laughing away and singing to the music. They were having great craic and were in good form.

Kathleen prepared vodkas for the girls and a can of lager for Farah. Charlotte got up off the couch and went out to help her mam in the kitchen. As Kathleen was pouring the drinks she took the last of the ten E tablets that Linda had brought and crushed it up on the counter. Charlotte asked her what she was doing and her mam said that she was going to put it in Farah’s drink because she wanted him to be on the same buzz as they all were. Farah took the drink from Kathleen and staggered into the living room and sat down beside Linda. He’d been drinking for nearly twelve straight hours at this stage and was very drunk.

Farah got closer to Linda on the settee, put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her towards him. She felt very uncomfortable as he moved his hand towards her back and started rubbing her. He pulled her shoulder again and started to whisper something in her ear. She couldn’t understand what he said but knew it was sexual and that it was his sick way of seducing her. She felt ill and knew that what he was doing wasn’t right and said, ‘Farah, get your hands off me.’ But this only seemed to make him more determined.