The Liverpool Trilogy (109 page)

Alice was finally claiming her place among the living. And, while her mother wept tears of joy, Alice smiled in her sleep.

See, I’m fine with most of them. They come in the shop with their kids, a quarter of dolly mixtures and a
Woman’s Weekly
, pay the papers, ask am I all
right. It’s not all women; it’s the ones with a certain look in their eyes, as if they think they’re too good for the rest of us. It’s the beautiful ones. My mother was
beautiful . . .

A funeral took place at about five thirty in the morning on the day after the wedding. The sun was urging a weary eye over a misty horizon, and starlings were tuning up in the
orchestra pit, while a lone blackbird, who seemed to have elected himself maestro, shouted orders from the roof of Jackson’s bakery. If he wanted crumbs, he was in for a long wait, because
Sunday was the bakery’s single day off. Emily Jackson did her wedding and birthday cake icing on Sundays and, unless a major accident occurred, Sunday was a crumb-free zone.

Paddy was sole witness when her adorable, precious grandson emerged at snail’s pace from the side entrance of the prefab next door. He looked left, then right, before stepping out onto the
path with a huge knife and a bundle that was wrapped poorly in a crumpled mass of newspaper. A man on a mission, he frowned determinedly, and the end of his tongue expressed a high level of
concentration as it poked from a corner of his mouth.

Paddy failed to control a wide grin. Seamus closed the door with untypically meticulous care, turned, and dropped the hat. It slid out of its newspaper coffin and fell at his feet, though the
despised satin suit remained where it was. She started to laugh aloud when he forgot himself and jumped on the hat with both feet. Why on God’s good earth was she laughing? She had to face up
to Seamus’s older brothers in a few hours, had to save the life of poor old Ernie Avago, make sure that Lights of Liverpool was returned to a condition fit for its other incarnation, Scouse
Alley, and find room in her head for worry about three dead men and three live machine guns. And here she stood doubled over with glee as she watched the shenanigans of a focused and very angry
young man. And he had better not cut himself with that knife, since life promised to be hard enough without visits to hospitals and the like.

Seamus was cutting a square sod of lawn from the tiny rear garden. He lifted it and placed it to one side before getting to work with a spade. There was no ceremony, no prayer, no dignity. Ashes
to ashes and dust to dust? He wanted rid; that was all.

The lad stuffed the offending items into the hole, filled it with soil, replaced the turf, and jumped once again on the dearly un-beloved after making sure that the piece of green fitted
perfectly. No hymns, no words of wisdom, no goodbye. There. The deed was done. An unsavoury memory had been put to rest, so the world of Seamus Walsh had improved. Of course, there was no marker,
no monument, no floral tribute. Instead, a sweaty, pink-faced boy looked down critically at his work. He placed the spade against the wall of a little shed, glanced up and caught sight of his
grandmother.

She waved at him and put a finger to her lips, thereby indicating that his secret was safe. They both knew that he wasn’t completely out of the woods, of course. Should another wedding be
planned, boys of a certain size might be sent along to try on the suit, and they’d need a shovel to get it. But Seamus had done what he’d needed to do, and the fury and hatred were
buried in a shallow grave behind Maureen’s house. Maureen had trouble enough on her plate today; she and her husband would doubtless be involved in the business with Michael and Finbar, but
there was also the problem with Maureen herself, who lost her rag at the drop of a hat. What a temper she had—

‘Hello, love.’

Paddy jumped, a hand pressed against her chest. ‘You’ll be having me with a heart attack, creeping about like a burglar, or a prima ballerina with no shoes on.’

‘It’s true I’ve got no shoes on. But me tutu and me tights want a wash, so I’ve stuck to me pyjamas. And I am stuck, bloody wet through. It’s baking in here, love.
This place is that hot in summer, we’re cooked to medium rare. Stick the kettle on, Pads. Me nerves feel as if they’ve been back and forth across Wally Ainsworth’s bacon slicer
ever since last night. Even me eyelashes ache, and I’ve got pain in teeth I lost years back.’

‘I know, I know.’ She set the kettle to boil on the hob. ‘Kev, I’ve got a really bad feeling, so.’

‘I’ve got two,’ he replied. ‘Finbar and Michael.’

She nodded. ‘And don’t forget the Kray twins and company limited, Dimitri Wotsisname and his Athenian dancers, to mention but a few.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He leaned against the sink. ‘Why were you laughing a few minutes ago?’

She told him.

And he told her. ‘That pageboy suit’s on a half-promise to the church. You know they keep wedding stuff for poor folk who can’t afford it.’

‘Shotgun marriages, you mean. Don’t worry. I’ll do a Burke and Hare on the suit.’ She scalded the pot. ‘I’ll disinter it, mend it, wash it, and pass it
on.’ She pondered briefly on the subject of Seamus’s older brothers. They wouldn’t have buried the suit; they would have sold it. Even at the ages of six and eight, that pair had
fixed their eyes on money. They were the same today. Cash was king whatever its provenance. Perhaps they would change? Perhaps they would stay away from London. And, of course, there remained the
danger that others would follow the three dead in search of the two lads. Oh, God, it didn’t bear thinking about.

The long-married couple sat at the minute kitchen table, each with a pint pot of scalding tea. Maureen and her daughter, the newly wed Reen, had been heard to opine that Paddy and Kevin could
win prizes for tea-drinking. They never touched coffee. Coffee was for folk who didn’t mind murdering their own taste buds and, since England was a free country, such odd souls were within
their rights to fry their tongues with the chicory mixture that currently passed for that drink.

‘I wonder what’s going on?’ Kevin asked. ‘Down at Ernie’s, I mean.’

Paddy shrugged. ‘I know this much for sure, my love. It may be roasting in this house, but my lower vertebrae are frozen solid. Can’t get a move out of them. In those very bones, I
feel some bad news coming.’

Kev delivered the opinion that his wife’s bones were behind the times by several hours, since the bad news had already arrived yesterday. ‘I’ll bet you any money poor
Tom’s out of his mind next door. It’s one thing sniping during a war, another matter altogether on the streets of Bootle with a little gun pinched from your wife’s handbag. What
was she thinking of, Paddy? Letting the wedding go on like that when she knew her sons were in trouble?’

She shrugged. ‘Well, when I approached that subject, she told me to mind my own business. It is my business. Your stall, Scouse Alley and Lights keep this family going. And we could all
have been killed by those London gangsters. She said she and Tom would manage without us, but I must express serious doubt. I bet you she’ll be here by nine o’clock, bless her. It
isn’t every day your husband has to shoot three murderers, so I understand her lack of patience with me. I can be annoying. I even annoy myself sometimes.’

Their second pint was taken into the living room. Paddy lit her first cigarette of the day while Kevin went to make toast. She looked round her home and wondered what these walls would say if
they could speak. Martin and Jack, the two sons of whom she seldom made mention, had lived here for a while with their sister, Maureen. Maureen was now next door. The lads had been reasonably well
behaved once grown, had done well on National Service with the army, but London had beckoned, and that was that.

Paddy remembered digging Maureen out of her little terraced house, scrabbling in dirt and bricks, fighting to save her daughter and the grandchildren from beneath rubble and dust. Safe now.
Hitler had failed to destroy the family, but six members of it had brought grief to the house. Well, to this prefab and the one next door. Her spine remained frozen. The only one left was the
lovely afterthought, Maureen’s Seamus. ‘Dear God, keep him safe,’ she begged under her breath. ‘Think of something else,’ she commanded. Her mind seemed to have a mind
of its own, and that was silly.

Ah yes. How proud she had been of this little place. It had a built-in cooker and a refrigerator. She could make her own ice. Shivering, she remembered a rumour about a London madman who hired
himself out to the big boys. He specialized in disposal, freezing bodies of murdered folk, jointing them, and feeding the parts into some kind of crushing machine. Freezing made the whole thing
less messy. After that, he gave the resulting sludge to pigs. And people ate the pigs. Cannibals by proxy. Why couldn’t she think of something halfway decent, for goodness’ sake? If her
brain didn’t kick in soon, her usual quickness of thought would be no more than a pleasant memory.

She had nice furniture, decent carpets, pretty bits and pieces bought by her husband at Christmas time and on her birthdays. The rug was Axminster, and her china cabinet displayed some handsome
bits of Royal Doulton and good lead crystal. Kevin dealt in decent second-hand clothing from a stall on Paddy’s Market. He’d even invented a fold-away changing room with a cheval mirror
so that prospective purchasers could try on clothes. He was a good lad. Every weekday, at lunch time, he left the stall in the hands of another trader, came down to Scouse Alley in his van, and
served tea and cocoa. He ate the same stew each time with a side serving of pickled beetroot or red cabbage. She must think of the good, only of the good. Because madness lay—

‘Here you are, love.’ He handed her a rack of toast. ‘Best butter to put hairs on your chest.’

She smiled at him. ‘You’re still the greatest man I know, Kevin O’Neil. You know, I was thinking. We should start doing meat and potato pies and Lancashire hotpot. Scouse every
day gets a bit boring.’

He took a sip of tea. ‘I’m the lucky one,’ he advised her. ‘I was the man who picked you up when you fell over in the street that day.’

Paddy managed another smile. ‘Your hands were all over me.’

Kev shrugged. ‘I’ve always believed in making the most of situations. My ma taught me that before she died, bless her. She made the most by dying. Fifteen kids? The old bastard
should have been neutered. But no. He found another daft Irishwoman and remarried within months.’ The clock began the slow crawl towards seven. ‘Paddy, my darling, we know there’s
trouble afoot. Neither of us has slept a wink, what with all this, plus Romeo and Juliet clarting about at the other side of a very thin wall. We have to stay calm. No matter what happens later on,
we take it square and straight, no shouting, no tears, no anger. Your brothers and our sons may be lost to us, but perhaps we can save our grandsons.’

Paddy stared into her cup. ‘They’ve seen the big life, the clever life, Kev. They’ve also learned that the same life is of little value, because they’ll have witnessed
killings and might even have performed executions.’ She raised her eyes. ‘Look at it, my love. If they stay in Liverpool, they may well form a dynasty of their own. I’d rather
place them in the hands of the police than let them ruin another city.’

Kev nodded thoughtfully. Ernie Avago was an early riser. Always up with the lark, he had a way with flowers; he also grew his own veg at the back of the house. After his first cuppa,
Ernie’s primary job in decent weather was the inspection of his garden. ‘We’ll get washed and dressed, Pads. I’m not sitting here another two hours waiting for my
daughter’s permission to go hither and yon. We’ll be there before madam. And I’m sending Ernie for a couple of weeks in Blackpool while we work out what’s what.’

Paddy’s eyes widened. ‘What’s what? What about his whippet and the budgies?’

‘Not forgetting the ferrets.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘That dog eats furniture. As for ferrets – no. They bite.’

‘Paddy!’

‘Oh, all right. I know he has to be safe.’ She marched off to the bathroom. The dawn chorus had pulled in all the extras, non-professionals and substitutes, and the resulting
cacophony had woken love’s young dream in the back bedroom. Reen seemed to be enjoying herself, and her grandmother was pleased about that. Too many marriages failed due to mechanical
difficulties, and there was no way of correcting problems by fitting a new battery or having an oil change at a garage round the corner. The human body was a mysterious article.

There was an old woman in the mirror again. The face was pleasant enough, but lived in. Kev still loved her, and that was what mattered. He, too, bore the marks of time, yet they still clung
together like children lost at sea. What if he died? She’d never cope; if she went first, he’d be completely lost. ‘Have a wash, you stupid old crone. Hang about much longer and
you’ll have the cows home.’

Back in her bedroom, Paddy closed her ears to the noise next door. She lit a night light in a blue glass container and placed it below a statue of the Immaculate Conception. ‘Intercede,
Blessed Mother.’ She then recited from memory, ‘Wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of the Lord.’ These gifts from the Holy Ghost arrived when a
Catholic was confirmed, and Paddy needed them reinforced today. She often used the Virgin Mary as messenger; everyone listened to Mary, though Jesus had been a bit snappy with her when she’d
told Him off for preaching in the temple at the age of twelve. Mind, twelve was a difficult age, and the lad had been half human after all. ‘Oh, pull yourself together, Patricia. This is
going to be one very long day.’

Kev had a shave followed by a lick and a promise. There was no point in attending to detail, since Scouse Alley wanted cleaning while half a dozen helpers peeled spuds and carrots for tomorrow.
None of them knew the recipe, because Paddy had her secrets, and one of them was her scouse. She had taken the Norwegian dish and injected a bit of the Irish into it; she also used a combination of
herbs known only to herself. The women of Bootle and the rest of Liverpool had tried, but no one could get the full list out of her.