The Girl From the Killing Streets

  The Girl From The Killing Streets

  David Hough

  Copyright © 2020 by David Hough

  Artwork: Pixabay: ptrabattoni

  Design: soqoqo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat/darkstroke except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are used fictitiously.

  First Dark Edition, darkstroke. 2020

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  something nice will happen.

  To my grandsons, Henry and Oliver.

  Acknowledgements

  I did not get to be a published novelist without the help and encouragement of so many fellow writers. There have been too many to name individually, but I would like to say a big 'thank you' to all those friends I made while attending Della Galton’s weekly classes, the Cygnatures Writing Group meetings, the Dunford Novelists' meetings, and the annual Swanwick Writers' Summer School.

  When I started work on this novel, I was given valuable feedback by friends who read and commented on the original manuscript. I thank you, all of you. I was delighted when the final manuscript was accepted by Darkstroke and I must thank Laurence for dreaming up the inspiring front cover.

  Finally, it would be wrong of me not to mention the people I lived amongst and worked with in Northern Ireland back in the early nineteen seventies. Many have now passed on but, for those who are still alive and who helped me in the difficult days we went through, be assured I have not forgotten you.

  About the Author

  David Hough was born in Cornwall, England, a distant relative of the historian, Dr A. L. Rowse. Because of his father’s work he grew up in the Georgian city of Bath. He began his working life in an accountancy office in London, but quickly changed career to something more demanding. In 1965 he began training as an air traffic controller.

  In 1968, at the end of his training, David was posted to Belfast Airport in Northern Ireland. The following year ‘the troubles’ erupted and David was the Aerodrome Controller on duty when troops were airlifted into the province. Away from work, he mixed with people from both sides of the divide and listened to their stories. It gave him a deeper insight into the grievances behind the violence. He subsequently worked as a civilian controller at a military radar station in Northern Ireland. The violence got worse and, from inside his own home, he saw bombs explode nearby. He was on duty when the radar station was targeted by mob rioting. Thankfully, he had moved on when it was attacked with mortar bombs.

  After leaving Ireland, David worked as an Aerodrome Manager and as an Area Controller in Scotland. He then took up a post as an instructor at the UK college of Air Traffic Control. That was when he suffered a heart attack and was prevented from returning to operational ATC. He turned to writing stories as a therapy during his recovery. When he finally retired from Air Traffic Control, he became a full-time writer and has had more than thirty books published.

  David now lives with his Irish wife, Fionnuala, on the south coast of England. They have a daughter, two sons and two adorable young grandsons.

  The story of The Girl From The Killing Streets owes much to David’s experiences in Northern Ireland. The vivid descriptions of life in Belfast in 1972 could have come only from someone who lived there and saw ‘the troubles’ at first hand.

  Readers can learn more about David and his books on his web site at: www.thenovelsofdavidhough.com

  The Girl From The Killing Streets

  PART ONE

  Human life is a learning experience

  Death is merely the end of the lesson

  Chapter One

  September 1980

  They were two hundred and fifty feet above sea level, but they stumbled around like half drowned shipwreck survivors on a remote shore. I counted more than a dozen of them: armed soldiers caught in torrential rain at a moorland roadblock a few miles from Armagh city. A line of traffic built up as they examined each car in turn.

  What the hell was the problem? Gun-running? A prison escape? Or was this the army’s answer to a tip-off about the movement of yet another car bomb? Were the troops told to get their arses up here and watch for a vehicle with a heavily-laden boot? A dead give-away was that: a sagging boot stuffed full of fertiliser bags ready to be soaked in fuel oil. The IRA’s bomb of choice.

  When I reached the head of the queue, a rain-soaked figure signalled me to wind down my window. Rainwater cascaded off his Gore-Tex waterproofs as he leaned towards me, hugging his self-loading rifle against his chest. He had a young face - too young to be soldiering in a dangerous place like this - and his youthful voice fought against the noise of the downpour.

  “Where are you going, sir?”

  “Armagh Gaol.”

  “Why?”

  “To interview a prisoner.” I pulled my briefcase from the passenger seat, took out a formal letter along with my passport and held them up to the open window. A sudden gust of icy wind washed the rain over them. “This is my letter of permission from the prison governor, and this is my ID.”

  He glanced only briefly at the documents before staring intently at my face. “Where have you come from?”

  “Belfast Airport. I flew in from London just an hour or so ago.”

  “Has anyone stopped you along the way?” His gaze remained tightly focussed on me. He seemed nervous but who wouldn’t be in his place?

  “Yes, you. Are you expecting trouble here?”

  “Maybe. We’ll need to look in your boot.”

  “Okay.” I sat back and waited while another soldier opened the boot lid and rummaged inside. He would have found nothing except the spare wheel. After no more than a minute of searching, he slammed the lid shut. The boy beside my window stood back and waved me on. Rain was still cascading from his waterproofs.

  “Move along, sir.” He sounded utterly pissed off.

  Clearly, I wasn’t what they were looking for.

  “What’s your name, soldier?” I asked.

  “Why do you want to know?” He sniffed and wiped the rain from his face.

  “Curiosity.”

  He should not have answered my question, but he did. “It’s Atkins. Now, move along.”

  “You’re in the wrong war, son. Tommy Atkins belonged in a much earlier conflict.”

  He shrugged and walked away.

  Was I once like that boy soldier? Was I like him back in the days when I lived here in Ulster? Pissed off while the world about me went utterly mad? Maybe so, but I had a wife then, someone who was able to smooth away the jagged nerve edges that remained at the end of each day.

  I accelerated past the barrier and flipped on the car radio, not sure which channel it was tuned to. Pop music for the oldies seemed to be the general idea. Buddy Holly, Raining In My Heart. Buddy I could take, but the ‘rain’ theme was just what I didn’t need. Not in this downpour. It was followed up with Barry Manilow’s I made it Through the Rain. I switched it off.

  The weather got worse. Ugly black clouds dragged their ragged bottoms low across the bleak landscape. As I came to the outskirts of the city a lightning flash lit up the sky and a thunderclap boomed directly overhead. In that same moment, the hire car’s engine missed a beat, ran rough for a few seconds before recovering. Maybe it was warning me to turn round and go home. In this weather I could so easily have been persuaded. More ligh
tning and more thunder followed. The car wheels splashed through floodwater, and the windscreen wipers fought a losing battle. You’d think that God had finally given up on Northern Ireland. Let’s face it: He had reason to call it a day here after years of unremitting violence. But I had to keep going because my next book would depend upon what a young woman was prepared to tell me.

  Her name was Sorcha Mulveny.

  Eight years ago, she had been tried for the murder of a police detective and a police informer. It was an unusual case. At the start of the trial she entered no plea and then, to everyone’s surprise, she confessed under cross examination. I remembered it well.

  The prosecuting counsel asked her, “What happened when you met Detective Constable Dunlop that night?”

  I imagine he was expecting a pack of lies, but what he got must have knocked him for six.

  “I killed him.” The words came out just like that. No explanation, no excuses, just a confession. She looked so small and insignificant as she stared down at the floor; a lamb in the courtroom slaughterhouse. I had to concentrate hard to hear her.

  The prosecutor looked astonished at the unexpected admission. “Would you say that again?” he asked. Maybe he wanted thinking time. Clearly, he hadn’t prepared himself for this.

  “I killed him,” she repeated in a calm, quiet voice. “And I killed Jimmy Fish the next day. I killed them both.”

  She refused to say any more. In the face of her admission of guilt, the trial ended abruptly, and she was handed a life sentence.

  My interest in the case might have gone no further, but Sorcha’s confession didn’t feel right. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Uneasy thoughts like that had served me well as a journalist, prompting me to look deeper into stories that other hacks accepted at face value. I saw a lot of harrowing court cases in those days, but this one intrigued me more than most. I couldn’t understand why the defendant seemed more like a victim than a perpetrator. Was I likely to find answers eight years after the events?

  I could try.

  That was why I was here.

  ***

  Pounding rain was hammering at the barred windows when I walked into the prison later that morning. Thunder rattled the frames. They used to tell me - when I lived and worked here - that we English are soft because we don’t get the sort of weather that turns Irishmen into real men.

  They were probably right.

  Sorcha instantly stood up to meet me in the interview room. The visible change in her was striking, I saw it straight away. Still in her late twenties, she looked like a middle-aged woman who had endured a hard life. Skin that had once been fresh and flawless was now sallow and lined. Despite that, there was a look of determination about her, something I hadn’t seen in court eight years ago. Her clothes still let her down; a well-worn skirt coming apart at the hem, and an off-white blouse that had seen better days. She was allowed to wear her own clothes, but she would probably have looked better in prison issue.

  She reached out her left hand to shake mine. Her right elbow had been shattered by a bullet on that terrible day in 1972 and it still gave her trouble. It most likely always would. The atmosphere within the interview room was claustrophobic, tinged with the odour of other people’s tobacco smoke, but that was better than the smell of pee and sweat that filled the windowless corridor that led to this part of the prison. Pee and sweat: the more obvious symptoms of fear perhaps?

  I had written to Sorcha weeks ago to explain the reason for my proposed visit. It took that long to get her agreement along with permission from the prison governor. With the formalities behind us, we were able to get down to business quite quickly. “You know what I want to hear from you,” I said. “There were so many things that never came out at your trial.”

  “That was eight years ago,” she said as she sat down. “I’ve changed since then. I’m ready to talk now, so I am.” Unlike her physical appearance, there was something fresh and vibrant in her voice. “I want to get it all off me chest. I know people will hate me for what I did, but I want to tell youse everything.”

  “Did you really do what you said at the trial, Sorcha?”

  She shrugged. “You can’t imagine how guilty I felt, but it wasn’t the way people thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was more complicated.”

  I still didn’t understand, but I asked, “Will you be seeking a review of your case?”

  “No. But I want youse to write about it. Tell people what really happened.”

  The contradiction still didn’t make sense, but I let it pass for the moment. If she was innocent, there would be time later to talk about a judicial review.

  “What did happen?”

  “That’s what I’m gonna tell youse.”

  Some people get irritated by the Ulster habit of making the word ‘you’ rhyme with ‘whose’, but I was used to it. I’d lived in the heart of Belfast when my wife was alive, before violence and a very painful loss drove me back to England.

  “What brought about this change of heart?” I asked, puzzled by the extent of the transformation.

  She thought for a moment or two before replying. “Time and… and the prison chaplain. We’ve had some long chats, so we have. I never told him what really happened, but I need to tell someone. I’ll talk to you instead.” She thought for a moment. “’Tis all about guilt, ain’t it? Yes, ’tis all about guilt.”

  “Why didn’t you open up fully to your priest?” I asked.

  “A priest? Godsakes, I’d not talk to a priest!”

  “You no longer believe in your Catholic faith?”

  She shook her head fiercely and wiped a trace of dampness from the corner of one eye. “After what they did to me? Took away my... Hell! I’ve no time for priests. Not now. The chaplain’s a Proddy… the Reverend Mayfair. He’s a good man, so he is, but I’d rather tell the full story to someone who isn’t tied up in religion. I had a belly-full of religion when I was growing up.”

  “Was that what brought this about? Just those chats with the chaplain?” I was cautiously sceptical.

  She sniffed and a trace of colour returned to her cheeks. “There was me official prison visitor as well. We talked a lot… about the guilty feelin’s… not what I actually did… just the feelin’s… and then I told her about yer letter. That’s the one where you said you wanted to hear what actually happened that day.”

  I gave her an unwise grin at that point. “Did you notice, Sorcha? You can say ‘you’ when you try.”

  “Don’t criticise me!”

  “Sorry.” I tried to sound apologetic. “Tell me what your prison visitor said.”

  She took a moment to calm down before she continued. “She said you could be my opportunity to finally put everythin’ to rest. She said it could be good for me to tell youse what really happened. Told me it could bring a sort of personal closure, whatever the truth of it.”

  Whatever the truth of it.

  There it was again, the suggestion that the real story would prove to be an eye-opener. If she was deliberately trying to grab my attention, she was sure as hell succeeding. I tried to curb my impatience.

  “These people…” I said. “… the chaplain and the prison visitor, they must have been persuasive.”

  “’S’pose so. One day I found meself seein’ things in a different light, so I did. It brought things home to me. Made me want to clear the air. Made me want to speak about the things I didn’t say in court.” A forced grin came back to her face. “I remember seeing youse in court back in seventy-two, so I do. Came in every day, so youse did. Every day. I don’t know why youse stood out, but youse did. Youse used to stare at me and yet youse looked kinder than the rest of them, as if you felt for me. And youse looked a lot younger then.”

  I was surprised by the sharpness of her memory, but I made no comment. I was now approaching the forty-year mark and I didn’t need remarks about my age from a young woman like Sorcha.

  I
set my notebook on the table between us and took out my pen. “You don’t mind if I start taking notes?”

  “Fill yer boots.” She drew a deep breath, and then both eyes grew moist again. “They will hate me, won’t they? The people who read yer book… they will hate me for what I did?”

  I shook my head. “I hope not. From the little I learned at your trial I’d guess that you were a victim of your environment. I suspect you were a victim long before the events of Bloody Friday.”

  “A victim? Youse mean what the nuns did to me, after the baby…?” She looked away and the lingering dampness in her eyes turned to a trickle of tears. The previous air of determination was gone in an instant. I allowed a moment of silence for her to compose herself. The revelation about a baby surprised me, but this was not the time for me to question the matter. Later, maybe.

  When she seemed recovered, I told her, “I suspect that your story goes a lot deeper than most people realise.” I injected as much of a tone of compassion as I could muster. She needed compassion like a starving man needed food, probably more, and she’d had precious little of it so far.

  “Youse think so?” she mumbled.

  “Sure of it. Look, we can delve into the more painful parts of your past some other time, if you prefer. Why don’t you start this interview by telling me about what happened that night, the night before the bombing? Tell me what actually happened when you came across that policeman, the one who...”

  “No!” She suddenly shook her head fiercely and shouted at me. “No! Not that!” Her air of cooperation vanished in an instant, leaving me nonplussed. “I don’t wanna talk about that bit yet. Not yet. Why can’t you leave it for the time bein’?”