The Girl From the Killing Streets Read online

  “But you said you’d tell me…”

  “Not yet! I ain’t ready for that yet!”

  I struggled to control my frustration. We hadn’t even begun and already I had come upon a brick wall, and I didn’t know why. I tried to keep my voice calm. And then that suspicion came back to my mind; the suspicion that told me something about her confession wasn’t right. There was far more to her story than anyone had guessed. However, this wasn’t the time to force the issue. Patience was going to be important here.

  Patience and persistence.

  “All right, Sorcha. What about later that night? When the Protestant boy died. Can we talk about that?”

  “Suppose so.” She sounded more compliant now, as if this act of violence was somehow unlike the killing of the policeman. Her voice was firm, but not so angry. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t kill him.”

  “I know. I heard what you said in the trial – what little there was of it. I’d like you to tell me about it in more detail. Make it more personal.”

  “More personal? You mean; what I was thinkin’ at the time.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s what I need to tell youse. What was in me head.”

  “If you’re up to talking about it.” I tried to inject a tone of encouragement into my voice. “Go back to what happened in the early hours of that morning. The time you were with Fitzpain in that back alley. Tell me exactly what happened.”

  She wiped at her eyes and she thought about it for a moment. “Youse mean… the moment when the boy had his dick cut off?”

  I shuddered. I’d seen the graphic police photographs. “Yes. That’s where I might begin the book, so why don’t you start there.”

  “God, what a night that was.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Chapter Two

  Friday 21st July 1972

  0410 BST

  What Sorcha Mulveny saw in the dimly-lit back alley that night wasn’t justice. She understood that.

  It was mindless retribution.

  Bile rose in her throat as she watched Brian Fitzpain castrating a Protestant pervert. He sawed off the boy’s penis with a serrated kitchen knife and he was smiling as he did it. It was a cruel, self-satisfied sort of smile, as if he was enjoying himself. With such a grin, he could have been carving a Sunday roast, with his mistress and their five children gathered around the dinner table. Except that he was no longer living with or supporting the poor woman and her children. She was said to be good in bed, but even she couldn’t hold on to him all the time.

  Sorcha gagged on the bile. She thought she understood Fitzpain better than most people but, just when she imagined she’d seen it all, he would surprise her. He’d show her what further depths he could sink to. He relished administering harsh punishment, much like their parish priest relished buggering young altar boys, but today he was surpassing himself.

  She wanted to look away, but guilt made her continue watching; the guilt of knowing she was a party to this butchery, this act of retribution. She shivered yet again, and it wasn’t the night air that was getting at her. It was remorse… and fear.

  “This bastard won’t last long.” Fitzpain scowled. “Stupid Proddy wanker.”

  Sorcha stared at him, aware that his lingering smirk was only a surface image. Underneath it all, he was just an animal carving up another animal, and she had allowed herself to be drawn into it.

  God forgive her. Drawn into violence yet again.

  She would have crossed herself if she had any remaining faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church, but she had long since fallen out of love with religion… and with Brian Fitzpain. His behaviour was the cruelty of a feral child. Her wickedness was born from fear of retribution if she refused his orders. So, which of them deserved God’s forgiveness?

  Neither, she guessed.

  The smell of bile still lingered in her throat. With her heartbeat thumping like a Lambeg drum, she breathed deeply in an effort to calm her rising panic. Then she wiped a trace of spittle from her mouth.

  Damn you, Brian Fitzpain! Damn you to hell.

  And where did your family get that name anyway?

  “’Tis the pain that fits the crime,” he’d often say when he was administering punishment, and then he’d laugh. You were expected to laugh with him. It wasn’t an option if you wanted to stay in his good books. And staying in his good books kept you alive.

  The boy fought and screamed, but two men held him down. They called themselves the Pain Men: Brian Fitzpain’s loyal and dedicated apostles. It was almost like a religion: you believed what the holy Brian and his followers told you. Or, at the very least, you pretended to. When it came to the crunch, you did as they demanded. You hid Republican snipers in your home and you diligently emptied your pockets when the IRA collection plate came round. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  One of the men thrust a fist into the boy’s face to make him shut up. It didn’t work. The screaming got even louder. It echoed between the brick walls along the narrow alleyway at the rear of Mafeking Street where drug-stained syringes lay discarded alongside used condoms. Neither social workers nor pious priests were ever seen cleaning up the mess in this ghetto.

  The boy’s screams must have been heard half a mile away, but no one came to find out what was going on. They dare not. Too many of them had died sticking their noses in where they weren’t wanted. They would have been woken up by the boy’s cries, but they would know better than to open their doors or windows to investigate.

  The grim red-brick terraces were wrapped in semi-darkness.

  Not a single curtain twitched.

  Not a single door creaked.

  Sorcha relaxed her breathing as a measure of self-control returned. The foul smell still filled her nostrils, but the rhythmic thump of her heart began to lessen.

  Until the deep boom of an explosion filled the night air.

  A red flash silhouetted the line of houses.

  Fitzpain looked up. “Not one of ours. It’ll be the Loyalist bastards, so it will.” He spoke with the offhand manner of someone who had grown used to explosions in the streets of Northern Ireland. It as the behavior of a man who revelled in his own part in the violence, believed in the righteousness of it.

  We’ve got to do it, boys. We’ve got to blow the place apart. There’s no other way.

  It was yet another mantra of religious proportions.

  The explosion was a car bomb, Sorcha decided. A vehicle loaded with ANFO; a low explosive mixture initiated with a small amount of high explosive. Pure high explosives sounded quite different to anyone used to hearing them repeatedly.

  She waited until the night went dark again before she asked, “Are youse sure ’tis one of theirs, Brian? Sounds more like one of ours.”

  “’Tis not on yer list, is it? Much too early.”

  “S’pose so.” She focussed her mind on the hand-written page he had given her earlier, and she lived again the moment when a man was killed because of it; a peeler. She recalled the look of surprise in his face just before he died. He was a Catholic, but he went to his God without the last rites; totally unprepared for whatever he met on the other side.

  She shivered at the memory and wrapped her arms about herself. The image of the knife in the man’s chest came back to her and her shivering intensified.

  “What’s the matter with youse?” Fitzpain snapped.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Damn you!”

  She forced herself to wipe the images from her mind. It was far from easy. Her thoughts came back to the present when an army Saracen armoured personnel carrier rumbled noisily along Ladysmith Road, briefly visible in the streetlight at the end of the alley. That particular light was one of very few left working in this part of Belfast. Most of the junction boxes had been robbed of their timers by thieving IRA electricians. They were re-used in the manufacture of home-made bombs. The last remaining light in Ladysmith Road wouldn’t be working much
longer because many more bombs were needed if the IRA was to win this war.

  As for the troops in the Saracen vehicle, they would most likely be on their way to deal with that last explosion. God help them.

  And God rot them all for the mistakes they made here in Ireland.

  Bloody Sunday would live long in the memories of the people of Northern Ireland. Long after the last British soldier went home to a comfortable fireside in a cosy English city. Long after the population of Northern Ireland was left to try to sort out its own problems its own way. Try… and fail yet again.

  Meanwhile, the Proddy boy’s severed penis lay in a pool of blood, dimly lit by that single streetlight. His severed testicles lay nearby. Funny how Protestant dicks and balls looked pretty much like Catholic dicks and balls, Sorcha reflected wryly.

  You’d almost think they were the same race.

  She wouldn’t try out that cynical observation on Martin Foster. He wouldn’t appreciate it because he was too compassionate and thoughtful for his own good. Naïve as well, but she could forgive that.

  He was her impossible dream and she knew that such dreams were never perfect. Never lasted. Sooner or later the cracks had to show. In the meantime, she reluctantly admired the ideal way of life he offered her. Anything else meant facing up to the full extent of the ugliness of her own background. It was easier to pretend innocence and pander to his niceness and his naivety.

  After all, she would be dead now, but for him.

  Pity he was a Protestant.

  A scruffy mongrel wandered out from a back yard, sniffed at the severed penis, pissed over it and ambled away down the alley.

  No one commented.

  “Now let’s put the bastard out of his misery.” Fitzpain thrust his knife deep into the rapist’s crotch and opened an artery. Blood spurted over his hands and his dirty jeans, but he seemed unfazed by it. He laughed as the fountain of red flooded down over his shoes. “He won’t last long now. Don’t any of youse ever say I’m a man without an ounce of pity.” And he laughed again.

  The Pain Men laughed with him.

  It was expected.

  Sorcha let out a cry of disgust as a splash of red hit the torn and faded jeans she wore. They were not her jeans. Hers were thrown away in a bin outside Brian Fitzpain’s place, the bloody evidence following the peeler’s death. These jeans had previously been worn by a prostitute.

  Ironic in a way, she thought.

  She shivered once more as she turned away, remembering that less than half an hour ago the dying boy had tried to seduce her.

  Tried, but failed.

  In hindsight, she was glad of that. He didn’t deserve normal sex, not after what he did to the child. But did he deserve this? God, what an eejit he was, and him barely out of his teens. No older than herself. He should have known better.

  She gritted her teeth. The poor wee sod.

  She’d done what was expected of her… demanded of her as a matter of loyalty… but what would it achieve? Just one more killing. One more act of bloody revenge. It was at times like this when she wished she’s had the courage to go ahead and end it all.

  If she had terminated her miserable life a month ago, she would not have been at Brian Fitzpain’s rented parlour house last night. But she was there. She had been drinking heavily to deaden the impact of the peeler’s death. Who else could she turn to at a time like that, even though she blamed him for what happened? That was when word got to them about the rape. An IRA runner called at the front door, a teenager with protruding teeth and a mop of red hair. When the riots started, he would need a hood to cover that hair. It was a dead giveaway.

  “There’s been a Proddy rape last night,” he announced in a shrill, reedy voice. “A poor wee Catholic girl got raped, so she did. Joe Cahill says he wants the guy pulled in and done over.”

  “Who did it?” Fitzpain asked.

  Sorcha stood behind him, a glass of whiskey grasped in one hand, and she heard the boy give the name of Hamish McGovern followed by a brief description.

  “And where do we find him?”

  “There’s a Proddy stag night goin’ on right now.” The runner’s teeth flashed intermittently in the dim hallway light. He gave them the address of an illegal drinking den in a Protestant area. “We think t’was him what did it, but ya’d better make sure before ya do him in. If we’re wrong, the Prods will come lookin’ for ya.”

  After the runner had left, Fitzpain looked at Sorcha thoughtfully. Then he said, “Youse’d better do the findin’ out, so youse had.”

  “Not my job,” she protested, downing the last of her whiskey. It stung the back of her throat. Hadn’t there been enough violence already? Wasn’t she sick of it all?

  “Don’t bloody argue with me,” Fitzpain told her. “Go and find out for sure if it was him.”

  “Why me?”

  “’Cos I’m tellin’ youse to!”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Youse’ll regret it. By Christ, youse’ll regret it. I’m not doin’ youse any favours, Sorcha.”

  She felt fear then because she knew what he meant. Her only hope was her belief that he would draw a limit. He might have her beaten to within an inch of her life without a moment’s regret, but he couldn’t kill her. Not that. As the daughter of Barbara Mulveny, she was too close to him. It occurred to her that maybe he’d be doing her a favour if he could kill her. A bullet through the brain would be a quick and painless way out of this shitty life. And it would be ironic if he, of all people, was the one to end her miserable existence. But he couldn’t do that, could he? Not to her.

  “How do I go about it?” she asked, forcing a small measure of control into her voice. “How do I get him to confess?”

  “Use yer wits and yer tits, girl. Ye’re no wee innocent with men, are youse? Just get him in a mood to talk.”

  The inference of what was wanted could not have been clearer. She could almost hear Fitzpain telling her to drop her knickers and give the boy a good time because that would induce him to talk. What boy was going to keep his mouth shut when he’d experienced what Sorcha Mulveny had to offer?

  Her mammy was away visiting relatives in Ardglass village, and her sister was on night duty at the Mater Hospital. The way was clear. She relented and approached the boy in the early hours as he stumbled away from the stag night in the Loyalist drinking den; drunk and incapable. She sidled up to him, lured him away from his mates and told him she was one of the future bride’s friends. Told him she fancied him. He gave her a whiskey-sodden grin in return. He was too drunk to notice when she led him back to Mafeking Street. Within half an hour he was in her bed, lying on top of her and breathing whiskey fumes over her naked breasts. The sex was rubbish, he couldn’t get it fully up, but she wheedled a confession out of him anyway. He told her, in a slurred voice, about how he’d raped a dirty little Fenian. It was revenge for a Prod child killed by an IRA bomb, he said. Of course the poor girl had nothing to do with the bomb, but she was a Fenian and that was guilt enough. His drunken rambling disgusted her, so she persisted in setting him up for the punishment. She bundled the boy into his clothes and led him, still too stoned to protest, through the back yard and into the alley where Fitzpain and his thugs were waiting.

  Dawn was not far off by then, but Hamish McGovern would never see it rise. He should have kept his trousers zipped up.

  The wee bastard was shitting himself uncontrollably now. The slimy mess mingled with his blood, and the smell lingered.

  God, what a stink.

  Sorcha waited for the end; anxious to get back to her bed, and yet dreading the nightmares that would mar her sleep. Ahead of her the dirty cobbles were lit by the streetlamp where the alleyway met Ladysmith Road. It was the sort of early morning when no one would show surprise if a mutilated body turned up, dumped in the dirt like a sack of rubbish. What would be a big news story elsewhere was a common enough occurrence in a city that had long since lost all sense of humanity. She flinched instinctively wh
en a police Land Rover sped along the road, a sudden burst of noise that faded just as the boy’s screams began to weaken.

  She heard Fitzpain laugh and say, “That’ll teach ’im. ’Tis justice where it’s wanted.”

  “No it ain’t,” she muttered. “’Tis revenge.”

  “Same thing,” Fitzpain said.

  “No, it’s not.”

  Fitzpain shrugged. “Does it matter? He’s got what he deserves. Taught ’im a lesson, so it has.”

  “And what’s it gonna teach him now he’s dead?” She turned back to face the gruesome scene. “D’youse want me to call an ambulance?”

  A stupid question.

  He was a Loyalist who’d raped a twelve-year-old Catholic girl on her way home from Mass. So what did it matter whether he was carted away in an ambulance or rotted where he lay? Anger boiled inside her, deep fiery anger. Was it because the girl was only twelve, or because she was a Catholic? Round here, either was good enough reason for retribution. Or… Sorcha paused… was it because she was the one who set this up? Which was worse, she wondered: setting up a victim, or killing one? And her thoughts carried her back to the earlier killing.

  The peeler.

  The image of it still held sway inside her head. Still sickened her.

  Barrel-chested and tall, Fitzpain stood up. His voice rose like the devil himself climbing out from hell, starting low down and ending a full six foot above the ground.

  “Nah! Let him lie there. Teach the rest o’ them perverts a lesson, so it will.” This time there was a sharper tone in his voice; like the shiny edge of an otherwise grey knife blade. That was him all over, Sorcha thought. His voice was the sharp, shiny edge, and the rest of him was the grey bit. When you got to know him, you soon saw that he was just another middle-aged grey man. Angry, but grey. Receding grey hair, gaunt grey face and rumpled grey clothes. And when you looked deep into his eyes you saw such bitterness that made you wonder who had damaged him in his grey, misty past. His parents? A boy-buggering priest? Or was it a woman who had psychologically maimed him for life? One thing was for sure: other people were now paying the price of that damage. But wasn’t that a common motto for all that was wrong around here? Whatever the trouble, someone had to pay.