The Bells of Scotland Road (31 page)

It was over, it had happened, nothing to do now. His full weight on her back, a big man kneeling astride, pulling hard, no breath.

She studied her fingernails. Her hands were pale.

A smell, just a smell, thick and sweet, where? No talking yet. A smell, forgotten, hidden away in her head.

The door opened. ‘Hello, love.’

It was Mam. Mam was big and strong and she had always been there. But even Mam had cried, so Mam had no answers, either. Because there were no answers. It was no use.

Maureen stood up while Mam gathered up a spare nightie, a hairbrush, a comb. They walked out of the sanctuary and into the body of the hospital. People moved about the corridor and made noise.
Maureen Costigan carried on putting one foot in front of the other, because there was no choice. Time and tide waited for no man. That had been one of Grandma’s sayings. The future was there,
so she simply walked towards it while her heart continued its perfect and undisturbed beating.

Diddy Costigan was seeing the world for the first time, would now be able to tell her friends at the bagwash that she had been to Lowton, Leigh, Atherton and Bolton. Bolton was
grander than she had expected. Everyone thought of the mill towns as shabby, dirty and dull, but this, the largest town in England, seemed to be thriving in spite of recession.

She took in the civic buildings which formed a perfect, crescent-shaped backdrop for the Town Hall and its magnificent clock, decided that there must be money in cotton if these structures had
risen out of spinning the stuff. Maureen wasn’t taking in much. ‘Look,’ said Diddy, ‘a Bolton tram. I wonder where it’s going. Have you seen all the chimneys?
Thousands of them. This is where they make the quilts we have on our beds.’

Maureen stared through the window. She had never ridden in a car before. They had driven through some towns, past fields, over and under bridges. Mam and Edith had tried to keep up some sort of
conversation, but Maureen hadn’t spoken yet. So she would speak now and get it over and done with. ‘I don’t want any questions,’ she said.

Diddy, who was sharing the rear seat with her daughter, simply sat and allowed her mouth to hang open.

‘What did you say?’ asked the driver.

‘No questions,’ repeated Maureen in answer to what was obviously a question. ‘About what happened to me, I mean.’

Edith understood. This poor young thing was plainly in shock, could take months to get back to somewhere approaching normal. ‘There’ll be no inquisitions from me or from
Richard,’ she promised.

Maureen turned to her mother. ‘Sorry, Mam,’ she said softly.

‘What for?’ Diddy asked eventually.

‘For getting into trouble. For not talking in the hospital. Only I didn’t know what to tell them. If I’d opened my mouth, they would have gone on about how tall was he, how
strong, was I sure I hadn’t caught a glimpse.’ She swallowed painfully. ‘It would’ve been like going through it all over again, Mam. And I don’t want to. Don’t
let them make me.’

‘I won’t. I’ll keep you safe, love.’

Maureen closed her eyes and leaned back. Coming away was probably the right thing, because nothing would be expected of her. Perhaps she might even start to feel better or worse or different.
Feeling anything at all might be a step in the right direction. If she could just care about how she looked, what she did, where she went. Was worrying about not caring a feeling, she wondered? And
was she really worrying, or was she merely thinking?

She remembered being a tree in a show about ten years earlier. As a new pupil of the dancing school, Maureen had simply stood in her tap shoes and tree costume, her arms outstretched, fingers
dropping paper leaves onto the stage. She was a tree again. If the wind blew, she might bend, but exterior forces would have to be in charge. Edith Spencer was wind and weather at the moment. Edith
Spencer was dictating pace and direction. Like a three-year-old sapling, Maureen must stand still and let things happen.

‘You all right, queen?’ asked Diddy.

‘Yes,’ replied Maureen. She wasn’t, but she didn’t want to go into any details.

Anthony Bell stopped outside the village post office. He had acquired a rather ramshackle bike, and he leaned this untidy object against the wall of the shop. There
wasn’t much doing today. An improbably blue sky was dotted with cotton wool clouds kept mobile by an intermittent breeze. A dog barked, the till drawer inside the shop clattered into the
closed position, Bridie Bell emerged with her shopping basket.

She stopped in her tracks. Anthony could tell by her demeanour that she had been rendered uncomfortable by his unexpected presence. ‘Good morning,’ he achieved after a small and
rather unwieldy silence, ‘how’s Cathy?’

‘Both the girls are fine, thank you.’

He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘Damn,’ he muttered, ‘I’ve forgotten my money. I’ll walk back with you.’

Bridie fiddled in her purse. ‘I can lend you two shillings,’ she offered.

‘Forgotten the list as well.’ He indicated the basket attached to the bike’s handlebars. ‘Shopping on wheels from now on.’ She wasn’t looking at him, not
fully. She knew. Women were like that, he supposed. They were capable of receiving messages loudly and clearly when not a single word had been uttered. Perhaps they had hidden antennae or a sixth
sense.

Bridie tried to smile, but the effort gave birth to no more than a nervous flicker. ‘Diddy’s coming today,’ she said. ‘We found out just last night that Maureen was
attacked. So she’s coming with Diddy to stay at Cherry Hinton.’

Anthony froze. ‘Attacked?’ The pitch of his voice had risen. ‘When? Where?’

Bridie sighed. ‘We don’t know the full tale yet, but the poor girl was in hospital for days. Some man came up behind her and tried to strangle her. She was found by a tramp –
you know the fellow – he pushes an old cart round, has a one-man band and a puppet show.’

Flash Flanagan, thought Anthony. Flash had been entertaining the children of Scotland Road for about half a century. ‘Does Maureen know who did this to her?’

‘No.’

Anthony swallowed his instinctive terror. No, no, it could not possibly be Liam, not this time. Maureen was only a child. Light dawned slowly at the front of his mind. Maureen. Maureen Costigan
had been making eyes at Anthony. Liam allowed no-one to do that. But Anthony had left the area, was well out of Maureen’s reach. Had Liam felt that his twin had moved away to wait for Maureen
to come of age? Was it that blind fury again, the special rage that had driven Liam for years to break bones, to throw his brother in the river, to . . . to kill Val? ‘Jesus,’ he
whispered.

‘Anthony?’

His legs refused to move. The upper part of his body was trying to push the bike, yet his feet remained planted firmly on paving stones.

‘Anthony?’ she repeated.

‘I . . . er . . . I’ll be all right in a minute.’ He sat down on the ground after deciding that sitting would be better than falling. The bike went with him, of course, and he
lay that on the flags. Bridie threw aside her basket and crouched next to him. ‘Are you ill?’ It was important that he should not be ill again. Bronchitis could be the very devil to
shift, could lead to a permanent weakness in the chest, even to bouts of pneumonia. The idea of him being ill again panicked her beyond reason. ‘Shall I get help?’ she asked.

‘No. There is no help.’

Fear stabbed into her heart. Did he have some degenerative illness that took away the power of movement from time to time? Was he going to lose the ability to walk? ‘Tell me what’s
wrong,’ she pleaded.

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

He shook his head. ‘Go away from me, Bridie. People who associate with me always meet trouble. Val died, you know. Now, poor Maureen Costigan, who had a little schoolgirl passion for me,
has been half-murdered too.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘You must listen to me,’ he persisted. ‘You know I’m fond of you, too fond, perhaps.’ He cursed himself inwardly. Those words should never have been spoken. If such
a declaration were to meet the light of day, it should be made in better circumstances. Better circumstances meant not sitting in the street like a fool and not being the son of the loved
one’s husband. ‘He’ll find out, Bridie. He always does. He’ll know how I feel about you.’

She rose and stared down at him. This was Samuel Bell’s son, and she loved being near him, hated being near him, felt warm, excited, terrified, sick. ‘Sam would not hurt you or
me,’ she said, mistaking his meaning, ‘and we can’t be carrying on fond of each other anyway.’

He lifted his head so quickly that a red-hot crick of pain shot up his neck. She cared. Anthony could see it in her expression, could read it in her eyes. ‘I am not talking about my father
finding out,’ he said quietly. ‘My brother is the dangerous one. Liam is the murderer.’

‘What?’ Bridie backed away and leaned against the post office wall. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me. I don’t need to repeat it. He killed Val and he tried to kill Maureen. No-one would ever believe that, not without proof. You must say nothing. I don’t need
proof. Yes, he is a priest and yes, I may sound crazy, but he and I are identical twins. I’ve known him for almost thirty years. We were born at the same time and we grew up together. The
fact that I survived to adulthood is nothing short of miraculous. Liam is ill. The illness makes him evil.’

Bridie could not lay her tongue across one sensible word. Yet she knew that she believed what this man said. He was kind, clever and good. He was also humorous, but no sign of fun appeared in
his face today. The level-headed Anthony Bell was not the sort to make unfounded allegations.

‘I’m sorry, Bridie.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Sorry. If I’ve frightened you.’

‘I’m tougher than I look.’ She wanted to question him, to try to reassure him, but they were in a public place. Anyway, she needed time to absorb the concept of an ordained
killer.

He struggled to his feet. She reached out to help him, withdrew her hands as soon as he was upright. ‘Did I burn your fingers?’ he asked.

Bridie hid her face by turning to retrieve her shopping. This was terrible. The shock in her fingers seemed to have transmitted itself to him. He had felt her pleasure.

‘Bridie?’

She swung to face him. ‘Come on, let’s get you home,’ she said in the no-nonsense voice that was usually reserved for Cathy and Shauna. ‘We can’t have you falling
down all over the place, can we? Wheel the bicycle – it will support you.’ Liam was an unpleasant fellow. Was it possible that a man of God could be a cold-blooded murderer? And what
about confession? Priests went to confession just like everybody else. Was Liam receiving absolution while nursing a mortal sin? Because absolution would surely be refused in the case of a
murderer. And if he did not confess the crime, Liam would be damned for ever more. All these thoughts spun around in her head while she waited for Anthony to right his bicycle.

They walked in silence up the paved street and along the dirt track that led to Anthony’s cottage. At the gate, they stopped and looked at each other. ‘Are you going to be all
right?’ she asked. Could he hear her heart pounding?

‘Yes, thank you.’

She placed the basket on the garden wall. ‘Will I come in and make you a cup of tea?’

He smiled sadly. ‘That could be extremely dangerous, you know.’

Bridie did know.

He left his bike outside the door and went into the cottage. He would not look back. What had happened to Val and Maureen must never happen to Bridie.

In the kitchen, Anthony pulled a shopping list from one pocket and a ten shilling note from the other. He had forgotten nothing on his recent shopping expedition. With the possible exception of
his principles. He should not have told her about Liam. He should not have dragged Bridie into such murky waters.

It was the shock, he supposed. Bridie must say nothing to Maureen or to Diddy. But she wouldn’t. He had known Bridie for just a few months, yet he realized that she would never hurt
anyone, not intentionally.

Which was more than could be said for Father Liam Bell.

Anthony Bell jumped off the tram before it had stopped moving. He leapt onto the pavement and immediately looked around for Flash Flanagan. Flash Flanagan was one of those
people who were always there. Like birth, death and dirty washing, Flash was one of life’s undeniable inevitabilities. But the old man, his puppets and his tambourine were neither visible nor
audible today.

Anthony glanced across the shop fronts, took in the Maypole Dairy, Razor Sharpe’s barber shop, the premises that housed a mender of false teeth who was known as Gob Stopper. He walked
along, peered into Daly’s tobacconist’s, Dolly Hanson’s, the pork butcher’s. There was no sign of Flash, his cart or his gaudy marionettes.

Alice Makin, a mountainous woman who worked on Paddy’s Market, was being ‘escorted’ from the Throstle’s Nest by two unfortunate policemen. She had one in a stranglehold
under a massive arm, while the second was enduring heavy blows delivered by the man-sized boots she wore.

‘Mr Bell?’

Anthony swivelled, saw Nicky Costigan. ‘Monica. How are you?’

‘It’s Nicky, sir.’

‘Sorry. Tell me, Nicky, have you seen anything of Flash Flanagan?’

‘I haven’t,’ she replied. ‘Not for a week or two. You live near the Spencers now, don’t you? So have you seen Mam and our Maureen?’

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I’ll visit them tomorrow, perhaps. I’m only here for the day.’

‘Look out,’ warned Nicky, her tone heightened by a mixture of amusement and anxiety, ‘here comes trouble – watch you don’t get knocked over.’

Alice Makin had taken both policemen into firm custody, was holding one under each arm. ‘Mind yer backs,’ she screamed as she approached Nicky and Anthony. Her face was scarlet and
running with sweat as she fought to hang on to the struggling prey.

Anthony and Nicky stepped back. ‘Alice?’ called Anthony.

‘What? Can’t you see I’m busy?’ A half-strangled policeman peered at Anthony. ‘Get some help,’ he managed. He had lost his helmet. There would be trouble at
Rose Hill Police Station when the sergeant found out about that. The missing headgear would be adorning some chimney pot by this evening, another trophy acquired by the youth of Scotland Road.