Hide Her Name Read Online Free Page B

stump at Simon. Picking up the handset, he turned to face the wall before speaking into the mouthpiece.
    Less than thirty seconds later Simon almost spat out his tea as Howard spoke soothingly into the phone.
    ‘Now, now, Sister, you must not upset yourself. We will be at the school in less than half an hour. I can assure you, you have done exactly the right thing calling me and we will make sure the bishop knows that.’
    Howard replaced the receiver with far more enthusiasm than he had picked it up.
    ‘That was Sister Evangelista, she’s got news, good news, full of clues news. It sounds as though she has got our motive, mate. Drink up, one very upset nun seems to want to tell us all.’
    They both banged their mugs down on the table and two minutes later were whizzing through Liverpool city centre in a pale blue and white panda car, heading up towards Nelson Street school.

2
    L IFE ON THE four streets had very slowly returned to a normal routine. After all, the women could only last so many days without baking bread.
    From the second the news had broken, floor-mop handles had banged constantly on kitchen walls, summoning the women to a conference in whichever home had the freshest piece of gossip first.
    As they ran up and down the entry and in and out of one another’s homes, with babies on hips, holding half-full bottles of sterilized milk for the tea or a shovel of coal to keep a fire burning, they became engrossed by the most intense speculation. Who on this earth could have done such an awful thing and why?
    The women talked of nothing else and almost wore themselves out.
    Even the children playing on the green huddled into groups and repeated the whispered conversations they had heard at home. Rehearsing for the future. Dealing in the currency of the streets.
    ‘The Pope is in such a rage, so he is, he is coming from Rome to Liverpool to kill whoever did it with his own bare hands,’ said Declan, Maura and Tommy’s little rascal, to his rather serious twin brother, Harry.
    ‘No,’ said Harry, shocked at the thought of the Pope strangling someone. ‘That cannot be true, ye liar, where did ye hear that?’
    ‘It is so, I heard Mammy say it to Sheila in the kitchen this morning.’
    If his mammy was telling Sheila, then it must be true for sure. Harry gasped and put his fist in his mouth before he ran off to tell his mate Little Paddy, who had been a bit down of late, having caused such a fuss himself.
    He had been at the very centre of his own storm in relation to the murder and was now maintaining a low profile.
    As a result of what Little Paddy had blurted out, the police had taken in one of their own, Jerry Deane, for questioning. Everyone agreed this was a fanciful notion on the part of the police, who must have been desperate indeed. And all on the back of Peggy and Paddy’s stupid Little Paddy, looking to make a name for himself as the clever one at school. Claiming he had seen Jerry Deane running down the entry on the night of the murder, skulking like a thief in the night.
    As if anyone would ever believe anything Little Paddy said.
    Jerry Deane had been back at home within the day. Following the beating he took from his da, Little Paddy struggled to sit down for a week.
    ‘That is one child who will never be described as clever,’ said Molly Barrett to Annie O’Prey, just loud enough for Little Paddy to hear, as they both stood on the pavement to sweep their front steps.
    ‘As if any child from that family could know anything,’ Annie O’Prey replied, not breaking her stroke with her broom.
    Little Paddy’s da might have thrashed the living daylights out of him, but Little Paddy knew what he had seen, and he knew it was true, and no matter how many thrashings he was given, he knew he was right. He had seen Uncle Jerry running down the entry in the middle of the night. How was he supposed to know that he was only off to Brigid and Sean’s house for a card school and to tuck into the wedding