Last Rights by Barbara Nadel

treat me – on the night he died, I didn’t know. But the
     guilt was terrible then. The world was descending into madness again and, just as I’d done in the first lot, I was simply
     letting it happen. Which, after all, is more unforgivable? To kill a man on the orders of a so-called superior or to let a
     man obviously not well or in his right mind run off to meet his own destruction? My mates hadn’t let me desert: they’d taken
     care of this nutter and saved my life. I should have tried to save poor Kevin’s.

Chapter Seven
    T he Dooleys were a huge family. As well as the old mother and all of Kevin’s kids there were at least five adults who looked
     similar to the deceased. Brothers and sisters, I guessed, many with husbands, wives and kids in tow. Although none had come
     out in yellow, there wasn’t a lot of mourning wear to be seen. But it isn’t cheap as I’d be the first to admit. What doesn’t
     cost, however, is dignity and although the mother was obviously upset, there was precious little grief beyond that. Dodgy
     blokes wearing trilbies smoking fags, sometimes laughing, sometimes swearing angrily, blokes young enough I would have imagined
     to be in the services. No, the only real sorrow I could see was shown by Kevin Dooley’s wife.
    She came alone, still in her ratty old coat but with a hat she’d got from somewhere on her head. It had a bit of a veil, which
     she’d pulled down over her face that, with the trees she was standing among, concealed her from all but the most keen observer.
     That was me. I watched her cryfor some time before I went over. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I had to do next. But no one had known where she was
     so it had seemed the best, if not the right, thing to do to all involved.
    ‘Mr Cox and his boys have done your husband proud,’ I said, as I watched Albert walk towards the graveside ahead of the coffin.
     It was one of those dank afternoons where the half-bare trees look like ragged skeletons against the battleship grey of the
     sky.
    As soon as she saw me, Pearl Dooley’s tears stopped and something that looked like fear came into her eyes. ‘I loved him,
     you know,’ she said, ‘my Kevin.’
    ‘But he hit you,’ I said. ‘You had nipper after nipper for him and he still . . .’
    ‘I loved him!’ she said. ‘He gave me my life, he did. I know it can’t make much sense to anyone else, but he took me in and
     he protected me. He was a hard man, yes, but . . . Anyway, what’s it to do with you?’
    In contrast to how humble she’d been with me when she and Velma had first turned up at the shop she was now openly hostile.
     As far as I could tell, Spitalfields, and what had been discovered there, had changed her.
    ‘Did your mother love her bloke?’ I said. ‘The one she finished with her hatpin?’ I turned to look down at her and found a
     face bursting with both grief and anger. ‘You know I saw your husband on the night that he died, Mrs Dooley,’ I said. ‘He
     told me he’d been stabbed.’
    She shook her head. ‘He died from the blast. The coppers’ doctor said so.’
    ‘There was a little hole, just under his breastbone,’ Isaid. ‘It could’ve been where a long pin stabbed into him, maybe from a lady’s hat. Where were you and Velma the night that
     Kevin died, Pearl?’
    Her mouth opened and her eyes, even through the veil I could see, filled with tears.
    ‘No, it’s not possible!’ she hissed rather than shouted. Father Burton, at the head of the grave, cleared his throat prior
     to beginning his committal. ‘You think I killed him? Just because my mum—’
    ‘You know, some of the Shoreditch coppers reckon that your Ruby could’ve killed old Mr Kaplan,’ I said. ‘Bessie Stern didn’t
     see him alive before that raid. Ruby was the last person to see him, as you know. Some people believe murder’s in the blood.’
    I didn’t add that I had doubts about that. Although the way Kevin had met his end was