Blow Up the Irish Mail!

By Simon Mostin

In the vibrant backdrop of 1880s London, a gripping tale of political intrigue and impending disaster unfolds. Eifion Price, an impassioned Welsh nationalist, works as a guard on the Irish Mail train, simmering with a desire to make the oppressors of his beloved country suffer. Little does he know that Edward Mulholland, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, sees in Eifion the ideal instrument to exact revenge on England.

Meanwhile, Thomas Wells, a seasoned and uncompromising detective from Scotland Yard, receives a directive from his superiors: investigate a troubling rumour of an impending attack in London, orchestrated by the I.R.B and involving a Welsh accomplice. Unbeknownst to him, a carefully concealed bomb has been smuggled into the country from Ireland, its deadly detonation poised to claim countless lives. As Thomas delves deeper into the investigation, he unwittingly attracts the chilling attention of the I.R.B, transforming him into their next target.

With each passing moment, the day of unfathomable horror creeps closer, and time becomes an unrelenting adversary. Will Eifion succumb to Mulholland’s machinations, or will his conscience steer him away from the path of destruction? Can Thomas decipher the puzzle before innocent lives are irrevocably shattered? As the clock ticks relentlessly, the tension mounts, propelling readers on a suspenseful journey through a world on the brink.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035818426

Simon Mostin

Simon Mostin was born in Bangor, North Wales in 1979. He went to Lancaster University where he studied sociology from 2002–2005. Simon studied nursing at Birmingham City University from 2006–2009. He taught English as a foreign language in Thailand for six months in 2015/2016. He currently works in care.

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About the Author

Simon Mostin was born in Bangor, North Wales in 1979. He went to Lancaster University where he studied sociology from 2002–2005. Simon studied nursing at Birmingham City University from 2006–2009. He taught English as a foreign language in Thailand for six months in 2015/2016. He currently works in care.

Copyright Information ©

Simon Mostin 2023

The right of Simon Mostin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035818419 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035818426 (ePub e-book)

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First Published 2023

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Chapter 1

Dublin, Ireland

1880

A terrible storm raged in the skies over Dublin, sending a great wind roaring through the streets bellowing like an angry and tyrannical god, its terrible breath tousling both hair and clothes and violently shaking the unlucky recipient caught in its path and blowing them backwards and forwards as it pleased; the unlucky recipient being unable to do much other than to do as the wind willed until, its appetite sated, it moved on to its next unlucky victim to have its mischievous way with them for a time. Although, as a final afterthought of its malicious cruelty, it left its victims soaking and sodden with the heavy rain it left in its wake. The unlucky souls caught in its buffeting malice could be forgiven for thinking that this was the latest cruel jest played upon them by an angry Old Testament god who had surely forsaken them in this blighted land. If so, then it was the least of the malice’s that this divine being had seen fit to inflict upon them.

The wind whistled through this night-time street as those unlucky enough to be out in it put their heads down and made their soaking sodden way through it. The inhabitants of the street itself were also the lost souls that only a blighted land would vomit up and, although not the hell that Dante and Virgil would have gone through, this was as good a representation of it as any that could be found on earth at the moment.

Here was a man staggering to and fro, this time not by the malice’s of the wind but through being drunk, the alcohol in his system acting as a temporary amnesia for the troubles besetting him. As he staggered through the town, he passed gangs of men fighting with each other, their violence unabated by the rain. Down a nearby alley, a young man in his mid-twenties had a young girl of fourteen, whose services he had just paid for, up against a brick wall. As the man entered her roughly, the girl closed her eyes to drown out the pain and tried to think of the lifeline that the money would represent to her family as her backside rubbed roughly against unyielding brick and endure the rabid behaviour of the cruel man violating her as he bit and sucked. Such cruelty and despair was normal in a land that was in the aftereffects of what had been a long famine.

The Great Famine had started when the potato crop on which the poor in rural Ireland depended upon for food was affected by an infection and crops began to fail in 1845. Irish politicians in Dublin became aware of the distress caused by the famine and petitioned Queen Victoria and the Westminster parliament to do something to relieve the terrible poverty. Although the British government did repeal the Corn Laws and its tariffs which would reduce the price of grain and bread, this did absolutely nothing to relieve the poverty. Indeed, the situation was only worsened by the fact that Britain was a major recipient of Irish exports such as livestock, butter, rabbit, fish and honey which could have been used to feed the Irish people but was exported away instead.

The famine would not end until 1852 and for those who could not emigrate and had to remain, life was brutally hard. This was why the denizens of this Dublin street took to drinking, fighting and fornicating, the brutality meted out to that fourteen-year-old prostitute in that back alley was a metaphor for the brutality that the Great Famine had wrought on Ireland and those unlucky enough to be left in that country and wandering the windblown rain lashed streets of Dublin that night.

However, temporary solace and warmth could be found in an adjacent inn. The grey-haired and grey-bearded man looking out of the rain-lashed window must have felt that as he looked out on the scene that met his eyes. He was old enough to remember the days of the famine and the great hardships that it had caused. Such thoughts were depressing as was the weather so he turned away from the window and back to the drink on the bar before him now his third one.

The inn was warm and the man was luxuriating in this as well as the alcohol coursing through his body providing a temporary feeling of contentment away from all troubles and the smile of the pretty pale-skinned blonde girl who delivered it to him. She was a very pretty girl this one, thought the grey-haired man, a beautiful Coleen far too young for him but she would make a fine wife for some lucky man but at least he could enjoy the proximity of her beauty for some short time.

Here at least was a form of happiness, a one-man utopia in this inn but the troubles of the times could not be denied even in the relative comfort of this lively inn and its mostly contented patrons, for on the opposite side of the inn where the grey-haired man and the pretty barmaid were, was a far table whose occupants were not at all interested in the frivolities of escape that excessive alcohol or the glimpse of a pretty bar maid would allow.

There were five occupants in all and they were engaged in very serious and hushed conversation as well they might as they were all members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the organisation that wanted to free Ireland from British rule.

The grey-haired man looked up impatiently as the inn doors opened, admitting for just a second the brutal weather outside as a red-haired man entered. This man’s name was Michael Cullen. He moved over to the bar and quietly ordered a stout from the blonde barmaid and made his way to the table of the IRB men, for he was one of them. He nodded a greeting and a muttered apology for his lateness to the dark-haired and imposing man at the head of the table.

This man’s name was Edward Mullholland. Mullholland nodded his acceptance of Cullen’s apology and continued with his talk of conspiracy. Edward Mullholland was clearly the leader of the group gathered around this table and it was clear that he carried an enormous amount of respect as others would not have excused Cullen’s lateness so easily.

Edward Mullholland was an angry and bitter man overflowing with resentment at the English and their failure to relieve the sufferings caused in the Great Famine. The famine had led to the demise of both his parents and four siblings from both disease and starvation. As the only surviving member of the family and in a desperate state of hunger, he was evicted from the only home he had ever known. In order to survive, the young Mullholland had to do whatever he could by begging or by living off any food that he could pick up off the ground. The memories of this time still brought him feelings of shame, humiliation, sadness and, more importantly, anger, which he nurtured to this very day.

At the age of ten, having walked all the way from his home in County Mayo to Dublin, he collapsed from weakness, tiredness and hunger. Death’s sweet and caressing embrace invited him to join it to free himself from this life of misery and toil, to sleep forever away from all this, it promised the child but its request would be denied as he was found by a local woman who took him into her home, fed him and gave him a bed to sleep in.

As he began to recover, and death and its insistent and caressing embrace left him, he told the woman whom he knew as Miss Niamh about what had become of him and his family. Miss Niamh adopted the boy and he became her son; such was her Christian duty as she saw it.

In spite of this early hardship and the resentment and anger that it caused, Edward Mullholland would have a happy childhood. Miss Niamh insisted that he keep his original name in honour of his deceased family but she as a woman who had been denied children saw the arrival of this boy as a gift from God himself. She bestowed much love on him and he grew into a healthy and happy young adult. He was a good-looking and charming man, full of confidence, almost commanding and he soon became popular with the local girls and he soon met the girl whom he would fall in love with. Her name was Maeve and after a courtship of about a year, he married her in the local Catholic church in 1856 when he was twenty-one and she was nineteen. A long happy life awaited the both of them and Mullholland looked back on it as the happiest day of his life.

Childbirth would not come easy