Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  The police had decided, after lengthy deliberations, against charging Duggan with conspiracy to murder, or the attempted murder, of Barack Obama and David Cameron. After a lengthy questioning of Duggan, they had come to the conclusion that assassinating them hadn’t actually been part of the plot.

  But all that was old news, as far as the waiting journalists in the adjoining room were concerned. It had been splashed all over the newspapers, had been the top news story on every international television channel, had dominated radio and online news for the past week, and had been among the highest-trending stories in Twitter’s history.

  The new revelations, which Johnson knew would be pure media dynamite once released, were contained in the second part of Arnside’s statement.

  It went into considerable detail about an alleged crime committed in 1984—the cold-blooded shooting on Coolderry Road, south Armagh, of Alfie Duggan, by a unit of six soldiers.

  Only one man—the now suspended chief constable of Northern Ireland, Campbell—was to be named on the charge sheet for that murder, Arnside was preparing to announce. The simple reason for that was that he was the only one still alive out of the six alleged perpetrators. The other five were all among the victims of Alfie Duggan’s son, Dessie.

  The missing incident file that had been recovered from Nottingham did no more than briefly describe the Alfie Duggan shooting and list the names of the army personnel present. It drew no conclusions and apportioned no blame. But it did corroborate the detail of who took part in the incident, as described in Will Doyle’s journal, which had now become a smoking gun.

  Finally Arnside looked up from his sheaf of papers. “This is going to cause an absolute shitstorm,” he said.

  Johnson resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. Neither he nor Jayne, who stood next to him, had ever seen anything like it. And neither, he suspected, had the media audience in the hall who were about to receive the details.

  Six army officers had gotten away with the shoot-out for nearly three decades, thanks in part to the fact that two of them had become top policemen in the force that was responsible for prosecuting such crimes.

  Johnson didn’t envy Arnside at having to face the media on this one.

  “How exactly are you going to explain the twenty-nine-year delay in getting to the bottom of this?” Jayne asked Arnside.

  The policeman pressed his lips together. “I’ll just have to come clean, as far as I can, anyway—I’m very limited in what I can say now that Campbell’s being charged. Otherwise I’m at risk of prejudicing the whole prosecution. I’ll have to admit the conspiracy by him and Simonson and then confess to a cock-up by everyone else in monitoring what was going on.”

  Johnson nodded. “The problem you’ve got,” he said, “is explaining how those files at Carrickfergus could have been stolen by them in the first place and then how the copies could sit untouched in a box in Nottingham all this time without anyone realizing.”

  “Yes, and there is no explanation,” Arnside said. “The Historical Enquiries Team has done a damn good job in locating almost all the files and papers relating to past crimes of this kind. How they missed these, I have no idea. If it was due to any instruction by Simonson or Campbell, then we’ll get to the bottom of that and add it to the charge sheet.”

  Johnson glanced at Jayne. The fact was, although the HET had its own director, the entity was part of the PSNI, and many of its investigators were former policemen from Northern Ireland. He knew there had been allegations that the HET had different, softer procedures for investigations involving former police, military, or security services members who were accused of crimes against terrorists than it did for those who were members of the IRA or loyalist terrorist groups. Who knew what orders Campbell and Simonson had given behind closed doors.

  However, the Campbell case was too high-profile to be swept under the rug. It had already been passed over to the PSNI’s Crime Operations Department, which Arnside had been heading, and there was every likelihood that the investigation would be taken over by an outside, independent police force from England.

  But there would inevitably be an enormous political outcry, too, both in Northern Ireland and in London, where senior politicians would try to capitalize on the situation, as ever.

  “You’d better make sure you keep the heat on your investigators,” Johnson said. “I want to see justice done after all that effort.”

  Arnside nodded. “But I don’t want it to derail the peace process,” he said. “That’s my worry; both sides will use it as an excuse to restart hostilities.” He jerked his thumb toward the group of journalists, who were visible through the glass panel in the classroom door. “I’d better go and face the music.”

  Johnson and Jayne watched as he opened the door of the classroom and strode across the school hall to where a lectern had been placed for him to make his address. In front of him were rows of seats, all occupied.

  The room fell silent as Arnside placed his notes on the lectern, cleared his throat, and began to speak.

  As he did, Johnson’s thoughts drifted to the innocent victims, not just those who had lost their lives but the wives left as widows, like Norma Simonson, Beth Doyle, and Susan Joyce; the children left fatherless, like Becky and Tommy Dennehy; and those who had died trying to do the right thing, like Moira. Especially Moira, whose memorial service was being held in two days. Johnson and Jayne were definitely planning to attend.

  Jayne seemed to read his thoughts. “None of this makes any sense,” she whispered.

  “No sense at all,” he said. “All I can say is, we’ve made a difference. We’ve brought it out into the open. Now it’s up to others.”

  What had O’Neill said at Ronnie’s house, after their escape from the bunker? It’s easy for you, coming in from outside. You can walk out anytime you like. For us, we’re stuck here with kids in schools, families, roots that have been put down. We’re dealing with a helluva stressful situation, issues that go back decades, and it’s bloody complicated.

  Yes, complicated it was. But Johnson knew one thing: his work was showing how futile, how unproductive, how destructive all this sectarian hostility and fighting in the name of nationalism, unionism and religion really was.

  For Northern Ireland, substitute any number of other countries and regions around the world. Johnson knew there were similar situations almost everywhere that different peoples, tribes, factions and religions coexisted. War crimes were often the result. And as long as Johnson could continue doing what he was doing to catch the perpetrators, he would.

  If you enjoyed this book please write a review

  As an independently published author, through my own imprint The Write Direction Publishing, I find that honest reviews of my books are the most powerful way for me to bring them to the attention of other potential readers.

  As you’ll appreciate, unlike the big international publishers, I can’t take out full-page advertisements in the newspapers or place posters on the subway.

  So I am committed to producing work of the best quality I can in order to attract a loyal group of readers who are prepared to recommend my work to others.

  Therefore, if you genuinely enjoyed reading this novel, then I would very much appreciate it if you would spend five minutes and leave a review—which can be as short as you like—preferably on the page or website where you bought it.

  You can find the book’s page on the Amazon website by typing ‘Andrew Turpin Bandit Country’ in the search box. Once you have clicked on the page, scroll down to ‘Customer Reviews’, then click on ‘Leave a Review.’

  Reviews are also a great encouragement to me to write more.

  Many thanks!

  Updates and other books in the Joe Johnson series

  I am keen to build a strong relationship with my readers. As part of this, I send occasional updates to those on my email list containing details of forthcoming new books, special offers, and perhaps snippets of background information on the resea
rch I’ve done, on plots, and on characters.

  For example, I sometimes join together with other authors for promotions where we might offer a selection of our books at a discounted price—or even free.

  If you would like to join my Readers’ Group and receive the email updates, I will send you, FREE of charge, an ebook box set containing the first five “taster” chapters of the first two books in the Joe Johnson series, The Last Nazi and The Old Bridge (it includes Bandit Country which you already have).

  You can sign up for the Readers’ Group and get the free box set at:

  www.BookHip.com/HLWDJQ

  The first book in the Joe Johnson series, The Last Nazi, is set in 2011, with flashbacks to Nazi-occupied Poland in 1944, and involves a search for an old SS concentration camp commander who escaped after the Second World War. Most scenes are set in Washington, DC, London, Poland, and Argentina. The book, a best seller which reached no.8 on Amazon UK, can be found at the following links:

  Amazon US: www.andrewturpin.com/amazonus-thelastnazi

  Amazon UK: www.andrewturpin.com/amazonuk-thelastnazi

  The second book in the series, The Old Bridge, is another war crimes investigation. It is set in Bosnia, Croatia and the US in 2012, with flashbacks to the Yugoslav civil war of the early 1990s. Most of the action is set in Dubrovnik, Split, London and New York City. It can also be found on Amazon at:

  Amazon US: www.andrewturpin.com/amazonus-theoldbridge

  Amazon UK: www.andrewturpin.com/amazonuk-theoldbridge

  Andrew Turpin, St. Albans, UK.

  Thanks and acknowledgements

  I would like to thank everyone who reads Bandit Country—which is my third novel in the Joe Johnson series, following on from The Last Nazi and The Old Bridge. I hope you enjoy the book and that it proves entertaining and even informative.

  As always, there have been several people who have helped me through the long process of research, writing, and editing. My main early “beta” readers this time were my brother Adrian, Warren Smith, Dave Payne, Mark Farrar and David Cole—thanks to all of you.

  But I also have a growing team of advance readers who go through the book at a later stage, just prior to publication, and have been able to give me a few useful pointers and have spotted the odd error. If you would like to join my Advance Readers team, send me an email at andrew@andrewturpin.com and let me know.

  Adrian also again helped with the graphics for my website and reader emails as well as providing good encouragement generally. Writing can be a lonely business sometimes!

  I used a different team of editors for this book. Kevin Smith and Jon Ford gave me some very helpful feedback and ideas for improvement in the earlier stages, and then Chrisona Schmidt did a very good job at the line-by-line copy editing stage. Thanks to all of them—the responsibility for any remaining mistakes lies solely with me.

  Damonza, my cover designers, again did an excellent job.

  Author’s note

  As a teenager during the 1980s, the conflict in Northern Ireland was never far from the headlines and the television news bulletins. I still have fairly clear memories of watching stories about car bombs, street fighting between the IRA and the British soldiers, and sniper attacks.

  My interest in Northern Ireland deepened while studying history at university, and I ended up writing my final year dissertation about attempts by David Lloyd George’s British government to impose conscription in Ireland during the First World War in 1918—when all of Ireland was governed from Westminster.

  The initiative, which failed, simply helped fuel a rising tide of republicanism that by 1921 had resulted in independence for what is now the Republic, with Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom.

  Since then, I’ve remained interested in events across the Irish Sea, and so it seemed almost inevitable that I would turn to this fertile source of fiction for one of my Joe Johnson stories.

  Despite many public inquiries, much of what happened in Northern Ireland during the conflict between the IRA and British security services remains shrouded in doubt and uncertainty. Nothing was ever black and white—perfect for a war crimes investigator who is determined to deliver justice, but who also recognizes the deep-rooted, historic nature of sectarian and nationalist sentiment and the difficulties involved in determining who is on the side of right.

  It is not necessary to read very deeply into the history of The Troubles before coming across accounts of the events on November 22, 1975. On that day, the south Armagh brigade of the Provisional IRA attacked a British army observation post at Drummuckavall, near Crossmaglen, on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Three British soldiers were killed in the shooting, which came nine months after the Provisionals had declared a ceasefire.

  The following day, the British government’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, referred in a statement to “the bandit country of South Armagh.” The tag stuck and has been widely used by the media ever since in connection with the southern part of County Armagh.

  The third Joe Johnson thriller, entitled Bandit Country, is set in a Northern Ireland landscape which, two decades after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, still does not match up to the vision laid out at that time.

  The on-going conflict between violent republicans, who want a united Ireland, and unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, still simmers away and explodes into violence at fairly regular intervals. During 2017, there were about sixty shootings and over thirty bombing incidents by dissident republican terrorists, principally the New IRA, as the largest group is known. Some of the attacks were directed at police officers and police stations.

  Generally speaking, it is not violence of the type that disrupts people’s lives day after day as it did at the height of the Troubles in the ’70s and ’80s. But the New IRA now represents the biggest threat since its bigger, older, brother—the Provisional IRA—ended its campaign in the 1990s. The New IRA is adept at sourcing explosive and weapons, and efforts to combat it continue to consume a large amount of time, resources, and funding among the police and intelligence organizations in the region.

  Bandit Country is set in 2013. But little has fundamentally changed since then, and as is often the case in communities where nationalism and sectarian conflict are hard-wired into the culture, it is likely that these issues will be at the forefront for years and decades to come.

  In that sense, it is hoped that the book might spur readers with little knowledge of the history of Northern Ireland to find out more, and to watch developments there as they unfold in the future with new interest.

  One major issue now is how the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic will be structured once Britain has left the European Union, while the Irish Republic remains inside it. Some senior police and security experts fear that a “hard” border, with checkpoints, might become a new target for the dissidents.

  Finally, I should note that as Joe Johnson, the lead character in this series, is from the United States, and most scenes are from his point of view, it makes sense to use American spellings and terminology in most cases, rather than my native British. Any mistakes in this respect are mine alone—please do point them out to me.

  Background reading and bibliography

  There is a huge pile of background reading on Northern Ireland sitting on my hard drive and on the shelf in my small writing den. The task of combing through it in a search for interesting fragments that could be incorporated into a fictional story has been fascinating, and the list below represents only a small sample of the whole.

  I really need to start with a huge thank you, but also an apology, to one writer in particular—Toby Harnden, currently the Washington bureau chief of The Sunday Times. He wrote a seminal non-fiction book in 1999—the original Bandit Country— on the conflict in Northern Ireland, and south Armagh in particular, built around his experiences and research as a correspondent in the regi
on.

  I spent quite some time trying to locate a copy of Toby’s book, but failed, and ended up emailing him and asking for help. He very kindly let me see a copy and I quickly realized why it is held in such high regard.

  It is immensely well-researched, written in Toby’s usual engaging style, and is packed full of colorful material about some of the IRA’s most notorious leadership figures in south Armagh, such as Thomas “Slab” Murphy, as well as facts and analysis. It proved an invaluable source of background information and ideas for me as I battled to construct my plot.

  Hopefully he will see it as a huge compliment that I’ve also stolen his title. Bandit Country was a tag coined in November 1975 by the then British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees to describe south Armagh, and has been widely used ever since.

  I struggled for a long time to think of a good alternative for this book, and despite toying with several options, I just couldn’t come up with anything that matched the stark Wild West imagery conjured up by the original tag. Given that Toby’s book is non-fiction, and was written a long time ago, and is not available as an e-book, I hope he will forgive me for my lack of original thinking. I certainly have a very long way to go to match the 100,000 worldwide sales that his book achieved—if anyone wants to drill much deeper into the history and background of the conflict in Ulster, I would thoroughly recommend it as a starting point. It is possible to find copies of the paperback edition at the Bookfinder website,

  It is also possible to read the full text of the book at Toby’s own website, http://www.tobyharnden.com/

  Apart from that, there were several other excellent books which also provided me with a deep seam of background material and ideas.

  Mark Urban’s book, Big Boys’ Rules, gives a detailed account of struggles by British security forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary to combat IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland. It examines in particular the tactics employed by undercover units within the Special Air Service (SAS) and 14 Intelligence Company. Operations mounted by these small, specialist units resulted in the deaths of thirty IRA terrorists between 1976 and 1987, according to Urban, some of them in planned ambushes. During the same period the regular army killed nine IRA men.