The Wild Heart

by Menon, David

  ‘ I’m just … a guy in my late thirties without much of a life’.

  ‘ You mean an intimate life’.

  ‘ Yeah, that’s what I mean’.

  ‘ You’ve always known how lonely this would turn out to be’.

  ‘ I have’ said Ian ‘ But maybe I’ve had enough’.

  ‘ You can’t just resign from a job like this, Ian’.

  ‘ I can do whatever I like in a free country’.

  ‘ You gave up some of that freedom’.

  ‘ I don’t remember having much of a choice’.

  ‘ Ian, Derek Campbell is out of gaol’.

  ‘ So, we get to the reason why you’re here. Should I be concerned by that news?’

  ‘ I think you should keep an eye over your shoulder, yes’.

  ‘ But why if he doesn’t know where I am?’

  ‘ You’re right, he doesn’t know where you are but he might have ways of finding out. All I’m saying, Ian, is watch yourself and be careful. That’s all’.

  The evening presenter on Sky News read out the headlines at seven and then crossed to the channel’s political correspondent who was standing on St. Stephens Green, outside the Houses of Parliament, with a breaking news story concerning the resignation of an MP from the Ulster Democratic Party.

  ‘ Thank you, yes, Peter Irvine, one of the Ulster Democratic Party’s senior M.P’s, he was first elected in 1987, has resigned from the UDP and formed his own party which he’s calling the True Unionists. It’s rather soured the note of jubilation at the scenes last week at Stormont when the leaders of the main Unionist and Republican parties sat down to devolved government in the province. Peter Irvine is with me now’. The correspondent then turned to his guest and said ‘ Peter Irvine, what do you hope to achieve by this dramatic move today?’

  Peter Irvine was in his usual grey suit, blue shirt, red and white striped tie. He’d just turned fifty and leaned forward with the stature of age, trying to avoid looking at the camera just off to his right.

  ‘ Justice for the unionist people and an end to the Good Friday agreement which is the granting of a republican wish list. It’s time to smash these aspirations once and for all and end the minority dictating to the majority. I believe very strongly that what happened last week was a sell-out to terrorists and will lead us ultimately into a united Ireland which is totally against the wishes of the unionist people’.

  ‘ You really think that the UDP would countenance even for a second any move towards a united Ireland?’

  ‘ I believe that the UDP has abandoned its responsibilities to its constituents and the wider unionist community by joining a government with Sinn Fein IRA’.

  ‘ So you’re totally opposed to progress and unwilling to make the necessary compromises for peace?’

  ‘ We are not opposed to progress but we will never agree to progress solely on republican terms’ said Irvine. ‘ We need the IRA’s army council to make an announcement confirming that it has disbanded before we can trust the process’.

  ‘ But you know they’ll never do that’.

  ‘ That’s their choice but I could not remain a member of a party that is happy to sit down to government with former terrorists’.

  ‘ Peter Irvine, what do you say to those who brand you as out of step with the majority of unionists in Northern Ireland who just want a normal life without all the sectarian divisions that have prevented that from happening until now?’

  ‘ I say that judging from the support I’ve received in phone calls and emails today, those people who attack me in that way need to go out and listen to the unionist people who are fed up with the unrelenting fulfilment of republican wish lists’.

  ‘ Okay, but what about all the loyalist guns in Northern Ireland?’

  ‘ That’s not the issue at this particular time’.

  ‘ But in the last year there have been twice as many incidents of violence committed by so-called loyalist paramilitaries than republican ones. The figures are in the public domain and speak for themselves, don’t they?’

  ‘ In terms of an agreement on a devolved assembly it’s republican weapons that matter to unionists and that’s who I and my colleagues in the True Unionists represent’.

  ‘ So what do you want your former boss, the leader of the UDP and the new First Minister of Northern Ireland, to do now?’

  ‘ Resign and call fresh elections but they won’t dare because they know I’m right’.

  ‘ And what will you do in the meantime?’

  ‘ Campaign in whatever way I can to bring about justice for the unionist people in our beloved land of Ulster’.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The thing he liked about the coast road was that there were many tracks off it that led to places that either people didn’t know about or had no inclination to go to. Detective Inspector Graham Armstrong of the Police Service of Northern Ireland pulled up at a spot where he could afford himself a view of the sea whilst he waited. He was only a few metres down from the road but there was enough of a ledge to hide his car from view of the traffic above. People didn’t tend to look straight down anyway. They looked out to the view across the Irish Sea and the cliff itself didn’t mean much unless you were planning to use it to rid yourself of this world in the hope that something better would be in the next. Many had done that along this stretch.

  He looked down the coast to the town of Larne which was only about five miles away. Larne was the town in County Antrim through which some of the ferry passengers were travelling for more sinister reasons than visiting the relatives or going to the mainland to look for work. He’d made several snatches down at the terminal over the years. Some were common or garden criminals who thought they’d cut themselves a piece of the big time and some would claim to be either defending Ulster or doing their best to sell it out to the free state. The good and bad, the right and wrong had all been easy to identify when he was a young P.C. But these days it was getting harder to work out who your enemies really were when former godfathers of the IRA were sharing power at Stormont with protestant hardliners. Graham was glad of what was called the ‘peace dividend’ that would mean that his children wouldn’t have to grow up in the kind of brutalised uncertainly that his generation had been subjected to. But to call it all progress? He wasn’t sure about that. The republicans seemed to have got all they ever wanted short of a united Ireland and that wasn’t permanently off the agenda. He’d tried his best to open his mind to the new situation but it was difficult when he‘d been passed over for promotion by the Catholic Jimmy Kent. The DCI job had come down to a choice between himself and Kent and nobody would ever be able to convince Graham that Kent had got it for any other reason than the powers that be needed to demonstrate their commitment to a ‘more representative and inclusive force’.

  The sea looked wild today. Graham thought it must be rough for those on the ferries as the waves crashed against the shoreline. He had no sea legs. He threw up even in calm waters. He’d once taken the family on holiday to the Isle of Man and for some unfathomable reason he’d booked the ferry from Belfast. He’d spent the entire journey, both out and back, throwing up and the kids had never let him forget it. Now when they went on holiday it was always either by air or, in the case of crossing the border into Donegal or Sligo, by car.

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. His contact was late. He hated it when people didn’t pay attention to punctuality. Then, when he was starting to get irritated, he heard a rustle behind the car. He instinctively placed his hand on his gun that was inside his jacket and looked through the rearview mirror. Jamie came out of the undergrowth and straddled up to the car. He was dressed in his usual hooded jacket and jeans and Graham thought he was the wrong end of his twenties to wear that kind of clobber but no matter. There was no dress code in dealings of this kind. Jamie opened the passenger door and got in.

  ‘ You’re late’ said Graham.

  ‘ So arrest me’ said Jamie defiantly.

&
nbsp; ‘ You’re not even funny, Jamie’.

  Jamie Robertson had been one of Graham’s snouts for months. They'd met when, during the course of a previous investigation, Graham had caught Jamie in a compromising position with underage girls and offered him a deal when Graham found out that Jamie was best mates with Shaun Campbell.

  ‘ How’s your mate Shaun?’ Graham asked.

  ‘ Battling with his father’ said Jamie ‘ Since Derek came out of prison they haven’t stopped rowing’.

  ‘ What about?’

  ‘ Derek doesn’t like the nature of the business Shaun is involved in. Shaun says his father should wake up to what he calls the reality on the ground’.

  Jamie was sweating as he talked. The last time he’d made contact with Graham, Shaun Campbell had grown suspicious when Jamie couldn’t think of an excuse to explain his absence that particular morning. He’d caught him off guard. His mind had gone blank and he was sure his hesitation aroused sufficient suspicion in Shaun to make him want to keep an eye on him. He couldn’t be certain but he was sure he’d been followed.

  ‘ I can’t do this much longer’ said Jamie ‘ It’s too much of a risk’.

  ‘ What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘ Shaun knows. I’m sure he does. And if Shaun knows then Derek knows too and he’s one hell of an angry man just now’.

  ‘ What is he angry about specifically?’

  ‘ There’s someone he calls the Judas. He’s the one who grassed him up twenty years ago and whose evidence closed down the Ulster Defenders. He thought he was dead but he’s found out he’s alive and living in Manchester. The only thing on Derek’s mind now is killing him although he’s not going to do it just like that. He wants his revenge to taste as good as he can make it. He’s made contact with some group on the mainland that’s putting the wind up all the Pakis and they’ve agreed to help him. Freddie Burnside did all the groundwork before Derek got out of gaol. Derek says he’s been waiting twenty years for this and he’s going to make the most of it’.

  ‘ Do we have a name for this Judas character?’

  ‘ Duncan Laurence’.

  Graham felt like he’d been bashed in the chest with a slab of concrete. ‘ What name did you just say?’

  ‘ Duncan Laurence’ Jamie repeated. ‘ Why? Do you know him?’

  Mark inwardly groaned. Somebody had stuck leaflets for the ‘ White English Movement’ on the staff noticeboard and he knew exactly who it would be. Tina was one of his team, a Geordie who’d met her painter and decorator fiancé from Bolton at a mutual friend’s wedding and moved over from Newcastle when they got engaged. Mark hadn’t taken to Tina’s fiancé, Tyrone, when he met him at last year’s office Christmas party. Shortly into the conversation Tyrone had begun spouting garbage about England not belonging to the white man anymore and the whole country being run by Scots. He’d have ignored all of that and just not bothered with him anymore but then Tyrone had declared his sympathy for those responsible for a spate of arson attacks on Asian-owned businesses in Rochdale and Oldham. They’d put out a statement declaring their objective was to ‘ take back England for the white protestant people and forcibly remove all immigrants’. Mark had suspected from Tyrone’s knowing looks that he was more than just sympathetic to the arsonists and it had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Little kids nearly died in those arson attacks and there was this thug almost boasting to him about his involvement in it. He’d reported his suspicions to the police and he knew they’d questioned Tyrone but it hadn’t gone any further. Maybe they couldn’t get enough proof.

  He found Tina in the staff lounge making herself a coffee. If he was asked to strip the workplace veneer from his feelings for Tina he’d say that he couldn’t stand the sight of her. She was forever re-applying her lipstick, always bright red, leading Mark to think that her lips might expand and takeover her entire face. And she was so argumentative that if he said the sun was shining she’d argue under a clear blue sky that it wasn’t. Why did she have to be like that? She wound people up all the time. She’d accuse them of something that was completely untrue and yet she’d then make them look like they were denying something they were ashamed of. He sometimes thought she had a screw loose. He had the leaflets in his hand and was about to challenge her about them when he noticed she was crying.

  ‘ Tina? What’s the matter?’

  ‘ It’s just so not fair, Mark’ she whimpered.

  ‘ What isn’t?’

  It transpired that during the week she and Tyrone had spent in Benidorm earlier in the summer, they’d discovered a small church in a mountain village a few miles from the resort. Tina had fallen in love with it and set her heart on getting married there. But the priest didn’t speak English and Tina thought this was appalling.

  ‘ He should speak English!’ she insisted. ‘ It’s my dream’.

  Mark watched Tina wipe the tears from her eyes but couldn’t muster much in the way of sympathy for her. Why would a priest in a Spanish village speak English? How arrogant to expect it.

  ‘ Why don’t you make enquires about learning Spanish?’ he suggested. ‘ There’s that Spanish cultural centre at the bottom of Deansgate in town and … ‘

  ‘ … why should I earn Spanish? I’m English’.

  ‘ Because you’re wanting to get married in Spain. I mean Tina, think about it. Say a Spanish couple found a little church in the Lakes or the Peak District and wanted to get married there. Do you think the priest would be able to conduct the ceremony in fluent Spanish?’

  ‘ We don’t have priests in England’ she said, flatly. ‘ We have vicars’.

  Mark smiled in frustration. ‘ Vicar then’.

  ‘ Well no because it just wouldn’t come into it. This is England and we speak English. It would be up to the couple to learn our language’.

  ‘ But don’t you think the same applies to you the other way round? I mean, in Spain you’re the foreigner’.

  ‘ I am not a foreigner! I’m English! I’ve been going to Spain for like the last ten years. I’m not a foreigner. Honest to God, Mark, you have some bloody weird ideas sometimes’.

  Give me strength, thought Mark. Give me fucking strength.

  ‘ Tina, there’s something I need to talk to you about’ said Mark ‘ Did you pin these leaflets to the staff noticeboard?’

  Tina tilted her head back haughtily and glanced at the leaflets Mark was holding up in his hand. ‘ Yes. What of it?’

  ‘ I’ve taken them down’ said Mark. ‘ They’re racially offensive’.

  ‘ Not to me as a white English person they’re not’.

  ‘ But to others who work here at the bank they are’ Mark emphasised. What was it with racists? He detested them. He just didn’t understand the siege mentality of some of his fellow white citizens. He didn’t feel threatened by anyone except the bigoted.

  Tina shrugged her shoulders. ‘ So that’s their problem’.

  ‘ No it isn’t’ said Mark. ‘ It’s mine. I’m responsible for the well being of everyone on this shift team and these leaflets are offensive and demeaning’.

  ‘ So you’re on the side of vermin who come into this country and sponge off us?’

  ‘ I’m on the side of anyone who’s willing to work and contribute and that includes anyone who’s come to this country from elsewhere’ said Mark ‘ I’m not on the side of anyone who uses race to take attention away from their own failings and a lot of immigrants show up the indigenous population by their hard work’.

  ‘ What does indigenous mean?’

  ‘ Oh never mind’ said Mark ‘ Look, these leaflets go and that’s that. Deal with it’.

  Wendy Armstrong was used to the measures that needed to be taken when you’re married to an officer in the R.U.C. When you came home at night and the house was empty, you didn’t put the lights on until you’d closed all the curtains. If you did put the lights on when the curtains were still open, it meant that if a sniper was waiting in the garden he ha
d a clear view of his target from the darkness outside. You always checked underneath the car whenever you went to it, especially first thing in the morning. And you tried not to fall into habits. The school run was varied, the shops you bought from changed from time to time. All the doors, not just the front and back, had extra locks on them so that you could bolt your family into one bedroom whilst you waited for help. It was something she’d grown used to in nearly twenty years of marriage to Graham and was now second nature. Headquarters had assured them that they were low-level risk but nevertheless, they had three children to protect and she wasn’t ever going to take any chances.

  It was just after six and she was preparing the evening meal. Lamb chops with carrots and roast potatoes. Little Matthew, her youngest and just turned three, wouldn’t like it much but she’d get him to eat as much as she could. The older two, Ben aged 15, and Helen, 12, would both enjoy it as would Graham. She’d open some wine for her and Graham and she had lemon meringue for dessert.

  Ben and Helen were both upstairs doing their homework. She would acknowledge that she was lucky. Neither of them showed any signs of going off the rails. They were both clever and good students, which was a clear weight off her mind. Some of her friends weren’t so fortunate with the behaviour of their children. Drugs were an ever-present menace and she dreaded to think what it would be like when Matthew got to the age his older siblings were at now.

  A few minutes earlier she’d taken a call from Graham who’d said he was on his way home. That meant about half past six by the time he got over from Belfast. They were a happy family and they’d lived in this modern detached on the outskirts of Coleraine for a few years now. It was surrounded by the hills that she loved to walk in. She and Graham sometimes had to really work at their marriage but who didn’t when you’ve been together for as long as they have? They weren’t love’s young dream anymore but they had three beautiful kids to show that something obviously worked between them.