The Wild Heart

by Menon, David

  ‘ They’ve arrested Kevin for the murder of that policeman’ said Ian as he sat with Mark on the sofa. They’d finished dinner and had opened a second bottle of wine.

  Mark gasped. ‘ Kevin? Why?’

  ‘ He’d fallen in with a bad lot’ said Ian ‘ He was stealing stuff from my yard and panicked when the policeman stopped by and asked what was going on. He was small fry, a middle man, a go-between. He wasn’t a main player in the gang’.

  ‘ Gang of who for God’s sake?’

  ‘ Loyalist paramilitaries form back home’ said Ian. ‘ He was seduced by it all. He thought he could bring some excitement into his otherwise dull little life’.

  ‘ He worked for you, Ian and he was planning something like that. It sends a shiver down my spine’.

  ‘ I met a lot like Kevin back home. They think they’ll get away with it, they think nobody will ever find them out or grass them up. But they all end up being very, very sorry’.

  ‘ Are they trying to involve you in what they want to do?’ asked Mark who just knew from the way Ian was talking that he spoke as someone who knew first hand what Kevin had got himself into. ‘ Ian, are you connected with these people in some way?’

  ‘ It was just a coincidence that Kevin worked for me’.

  ‘ You must feel very let down by him’.

  ‘ He’s let his family down’ said Ian ‘ His two wee girls. He’s been a stupid fucking idiot. I can get over it. Those two wee girls will have to live with what their father did for the rest of their lives’.

  Natalie wanted to curl up into a ball and die. She was desperate to have her baby but every time she as much as broached the subject with Shaun he wouldn’t hear a single bar of it. All he kept doing was getting onto her about making an appointment and getting rid of it. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to have her baby and give it the love she’d lost when her Uncle had made her do things to him that she knew were wrong.

  ‘ Is that you, Shaun?’ she called out. She was lying on the bed and heard the door go.

  ‘ Yeah!’ he called back.

  She went through to the lounge just as Shaun finished a call on his mobile.

  ‘ You’ll need to get over to Bangor ‘ he said ‘ Some wee shite has been trying to muscle in on our patch and it seems the source of his merchandise is Republican. I want to know who he is and where he lives and I’ll deal with him from then on’.

  This was the usual way that problems were dealt with. For the last four years Natalie had handled the sales and Shaun had seen to the distribution. But she was rapidly losing interest in anything to do with her life before falling pregnant and if she could only get to Shaun’s father on his own she was sure she could convince him that the prospect of the arrival of his first grandchild would soften him enough to put pressure on Shaun to let her keep it.

  ‘ Did you hear me?’ he asked. He was sitting on the sofa with some papers in his hand and Natalie was standing behind him.

  ‘ Yes, I heard you, Shaun’.

  ‘ What have you been up to?’

  ‘ I went to lie down for a bit. I was feeling sick’.

  ‘ Have you made that appointment yet?’

  ‘ No’

  Shaun swung round and faced her ‘ How many times do I have to make myself clear, Natalie? I don’t want a kid. Period. Now you’ve got a week to sort it’.

  ‘ Or what?’ she asked tearfully.

  ‘ Or you can find somewhere else to live and we’ll be finished. I’m not bringing up your wee bastard’.

  ‘ But Shaun this is your baby you’re talking about’ she pleaded.

  ‘ I said I wanted you to get rid of it, Natalie, and I meant it’.

  Mark looked at his watch and saw that it was a quarter to six. Ian was picking him up on the hour. He switched off his computer and went to the lift that would take him down to the foyer. He’d only just gone through the main doors when a voice flew through the air like a brick.

  ‘ Oi, Earnshaw!’

  Tina and her fiancé Tyrone came round the corner with their faces set. Tina was in some kind of fur jacket which Mark couldn’t work out because it was a hot summer’s evening and her leggings were so tight it looked like she’d been poured into them. Her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail and she was scraping along in high-heels. Tyrone looked like he’d just laid the tarmac on the M6 single-handedly. There was no finesse in his bulk. He just looked like a thug and he headed straight for him.

  ‘ I wanna a word with you!’ growled Tyrone, prodding Mark’s shoulder and forcing him to step backwards. ‘ If you think you can get away with treating my fiancé like you’ve done you’ve got a very painful lesson coming, pal. Suspended? Just for exercising her right to free speech? I don’t think so’

  ‘ Free speech is not defined as the right to insult someone because of their race!’ Mark raged. He felt no fear. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by this idiot. Somebody had to stand up to these people even though Tyrone was so up close and personal he could almost taste his breath let alone smell it.

  ‘ Oh yea? You’re all the same you lot. Think a few clever words will hide what we all know is the truth?’

  ‘ At least I can put a bloody sentence together. What have you got except for your fists?’

  ‘ Yea, well you’d know all about fists, wouldn’t you? Does your boyfriend fuck you with his?’

  Mark laughed. ‘ Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘ Why, what are you going to do about it?’ Tyrone sneered.

  Tina joined in. ‘ You can take him on, Tyrone, he’s only a dirty gay!’

  Without looking at Tina, Mark said ‘ Tell your bitch to shut her mouth’.

  Tyrone pressed his finger in Mark’s face. ‘ Watch what you’re fucking saying, pal!’

  Mark had got so wrapped up in the situation that he hadn’t even noticed Ian’s van come screeching to a halt beside them. He was about to lift his arm up to push Tyrone’s away when Ian came flying through the air and kicked Tyrone’s legs from underneath him. Tyrone yelled out with pain as his knees hit the ground and Ian brought his power down to bear without mercy. He twisted Tyrone’s arm up his back and pushed his face against the wall. Tyrone groaned as the wall collided with the skin on his face and the bone of his nose cracked. He was caught tight in the grip of someone stronger and more able. He hadn’t bargained on that.

  Tina screamed ‘ Help him someone! My Tyrone is getting attacked!’

  ‘ You’ve made a big mistake, pal’ said Ian ‘ I’m not a man you want to get on the wrong side of, believe me. And if you ever lay a finger on Mark again I swear to God I will fucking kill you. Do you understand?’

  ‘ Yea, yea, easy, easy’ Tyrone managed.

  ‘ Well just in case you still need convincing’

  Ian punched Tyrone in his kidneys, winding him, and then threw him down onto the ground. Tina screamed again and went to her lover’s side.

  ‘ You fucking brute! You could’ve killed him!’

  ‘ Could have’ said Ian, bearing down on her. ‘ But didn’t. That was my gift and I don’t give it away often, sweetheart, so you’d better make the most of it’.

  Tina suddenly looked terrified as she lifted her fiancé’s head into her hands. She spoke so softly she was barely audible ‘ We need an ambulance’.

  ‘ I don’t need an ambulance’ Tyrone muttered, groggily ‘ Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be alright’. The last thing he wanted was to be seen in front of his attacker getting help from his woman. There was no way he could let that happen.

  ‘ But baby … ‘

  ‘ … I said I don’t need an ambulance. Now leave it, Tina, please’. He tried to lift himself up but the pain shot through his back like a bullet. He gasped and laid himself back down. Through the fog of pain he recognised Ian as the one he’d been taking pictures of for the Ulster Defenders. ‘ I don’t need any help. Just leave it. I’ll be alright in a few minutes’.

  The bank’s security guard came running o
ut and demanded to know what the hell was going on.

  ‘ It’s alright, John’ said Mark ‘ Everything’s sorted. We’ve all calmed down and everything is okay’.

  ‘ Tina?’ John questioned.

  ‘ We’ll be alright’ she mumbled.

  ‘ What?’

  ‘ I said we’ll be alright!’

  John the security guard gave her a look of annoyance at the way she’d spoken to him and turned on his heels and went back into the building. Under his breath he cursed ‘ I don’t know why I flaming well bother trying to help people’.

  Tina turned to Ian and Mark ‘ You’ll be sorry for this! Oh yes. You’ll get yours’.

  Mark wasn’t having any of that. ‘ Did you really think you could threaten me into reversing my decision on your suspension? You really are a lot more stupid than I thought. You two deserve each other. I just feel sorry for any kids you might have. If I had my way people like you wouldn’t be able to breed’.

  Mark sat in what had become his usual place in the first row of the stands behind where Ian sat with his assistant coach, Laurie Fielding. Alongside Mark were his brother Simon, his sister-in-law Anne and both sets of Mark’s grandparents. It had become a family affair. The two teams, Worsley and Hyde, came out to loud cheers from their respective supporters. Mark exchanged an encouraging wink with Ian who seemed relieved that he had the match to focus on.

  It was a performance that any coach would be proud of from his team. Hyde took an early lead of six points but Worsley fought back and equalised before half-time. Then the second half turned into a whitewash. Worsley annihilated Hyde with a further score of 24 points to finish 30-6. The northwest amateur league championship was theirs. Mark just managed to get down to the touchline and tell Ian how proud he was of him before Ian was whisked away to join in the celebrations with the team.

  The next few hours dissolved into a haze of alcohol and frolics. At the clubhouse a party had been laid on for the ending of the season but now that the team were champions it took on a much greater significance. They were ecstatic! Some very dubious songs were sung about virgins and farting and the team lifted Ian onto their shoulders in a deafening rendition of ‘ For he’s a jolly good fellow’. It was the only clean song to be heard all night. The Salford Advertiser and the Manchester Evening News were there to take pictures and interview members of the team, and a specialist rugby league paper was also there to report on events. Mark noticed that Ian stepped back when pictures were being taken and only succumbed to an interview when he was cornered and didn’t have any choice.

  When it came time for the speeches the owner of the club, local businessman Mike Ratcliffe, dedicated the victory to Ian. Mark was bursting with pride. Ian was reluctant to soak up the applause but was dragged along to the front by the team and managed to make a speech praising the commitment of his players.

  ‘ So this is where you got to’ said Mark. He’d gone looking for Ian after the speeches had finished and found him smoking a cigarette in the car park next to the clubhouse.

  ‘ I hate being the centre of attention’ said Ian ‘ It’s just not me’.

  ‘ It was only to be expected’ said Mark who thought that Ian looked great in his dark blue jacket with the club emblem on the breast pocket, his light blue shirt and beige chinos. ‘ You’ve pulled off something pretty big’.

  ‘ The players did it’.

  ‘ But they wouldn’t have done without you leading them’.

  Ian shrugged self-consciously. ‘ Are your family enjoying themselves?’

  ‘ Oh yeah’ said Mark ‘ They’re as proud of you as I am, although of course I’m way in front. They all want to buy you a drink so come on, let’s go back inside’.

  Ian began following Mark back in when they were rocked by an explosion that came from the back of the clubhouse where John and Stella Richardson, the rugby club managers, had their makeshift office. Mark looked to the building and didn’t know which was the more terrifying, the loud bang of the actual blast or the overwhelming silence that momentarily followed before the fire broke out.

  ‘ Oh Christ, Ian, my family are in there!’ He made a move for the door but Ian stopped him.

  ‘ You can’t go back in there’ said Ian, firmly. He placed his hands on Mark’s shoulders. ‘ Please, Mark’.

  ‘ Ian, my family are in there and I’m going in!’

  The screaming began and then everyone started pouring out of the burning clubhouse. Mark ran forward when he saw all his family members stepping out looking bewildered and frightened.

  ‘ What the hell was all that about?’ Simon asked, looking shaken but otherwise alright. He was holding on tight to Anne’s hand and they both hugged Mark.

  ‘ Is everybody else alright?’ Ian wanted to know.

  ‘ They seem to be’ said Anne ‘ They’re just really shocked. One minute everybody was laughing and talking and then the next … who’d do something like this?’

  ‘

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘ Ian, is someone after you?’ Mark wanted to know. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. They’d all been taken down to Hope hospital in Salford but nobody had been seriously injured. Just a few cuts and bruises and some had been treated for shock.

  ‘ Why do you say that?’

  ‘ You didn’t seem surprised by the torching of the clubhouse tonight and when everybody was speculating about who it might’ve been, going from a business rival of Mike Ratcliffe to al-Qaeda for fuck’s sake, you said nothing. You just stood there with a look on your face that told me everything. You haven’t slept well the last couple of nights, Ian. You’ve been deadlocking the front door like you really didn’t want someone to get in. What’s going on?’

  ‘ His name is Derek Campbell’.

  ‘ Isn’t he some kind of loyalist terrorist leader? Wasn’t he released from prison recently?’

  ‘ He was in prison because of me’ said Ian.

  ‘ How come?’

  ‘ I was a member of his organisation, the Ulster Defenders, twenty years ago but I turned supergrass and my evidence sent them all down. They gave me a new identity and moved me over here. I’ve carved out a life for myself, if you can call it that, with the firm and the rugby. My family thought that I’d been killed in a car accident. Duncan Laurence died on October 25th 1992 and I became Ian Taylor’.

  ‘ Who are they, Ian?’

  ‘ Mark, I’ve been working for British Intelligence for the last twenty years’.

  ‘ You’re a spook?’

  ‘ No’ said Ian. ‘ I’m an assassin. They give me a name and an address and I go in and deal with them’.

  Mark sat down and started to take it all in. Ian handed him a glass of scotch and sat down beside him.

  ‘ Thanks’ said Mark. ‘ I need this’.

  ‘ I’m sorry, Mark’.

  ‘ Well I need to know all of it now’ said Mark. ‘ Like, how did you get involved in all this?’

  ‘ After Kenny was murdered I went into a very dark place, Mark. I wanted revenge and that’s when I fell in with Derek Campbell. I went to see him and we hit it off straight away. I wanted to taste the blood of revenge for myself and he understood that’.

  ‘ Well he would’ said Mark, cynically.

  ‘ Mark, I grew up in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles, back in the seventies and eighties when it was tribal warfare day in, day out. I tried so fucking hard to steer a path away from it but it was corrosive and when it pushed me over the edge it became the only thing I had to fight back with. It was my tribe against their tribe, my community against their community. Everything they believed in I had to be against. It was like a cult and being that young I thought I could do anything and live forever. I’m not trying to excuse anything, Mark. I’m just trying to explain what it was like’.

  ‘ So it was Kenny’s murder that pushed you over the edge’.

  ‘ You don’t know what it was like for Kenny and me. We had to cover our tracks the whole
time and be bloody careful that we didn’t let anything slip. The only people who knew about us were my sister Claire and my mate Graham Armstrong but after Kenny was murdered neither of them could do anything to save me. I’d turned into a monster. Understand Mark that I hated everything that was republican and I wanted to strike back at them for Kenny. Neither Derek nor any of the others knew about the true nature of my relationship with Kenny. The loyalist paramilitary fraternity isn’t exactly known for its permissiveness and I had a girlfriend at the time who I kept going with as a cover. Campbell just assumed that I wanted revenge for my mate. One night he got hold of the names of the two republican scumbags who’d planted the bomb that had killed Kenny. He said they were mine’.

  Mark knew what was coming. ‘ You murdered them?’.

  ‘ We call it an OBE. One behind the ears’.

  Mark breathed in deep. ‘ Go on’.

  ‘ I shot those two wee bastards and then a couple of days later I was in a pub just off the Shankill having a few pints with some mates’ Ian went on. ‘ I was on my own when I came out and I was bundled into the back of a car. I thought at first it was the IRA and that I was a goner for sure. But it was MI5. They offered me a deal. I turn informer on Campbell and his Ulster Defenders and they forget about the two republicans I’d shot dead’.

  ‘ But how did they know it was you who’d done that?’

  ‘ Somebody tipped them off. You never know who’s talking to who half the time in a situation like it was in Ireland back then. Unless someone wants to make it clear to you for their own reasons you never find out and sometimes it’s better not to know. It only opens up another set of problems to deal with’.

  ‘ And that’s when they faked your death?’

  ‘ Yes’ said Ian, turning his empty glass back and forth in his hand and trying to stay level. This was the first time he’d told anyone about all this. ‘ And they used the threat of informing Campbell that I’d grassed him up to force me into agreeing to their plan. I’d have been a dead man if I’d gone down for those murders. Republicans would’ve got to me or worse, they’d have got to my family. I hated doing it to them, especially my mother, but the only way to protect them, and me, was to agree to fake my death and move over here with a new identity’.