The Truth Commissioner

by David Park

  ‘The purpose of this equipment,’ she says, ‘is not to make a recording that as Mr Anderson quite rightly points out would be a serious breach of procedure, but to play a tape relevant to the case.’

  ‘I object,’ Anderson says, still on his feet and looking flushed in the face and angry. ‘We had no prior knowledge of this tape nor were we given an opportunity to listen to its contents.’

  ‘Please come forward Mr Anderson and Ms Clarke,’ Stanfield says in an obviously weary tone. Fenton half turns to listen to what he has to say. ‘Mr Anderson,’ Stanfield continues, ‘can I just remind you that this is not a court and that it would be in everyone’s interest if you could switch out of adversarial mode and concentrate on giving your best services to the establishment of a communal truth. Your client is not on trial. And, Ms Clarke, can you assure me that this tape is of legitimate concern to this hearing and relevant to our purposes?’

  ‘I can, Commissioner, and believe it’s an important part of the story of Connor Walshe.’

  Stanfield glances to where Matteo and Laura are sitting. Matteo is nodding his head as if he needs encouragement to approve the playing of the tape. He looks at Ms Clarke who seems preposterously young, hardly older than the students he used to lecture, and tells her to proceed.

  ‘This tape has been authenticated by Mrs Walshe and Connor’s sister as being his voice.’ She hands a piece of paper to Stanfield. ‘Independent experts have also verified that the tape has not been tampered with in any way so with the Commission’s permission.’ She sets the player on the front desk and Fenton watches her press the play button. He grips the lectern a little tighter and tries to think of being in the van and anonymous miles of roads spooling endlessly in front of him. Of towns and cities glimpsed at dawn and still asleep. Of roads climbing over the mountains where thick swathes of trees border the broken and fraying edges of his journey. He thinks of sleeping on the pallet of clothes, his face close to the roof of the van, of Florian’s house in the woods. And then into his futile attempts to fashion an escape from the terrible openness of the moment where he feels as if he’s standing on an exposed plain devoid of any feature that might shelter, he hears the voice of Connor Walshe. And then he’s transported once again, despite the resistance of his will, to all the places he heard that voice, the voice that is instantly recognisable, and there’s the same pleading, the familiar edge of desperation that he heard in it the very first time, but this time there’s no pretence of bravery, no attempt at bravado or aggression. The voice fills the chamber with its whimpering, broken stammer of words and it flows down through the rows of seats and laps round Michael Madden like the water laps and slurps round the jetty at the lake. He wants to walk away, return to the house and find Ramona sleeping in the bed, have her look up and then offer him the warmth of her embrace. Instead all he can do is fidget until Mairead rests her hand on his arm in a gesture that’s meant to calm him and then she tells him to sit outside in the foyer and she’ll get him when he’s called.

  Fenton leans his forearms on the lectern and keeps his eyes focused on the back of the chamber. ‘And they said that they’d get me shot if I didn’t tout for them. Said they’d put me in a car and drop me off where people’d be waiting for me to give me a head job.’ The voice is high pitched and rising on a wave of breathless insistence, the fear its own lilting descant. On and on it tumbles from the player in a frantic scramble to find some exoneration, some hope of absolution. ‘They give me money but hardly anything and I didn’t do it for the money but because I was scared and they kept saying what would happen if I didn’t help them.’ The voice beats against the walls of the chamber like some moth trapped in a tremble of confusion and looking for release. Stanfield looks down on the listeners and sees their eyes drop to the floor as a kind of collective embarrassed shame settles on the room because they know they’re listening to the voice of a boy who’s about to die and they know that their presence intrudes even all these years later and that their places should be taken by a priest or his family, someone, anyone, who will put a hand on his shoulder and tell him that everything will be all right. They want the tape to stop. They don’t want to hear the rest about how Fenton gave him money to supply information, of the places they met. They want the tape to finish, to be able to loosen the coiling ligature of words that constricts and chokes their own sense of who they are and replaces it with a helplessness that pulls everything away from them like some sucking tide going out. And then it does. But the silence that follows the whispering final slither of words lasts only for a second and then there’s the voice of a boy asking, ‘Can I go home now?’ And again when there’s no answer, ‘Can I go home now?’

  The waiting area forbids smoking so Madden goes to the toilets and lights a cigarette. His hand is shaking and he stumbles over striking the match. He leans against the white-tiled wall and inhales deeply.

  The clunk of the player being switched off is what everyone wanted but now to Fenton the silence is even more terrible than the words. Stanfield, however, feels a flicker of admiration for her sense of theatrics as Clarke pauses for maximum effect, resisting the temptation to speak while the voice still echoes in the four corners of the room. Fenton glances at Young and Anderson but for the first time they’re not looking at him and he knows they’ve cut him loose, that no one’s standing shoulder to shoulder.

  ‘Isn’t it true that Connor was working for you?’ Clarke asks after a few moments have passed. ‘Just as he claimed.’

  ‘I didn’t say any of those things to Connor.’

  ‘With respect, Mr Fenton, I asked you if it was true that Connor Walshe was working for you, working for the police?’

  ‘He didn’t work for us. We didn’t employ him in that sense of the word.’

  ‘In what sense did you employ him then?’

  Fenton considers before answering. He has no capacity for lying and no skill in choosing evasive words and he tells himself that if he’s to try, it will mean throwing away some part of himself that’s important to him, that it will damage the little legacy he has left from all the years of service he gave.

  ‘In the fight against terrorism it was of crucial importance to gather intelligence. We needed that intelligence to try to protect life. People were dying – we had to enlist as much information as possible.’

  ‘So you enlisted Connor?’

  ‘We met him from time to time in the same way we met many people.’

  ‘How many times did you meet him?’

  ‘I don’t have a record or an exact number.’

  ‘Five or six? A dozen? About how many, Mr Fenton?’

  ‘Perhaps half a dozen. I don’t remember exactly.’

  ‘And you paid him?’

  ‘Small amounts of money. Not very much.’

  ‘So what are we talking about? Five or ten pounds? More?’

  ‘I think mostly about ten pounds.’

  ‘Each time?’

  ‘No, not always. Sometimes no money was paid.’

  ‘And in return, Connor gave you information?’

  ‘There wasn’t much information. Sometimes I think he just wanted to talk as much as anything.’

  She pauses and touches the cassette player with her hand. ‘Connor said he was threatened, forced to supply information.’

  ‘No one said those things to him. No one threatened him or said he was going to get shot.’

  ‘So why do you think he said those things?’

  ‘I would guess because he was frightened and because in the situation he later found himself in, he’d little choice about what to say.’ Fenton stares at her. She looks no older than her twenties; about the same age as the young woman he met on the mountain that morning when the slopes of Donard were shawled in snow. That same day he fell on his descent. And what does she know except books and examinations that take place on paper? He feels a growing sense of anger and wants to tell her that every day he was examined by what he had to see and do and maybe that someti
mes it was hard to know what the right answer was.

  ‘Mr Fenton, you are aware of Connor’s age?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you knew he was a child?’

  It feels like he’s falling now, powerless to stop himself, carried by a cold rush of water. ‘Yes,’ he says as he stares at her but sees neither fear nor hate in her face, only a calm resolution, smooth like the slabs of granite, but he can’t let it take him and so he struggles against it, determined to break his fall. ‘I don’t think you understand what we were dealing with …’

  ‘I understand that you were dealing with a child,’ she interrupts, her voice flecked with the first trace of an impatient insistence.

  ‘Ms Clarke, please let Mr Fenton finish what it is he wants to say,’ Stanfield says.

  ‘Unless you were there, unless you lived through it, you can’t understand what it was like,’ Fenton says. He wants to tell her what it was like to enter the bar after it had been sprayed, about the smells, the sounds, what he had to see. He wrants to tell her about what fear feels like when it takes up residence in your stomach, about the heave and churn that accompanied the worst moments, but he doesn’t have the words. He stares out at the gathered audience and tries even though he knows the attempt is doomed to failure. ‘Things were falling apart, society was falling apart. When you reported on duty you never knew what was going to happen, what you might have to deal with. People were dying. Men, women,’ he pauses, ‘and children, too. We were in a war, things change in a war. Things happen that shouldn’t happen.’

  She lets him finish and her face is impassive but when she speaks her voice is calm and measured again. ‘Forgive me, Mr Fenton, for interrupting you. Have you finished now?’ There’s no sarcasm in her voice, no condescension, nothing to help him hate her. But now there is one final thing that he wants to say. For the first time he looks at the boy’s mother and sister. ‘I want to say that I regret deeply what happened. I’m very, very sorry.’ But their faces are closed to him and give no response or recognition to his words. He feels intensely cold now and desperate to return to his seat, to try and wrap some protective coat about himself.

  ‘Thank you for that but I have a few more questions the family would like to ask.’ He watches her walk back to her desk and look at a piece of paper then turn again towards him.

  ‘Am I correct in saying that you, a senior officer in the REJC, induced a boy to engage in an activity, a relationship, that exposed him to the greatest danger?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says and his own voice is strange to him.

  ‘And you would have been well aware of the fate of so-called informers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you disregarded that knowledge.’

  ‘Perhaps I thought…’ He doesn’t know what he thought and the words trail into silence.

  ‘And, Mr Fenton, in the time you had this arrangement with Connor, did he supply you with any information that was of importance or helped you in your fight against terrorism?’

  For a second he wants to knock the whole thing over and he hesitates, thinks of the last time he met the boy when his pale face came swooping out of the darkness. ‘No.’

  ‘So a boy lost his life for supplying no meaningful information to you in exchange for petty cash?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The family doesn’t have any further questions,’ she says, then starts to walk back to her seat.

  ‘I didn’t kill Connor!’ Fenton shouts at her back as something breaks inside him. ‘I’m not the person who killed him.’

  She stops in her tracks and looks at him for a few seconds but says nothing, then turns away and resumes her seat. Fenton stands on, trying to find a sense of balance, wishing he could reclaim his words. He stands until Stanfield tells him he can go and then he walks down the aisle and when he passes where Anderson and Young are rising to receive him he stares straight ahead before striding towards the doors of the chamber. There are too many people in the waiting area and he follows the signs for the toilets. Going to a washbasin he splashes his face with warm water then as he dries it with paper towels he catches Madden’s reflection in the glass. Their eyes meet then both look away. The door opens and Young comes in.

  ‘The car’s coming to the front, let’s get out of here,’ Young says, shooting a glance at Madden.

  ‘Give me a second,’ Fenton says. ‘I’ll be straight out.’

  ‘You all right?’ Young asks, patting him on the back. ‘It’s over now.’

  ‘Give me a second,’ he says again and then after he sees him leave he goes into a cubicle to be sick, retching even when there’s nothing left. When he comes back out there’s no one there and only the slow drift of smoke indicates the former presence. He splashes his face again and knows that what he feels is the old unravelling of fear. Grasping the sides of the basin he steadies himself, carefully checks his reflection in the glass and then goes quickly outside.

  Madden stands at the lectern and silently rehearses what it is he has to say. Perhaps being an actor delivering someone else’s lines allows him to believe that they have no true connection with him. Perhaps he can speed them to their conclusion and be gone far from this place so he begins with a little pulse of confidence and he hears his voice grow stronger as it says, ‘I joined the IRA when I was eighteen. Our home in Bombay Street had been burned by Loyalists in collusion with the security forces and I felt it was my duty to protect my area from such attacks. I was very young and inexperienced and I didn’t think of all the consequences of that decision but I believed we were fighting in a war and I was fighting for civil rights and to free Ireland from foreign occupation. I had only been in the IRA a matter of six months when I became involved with Connor Walshe. I had never done anything other than drive a car on reconnaissance exercises and once as ordered I stole a car. That sort of thing. Small stuff. But then one night we were told that Connor was passing information about Republicans to the RUC and that he was to be lifted for questioning. This was a time when people were being lifted by Special Branch and abused in Castlereagh and other holding centres. It was also the time of non-jury trials and so anyone who assisted the security forces in targeting Republicans was considered a serious threat to their community and the movement as a whole.

  ‘We were told Connor had been seen with a known Special Branch member of the RUC and that he had flashed money around that he’d been given so he was to be lifted and questioned about it. I drove the car for two other volunteers who are both now dead and I will not give their names because they can’t come to speak for themselves but this is the only information I intend not to supply. Everything else I intend to tell as it happened.

  ‘We picked Connor up after he left the boxing club. I kind of knew him to see and when he came out I asked him would he be interested in making some easy money and after he followed me to the car he was bundled into the back seat by the other two volunteers. I drove him the short distance to a house in Ardoyne and he was taken inside. A couple of hours later I was told that he had to be moved because there was a chance of police raids who we knew would be looking for him. I drove the car in which he was taken to a farmhouse in South Armagh near the border – I now know the name of the place but I didn’t then and just took directions from a volunteer who we picked up in Newry.

  ‘When we got there the volunteers questioned Connor but no one hurt him or abused him in any way. He was just a kid and he was scared. I was in the kitchen when most of it was happening. I had to make everybody something to eat. But he told them everything – the times, the places, what was passed on. And then they made the tape. He told everything on the tape that you heard. Afterwards there was a discussion about what was to happen next and the orders came through that in a couple of days he was to be returned to Belfast and there was to be a press conference and Connor would describe how he had been recruited by the RUC. After that he was to be allowed back to his family but advised to leave the area for his own safety. That’s how it
was and that’s all that was intended to happen.’

  The next bit is harder. He pauses and gathers his thoughts, tries to remember. ‘We had to keep him in the farmhouse for a couple of days until arrangements were made in Belfast. We had to wait until we got a phone call saying that we were to bring him. Connor wanted to go home that night and got very agitated. We tried to calm him and tell him that everything was going to be all right, that he’d nothing to fear. But he worked himself into a bit of a state, crying and that, saying he wanted to go home. I got the job of looking after him most of the time. But I wasn’t much older than him and it wasn’t easy. I made him something to eat and he was sitting in the kitchen when one of the other men called me from the other room and in that second I was distracted Connor was out the back door and away. I wrent after him and I had a gun. I was frightened, frightened of screwing up on what was my first real piece of active service. Frightened of getting the blame for him making a run for it. I couldn’t see him but I ran into the yard and headed towards the sheds. I went in the one with the open door – it was a kind of metal barn – and as soon as I was inside he jumped on me and wre struggled. He tried to get the gun out of my hand and that’s when it happened. The gun went off and the next thing Connor’s body went limp and he fell back and collapsed. The other two arrived then but it was too late – he was dead. We panicked and didn’t know what to do – it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I am truly sorry for what happened to Connor – it wasn’t supposed to happen, it was never meant to end like that. It was a terrible thing, a terrible accident, and I feel deep regret for what happened. I wasn’t much older than he was and I’d never hurt anyone or anything in my life. We tried to help him but it was no use – I think he died instantly. I’m truly sorry.’