‘ You don’t get time in the week?’
‘ Well we’re on site by eight o’clock and not having breakfast before I leave means more time in bed. And haven’t you noticed that wherever there’s a building site there’s always a greasy spoon café nearby that serves all the egg and bacon rolls a bricklayer can lay his hands on?’.
‘ Yes I’ve noticed’ said Mark, smirking. ‘ Well I’ve noticed all the builder
totty in such places anyway’.
‘ Behave’.
‘ You weren’t saying that last night’ said Mark as he placed a piece of toast in Ian’s mouth. ‘ In fact, you were positively encouraging me to misbehave’.
Ian fingered the corner of Mark’s mouth ‘ That’s because you’re so good at it’.
Mark took the plate from Ian’s hand and placed it next to his own on the bedside table with the mugs of tea. He moved on his lips and kissed him. ‘ Enough of breakfast’.
Once their desires had been sated, they wrapped around each other and although he’d never needed anyone to hold his hand through life, Mark felt the most incredible sense of peace. He ran his fingers through the thick black fur on Ian’s chest.
‘ Ian, you really don’t have to wonder about me, you know’ said Mark.
‘ I know’.
‘ So you’re not wanting to hold back anymore?’
‘ I’m working through it’.
‘ And you can tell me anything, you know, anything at all’.
Ian squeezed his new lover. ‘ Maybe one day’ he said. He didn’t have the first idea about how he could tell Mark that he was an assassin for the state and that he’d dispatched dozens of men to their deaths in the line of duty. That didn’t make for very easy
pillowtalk.
‘ It’ll be time for lunch soon’ said Mark.
‘ What are you doing for it?’
‘ Going over to my brother’s in Whaley Bridge. They’re not doing it until four though so I’ll get the train from Piccadilly later’.
‘ Do you want to come back here tonight?’
‘ If you want me to?’
‘ I do’ said Ian ‘ Very much’.
Mark smiled to himself. This was a result.
‘ Mark, I’ve been meaning to ask you’ said Ian. ‘ What happened to your parents?’
Mark waited for a moment and then told the story. ‘ They’d been on a coach trip to London for the weekend with my Dad’s work. On the way back the driver fell asleep at the wheel and crashed the coach into the central reservation of the M1 which sent it flying across the opposite carriageway. Dad died instantly, Mum died the next day of her injuries’.
‘ And how old were you?’
‘ Fourteen’.
‘ So what did you do?’
‘ Well my maternal grandparents moved in with us initially but they soon realised that my brother Simon and I could cope by ourselves. I’ll miss my parents to my dying day and sometimes it cuts through me like a knife when I think of them. But you’ve just got to get on with it, you know? Otherwise you may as well just pack up and go home’.
‘ You’re very wise for one so young’.
‘ I had my moments when it happened. I wanted to find the coach driver and kill him. He survived, you see, and the unfairness of that drove me mad for weeks. All my friends at the time went on about what goes around comes around and that he’d get his but I really don't believe in all that shit. It’s just a platitude. The only time someone gets what they deserve is when someone makes it happen’.
Ian went cold. ‘ So you do understand the need for revenge?’
‘ I can see why people are driven to it, yes, because I’ve been there. I understand anyone who
seeks justice when they feel they’ve been wronged against. Too many bad people get away with it, Ian and I’m not arguing for vigilantism but yes, I can understand the need for revenge, I really can’.
Graham met Tommy Millar when they joined the RUC on the same day. They moved up the ranks together before Tommy went into special branch and Graham stayed put. Graham called his friend on his personal mobile.
‘ Is this line secure, Tommy?’ Graham asked.
‘ You know the answer to that’ said Tommy. He was sitting at his desk at the office. He hadn’t heard from Graham in a while. ‘ What’s up?’
‘ I need some information on someone and I don’t want to request it officially through the usual channels’.
‘ Can I ask why not?’
‘ I have my reasons, Tommy, and you owe me one. Remember?’
Tommy couldn’t get out of that one. A few months ago his wife had accused him of having an affair with another woman and Graham had provided him with a false alibi that got him off the hook. He did owe him one.
‘ Name?’
‘ Duncan Arthur Laurence. His evidence was enough to arrest Derek Campbell and his gang twenty years ago and get them sent down. He then died in a car accident on the Antrim Road on October 25
th
1992’.
Tommy wrote down the details. ‘ And you think there’s more to it than that?’
‘ In that last chat we had, Jamie Robertson told me that Derek Campbell had found out that Duncan Laurence was alive. We both know that a lot of people died conveniently during that time and I want to know if it’s true in this case. I want to know if Laurence is alive and if so where he is’.
Most of Derek Campbell’s political contacts had turned their backs now that they were preening themselves at Stormont. They all seemed to be taking it for granted that he wouldn’t open his mouth and drop the lot of them right in it up to their necks. All the money he used to make from his enterprises had gone into the pockets of those who now claim to have a democratic mandate from the people. He’d risked his life over and over again and made hard cash for everybody but himself. Derek had been the employee, the commander of field operations, the one who hired the men and women who carried out the orders, the one who made sure none of the shit could ever be traced back to those who put rosettes on at election time and shuttled backwards and forwards to Westminster. But none of them now wanted to be reminded of the sacrifices Derek had made which was why he was more than suspicious about what Peter Irvine wanted from him.
Peter Irvine lived in a fortified bungalow on the edge of Ballymena but it still felt like light years away from the kind of estate that Derek was used to. When he’d been released from incarceration he’d gone back to the same council house that had been his family home for nearly thirty years. During that time it had been modernised and changed, the toilet moved from downstairs to upstairs, the bathroom fitted with a shower, the kitchen fitted out with units from one of the local suppliers. Everybody knew where Derek lived but none of his former masters had ever suggested fortifying Derek’s family home. Loyalty only knew one direction as he’d already found out. The front door opened as Derek walked up to it. Freddie Burnside had driven him there and would be at his side throughout the meeting.
Peter Irvine’s parents had moved over to Northern Ireland from Scotland in the 1920’s when the republic had gained its independence and Protestantism in the six counties needed fortification. Michael Collins and Eamonn D' Valera were the only political figures on the island of Ireland that anybody took any notice of at the time and his parents had wanted to change that. Peter’s parents had both died before the abomination of the Good Friday agreement had been rubbed in the noses of the Unionist people. They’d turn in their graves if they knew that their son had last month taken tea with Catholic priests after listening to a Catholic school choir with a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who’d once called for British withdrawal from the six counties of Ulster.
Peter Irvine tended to dominate every situation he was in. He was in his early fifties, a big man with an absolute faith that the Pope was the anti-Christ. He’d never had any time for those unionists who asserted that there could be no peace without compromise. Appeasers were his natural enemies. There could be no peace until nationalist aspirations had been stamped out once and for all.
‘ What do you want from me, Irvine?’ Derek asked. His voice was urgent and uncompromising. ‘ I’m impatient to find out’.
‘ Let’s go through and get started’ said Peter, trying not to feel warned by the tone in Derek’s voice. ‘ I’ve to get the afternoon shuttle back down to London. I’ve to be there for a meeting with the Prime Minister first thing in the morning. They’re trying to bully me, Derek, trying to use their strong arm tactics to beat me into submission. But they’ll never succeed’.
Peter led Derek and Freddie Burnside into the lounge and closed the door behind them. His wife was upstairs and his driver was outside waiting with the car. He hadn’t expected Derek to lunge at him from behind, twist him round and pin him up against the wall. He couldn’t breathe properly because of Derek’s arm pushing against his throat.
‘ Derek, what the … ‘
‘ … I’ve wiped the arses of politicians like you all my life but this is where it stops. If you want me to work for you then you’d better not be planning to dump me when I become inconvenient like all your old comrades have’.
Peter had never been in a fight in his life. Men of his class didn’t do that sort of thing. His hands were being pushed up his back by Derek’s tight grip, causing him to feel the most excruciating pain that was ripping across his shoulders like a sharp knife. But it was the look in Derek’s eyes that was scaring Peter the most. They were right up close and it was like looking into the soul of the devil.
‘ I … I’ll not … I’ll not … I’ll not let you down, Derek’ Peter managed to get his words out between gasps for air.
‘ How do I fucking know that? I never thought all the others would one day rather sit down with Sinn Fein than with me. What makes you so different?’
‘ I’ve formed … my own party. I’ve … broken away. Why would I do that if … if I didn’t mean what I say. Now … please, Derek. Let go of me’.
Derek waited a few seconds and then let go of Irvine. He could’ve laughed at the look on Irvine’s face. He looked scared to death as he tried to recover his composure.
‘ What was that all about?’ asked Peter as he rubbed his wrists. They were hurting like hell after being in Derek’s vice-like grip.
‘ I had to be sure’ Derek answered.
‘ Do you not trust me or something?’
‘ I’ve been let down a lot since I came out of prison’.
‘ Yes, well don’t mark me out because I don’t deserve it, Derek. We’ve known each other thirty years and it’s because I share the same principles with you that I resigned from the UDP’.
‘ It’s funny we’ve known each other thirty years, Peter’ said Derek, grinning in a way that he knew was spooking Irvine from the look on Irvine’s face. So he grinned some more. ‘ I mean, I haven’t seen
you for twenty of those, the twenty that I spent inside’.
Peter Irvine felt hot and more than a little uncomfortable. ‘ Yes, well, first of all I want your assurance that there’ll be no more little displays like just now, Derek, if you please. Your release from gaol could prove to be useful for us both but not if there’s any more of your violence towards me’.
Derek had kept his grin. He was enjoying this. ‘ Don’t threaten me, Irvine. I don’t respond well to threats. Just ask the people who tried to get the better of me inside if you don’t believe me’.
‘ I’m not threatening you, Derek. Now let’s just put this aside and get down to some business. I promise you, you will want to hear what I’ve got to say’.
Peter knew that Campbell was volatile, unpredictable, a wild card, but if his plan to rip apart the sickening consensus between the British and Irish governments was going to work, then the unpalatable truth was that he needed Derek Campbell.
‘ Yes, well, sit down, please, gentlemen’.
Derek and Freddie sat down on the long sofa in Peter’s lounge, whilst Peter sat in the armchair.
‘ Now what we say within these four walls goes no further’ said Peter. ‘ Are we all clear on that?’
Derek and Freddie nodded their agreement. This must be big, thought Derek, judging by the look on Irvine’s face. It was a look he’d seen back in the old days when Irvine had ordered the killing by the Ulster Defenders of over a hundred men. During the republican hunger strikes of the early eighties Irvine had once assembled an army of local protestant thugs in the hills above Ballymena who’d then gone down into the Catholic estates and given them the message that they weren’t welcome in the largely protestant town. Thanks to his friends in the R.U.C no action had been taken against him or the perpetrators of the violence, but when republicans had hit back he’d gone on television to assert that it was proof that the two communities couldn’t live together in peace.
‘ I know you have contacts on the mainland, Derek … ‘
‘ … and I have my own uses for them, Irvine’. He filled him in on the discovery of the Judas and what he was going to do to make him pay. ‘ Him and his filthy wee pervert friend will burn in hell believe me’.