Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (43 page)

Eventually, with most of the flats’ renovation complete we had to close the Weavers pub itself for renovation and that was a weird night. Sean arranged for all the bottled beers and various cases of spirits to be taken up to Toad Hall. Tables and chairs that might be sold or recycled to other bars owned by the Storrie family were stored in the shops we owned next door. So, that night, all our old and new customers gathered round the bar and we let them drink what was left in our draught beer stock. We even let them pull down the fittings and walls. I watched as people I had served for 14 years ripped up tiles and dragged carpets about. Friends and customers hauled couches, toilet pans and sinks outside until 4.00 a.m. Even the bar units were ripped out.

Sean wanted to pull the place down himself; he felt it would provide closure for him. Every piece of the Weavers had been part of him since he was a wee boy and he had either renovated or designed or built each piece. Now he took it all apart, destroyed it and threw it into the rubbish skip. By midnight, the place was a cloud of dust and Sean was filthy. By early dawn, the bar was a black shell, the fake wood panelling ripped away, revealing all the scorch marks on the walls and ceilings that had survived a mysterious big fire in 1970 which had almost destroyed what was then the Nationalist Bar. By morning, the place where the bar once stood just housed a single beer tap (still connected to a barrel down in the cellar) on a scorched, bare wooden floor. Electrical wires drooped from various wall sockets where wall fittings had been ripped off and the place looked like it had been bombed. Finally, Sean left the bar – he looked deep and longing, like something had died – and locked the door behind him.

We lay in late the next day, unsure what we were supposed to do now that we did not have a job to go to. Ashley was off school for the October week holidays and we planned to go out in the car with her. At about ten that morning, Sandra called from the caravan at Wemyss Bay, near Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, and demanded that Sean pay her phone bills and give her money. Young George was in London and she needed money right now! Sean told her, ‘Fuck off!’ and promptly made sure the phone was disconnected at the caravan.

Later that week, she retaliated by calling the house from a phone box and shouting down the line, ‘You will be sorry, ya fucking bastard!’ Sean hung up on her.

On the Thursday of that week, Dick came over to stay (again). I tucked Ashley into bed and gave her Whisky the cat. ‘Goodnight, chicken,’ I whispered as I kissed her head.

‘Goodnight, Mummy. Kiss the cat, please.’

I did kiss the cat, his soft furry head feeling warm on my lips.

I was woken early the next morning by noises. It sounded like Brindle the evil dark lord of dogs had finally caught some poor bastard in his jaws around the backyard. His deep growling barks were interrupted by human screams of agony. I jumped out of bed and crept through to Ashley’s room which overlooked the back yard. Whisky the cat was already at the window, bemused, watching the dogs. It was only 6.00 a.m.
Who the fuck would be daft enough to go into that yard at this time of day and face that nasty psychotic dog?

I could hardly make the figure out in the early morning light but it looked like a man dressed in black. As I saw him, he leapt back up onto the wall and disappeared over it with Brindle snapping at his heels. The dog looked up to me in the window and began barking his head off, slavering and snapping madly; even amiable Junior was going mad barking and he normally just stared at Brindle when he went off on a barking rant. I ran to get Sean and, as I reached the bedroom, heard a hammering on the downstairs door. The bell was being pushed constantly, as the hammering continued. It sounded like someone was trying to kick the door down.

‘Sean, get up! The dogs are going mad! Who the fuck is kicking the door?’

Sean sat up, his hair sticking on end, reached for his glasses and spoke very quietly. ‘Police,’ he said simply.

I jumped into our bed, naked, trying to figure out what was happening, as Sean walked calmly downstairs to open the front door. Within seconds, two police officers were in my bedroom, dressed in black with stab vests and armed with sub-machine guns. They never spoke, just stood there. All I could think was
Oh my God! They will be in Ashley’s room and she will wake up to see them!

‘Please, let me go in and get my daughter – don’t you wake her.’ I tried to wrap the sheet around me.

‘Get out of the bed!’ a police officer spat.

‘Let me get on my housecoat.’ I tried to reach down to the ottoman that sat at the foot of my bed. He pulled me roughly from the bed, naked, and made me stand there. I was horrified but more worried that Ashley would be awoken by this vision of men with guns. ‘Please let me go get my daughter next door, please.’ I grabbed my housecoat and wrapped it around myself.

‘Which room is it?’

I pointed through the wall. He nodded and let me pass him.

I could hear Sean downstairs explaining who was in the house and where they were. ‘Let me go wake up my daughter and give her through to my wife,’ I heard him say as I passed Whisky the cat sitting, still bemused, at Ashley’s doorway. Ashley was on her side tucked up in her favourite sleeping bag. She had always refused to sleep in any bedclothes that belonged to her dead grandad’s house and insisted on being wrapped up in her sleeper on top of the big double bed. She looked so happy and cherub-like lying there. Whisky suddenly leapt up on the bed and curled defensively beside her head, hiding her face from my view.

‘Ashley,’ I said gently, ‘get up, baby, come on.’

Her eyes snapped open. ‘Is it school time?’

‘No, but the police are here and they want everyone in the living room,’ I answered.

‘Are they here for my grandad?’

‘No, remember Grandad is in heaven?’ I smiled as I tried to lift her gently out of the sleeping bag.

‘Then why are they here, Mummy?’

‘Ashley, just get up, please, and don’t ask anything.’ I spoke quickly as I realised there was now a police officer standing behind me at the door.

‘No speaking!’ he barked.

Ashley dipped her body to the side to see where the voice was coming from, looked at the police officer standing there and then her big brown eyes opened like saucers and she looked straight at me: ‘Are they going to take my daddy away?’ She suddenly leapt off the bed and ran for the door. The policeman stopped her as I tried to catch her from behind.

‘Let me go! I will speak if I want! This is my grandad’s house! You can’t make me stay here! I want my daddy! Daddy! Daddy, where are you?’ She struggled from his grip and ran downstairs with me still trying to catch her; she met her father halfway down the stairs.

‘It’s OK, Ashley. They are just here to look for stuff; no one is going anywhere. Let’s get breakfast, eh?’ and, with that, he picked her up. She wrapped her legs and arms tightly round him and stayed there until he made her sit at the kitchen table. The police brought Dick down and sat us all together in the kitchen, including Ashley. There were three policemen standing over us. The men with sub-machine guns had melted away somewhere.

‘We have information that there are weapons and
explosives
hidden here in the house and in the surrounding grounds.’

I looked at Sean with enquiring eyes that begged him to reassure me with a smile that there was nothing to find. Sean looked at me, then looked straight down at his feet, a sure sign he could not assure me of anything.
Fucking hell!
I thought.
There are guns in this fucking house? Where?
I had let Ashley play everywhere out in the yard and all around these grounds.
There are explosives?

The plain-clothes officer continued. ‘Also there is an accusation of abduction and rape against you, Sean Storrie, from a Mrs Sandra Storrie. We will be taking that enquiry further as soon as we search the place.’

I looked at Ashley, took her out of the kitchen and was allowed to take her into the living room to watch television.

‘Don’t speak to your daughter,’ a policeman told me. ‘If you want, you can get someone to come and take her away from the house.’

I ran upstairs with Ashley and a policewoman and packed for her to go. I took out her panda bear and told her to ‘speak’ to it.

‘What are you saying to her?’ the policewoman demanded.

‘I just told her to speak to Mr Bovey if she was worried about anything.’

‘Who’s Mr Bovey?’

‘He’s her panda bear.’

Ashley looked at me, smiled, then grabbed the bear, hugged him tight and waited for me to call Sean’s Aunt Betty to come collect her. As she kissed her dad to leave, she held up her panda bear and said: ‘Say hello to Mr Bovey, Daddy …’ Sean looked at me and laughed as we waved goodbye to her. The real Mr Bovey would be called as soon as she got to Aunt Betty’s house; the panda had Mr Bovey’s Edinburgh telephone number on its collar.

The police took apart every box we had painstakingly packed when we moved from the Weavers. I saw, lying all over the floor, my pictures, wedding dress, Ashley’s Communion frock and loads of personal mementoes that we had carefully kept. They overturned Old George’s big work desk and pulled all the paperwork out of it. They demanded that we lock up the dogs and even Whisky got into trouble for hissing at a female officer who hated cats. My nerves jangled as they pulled out each drawer, each cupboard, and pulled up yet another mattress as they searched for the ‘weapons and explosives’.

‘Look, we know what this is all about,’ said Sean, standing with his arms folded, casually chatting as if he were behind the bar at the Weavers. ‘Sandra was my father’s girlfriend and she never got any money after he died and she is set on revenge. I never raped her.’

‘Well, we will see about all this later, Mr Storrie,’ the unsmiling officer replied.

The officers took us upstairs to search our bedroom and, from the back of the television mounted on top of the wardrobe, one officer pulled a large padded envelope. It was placed on the bed in front of us.
Mrs Storrie
was typed on the front. The policeman pulled on rubber gloves, peeled the top open and felt inside. I watched his face for any clues as to what he was touching. I looked at Sean for any sign that he recognised this package, but he just shrugged at me. The policeman delicately pulled the item out of the bag and I giggled. It was a huge black ribbed vibrator and it was followed by tubes of lubricator. I threw both hands to my face in embarrassment and shouted: ‘That is fucking
not
mine! I would own up to the fucking weapons or explosives you seem tae think we huv – even the rape – but I do not own a black vibrator. That is Sandra’s! Remember she calls herself Mrs Storrie.’

The policeman made a really cheap side glance at me and just threw it back in the bag.

‘Fuck off looking at me like that!’ I told him indignantly. ‘They are not mine – I mean it.’

‘Everyone down here now!’ someone shouted from downstairs.

We were led down and out into the backyard; the dogs had been locked up. A plain-clothes officer was crawling under a washing machine that sat in the garage space behind a big yellow truck. I shivered in the autumn chill. I realised I had not eaten any breakfast; nerves had made me keep going but now I felt cold and faint. The shock was beginning to scratch at me, like cold claws creeping upward at the back of my legs. The policeman pulled at a black plastic rubbish sack that was half exposed with the other half dug into the soft earth directly beneath the washing machine. As he pulled, two other policemen eased it out carefully. I looked at Sean. He immediately stared at Dick, who took one long drag on his cigarette and flicked it high into the yard; then ran both his hands through his hair and kept his arms up high around his head. Their body language screamed
Guilty! We have guns here!
I felt my legs buckle slightly as the bag was ripped open and three big, old-style World War II rifles spilled out onto the moist grass. The policemen kept pulling at the black bag and what seemed like hundreds of bullets came out, spattering and spilling all over the earth like steel confetti.

Holy fuck!
was all I could think.
I am going down. I am going to prison and some other bastard brother called Storrie will raise my child
. My heart thudded hard inside my chest. I glared at Sean. Words I could not say in front of the coppers sat like venom inside my eyes. I wanted to leap across the guns and grab the useless bastard by the neck. I felt like picking up a gun and shooting the fucker.
Him and his fucking brother so aptly named ‘Dick
’. Now
I
was dragged into their shitty mess.
That cow Sandra knew what she was doing
. I glanced to the back of the yard where two policemen were holding a piece of paper, turning it round and round as if trying to make sense of it, while other police officers looked smug. I ran over to look at the paper the men held. As I got close, they tried to hide it, but I recognised the handwriting.

‘A fucking map! She drew you a fucking map! Did she draw you a picture of my husband raping her?’ I was so angry I actually gave the policemen a fright with my sudden turn of mood. They jumped back from me, looking startled by my screams.

‘Calm down, Mrs Storrie,’ a big, black-haired police officer said as he gently took my arm. ‘Let’s get into the house. We have to formally charge you all with possession of the weapons.’ He looked genuinely sorry for me. I had seen no compassion from anyone else that day, but he stroked my hand: ‘Look, we know this has fuck all to do with you; this is just procedure. The sooner we get it all done, the better.’

The day dragged on as the officers kept interrogating us. My stomach dipped and churned as if it was on a rollercoaster.
I knew we should never have come to this poxy bad luck house!
I worried about Ashley.
Was she scared? Was she crying? Did she call Mr Bovey?
The timing of this raid could not have been better for Sandra. Young George and Stephen were in London, Philip was in Spain on holiday, Paul was in Thailand and Michael was probably in jail again. We were left on our own to deal with this fucking mess. Before long, they found 11 handguns, 14 long sawn-off shotguns, an automatic rifle, black balaclavas, handcuffs and hundreds of bullets and shotgun cartridges. By then, it was late into the afternoon and, after they had discovered nothing new for four hours, they decided they had thoroughly searched the place, covering all points on the Sandra Treasure Map. The police called for a van and started to carry all the stuff into it. Neighbours were hanging out of their windows watching – at least seven tall tenements looked into George’s front garden – they must have had a great view of the whole scene. We were cuffed and put into the back of a police van; I was so shocked I just sat with my head down. Sean looked over at me, cocked his head to the side and smiled.