Thrown Down (21 page)

He’d just put his pants and trousers back on and was fastening his belt when Collette stirred.

‘Hey’ she said, sleepily. ‘You weren’t going to go without saying goodbye, were you?’

‘Of course not’ he said. He came round and sat on the edge of her side of the bed. He leaned down and kissed her. ‘Good morning’.

‘Good morning to you handsome’ said Collette who then placed her arms round his neck. ‘Last night was a lot of fun’.

‘It sure was’ said Jeff who used one hand to brush the hair from her eyes whilst caressing her face with the other. ‘I never thought anything like this would happen’.

‘Neither did I’ said Collette. ‘It just goes to show that when you’re not looking and all that’.

‘Oh yes’ said Jeff who kissed her again. ‘But I’ve got to go. You do understand?’

‘Of course I do’ said Collette who was running the ends of her nails through the hairs on Jeff’s arms. ‘You need to get back to your little bloke. That makes me think even more of you to tell you the truth’.

‘Do it all again tonight?’

‘I should bloody hope so!’

Collette waved as he left and then she lay back feeling on top of the world. 

Jeff called the team together as soon as he received the call. It was just after nine o’clock and he’d just made it in.

‘Okay everybody, breaking news as they say’ Jeff began. ‘It seems that yesterday afternoon Jade Matheson used her mobile phone and the signal has been tracked down to a house just outside the village of Hurst Green which is west of Clitheroe up there in the Ribble Valley and northeast of Blackburn. The local squad have been round but sadly they were too late. The house was deserted except for the body of a man, a white Caucasian who they’ve identified as Jade Matheson’s father Guy Matheson. He was shot through the head in the same way as Barry Murphy. The pathologist June Hawkins and her team are on their way out there now to start doing their necessaries. Guy Matheson’s car was found parked outside the house and according to the mobile phone records it was him who Jade called from the house’.

‘Could it be that Jade is being held against her will, sir?’ DS Adrian Bradshaw suggested.

‘I think that’s possible Adrian, yes’ said Jeff.

‘Jade was calling for help and her father ended up dead coming to her aid’.

‘That would seem the most obvious’ said Jeff. ‘But let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet. They’re informing Guy Matheson’s wife right now. Now, the house is owned by a Major in the British army by the name of Gerald Cotton. By chance he’s attached to the MOD in London at the moment and he’s happy to be interviewed but it has to be first thing in the morning before he has to go off to NATO headquarters in Brussels for three weeks. So I’m heading down late this afternoon and Detective Constable Ryan can come with me. If nothing else, it’ll give her a chance to see the capital city of this country that she’s been sent to’.

‘Take Detective Constable Ryan to see the Queen, sir’ DS Joe Alexander joked. ‘She can tell her majesty how it’s going in the colonies’.

‘The colonies?’

‘Well you’ve still got the Queen as head of state’ Joe pointed out. ‘You can’t bring yourselves to cut those apron strings, can you?’

‘I voted for the republic actually’ Collette boasted proudly. ‘And will do so again when the next vote comes up which it will. But I’ve never been into pom bashing or any populist tabloid shit like that. I prefer a more grown up relationship. I have the utmost respect for the Queen but I want us to be a republic and in the meantime I’ve only got one word for you, Joe and that’s cricket’.

‘Yes, we invented it’.

‘And yes we’re better at it than you!’

‘Alright, I’ll give you that one’ said Joe as everyone in the room laughed.

‘Sorry folks but we’ll need to save this one for when we’re all next in the pub’ said Jeff. He tried not to look at Collette as he went on. He was embarrassed. He’d booked a hotel and he’d only booked one room. ‘I’ll be leaving DI Ollie Wright in charge here and I want to see the surveillance of Patricia Knight kept up now that she’s here in the city and I want you to keep on looking for reasons why there’s no official record of her having left for Australia or arrived in that country. In fact, go and talk to her. See what she’s willing to tell you’.

‘Good luck with that’ said Collette.

‘You don’t think she’ll be amenable?’ DI Ollie Wright questioned.

‘It depends’ said Collette. ‘Coming over here might have softened her attitude. She might be willing to let the past go and if she has any grudges to bear, no, I correct myself because she will have grudges to bear, then now might be the time to get at them’.

‘Why are you so certain of that, ma’am?’ asked DC Joe Alexander.

‘Well put yourself in her shoes. She wouldn’t have just walked away from her family and set up home on the other wise of the world without good reason. Not when she was so committed to her community, and to defending the rights of her community as she saw it, that she was prepared to join a terrorist organization that could’ve ended up in either her death or her incarceration. Look at it from her perspective. Don’t think like a normal person because she wasn’t acting like a normal person back then. You don’t exist in that kind of world without bearing grudges that can end up deadly, even years later, and I’m not defending her. I’m not defending her at all. I’m just saying that there’s often more than one dimension to this sort of thing. There’s going to be a feature including what I gather is going to be a pretty in-depth interview with her in one of the national papers at home called ‘The Age’. Now you’re not going to tell me that the interview won’t be syndicated and then local papers here will want their own interview with her. What she knows we need to know first so that the media doesn’t knock us for six with stuff that they’ve found out which we should’ve been able to’.   

Guilt comes easily to single parents as Jeff Barton would unhappily testify. Tonight was going to be the first night he’d spent apart from his son Toby since his wife Lillie Mae died and though he was looking forward to having a few hours together with Collette Ryan he was wrapped him in guilt over leaving Toby even though it was only for one night and Brendan was well able to take care of him. Jeff called his brother Lewis who told him not to be so damn stupid.

‘I’m all over the place, Lewis. Collette is a wonderful girl and I want to spend as much time as I can with her whilst she’s here but, and I know I sound pathetic, Toby and I are a team’.

‘You don’t need to tell me that, Jeff’.

‘So how can I leave him for a night?’

‘Jeff’ said Lewis with the firmness that Jeff had come to expect from his baby brother when he was trying to sort him out. ‘Toby isn’t going to turn on you in twenty years time and say that he was psychologically damaged by you leaving him for one poxy night and if it makes you feel any better Seamus and I will swing by your place tonight and take Toby out for pizza and bowling’.

‘Would you? That would be great. He’d love that’.

‘We will too because we haven’t seen much of him lately and Seamus has been off the booze and watching what he eats the last few days because of his annual medical check at work which was today and which he passed with no problems like he always does but you know how he gets when it’s coming up’.

‘Well if there was something wrong it might be the end of his career, Lewis’.

‘I know and you know I support him all the way through’.

‘That’s one of the reasons why he’s marrying you’.

‘Oh Jesus you’ll make me blush! Anyway Seamus loves pizza as you know so he’ll be well up for that but back to you. Get down there and shag the arse off this Collette’.

‘Lewis!’

‘Well that’s what you’re intending, isn’t it?’

‘Well there might be a glass or two of wine and a bite to eat involved too’.

‘Okay, and then you’ll shag the arse off her. Well you just have a great time. You deserve it, Jeff. It’s about bloody time and you know it’.

‘Thanks Lewis’ said Jeff. ‘Once again I owe you one’.

‘You owe me nothing except to have some fun. And Jeff?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t take anything too seriously. In fact, don’t actually think about anything at all. Just enjoy yourself and learn to have a good old laugh again’.

When DS Adrian Bradshaw and DC Joe Alexander got to the hotel on the east side of Manchester close to the Etihad stadium they found Patricia Knight and her husband Dennis in fairly jaded mood. Patricia looked at both Adrian and Joe with great suspicion.

‘I’d forgotten how much the journey takes it out of you’ said Patricia. She sat alongside Dennis on the sofa in their room. Adrian and Joe occupied two chairs on the other side of the low coffee table.

‘Can I get you two gentlemen any coffee or tea?’ Dennis offered.

‘They won’t be staying’ said Patricia, cutting her husband off and earning a very disgruntled look from him. The last thing she wanted was to sit exchanging small talk with these two characters. She was still hurting from her family’s absolute refusal to see her and they’d also made it perfectly clear that she would not be welcome at the house of her sister Maria from where the funeral cortege of her brother Padraig would be going from. She hadn’t exactly expected the red carpet from her siblings especially when they all probably knew that it was her fault that Padraig had gone down for the murder of James Carson. But for God’s sake she’d crossed the bloody world and brought her dear husband Dennis into a situation that was completely unknown to him until just a few days ago. She’d wanted to reach out and make some kind of amends but not one of them had even offered them a cup of bloody tea! Yes, she’d walked out on them all those years ago but couldn’t they work something out?  She’d appealed to Maria but it had all fallen on deaf ears. It had broken her heart.    

‘That’s not very friendly, Mrs. Knight’ said DC Joe Alexander.

‘I know firsthand just how unfriendly the British police can be and I’ve probably still got the scars to prove it so don’t you dare lecture me on manners’.

‘The IRA always behaved like a bunch of gentlemen then?’

‘We were defending ourselves against your terror’.

‘I don’t think we were the terrorists, Mrs. Knight’.

‘Oh don’t you? Well you see it’s funny how when impoverished communities who’ve been discriminated against for decades are called terrorists when they fight back. But the people who they’re fighting back against are never called terrorists because they’re the state so they’re excused murder’.  

‘No’ said Joe. ‘I have to admit I hadn’t looked at it that way’.

‘Oh that’s no surprise to me’ said Patricia. ‘In fact, I’d have been surprised if you had given a second’s thought to the social injustice inflicted on minority communities’.

‘Mrs. Knight, this is Manchester in twenty fifteen. It’s not Belfast in the early nineteen seventies. We’re not always perfect and we don’t always get it right but you’ll find that the police today behave rather differently from what you allege in your previous experiences’.

‘I don’t allege anything’ said Patricia. ‘I speak the truth however uncomfortable it is for the likes of you’. 

‘We probably wouldn’t have chosen this particular hotel if we’d know how potentially difficult it is to get into town’ said Dennis, who didn’t know why the hell he’d said that but he didn’t like the way the mood was going. ‘But we weren’t to know that it’s a five minute walk even to the bus so we’ve been taking taxis all the way into and out of the city. We went there this morning to buy gifts for our grandchildren but we’ll probably eat here in the hotel tonight. Neither of us can stomach going into the city again although we do like it. We’ve quite taken to Manchester. It’s not a bad place at all with all the shopping and the bars and the restaurants. It certainly seems thriving’.

‘So it’s your first visit to the UK, Mr. Knight?’ asked DS Adrian Bradshaw.

‘Yes’ said Dennis. ‘It is’.

‘But I’m sure our rating of the city isn’t why you’ve come to see us?’ said Patricia. ‘Or rather, isn’t why you’ve come to see me?’

‘This is when I’m made to feel like Prince Phillip’ said Dennis, laughing. ‘It’s all about my wife’. 

Adrian thought that he would also use pretty lame attempts at humour as a means of dealing with this particular situation. How else could you cope with finding out that your wife is a former terrorist?

‘How does it feel to be back, Mrs. Knight?’ Joe asked.

‘Let me make one thing very clear’ said Patricia, leaning forward intently. ‘I know you two haven’t come here to have a cozy chat with me and my husband about what we think of your city. And quite frankly I resent you using my husband to get through to me and don’t try and say you’re not doing that because if you do I’ll call you the liar that you are. And I’ll make something else very clear too. If you think I’m going to take a nice little stroll down memory lane and incriminate either myself or anybody else I know then you can think again because it’s not going to happen’.

‘Have you spoken to any members of your family since you’ve been back?’ asked DS Adrian Bradshaw who’d decided to ignore Patricia Knight’s ardent pleading. ‘I mean, that’s not if you think the question is leading in any way?’