Between Heaven and Hell

by Alan Rimmer

  “Thinking about it now, it was an unbelievable callous thing to say, but at the time we were both too shocked to speak. We wanted so much to have children; it was all I had ever wanted. When we recovered from the shock we demanded to know how this could be so when both our families had lots of children. The doctor just shrugged his shoulders, but then he said a very strange thing to my husband: ‘You’ll rue the day you stepped foot on Christmas Island.’

  “At first I didn’t understand, then I remembered those newspaper articles and, I knew. It was so heartbreaking; I was in this terrible position of desperately wanting my own child, yet I couldn’t because I knew that Kenny was the only man I could ever love.

  “I blamed Christmas Island then, and I blame it now. I blamed it because of the way Kenny had changed and for what the doctor had told me. I loved this man, but we couldn’t have children together. They took that away from me. I was never going to have kids.

  “In the end we went down the adoption route and we got our lovely daughter Louise. I have never regretted that for one minute. She is a beautiful girl and adopting her was the best thing we ever did. But it still rankles that the opportunity to have children of our own was taken away from us.”

  Somehow Ken and Alice staggered on through the lean years. Business had all but dried up and selling up had become an inevitability. They knew this would, in many ways, be a relief.

  “Increasingly both had become aware that they seemed to be under surveillance: strange cars occupied by shadowy figures appeared outside their home and parked for hours with no obvious intent. Post arrived that had obviously been interfered with; strange noises interrupted their telephone conversations; their home was burgled and confidential papers stolen.

  “There were other alarming events that shredded already frayed nerves, like the time McGinley received a summons to attend court on a serious assault charge. He had never been arrested for anything and, much disturbed, took the matter up with the Procurator Fiscal’s office where he was told it had all been a mistake.

  “Further inquiries revealed that a local firm of solicitors had mistakenly used McGinley’s name and address on the charge form. But why, McGinley wanted to know, did the solicitors have his name and address in the first place? The solicitors were evasive, but later admitted they had been commissioned to collect press cuttings concerning McGinley and send them on to “an interested party.” The lawyers refused to say who their client was.

  Another frustrating problem arose when McGinley’s small war pension, awarded for his continuing stomach problems, was summarily withdrawn. He appealed against the decision and during a disclosure hearing McGinley learned that a doctor working for the Pensions Department, who had never examined McGinley, had written across his notes: “Politically sensitive case. This paranoid appellant is the president of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association.”

  McGinley was outraged and naturally kicked up a fuss; his pension was eventually reinstated. The sensation of being under siege reached a head when the British Security Services came knocking on his door.

  There were two of them, both male. One was a middle-aged executive type; the other looked to be in his late twenties. They had rung ahead to request an appointment and arrived promptly at the chosen time.

  McGinley invited them in and examined their identity cards curiously while his wife made coffee. On the table in front of them was a week-old copy of a newspaper dominated by a picture of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man accused of the Lockerbie bombing.

  He had recently been indicted by the US Attorney General and the Scottish Lord Advocate for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish border town of Lockerbie killing 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground.

  The reason for the visit was because McGinley was certain he had met al-Megrahi --- a year before the bombing.

  The encounter took place in Amsterdam at a meeting of a group called WISE, a small but influential anti-nuclear group based in the Dutch capital. McGinley had been invited to one of the group’s regular get-togethers and found he was rubbing shoulders with a vociferous cross-section of left-wing intellectuals, environmentalists and nuclear dissidents.

  Present also was the renegade CIA spy Norman Stockwell who enlivened the meeting by talking about US covert operations in Africa and Asia. It was during a break in the proceedings that McGinley met al-Megrahi.

  He was standing outside the conference hall smoking a cigarette when a mustard-coloured Volvo pulled up alongside. There were two men in the car, and the passenger leant out of the window and gestured him over. McGinley recognised him as one of the spectators who had earlier attended the meeting.

  He was a Middle-Eastern man and spoke impeccable English and addressed the Scot as ‘Dr McGinley.’ He oozed friendliness and asked McGinley if they could meet up again at the next seminar, scheduled for Germany the following month. He was obviously under the delusion that McGinley was some kind of scientist and said he would like to introduce him to some of his scientific friends.

  McGinley was quick to disavow him about his academic status, but the man insisted he would still like to see him in Germany. As the man climbed back into the car, McGinley never forgot his parting words: ‘We can talk about bombs!’

  That was a full year before the Lockerbie bombing and almost four years to the day since the meeting took place. But McGinley recognised al-Megrahi as soon as he saw his picture in the newspapers and on the news bulletins. It shook him so much he phoned the police unit in charge of the Lockerbie investigation.

  He recalled: “I was one hundred per cent certain that the man who accosted me in Amsterdam was al-Megrahi. It horrified me to think that this man had mistaken me for a scientist, and that he had wanted to talk about bombs. The fact that he obviously thought I was a nuclear scientist made my blood run cold. I thought it was something the authorities should know about.”

  The authorities were indeed interested: 24 hours after making the call the two “spies” presented themselves at his door. McGinley recalled how one of them took notes while the other asked the questions. After about an hour they surprised the McGinleys by inviting them for a drink at a local hotel.

  During the course of the conversation, the elder of the two men warned McGinley of the need for silence. He said McGinley could probably make a lot of money by going to the newspapers, but that if he did it could “jeopardise everything.” McGinley assured the man that he had no intention of going to the press.

  The men relaxed and asked McGinley about his campaign and the sort of circles he was moving in. They said they knew all about the WISE conference and its aims. Throughout the conversations, McGinley had the clear impression the pair were building up to something, but never quite got round to saying what it was.

  They were particularly interested in the contacts he made abroad and how often he spoke to other nuclear groups. They made some flattering remarks about how he was considered to be very influential among anti-nuclear circles. They asked him how he felt about nuclear power, whether he thought it was a good thing or bad.

  After a couple of drinks, the men thanked McGinley and dropped him and his wife back at their home. McGinley speculated on the reason for the visit: “The al-Megrahi incident was certainly of interest to them, but I got the impression they were more interested in the people I was meeting in the course of the campaign. They were definitely on a fact-finding mission to find out who I was in contact with and what we were discussing. They were very friendly and seemed to be sizing me up; I was half expecting them to ask me to keep them informed of future meetings.”

  McGinley was amused at the idea that Her Majesty’s Government might be trying to recruit him as a spy, but the incident unnerved Alice who felt they were becoming increasingly out of their depth. Alice yearned to get away from it all.

  They sold Pitcairlie House and moved back to Johnstone where, Alice insisted, they would make a fresh start. It was a forlorn hope. No sooner were they s
ettled than her husband was embroiled in another entanglement with officialdom, this time with an even more formidable opponent than ‘James Bond’: the Treasury Solicitor.

  THE CORONER’S CLERK

  The Treasury Solicitor sounds innocent enough. The title conjures up an image of a fusty lawyer armed with a pen and wig, beavering away in a back office concerned only with the collection and disposition of ownerless properties on behalf of the Exchequer.

  In actual fact he is a little-known attack dog of government whose primary function is to cling on to governmental purse strings with Rottwieler determination. The Treasury Solicitor’s Office encompasses a 600-strong highly professional legal team that was officially defined in 1661 as “the solicitor for negotiating and looking after the affairs of the Treasury.”

  It has sweeping, some say Draconian, powers, enabling it to delve into every aspect of a case with impunity, and is accountable only to the Attorney General. In the early 1990s this formidable force was suddenly turned on the nuclear veterans who were enjoying considerable success in persuading War Pension Tribunals to find in their favour.

  Some of these tribunals had caused considerable embarrassment to the government by awarding pensions to nuclear veterans whom they deemed to have been ‘affected by radiation.’

  Some mandarin in the Civil Service clearly decided that enough was enough: The Treasury Solicitor was unleashed and set about hi-jacking inquests and pension tribunals. Their mission was to take control of the evidence and present it in a way favourable to the Government line. And it seems they didn’t care how they did it.

  McGinley obtained first-hand experience of their methods when he got a call from a very frightened coroner’s clerk. The man said he had been carrying out inquiries into the case of a former sailor who had been on board HMS Diana, the ship that sailed through the mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion off the Australian coast in 1956.

  This was potentially a very embarrassing case for the Government after a pathologist found traces of a radioactive substance lodged in the sailor’s body which was being confidently blamed for the man’s death from a rare form of bone cancer.

  During the course of his enquiries the coroner’s clerk, a punctilious police constable, was carrying out interviews of doctors and other officials involved in the case when out of the blue he received a telephone call from a Treasury Solicitor who briskly informed him “the Crown” was taking over the handling of the case.

  When the clerk protested he was brusquely told by the lawyer to “step aside and forget about the case.” The clerk was troubled and eventually complained to the coroner. Nothing was heard for several days, but then came another phone call – this time in the middle of the night.

  The call was made as the bleary-eyed PC lay in bed with his mistress. The caller simply told the man, who was married with two children, the affair was ‘known about’ and that he was damaging his future job prospects.

  The flabbergasted constable didn’t recognise the voice, but he was understandably rattled. He was certain his wife knew nothing about his affair, ands his girlfriend was equally certain that none of her circle were in the know.

  The constable concluded he was being shadowed and that it had something to do with his run-in with the Treasury Solicitor. He decided to tip McGinley off because he was convinced the forthcoming inquest was being nobbled.

  McGinley travelled to see the man, but in the absence of on-the-record evidence from the clerk there was little that could be done. The inquest duly found no evidence to link the sailor’s death with his involvement in nuclear bomb tests.

  This odd story might well have been dismissed as the paranoid ramblings of a man literally caught with his trousers down, but for a startling coincidence involving the same Treasury solicitor.

  Again it involved an inquest, this time into the death of Harold Graham Dovey, a former AWRE technician who had witnessed several atomic explosions in Australia.

  Mr Dovey had died of rare form of cancer, multiple myeloma, which has been linked with radiation exposure. As in the previous case, the coroner’s clerk was a local police constable who had been asked to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr Dovey’s death.

  The man from the Reading Police force confirmed he, too, had been taken off the case by the same Treasury solicitor.

  He made the following statement: “I was making routine inquiries at the Department of Health and Reading Area Health Authority when I received a phone call from the office of the Treasury Solicitor.

  This man asked me, in a not too friendly way, why I was making inquiries into the Dovey case when he, the Treasury Solicitor, had all the relevant information. I told him it was my job to do so. He replied that it was no longer my job and he effectively sacked me from the inquiry.

  I protested, but it was made known to me in no uncertain terms as to my future job prospects if I attempted to interfere. Obviously I cannot say too much about my personal feelings in this matter. Suffice it to say, I thought it was wrong.”

  Both statements were later given in confidence to Liberal MP David Alton who demanded the Attorney General Sir Michael Havers, and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, investigate the claims. He said: “There is something very sinister about this affair. It is scandalous that police officers carrying out their normal duties can be intimidated in this way.”

  Despite the protests, no inquiry was ever made into these matters. The Dovey inquest went ahead, but this time the jury returned an open verdict which was hailed as a victory for the veterans.

  And what happened to the Treasury solicitor? Within weeks he was shunted aside and was last heard of working for the criminal injuries compensation board.

  The implications of these disquieting events were not lost on McGinley. He was beginning to realise that ‘dirty tricks’ had been the stock in trade of successive governments ever since the bomb tests had taken place. Witness statements and first-hand testimony from nuclear veterans and civilian workers suggested something very sinister was taking place, but it was difficult to prove a widespread conspiracy.

  Despite the setbacks, progress was being made by the veterans and although the ‘smoking gun’ that would prove their case was still elusive, even the most diehard cynics could hardly doubt the link between ill-health and the atom tests.

  Bowing to pressure, the government began to quietly introduce rule changes to award war pensions to veterans who had certain types of cancers. And there were plans to draw up a Green Paper that would have compensated the veterans through the social security system, without embarrassing the government too much. It was a solution of sorts, and something that McGinley and the veterans would have accepted.

  But an unexpected development sent the campaign off in an entirely new and unexpected direction: a veterans’ meeting in Newscastle was gate-crashed by a tall, raw-boned Scot who, without preamble, threw a black and white photograph on the table in front of Mr McGinley: “That’s what you should be looking at,” the man said before disappearing into the night.

  McGinley and the rest of those present examined the photo. It was of a little boy, in a white shirt, bow tie and grey shorts, sitting on a tricycle. The lad had no hands or feet and his large, luminous eyes stared out from a grossly-misshapen head. It was a pitiful picture and everyone was struck by the eyes that conveyed a mute appeal.

  A search party was sent out to look for the mysterious stranger, but he was nowhere to be found. It was some weeks before they finally tracked him down. His name was Murdo MacLeod, a crofter from Lewis, the largest of the Hebridean islands off the far northwest coast of Scotland.

  Thirty years earlier he had been a civilian truck driver and adventurer who managed to get himself attached to the British Army in the Maralinga proving grounds where he witnessed several nuclear bomb tests.

  During his year-long tenure, he became William Penney’s personal driver and often took the scientist out to the test sites. When it was all over he returned to Scotland where h
is son John Alexander was born. It was John’s face that stared out of the picture. The face opened up a disturbing new chapter in the campaign.

  MURDO’S STORY

  Able Seaman Murdo MacLeod decided to jump ship at Fremantle, 20 miles along the coast from Perth in Western Australia. He and his buddy Wally McIver had had enough of the old MV Thuyssen. She was a rust-bucket of uncertain parentage which had somehow survived the war and now she shipped coal and scrap metal. They didn’t like the captain, a mad Dutchman, so decided to strike out on their own.

  They’d heard of big gold strikes in the Outback, and wanted some of the action. They were young and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  They picked up rumours of gold prospecting in the north-west territory, but when they headed north they found nothing, and when they went west they found less. After a couple of months their money ran out and decided to try their luck mining for opals mining in south Australia, on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert.

  It was at a place called Coober Pedy. Rumour had it there had been some sensational finds. It was just the thing they had been looking for. They acquired a battered old Land Rover and headed for the digs

  In 1956 Coober Pedy was like an Australian Klondyke, attracting hordes of adventurers, all scraping the harsh desert surface for the bright blue gemstones reputed to be lying around just waiting to be picked up. It was so hot, its inhabitants had to live like troglodytes underground in man-made holes and trenches; water and other supplies had to be carted in from great distances.

  Murdo got a job as a truck driver while Wally dug trenches. It was tough work, but they were both tough men and they decided to get on with things until better days came along.

  The best part of Murdo’s job was the weekly run to collect provisions and water from Watson Siding, an isolated railway junction in the middle of the desert about 40 miles west of Coober Pedy. The freight train, when it came, arrived in its own good time, and Murdo often had to wait for hours before it turned up. Murdo soon got to know the local aborigines who regarded the junction as an important meeting place.