by Robert White
He didn’t know any more, but suggested I contact a DCI Tierney who he believed was the investigating officer.
Don’t ask me why, but I instantly knew Jamie was involved.
Within eight hours, I had confirmed my darkest suspicions.
* * *
Tierney was a quietly spoken, man, with no small modicum of intelligence. Before he offered any information, he remined me that the army not only demanded a blanket news ban, but also, of my responsibilities, not only to the Crown, but also to his case.
I assured him, I had no intention of interfering with his investigation and eventually he supplied some details on the matter, most of which seemed damning in the extreme.
The evidence strongly suggested that after being fired upon, two Security Service personnel gave chase to a seventeen-year-old by the name of Barry McGuire. Barry was a known PIRA member, and indeed, there was no question that he had shot at his pursuers intending to kill them. However, a nine-year-old witness had testified that, after being cornered at the top of a fire escape, the Irishman had thrown down his weapon and had his hands on his head, when one plain-clothes soldier shot him dead. Tierney was also adamant that the forensics at the scene bore out this testimony.
When I mentioned the name Strange, the DCI reluctantly confirmed that a man of that name had been charged in connection with the shooting. However, the detective had no idea where the two 14th Intelligence Unit members were, or if any proceedings had yet taken place. It was, for now, out of his hands, and in his opinion, a massive political issue.
Due to the recent dogmatic fallout in the Province, investigating the incident had obviously given Tierney a problem in his home station. The RUC were predominantly Protestant, and had suffered many losses at the hands of the PIRA. Yet Tierney had conducted his investigation with total impartiality, much to the annoyance of his colleagues and the army.
Equipped with this information, I then followed my nose. England has only one military prison. Indeed, they don’t even call it a prison, rather a “corrective training centre”.
MCTC, Colchester, Essex, is known in military circles as “Colli”.
What I suspected, however, was that due to the extremely sensitive nature of the incident, the powers that be had decided to throw a blanket over the matter until a decision had been made as to the fate of Jamie Strange and Richard Valance.
Therefore, just as Harry had drawn a blank with the detention centre, so did I.
No one knew anything.
This was not surprising.
Toward the end of 1982, the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary had been openly accused of operating a “shoot-to-kill” policy, under which suspects were alleged to have been deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest them. This alleged policy had been directed, almost exclusively, toward members of the PIRA. In November and December of that year, six PIRA suspects had been shot dead at checkpoints by the RUC. The SAS had added to that tally in an undercover operation, bringing the total to eight in a period of weeks.
Now, it would appear that Jamie Strange and Richard Valance had continued the theme.
There was already talk of a public inquiry.
The allegation doing the rounds in the press was this policy had emanated from high places and that eventually a senior police officer would be engaged to investigate the matter.
So, you can understand why I felt the need to tread carefully. After all, I had a wife and ever-growing family to consider.
I had never been a fan of the legal profession. From junior solicitors to full-blown barristers and judges, I had little time for them.
Their world, like my own, was by the book. That said, theirs was their own very special book, a book that could only be read and understood by a select few, and the clever manipulation of the “facts” contained within those exclusive pages was how they made their, often dubious, living.
I had spent most of my adult life watching the judiciary carve up people’s lives, quite often to the detriment of the poor victim, so you may understand my reluctance when it came to dealing with them.
If lawyers could find a way to extricate their often-vile clients from their charges, be it on technical grounds or by influencing a jury with intelligent argument, they would.
Of course, there is always a Ying to the Yang. So, it was best not to rebuke any profession publicly. Being a cop, there was always a slim chance that at some point in your career you might find yourself in trouble with the same law you were paid to uphold.
I had long ago decided that should I ever suffer this particular misfortune and require legal assistance, I would only ever turn to one man.
Montague Kane.
It was he who I contacted regarding the case of Jamie Strange.
I had the feeling that the allegation against Jamie would interest Kane enough to drag him away from anything else he may be embroiled in. He would be unable to resist the high-profile nature of the matter. The massive press interest and alleged government involvement would pull him off the golf course and down the motorway to Colchester in an instant.
A quick and curt phone call proved me correct, and there and then Jamie Strange had one of the finest legal minds at his disposal, for free.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Montague Kane was a tall, lithe man. A former Cambridge blue, he’d rowed in the famous boat race three times. Since leaving the hallowed halls, he’d kept himself in trim on the squash court and golf course. He never drank and ate a balanced diet.
Indeed, everything about Montague Kane was balanced.
He’d remained single until his thirty-fifth year, before marrying twenty-seven-year-old Italian beauty Marcia, a socialite and daughter of wealthy Sicilian winemaker, Antonio Giovani. Monte, as he preferred to be known, fathered a son a year later.
The rumour was, just a day after the birth, he’d visited a private clinic to have a vasectomy.
Monte knew what he wanted.
Harry Strange knew what he wanted too. Right now, that was to see his son.
Although Harry didn’t instantly take to Montague Kane, he valued his friend Jim Hacker’s opinion. If Jim said the guy was the best, that was good enough for Harry.
The barrister certainly hadn’t scrimped on the expenses, and had taken great pains to explain to Harry that there would be no fee to change hands. Monte would do his very best for his son, whatever the cost to himself or, as Harry suspected, the British legal aid system.
Kane had flown to London that very day to visit an unidentified man, who would allegedly grease the wheels to enable Harry to visit Jamie in Colchester. That, and for Kane to begin to build the case for the defence.
Harry, some twelve hours behind the lawyer, sat in the back of a chauffeur-driven Rover as it negotiated the M6 traffic. Alongside him was a waif of a girl wearing a two-piece outfit with shoulder pads the Miami Dolphins would have been proud of. Her name was Davina, and she was Kane’s clerk.
She held a legal jotter on her lap and scribbled on it as she spoke.
“What can you tell me about Jamie, Mr Strange? I mean, what was he like as a child? What was his relationship like with you and Rose… Mrs Strange, you know, before her death?”
Harry was a little taken aback by the bluntness of the girl. Nobody ever spoke of Rose.
It wasn’t that Harry didn’t think of her every day, or visit her grave each week to tell her what had been happening in his life, it was just a shock that another person had uttered her name.
“Erm… well he was a good lad. A little on the quiet side when he was younger, not a lot of friends, but enough. Who needs lots of friends eh? They say you can count true ones on one hand…”
Harry was rambling, unnerved. Davina noticed too.
“I’m sorry to be blunt Mr Strange, but it’s my job to get as much background on Jamie as possible. Your wife�
�s death is a matter of public record. There was a coroner’s inquiry. I have already read the transcripts.”
She turned slightly and managed a smile. Harry suspected that Davina didn’t smile too often. Nonetheless, it wasn’t an unpleasant countenance, rather a pretty one.
Harry nodded. “I know, you are just doing your job love, and I’m grateful for it. Rose would be too, if she were still here, bless her. Look, Jamie was a good lad. Good at school, never got into trouble… well not with the law anyway. He was a bit of a scrapper… like me I suppose. He wouldn’t take any messing from anyone. But he loved his mum. Doted on her. I think it hit him harder than he showed when she passed.”
Davina stopped scribbling.
“Do you think he was suffering some kind of trauma then? I mean, as a result of Rose passing?”
Harry shrugged.
“There was no doubt losing his mum was a massive blow. To me and to him. She was a rock was Rose, she kept us all on the right road, you know? But the lad was wounded when the Sir Galahad was sunk last year. They were landing troops off Fitzroy for the final push to take Stanley. The ship was hit and on fire; men were trapped below deck. Jamie rescued some, but others… well… others didn’t do so well.
“So, if you are looking for trauma, I’d be more inclined to say he was affected by the Galahad.”
“By what he saw?”
“You never forget it love… never.”
Davina wrote some more, then asked, “Any other recent issues? Changes in behaviour?”
Harry shook his head.
“Not that I noticed. You must realise Davina, that being a marine, and being whatever Jamie is right now, means you are away from home a lot. I only saw him for one day after we buried his mum, then for a few days when he was convalescing after Galahad, and maybe a week after the XMG shooting incident…”
“There was another shooting?”
Harry held up a hand, sensing the girl was on the wrong track. “Yes, but that was all above board, a totally clean kill. It’s standard operating procedure for the shooter, and in the case of a sniper, his spotter, to be given leave after a shooting. They both turned up at my house and had some R and R.”
“And who was Jamie’s spotter?”
Harry felt his stomach churn. “Look, I know what you’re thinking Davina… but it has no bearing on this case… okay… yes it was Bird… it was Richard Valance.”
Davina recorded the information on her pad. “It doesn’t matter what I think Harry. It’s what the jury thinks.” She leafed through her papers until she came upon a blown-up picture of Jamie Strange. Harry had provided the original from his mantle.
“Good-looking boy,” she muttered, almost to herself. Then, turning again, “No girlfriend?”
“No,” said Harry. “There was for a while, but they broke up.”
“When was this?”
Harry locked eyes with the girl. “The day after Rose was buried.”
* * *
Montague Kane sat opposite Davina and sipped his black coffee.
His clerk had been up most of the night. She had dropped Harry Strange at his hotel and begun to draft Jamie’s antecedence file, finishing around three a.m.
After just four hours’ sleep, she then correlated the information Harry had given her about his son’s background, with the hard facts the law firm of Kane and Drew had already acquired on their latest high-profile client.
Then, Davina produced a concise report, succinct enough as not to annoy her very demanding boss, who now scanned the text as he sipped.
“This is good,” he said, sending a wave of relief through Davina. She had been at the sharp end of Kane’s infamously short temper on several occasions, when her work hadn’t reached his extremely high standards, and it wasn’t pretty.
“We can use this as a final throw of the dice if we need to. Handsome young marine, no prior convictions, father and grandfather both decorated. Loses his mother in a tragic accident, fiancée dumps him the day after the funeral, wounded in the Falklands, kills a hardened terrorist with a wonder shot in South Armagh before being drafted into the most secret undercover army unit of all time. The lad’s a bally hero.”
Davina, poured milk into her tea and added a sugar.
“He’s also a liar, if you believe the prosecution. He may not have pulled the trigger on the gun that killed McGuire, but in his support for Valance, he is acting in concert with him and therefore both soldiers are guilty of murder.”
Monte dropped his cup on the table. His eyes flashed with irritation. “I don’t need a lesson in the legal fact Davina. I’m fully aware of what we have here thank you. I was merely stating that should we not be able to discredit the prosecution’s case, then this file, that you have so kindly put together, will be useful to show mitigation. Maybe even a stress-related condition, if we can find a friendly psychiatrist.”
Davina shrugged off Kane’s cantankerousness, pulled a sheet of paper from her briefcase and pushed it across the table.
“Dr Irvine Kulturwort. He’s an expert in stress-related conditions, particularly, post trauma. He believes servicemen and first responders can suffer from a condition called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s new, but his theories have received some praise in the Lancet recently. So, I’ve booked him for a session with Strange for tomorrow at eight a.m.”
Kane calmed. “Good… good work. So… what do we know about the prosecution witness?”
Davina rummaged again and pulled out a thin file. “Katie Harrison is nine years old. Parents moved to Coalisland from Belfast when she was six as the father found work there.”
Kane poured more coffee. “Catholic?”
“Strangely not, no. So no axe to grind there. The Harrison family are about as religious as you and me.”
Kane shook his head. “Typical. At the last census, Coalisland was ninety-eight point two per cent Roman Catholic, and we have to find the only bloody none-Catholic witness in the town. What about reliability? Does she have any issues?”
“You mean is she retarded?”
Kane shook his head. He sometimes considered that his clerk was harder nosed than himself. “No, I mean, does she wear glasses? Did she wear them on that evening? Does she hate soldiers?”
“No glasses, it was raining hard on the day but she was only fifty yards away. Anyway, there is no need for her to make any identifications as there is broad agreement that all the parties were present. All she is going to say is that one guy shot another guy after the first guy threw his gun down and put his hands on his head.”
Kane pursed his lips and tapped them with a manicured finger.
“She still has to be able to see a small handgun thrown down a stairwell, in poor visibility from across the road… Just dig up what you can on her. Has she told lies to the police or at school before? Is she a fantasist? Any criminal elements in the family history? In fact, any skeletons at all that may discredit her or her parents.”
“You think this is going to get that dirty Monte?”
“It always gets that dirty Dav… What about forensics?”
“Nothing as yet. The prosecution hasn’t officially disclosed anything from their ballistics tests crime-scene samples, or the post-mortem on the victim, but from what I gathered from the Lancashire copper, Hacker, it was pretty damning.”
Monte stood, lifted his suit jacket from the back of his chair and slipped his arms into it. “Then we’ll have to see how much of that unconfirmed and undisclosed evidence DCI Tierney told our client in interview then. Coercion is a terrible thing Davina.
“Oh, and whilst we are on the subject of Tierney, get one of our investigators on a plane to Belfast ASAP and have then do some digging there. He’s going to be the most unpopular guy in the station right now. People will want to tell all manner of tales about him.”
He checked his Om
ega. “What time are you collecting the father, Harry?”
“Forty minutes.”
“Okay, it’s been agreed that he gets half an hour alone with Jamie. Then we get him for another hour. Meet me in the lobby in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Harry Strange had been inside a prison before. Maybe not as organised and as professional as MCTC, Colchester, but a prison nonetheless. He’d held prisoners, fed them, watered them, even tried to give them solace in his own way.
Prisoners of war, prisoners of conflict, are very different from criminals, and should be treated as such.
People who are instructed to fight for their country, ordered to bear arms against a common enemy, who find themselves captured, are not criminals.
Yet the men incarcerated in MCTC Colchester were just that, criminals. Men who had either broken the criminal law, or who had breached the military code, disobeyed orders.
And then there was his son, Jamie. Where did he fit into all this?
That is exactly what Harry was desperate to find out.
Harry was shown into a small white-painted room. A polished table with four matching padded chairs took centre stage. There were no bars on the window, indeed there were brightly coloured curtains pulled half closed, to shade the room from the low October sun.
Harry sat, and waited.
Ten minutes later, Jamie walked in the room, flanked by two burly guards. They ordered Jamie to sit.
One spoke to Harry. “We’ll leave you now Mr Strange, to give you some privacy, but we’ll be just outside should you require us.”
The door closed.
Father and son stood in unison, stepped around the table and embraced each other.
“I love you son,” whispered Harry, holding his son so tight his arms ached. “No matter what… okay… no matter what.”
Jamie began to weep. It was a sorry sound, and it tore at his father’s heart.
“Come on Jamie,” Harry led his son to a seat. “We’ve only got half an hour, I need you to talk to me.”