by Mick Norman
Modesty washed – an unusual experience for her – and Monk got as pissed as he could without actually crashing.
Then, under the guidance of Gwyn, as the president of the host chapter, they stood together in front of Monk’s own hog. The purple paint gleamed in the flickering light of the fire and the chrome shone with an evil splendour.
While Gwyn read out the words, Modesty and Monk held hands. They both promised to honour the chapter and the bike, nourishing and caring it above all their own interests. Not letting anything come between them and the chapter. Honouring the president. And the chapter. And aiding all other brothers when called upon to do so.
When they had each promised to do all these things, Monk was handed a highly-polished steel washer, which he slipped over Modesty’s ring finger. Then, amid obscene yells and cheers, he kissed her hard on the mouth.
Modesty got her own share of the cheers by drawing down his zip and fondling him in front of all of them. That was class.
Later, after all the fuss had died down, they walked together on the beach. The tide was in, and the strip of pebbles was narrower than ever. The night was warm, and Monk made no protest as Modesty pulled him gently down on to a small patch of sand, under the lee of the cliff. Close to the ruined remains of a rotting jetty.
Her hands were careful, helping him out of his jeans, caressing him, until he reached the edge of readiness. Fingers and mouth took him, lovingly carrying him on to a bursting warmth. Only when he had finished did she allow him to take her and make love to her. Not brutally, as it so often had to be, but with caring.
He licked her breasts, rolling the nipples between finger and thumb. She moaned and arched her back as his tongue moved lower down her body, leaving a wet trail, that dried in the warm air. Modesty took his hand and brought it to the core of her body, pressing his fingers against her.
Only then did he roll on top of her, and she guided his swollen firmness into her. Together they thrust and rose and fell, until they climaxed together.
Afterwards, they lay together, holding each other close, covered only with a blanket that Modesty had brought draped over her shoulders. The sea whispered at the pebbles by their feet, and the rest was silence. Above them, the camp was, at last, settling down into sleep.
She touched his lips with her finger. ‘Mick?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What about getting out? Like you said you wanted. Have you thought about it at all?’
‘I tell you, love, I’m always thinking about it. When I saw poor John buy it today. One day that’ll be me. I want to I help out here. Then, get back to our place, and talk it over with Gerry.’
The mention of the name brought an uneasy moment of quiet. Modesty broke it. ‘Do you think he’s all right?’
‘Gerry? Yeah. He’s probably living it up somewhere right now. Probably screwing some young bird. Lucky bastard.’
She nipped him with her nails, and he rolled back on top of her. Later, they got back to the camp, and slept.
Nine – That’s What Haunts Me
An extract from an interview given by Professor Angela Wells
in the magazine New Social Conscience
January, 198–
New Social Conscience: Professor, you have been called the stormy petrel of modern psychiatric research. Would you like to comment on that?
Angela Wells: Everybody wants to put labels on everyone else. I’m sorry, but I’m not prepared to play that game.
N.S.C.: But, it is fair to say that you have built up an enormous international reputation for some of your outspoken and controversial views?
A.W.: Yes.
N.S.C.: You’re very young—
A.W.: You make that sound like a crime.
N.S.C.: No. Not at all. But, do you not think that a lot of the antipathy among the traditionalists is due as much to the fact that you are an attractive young woman as to the validity or otherwise of your views?
A.W.: Christ! Every time I hear that tired old phrase “attractive young woman” it makes me want to throw up. It’s like that great old actor – Jack Palance. Every interviewer used to ask him about having the face of a prize-fighter and the voice of an angel. I know how he felt. Can we just get this one straight? I am a psychiatrist, with a particular interest in penal sociology. That’s what I want to talk about, not whether I’ve got big boobs or not.
N.S.C.: All right.
A.W.: And, as for the traditionalists did you call them? As for them, I have not a shred of respect for their hidebound and outdated ideas. They are living in the seventeenth century. It would be better for the whole area of penal psychology if those dotards retired to sit in the sun and weave baskets.
N.S.C.: As you rightly say, let’s try not to get involved in any kind of argument about personalities. Let’s keep it to your views.
A.W.: Very well.
N.S.C.: What, as simply as possible, is so different about your concepts?
A.W.: Basically, I’m not saying that is radically new or different. All I want is for penal psychology to take a tip from psychiatry, to get right back to a criminal’s roots. Spend a lot of time with him – or her – and dig deeply into seminal events. Those happenings that really seem to matter in the development of that person’s psyche. What makes his character into a criminal one. I suspect that this kind of really deep digging will turn up some interesting facts. The trouble is that it is virtually impossible to get the prison and after-care authorities to co-operate with one on such a lengthy scheme.
N.S.C.: Of course, as you say, there isn’t anything very new in that.
A.W.: If you weren’t so eager to leap in, I could go on and expand on the new areas I want to touch. I also feel that there is a tendency among criminals, when they are confronted with the full panoply of the psychiatrist, to lie. They will tell you what they think you want to hear, rather than what is true.
N.S.C.: There may well be something in that.
A.W.: It’s not a question of ‘may be’. There definitely is.
N.S.C.: How can you check it?
A.W.: What I want to do is to find some top criminal and spend several days with him.
N.S.C.: I notice you didn’t qualify that by say ‘or her’ as you did earlier.
A.W.: Quite right. Before I was talking about the ordinary criminal. Now I’m talking about major crooks. Sad to say, there are very few major criminals among the female sex. That is also something I propose to look at later.
N.S.C.: Please go on.
A.W.: By doing this, I can win some sort of confidence. Also, I really want to have some kind of hold over him so that he will be under pressure to tell me the truth. I wanted to offer remissions in return for the truth, but the authorities wouldn’t think of it.
N.S.C.: What is the alternative then? Or, is there any alternative for you?
A.W.: There’s always other possibilities.
N.S.C.: Such as?
A.W.: I might kidnap someone and threaten to have him killed if he doesn’t co-operate.
N.S.C.: I hope you’re joking.
A.W.: Well, what do you think?
N.S.C.: When do you hope to get your plans moving forward? We’ve heard that your rivals have suggested that you will never be able to operate under the conditions you want. What do you say to that?
A.W.: I suppose that they might be right. All I can really do is keep waiting. And trying.
N.S.C.: As long as you don’t have to kidnap anyone to do it, we wish you luck.
A.W.: Thank you. We’ll see the way the prune wrinkles.
N.S.C.: Professor Wells. Thank you.
A.W.: Thank you.
Ten – And You Hide From My Eyes
Angie cooked supper for them both. She seemed happy with the sort of stuff he’d handed out to her during the afternoon session. Not that it wasn’t true. It was. Every word of it.
More or less every word. The only change came at the end. He had actually followed them and watched the end of his tormento
r. And, he’d enjoyed it in a weird way.
Supper was good. Israel had rung late in the afternoon to say that he was hung up on a case in Birmingham and wouldn’t be back that night at all.
So, it had been a meal for two. Gerry wasn’t a great expert on food, but he enjoyed it all. There were avocadoes with prawns for starters. Veal cutlets with a superb sauce to follow and a mixed salad. The afters was ice-cream and fresh strawberries. Just about his favourite.
They had a chilled white wine with it, and she had managed to get some Southern Comfort for afterwards.
Over coffee, she asked him if he’d mind doing one more session that night.
‘I work best at night, Angie.’
She grinned at him. ‘I’m sure you do, Gerry, Now, come on. Hobble into my work room, and we can get started.’
She followed him in, carrying the coffees on a tin tray, heavily ornamented with flowers. He sat down in his usual chair, and she set up the tape machine.
‘You’ve told me about the first time you ran in with the Angels. Now, I’d like to know about the time in your life when you first came into contact with violence. It seems to me, from what Israel has told me, that you have a strange preoccupation with death and violence.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, I mean, don’t you think that you have less of a regard than most people for human life?’
Gerry thought about it for a time. ‘Yes. I suppose there’s something in that. But, I don’t put that much value on my own life either.’
The sun was just sinking over the hills to the west. He knew they were somewhere in Shropshire, but he couldn’t guess where. Over on the horizon, he could see a small white house, with a white fence around it.
Angie had stood up and had now walked near him. He was conscious of the scent of her body, close against his shoulder. Almost without thinking, Gerry put his arm around her shoulders. She moved a little away from him.
‘No Gerry. That’s a dangerous path to start down. If Israel ever found out that I’d been unfaithful to him, I think he would kill the man. I think he might even kill me.’
He swung round to face her. ‘Then why do you go with him? Leave him.’
Her face changed, frighteningly. Her eyes widened, the nostrils flared, and the mouth tightened. Her voice was cold and hard. ‘Leave him? You must be mad, Vinson. It’s only through him that I have this chance to carry out my ... my tests. How could I possibly leave him?’
It was time to change the subject. He pointed over the fields, to where the distant house was just visible among the trees.
‘Who lives over there?’
She stood by him again, but not close enough for him to touch. ‘In the white house?’
‘Yes.’
‘An American. We know nothing about him. Small man. Moved there a few months ago. Does a bit of smallholding. Name’s ... let me see. Remington. Richard Remington. I’ve seen him a couple of times. He’s put on weight since he’s been here. Must be the country air. Personally, I think that he’s a homosexual.’ Hastily, she went on: ‘Of course, that doesn’t make him a bad person.’
They both sat down again.
‘Back to life and death, Gerry. Tell me about when you first started to hate the system. And, when you first came to realise that life wasn’t all that valuable after all.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you do. Was it soon after school?’
‘What good will it do you to know all this? I still don’t understand.’
Patiently, as though teaching a half-witted pony to jump over a rope, she explained it. He noticed that her words were just that little bit slurred. The Southern Comfort was getting to her. He remembered how Brenda had started to go, and the signs that showed him how pissed she had been. There was a momentary pang of loss.
Now, this woman was showing the same signs. The eyes opened that bit wider, and the lower lip seemed to get bigger. Sort of flubbery.
‘Gerry, my dear man, I will try again to make all clear for you. By spotting these key times in your wretched life, we might get clues as to what has made you the way you are. Then, we might be able to help you. And those who come after you. Now, come on, there’s a good boy. Otherwise I’ll have to smack your bottom and send you to bed. When did you find, out about the value of life? And, when did you start to hate authority?’
‘In the army.’
‘Yes. Come on. I want a bit more than just “in the army”. Come on.’
‘Well, it was after I’d left school ...’
Gerry Vinson had got his degree, from a good provincial redbrick university. As a result of the saturation induction into the profession in the sixties, there was a glut of teachers. There was little that an arts degree qualified him for.
He didn’t fancy selling himself up the river every day in an advertising agency. Publishing was a profession for a gentleman. At least, that was what he’d always heard. Journalism often had a bad effect on people, and he didn’t want to shuffle off with blood pressure, or ulcers or cirrhosis before he was forty.
So, that left the army. He’d signed on for a five year spell, although he only just scraped through on the tough physical qualifications. He’d done well in training, thanks largely to the untender care of Sergeant Newman. He’d learned things there that he’d never forget. Things of greater value than the quadratics, or Boyle’s Law, or the limewater equation, or declensions or conjugations.
Newman had taught him how to kill a man. Quickly and efficiently. How to defend himself. How to turn himself from mild-mannered Gerry Vinson, into a lethal fighting machine. That was something he’d never forget.
After basic training, with its incessant drills and practicing, Gerry found himself in the real thing. He was drafted to Northern Ireland, then at the worst period of its bitterly troubled history.
He found himself less than two hundred miles from his home, yet in a country that might have been centuries away. He saw things in Belfast that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Things that the newspapers either glossed over, or just ignored.
He saw a child’s head burst apart by the powerful bullet meant for the soldier who was taking it across the road. What was left of the man who one of the illegal movements suspected of being a traitor. A mentally deficient youth gunned down in his own bedroom.
Gerry had been on duty the day that a bomb tore the heart out of a crowded bus station. He picked up the arms and legs, swept up shattered fragments of bodies with a stiff-bristled broom, shovelling up dripping loads of intestines. Dropping a woman’s handbag on the stretcher, because the hand still held it.
But, the wrongs and the brutality and the senseless slaughter weren’t all on one side. A young corporal m his platoon panicked when a crowd of women started to heckle him. He forgot all about the warning card. His finger squeezed the trigger, and carried on squeezing. Set on automatic, the rifle cut a bloody swathe through the women.
It went on all the time. You got used to the muffled blasts of the car bombs, or the milk-churns packed with weed killer and the other simple ingredients necessary to make a lethal bomb. There were things that took longer to settle to, like the toddlers of four and five who marched after you down the street shouting obscenities at you, and heaving stones at your back.
Eventually, even that became commonplace, and you forgot about it.
Gerry Vinson did well, showing himself sufficiently tough to survive and sufficiently tactful and self-controlled not to make waves for his superiors. After six months he was seconded to one of the special undercover units that patrolled the Bogside and Creggan in unmarked cars and vans. Working in twos and threes, their job was to watch for the top men in the I.R.A. and the U.D.I. and snatch them if there was evidence of illegality.
‘Of course, Vinson, if you get caught, you must expect to get killed,’ said his captain. ‘In fact, if that happens, we shall officially deny all knowledge of you. Good luck.’
The army had supplied them with a
van, painted up to look like a laundry van. They had a tough, butch woman officer with them who actually ran a laundry round, collecting information with the dirty washing. Gerry and a lance-corporal were there to provide any muscle that was needed.
One morning, the woman came back in a high state of excitement. ‘OC’s staying the night at twenty-seven. If we move now we can have him.’
That was Seamus O’C, high on the army’s wanted list.
In this sort of situation, to try for his capture would mean that their cover would be blown. It was up to the officer to take that decision.
They got in contact with their base by the short-wave radio they carried. There was a deal of excited squawking above the static, and they finally got confirmation to go in.
This was at a time of the ‘No-go’ areas and there was no
chance of an orthodox unit getting and snatching O’C.
So, it was up to them.
Their plan was simple. The woman would stay with the van. That wasn’t chivalry – she just happened to be the best driver of the three of them. Gerry and the lance-corporal – a dour Glaswegian called Andy Brown – would rush the house and hope to catch him. It was risky, but there was no other way.
Twenty-seven was just the same as any of the other neat little terraced houses in the long road. The curtains were drawn when they pulled up outside. Gerry and Brown cocked their automatics and sprinted up the front path. The officer – Gloria Shuckburgh – stayed in the driving seat with the engine running.
Gerry shouldered his way through the front door, finding himself in a narrow hallway. Leaving Brown at the bottom of the stairs, he ran to the top, pistol in his hand. All the bedroom doors were shut, and he paused.
‘In here, soldier-boy.’ The voice was quiet and controlled.
Gerry stopped dead. That meant bad news. It was a set-up. He turned to look down the stairs, and saw his lance-corporal, hands raised, ringed by masked men with levelled pistols.