by Robert White
I knew I had PTSD. Fuck, I’d had the dreams, the flashbacks; they were one thing, but my waking life had become a much scarier nightmare.
I was improving. The meds helped, no doubt. Yet in the two previous weeks, everything, and I mean everything I did had to be evaluated for risk. Every time I entered a room, familiar or not, I looked for an escape route. I opened every cupboard and checked every space large enough to conceal a person. Once I was inside the place, I sat with my back to the wall. Once outside, I found myself checking every registration plate in the visitor’s car park, just in case there was an Irish number in there.
Spring was poking its nose out of its winter blanket, and I spent hours in the stunning gardens, reading endless pulp fiction. Yet the slightest noise sent me schizoid and I found myself shaking uncontrollably whilst scanning the horizon for potential kidnappers.
Rick had been fabulous. I had been pampered within an inch of my life, and although we hadn’t had the conversation, I knew things had changed between us. There was no point in beating around the bush anymore. I was falling in love with him.
Rick Fuller’s Story:
The first time I experienced being shot was in Ireland. I’d been in the army less than a year. Brand new, straight out of the box.
I’d been sent out on foot patrol with a far more experienced paratrooper by the name of Wilson, a bull of a man, barrel-chested, flat-knuckled, a streetfighter who stank of booze at eight in the morning.
It was Wilson’s third tour and he absolutely fucking loved it. For him, it was an excuse to indulge in the two things that mattered to him most, drinking and fighting. He’d take any fucker on. It didn’t matter who you were, or more to the point in question, where you were. He’d still have a tear up.
On the long foot-patrols most blokes got to know their partner quite well, but even back then, I was never one for small talk. I do remember Wilson’s dream was to leave the army and buy his own truck. I don’t know if he ever got one. Come to think of it, I’d be lying if I said I knew if he came back from Ireland alive or dead.
On the day in question, we were on the Shankhill Road, the area of Belfast where the Loyalist Protestants felt safest. Our job was to make them feel even safer, and for the most part, we were welcomed with open arms; even cups of tea and the odd slab of cake were offered. It was a direct opposite to the Falls Road, where the Republican Catholics often greeted you by emptying the contents of their chamber pots over you from the upstairs windows.
As a naive kid, I didn’t understand the politics, or the religious divides in Northern Ireland. I had no idea why the Protestants hated the Catholics. I’d been brought up in a kid’s home in London, where we all just lived together, with no idea who was Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever. You may have knocked seven bells out of each other on a Friday night, but it was more likely to be over a girl or the football, rather than Allah or Jesus.
I watched Wilson’s back as we strolled along the road in the sun. We must have looked a right pair. Wilson doing a fair impression of a bulldog, whilst I was just a skinny-necked kid with acne and a fucking big gun.
We passed Frizzell’s fish shop, above which the UDA held regular meetings.
The Ulster Defence Association was the largest of the loyalist paramilitary groups and undertook killings of Catholic civilians and PIRA players throughout the Troubles. Despite their obvious involvement in terror activities, the UDA were regarded as a legal organisation by the British and were not banned as a terrorist group until 1992.
Once again, as a raw recruit, I failed to grasp the politics of the situation.
All I knew was, if you walked by Frizzell’s at the right moment, the owner would sometimes chuck you a bag of chips and scraps of batter. For a young, permanently hungry squaddie like me, this was a godsend.
The chip shop was to become infamous some years later when the PIRA bombed it in an attempt to kill the UDA men who still met upstairs. In typical terrorist fashion, they missed their targets. They did however, manage to slaughter eight civilians and wound thirty others.
On this day, however, smelling the frying chips as I passed, I looked longingly inside, but this was not my lucky day.
I remember we were passing this row of houses, when some fucker’s front door flew open. Out fell a woman with a fat lip and her blouse all ripped. Her old man followed instantly and started to slap her about a bit.
He was a big fucker, all string vest and tweed trousers. Some neighbours watched the show from their windows, whilst others ventured to their front doors. No one attempted to stop the man from showing his missus the error of her ways. Even at my tender age, I got the impression this was a regular incident, and that the locals regarded String Vest as a man not to be messed with.
Nobody, however, had mentioned this to Wilson.
He turned to me, his droopy black moustache twitching with excitement. “Here, son, just take hold of me SLR will yer, whilst I sort this twat.”
Now, this was not a good idea. I had my own weapon to contend with and holding a second would render me well armed but totally defenceless.
Wilson’s eyes burned into me; I was a sprog, a rookie, I had no choice.
By the time I’d sorted myself out and rested Wilson’s weapon on the deck, he was striding over to String Vest, beckoning him over with his balled fist.
The guy hadn’t even noticed us. He was too busy ripping the clothes off his wife’s back, as she tried to evade his clutches. Now in this day and age, it isn’t unusual to see a woman with a tattoo, but back then, the sight of a female with a large red rose emblazoned on her breast was as rare as rocking horse shit.
At my age, I hadn’t seen too many bare boobs either and I stood transfixed at the sight of the now topless woman as she began to put some distance between herself and her attacker.
Seconds later, Wilson caught up with his man.
There were lots of tough lads in the military, and over the years, I’ve met a few, but Wilson was as hard as they came. He set about String Vest with both fists, bobbing and weaving like the boxer he was, slamming each blow into his opponent’s body with murderous force, knocking the wind out of the big Irishman. Then he found his range and went for the man’s head. The sickening sounds of knuckle on bone reverberated against the walls of the tight terraced street. Most men would have gone down under such a sustained beating, but String Vest was still up there. His nose was broken, along with a rib or two, and he staggered briefly as he spat out a bloody tooth, but there he was, still standing and beginning to throw a punch or two of his own. Wilson had picked on the local hard man.
The whole street was out, enthralled by the contest. Nobody noticed the battered Ford Cortina Estate swing into the Shankhill Road, three up. If the driver had been a little more relaxed and not caused the slightest squeal of tyres as he made his turn, neither would I.
The boy put his boot down and I heard the old engine complain. As the car accelerated, my hackles rose. Squinting against the low evening sun, I readied my weapon. The old Ford was heading straight for the crowd. Men women and children, all gathered together to watch what was an Irish pastime, a bare-knuckle boxing match. The back windows of the car were rolled down, and as it drew ever closer to the onlookers, I saw the unmistakable sight of an Armalite rifle poke out of the offside.
During my initial training, I’d always wondered how I would react in a real drama. I considered shouting to Wilson, but he was a good fifteen yards from me, gripping his opponent in a headlock and punching him repeatedly.
The crowd were cheering and encouraging both men. I ignored them and focused on the car. As I brought my weapon up into the aim, I heard a voice in my head. It was my commanding officer as he drilled us with our rules of engagement. Never fire at, or from, a moving vehicle, he was saying.
Fuck that.
I clicked off the safety and put four rounds into the front screen of the Cortina. It veered first left, then right as the driver lost contro
l. The sound of gunfire was not lost on the good people of the Shankill, they knew it only too well, and the crowd began to dive for cover, their interest in the street fight temporarily forgotten.
As the car closed on the gathering, the boy in the back seat let go with the automatic rifle. It was totally random, the car was all over the road, but even so, some of his rounds found human targets, and, for the first time in my life, I heard the screams of the wounded and dying.
Wilson had released his foe and was sprinting toward his weapon as it lay useless on the pavement. He would be too late.
With an almighty crash, the Cortina ploughed into a lamppost, the driver exited via the front screen, already dead from my head shots, but the two boys in the back forced open their doors and rolled out onto the cobbles.
The guy with the Armalite came out firing.
For a split second, I caught his eye. He had that look about him, the same look I saw every time I examined my own face in the mirror. There was something missing in there. Fear maybe? No, it wasn’t that, although, even to this day, I can clearly remember the boy showed none.
No, he was missing something else, something I have always had trouble with, he was missing emotion, that was it…emotion.
As the kid drew closer, I found my sight picture and pulled the trigger on my SLR putting two in his chest. I watched his legs buckle under him. The third player ran back along the street in an attempt to escape, but he was chased by the crowd. Within seconds, they became a baying, angry mob.
I stood looking at the blood pooling around the kid with the rifle.
Wilson took hold of my bicep and I instinctively stepped back away from him.
“Whoa there, son,” he said. “Look…” He pointed at my left shoulder. “You caught one, pal; you’ve been shot.”
The kid that ran away was Sean Patrick Connell. He was seventeen, one of a family of eight. They found his naked body in the gutter four streets away. No one was ever charged with his murder. The boy with the Armalite was a year older, Donal Greenhalgh. He killed two and wounded three more. His youngest victim was a kiddie of six, Peter Black. The boy was out walking with his family when he was caught by one of Greenhalgh’s stray rounds.
I will never forget the sight of his mother rocking him in her arms as he bled to death before he could be treated.
Since that day, I have seen that little kid’s face thousands of times in my dreams. Whenever I hear of another child dying needlessly, he has always been the one to visit me in the small hours.
Some would comment that I’ve been a basket case from age nine, a care-home kid, but what I saw and did that day changed me forever. The saying, ‘only the good die young,’ is a big fat fucking lie. People die for any number of reasons, good, bad, young, old. Wrong place, wrong time.
Me, I needed eleven stitches, and they gave me a fucking medal I didn’t want.
My latest injury however, was a different matter. It had been twenty-seven years since the Shankhill Road shooting, and my rate of recovery was taking far longer than back in that day. The doctor kindly informed me that I would never sprint the same again, but jogging was okay.
Jogging? Fuck off.
It had been over seven weeks and I could just about walk. At least I’d lost the bag and could visit the toilet naturally again.
I’d spent a lot of time stretching my groin area and working my upper body in the gym.
That said, I used up far more time watching Lauren North.
I found myself sitting in the beautifully manicured gardens as she read book after book. She was as stunning as ever, yet somehow, a shadow of her former self.
Thinking back, shooting O’Donnell at such close quarters was a big thing for her. Then, of course, we’d started our business, and had just settled into some form of normality when the Firm came calling, we were back in the thick of it, and she had been captured.
In all my years in the Army, I had never been taken. It had always been one of my greatest fears, and as I watched her read her latest novel in the morning sunshine, I wondered how I would have coped. Lauren had survived. She had used all her training and natural guile to outwit the Irish and to come out the other side. But she had lost something over there. They had taken a part of her away.
I watched her, engrossed in her story, yet as each new car arrived in the carpark, she eyed it suspiciously. If someone approached, she became increasingly tense until they passed by.
Time heals, they say.
I lay back on my chair. The birds sang, and as I dozed in the warmth of the noon sun, right on cue, the boy Peter Black from the Shankill paid me a visit.
Some things, time can’t fix.
“Do you always talk in your sleep?”
Lauren was standing over me, hands on hips, silhouetted by the sunshine. I took a moment to grasp reality, shaded my eyes so I could see her face and shrugged.
“I don’t know, I sleep alone.”
She stepped sideways bathing me in the heat of the day.
“I’m not surprised,” she said.
I managed a sarcastic smile.
“Always ready with a compliment eh? What was I saying?”
“Oh, I don’t know…you were eating chips and fizzy something.”
I half closed my eyes and nodded.
“Ah, the Shankhill, Frizzell’s chip shop…the old boy who owned it used to throw me the odd bag of free chips when I was on patrol there.”
Lauren grabbed a chair and sat. She rested her chin on her hands.
“When exactly was this?”
I blew out my cheeks. “I was nineteen, I think.”
“And you still dream of his chips?”
I sat up and rubbed the top of my head with my palms, in no mood to explain further.
“They were good chips.”
Lauren eyed me, her face a mixture of disbelief and mischief.
“Whatever…anyway…talking of food…”
“Yes?”
The words almost tumbled from her mouth. It was as if she’d been holding them in there for so long, she was unable to keep them contained a second longer.
“I want you to take me to dinner.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do. Somewhere nice, and not here, back in Manchester. In fact, I want to leave here soon.”
“Soon?”
“Yes soon. I’ve had enough physio, enough psycho…enough of here. I’m not going to get any better in this environment. I need normality, to get back home, to get back to work.
Please, Rick, take me home…take me to dinner.”
I took in her beauty for a moment.
“Okay,” I said.
Des Cogan’s Story:
I’d been staying over with JJ and Grace on and off for over six weeks. On the first day JJ and I returned from Birmingham, Grace had insisted I crash there until Rick and Lauren were up and about. I had to admit I enjoyed the company, especially the wee boy Kaya, who was a real character and reminded me so much of myself at the same age, always getting into scrapes.
With the news that the pair would soon be out of rehab, I paid a visit to my flat with the intention of moving back in the next day.
Sorting through the three-day pile of mail behind the door, I found a letter with a Glasgow postmark.
I was required to attend the reading of Anne’s will, at McCauley and Partners Solicitors, Byres Road, West Glasgow, day after tomorrow.
I must say, this information led to an uncomfortable couple of days. Grace picked up on my mood, but I kept my counsel.
I always take the train to the city. Its quick, easy and a sensible price if you don’t mind cattle class.
The train arrived at Glasgow Central on time, and I took a cab to the lawyer’s offices, one of many on the street. The reading was due at 1230hrs and as I stepped out into a rare sunny Glasgow day, I was twenty minutes early.
I had a quick look up and down the street, found a wee independent coffee shop, bought a latte to go and stood ou
tside McCauley and Partners’ gaff, having a smoke on my pipe.
Just after 1220hrs, a nice shiny new Audi convertible with the top down pulled up in front of me. Driving was a middle-aged, bleached blonde, with most of her tits on show. Sitting in the passenger seat, was none other than Anne’s widower, Donald.
He was so in awe of the driver’s ample assets, he didn’t even notice me standing in the doorway. The woman gave Donald a wee peck on the cheek as he stepped out onto the pavement, almost bumping into me.
“Alright there, Donald?” I said with a knowing smile, blowing smoke in his direction.
He took on the look of a hare in the headlights, before regaining some of his composure. “Still not packed in the fags then?” he said glibly.
I pushed my pipe into my pocket and gestured toward the convertible being parked over the road.
“Seems I’m not the only one with a bad habit though eh, Donald?”
He turned down the corners of his mouth. “I don’t see how Mary is any of your business,” he snapped.
“No?” I countered. “Really, pal? Is that right? Well I’ll have you know, I think it is ma fuckin business. My Anne is hardly cold in her grave, and you’re swanning about with Marilyn Monroe there.”
Donald saw my anger rising. I’ll say this, I always had the guy down as a decent sort. Even though he’d fucked off with my missus, I still didn’t bear him a grudge, but this? This felt fucking wrong.
Donald’s tone was conciliatory. “I know what you’re thinking, Des, but look, you must understand that Anne was ill for a very long time. Be honest, you were only there for her final hours. I’d nursed her for months.” He looked over toward the approaching blonde. “Me and Mary are just good friends, that’s all.”
I shook my head. I was ready for punching him right in his smug kipper. “Aye right, of course you are. Funny how you both have a nice wee suntan there eh? You didnae get that walking around Strathclyde Park did ye, pal?”