Thrown Down Read online

  ‘I swear to you, David, that if I knew what they’d done with James I would tell you’.

  ‘Liar’.

  ‘Padraig would’ve known’ said Patricia. ‘He was the last one to see James. I ran out of the flat and Padraig came after me a few minutes later. I was in a right state. I’d been ordered to kill the man I loved and when it came to it I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I loved your father, David. I loved him with all of my heart and that’s why I couldn’t deny him when he asked me to give him information on the IRA. I did it for him. I risked my own life for him. I don’t expect you to understand necessarily but I do expect you to accept what I’m telling you as the truth’.

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘That’s when the British offered me a deal. They’d send me away to Australia after the baby was born and no prosecution for anything I’d done would come my way of I kept my mouth shut about how I’d been helping them and if I’d give up my baby to Joan Carson. You have to believe me, David. That’s exactly how it was’.

  ‘They pulled the strings and you jumped’.

  ‘I didn’t have any choice’ said Patricia who wiped her face with her hands. The tears were still streaming down her cheeks. ‘James and me … we were planning to run away together. That’s what he told me. We’d get as far away as we could and we’d start life all over as a couple and then as a family when the baby came along. I don’t know if I should tell you this, David, but it’s true, I promise you it’s true’. She stepped closer towards him. She could see that he was crying too now. ‘Give me the gun, David. Come on now, it’s over, it’s all over and no good can come of pushing this any further’.

  ‘Don’t come any closer’ he said, quietly.

  ‘David, just give me the gun’.

  ‘We could’ve been a family’

  Patricia smiled and nodded. ‘Yes’ she said. ‘If the circumstances had been different, if me and David had just been two people with no connections to the war then we could’ve been a family and run our own lives instead of having them run for us’.

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘No reason’ said Patricia whose tears had been replaced with resolve and determination. She wanted to hold her son again. She wanted to make him feel her love just like any mother would. She’d now moved past the end of the gun and was almost standing there facing him. His face was wet with tears and his eyes were full of pain.

  ‘Mum never told me she wasn’t my mother’ said David. ‘I never found any of this out until I found that file and read what was inside’.

  ‘We can try and make this right, David’ said Patricia as she slowly placed her hand on the gun. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She was so hot and sweaty. But she had to keep going. She placed her other hand on his shoulder whilst David stared into the distance. ‘Come on, David. It doesn’t have to be like this. Come on, give me the gun and let’s get this over with’. She gripped her fingers round the barrel of the gun and she felt his hold on it gently loosen until she was able to slide it from his fingers and take hold of it. ‘That’s good. Now just trust me’.

  David turned to her. ‘Trust you? Like my father did? I’m not going to make the same mistake he did’

  He grabbed the gun back from her and before she had a chance to do anything he’d put the end of it in his mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing his head off in front of her.

  Patricia screamed with shock and when the armed unit burst into the house she was shaking so much and gasping so desperately for breath she couldn’t speak.

  Her little baby David who’d once smelt so clean in that hospital a thousand years ago was lying there in a tangled mess of blood and scattered bone and tissue, having left this earth in a state of utter emotional turmoil.

  When Dennis ran in after all the police officers she held on to him as if her life depended on it. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even cry. The pain was running too deep.

  The psychological report on Major David Carson was very clear and unambiguous.

  ‘If he hadn’t taken leave of absence from the army’ DSI Jeff Barton began to explain to the final meeting of the case team. ‘He was going to be discharged on medical grounds anyway’.

  ‘Why was that, sir?’ asked DI Ollie Wright.

  ‘Because of an incident in Helmand province, Afghanistan in which he lost three of his men and for which he blamed himself’ Jeff went on. ‘He couldn’t accept that, according to the report into the incident, he made all the right decisions and couldn’t have anticipated what subsequently happened. There’s a lot of detail in the report that I don’t really need to repeat. But the army were concerned about his emotional state even before the aforementioned incident’.

  ‘So why didn’t they do something about it?’ wondered DC Collette Ryan. ‘That’s the trouble when you blokes like him get problems of the emotional kind. They clam up and somehow feel it’s unmanly to share what’s bothering them with anyone’.

  Jeff smiled. ‘Very perceptive, DC Ryan. Anyway, it seems that when Major Carson got hold of the file on his father it was enough to tip him over the edge and turn him into a calculating killer’.

  ‘What was special branch’s involvement in all of this, sir?’ asked DS Adrian Bradshaw. ‘I don’t want to put you in a spot but do you think they at best hindered our investigation and at worst created the whole investigation to start with?’

  ‘Special branch knew exactly what was happening all the way through, Adrian’ Jeff replied. ‘What they wanted was to draw Patricia Knight into it all in the hope of drawing other republicans into it too. But they got it all wrong. Spectacularly wrong as it turns out. No other republicans were drawn out’.

  ‘But still they used Carson’s fragile state of mind to try and do their work for them’ said DC Joe Alexander.

  ‘It looks that way, Joe’.

  ‘I know this is going to sound crazy but here goes’ said Collette. ‘I share everyone’s anger and revulsion at the way special branch used David Carson but if there’s one thing to be taken from all this it’s that Carson got to finally meet his birth mother? And what’s more he got to know the truth of his life from her. Isn’t that something at least?’

  ‘I agree that may have meant something to him’ said Jeff. ‘But we still don’t know what did happen to his father’s body. That particular part of this whole mystery remains to be solved’.

  ‘And what’s your theory, sir?’ asked DI Ollie Wright.

  ‘I haven’t got one, Ollie’ Jeff replied. ‘And I’m not going to waste any time thinking about it’.

  Dennis Knight was busy packing his and Patricia’s suitcases when there was a knock on their hotel room door. It had been such a hard couple of days since the whole business with David Carson. Patricia was still fragile. She hadn’t eaten much. But she shared a desire with her husband to get home and start putting all this mess behind them.

  He looked through the peep hole and saw a familiar face so he removed the chain lock from the door and opened it.

  ‘DC Ryan’ he said and ushered her in. The room was in a bit of a mess, Not only did they have all their clothes to fit back into the suitcases but they’d bought so much stuff for the grandchildren that they had to fit into them too. Dennis thought he would probably have to sit on the cases to get them shut. ‘We were just getting all our stuff together to go home’.

  Collette didn’t know how to feel when she heard the words ‘go home’. She’d love to ‘go home’ to Melbourne and be back amongst all her family and friends and the life she had there. It really was ‘home’ for God’s sake. But her emotions were conflicted. She and Jeff had been having such a blast and though she didn’t like admitting it, not even to herself, she was well and truly falling.

  ‘So I see’ said Collette. ‘Jeez, you two look like you enjoy shopping?’

  ‘It’s mainly for the grandchildren’ said Dennis.

  ‘And how are you, Patricia?’

  ‘I�
��m not in a great place, DC Ryan’ Patricia replied. ‘As you know we buried David today. That was hard. But at least there were no incidents’.

  ‘And what about your family?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing’ said Patricia. She caught her breath and tried not to start crying. ‘Not one phone call and they all know where I am. After what David did in my sister Maria’s house I thought one of them might’ve wondered how I was but no. I was perhaps expecting too much’.

  The next day Dennis and Patricia checked in at Manchester airport Terminal One for the Emirates flight to Dubai. They had a connection from there to Melbourne on Qantas. The family had all promised to be waiting there at Tullamarine airport to greet them. It would be a sight that Patricia knew would fix her broken heart.

  ‘Well I’ll be following you in a couple of weeks’ said Collette who’d accompanied them to the airport. They’d actually managed to remain quite civilized with each other and it felt good to Collette to be talking to folks who were from her own neck of the woods. ‘Now the investigation is over’.

  ‘Why don’t you stay on and have a little holiday?’ Patricia suggested. ‘That’s what we were going to do if things had turned out differently’.

  ‘Yeah, I might do that’ said Collette. ‘But in the meantime, you two have a safe journey home’.

  ‘We will’ said Dennis. ‘I’m taking my lady home’.

  Patricia walked along with her husband and just before going through passport control she turned just to see if any of her family had turned up at the last minute to say goodbye or offer any kind of olive branch. But none of them were there.

  But the one face in the crowd she did meet eyes with made her gasp. Surely it couldn’t be? She told herself she was being stupid and then walked on holding hands with Dennis as they presented their boarding cards and Australian passports. They were processed through and she looked back momentarily before moving on, even though she couldn’t see through to the check-in hall. Could it have been? No, it couldn’t. It must’ve been just her mind playing tricks.

  THROWN DOWN EIGHTEEN

  Collette walked into Jeff’s office and closed the door discreetly behind her.

  ‘Hi’ she said.

  ‘Hello’ said Collette who then stepped round to Jeff’s side of the desk and perched on the edge. ‘What’s with the long face? You got a good result’.

  ‘Except that the suspect did away with himself before we had a chance to get him into court and show his victims that justice had been done. I don’t like this kind of untidy result, Collette’

  ‘Yeah but it’s not a total loss. Charges have been brought against Tabitha Murphy and Jade Matheson. And David Carson was screwed up, not the full quid. I think he was always going to do something stupid like that’.

  ‘I think you may be right’.

  ‘He lost it in Afghanistan, Jeff, like so many of them did. That’s where they experienced Hell and they brought it back with them. In the case of David Carson all the stuff about Patricia and his father James was added to someone who was already in a bad way psychologically’.

  ‘How did you get to be so wise, Detective Constable Ryan?’

  ‘It’s because I’m a girl’.

  Jeff stood up and they kissed.

  ‘God, you taste good’ said Jeff.

  ‘Well you certainly wet my appetite’.

  They kissed again.

  ‘Someone might come in’ said Collette.

  ‘Yeah, someone might. Do I look bothered?’

  They embraced and kissed again before Collette thought she should bring Jeff up to date with what was happening about her return to Australia. It was a conversation she didn’t want to have. It was a conversation she wished she didn’t have to have. She’d once tried to manage a relationship with a guy who lived interstate in South Australia and that was bloody bad enough. It exhausted her. She knew that some people survive relationships with people on the other side of the world. They make it work. But she just didn’t think she was one of those brave souls. She didn’t think she was one of those who could make it work and it was going to break her heart to tell Jeff that.

  ‘Listen cowboy’ said Collette. ‘I won’t be able to see you until later tonight because after we’ve all been to the pub this alvo some of the girls at the station here are taking me shopping. To the Trafford centre?’

  ‘Oh the Trafford centre. One of the biggest shopping malls in Europe I believe’.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I hope you’ve got plenty of credit on your card’.

  ‘I’ve never been a big shopper. I’m not girly in that way but I like to have a look around’.

  ‘Okay’.

  ‘The thing is Jeff … oh look, I had a call from my boss at home this morning’.

  Jeff felt his heart sink. He’d been dreading this. ‘And?’

  ‘He says I’ve still got about three weeks of my annual leave entitlement to take and that if I want to I can use it to extend my stay here’.

  ‘Oh?’ said Jeff who really didn’t know what to say. He could take some leave himself but he normally took it during the school holidays to be with Toby. She could just move in with them for the time and they could go away for weekends. But then what if Toby gets attached and then she has to go. What if Jeff himself grew more attached than he already is. Being with Collette this short time had reminded him so loud and clear just what was missing from his life and how much he’d been missing it. But it had to be her decision. He couldn’t make it for her. ‘So what did you tell him?’

  ‘I said I’d call him back tomorrow’ said Collette. ‘I mean, do we prolong the agony and have a good time for a few weeks or do we make a clean break and I go back in a day or so? I don’t know what to do for the best, Jeff. I really don’t’.

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door.

  ‘Shit!’ Jeff cursed. Collette quickly moved away from his desk. He called out. ‘Yes?’

  DI Ollie Wright came in. ‘Sir, there’s someone downstairs to see you’.

  ‘Who, Ollie?’

  ‘He says his name is James Carson, sir’.

  Jeff and Ollie went downstairs and into the interview room where James Carson was waiting. They shook hands with him and then they all sat down. He was a dapper looking gentleman who belied his sixty odd years with a full head of now white hair and smooth skin. His neck didn’t show the usual tram line sagging from his chin down his neck. The years had certainly been kind to him. Ollie thought he must’ve been quite a head turner in his younger days. He didn’t look so bad now but Ollie had never been with anyone that old. He wouldn’t rule it out though if he could find someone like James Carson here.

  ‘Can you confirm your identity, Mr. Carson?’

  ‘I can but everything I have on me is in the name of Robin Fletcher. That’s the name I’ve been living by since 1976. But special branch will be able to confirm everything I’m about to tell you. I can assure you that I am James Carson and the father of David Carson. If you take my finger prints you’ll be able to verify it’.

  Special branch had better have a damn good explanation for this, thought Jeff.

  ‘You look in remarkably good health for someone who’s been dead for nearly forty years, Mr. Carson’ said Jeff. ‘You’d better tell us your story’. Although this had come as quite a surprise and what Carson had to say would probably prove to be dynamite, he still had half his mind on Collette and what she was going to do. He knew what he’d like her to do.

  ‘I had to play dead so that they could put Padraig O’Connell away’ said Carson.

  ‘And what did they have on you that made you agree to such a drastic measure?’

  ‘I was running several IRA informants including Patricia’ James explained. ‘But she was special. She was a beautiful young girl and we fell in love despite being on opposite sides of the sectarian divide and despite the war that we were both involved in. Our feelings for each other were genuine. In the meantime she was feeding me with
a lot of very good information and there came a point when, because of my feelings for her, I felt like I had to give her something back partly to protect her from the suspicions of her IRA comrades. So I told her of a planned operation by the RUC and the IRA’s knowledge of it led to the murder of three RUC officers’.

  ‘Did you know she was pregnant with your child?’

  ‘Yes’ said James without any equivocation. ‘Of course I knew. I also knew that my wife Joan couldn’t have children and it was eating her up inside’.

  ‘What happened after Padraig O’Connell shot you?’

  ‘They’d wanted to get Padraig O’Connell for a long time and he’d given them a chance. They, and I mean special branch, concocted the whole story of how the IRA must’ve dealt with my body which was why it was missing. Now what I wanted to happen was for Patricia and I to be moved away somewhere together. But special branch wouldn’t agree. They said it would seem like a reward of some kind and my passing of information to Patricia had led to the deaths of those three RUC officers. So I had to stay dead for them. In return they said they’d move me over to London with a new identity and I could start afresh. But there was still the matter of Patricia and the baby. I had to do something for them both. I knew that sooner or later Patricia would go down and for a very long time. I also knew that she didn’t want to bring a baby into that environment. I got them to put it to Patricia that she should have the baby but give it to Joan to bring up’.

  ‘They must’ve told her that she was your son?’

  ‘Yes’ Carson confirmed. ‘Considering how things have worked out I’m not sure if that was the best idea but you know, the benefit of hindsight and all that. As part of the deal with Patricia they told her they’d move her to Australia once she’d had the baby. She didn’t agree straight away. There was no way she was going to agree quietly to selling out as she saw it. Added to that dogged determination she was pregnant and she was grieving over the death of me. Because you see, she didn’t know that I’d survived the shooting and was picked up by the army well after she and Padraig had gone. She’s always thought I was dead too’.