‘You’d better not let the Australian taxpayer know you were sent all the way over here just to keep an eye on me, DC Ryan’ said Patricia who was feeling suddenly vulnerable. All she could see where graves and tombstones. She’d never been more thankful to have Dennis’s hand to hold onto. ‘I’d get more strife for that than for … well than for being involved with the IRA all those years ago’.
Collette smiled. ‘You may be right there, Mrs. Knight’.
‘Oh I think I am’.
‘Mrs. Knight, do you know what might be in the file on James Carson that would’ve upset David Carson so much?’
Patricia fixed her with sharp eyes. ‘You people don’t give up, do you? Not even whilst we sit here waiting to bury my brother’
‘I’m just doing my job, Mrs. Knight’ said Collette who’d really had a gut full of Patricia Knight especially after hearing about the way she’d treated DS Adrian Bradshaw and DC Joe Alexander during their attempt to interview her. How dare she be so bloody sanctimonious with her history?
‘You have no idea what I went through’ said Patricia.
‘I know that whatever you did back then led to us being here today’.
‘Look, would you stop picking on my wife?’ said Dennis, his anger rising. ‘She’s not under arrest here’.
Patricia was looking all around her, waiting to see those members of her family who she hadn’t seen in almost forty years. They’d already broken her heart. She’d tried calling all of them at least twice now but each time they’d all put the phone down on her. She didn’t know what she was going to say to them when they did appear.
‘I want today to be over and done with and then I’ll be glad to fly home’.
‘You’re not sticking around?’
‘I want to get back to my family. The family that Dennis and I created and who I know still love me. You might not think I deserve it. But I’m not going to justify anything of what I feel to you’.
Dennis squeezed her hand and then said ‘Look, my wife is finding all this distressing enough and we’re still so bloody tired from the flight over’. He wasn’t looking forward to the flight home. Twenty-two hours cooped up in a plane with only one stop to stretch your legs. It wasn’t Dennis’s idea of fun. ‘So like I said before, just back off’.
Collette got out of the car to get some air. She stretched and rubbed the back of her neck. She was knackered and no surprise for guessing why. She and Jeff had been at it like rabbits again last night in her hotel room before he left as the sun came up to go and spend some time with his son. She’d never actually seen rabbits doing it. She’d spent many summer holidays when she was a child with her paternal grandparents on their farm in rural Queensland. They kept rabbits there and one year she took a shine to a particular one who she called Bobby. He had this beautiful brown fur but sadly for him he encountered a python in one of the fields one day and came off worse. It took her weeks to get the image out of her head of poor Bobby being eaten alive by a snake about a hundred times his size. The poor little thing must’ve been terrified.
DI Ollie Wright took a call from DSI Jeff Barton and once he’d digested the details he leapt out of the car to speak to Collette.
‘That was the boss, Collette’ he explained. ‘David Carson has turned up at the house of Maria Holmes, sister of Patricia Knight, with a shotgun and a whole stack of other weapons. He’s hearded all the guests into the garage and locked them in. He says he’ll kill anyone who tries to get out. He’s already doused the coffin of Padraig O’Connell with petrol and set fire to it’.
‘You what?’
‘It was on a trolley which he sent hurtling down the street’.
‘Oh my God but look, I thought that Maria Holmes’ house was supposed to be being watched?’
‘The body of the uniformed officer on duty this morning has been found in the back garden of the house. He’d been shot in the back of the head’.
‘Christ, we left him out there exposed like a shag on a bloody rock’.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s just an expression’ Collette explained. ‘Has he made any demands, sir?’
‘Oh yes’ said Ollie. ‘That’s why we need to talk to Patricia Knight’.
‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ Dennis wondered.
‘I don’t know but it looks like they’re being pretty intense about something’ said Patricia.
Dennis looked at his watch. ‘Isn’t the service supposed to start at ten-thirty?’
‘Yes?’
‘Well its gone twenty-five past’ said Dennis. ‘And there’s no sign of anybody. Talk about cutting it fine’.
DI Ollie Wright and DC Ryan got back into the car and turned to Patricia.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Dennis as he held his wife’s hand tightly. ‘Something’s wrong?’
‘It’s about as wrong as you could get I’m afraid’ said DI Ollie Wright who then went on to tell Dennis and Patricia everything about what had happened. Patricia burst into tears and Dennis held her tight.
‘He’s asking for you, Mrs. Knight’ said Collette.
‘He’s asking for Patty? Why would that be?’
‘He won’t say, Mr. Knight’ said Ollie. ‘All he will say is that Mrs. Knight will know why he wants to see her’.
Dennis turned to his wife. ‘Patty?’
Patricia lifted her tear stained face and said ‘Take me there. I’ll go’.
‘Patty? You don’t have to do this!’
‘Yes I do, Dennis!’ she wailed.
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s my son!’
DSI Jeff Barton drove himself and Chief Superintendent Geraldine Chambers down to the house in Holmes Chapel that was classed as being part of Stockport but geographically was part of Greater Manchester. The house was at the end of a long street of semis but, luckily for Carson, it gave an exposed side to the end of the street where a roundabout that slowed down and managed the local traffic completed the suburban picture. The whole place had been cordoned off and Carson was believed to be in the main part of the house with his captives locked in the garage which was at the end of the drive and parallel to the back of the house.
‘One policeman down already, Jeff’ said Chambers as they pulled up outside. ‘This doesn’t look good. A whole family being held prisoner in their garage and the house surrounded by armed police and now the revelation that Patricia Knight is David Carson’s mother. This is not going to end easily’.
Jeff switched off the engine. ‘Ma’am, a lot will depend on what Patricia Knight can do when she gets here’.
‘Hardly the best circumstances for a mother and son reunion’ said Chambers. ‘And I’m uncomfortable about using her. But if he won’t proceed without her being here then I don’t see as we have any choice. Do you think that the fact that Patricia Knight is his mother is what he found in his father’s file and that was the shock that sent him down this path?’
‘Who can say at this stage, ma’am’ said Jeff. ‘But I think there has to be more to it than that and maybe we’re about to find out what that might be’.
The officer in charge of the armed response unit briefed DSI Barton and Chief Superintendent Chambers on the basic logistics of what they were up against. He told them that he was in contact with Carson by mobile phone and that Carson was in the kitchen of the house and depending on where he stood within the kitchen they could get a shot at him if the order came. He also pointed out the garage where Carson had locked inside twelve members of the O’Connell family who’d Bgathered for the funeral. Carson claimed to have booby trapped the garage with a bomb that would go off if any of them tried to escape or if the police tried to free them. Barton could hear them crying inside and the officer said the group had screamed and yelled when Carson set Padraig O’Connell’s coffin on fire and pushed it down the street. There was now a tent over where it had stopped and June Hawkins and her forensic team were analyzing it right now although they didn’t expect the body to be that of anyone but Padraig O’Connell. It was just a precaution. Another half a dozen family members who’d arrived at the house after Carson had taken over were all huddled in the back of a police van and being kept well away from neighbours and other members of the public.
‘Has he said where Jade Matheson is?’ asked Barton.
‘Yes, sir’ said the officer. ‘She’s in the boot of his car just over there. He says that’s booby trapped with a bomb as well. We can’t take the risk of whether or not he’s lying, sir’.
‘No, of course not’ said Barton. ‘Well let me speak to him. This may have started on his terms but it isn’t going to end on his terms’.
‘I’m sorry, Dennis’ said Patricia. She was sobbing as DI Ollie Wright and DC Ryan drove her and Dennis across south Manchester to the house of her sister Maria where all Hell had broken loose.
‘You’re sorry? I thought there was nothing else that could piss all over the life we’ve had. And now you’re expecting me to accept that this murdering maniac is your son?’
‘It was all part of the deal’ Patricia reasoned. ‘I wanted to leave for Australia straight away but they had other ideas’.
‘Who did?’
‘The British security services’ said Patricia. ‘I was in their hands, Dennis. I was utterly powerless. I was pregnant with James’s baby. James and his wife Joan had not been able to have kids. They said that if I had the baby and gave it to Joan to bring up then my past, as they called it, would be erased. I knew that my only means of survival was to go along with their demands’.
‘So where did you have him?’
‘I was taken over to England after James died’ Patricia revealed. ‘I never even had the chance to say good bye to my family and that’s why they hate me because they think I just stuck two fingers up at them. I was placed in a hospital somewhere in London, I don’t know where, and after my son was born I was picked up the very next day and driven out to Heathrow to catch the flight to Australia’.
‘Mrs. Knight?’ Collette ventured.
‘Shut up!’ Dennis roared. ‘Just shut up!’
‘Mr. Knight, will you calm down?’ Collette demanded.
‘Dennis, this all happened before we met and I love you!’
Dennis paused. ‘And in the end, Patty, that might just be the only thing that saves us’.
DSI Jeff Barton didn’t like the idea of Patricia Knight going into the house. Apart from the weight of meeting the son she gave away to the wife of her dead lover, it was an almighty risk giving in to the demands of a clearly unstable David Carson. He’d spoken to him at length. His mood seemed agitated and unpredictable. He was calm one minute and reasonably spoken and then the next he switched to being belligerent and almost aggressive. The switch seemed to come when the mention of Patricia was made. The very sound of her name seemed to make his blood start to boil. He said he had absolutely no compassion for the O’Connell family as he held them in the garage. They were nothing to him and had been part of the side of the Northern Ireland community with which his side had been at war. If they ended up being casualties then he really didn’t care. He admitted to the murder of Padraig O’Connell who he said had been slain in an eye for an eye for his father. Barry Murphy had it coming to him for assisting dissident republican groups with laundering their money. Jeff tried to negotiate the release of the hostages in the usual way but Carson wouldn’t hear a bar of it. But the third confession Carson made was to the murder of Guy Matheson who he said had simply ‘got in the way’. Jeff pressured him further on the bombs he’d claimed he’d connected to the garage and to the car where Jade Matheson was tied up in the boot but Carson wouldn’t give. He just said that he would detonate them if the police went anywhere near.
‘There can’t be a happy ending to this, Carson’ said Jeff on the mobile. ‘You must know that. You’re wanted for three murders. You’re surrounded by armed police who know exactly what they’re doing. Give yourself up now and we’ll talk’.
‘Talk about what?’
‘Talk about what’s in the special branch file on your father that made you so mad?’
‘I’m not talking about that to you’.
‘Why not?’
‘Look, just get Patricia in here. She’s the only one I’m interested in talking to and if she’s not in here in fifteen minutes then I’ll detonate the car bomb and Jade Matheson will be dead’.
‘What was in that special branch file on your father, Carson?’
‘Fifteen minutes or Jade Matheson will be dead’.
DI Ollie Wright and DC Collette Ryan stood at the bottom of the narrow driveway that led up the side of the house to the back door where Carson had agreed to let her in. Dennis Knight was waiting anxiously by Ollie Wright’s car and he was being looked after by DS Adrian Bradshaw and DC Joe Alexander. Patricia looked sideways at the sizeable and growing crowd that was being kept at bay behind the police barricade.
‘There’s still time to change your mind, Patricia’ said Jeff. He was still reeling from his last exchange with Carson. The bastard was calling all the shots.
‘No there isn’t’ said Patricia. She was determined to see this through. She was suddenly terrified as the reality of what she was attempting to do swept over her. It had been a long time since she’d held her baby in her arms. Now she was going to have to negotiate with him for the lives of her whole family. And what was she going to negotiate with? Some might say it was ironic considering she’d once been involved in terrorist activities that had claimed the lives of people who’d never been given the chance to negotiate.