‘You can still pull out if you want to?’
‘That is not an option’ Patricia insisted. ‘If this is the only way to save my family then it has to be. I owe them. I owe my son’.
THROWN DOWN SEVENTEEN
She remembered the smell of him the last time he was with her. He had that fresh newborn baby smell that every mother breathes in and thanks God for. She’d done it with all her other three. They’d all had that smell when they were still in the hospital and that’s one of the ways she always remembered David with his clean skin and clean clothes, the look of total dependence when he looked up at her and his little smile and the waving of those arms and legs. As his mother she’d given him a way into the world but her caring of him was to be short lived. She held baby David for barely thirty-six hours before he was taken from her. It was swift. It was cold. It was heartless. The baby whose father she’d loved so deeply had been in the cot one minute and then he was gone the next. She was in some military type of hospital somewhere in London. That’s as much as they allowed her to know. There’d been no friendly faces around and no smiles of support. Later that same day they drove her out to Heathrow airport. She was escorted through passport control and put on the Qantas V-jet bound for Melbourne. All the way through the journey she’d thought about that little baby, her son, but there was to be no looking back. She put it out of her mind that she’d ever see him again and got on with her life in Australia with Dennis and their three children, but now her first born was standing there with an automatic rifle in his hands that he was pointing straight at her.
‘Close the door behind you’ said David.
Patricia did as she was told. ‘Hello, David. I’ve come to bring an end to all this. You’ve already made quite a show here’.
‘I haven’t even started yet’.
‘What you did to my brother’s coffin was unforgivable’.
‘He murdered my father’ said David. ‘But you must be used to putting on a show. You never stayed around to see the results of your handiwork though, did you? You were always long gone before any of it was discovered’.
‘Let my family go, David’ said Patricia who was finding it hard to keep her eyes on him because he was the image of his father James. He had the same black hair and dark eyes. He was tall like James too. This wasn’t how his life should be. He should’ve been sewing his wild oats and then settling down with a pretty girl and starting a family. She thought about her two little grandkids back in Melbourne. She ached to be with them now.
‘Make me’.
‘I said let them go, David’.
‘You don’t call the shots here’.
‘I said let them go! They’ve done nothing to you. It’s me you wanted and I’m here now so let the rest of them go’.
‘You’re remarkably brave considering what’s at stake here’ said David who didn’t quite know how to feel about his birth mother standing there in her black jacket, black skirt, black shoes and white shirt, all ready for a funeral. His mother Joan, the woman who’d brought him up, was the kindest and most attentive mother he could ever have wished for but he still wondered what it would have been like to have been brought up by Patricia. What would it have been like to be part of this typically extended Fenian family? The O’Connell’s would have probably had much less trouble accepting him than he would’ve had about accepting them. But that was the trouble with all these nationalists and republicans. They think that everyone who lives on the island of Ireland is Irish by definition and should be happy to live in one so-called Free State. But David had never considered himself to be Irish even though he’d grown up in Northern Ireland. He was a loyalist to the British province of six counties. He was loyal to his Scottish Presbyterian heritage. He didn’t feel anything Irish at all.
‘Well I’m guessing you wouldn’t actually kill your own mother in cold blood’
‘That’s the risk you took when you came in here’ said David, calmly. ‘But then you know all about killing in cold blood because you’re a murdering whore’.
‘Say that without a loaded gun pointing at me and I might respect you for your directness’.
‘I’m not after your respect’ David sneered.
‘Then what are you after?’
‘You mean you really don’t know?’ said David.
Patricia decided to play along with him for a while. He clearly wasn’t prepared to release her family any time soon and certainly not as an answer to her request. She felt anxious about how this was all going to end up. It had been a long time since she’d had to deal with anything like this. The last time she’d had to negotiate anything was when her kids were young and one of them fell out with their friend next door or across the street. She always got it sorted out though. That was probably why the neighbours always left such disputes to her to sort out. But none of those kids had been killers. Not like her own kid who stood before her now and she wanted to drag it out for as long as she could before he was minded to do something drastic once again. She didn’t know if she could manage it. She could feel herself sweating. This was her son and yet he’d turned into this. Was it her fault? Was it in the genes? Had she passed on her own anger and resentment to her eldest son?
‘Why don’t we just sit down and talk, David?’
‘I think we’ve gone way past that, don’t you? In fact as mother and son we’ve gone past so many of the normal turns in the road that we’re now speeding towards a dead end. Do you like that? A dead end? Quite poetic, don’t you think? But who is going to end up dead from this?’
‘If I told you I’m sorry would it help?’
‘Not if I don’t believe you’.
‘Well I am sorry, David’ said Patricia who began to slowly step towards him. ‘I’m sorry that it was another woman who brought you up but you see, they didn’t give me much choice. It was either give you up to Joan Carson or be charged with everything they had on me’.
‘So you gave me up to avoid a prison sentence? You sold me out for that?’
‘They’d have still taken you away from me even if I’d said no! Don’t you see that? At least by letting Joan Carson bring you up I was giving her back something of what I’d taken from her. I’d had an affair with her husband. You were the result of it. She couldn’t have children but if she had you then she’d not only have a child but she’d have something of James too. I did what I did to try and put something right and I’m not going to let you make me feel bad about it! Yes, I was in a corner, yes my back was up against the wall and yes I was thinking of my own survival. But I was also thinking of you and of Joan and of James who’d lost his life and been taken away from Joan because of me. I just wanted to give her something back’.
David hadn’t been counting on such an emotional response from Patricia. It all sounded so very plausible. If it wasn’t for the situation it was all wrapped in he may believe it all without reservation. But none of this was normal. None of this made any sense compared to how he’d been feeling since he opened that special branch file.
‘Where is he?
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Where is my father’s body? And don’t tell me you don’t know’.
‘Why would I know, David?’
‘The only part of the file that remains classified is the part that deals with where his body went. I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me because you were there and you must know what happened to the body after your brother murdered him?’
‘Why should that matter to you now?’
‘It was bad enough finding out in that file that you were my mother! I’d had no idea that all my life I’d been fed a lie. My mother never told me that she didn’t actually give birth to me. She never told me about the deal cooked up between you, her and the authorities. And worse still, I had to grow up without a father because of what you did and what your brother did’.
Patricia was silently crying. ‘I’m sorry, David’.
‘Sorry? You’re sorry? I was told that my father was killed in active service and that a body was never found. He was in active service. He was in active service to you and you betrayed him with your IRA murdering scumbags’.
‘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’.