living room and fuck her goddamn brains out.
I oiled the gate. The rain came on. Mrs Campbell did not come out.
15: THURSDAY MAY 21 1981
Tuesday had been a bust. Wednesday had been a bust. Two days of nothing. And then on Thursday all hell broke loose.
4 a.m. Carrickfergus
They didn’t phone. Crabbie rang my front-door bell at four in the morning. I was convinced it was an inept terrorist attack and opened the door with my service revolver cocked.
“Don’t shoot, it’s me,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Get a move on, Sean. We’re meeting the Chief in half an hour.”
“Let me make a cup of tea,” I murmured.
“No time for tea, the others are waiting in the Land Rover, come on, I’ll help you. Lemme get your kit off.”
“Don’t touch me! Wait in the living room.”
I quickly threw on my dress uniform and body armour. “Last night I told a mate in Special Branch my theory about Freddie Scavanni,” I yelled from the bathroom.
“What did he say to that?” McCrabban asked.
“He said I was a genius and he sent over the file on Jack the Ripper.”
“Have you solved that one too?”
“It was Queen Victoria.”
“I knew it all along. Easy to conceal a machete under all that crinoline.”
I grabbed my electric razor and the pair of us went outside.
“I cleaned that graffiti off the back of the Rover,” Crabbie said.
I had completely forgotten about that. “Thanks, mate,” I told him.
“You can go in the front, Sean,” Crabbie said. “I can see you’re fragile today.”
I got in the passenger’s seat. Sergeant McCallister was driving, McCrabban, Matty and three reservists were in the back. No one had mentioned the name “Thatcher” yet but this had to be about her.
“We’re to rendezvous at Ballyclare at 04.30 hours,” McCallister said.
“‘04.30 hours?’ Is that what he told you? Does he think we’re the bloody army?”
4.30 a.m. Ballyclare
Brennan was sitting there like Lord Muck in his famous Finn Juhl armchair that he must have transported in the back of the Land Rover. He tapped his watch and grinned at us as we pulled up in front of the Five Corners Public House, which was open and serving Irish coffee to the lads.
The sun was just coming up over the Slieve Gullion and Lough Neagh and if the big line of black clouds to the north would keep away it might be a fine morning. The landlord of the Five Corners passed an Irish coffee into my hands and I took it gratefully. Brennan was enjoying himself, surrounded by his men, in the wee hours, in his full dress uniform and leather gloves.
“Men, we are to proceed to Aldergrove Airport in convoy where we are to meet with the brave boys of Ballyclare RUC and establish a roadblock, in co-operation with units of the British Army, on the Ballyrobin Road in Templepatrick so that an unnamed very important person can drive to Belfast,” he said.
“Why doesn’t she take a helicopter like everybody else?” McCallister wondered.
“Wrecks her hair, doesn’t it,” Matty offered.
5 a.m. Templepatrick
The army had the whole village sewn up and a brigadier general told Brennan that we were surplus to requirements.
“We were ordered up at four in the morning for this!” Brennan said furiously and after some negotiation we were allowed to set up our three Land Rovers further along the road.
“They’re on the way! Attention!” one of the squaddies yelled and the soldiers stiffened. We did not. Instead we fidgeted in our body armour and Crabbie explained to the reserve constables that because this was both out of regular hours and perilous we could claim hardship allowance and danger money at the same time.
At 5.30 a.m. two police motorcycles were the heralds for two fast-moving army Land Rovers, two equally speedy police Land Rovers and two bullet-proofed Jaguars that presumably contained the Prime Minister and her staff.
I didn’t see her. All I saw was a blur.
“Was that it?” Matty asked me. Nobody knew the answer and we got back in the Rovers feeling deflated.
Fifteen minutes later on the way back to Carrickfergus we were diverted to young Shane Davidson’s muse, the Kilroot Power Station, where there was trouble.
6.10 a.m. Kilroot
Two dozen workers backed by another hundred and fifty men from God knows where had formed an illegal picket line in front of the power plant. The shift change was trying to get in and if they couldn’t all the lights in north Belfast and East Antrim would be out, which wouldn’t impress Mrs Thatcher during her news conference about how everything in Ulster was just tickety boo.
We parked the Land Rovers a hundred metres away.
“Machine guns away, lads,” Brennan ordered and we advanced with side arms only. In my case this was an easy instruction to obey since my SMG was still back on my hall table in Coronation Road.
“You lads wait here, I’ll go talk to the fucking scum,” Brennan said with the diplomatic
“I’ll go with you,” Sergeant Burke said and McCallister gave me the nod. I sighed and joined them. We walked to the picketers who were holding up signs that said “Thatcher = Traitor” and “No Deals With Terrorsits [
The headman was frickin Councillor George frickin Seawright who was rapidly becoming the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of my little drama.
“You have to let the day shift in. This is an illegal picket!” Brennan said in a voice that you could have heard at the top of the power station’s six-hundred-foot chimney.
“We will not countenance deals with the blackguards in the H Blocks! Mrs Thatcher and the British government will know our wrath as the Amalekites knew the wrath of the Lord! Just as the Sodomites have tasted the fruits of their evil ways. Just as the Antichrist in Rome felt the wrath of the Lord’s divine justice!” Seawright yelled in his apocalyptic Glaswegian accent.
Chief Inspector Brennan hooked his thumbs under the Velcro straps of his flak jacket. “I just saw Mrs Thatcher. We were part of the honour guard at the airport and after telling us what a lovely day it was she assured us all to a man that no deal would ever be done with IRA terrorists!”
There was a cheer from some of the picketers. Seawright seemed to waver and Brennan grabbed the initiative. “Ok, lads, you’ve had your fun, now let these hard-working lads through to do their job!”
“Aye, let them though,” someone yelled from the crowd.
I walked over to the first car waiting beyond the picket line.
The driver was a thin, jumpy young man with tissue paper plastered over his shaving cuts.
“Drive in, mate, don’t stop and you’ll be fine,” I told him.
“It’s me mother-in-law’s car. She’ll go ape if they break me windows.”
“Didn’t I just say you’d be fine? Drive, or
He set off and the others followed behind. And with that the night shift went in and day shift came out and heat and light and power flowed to the citizens of Ulster and for once the Amalekites were triumphant.
7 a.m. Carrickfergus
Back in the RUC station we began hearing rumours that not one but two hunger strikers had been given
