A Darker Place. Jack Higgins
his training days as an officer cadet at Sandhurst, and on graduation, it had led to an immediate posting to the Ordnance Corps. In ninety-one, he was entering his third year as a disposal officer, a captain in rank and several hundred explosive devices of one kind or another behind him.
Most people didn’t realize that he was married. A summer affair with his second cousin, a schoolteacher named Elizabeth Howard, during his first year out of Sandhurst had turned into a total disaster. It was a prime example of going to bed on your wedding night with someone you thought you knew and waking up with a stranger. A Catholic, she didn’t believe in divorce and indeed visited his mother on a regular basis. He hadn’t seen her in years.
The ever-present risk of death, and the casualty rate amongst his fellows in the bomb disposal business, precluded any kind of relationship elsewhere. He smoked heavily, like most of his kind, and drank heavily at the appropriate time, like most of his kind.
It was a strange bizarre existence which produced obsessive patterns of behaviour. On many occasions, he’d found himself dealing with a bomb and indulging in conversation, obviously one-sided, demanding answers which weren’t there. It was an extreme example of talking to yourself. A bomb, after all, couldn’t talk back except when it exploded, and that would probably be the last thing you heard. However, he still talked to them. There seemed some sort of comfort in that.
His father had died when he was sixteen. It was his uncle who had arranged for his schooling and Sandhurst, and maintained his mother at the extended family home in Shropshire. She was basically there as unpaid help as far as Roper could see, but on army pay there wasn’t much he could do about it, until the unexpected happened. His mother’s brother, Uncle Arthur, a homosexual by nature and a broker in the City with a fortune to prove it, had died of AIDS and, lacking any faith in his sister’s ability to handle money, left a considerable fortune to Roper.
He could have left the army, but found that he didn’t want to, and when he tried to get his mother her own place, it turned out she was perfectly happy where she was. It had also become apparent that the perils of bomb disposal were beyond her understanding, so he settled a hundred thousand pounds on her, and the same on his wife, and left them to the joys of the countryside.
Before the Portland Hotel, he had been decorated with the Military Cross for gallantry, although the events surrounding it had only a tenuous link with his ordinary duties.
On standby, he had been based in a small market town in County Down where there had been a spate of bomb alerts, mostly false, though one in four was the real thing. The unit had five jeeps, a driver and guard and a disposal expert. On that particular day, a call came in over the radio, and the jeeps disappeared, leaving only Roper and his driver, the unit being a man short. The first call was false, also the second. There was another, this time for Roper by name. There was something about it, the speaker had a cockney accent that sounded wrong.
Terry, his driver, started up, and Roper said, ‘No, just hang on. I’m not happy. Something smells.’ He had a Browning Hi-Power pistol stuffed in his camouflage blouse. He was also wearing, courtesy of his newfound wealth, a nylon and titanium vest capable of stopping a .44 Magnum at point-blank range.
Terry eased up an Uzi machine pistol on his knees. There was a nurses’ hostel to the side of the old folks’ home across the street and as the voice sounded over the radio again, still calling for Roper, a milk wagon came round the corner. It braked to a halt outside the hostel. Two men were in the cab in dairy company uniform.
The one on the passenger side dropped out, turning suddenly as Roper started forward, pulled out a pistol and fired. He was good, the bullet striking Roper in the chest and knocking him back against the jeep. The man fired again, catching Terry in the shoulder as he scrambled out with the Uzi, then fired again at Roper as he tried to get up, catching him in the left arm before turning and starting to run. Roper shot him twice in the back, shattering his spine.
The vest had performed perfectly. He picked up the Uzi Terry had dropped, got to his feet and walked towards the milk truck. The driver had slipped from behind the wheel and was firing through the cab where the passenger door was partially open. A bullet plucked Roper’s shoulder. He dropped down on his face and could see directly under the truck where the driver’s legs were exposed from the knees down. He held the Uzi out in front of him and fired two sustained bursts, the man screaming in agony and falling back against the hostel wall.
Roper found him there, sobbing. He tapped the muzzle of the Uzi against the man’s face. ‘Where is it, in the cab?’
‘Yes,’ the man groaned.
‘What kind? Pencil timer, detonators or what?’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘Have it your own way. We’ll go to hell together.’
He grimaced at the pain of his wounded arm, but managed to pull the man up and push him half into the cab. There was a large Crawford’s biscuit tin. ‘You could get a Christmas cake in there or a hell of a lot of Semtex. Anyway, let’s try again. Pencil timer, detonator?’
He turned the man’s face and pushed the muzzle of the Uzi between his lips. The man wriggled and jerked away. ‘Pencils.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right, for both our sakes.’
He pulled off the lid and exposed the contents. Three pencils – the extras just to make sure. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘Fifteen minutes. I’d better move sharpish.’ He pulled them out and tossed them away and eased the man down as he fainted.
People were emerging from the houses and the local bar, now a couple of dogs barked, and then there was a sudden roaring of engines as two jeeps appeared, moving fast.
‘Here we go, the bloody cavalry arriving late as usual.’ He slid down on the pavement, his back to the hostel wall, scrabbled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, fumbled to get one out, and failed.
It didn’t make him notable in any way beyond military circles. The national newspapers didn’t make a fuss simply because death and destruction were so much a part of everyday life in Northern Ireland that, as the old army saying went, it was old news before it was news. But the Portland Hotel a year later, the lone man face-to-face with a terrible death for nine hours, really was news, even before the decision had been taken to reward him with the George Cross. He’d continued to meet the daily demands of his calling, working out of an old state school in Byron Road which the army had taken over on the safe-house principle, fortifying it against any kind of attack, the many rooms providing accommodation for officers and men, with a bar and catering facilities. There were places like it all over Belfast, safe, but bleak.
Local women fought for the privilege of working there in the canteen, the laundry or as cleaners. That many would be Republican sympathizers was clear, and a rough and ready way of sorting the problem was to try to employ only Protestant women. On the other hand, it was obviously a temptation for Catholics who needed work to pretend to be other than they were. Such women lived locally, and came and went through the heavily-fortified gates with identity cards, often so false they could be bought for a couple of pounds in any local bar.
Roper had been posted to Byron Street for nine months, and in that time had caused something of a stir with his Military Cross and good looks, but his gentlemanly behaviour towards the younger women, which was conspicuously absent in his fellows, had provoked a suggestion that, as the local girls put it, there had to be something wrong with him.
On the other hand, his incredible bravery was a fact, and so was the fact that in those nine months, some of his comrades had paid the final price and others had been terribly injured.
The Portland Hotel caused many people to look at him differently, as if there was something otherworldly about him, and there were those who felt uncomfortable in his presence, hurrying past him. One who did not was a new young cleaner who replaced an older woman who’d moved away. The girl’s name was Jean Murray and she was from a Protestant Orange background.
Roper’s room was on her list and she was resolutely cheerful from the moment she started and knew all his business