I didn’t say anything and continued to drive along the road.
“Well go on then, sir,” Lawson said.
“Unfortunately I have zero evidence for any part of my hypothesis. Nothing I can present to the DPP, nothing that I could take to any of our superiors.”
“Go on, Sean, you have to tell us what you’re thinking.”
I pulled over to the side of the road and we walked to a pub in the picturesque village of Waterfoot in the Glens of Antrim. Quite the dissonance between the story percolating in my brain and the beauty of the surroundings.
A pint. A cigarette. A think. I made sure we got a table outside in the empty beer garden where our only listeners were the cows staring at us over the stone wall.
“They didn’t plan on rape. Not at first. The rape comes near the end. They’ve been drinking but they don’t consider themselves to be bad men. Three concerned citizens working as reserve policemen. Salt-of-the-earth types. Two Prods and a Catholic. Just like the three of us.”
“Very different from the three of us,” McCrabban said, with as grave a voice as I’ve ever heard him use.
“Young couple stop at the checkpoint, impatient to get going. Cops are being overbearing and a little lascivious. Just light banter. Maybe the girl gives the policeman lip. Maybe the boy. They take the boy out, rough him up, one thing leads to another. The girl goes for them. They point the rifles at the boy and one of them has the bright idea to teach the wee lassie a lesson. She won’t talk, and if she does no one will believe her. Teach her a lesson and let them go. This is Ulster: whatever you say, say nothing. They take turns and she’s screaming and the shy boy finally cracks. Tries to take down one of them. But it’s no go and they shoot him. And then they feel they have no choice and they have to shoot her. And then it’s a pact in blood between the three of them: Deauville, Selden and our good friend and lord protector Assistant Chief Constable Strong.”
I took a sip of my Guinness and continued.
“The years go by. The B Specials are disbanded. Strong joins the RUC proper but Selden and Deauville take very different paths. Deauville goes to England and drifts into a life of petty and not so petty crime. Selden moves back to Derry and when Bloody Sunday happens, like every other Catholic man in the city he attempts to join the IRA. They take him in. He slowly moves up the ranks. He’s a plodder. Not a gunman or a planner or a thinker. Just a plodder. He’ll never go anywhere, but then he has an idea. What about his old friend John Strong who he’s heard has joined the RUC. What’s he up to these days? And he finds out that John Strong has made quite a career for himself. He’s going places. And he arranges a not-so-accidental meeting with John Strong. And he tells Strong that all this beautiful life you’ve made will end if I tell people what really happened to Maria McKeen and Patrick Devlin back in 1968.”
Crabbie filled his pipe. “I don’t like where you’re taking this, Sean,” he said.
“And at first Selden just asks for a few bits of information here and there, maybe a tip-off or two about an upcoming raid. And maybe it even goes two ways, maybe Strong gets information from the IRA as he moves up the ranks and the IRA high command realise that they have a very important operational asset indeed. Both men help each other. Both careers blossom. Selden does in fact become something of a player and as a reward gets to be a councillor.”
“But no one in Derry knows this, only the Army Council itself,” Lawson said. “That’s why your mate Ken thought Selden was a nonentity.”
I looked at Crabbie and he knew it was possible, maybe even probable. There was an IRA mole and that mole was John Strong.
“An Assistant Chief Constable who belongs to the IRA,” Lawson said, gasping over his drink.
“An Assistant Chief Constable, maybe Chief Constable in waiting who is their creature to his very boots. What a coup that would be.”
“And everything’s just peachy for a few years but then Deauville returns from England with a new wife and a new game,” Lawson said.
“And he spots his old friend John Strong in Carrick. Maybe at the Rangers Club,” Crabbie suggested.
“And Deauville’s not like the IRA. He’s not subtle. He’s not interested in the long game. He sees that Strong is a wealthy man, an important man and he asks for money. A lot of money. If Strong pays him a handsome cheque every month poor Elena won’t have to risk life and limb smuggling heroin from Bulgaria every six weeks,” I said.