Inside a brightly lit office an RUC sergeant was sitting at a desk.
‘I’m Sergeant West,’ announced one of the men holding me. ‘We’ve arrested this man under Section Fourteen. He was found in possession of a weapon in suspicious circumstances in the forest above Ballyconvil, suspected of being a terrorist.’
‘Fine,’ said the custody sergeant. ‘Put him in there, and get the bag off him.’
He nodded towards the first room across the corridor, which was a cell, bare but clean and smelling of disinfectant.
In there, with the door securely shut, my two attendants pulled the white bag over my head and one of them released the handcuffs. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Get your clothes off.’
‘Wait a minute…’
‘Get ‘em off. Everything except socks and pants.’ The door opened, and someone handed in a grey track suit. The sergeant who’d arrested me dropped it on to the bed, which was a raised concrete bench. ‘You can put that on afterwards.’
‘Look,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not a fucking criminal. I’m in the SAS.’
‘Yes,’ said the sergeant, equably enough. ‘And I’m the Colonel-in-Chief of the Coldstream Guards. So just do as I say, and put your clothes in there.’
He held out a black plastic bin-liner and reluctantly I started to strip off.
I saw the sergeant staring at me. ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked.
‘Nothing — why?’
‘You’ve blood all down your right side, looks like a cut on your forehead.’
I put my hand up and felt a matt surface down my cheek. Until that moment I’d felt nothing. ‘Oh, that. I ran into a tree.’
‘Nobody hit you, then?’
‘No.’ I dropped my clothes into the bag and pulled on the track suit, which stank of mothballs.
The sergeant left the bag on the floor and went out saying, ‘The Scene of Crimes Officer will be with you in a moment.’
I sat down on the bed feeling stunned. I knew I’d be deep in the shit with the Regiment. But all the same, my overwhelming desire was to get out of this gaol and back to the troop, among my own people, as soon as possible.
The door of the cell opened, and in came not the SOCO, but the custody sergeant holding a paste-board and a biro. ‘I’ve given you the custody number one-oh-two,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Sharp. Geordie Sharp. Sergeant in 22nd SAS.’
He gave me a hard look and said, ‘Are you suffering from any illness?’
‘No.’
‘Do you need any medication?’
‘No.’
‘Are you injured in any way?’
‘Only this cut.’ I pointed at my head. ‘And I got a load of bruises. And a bite in the ankle from a dog. But I don’t think it’s serious.’
‘Do you want anyone informed of your arrest?’
‘Yes, I do.’ I gave him the name and number of Tom Dawson, the sergeant major, troop second-in-command, and asked if I could speak to him.
‘No,’ was the answer. ‘I’ll speak to him myself.’
The custody sergeant went out, and the cell door clanged shut again. Next man in was the SOCO, a thin, lugubrious-looking fellow with a ferrety face, carrying a white tray with instruments on it.
‘I need to take some samples,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘It’s routine.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Nothing to worry about. Hold out your hands, one at a time.’
Like a robot, I did as I was told, watching with a mixture of fascination and revulsion as he wiped swabs of cotton wool carefully over my fingers and palms, then used a flat-ended gouge to dig out minute scrapings of dirt from under my fingernails. Finally he took a pair of scissors and cut some hair from my forelock, which was short enough anyway.
As he worked, I felt myself getting more and more steamed up. In the end I came out with, ‘This is bloody ridiculous! I haven’t done anything.’
‘I’ve heard that before,’ said the SOCO mildly. ‘None of them has ever done anything. They’re all as innocent as lambs, so they are.’
Just as he was finishing, the custody sergeant reappeared and said, ‘Right, you’re wanted for questioning.’
He took me across the corridor into an interview room, where a table was set out with one chair on the far side of it and several in front. We sat down briefly, waiting for someone. I’d already decided to say as little as possible until one of my own people turned up; but suddenly an idea occurred to me.
‘What station is this?’ I asked.
‘I’m not allowed to tell you.’
‘Does Chief Superintendent Morrison work here?’
‘Morrison?’ The sergeant was obviously surprised that I knew the name. I’d scored a point. But he said, ‘No. Not here.’
‘Well, can you get a message to him? Tell him I’m here?’
The sergeant looked at his watch. ‘He’s probably off duty now. It’s after eight.’
‘How about calling him at home, then?’
‘I don’t think he’d welcome being disturbed. He’s probably at his tea.’
‘At least he could authenticate who I am…’
The door opened, and in came a chief superintendent, a small, neat, sandy-haired man, who sat down on the far side of the table and said, ‘Now, I need to ask you a few questions.’
He was quietly spoken and courteous, but I knew that every word I said was being recorded, so I said as few as possible. I tried to give away nothing beyond my name, rank and number, and kept repeating that I was a member of the SAS. But when the chief asked, ‘Are you saying that you were taking part in some official operation?’ I had to answer, ‘No.’
‘What were you doing, then?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Where did you get the Luger?’
‘Pass.’
‘It’s not one of your unit’s normal weapons.’
‘No.’
All the time my mind was in the warehouse, in the ops room. I kept thinking of the consternation that news of my arrest must be causing, the acute embarrassment at having one of the guys go off his trolley. I hoped to hell that someone was already on his way across to rescue me. Further, I hoped it would be Tom, rather than Peter Ailles, the troop boss, whom I hardly knew. That wasn’t his fault; it was just that he spent so much time at TCG, liaising, that the guys in the troop saw very little of him.
After a while the chief ran out of questions, so I asked a couple myself.
‘What’s happened to the hire-car?’
‘Don’t worry. It’ll be taken care of.’
‘The keys were in the pocket of my windproof.’
‘Yes. We found them.’
‘Have you informed my people that I’m here?’
He picked up a telephone and spoke briefly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they know. There’s someone on the way over. Meanwhile, we’ll get the doctor to clean up that cut. When did you last have anything to eat?’
I stared at him. Was he offering me food? What was this place? A fucking hotel with cells? I had to think back. Of course — we’d had lunch with my in-laws. ‘About one o’clock.’
‘Do you want something now?’
I shook my head. I couldn’t have eaten a thing. ‘No, thanks.’
The custody sergeant took me along to the medical room, where a doctor cleaned the rip on my temple, declared that it didn’t need stitching, sprayed it with disinfectant, and put a dressing over it. He also took a look at the puncture-marks on my ankle and gave them similar treatment.
‘I don’t think you’ll get rabies,’ he said, ‘but you’d better have an anti-tet.’ When he saw the bruises on my shoulders he said, ‘You may be glad to know that you’ve got one broken police nose to your credit.’