The Bungalow-23

Continued from Chapter 22: The Bungalow-22 | ABCtales

‘Theatre, pure theatre.” The old man pronounced the word with an upper-class drawl – ‘the-ar-ter’. Hawke assumed it was a deliberate affectation; back in the day, he’d never strayed from his flat East Midlands accent. Was this really the same guy that had terrorised him, over 40 years ago? Perhaps there was something in the voice, but then almost all Sergeant Lomax’s utterances had been yells, not normal speech, so you couldn’t really tell. The full head of black – dark brown? – hair had gone, long ago. A few wisps of white on the otherwise bald pate, like scraps of waste paper on Belfast waste ground.

‘You see,’ Herbert Lomax continued, wheezing slightly, ‘the military’s all a big theatre, everybody acting a part. So I merely swapped one stage for another.’

He pressed a button; the bed headrest inched upwards, accompanied by the whirring of the electric motor.

‘I see. What sort of acting?’

‘End-of-the-pier stuff at first; not literally, but pretty sketchy set-ups. Then a few small parts in provincial rep, then bigger parts. Played military chaps to start with. Typecasting.’

‘Films, TV?’

‘You know the Hughie and Wilma comedy on ITV? Only lasted one series, so maybe not.’

‘Heard of. Don’t think I ever saw it.’

‘I was Uncle Ralph. Hughie and Ralph; sort of running joke.’

‘Nice view you’ve got here.  A bit of crumpet waiting at that bus stop.’

‘No point complaining. They’d only say: “What precisely did you expect to see from the window of a Biggleswade care home?” Like that chap…tall chap with a tache in…in…’

“John Cleese. Fawlty Towers.”

“That’s it! Sharp boy!! I must say, Hawke, I always thought you were among the brightest in that platoon – and out of a pretty good bunch. Knew you’d go far – and you did.”

“But you hated us, Sergeant Lomax! Said we were the most idle, useless, shiftless shower that had ever darkened your door…”

“Course I did. The Army’s just a big act. Couldn’t have you resting on your old laurels, what?’

The ‘what’ was an affectation, Hawke convinced. It owed more to the years of treading the boards than the Army. But then Sergeant Lomax hadn’t ever been a great conversationalist.

Herbert Lomax pressed the button again, whirred closer to Hawke, as if to give more emphasis to his words.

The door of the room pushed open; the young Polish orderly put her head around the door. “Yes, I’m ready for the old tiffin, m’dear. And I’m sure my young friend here must be gasping for a cuppa.”

“Tea, no sugar.”

When the young woman had gone, Herbert Lomax pulled the tray towards him and pushed a boiled carrot abstractedly around his plate. ‘But I’m sure you didn’t come here to swap old army yarns, young Hawke. Those lawyer chappies been giving you a hard time, raking up what you did in Belfast forty-odd years ago?’

‘No, nothing like that, it’s more…’

‘Bloody disgrace. Fat bastards sitting in their warm comfy offices, forty years on, arguing about whether a man should or shouldn’t have pulled the trigger…’

‘Yeah. Lawfare, they call it.’

‘I mean, we were only doing what we’d bloody been told to do by the high-ups, the politicians. They wanted a dirty fight – a dirty fight’s what they got. Don’t see those people in the dock, do you?’

‘No, quite. But actually, it’s not about any of that. It’s about the field outside Portadown? The burial.’

‘Yes? What about it?’ For the first time, there was a hard edge to Herbert’s voice.

‘Any idea who was in the body bag?’

‘No idea. Haven’t the foggiest.’

‘There was talk at the barracks…’

‘Always talk at the barracks. Well, you chaps had all the time in the world on your hands.’

‘We did the burial just a couple of days before those news reports about Tommy O’Reilly.’

‘Who O’Reilly? Why the hell you want to know, anyway?’

‘I think the family…they want answers.’

‘Well, those murdering Fenian bastards chose to put themselves in harm’s way. They were trying to kill us! Deserve everything they got.’

‘Hardly the case for Tommy O’Reilly.’

‘Well, that’s as maybe.’

‘Did you ever come across ... hear about our guys hooking up with some of the Proddies? Joint operations? Unofficially.’

‘Perish the thought. We were professionals. Why would we want to have anything to do with that rabble?’

‘Might have been convenient. Word in the messroom was …’

‘Too many words said in the messroom, if you ask me.’

‘…a few of them were around in Donegall Pass that time, close  to where Tommy O’Reilly was last seen. Perhaps one of them got a bit overenthusiastic?’

‘What about it?’

‘Collusion between British forces and some of the Prods, ending up with the shooting of Tommy O’Reilly. Would have been dynamite.’

‘Would have been. If true.’

To be continued in Chapter 24: The Bungalow-24 | ABCtales