Breaking Bones_A Dark and Disturbing Crime Thriller by Robert White

Author:Robert White [White, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert White Books
Published: 2018-03-03T23:00:00+00:00

Detective Jim Hacker

Harry Strange never rang me at work.

Throughout our friendship, he had only ever called me at home. Indeed, it was generally me that did the calling.

Harry was a quiet, solitary figure. As measured a man as you may ever meet. Therefore, during our all too infrequent visits to Preston’s many hostelries, if Harry presented a rare unsolicited comment or observation, it always seemed to carry all the more heft.

I’d never heard him so concerned than on 8th October 1983.

Even when Jamie had not been accounted for after the attack on the Sir Galahad, Harry had been calm.

He’d waited four days for the official confirmation that his only son was alive, yet there had been no sense of alarm from him.

I’d witnessed Harry lay his wife to rest, and watched him carry the burden of grief and subsequent loneliness with the strength of ten men. Yet on this day, I heard his voice falter as he pleaded with me to help him.

Jamie Strange had been arrested, charged with murder, and was in military custody. It was all he knew. He didn’t know who had been killed, he didn’t know where Jamie was being held. Harry suspected Jamie had been working undercover across the water, but he was in the dark as to exactly where.

He’d scanned the press and TV for any possible incidents. The papers had been full of the Maze escape, but nothing more.

He was desperate.

Despite my massive workload, I dropped everything and set to work on helping a man who had become one of my closest friends.

Back in 1983, information was sent from station to station, division to division, even force to force, by teleprinter. There was no “search box” on a screen where I could start looking for RUC incidents. Everything was done manually. If the teleprinter operator saw a message was flagged for your department, a copy would end up in your in tray… maybe.

Checking the Irish press for anything that might be a clue meant just that, finding hard copies and reading every page.

There was no simple or quick way to find out what had happened to Jamie, yet I had a break within an hour.

* * *

Lancashire Constabulary HQ, was not only the heart of the force’s communication and clerical operation, but the site also boasted a world-renowned training facility.

Whilst I had been on a residential course at the school, I had met one Seamus Connery.

Seamus was a detective sergeant in the RUC, was as mad as a March hare, and we of course, nicknamed him Sean.

We’d spent a rather boozy, two weeks together and had swapped contact details before he’d returned to Belfast, promising to keep in touch, but never had.

I dug out my diary, found his telephone number and dialled.

Seamus was only too happy to help.

He worked in Cookstown, some twenty minutes’ drive from a place called Coalisland. Apparently, about a week earlier, there had been a shooting incident there, where a seventeen-year-old had been killed by the British Security Services.

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