Entrenched Beliefs: Richard West, #5

By Robert W Fisk

An IRA bomber believes a priest betrayed him and seeks revenge.  A school principal believes a six year old is being molested, and launches an investigation.  In Middle Creek Primary School, a twelve year old believes her internet boyfriend is seventeen.  Another pupil knows a dark secret about her friend Edwina, who disappeared while on a Pony Trek.  An artist believes she will win the lottery.  Welcome to Middle Creek, the fifth book in the Richard West series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: FOXBURR PUBLISHING
• Release date: May 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386108177

Robert W Fisk

Robert lives in Mosgiel, a small town near Dunedin, New Zealand. Robert has been a primary and secondary teacher and school Principal, and later was a Senior Manager of Special Programmes at the University of Otago Language Centre. His writing has been mainly research papers and reports, and while in Brunei Darussalam, a series of dramatised Radio Brunei scripts. He has always enjoyed reading light fiction and now turns his hand to writing it with six published books.

Book preview

FOXBURR PUBLISHING

13 ARMADALE STREET

MOSGIEL, NEW ZEALAND 9024

Dedicated to my mother, the late Florence Margaret Fisk, story teller and poet.  She would have loved little Azure.

DISCLAIMER

This novel is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, organisations, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

COPYRIGHT  ©  Robert W Fisk  2018

Dr Robert W Fisk has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright Act, 1994 and related International Treaties.

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OTHER BOOKS BY DR ROBERT W FISK

You Talk You Die

Passport to Power

The Fern Valley Conspiracy

Farm Kill

CONTENTS

PRELUDE

‘False accusations can be prompted, aggravated or perpetuated by law enforcement, child protection or prosecution officials who become convinced of the guilt of the accused.’

Wikipedia

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Connor McManus read and re-read the section of Wikipedia about the Provisional IRA on the computer in the prison library. 

‘Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, (footnotes and references removed).’

The IRA declared a brief ceasefire in 1972 and a more protracted one in 1975, when there was an internal debate over the feasibility of future operations. The armed group reorganised itself in the late 1970s into a smaller, cell-based structure, which was designed to be harder to penetrate. The IRA now tried to carry out a smaller scale but more sustained campaign which they characterised as the 'Long War', with the eventual aim of weakening the British government's resolve to remain in Ireland. The British Army called this the 'terrorist phase' of the IRA's campaign. The IRA made some attempts in the 1980s to escalate the conflict with the aid of weapons imported from Libya.  In the 1990s they also began a campaign of bombing economic targets in London and other cities in England.

The bastards only wrote about the English side. As usual. What about the centuries of oppression?  Of the thousands of families forced to flee Ireland in order to avoid the starvation brought on by the potato famine, which itself if the truth were known was caused by greedy landlords?  The very words 'made some attempts', themselves an example of how the English were shrinking Irish history to a non-event, obliterating the struggle of thousands of worthy men, and women too, who gave their blood for the cause.  Was this not the same English system grinding down the Irish despite the fancy words and televised announcements of agreements to settle the Troubles once and for all? 

And not just blood had been given.  Hadn't he himself sat rotting these fifteen years in a stinking prison, never saying a word about his connections, even when the bastards questioned him again and again, starved him, thirsted him and beat him again and again until at Death's door and with no Priest, a man confessed his all?  Himself had rather he died than betray his Cause, not like the priest who looked like the picture of Abraham Lincoln in his old school history book. It was reported to Connor that having seen Connor leaving at the scene of the last bomb, the priest talked to an officer from the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary.  How else would the English have known who had planted the bomb?

While he lay in prison awaiting his trial, the Green Group, as his men and women were called, was rounded up.  Some were thrown into gaol, some were shot on the spot in the dead of night as they defended themselves, while others fled the country, to be hunted down no matter where they were, in retaliation for the university hall the cell had bombed.  It was a fair target, and although the Press bleated on about innocent young lives, these were the new wave, oppressors in the making, filled with belief that England was right and the IRA was wrong.

There was no jury for a terrorist.  Connor made no plea. That he had intimate knowledge of who was connected to whom in the IRA there was no doubt, but Connor refused to give the Army any information. He was sentenced to twenty years. 

Connor still had his connections, even when back in the prison cell, people who would never surrender their principles, who would fight on covertly to avenge the wrongs done by Irish betrayers, turncoats and whistle-blowers, those cowards who had sold out their friends and who would eventually have to pay the price. 

Connor let it be known that he sought the priest, Father Simon Murphy and the policeman he had told.  The priest, Connor was told, had fled to England, a sign of guilt as sure as God made little apples, causing a delay while informers and supporters tracked the man down. 

The policeman, Michael O’Hare, was still living in Ireland, so that was easy, even in this day and age.  Connor made the arrangements for a man to fly from Spain to visit his sister. 

It happened that Michael O’Hare took his wife to the theatre one wet and stormy night in Belfast.  After the show, in the driving rain, Michael walked to get the car, leaving his wife, truly blessed by God, waiting under the porch of the theatre for him.  His car exploded and the policeman died immediately, which was a crying shame because the policeman deserved a slow death for the years of suffering he had caused to Connor, the only one of the patriots who could be positively identified.  His wife and child would be looked after by the Welfare, and be given a special benefit for those who died while protecting the people.  The policeman was a hero, while Connor rotted in gaol.  Now wasn't that an irony?

His wife and the boy Eamon visited Connor in the prison, but the boy failing to understand the silence of Connor was a matter of honour, urged his father to tell the English what they wanted to know so that his father could be released to join him and his Ma.  To confess and betray were the last things Connor would do.

Although time passed, Connor was still determined to exact his revenge.  His belief that the priest should be brought to justice never changed.  Eventually, word was brought that the priest had left the Church. 

The ex-priest was no longer Father Simon Murphy.  A woman in her thirties came to visit Connor in gaol, pretending to be Connor's granddaughter; ‘they must think I’m getting old to have a grandchild of that age,’ thought Connor. 

A man who had changed his name from Simon Murphy to Simon Woodhaugh-Jones was fighting for the English in Afghanistan, the very same man who had broken his Holy Vows and told the English what he had seen.  Now Connor knew his changed name, he could find him. 

The RUC was re-structured in 2001, at which time Connor, no longer a threat to society, was released like many others who were given one hundred punts and a cheap suit and set free.  He moved back into the small house, a house which had seemed small but after prison was like a mansion, with his good Catholic wife who had waited loyally for Himself to return. 

Things were not easy.  They had both changed in the years they had lost from their lives.  They were not happy, Connor himself only when in the arms of the bottle, a man who knew he was unfair, violent even, but who could do nothing to exorcise his demons, even with the help of the new young priest.  He barely noticed his wife sicken.  By the time he realised how sick she was, it was too late.  She passed away in a cottage hospital, with Connor holding her hand.

His son Eamon had grown up during the long years that Connor had been locked away.  Outside the prison there was an accord: Ireland was united, the Troubles were over and would never come again.  Forgotten warriors were released from their cells, their youth taken from them, their bodies weakened by confinement.  While most tried to settle down and forget the past, many who could not let go of it left the country to start afresh, in a land unspoiled by the violence such as had gutted Ireland for two generations.  Some went to peaceful New Zealand, a country as green as the Emerald Isle itself, so they were told.

Then word arrived.  The conniving priest, the one who looked like Abraham Lincoln, the one whose face and name were pictured in the News of the World, his cheeks and chin bearded and his mouth and face left bare, had been found in a small town in New Zealand. 

Eric Blake was a joiner and cabinet maker.  After leaving school, he had worked in Dunedin, for a well-known firm of artisan furniture makers.  Cheap imports of tables and chairs, beds and sofas, recliner chairs and cabinets from Asia flooded the New Zealand market under a Free Trade Agreement, providing lower quality items at a cheaper price, against which tide the firm could not compete.  The family owners closed the workshop and began importing furniture from overseas, ending one hundred and fifty years of tradition.

Agnita was a musician.  She had left her native Finland to study the violin in London and Paris, after which she played as a support musician, filling in for people who became ill, or pregnant or simply broke down in the middle of a tour.  She became well-known as an excellent musician.  She as asked to perform solo brackets, even having her name on billboards, which led to her name being pronounced Agneeta rather than Anyeeta,. While touring New Zealand with a famous orchestra, she met and fell in love with Eric Blake.  When the concert tour ended, she remained in New Zealand to marry him.

Eric also had a Scandinavian heritage, as do many of the Irish.  Although the family had left Scandinavia generations ago, his handsome Northern European looks and his strength of character had not been diluted by his family’s generations of living in Ireland; instead he added a wry sense of humour and a love of language to his skills.  He had also inherited a love of alcohol and a fighting temperament, the like of which was not matched in Aurum. 

The Blake family farm where Eric had grown up did not survive the cruel years that followed Great Britain’s entry into the European Union in January 1973.  With the small country’s major market for mutton and wool taken away, New Zealand farmers suffered badly.  Those with capital diversified into other activities such as dairy farming or growing kiwi fruit but Eric’s father, Patrick Blake, could not afford the costs of conversion to dairy and kiwi fruit did not grow so far south.  Throughout the country, but especially in the South Island, many farmers sold out and sought work elsewhere.  The buyers were often businessmen, ‘Queen Street farmers', the Kiwi businessmen were called, after Auckland's business centre.  Many buyers who lived overseas in countries like Malaysia had no interest in New Zealand other than as a means for making money, so investment in production declined.  Numbers of sheep fell dramatically as the mutton market shrank and farmers diversified their products. When the Queen Street farmers and the overseas investors prepared to take their capital gains, the dairy industry was re-organised to create an international marketing giant.  Money poured into the agricultural sector as farms were converted to produce milk, many large irrigation schemes were built and chemicals were applied to the land to increase its capacity to grow grass.

The Blake farm staggered on for some years, with ever increasing losses. Sadly, Mary Blake, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer in her early fifties and Eric's father, Patrick, was left alone.  Patrick thought he would build a house on a corner of the farm for his retirement and then bring in a manager who would live in the farmhouse.  A three year drought brought his dream to an end. 

The mortgage on the new house he had built fell in arrears.  The new house added little to the farm’s value, and suddenly his pride and joy, the new Holden Statesman, was worth nothing to the car dealers.  Because it was the collateral for the mortgage to build the new house, the bank quickly took over the farm, installed a manager, and later sold the farm to an overseas investor for a handsome profit.  Patrick sold the stock and plant, recovering enough money to buy a house in Saint Kilda, near the sea.  Disillusioned and feeling he had failed his family, Patrick never went back to Southland.  Patrick later died of a heart attack, leaving the house to Eric and his sister. 

For a short time after the artisan factory closed Eric lived in a rented house whilst working for a kitchen outfitter in Mosgiel, basically assembling flat pack cupboards and counter tops from Malaysia and China, while yearning for his own workshop.  Eric invested his share of Patrick’s estate at good rates.  Agnita had earned and saved as a concert musician and she placed her money with Eric's.  When an opportunity came up to buy cheaply in a rural area inland from Dunedin, Agnita and Eric did not hesitate.  They bought some acres with a house and a large workshop in Middle Creek. 

They moved to the village of Middle Creek, a twenty minute drive from the township of Aurum, where Eric and Agnita made a new life for themselves.  Middle Creek was close enough to Dunedin for Agnita to teach from time to time at the School of Music in Dunedin, and to attend her music practices.  On stage in a long gown, Agnita looked sensational, always earning applause as she entered the limelight.  The audience clapped especially loudly when she flung her long blonde hair in a long sweeping motion while her violin played fast high notes that set the blood racing.

Eric, unlike his father, was a lucky man with money.  The directors of the finance company he had invested in declared the company bankrupt, causing thousands to lose their life savings, but Eric and Agnita were safe because they had already withdrawn all of their money for the house and the workshop, which was flourishing and making money. In time, Eric was able to employ three workers in the workshop in Middle Creek, and a young woman to run a shop in Aurum.

The couple were happy in their new life, except Agnita could not get pregnant.  They tried IVF but found Eric was the problem.  They tried adoption but that did not work out.  When Agnita told Eric she was having a baby at last, Eric was pleased and he and Agnita came to an acceptable agreement between themselves.  Life carried on but more and more often Eric turned to the bottle.

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Richard West was out running.  Because, later in the day, he had a lecture he had prepared for the night before, he needed to get out in the early morning air and blow some of the cobwebs of academia away. 

From a viewpoint on the Mount Cargill road, the harbour looked silver mercury poured between the hills to make a harbour for pioneer ships in the middle 1800s.  The green hills reached up on either side with West Harbour on the left, closer to the city of Dunedin, and Roseneath and Port Chalmers further to his left towards the sea. 

Mount Cargill stood sternly over the hills and the harbour, a huge volcanic mother hen sitting on her chicks beside the harbour. On the other side of the harbour, the land also rose high above the sea but the terrain was not as jagged, more rounded, with hilltops that were low enough to see over the hills to the Pacific Ocean beyond.  At the foot of the hills, where the harbour water lapped the shore, was the thin ribbon of the Peninsula Road, built between 1869 and 1881 by convicts, largely of Maori origin, sent to Otago as prisoners following the Maori Wars.

Richard’s wife, Alexandra, a name she seldom used, was part Maori.  Her father, Wiremu, known as Bill,  had been the Minister of Police when Richard and Alex lived in Weatherston.  Although Alex was brought up in the European or pakeha way her mother Syd, named after the city of Sydney in Australia, told Alex childhood stories of the Maori Wars, of the bravery and chivalry of the men and women who had stood up to the new colonists and demanded the rights granted in a special charter signed by all tribal leaders and the representative of Queen Victoria. Alex learned of the courage and nobility of her race, qualities she tried to emulate even though they got her into trouble quite often at school, and of Maori heroes like the present day warrior, Willie Apiata, VC. and Huria Matanga, the young woman who swam into stormy seas time after time to rescue the crew of the wrecked Delaware off Wakapuaka, Syd’s tribal homeland.

Bill and Syd Paki-Paki set high expectations for Alex, which she fulfilled by gaining a degree at Christchurch University.  There the slim, pretty Alex with melting brown eyes and honey coloured skin met tall blond blue eyed athletic Richard West and fell in love.  Bill told his daughter that university romances seldom lasted.  His belief still remained, even though over twenty years had passed since Alex had brought her fair haired pink skinned pakeha to meet her parents. With a chuckle, when Alex reminded him of his advice, Bill said, I guess you are exceptional.

Alex and Richard had only one child, Jo Hannah, named after Johannesburg where she had been conceived.  Jo, now eighteen going on nineteen, was studying at Caledonian University in Dunedin.  Some four years before, Jo had been abducted and held as a hostage to force Richard and her grandfather the Minister of Police, to suppress evidence in a drug and murder investigation.  As a result, Jo had difficulty with anxiety whenever she was on her own. 

With her olive complexion, dark brown hair and brown eyes, Jo was seldom alone as she attracted attention from men of all ages, but seldom developed a stronger relationship with men than chatting in a coffee house or as a casual partner for a social occasion. 

Recently she had fallen heavily for Rory McIntosh, a very tall thin scholar, nothing like her mother or her father, but a young man who made her laugh and made her feel safe.  Jo had begun a relationship with Rory but tried to limit the growth of her feelings for him by seeing other men and studying very hard.  Her actions seemed to have an effect on him that was the very opposite of the one she desired, making him more ardent rather than cooling off his attentions.  She would have to do something about Rory soon.

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On the Mount Cargill road, sitting admiring the view on this lovely sunny day, Jo’s father, Richard West, was becoming a little chilled as his sweat dried.  He rose and stretched his ham strings, then jogged lightly on the spot to free up his stiffening muscles before going back down the road to the city and his home.

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Edwina Blake was twelve, and would start secondary school when the new school year began in a few weeks' time.  Edwina was tall for her age which made some people think she might be fifteen, except to her regret, she had no bust.  In a world where large mammary glands are worshipped in the media, glamorised on the covers of every teen magazine, and covertly glanced at by the boys at school, Edwina felt embarrassed that she could not compete.

Just wait, darling, said Agnita, her mother.  Your boobs will grow.  I was like you when I was your age, and now I wish mine were smaller.  Anyway, you haven’t had a period yet.  Just let Nature take its course.

Edwina wanted her chest to grow but she did not want to start menstruation, although her mother had prepared her for this event.  She agreed logically with her mother but in her heart she wished she could have one thing but not the other.  Her friend Alicia had suddenly grown breasts which she pushed up and forward whenever she had boys around so she could look like the girls the porn sites on Alicia's mobile phone.  Edwina did not like watching the porn Alicia shared with her because she found it disturbing.

Edwina had classic Nordic looks, with broad shoulders and slim hips, long blonde hair and bright blue eyes.  Her ready smile lit up her face, making those around her smile in her company.

My little ray of sunshine, said her father, Eric Blake, as he gave her a hug that she shrank from. 

Don't worry, dear, said Agnita to her husband Eric.  It's just her age.

Edwina's father Eric was neither big and nor small and neither dark nor fair.  His eyes were black coals that could light up with a dark fire when he was angry.  He had an annoying moustache that prickled Edwina when he kissed her.  Often his moustache woke her up as it brushed her face or neck.

It's just a phase, said Agnita.  All girls go through a stage of replacing their mother in their father's affection, then in their teens as they become little women they turn more to their mothers.  Don't worry, you're still her father, and she still loves you.

The lie tripped easily off Agnita's tongue and fooled neither of them.  Eric was a heavy drinker.  To Agnita’s horror, one night in the pub Eric had told his companions that he was not Edwina’s biological father.  Before long, the whole town knew his secret.  Edwina was not teased about having a different father.  In this day and age, mixed families were commonplace.  That was not the bad thing that bothered her.  Eric not being her biological father made her prey for his desires.  Edwina dreaded her mother finding out her horrible secret.

Is he going to leave us? asked Edwina.  In her heart, she hoped that would happen.  Then the shame might stop. 

No, dear, he loves us both too much to leave, said Agnita, with ice in her stomach as she told the lie.

Too bad, muttered Edwina under her breath.

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At school, Edwina was a good student who was athletic and energetic.  She loved horses and was becoming an excellent rider.  The Middle Creek house had a large paddock attached to it where Edwina was allowed to keep a horse called Brandy.  With natural balance and a flair for horsemanship, Edwina became a favourite at the Aurum Pony Club.  At 13.2 hands, Brandy was now a little small for what Edwina needed to do, but she truly loved her horse and would never sell him. 

Edwina was allowed to participate in the Pony Trek for young riders, which was part of an annual Horse and Riders Club Trek.  This event took place over three days of the public holidays in summer.  Eric and Agnita were invited but as neither rode, they agreed that Edwina would travel in the care of Daphne and Tom Agnew and their daughter, fifteen year old Lynda.  Edwina and Lynda were very happy with the arrangement, with Lynda, who had been at high school for two years, treating Edwina as her little sister.

The two girls rode together in the middle of the strung out line of participants, with Major Winthrop at the front and the Reverend Woodhaugh-Jones bringing up the rear.  The trail took them across Middle Creek, where the horses huffed and puffed and splashed, trying to delay the crossing to better enjoy the cool water on their hot legs. 

After the creek and the rocky shelf above the stream the string of riders started climbing steeply as the dry brown grasses where clumps of purple thyme became interspersed with small dark green muehlenbeckia with thin red stems tangled together.  As the string of people on horses and the followers on foot climbed higher, the red tussock and the thyme gave way to pohuehue and the taller sharp-thorned matagouri or tumatakuru, shrubs that covered the ground in tangles that could trip or tear the skin of the unwary.

There was a longer route, an old cart track, eroded in places, a long track that curved along the contours of Mount Aurum, a track once forged to give access to the gold claims that sprang up in the late nineteenth century in the forty years following the discovery of gold.  Major Winthrop followed the walking trail that was quicker for  the Horse Trek, although it still twisted and turned to avoid the steeper faces.

Rocky tors or outcrops, sharp pillars made of horizontal layers of schist rock standing up out of the surrounding shrubs, had to be sidestepped with sideways movements that shifted the riders' weight uncomfortably, requiring care with footing on the sharp rectangular pieces of stone under the horses' hooves.  As the girls looked for easier passages through the areas of scrub they began to fall behind.

The footing was almost entirely sharp broken rocks broken into small pieces like a schist rock garden Edwina had seen in Dunedin when she went for an introduction to her new school.  Edwina loved the small plants and flowers that grew among the rocky pieces, wondering how they managed to survive among the dense pohuehue and other forms of muehlenbeckia.  Perhaps they gained shelter from the larger plants. 

If  Edwina looked carefully as she did from time to time, she could see a myriad of small pretty plants, and here and there a smooth skink warming itself in the sun, which at this time of the year, created a fierce heat which not only beat down mercilessly, but also radiated upwards from the rocks underfoot.  The tired horses slowed their pace still further without the two girls noticing.

I’m really lonely at school, said Lynda.  Caversham High is not a friendly place like Middle Creek, or even Aurum.  And living with a different family is not the same as being with your own people.  When their son Brian gets steak I get a sausage.  It's not fair.  He gets bacon and eggs for breakfast, I get cornflakes.  And I don't get to meet people.  The family just stays home watching television.

They stopped in a small clearing to rest, taking off their riding helmets to let the afternoon air dry their damp hair.  The vegetation surrounding them was only a metre or so high, their horses standing tall in a sea of dark green and grey.  Tall rocky pillars almost encircled the clearing they were in.  It was a secluded private place where two teenagers could talk freely without being heard by others.

I’ll be boarding at Diocesan Grammar, said Edwina.  I think when you’re a boarder you meet more people and have a lot of sports teams.  I can't wait.  Edwina did not say why she could not wait.  That was a big secret.  Going away would change her life forever, and she was determined that she would never come back.  The Reverend Woodhaugh-Jones had kindly advised Agnita on what school might be best, and had even arranged for her to get a scholarship from the church.

My host family are weird, said Lynda.  "I have a friend who lives along the street.  We get on and off the bus at the same stops.  I like Chris, but we’re not , you know, romantic.  He’s cute and he’s funny.  He’s safe, too.  Mrs Green said I had to stop seeing Chris. ‘It’s not proper,’ she said, and told my parents.  I told Mum he was a