Storytime with Houdi – Back to Bedlam…

My life is brilliant 

My love is pure  I saw an angel

Of that I’m sure

My life is brilliant. Is that so? That’s what I ask James Blunt as I travel from the panoramic north coast to the madhouse that is the Crumlin Road in Belfast. The previous year I was working in peaceful Mid Ulster but was transferred to manage a new department store in the most volatile interface in Belfast. As I manoeuvre past the burnt out cars and uprooted paving slabs blocking the entrance to the store, I think the CD is appositely titled Back to Bedlam. Who would have envisaged that a former British Army captain would be the the most popular musical act in the country in 2005 with his debut becoming the biggest selling album of the year.

I certainly didn’t. When I left the south of Ireland twenty years earlier to work in Belfast, the mutual hatred of the tribes at that time enveloped the city like a gossamer cloak. I’d read about it. I’d heard about it. Now I witnessed it. It was eerie. Despite the signing of the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement nothing had really changed in the seven subsequent years, especially in north Belfast where the warring population was evenly distributed. The peace seemed to be all about semantics. The wholesale slaughter had ceased but the currency of mistrust had not devalued. Well, it depends on how you define slaughter. Robert Mc Cartney was stabbed to death by members of the IRA in an internecine feud outside a bar at the start of the year. The LVF demonstrated they were still an equal opportunity enemy by shooting their former UVF comrades as well as Catholics.

I sit in the car to listen to the news before I start work. I hear Mo Molam has passed away. She won’t be waving her wig anymore at Michael Stone the legendary artistic Loyalist. I couldn’t get the image of her on TV out of my head, in the H Blocks encouraging the tattooed muscle bound paramilitaries to stay on board the peace train. Now she’s on the roundabout in heaven with the recently deceased street entertainer Mickey Marley having the craic. I head into work and someone must have read my mind as the piped music had James Blunt singing an elegy for her with Goodbye My Lover.

The security man is at the foyer door. He never moves but I know he is still alive as there isn’t a raven perched on his shoulder. I tell him that there’s enough mannequins in the shop window. We don’t need any more. He might need to move or make an occasional physical gesture in case a customer calls an ambulance suspecting onset rigor mortis. He tells me he’s only here because the dole sent him. Anyway, after a monosyllabic conversation, he agrees to prevent anyone coming into the shop wearing a Celtic FC or Rangers FC football shirt as this will lead to fistfights up the aisles. I inform him I’m too busy doing orders with little time to be a boxing referee, like I was the day before.

I do my usual morning duties and stock checks. I’m at the photocopier that has more jams than a Presbyterian Women’s fundraiser. My personal mobile rings. A man who is either a Belfast Rod Stewart tribute act or someone with a sixty cigarette a day habit says ‘are you that fenian fucker from Portrush?’ Taken by surprise, I assume it’s one of my colleagues pulling a prank. I tell them that Portrush has indeed a preponderance of f@#£ers but not all of them are fenians. I may be a f@#£er but I’m not a fenian f@#£er. I was once a fenian f@#£er but now I’m a Presbyterian f@#£er and you should never trust a convert.  Well my stand up comedy gig lasts about as long as a Loyalist hunger strike when he quotes my full address, my wife’s name, my three children’s names, finishing off the broadcast with my car registration.

My mouth feels as if I swallowed a pot of the aforementioned Presbyterian jam rendering me speechless. My colleague must have observed the colour draining from my face because he stops what he is doing, staying beside me as I point to the number on my phone, which was strangely not withheld. ‘We have your wife here in your house at gunpoint. Take all the cash out of the safe. Put it into one of your supermarket bags and bring it up to the Oldpark road. There is a bin beside a green park bench at the phone box. Drop it in that. You have 20 minutes. We have boys in your house and outside the shop, so no acting the bollicks or she gets done’. My colleague has rang BT who confirm that the call was made from a public call box. He immediately phones the police with that information.

Urgently I ring my wife’s mobile number. It is constantly engaged. As is our house landline. I’m convinced they are at the house. I ring PSNI at Coleraine to explain the situation giving all the details. They say expect a call back soon. I phone a relative who is in the PSNI requesting he casually check the house out. I decide that I won’t take the money to the destination, with absolutely no idea why I make that decision. Am I institutionalised by my employers so much that I prioritise them before the mother of my children? Or do I have a gut feeling it is a prank, especially as the caller’s number wasn’t withheld?

My mobile phone rings. ‘Is that Mr Mc Cabe? Thanking the lord it isn’t Rod Stewart I confirm my identity to the caller. ‘PSNI Coleraine here. What’s this you were saying about to someone here about a Tiger Kidnapping or something?’ In a tone like I had asked directions to the Giant’s Causeway, he was oblivious to my situation. I am incredulous. He doesn’t know any of the details. I have to tell him the entire sequence of events including my address etc. My heart is beating faster than a Ballymena man facing a waiter coming toward him with a bill.  Now my relative rings to say he couldn’t get near the house as all roads and streets into my house are sealed off. Beyond pacifying now, I’m absolutely convinced she is in danger. I ring both my wife’s contact numbers. Both are still engaged. I am distraught.

I’m advised to go to my office to be met by three detectives. The lead detective is younger looking than my son. I think he had his first shave that morning. If circumstances were different I’d be interviewing him for a job as a trainee manager. He explains that he is the head of a team that deals with Tiger Kidnappings and Coleraine PSNI should have let them deal with it. He asked why I didn’t hand the money over, knowing I couldn’t contact my wife. I can’t honestly tell him why. He says that in 99% of these cases the money is paid but a good percentage of the money is recovered later. I was the 1%. Hearing this I feel like I have taken two bottles of syrup of figs and overdosed on Beecham’s Pills.

They go through the exact details of the phone call, what did his voice sound like? Did he have a speech impediment? ‘No’ I say ‘but he sounded like Rod Stewart’. They inform me that the call was made from the phone box across the road from the store which is now sealed off by the forensic team. They then tell me they’ll keep me informed of developments and not to worry. About two hours later my mobile rings. It’s my wife ‘what the flip is going on. Are you ok? They have all the roads blocked off up here. The police are everywhere. Are you taking a hand out of me or what?’ I ask why both her phones were engaged. She explained that she must off knocked the house phone over when she was cleaning  ‘unlike you I never look at my mobile phone, you never have it out of your hand. What time will you be home for tea? Can you bring home some coleslaw?’

Postscript. Bizarrely, I am relieved that I never left the money in the bin at the bench. Not entirely because my wife was unhurt but that I didn’t make an idiot of myself in the eyes of my colleagues or company executives. Imagine if there was no Tiger Kidnapping (which there wasn’t) and I’d given them the money. The company would think I was a thief. Anyway, regardless of the outcome, at this point I realised something. I put the welfare of my employer before my family. To make me feel worse I am never asked by my employer, then or after, how I was coping after that whole episode.  I was never offered therapy. I never took sick leave.

I throw the coleslaw onto the passenger seat car. As the car starts I feel I have navigated more twists and turns today than Mickey Marley who is now Mo Molam’s heavenly perruquier. Circumventing the broken paving slabs and half bricks at the front gate, I look over at the phone box to see a giant condom of white forensic plastic.  It’s like CSI on the telly. There’s no sign of Ted Danson. I turn on Downtown radio. Jerry Lang says he’s visiting the seventies. ‘Does this one bring back memories?’

Alright, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right

That’s right, I really love your tiger light

And that’s neat, that’s neat, that’s neat, that’s neat, 

I really love your tiger feet, I really love your tiger feet