Collusion: Chapter 11

The impact of violence takes a toll on the perpetrator and the victim and the spectre of Stepan Bandera raises its ugly head

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll publish a section from the novel. Chapters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 are here for those who missed them. The story so far: A captured ExSat man faces the reality of a Belfast-style interrogation

Chapter: 11 Romper Room

The door to the sinister room was open when Ashton went to the basement and the chained and hooded man was sitting manacled to a chair with his head lolling to one side. He looked dead.

Titch was in his high-tech office. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. “Go fill me a bucket of water.”

“No,” Ashton said with disgust. “I’ve been through it. No. Never.”

“It’s to wake him up. But this is no time to be squeamish.”

Still, Ashton did not move. He hovered outside the computer room.

“He wasn’t carrying ID,” Titch continued, “but I’ve sent photographs and fingerprints to London. We should have an idea of who he is pretty soon. But that hardly matters. We need to know why they are so desperate to get you and who is tipping them off about your whereabouts.” Ashton remained in the doorway.

“Rightio. Let’s get started,” Titch said, pushing past.

He wheeled a mobile workbench into the interrogation room and went and filled his own bucket. For the first time Ashton noticed that the floor was not level. It had a slight slope towards the far corner where there was a drain. It had been designed so liquids would run off the concrete and, presumably, into the arroyo.

“Let’s take a look at his face,” Titch said and removed the hood. The prisoner remained slumped. “Bucket,” he said to Ashton and then threw the contents all over the captive. The shock woke him up.

“Let’s play a game of guess,” the big man said lightly. “You’re about 45?” The stranger stared with sheer hatred. “I’m going to cut your clothes off and I’ll bet…” he turned to Ashton, “… a bottle of Alesmith Reforged XX that he’s got a white supremacist tattoo on his arm.”

Titch kept on with his monologue. “Did you see the flicker of recognition when I said that? OK, let’s talk tattoos. I’ll double down on the gamble. He’ll have either Parachute regiment wings or a Loyalist terrorist group crest. Bet?”

Ashton was too consumed with dread to speak. Titch opened one of the drawers and produced a huge pair of scissors. He cut the man’s trousers off, then his jacket and shirt. All that was left were his socks, shoes and underpants.

“Oh look,” Titch said in triumph. “A Black Sun. The Sunwheel Swastika.” The circular design with a dark centre and 12 protruding runes was prominent on the left forearm.

“Were you in the Azov, too?” There was no response so Titch continued with his history lesson. “You remember the alt-right rally in Charlottesville a couple of years ago? They had this symbol on their shields. Oh, those silly Americans. Do you recall what they chanted? ‘The Jews will not replace us.’”

Shaking his head, Titch continued. “It has always struck me that Americans don’t know how to chant. That’s something we British do well. We should be very proud of that. I’ve always wondered whether it’s because Yanks are so individualistic. It takes a certain community spirit to chant properly.”

Titch’s tone was mild, like a slightly jaded professor’s, and he circled the chair slowly. It was very disturbing.

“And here, on the other arm, is what I expected. A paratrooper’s wings. Do you know who is the patron saint of paratroopers, Ash?” He addressed the man. “You know, don’t you?”

He turned back to Ashton. “Your namesake. Saint Michael,” he said. “He of the lovely thighs, ‘The Archangel, domesticated,’ as Lorca said.

“This one here is not domesticated. Shall we see what he’s got to say?” Titch removed the gag. Nothing. The silence was oppressive.

“Let’s check for injuries,” Titch said. “That wrist may be broken.” The right arm was badly swollen. “To judge from the bruising, the ribs have taken a pounding. And clearly concussed.” He checked the man’s pulse. “His blood pressure was a little high last night but no imminent danger of death.” Titch smiled. “At least not from these wounds.”

He let that sink in. “You were in Northern Ireland towards the end?” Turning back to Ashton he carried on. “They are superb fighters, the Paras. On occasion they let themselves down in Ulster. Badly. But, believe it or not, most of them are good people placed in terrible situations. You could never justify the Ballymurphy massacre or Bloody Sunday but the majority knew right from wrong and most of the troopers who served have little reason to feel any guilt – apart from covering for colleagues, perhaps.

“A few,” and he gestured to the man in the chair, “had other motives. Did you see the Good Friday Agreement as surrendering to the IRA?” There was no answer. Titch’s phone, sitting on the workbench, pinged. He picked it up, spent a minute or two reading what Ashton presumed was an email and then looked up with delight.

“Kenton Ainsworth,” he said. “You’ve aged well, Kenton.” He turned to Ashton. “He’s coming up on 55. Kept himself fit, has our Kenton.” The man in the chair narrowed his eyes. “It’s even better than I thought. Friend Kenton was FRU.” There was glee in Titch’s voice and, thought Ashton, a touch of hysteria. “You’re a journalist. You know about the FRU?”

“No.”

“That’s what I reckoned,” Titch said smugly. “The Force Research Unit was even more secret than the Det. You got up to all kinds of antics, didn’t you, Kenton?” There was no response. Titch faced Ashton.

“This man and his comrades helped target people for assassination. They requested restriction orders for army and RUC patrols at times when they knew Loyalist killers were about to strike, making it easy for them to murder and escape. They had agents in the UDA and IRA…” He paused and turned back to the man in the chair again. “But I won’t bore you. Go google the FRU. I was part of the dirty war with the Det but the FRU were filthy.” He snorted in disgust. “Filthy.”

Titch moved to the tool cabinet. “Well, to work,” he said grimly. “Welcome to my Romper Room, Kenton.” He opened the big compartment and produced a steam iron and a power drill and plugged both into an extension socket.

“You missed the heyday of Romper Rooms, Kenton, but you’ll know all about them.” The look on Ainsworth’s face suggested he was all too aware of their significance.

Back in lecturer mode, Titch addressed Ashton. “Have you heard this term?” He hadn’t. “I’d better explain. They were said to be invented by a former para, a man called Davy Payne, in the 1970s. He was a sadist but there are many like him around. I’ve seen them in quite a few countries. Most of the time they keep their dangerous appetites subdued but, when that veneer of civilisation rubs off, they have the opportunity to indulge their desires.

“Is this specimen a sadist?” he pointed to Ainsworth. “I don’t know. But he’s involved in dangerous activities. Anyway, back to Romper Rooms.

“The name comes from an American children’s television show. A place where youngsters had fun. Payne and his UDA comrades had less innocent pleasures. They liked to give people ‘romperings’ – beatings, torture, mostly in back rooms of shebeens, illegal drinking dens. Sometimes it was those from their own community and organisation who had transgressed. For the most part they survived. Women would take get involved, too. Evil doesn’t discriminate. A young mother called Ann Ogilby was beaten to death by women in the 1970s because she had an affair with a UDA man.”

Titch tutted and continued, still circling the man in the chair. “Often, they abducted Catholics off the streets and inflicted the worst sort of outrages on them before taking them somewhere quiet and shooting them.”

For a moment, Titch was contemplative. “Payne is worth further discussion. On the night of Bloody Friday, that dreadful day in 1972 when 22 IRA bombs killed nine people in Belfast, Payne and his mates went looking for Catholics.

“They stopped a taxi carrying a woman called Rosemary McCartney and her boyfriend Patrick O’Neill. The couple were taken to a romper room.

“Rosemary had a business card which said she was a singer. So Davy asked it to prove it by giving them a song. She did.

“Meanwhile, her masked abductors discussed whether they should rape her or not. Some of them thought she was too pretty to ‘let her go to waste’ by merely murdering her. The opposite view prevailed and she was not sexually assaulted. Do you know what the rationale was?” He turned to Ashton but did not wait for a reply.

“That they were soldiers. Soldiers don’t rape. These ‘soldiers’ merely shot her dead after torturing her boyfriend.”

Titch’s brooding anger was reaching a peak but he took a step back, composed himself and continued speaking. It struck Ashton that the night terrors he had heard in the early hours were rooted in true horror.

“One of the most infamous Romper Rooms was the drinking den on Sandy Row. It was where the bunch of Orange harpies killed that mother I’ve just told you about. But there were plenty of other venues. Businesses, disused houses – anywhere where you could spend hours torturing people, wringing every last drop of pleasure out of a victim’s agony.” He spat on the iron and it sizzled.

“They found bodies with their fingernails and teeth pulled out, burns all over their torsos – one had a cross seared into his back. Yes, they liked a dramatic flourish.

“Anyway, young man,” he tapped Ainsworth on the cheek, “I’ll wager you never expected to be on the receiving end of a rompering.”

The ExSat man glowered murderously.

“So,” Titch picked up the drill with his other hand and pressed the trigger. He let it whirl for a moment before pointing the bit at Ashton and speaking to Ainsworth. “Do you want to tell me why this man here is so important to your organisation?”

“Fuck off,” Ainsworth said.

“I expected nothing less.”

Titch unplugged the iron from the socket and walked across the room. “That Black Sun tattoo is not going to look very good when you’re old and wrinkled – if you live that long,” he said. “I can see the skin already beginning to pucker.” He rammed the scorching surface of the iron on to the arm and sizzles and screams filled the room. The smell made Ashton vomit but he was static with fear. The burn was already blistering. A sac of pus was forming in front of his eyes.

“I’ve made a mess of your tattoo, sorry,” Titch said. “Maybe I should remove it.” He went to another drawer and produced a gleaming knife. “I should operate. Payne liked his knives, if I remember rightly. He used to carve little bits off his victims. And, of course, the Shankill Butchers loved a bit of blade play. Loyalism is so much about respecting tradition.”

Ashton snapped. He tried to grab the weapon. “No, stop it! You’re worse than them!”

“Leave now,” Titch said. His face was set and deathly. “Go upstairs and leave us alone. Now!”

He hurled Ashton from the room and slammed the door shut. A lock clicked. For a moment the journalist thought he would faint. He needed fresh air. The back door was open and he went and sat down on the patio. His mind was locked with fear and horror.

Everything appeared absolutely normal. The sun was shining. Cars passed on the main road, carrying ordinary people going about commonplace activities. Two boys rode horses across the field and negotiated the slope of the arroyo cautiously before emerging on the other side with whoops of excitement. The villa was silent. But in the bowels of the house evil acts were taking place. Ashton sat and tried to think about what to do. Should he call the police? How would he explain the situation?

He was shivering. It was not cold. In the kitchen he made a cup of tea and put on a coat. Was he in shock? He desperately needed to talk to someone but he was stuck in the middle of nowhere with at least one, possibly two, psychopaths. The urge to run coursed through him but he knew he needed to be here when Titch emerged. He hoped it would not take long. It didn’t.

“Can’t say I enjoyed that,” Titch said, coming on to the patio. “I have never enjoyed torture.”

Ashton glared at him. “What the hell did you do?”

“You don’t want to know, dear boy. But you were helpful. You helped build the psychological pressure. After I sent you away he really believed that I was going to torment him for a long time.”

“Is he dead?”

Titch guffawed. “No. A fair way from it. I’ve been in touch with some of our people and they will come and clean things up. They will find a way of repatriating him so he is not a danger. He might be encouraged to pursue a life away from the UK. Perhaps his friends in Ukraine would like him back. Anyway, we have to move again. Get your stuff packed. I’d like to be gone in an hour. London’s calling.”

Ashton stood up, speechless. “You should come back in the summer,” Titch added. “Really, it would be such a relaxing place for you and, say, Orlanda, to visit. I’ll be elsewhere. I’m sure she would absolutely love it.”

There was nothing Ashton could say. His mouth was agape and his mind stuck in neutral. He wanted to get away and never see this town again.

*

“You drive,” Titch said, throwing Ashton the keys to an anonymous compact car that was parked on the opposite side of the road. “I’ll direct you.”

They drove off down the one-way street and just before he turned right to reach the main road, Ashton saw the Berlingo creep behind them towards the villa. He could not be certain Jose was driving but it was a man of similar appearance. He began to doubt whether the torture victim would be treated in the manner that Titch had suggested. For the moment he kept quiet.

Titch, by contrast, seemed energised by the past 24 hours. They turned south but initially kept off the motorway. The passenger wanted to continue his history lessons. “This is an interesting place,” he said, insisting that Ashton stop the car. “Suspiro del Moro: the pass of the Moor’s sigh.

“Boabdil, as I told you, was the last Moorish emir of Granada. He surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492. He was allowed to leave and when he reached here, he looked back on the city in sadness and regret for what he had lost.”

Ashton was not interested. “The man you tortured. What will happen to him? None of ‘your people’ will come and take him away. He’s dead, isn’t he? His body will be dumped somewhere in those mountains.” He indicated towards the Alpujarras. “Jose will do anything for you, you told me,” Ashton added bitterly. “I look back and see the person I was before all this started. Now I’m an accomplice to murder.”

Titch seemed to ignore the outburst. “Boabdil’s mother was appalled by her son. ‘Now you weep like a woman over what you did not defend as a man,’ she said.” He turned, suddenly full of rage. “Sometimes you have to fight or you’ll lose everything!

“Don’t mourn for what you were. You could be dead. You still might die. You have been walking around under the impression that there is peace in your world. Men like Kenton Ainsworth and Killer – The Beast – live in a state of war. Much of their success comes because they target people who do not realise they are involved in a conflict. Like you. So save your humanitarian nonsense for someone else. If they had caught you last night you would be either in living hell or a shallow grave by now. Get in the car and drive and do not dare to be sanctimonious.”

They were in the bar at Almeria airport before the tension started to evaporate. Ashton ordered two gin and tonics – the beer was industrially produced pigswill – and the gesture loosened up Titch. “OK,” Ashton said, clicking their glasses. “What did you find out?”

“Very little.”

“Was he trained in counter-interrogation?”

Titch laughed. “That’s a myth. Everyone talks. It just depends how long it takes. A lot of interrogators like to stretch things out because they enjoy the power and inflicting pain. He told me everything he knew very quickly.”

“What did he know?”

“Valtteri is a nom de guerre of, as we thought, the Finn. He was in the Asov. He hates Russians – not surprising – and has great contacts with the Chechen contingent in Ukraine. It also seems he was involved with various anti-Serb factions in the Balkans. He appears to have history. He is in the UK at the moment. That’s about it.”

It was obvious Titch was holding something back. “And..?”

There was silence for a few moments. Titch signalled for two more drinks. “And..?”

“And there’s a bounty on you. For your capture and for finding out what you know.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“And that is the problem.”

It was an uncomfortable journey home on a number of levels. Titch was not built for low-cost airlines and Ashton was wedged into the window seat by his companion. They were picked up at Gatwick by Cathy and taken to a building in the back streets behind Millbank for a debriefing.

The authorities had been busy. Frank Joseph had been questioned but provided little information of any use. The FLAG front man was essentially harmless, the investigators concluded. He was a fame-hungry brute and had engaged Killer as a bodyguard to enhance his reputation but had become concerned that the brooding threat of the former paratrooper had usurped his own position of power. He was glad when his minder disappeared.

Armstrong’s story was accepted by everyone. He had, he said, been approached again by ExSat to raise money for troubled veterans, in particular Soldier F, who was facing the possibility of historic murder charges for his conduct on Bloody Sunday in 1972. Armstrong expanded on his meeting with Killer and claimed he had doubts about the sanity of the man with the scar when, mid-conversation, his companion bolted from the pub where they were drinking. The Ulsterman was familiar with post-traumatic stress syndrome and suggested that the ExSat representative could be suffering from the condition. That made sense.

Intelligence from Northern Ireland gave no indication that Unionist paramilitaries were remotely disposed to pass on their weapons. Nor that they had been contacted by ExSat with any requests. Killer was rumoured to have been embroiled in a Loyalist feud at some point but his involvement was said to be a personal favour for the UVF’s Mid-Ulster commander. Armstrong kept a wide distance between himself and what occurred on the streets of Belfast. All the information confirmed the views of Titch’s contacts. The Six Counites were a dead end.

It was unclear what to do next. Orlanda York was still under close protection – it was now March and Parliament was still poisonous. Titch was certain that the MP was not a target but the security services were not taking any chances. No one seemed concerned about the fate of the man captured in the Albacian. Ashton was shaken by the cold-bloodedness. He also got a sense that the anonymous spooks they were talking to had little interest in whether he lived or died.

Yet again he felt like his life was being mortgaged. Titch did not appear to care. The big man was happy to return to the mews. “Let’s see if they make another move,” he said. At least, thought Ashton, they were not in a secluded location. In the event of trouble, help was not far away.

Back at the house Titch returned to the subject of torture. “Lots of people have tried to prepare for it,” he said. “Stepan Bandera, who you’ll know about, of course, burnt himself with a lamp. Or he would hit himself with a belt. He apparently cried out, ‘Admit it Stepan,’ and would reply to himself, ‘No, I don’t admit it!.” Ashton laughed. He had no idea who this man was but expected it was another story from the Spanish Civil War. It was surreal. Was Titch telling him something in code?

“It’s not funny,” the older man said. “He was one of the worst people in the 20^th century. And he is our best lead at the moment.”

Bemused, Ashton asked for an explanation. Titch opened a De Ranke kriek and poured two glasses. Then he told the story. Bandera was a Ukrainian nationalist who colluded with the Germans during the second world war. He was assassinated by a Soviet agent who sprayed him with cyanide gas in Munich in 1959. During the Euromaidan demonstrations in 2014 Bandera’s portrait was displayed by protestors in Kiev.

Ashton was beginning to get a little bored with these political history lessons. Bandera was just another minor actor in a much greater drama.

“Ukraine was, arguably, the worst place to live in the 20^th century,” Titch said, sensing his friend’s irritation. “Unless you understand what happened there you cannot understand what is happening now.” He explained.

The southern part of the Pale of Settlement – where Jews were allowed to live in the Russian empire – included the western region of modern Ukraine. Pogroms were routine from the 1880s onwards. In the immediate aftermath of the Russian revolution, the same area was racked by internecine conflict between ethnic Ukrainians and Poles. The first world war might have ended for its major combatants in 1918 but it rumbled on, barely noticed, with savage intensity on the edge of the Carpathians.

Central and Eastern Ukraine were also in turmoil. Nationalist forces resisted the Bolsheviks. The Soviets tried to crush regional identities, causing huge resentment. The massive famine of the Holodomor led to as many as 3.5 million people starving to death. Ukrainians believed this was deliberate genocide by Moscow. And then the Germans arrived in 1942.

“The first world war never really ended,” Titch said. “Certainly not for Bandera. And world war two was much more complex than people imagine. The Germans liked to ferment violence between communities in the occupied territories. They co-opted Ukrainians to do their dirty work on the basis that they were allies against the Soviet Union. But even that is too simplistic. Germans killed Ukrainians, Poles and Jews; Ukrainians killed Poles; Poles killed Ukrainians; fascists killed communists; Russians killed Ukrainians and Poles; everyone killed Jews. Bandera was put in a concentration camp by the Nazis but still facilitated the murder of Jews and Poles and supported the German fight against the Russians. Is that all clear?”

After a big sigh, Ashton said: “I need another drink. Oh, and why is Bandera so important?”

Titch relaxed and gave a satisfied sigh. “Because,” he said, “there’s a secret museum dedicated to him in Islington. Yes, Corbynite Islington. It’s in a block of flats where even the residents have no idea what’s on their doorstep. They have all kinds of relics: the bloodstained shirt Bandera was wearing when he was killed, his death mask and a plethora of documents from his office in Munich. It’s a shrine to an ethno-nationalist Nazi facilitator. And where do Azov Regiment types go when they’re in London? To this altar of hatred. It might be a dead end, but it’s the best we’ve got. So, let’s do some surveillance – after all, that’s my specialty – and see what we can find in N1. What’s the worst thing that can happen? If there is no lead to be found we can adjourn to the House of Hammerton pub and drink Crunch, their peanut butter stout.”

“Or we end up dead,” Ashton countered.

“Dear boy, if I had to go for the rest of my life without a magnificent beer like Crunch, I’d rather be dead. Why don’t you phone the lovely Ms York and lift yourself out of this depression. Look at it this way: they were inflicting the pain and now we’ve hit back. We are on the advance.”

• Chapter 12: Going underground

• My other novel, Good Guys Lost, a very different story of gangsterism, the music industry and working-class Liverpool, is available here