I’d just sat down to write up the young burglar’s complaint when the first transmission came over my personal radio about the explosion in central London.
There had been a lot of reports in the press about a new terror campaign. It looked like they might be right. Sitting at a desk in Stoke Newington, there was little I could do except hope that no one had been hurt.
The remainder of the night passed off relatively quietly, one highlight being a foot chase when an eagle-eyed PC spotted some burglars as they climbed over the roof of a chemist. They had arms full of barbiturates, which they had been hoping to sell.
Very little information came through about the bomb. There were rumours that a police officer had been killed but no confirmation. At six o’clock I handed over to Dave Heathcote. He’d heard about the explosion on the early-morning news. Yes, he said, it was being reported that a policeman had been killed.
Driving home that morning, I felt deeply troubled. The sense of foreboding, a feeling that something was going to go wrong, was rolling around somewhere in my chest, pressing on my stomach and reaching up into my throat. What Heathcote had said about the victim being a cop had acted as a catalyst, a trigger that brought back unpleasant memories. I had to work hard at clearing my mind of pictures of torn and mutilated bodies, the victims of bomb blasts. They were flashbacks – sights I had seen; sights that no one ought to see. Their horror never left me.
Combat fatigue it used to be called, although in recent times it had been given more up-to-date labels. For me, it had taken the form of dreams. They started just a week after that firefight near Castlederg, twenty years before.
At first, there was just one dream that repeated several times over the course of a week. I was driving the Rover with the pursuers behind me. The Rover would lose power, I would coast to a stop and open the car door to run. Then, as I started to move, the air around me would take on a resistant quality that rendered movement virtually impossible. The harder I tried to move, the heavier my body felt. Within a moment the terrorists were on me. Blind panic gripped me, raw fear. This was it. They were about to kill me. And then I would wake up.
The point in the dream at which I became conscious was always the same and for a few seconds those last moments seemed perfectly real. I would be soaked in sweat and my heart would be racing. Then, as I lay still, the sweat would start to evaporate and I would begin to shiver. My skin would become cold and clammy.
After the third repetition of the dream, I started to place a towel on the bed sheet to absorb the sweat. Other dreams followed, but the theme was always similar and always ended with a violent, sweat-soaked awakening. Quality sleep, once something I had taken for granted, became a hopeless challenge.
Over the following weeks, the nightmares faded. Eventually they become a rarity. Just occasionally something would trigger a return. I learned to live with them.
Then, in March 1988, in the very area that I had been working in Northern Ireland, two soldiers were dragged from their car and murdered by a mob. Like me, the soldiers had been in plain clothes and with only sidearms for personal protection. They suffered the exact fate I had done everything to avoid, the fate I stared at in my nightmares, and that I only escaped by waking up.
At the time, the news footage of the murder was transmitted, I was a Sergeant manning the front desk at Barnet Police Station and just ending my shift. I drove home in a state of shock. That night and for several months following, my sleep was again interrupted and disturbed. Alcohol provided a partial solution, but at a cost. A developing relationship with a nurse from the St Pancras Hospital failed when she moved out of the flat we had only just started to rent. She said I needed help. I thought I just needed a drink.
Now, that was behind me. With a new home, a wonderful wife and a new child, it was beginning to look like my memories could remain just that, memories. Since meeting Jenny, I had hardly touched alcohol and had developed such a positive, forward-looking attitude to life that my army experiences seemed almost to be those of another person. I had my family to thank for that.
As I pulled into the driveway of our cottage, the sun was rising. Grey-blue sky was gently giving way to a golden glow. I switched off the car engine and sat for several minutes staring out over the fields. A faint mist clung wistfully to the valley, but a gentle wind was carrying it away. As the flashbacks and sense of foreboding passed, my heart rate and breathing slowed. Within a few moments, all was back to normal.
I crept as quietly as possible up the old creaky stairs to the bedroom, anxious not to awaken Becky. Jenny hardly registered my presence as I cuddled up to her, stroked her hair and kissed her gently on her exposed shoulder.
Sleep arrived even before my head touched the pillow.
The nightmares stayed away.