Dark Suits and Sad Songs (39 page)

Ulica Zmaja od Bosne, or Dragon of Bosnia Street, the
main boulevard in the city, became a shooting range for Bosnian Serb snipers preying upon the local populace, who were trying desperately to feed themselves and survive. Signs bearing the words ‘Pazi Snajper’ (‘Watch out – sniper’) became common. Assailants in the surrounding hills and tall buildings within the city murdered over 600 people, nearly half of them children, at random, using high-powered rifles, on that thoroughfare alone.

Many of us, to this day, find it hard to remove the image from our minds of emaciated men being carted off in trucks to dig their own graves, before being shot through the head. It saddens the heart to realise that at the very moment I write these words and when you read them, similar atrocities are being perpetrated against humanity and the creatures with whom we share this planet.

The Phoenicians

Many years ago, during a boozy Hogmanay in Campbeltown, Gordon Campbell, a well-known local chemist (now sadly missed), foraged about in an oak bureau in his lounge and produced an old tin cigar box. Within lay a coin, tarnished silver in colour, with irregular edges and rudimentary markings. He went on to tell me the tale of how he had dug it up in the late 1960s in his garden in Tarbert, the beautiful fishing village at the very north of Kintyre. Recognising the find as something special, Gordon contacted the British Museum, to be told that the artefact was a Phoenician coin, dating back almost 3,000 years.

The Phoenicians, the world’s first serious mariners, ruled the Mediterranean Sea, long before the rise of the Greeks and the Romans, from their base in what is now modern Lebanon.
Their great trading cities such as Tyre and Carthage have gone down in history as the first flashes of the modern world we now inhabit. However, due to the lack of written records, relatively little is known of them as a civilisation. For many years, scholars believed that their movements were restricted to the relatively calm waters of the Mediterranean. More recently, however, archaeological evidence points to the fact that they may well have traded with ports on the west coast of France, and possibly as far as the island of Ireland.

Famous not just for their trading empire and seamanship, but for the boats they built, they pioneered the use of the conical hull, a projection below the waterline that saw their vessels slip through the waves with more speed and grace than any of their contemporaries could muster. These sleek ships had something else in common; they had at their prow a carved horse’s head, an echo of the symbol used by the Vikings with their dragon longships. The name Kintyre is commonly thought to mean ‘the land of the horse people’, though there is little evidence to suggest that the ancient population of the peninsula used horses in any significant numbers. In fact, Kintyre is more likely to translate to ‘the land of the people of the horse totem’.

It is tempting to think that these first sailors made their way out of the middle sea and, hugging the coast where they could, navigated their way to the shores of ancient Kintyre. Frequently, they made their trading bases on promontories or peninsulas. In addition, on the shore at Kilkerran, just outside Campbeltown, can be found a geometric stone carving. I remember being taken there as a schoolboy. Looking a bit like a stylised flower, it was used as a logo by a local bakery in Campbeltown for many years. And, no doubt, readers of
the
Courier
will remember it on the masthead of the paper. This very same symbol is now thought to be connected with Phoenician navigation, and could well be some kind of venerable seafaring signpost. For further reading on the subject, dig out a copy of Dr L.A. Waddell’s
The Phoenician Origins of Britons, Scots and Anglo-Saxons
, most recently published by The White Press in 2014.

My old mentor Angus MacVicar had a ‘bee in his bonnet’ about it too; yet more inspiration from the great man. While linguistic link between the Phoenician city of Tyre and our Kintyre may well be tenuous, somehow I don’t think Hamish would need much convincing.

Lights in the Sky

The large runway at Machrihanish, originally constructed during World War II for the Fleet Air Arm, then later transferred to the RAF, has long been connected with rumours of strange lights in the sky.

Recently, after many years of speculation, the US military confirmed that they had tested the revolutionary Stealth aircraft there during its development in the 1980s. Indeed, a large force of American servicemen were based at RAF Machrihanish from the late 1970s through to the early 1990s. It is said that at any one time a third of America’s elite Special Forces unit, the Navy Seals, was stationed at the base. The question has long been: why?

I’m happy to say that such were the good relations between the visiting Americans and the Campbeltown locals, some of those reading this book will be doing so in the USA, happily married to people they met back then, and now far from home in the ‘Wee Toon’.

It is interesting to note that the base at Machrihanish, mothballed since the mid-1990s, is on the shortlist to provide the spaceport for Virgin Galactic’s proposed passenger service project. Looking at a map today, it is strange to think that Kintyre’s location, which made it so attractive to seafarers dating back possibly as far as the Phoenicians, may yet prove attractive to those who are pioneering a paradigm shift in the way we travel in the future. As Hamlet said to Horatio, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy . . .’

Acknowledgements

As always, I would like to thank my lovely family, Fiona, Rachel and Sian, for their continued help and support, and for keeping me sane and relatively grounded (not an easy task). Thanks too, to all the team at Polygon, especially Hugh Andrew, and my talented editors, Alison Rae and Julie Fergusson, with whom I’ve had many an interesting debate over the last few months. You deserve much wine!

I owe a great and ongoing debt of gratitude to my fantastic agent Anne Williams of the Kate Hordern Literary Agency, who guides me through this strange world with seamless ease. Many thanks are due also to Kate herself.

I always remember my late parents, Alan and Elspeth Meyrick. I hope you aren’t too annoyed by the swearing, Mum. God bless you both. To the people back home, I thank you all from the very bottom of my heart. It’s been great to be back down in Campbeltown over the last few months and spend time with so many old friends.

The next time you’re looking for somewhere to go on holiday, do not hesitate to take the long and winding road to
Kintyre. Certainly, as I reach a milestone in my own life, my thoughts are always to be there. Finally, thanks too, for the answer to a desperate prayer, when such shining uplands seemed so very far away.

D.A.M.

Gartocharn

April 2015

Also available from Polygon by Denzil Meyrick

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THE LAST WITNESS

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James Machie was a man with a genius for violence, his criminal empire spreading beyond Glasgow into the UK and mainland Europe. Fortunately, James Machie is dead, assassinated in the back of a prison ambulance following his trial and conviction. But now, five years later, he is apparently back from the grave, set on avenging himself on those who brought him down. Top of his list is his previous associate, Frank MacDougall, who unbeknownst to D.C.I. Jim Daley, is living under protection on his lochside patch, the small Scottish town of Kinloch. Daley knows that, having been the key to Machie’s conviction, his old friend and colleague D.S. Scott is almost as big a target. And nothing, not even death, has ever stood in James Machie’s way . . .

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