CAVANMAN'S DIARY: Reporting from the frontline
Paul Fitzpatrick
Wednesday morning, seven bells, and I am rudely awakened by a text from a friend. “Something big going down in Virginia,” it read, “town sealed off, guards everywhere!”
Now, Wednesday is my day off. That’s the day I indulge my passions for woodwork and general maintenance. Nah, I’m joking. I usually play handball or golf or, the odd day, observe a man hunt from close quarters.
What was that last bit? Yes, you read it right. Last Wednesday – ATM Day – was a bit like Show Day in Virginia without the wellies. Big crowds, heavy traffic, murmurs of excitement here and there.
So, for me, all engagements were cancelled. At 7.30am, being the Celt’s man on the scene, I tooled up (made sure I had my press pass) and strode purposefully towards the action - but I hadn’t walked 50 metres when I was intercepted by a jeep load of mean-looking hombres.
The driver – plain clothes, buzz-cut, thousand-yard stare - rolled down the window and asked me where I was coming from.
“Eh, my house,” I stuttered. And where was I going?
“I am a reporter with the local newspaper,” I announced, starting to feel guilty for no reason at all, “I’m just going up here to take a photograph for the website.”
By now, all eyes in the SUV were on me. I noticed what looked like a gun (did I dream this? Possibly. It was early.). The driver’s expression didn’t change.
“Can you show me ID?” he wanted to know. At this point, damn it, I felt like coming clean, holding my wrists out to be cuffed as I owned up to whatever had gone down.
After much rooting in my wallet, I found the little laminated NUJ card and produced it with the false confidence of a tipsy 16-year-old with a fake ID. He scanned it and handed it back.
“Will you do me a professional courtesy of staying out of the town?” he asked, without making eye contact.
“Well, I can’t,” I said sheepishly.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“I live in the town,” I said, trying not to sound smart. And at that, he just looked me up and down, rolled up the window and drove off, ignoring me when I asked could I still take a photo.
(Later, I was talking to a friend of mine, who is a guard, and told him about this encounter. “That was the ERU, the Emergency Response Unit,” he told me. “Those boys take no shit.”)
Rattled but unperturbed, I carried on, determined to shed light on just what had happened. I grabbed a coffee in Skelly’s and, moving over to the barricade, spoke to another guard – this one in uniform – who informed me that he knew “nothing, absolutely nothing” about what was going on.
“Is that a digger?” I asked, pointing at the digger.
“I don’t know,” my new source said with a shrug. We both laughed and I mentally filed this away as background information before returning to base to write up a few lines for the site.
Intermittently, I could hear the odd whoop of a siren from Main Street and it became clear that this was what we in the crime reporting/crime fighting game call “an unfolding situation”. So, at the end of the report, I added “more on this as we get it” - and I went back to bed.
A couple of hours passed before I suddenly remembered that the news never sleeps and I sprung into action once more. By now, there was a helicopter hovering overhead, doing laps of my estate, it seemed, and the woods beside us.
I quickly added my latest finding to the ‘Celt Journos’ WhatsApp group.
“Chopper here now!” I exclaimed, “More on this as I get it.”
After a while, a neighbour of ours arrived to tell me that she had heard from the guards that all doors should be bolted.
And sure enough, a couple of minutes later, an email from the boys in blue arrived, requesting “no further reporting” as this was “a live and ongoing investigation”. Wizened security hacks like me can quickly interpret such developments – there was, it seemed, a ‘person of interest’ on the run.
So, this was it. After all those years subbing club notes and listening to mammies complaining that Little Johnny had scored three points and not two, here I was, at last, at the top of the game, a real journalist, covering a manhunt!
Invigorated, I decided, against all advice, to go once more into the fray.
It was 2.09pm, or 1409 hours as we say. I grabbed my notebook, unlocked the living room door and then the front door and made my way on foot back to town, which I expected would be on lock down.
To my surprise, though, life was carrying on as normal. There was a child eating a 99, another fella carrying a paper under his arm.
And then, it happened. As I parked outside the Mason’s Apron (it’s hungry work, taking on organised crime), I spotted two armed guards sprinting up the middle of the street, reaching for their guns.
Within seconds, anything up to a dozen had streamed through the doors of the Riverfront Hotel, just feet from where the gang had attempted to rip out the cash machine.
After 20 minutes or so, I wandered as far as Eddie Matthews’ pub, where the man himself – an eye witness - was standing at the front door fending off journos and camera crews.
After a while, I crossed the street and entered the hotel and a waitress gave me the scoop – one of the wanted men had legged it through the bar and into the toilet, where he had been apprehended.
I made it my business to speak to a man who had been leaving the restroom at that time. He looked like he had seen a ghost. “I’m not the better of it,” he said.
Neither was I. Nerves jangling, I ordered myself a coffee and reconsidered this mid-career switch.
Maybe the sports beat isn’t so bad after all.