Dreams to Die For Read online

  Dreams to Die For

  Alan G Boyes

  Copyright © 2014 Alan G Boyes

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

  the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places and events

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any

  resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  ISBN 978 1783067 947

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  Contents

  Cover

  Acknowledgements

  ‘In Dreams’ by Roy Orbison

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  Acknowledgements

  Firstly, and most importantly, my thanks are to my family who have given me immense support and encouragement to fulfil my ambition of writing a novel. I must also thank those who inspired me to write this story: the numerous victims of crime that I had the privilege to meet and whose courage in overcoming adversity is humbling; and also to those perpetrators of crime who provided me with a brief insight into their own ambitions and motivations. My publishers have throughout given me invaluable help, expertise and advice and, lastly, to my springer spaniel whose antics, behaviour and character I have unashamedly drawn upon for certain passages in the book!

  I must also thank the following for permitting their copyrighted work to be reproduced:

  In Dreams

  Words and Music by Roy Orbison

  Copyright © 1963 (Renewed 1991) BARBARA ORBISON MUSIC COMPANY, ORBI-LEE MUSIC, R-KEY DARKUS MUSIC and SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC

  All Rights on behalf of SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC Administered by SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203

  All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

  Reproduced by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

  Quoich Dam Scheme (Cross Section)

  Reproduced by kind permission of Water Power magazine

  ‘In Dreams’ by Roy Orbison

  “A candy-colored clown they call the sandman

  Tiptoes to my room every night

  Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper

  Go to sleep, everything is all right.

  I close my eyes, then I drift away

  Into the magic night. I softly say

  A silent prayer like dreamers do.

  Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you.

  In dreams I walk with you. In dreams I talk to you.

  In dreams you’re mine. All of the time we’re together

  In dreams, In dreams.

  But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone.

  I can’t help it, I can’t help it, if I cry.”

  1

  Yasmin Hasan’s family were Sunni, like Saddam Hussein, but her parents never liked nor openly supported the autocratic leader of Iraq. They never opposed him either. Her mother and father, and their parents before them, had been born and raised within Baghdad’s ancient city walls and learnt that to survive and prosper it was necessary to adapt to the demands and turbulence of the changing ruling forces which had governed their lives. They had witnessed the bloodshed of the overthrow of the old King Faisal II and the murder of the royal family in 1958, dutifully turning out to join the gruesome parade of their bodies as they were dragged along the soiled and bloodstained streets of the new Republic. Ten years later they mingled with the crowds lining the same streets to cheer the success of the bloodless coup led by General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr that brought to power the Arab Socialist Baa’th Party and some of his close army colleagues, including Saddam. Throughout their lifetimes Baghdad had never been a place for freedom of expression and democratic principles, and during Hussein’s rule they had witnessed how even the slightest critical comment of the regime could lead to a whole family’s sudden and permanent disappearance. Yasmin’s family were more than content not to notice the abuses going on around them, preferring instead to take advantage of the benefits bestowed upon the minority Sunni population and to make certain that they at least appeared to be loyal citizens.

  By comparison with most Middle Eastern children, Yasmin had experienced a happy childhood free of poverty, principally because of the reforms and economic progress made by Iraq under Saddam, which had enabled her father to establish a flourishing and profitable electrical business. Her parents had come from modest backgrounds and life for them was initially tough until Hussein took control and installed himself both as President and Prime Minister in July 1979. Saddam actively fostered the modernisation of the Iraqi economy and protected it by creating a strong, often brutal, security force to prevent the country from returning to factional warfare. It also served to ensure no one threatened to overthrow him. The revenues from the newly nationalised Iraqi oil industry, swollen by massive increases in the world prices, had provided social services and public health systems, including free hospitalisation, which were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. There
was universal free schooling up to the highest education levels for both boys and girls and Yasmin was but one of hundreds of thousands of children who benefited from it, gaining an excellent degree in chemistry from Baghdad University before undertaking a postgraduate course at the University of Birmingham in England.

  During her year in Britain, the crisis between Saddam and the West worsened and when she returned home she found a nervous populace, confused by the West’s attitude towards an Arab country that had embraced very many western values, and a city wondering what its future may hold. Yasmin was determined to assist the country of her birth and she quickly obtained employment in a genetic research establishment on the outskirts of the city.

  On the first day of the invasion in 2003, the ‘Shock and Awe’ targeted bombing of her native city blasted the laboratory where she worked to rubble. From then on life for Yasmin and her parents rapidly descended into a daily ordeal of avoiding the coalition bombs and missiles. Her father’s business collapsed, initially not from high explosives, but simply because nobody wanted luxury goods any more. Prices were rocketing and money was needed to buy bread and other basic items that kept a person alive. When the Americans entered Baghdad and Hussein fled, Yasmin’s parents did not celebrate but neither were they dismayed. They were not political and their prime concern now, like most of their countrymen, was how quickly the city, and particularly their business, could start functioning again. Anticipation turned to frustration and then to anger when over the weeks it became clear that the forces that had almost destroyed their city had no intention, nor the resources, to repair even the most basic infrastructure. Day upon day passed with no electricity, no water and little food. Roads were impassable, buildings dangerous and all the while the resentment towards their new rulers grew. The khaki-dressed soldiers were now seen as invaders and tension rose as the general population increased its protests.

  Under Saddam there had been little terrorist activity as his security forces liquidated any such opposition with ruthless efficiency, but Yasmin noticed a dangerous change of attitude growing from those like her and her family who were forced to continue to live in ruined buildings and on broken streets. Saddam’s own military forces slipped quietly back into civilian life or joined the swelling numbers of the various disaffected factions who quickly armed themselves with weapons from their own hastily deserted military compounds. The next few months were both terrible and frightening for Yasmin. She watched as bombs and mortars, from one side or the other, rained down upon the street where she lived. She witnessed several of her friends die in these attacks, their limbs twisted and torn by shards of red hot metal and saw the spattered trails of dark red blood drying on the white concrete walls acting as a daily reminder of where they had fallen.

  “Why has this happened? What harm have we and our friends ever caused to Saddam or America to bring about this carnage?” She angrily questioned her father, after her oldest friend had her leg blown off from the blast of a car bomb. Her father could not answer. He did not understand either. He had believed the coalition forces would quickly restore order and provide safety as well as renewing the essential services, but it had not happened. He was a disillusioned and a deeply saddened man who often sat for hours in his empty shop gazing through tired eyes at the street outside and the destruction around him. Slowly Yasmin’s fear and grief turned to anger and resentment.

  Within a few months Haifa Street – Grenade Alley, as the Americans later nicknamed it – had suffered so many street bombings and helicopter attacks that hardly a building remained intact. Her father’s shop was so severely damaged it had to be boarded up, and Yasmin and her family were confined to the small flat at the rear of the premises. The intensity of the attacks escalated and tragedy struck Yasmin’s family in September 2004. The Shia-dominated new Iraq army, intent on driving out the Sunni population of the street, claimed that the area was occupied by insurgents and, bolstered by coalition forces, moved in to cleanse the street of its inhabitants. In the midst of a particularly fierce gun battle raging elsewhere along the dusty and now empty road, a trigger-happy American soldier suddenly burst through the Hasan’s living room door, firing his machine gun in all directions. Yasmin witnessed her parents being propelled to the floor as the impact of a spray of high-powered bullets smashed and ripped into their flesh, leaving only a horrible crimson stain spreading across the sofa where a few moments earlier they had sat reading books in the dim light. Too late the soldier realised that the two corpses lying on the carpet were unarmed civilians. Yasmin came running through from the bathroom and screamed. The soldier ran. Cradling their bodies, the twenty seven year-old Yasmin screamed and vowed to avenge their deaths. Frustration and resentment instantly turned to hatred.

  2

  Cindy Crossland had not slept much, despite having every intention of doing so when retiring to bed the previous evening. Having set her digital alarm for 5:30am, a quick glance at the pale blue display informed her she could indulge in the comfort of her light summer duvet for a little over half an hour longer.

  There had been times when this postponement to the daily routine would have been met with relief, excitement even, and on more than one occasion she would have turned over and put her arm out across Alan and gently woken him. But it wasn’t going to happen this morning and neither had it yesterday – in fact, she had not done so for several months. Another long night of disturbed and fitful sleep had left her feeling tired, her brain having been ceaselessly active from trying to analyse and make sense of the different thoughts and images that had invaded it since she turned off the light seven hours earlier. Yet she knew why she found sleep difficult. It was the same reason why she could not now slip her hand across the bare back of the man whom she had once loved.

  Cindy had achieved virtually every goal she had set for herself as a young girl: financial independence after a dazzlingly successful short career, a loyal and hardworking husband, a magnificent Cotswold home with a flat in London – what more did she want or need? But for some reason she simply wasn’t happy, and hadn’t been so for many months. She had lain awake at night for several weeks trying to work out a solution; she had even given up her job in the belief that such a radical change might help, but it hadn’t. At times she felt her mind was near to exploding with the constant churning over the same issue, but she had reluctantly concluded there was no simple fix or easy answer to her anguish. She knew the problem. What she needed was the courage to do something about it. Several weeks previously she had insisted on separate bedrooms. Of course Alan had not liked that, but her restlessness at night often kept them both awake, and he had eventually acquiesced. Cindy had moved her clothes into the adjoining room where she now lay and, as she had done on many mornings, gazed up at the stucco ceiling cursing silently to herself for her cowardice.

  There had never been a better opportunity than yesterday to explain to Alan just how she felt. They had returned a couple of days ago from Kalamata, having enjoyed a week in the Marni. She loved Greece and particularly the Southern Pelopponese, and they had once again relished the peace and quiet of the spectacular peninsula. The small, family run hotel in Agios Nikolaus was furnished in stark contrast to their Stillwood home but she had not missed the so-called necessities that she and Alan regarded as essential in England. They were content to tour gently around in the Group B hire car they had collected from the airport, stopping wherever and whenever they wished to soak up the atmosphere. They sipped lazily from their ice-cold drinks and spoke little as they enjoyed the freshly prepared fine food, and most evenings wandered down to the small harbour near their hotel where they watched the fiery sun set over the still water. The basic twin bedded apartment was comfortable and Cindy was grateful for the excuse not to round off an evening in a shared bed. The holiday break had gone as well as she might have anticipated and in fact she had been temporarily uplifted by it. Perhaps things may get better, she thought as the plane touched down at Birmingham International airport
– but it was now Thursday and yesterday had proved somewhat of a disaster.