It is said the spirit of the suicide lingers near the body of the dead person for a very short time. It could well be reasoned that the man who commits suicide has, long before he dies, begun to mourn his own death. When a person dies in an accident, you would expect their spirit to hover around for days, for years. When sickness claims someone, you would expect their spirit to be reluctant to leave, for that person wanted to live. The spirit would long to caress fondly the body in which it once existed, would spread itself round the aged corpse of the cancer-ridden young woman that stood in her prime some months before. But you would expect the spirit of the suicide to part quickly from the physical body which had rejected it. That was Jonathan Adams’ conjecture. He had seen many that died sudden physical deaths, or had endured long drawn out agonies. And their spirit seemed assured of a long stay in the minds and presences of those that had known them. But now, with Matti Bonner’s death, he found the dead man’s spirit would not leave his consciousness. Not because it could not find peace, but out of perversity against the physical world that had rejected it.

The village seemed to harbour a vengeful spirit. The death of Matti Bonner and the melee in Duke Street became linked in a fatal manner in the Sergeant’s mind.

Often, in the old days, he used call down to his neighbour. And he’d witness some extraordinary things. The act of life itself was a miracle in Jonathan Adams’ eyes. It seemed at its most fruitful in Matti Bonner. He had a small, cramped, natural face, thin, muscled arms, long legs, and farmer’s hands. He seemed always a satisfied soul, satisfied with his bare routine, his tuneful language, his pathos. That anything even faintly like despair could have occupied his neighbour’s mind was beyond Jonathan Adams. He found Matti the job at the station, but it was with a heavy heart that the Sergeant watched the wire grids go up. That country stations should be fenced in was to declare to the world: This is not only a war, it is going to be a long war.

For a while the police took shelter there and the British Army took to the streets. And it bred in the police a hopelessness, for they had been trained as an army. There was cowardice in handing over the fighting to another battalion. But because they had always been armed, they had never been real policemen – not as in Britain or the Republic where policemen went unarmed. They had prided themselves on their guns, but now, like a crowd of unruly and cowardly deserters, they had been withdrawn to barracks.

It was a demoralizing blow to the RUC.

The province had been taken out of their hands, all for the sake of propaganda.