2 An English Heaven
‘I’ve lived in Hungerford for almost half a century,’
Ron Tarry says with pride. The chubby, grey-haired grandfather has
twice been the town’s mayor. ‘My parents moved here shortly after the
war. I was a parachute instructor in the RAF at the time, in India -
just about at the time of partition - teaching Indians how to jump.
I’ve always been very much involved in the town, the community and its
organizations.’
Ron’s passion has always been football, so it is
hardly surprising that he gravitated towards the local club. It was
through his interest m the sport that he first came to be involved in
public life. Owned by the Charity Commissioners, the Hungerford
football club’s ground was leased to it by the town council.
‘We felt then that we weren’t getting a
particularly good deal, at least compared to other organizations. So
in the late 1960s I got myself elected to the War Memorial Recreation
Ground Committee - the people who ran it. The idea was to have our say.
Which we did. Then someone suggested that I might run for election to
the town council. That was back in May 1972, and I’ve served on the
town council ever since.’
The town council of Hungerford enjoys only parish
status, with many of its members being non-party-political. Fiercely
independent, Run Tarry fits into this category: ‘While I do enjoy the
cut and thrust of debate, my sole criterion is always quite simple: is
this or that measure going to be good for Hungerford?’
Ron explains how he became mayor: ‘I was persuaded
to stand as deputy mayor, knowing that I would almost automatically
become the next mayor, which, in those days, you could have been for
several years. But the then mayor died of a heart attack during his
term of office, so I had the office thrust upon me, so to speak. But
Joe Brady’s widow approached me and said that the next meeting, due to
be held a few days after his death, should go ahead. She said that
would have been what Joe wanted. So it did go ahead. That was
something of a difficult occasion for me. I was elected mayor in 1975,
and then for a second year, until 1977, the year of the Silver Jubilee
celebrations. I was therefore mayor for two and a half years, with no
thoughts of ever being mayor again. But ten years later, in 1987, I
was asked to stand again. Against my better judgement, I was talked
into it. My wife, Beryl, was not at all keen. So I said to her that
1977 had been a very hectic year because of the Jubilee. I said
that 1987 was bound to be something of a routine year. It wasn’t a
full-time job anyway. All we had, then, by way of administrative
back-up, was a part-time clerk, Mrs Fowler - and even she had to come
in from Newbury. Anyway, Beryl gave in and I became mayor once again.’
Ron Tarry has something of a reputation in the town
for his frenetic energy. When he was not seeing to the affairs of the
football club, he would be chairing the town’s planning committee,
opening a ffite or presenting an award. Not surprisingly, this
enthusiasm and zest for life, together with his overriding concern for
others, combined to make him a well-known figure in Hungerford.
Popular and respected, lie is devoid of the slightest trace of
pomposity or self-importance. The town contains only a few individuals
prepared to dart from one meeting to the next, like Ron. For the vast
majority, life proceeds at a more leisurely pace.
Hungerford is a picture-postcard market town.
Indeed the High Street is coyly, almost self-consciously English and
genteel, with its abundant, well-kept deciduous trees, elegant
eighteenth-century houses and numerous antique shops.
People walk their dogs on the Common; elderly
ladies clip their hedges and chat to passers-by., mothers from the
choir swap details of how much money they made from last week’s coffee
morning. On a sunny summer’s day the High Street sits wide and sleepy
amid the Berkshire Downs. With cars parked nose to the kerb, the
market town goes about its business quietly, the only noise coming
from a group of ducks squabbling on the banks of the nearby River
Kennet.
For some the tranquillity of Hungerford is
oppressive, and they move away. But the majority of the town’s just
over 5000 residents seem happy to remain, considering themselves more
than a little fortunate to have found such an agreeable spot. For many,
the trout and grayling fishing on the Kennet proves an irresistible
bonus. Here one can well believe, like John O’Gaunt, in a ‘Sceptered
isle, this other Eden, demi-Paradlise. This blessed plot, this earth,
this England . . .’
John O’Gaunt has long been the town’s most famous
resident. It was he, the fourth son of Edward III, who, as Duke of
Lancaster back in the fourteenth century, had granted commoners’ and
fishing rights to the people of Hungerford. Since that time the name
of Hungerford has been proudly associated with that of John O’Gaunt.
There is the John O’Gaunt School, the John O’Gaunt Inn -in fact just
about the John O’Gaunt everything. And if the Charter granted by this
much-feted man was lost or misplaced, then the traditions would still
be handed down and thus preserved.
To visit Hungerford is to step into history. The
ancient borough and manor of Hungerford is governed by the ‘Hocktide
Jury’, consisting of twenty to twenty-four persons selected by lot
from among the commoners. Its chief official is the Constable. Since
1458, when John Tuckhill was appointed to that post, the position has
been held by nearly 300 people. Other officials are the Portreeve -
responsible for collecting the quit rents, the Bailiff, three Water
Bailiffs, three Overseers of the Port Down, the Aletesters, the
Tithing men, the Town Crier and the Bellman.
Hungerford is rich in tradition. Indeed, many of
its traditions are entirely incomprehensible to people from outside
the town. This is never more true than on Tutti Day, always held on
the Tuesday of the second week after Easter. OnRitti Day the whole of
Hungerford goes to town.
‘Some people say Tutti Day is all a lot of nonsense,’
declares Ron Tarry. ‘That it’s just an excuse for a big booze-up. But
these are an important part of Hungerford’s traditions. Because if it
wasn’t for the work that people had put in in the past to keep their
commoners’ rights, they simply wouldn’t be there now. The Common is
now there for everyone to use. And the fishing rights on the Kennet
are reserved for commoners or anyone who rents them from the Town and
Manor. Tutti Day is the day when the commoners elect all these obscure
officials, like our two Ale-testers, whose job is to ensure that the
ales are a goodly brew. I enjoy all of these traditions. They are
unusual, and very much part of our history. They make Hungerford all
the more special.’.
Ron Tarry is right. Tutti Day is certainly unusual.
For nowhere else in England are you likely to find two Tithing men, or
‘Tutti men’, resplendent in morning dress, with beautiful long staves,
their Tutti poles topped by an ingenious arrangement of spring flowers
and streamers of blue ribbon, being sent on their way by the Constable.
And the Constable’s orders to his two smart Tutti men? To visit all
the commoners’ houses to demand a penny and a kiss from all the ladies,
even if that means climbing ladders to windows when normal ingress is
denied. Maidens are kissed; pennies and oranges thrown to the children.
And so the proceedings continue throughout the day,
as they have done throughout the centuries. The Tithing men duly
dispatched, the Constable takes the chair at the Manorial Court and
the day’s activities begin. These include the Hocktide Lunch, which is
followed by another Hungerford speciality, ‘shoeing the Colts’.
‘I haven’t really been all that much involved in
Tutti Day and the Hocktide Lunch,’ Ron explains, ‘because these have
always been organized by the Town and Manor of Hungerford, whereas my
involvement has been more by way of the town council. But I have been
invited to the Hocktide Lunch. It’s a marvellous occasion. The people
attending this lunch for the first time are known as Colts. These
people are caught and shoed by the blacksmith, whose solemn duty it is
to drive a nail into the sole of the shoe of that person until a cry
of "Punch" is heard. When they do this, they then have to pay for a
bowl of punch. It really is a lot of fun.’
The term ‘Tutti’ is derived from the West Country
name for a nosegay or a flower - a tutty. With its obscure and ancient
rituals, Tutti Day comes but once a year. For the remaining 364 days
Hungerford is as it has been since time immemorial. A former resident
of the town recalls his childhood thus: ‘Of all the quiet, uneventful
places in my 1950s childhood, Hungerford was the quietest. I remember
those utterly motionless summer afternoons in the High Street. My
grandmother and I would get off the coach from London at the Bear
Hotel and carry our cases, stopping frequently for rests, up the broad
main street, with its red-brick clocktower. Invariably, the town clock
would be tolling its slow, flat note, assuring us that, whatever might
be happening elsewhere in the world, nothing ever happened in
Hungerford.’
In fact something did once happen in Hungerford.
For on one of the back roads leading out of the town towards Lambourn
there is a monument that few notice. Half-buried in the hedgerow, it
commemorates two policemen murdered there by a gang of robbers. But
that was back in the 1870s, ironically just a few years after the
opening of the town’s small but proud police station. The former
resident was right, though, for ever since that time nothing
extraordinary had happened in Hungerford.
For Ron Tarry, Wednesday 19 August 1987 was a
typical working day. He was out and about in his maroon Ford Escort
estate, working for his employer, an agricultural cooperative. Ron’s
task was the same as ever: to sell stock feed, seed, fertilizer and
other agricultural products to the farmers of Berkshire.
‘I remember that day well,’says Ron.’ The sun was
shining. The windows were down. I was driving around the Lambourn
Downs, listening to the radio. I was just north of Lambourn at a place
called Seven Barrows, and preparing for my next call. Then I heard the
early-afternoon news.’
3 ‘That shows the power a gun
gives you’
Michael Robert Ryan was born at Savernake Hospital
on 18 May 1960. His father could hardly get to the registration office
quickly enough, and Michael’s birth was duly registered in less than
twenty-four hours. The reasons for this haste were twofold. First, as
a white-collar council employee, he knew all about the inner workings
of a small local bureaucracy. Secondly, and more importantly, in his
mid-fifties Alfred Henry Ryan was delighted to have finally fathered a
child. The prompt issue of a birth certificate provided confirmation
that Michael Ryan had made his belated entry into the world.
‘I remember the day when Dorothy returned from the
hospital with Michael as a baby,’ recalls the Ryans’ neighbour Guytha
Hunt. ‘I was thrilled to bits. I saw him grow up from the very
beginning. She doted on him - that’s the word. I sometimes used to say,
jokily so as not to offend, that I wouldn’t get him this or that. That
I wouldn’t jump to it when he c ‘ licked his fingers. But she loved
him as a son and that was it. There was nothing you could do. It just
wasn’t up to neighbours like me to interfere. So we didn’t.’
Alfred doted on his son too. He was the Clerk of
Works for Hungerford Rural District Council, and had a rather
unflattering reputation in the area as a perfectionist who enforced
strict standards of behaviour. But since he was already approaching
retirement when his son was born, he was happy for his wife to take
charge of the boy’s upbringing. Dorothy, over twenty years younger
than her husband, loved her son very much indeed. ‘I just don’t know
what I would do if anything ever happened to Michael,’ she would often
muse. And the hallmark of Dorothy Ryan’s brand of loving was
indulgence. Not surprisingly, it did not take young Michael too long
to realize that his wishes were usually likely to be fulfilled. Soon
the formula had been set: what Michael wanted, Dorothy provided. He
became the boy who was given everything: toys and train sets, records
and clothes, bikes and, later, cars.
Unlike both her husband and son, however, Dorothy
was a well-known figure in Hungerford, and highly respected too. The
general manager of the Elcot Park Hotel, where she worked as a part-time
waitress for twelve years, remembers his former employee as extremely
popular, conscientious and hard-working -,a real salt-of-the-earth
figure’. So popular was Dorothy that when, shortly before the summer
of 1987, she finally passed her driving test at the twelfth attempt,
at the age of sixty-one, the hotel’s management presented her with a
bottle of champagne, a gesture of admiration for her gritty
determination. However, the most constant beneficiary of any
additional income generated by Dorothy’s dedicated efforts was not
herself but her son.
As a young child Michael Ryan developed a
particular attachment to Action Man, the commando-style plastic doll
beloved of so many boys at that time. True to form, Dorothy saw to it
that Michael’s Action Man was exceptionally well kitted out, with
several different uniforms and virtually every accessory on the market.
For this was what Michael had wanted.
‘He was moody and self-centred,’ his uncle, Stephen
Fairbrass, would later recall, ‘but that did not mean that it was
impossible to like him.’ It might not have been impossible, but few
did. And when it came to his schooling, Ryan was himself certainly no
junior Action Man. Quite the contrary, in fact. He attended the local
primary school, just opposite his home in South View, before moving to
the John O’Gaunt School. He was a C-stream pupil of below-average
ability, as a former classmate recalls: ‘He was in a remedial class or
in one of the lower sets at secondary school. We used to try to get
him to join in games, but he appeared to be moody and sulky, so
eventually the other children would just leave him alone. The only
person I ever remember seeing him with was his mother, who adopted a
very protective attitude towards him.’
As an eleven-year-old, Ryan was photographed along
with all the other schoolchildren. Despite the best efforts of the
local photographer, even on that occasion he was unable to manage a
smile for the camera; indeed it is not difficult to detect a fearful
expression on his face. From the very earliest of days, Michael Ryan
was a child apart.
Guytha, Hunt recalls that throughout Ryan’s primary-school
days she saw little evidence of children coming to and going from his
house at South View: ‘In fact I never once saw any friend come to play
with him throughout those early years. Actually I had a lot of time
for Michael, but no one seemed to have a lot of time for him - apart
from his parents, that is.’
He might not have been seen by Guytha Hunt, but
there was eventually one boy, Brian Melkle, who did come to play. He
and Ryan were best friends at school, although they eventually grew
apart when Brian married in 1980. But during their school years, they
were two of a kind, enjoying motorbike scrambling, and both well aware
that neither of them was destined to scale the heights of academia.
Brian explains: ‘Neither of us was very good at school. In the fifth
year, when Michael was in a remedial class for one subject, he used to
play truant a lot. The other lads used to pick on him -because he was
small - but he didn’t get himself into fights because he just wouldn’t
have been able to stick up for himself. He was certainly no Rambo -
more of a Bambi really.’
Brian Meikle was right. His friend was frequently a
victim of bullying at school. Other children detected his sense of
isolation and preyed on it without mercy. And throughout his long,
lonely persecution, Ryan would say nothing, preferring to simply take
the punishment, always remaining silent and still. His former friend
and classmate remembers it well: ‘It was quite sad really, because he
would always sit on his own. He never did anything to harm anybody. He
wasn’t popular either with the boys or girls though. He took a lot of
stick - and it just made him even more withdrawn. He retreated into
his guns, and they became his only real friends.’
Nor did Ryan shine in sport. His former physical
education teacher, Vic Lardner, remembers only a sullen and shy boy:
‘He was quiet, withdrawn you might even say. He certainly wasn’t too
keen on sports, because it was difficult to get him to take part at
all.’
Not surprisingly, Michael Ryan wanted out. The
troubled teenager’s conclusion could hardly have been more clear: the
sooner he was free of the confines of the John O’Gaunt School, the
better his world would be. His father, however, was not so eager for
him to leave school so soon after his sixteenth birthday, and without
a single examination pass under his belt. In the Ryan household a
conflict developed as to when and what Michael’s next move should be.
But when his son promised to enrol at the Newbury College of Further
Education, Alfred Ryan relented. Perhaps there, he thought, Michael
would receive a more appropriate and vocational type of training.
Having taken his place on the year-long City and
Guilds Foundation Course, Ryan seemed at first to have found a home
for himself. It was a new and challenging environment. But within a
few months a familiar pattern had begun to emerge. For during his time
at Newbury College Ryan remained uncommunicative, always attempting to
make himself as inconspicuous as possible by sitting near the back of
the class. Like many others with whom Ryan came into contact, course
tutor Robin Tubb can recall only a shy., repressed personality: ‘He
was an exceedingly quiet student. He needed a lot of encouragement. He
did pay attention though - he was a real trier. It was just that he
wasn’t very good. I got the feeling that he was frustrated with his
inadequacy. He wanted to do well, but he was very timid. If you showed
him how to use a chisel, you would have to say: "Now hit it."
A timid and withdrawn loner, however, was far from
the image Michael Ryan was eager to project to the world. For his
pattern of behaviour made it clear that his aim was to be taken as
something of an Action Man himself. But a new persona had first to be
concocted. He invested in a military camouflage jacket, which, to his
mind, lent authority to his idle boast that he was once a member of
the 2nd Parachute Regiment. And whether in Hungerford or elsewhere, he
would always do his best to walk upright like a soldier, chin up and
chest out. Neighbour Victor Noon remembers his antics well: ‘Michael
was into buying and selling old military swords and he once owned a
tommy gun. He was a bit of a military freak and always wore combat
gear. He would tend to his guns the way most people would tend to
their plants.’
Ryan’s shed might have housed a considerable
arsenal. He might well have strained to walk upright like a soldier.
His patter to the world might have sounded completely. plausible. But
such boasting and behaviour belonged only to the private world of his
imagination. In fact, for Ryan, reality and fantasy were almost equal
and exact opposites, as another Hungerfordian, Denis Morley, explains:
‘1 worked with Ryan together on a project at Littlecote. He was
employed as a general labourer there. I thought he was a wimp. He was
very much a mummy’s boy. She bought him the best motorbike when he was
old enough to have a licence. And then he started going round in a
posh Ford Escort XR3i. His latest acquisition was a flashy new
Vauxhall Astra GTE. He would always have the latest registration plate
too. But he certainly wasn’t the sort to get involved in a punch-up.
In fact he wouldn’t even go up a ladder at Littlecote.’
For Ryan, ladders clearly represented an
unacceptable risk. And yet he was deeply fascinated by the worlds of
survivalism and combat, where the stakes are considerably higher. As a
result he was a regular visitor to the Savernake Forest, where several
survival huts can be found. Most of these are made from branches
broken and woven around a tree in order to blend with the background
of the forest. The forest is entrancing, with tangles of pine, beech
and oak criss-crossing a network of unmarked lanes, and in season, red
puffs of poppies amid the fields of brown, ripening corn which break
up the woodland. But Ryan’s repeated visits to Savernake were entirely
unrelated to the natural beauty of the environment, as Charles Armor,
with whom Ryan worked briefly, recalls: ‘He used to spend quite a lot
of time in Savernake pretending to be on manoeuvres. He used to tell
us, when we worked together at Littlecote, that he would camouflage
himself and creep up on picnickers without them knowing. He would
watch them for a while - and then disappear.’
‘He were a right nutter, were Michael Ryan. I can
remember running around the garden when I was about six years old,
some twenty years ago, because he used to use us as moving targets for
his air rifle.’
Wynn Pask was right. Ryan had terrorized his
younger neighbour for some time. And a good many of Wynn’s friends
too.
‘He never hit us but it was always Very frightening;
Wynn recalls. ‘Even when he was just thirteen years old, he would lean
out of his bedroom window, which looked on to our garden, and take
shots at us with his air rifle. It was the same thing when we were
playing - he would come out with his air rifle. We did complain about
it, but not all that much really because we were too scared of him at
the time. I often saw him going out into nearby fields and on to the
Common with a shotgun when he was just a kid. He even used to take aim
at his father’s cows, which were kept behind his house. He would shoot
at anything, would Ryan. A right bloody lunatic.’
Fourteen years later, Michael Ryan remained gun mad.
If anything, his devotion to the world of arms had increased with the
years. It was his mother who had initiated him by presenting him with
his first gun, an air pistol. Dorothy Ryan was constantly lavishing
gifts on Michael, her only child, and the air pistol was followed by a
moped, then a scrambler motorbike and, later, a string of smart new
cars.
There is nothing to suggest that these later
offerings were not appreciated. Yet Michael Ryan savoured nothing so
much as the acquisition of a new gun. Whereas supporting the local
football club was something of an interest, collecting guns soon
became a passion. And wherever Ryan went, his gun went too - even if
it was just to the local pub for a pint.
Throughout his teenage years and later, Ryan spent
long hours tucked away in his garden shed, which soon housed a small
arsenal. Every now and then he would emerge to fire at a tin can on
the garden fence or take a shot at a bird. The sound of Ryan firing
off rounds both behind his parents’ house, 4 South View, and in the
general vicinity of Hungerford, became quite common.
And then it was back to the garden shed to grease,
oil, polish or strip his formidable array of weaponry. Sometimes
Ryan’s visits to the shed would have no precise purpose, the hours
being whiled away simply admiring his treasured collection. Given the
opportunity, he could hold forth on every aspect of his hobby for
hours, while secreted in his bedroom was a comprehensive range of
literature on guns, with books, reviews and survival magazines packing
every inch of available space.
Ryan’s passion for weaponry singularly failed to
impress the next-door neighbours. Just as the Pask family had suffered,
so too had the Hunts, who for over twenty years had lived immediately
next door to the Ryans at 5, South View. Mrs Hunt remembers Ryan’s
antics well: ‘My husband often used to see Michael coming out the
house with his guns, place them in the boot of his car and then cover
them with blankets. My husband would say, I wonder where he is off to
with those guns!’ My husband used to keep geese and chickens. And of
course Michael was always around and about with his airgun - and I
remember my husband saying, "Michael, if you kill one of my birds, woe
betide you!’ He would also go to his bedroom window and shoot the
birds in the trees with his guns, and this also upset my husband.’
By the summer of 1987 Ryan’s collection of weapons
consisted of two rifles and three handguns. They were his pride and
joy, something about which he could boast to relatives and
acquaintances alike. Nor was there anything illegal in this arsenal
kept in the Ryans’ brick-built, end-of-terrace council house. On the
contrary, Ryan had held a shotgun licence since 1978. As his
collection had expanded to include other firearms, so his licence had
been amended accordingly, as required by law. The Thames Valley Police
had, in the twelve months before August 1987, vetted the young gun
enthusiast on at least three occasions, once in November 1986 and
twice in early 1987. As the storage facilities were found to be in
order, there was no good reason for the relevant authorization to be
withheld, and it was not.
Under the terms of his firearms certificate Ryan
was entitled to own five guns. It was his constant chopping and
changing of his weaponry which had prompted the police visits.
Constable Ronald Hoyes, the Hungerford community beat officer, was one
such official visitor to the Ryan household. He explains: ‘Having
worked in Hungerford for thirteen years, I had had no previous
dealings with Ryan at all and I knew that he had never been in any
trouble with the police, apart from one single speeding offence. He
appeared to me to be a fit and responsible person to hold a firearms
certificate.’
PC Hoyes’s visit was required because Ryan had
again applied for a variation to his certificate in order to include a
Smith and Wesson, a .38 pistol, for target shooting. The amendment
came through without undue delay. Everything was in accordance with
the law.
Another police constable, Trevor Wainwright, also a
member of the Hungerford constabulary, took the same view as his
colleague on his visits to 4 South View. In fact he lived just around
the corner in Macklin Close. These judgements were supported by Ryan’s
own doctor, Dr Huigh Pihiens, whose name had been associated with
Ryan’s original application. Again, both PC and GP found Ryan to be
sane and safe. Additional legal requirements were duly fulfilled by
the purchase and installation of a Chubb steel cabinet,
which was then bolted to Ryan’s bedroom wall. But
in reality the licensee kept the guns and hundreds of rounds of
ammunition in the garden shed, a flimsy structure which had long been
the nerve centre of Ryan’s quasi-military operations, as many
neighbours knew.
‘Michael was always fascinated by guns,’ his aunt,
Constance Ryan, confirms. ‘It seemed to me as if he felt more
important and powerful because of them - perhaps because he wasn’t all
that big himself, I don’t really know. But I do remember Michael
telling me that once he had met a person while out rabbit shooting and
this person had started getting saucy. Michael pulled a revolver out
of his pocket and pointed it at the man, and then watched with
satisfaction as he ran off. I remember the lesson he drew from this
incident very clearly. "That," he said, "shows the power a gun gives
you, Auntie."’
Michael Ryan’s fixation with weaponry might have
made him something of an exception in Hungerford. But he was by no
means unusual in terms of the country as a whole. For in the summer of
1987 Britain’s gun culture was very widespread indeed. Ryan was just
one among 160,000 licensed holders of firearms and 840,000 licensed
holders of shotguns. However, the number of shotguns in legitimate
circulation at that time was estimated at around three times that
number, because several could be held on a single licence. And
according to an estimate published in the Police Review
there were then possibly as many as four million illegally held guns
in the country. Gun shops and gun centres were also widespread, with
more than two thousand legitimate dealers trading in arms, many
extremely successfully, and some eight thousand gun clubs where the
enthusiast could hone his skills.
In his love for guns, then, Michael Ryan was not
alone. So when he applied to join the Dunmore Shooting Centre at
Abingdon in Oxfordshire in September 1986, there was nothing
particularly remarkable in his application. For Ryan membership of the
Dunmore club was particularly attractive because it incorporated what
it claimed was one of the biggest gun shops in the country. Ryan
proved to be a good customer, spending £391.50 on a Beretta pistol
shortly before Christmas 1986, and then buying a Smith and Wesson for
£325, a Browning shotgun, a Bernadelli pistol and two other shotguns
during the following year. Ryan borrowed the money to finance these
transactions, a Reading finance company handling his repeated
applications for funds.
There was more besides to attract the young gun
enthusiast, for the Dumnore Centre’s shooting gallery had a 25-metre,
fullboard, seven-lane range with television-monitored targets. The
Centre, situated not far from Ryan’s home, also had a turning-target
system, enabling him to practice rapid fire and combat exercises, an
area of gun expertise known as practical shooting. Here, accuracy is
tested not on Bisley-style targets where closeness to the bull’s-eye
gains the most marks, but under simulated combat conditions, firing at
representational figures, usually life-sized depictions of terrorists.
The aim here is to kill or maim the ‘enemy’. In the summer of 1987
there were no fewer than forty ‘survival schools’ scattered around
Britain, and magazines like Desert Eagle, Combat and Survival,
Soldier of Fortune and Survival Weaponry were then enjoying
a rapidly rising circulation. Michael Ryan was simply one of the gun-loving
crowd.
Or was he? Certainly there was something which did
not quite ring true. For Ryan’s extensive range of macho trappings
should surely have made him the envy of the neighbourhood. One night
have expected a string of callers at 4 South View: youngsters anxious
to sit in his high-performance car or interested in his impressive
armoury. Yet not only was there no waiting list of prospective
visitors awdous to inspect Ryan's collection; there was nobody in
Hungerford remotely interested in Ryan or his weapons. For the reality
was that Michael Ryan’s personality simply did not match his image.
One of his former workmates, John Mitchell, explains: In no way was he
ordinary. He had a quiet intensity about him, which nobody really
liked. Sometimes he was very pally, but you could tell that the rest
of the blokes were not having any of it. He used to talk about how
fast he used to drive here, there and everywhere. He was someone you
just wanted to stay away from.’
And people did just that. Ryan would therefore
occasionally be seen in local pubs standing alone, drinking a pint or
two of beer before leaving. Peter Bullock, the landlord of the Red
House at Marsh Benham, between Hungerford and Newbury, recalls his
surly, solitary presence in his pub: ‘I can remember Ryan standing at
the bar or sitting at a table. One thing never changed: he was always
alone. I don’t think that he was a loner by choice, mind you -just
that he seemed inadequate.’
Ryan certainly considered his own height of five
foot six inadequate. Nor was he very impressed with his head of hair,
for he worried a great deal about its premature loss. In fact Ryan was
something of a worrier all round, and his doctor was in no doubt that
the recurrent lump in his throat which troubled him so was caused
simply by nervous stress. His other features were nothing unusual: a
beer gut, short light brown hair and a light beard to match.
As a youth Ryan was so reserved and awkward that
his headmaster, David Lee, struggles to remember his former pupil: ‘He
was unremarkable, an anonymous sort of lad really, who failed to
distinguish himself either academically or in sports.’ Years later a
contrived anonymity would continue, with Ryan sporting sunglasses in
all weathers, an absence of sunshine not deterring him one iota. Being
tough, or being seen to be tough, was certainly important to him. And
it was no doubt the feeling of power over youngsters which prompted
him once to take a job as a bouncer at local rock concerts. Ryan’s new
role, with his gun tucked out of sight, neatly matched the image he
had developed.
Not surprisingly, Ryan was not much of a hit with
women. ‘In all the time I knew him,’Gary DevIin recalls, ‘I never once
saw him with a girlfriend. He was into his guns and kept himself
occupied with that.’ This is not to ‘imply that Ryan’s sexual
preference inclined towards men or boys, for it did not. It was just
that he was entirely lacking in the social skills which might have led
to a sexual relationship. In fact in June 1987 Ryan made such a
nuisance of himself at a party by persistently asking a local waitress
to go out with him, and refusing to take no for an answer, that he had
to be warned off by her friends. And Michael Ryan did not like to be
warned off. Not one bit.
By contrast, there was no risk of his being
rejected by Blackie, his labrador, whom he loved deeply and looked
after very well. Ryan would often be seen out walking Blackie. If
anyone crossed his path, or his crossed theirs, then providing that
person was not one of the neighbours with whom he had fallen out
because of his shooting activities, then invariably his greeting was
both courteous and friendly. ‘Hello, all right?’ he would always ask.
Sometimes he would stop and talk knowledgeably to the local children
about the latest television film he had seen or video he had hired.
If Michael Ryan was nondescript, so too was his
home. The living-room was decorated with a heavy, old-fashioned
wallpaper of a golden hue. Past the kitchen was a glass lean-to, which
his father had built and his mother used as a utility room. Beyond
that was the garden, some 200 feet long and complete with a garage and
a greenhouse. Michael’s room was at the front of the house on the
first floor, overlooking the street, which was really a lane, with
houses on one side and Hungerford Primary School on the other. This
house was the constant backcloth to Michael Ryan’s rather dreary and
joyless life. It was here that he had been brought, as the only child
of his parents, when he was just a few days old.
Dorothy Ryan was a grafter. And invariably she was
grafting for her son. She paid for everything: the fast cars, the best
clothes and the latest records. She always had, and what is more she
was happy to have done so. This suited Michael down to the ground, for
while his mother was happy to give, he was happy to take. Her money,
however, was hard-earned, as she worked as a dinner lady at Hungerford
Primary School. The timing of her job enabled Dorothy to have a couple
of hours off before starting work again as a silver-service waitress
at the stylish Elcot Park Hotel at Kintbury, on the outskirts of
Hungerford. Here she had felt privileged to serve members of the Royal
family on more than one occasion. If guns made Michael happy, therein
lay Dorothy’s satisfaction too. That explained why she was more than
happy to pop across the road every week to pick up her son’s pile of
survival and gun magazines.
Relatives and friends could see all too clearly
that Dorothy Ryan, who, unlike her son, was extremely popular in the
neighbourhood, was pampering Michael to a degree which defied
description. Michael could be a polite and well-mannered young man,
but he was at times a sullen, brooding character, and prone to extreme
mood swings. He was often rude and abusive towards his mother. The
analysis was hardly complicated: he had been thoroughly spoiled. Aunt
Constance Ryan, however, is a little more charitable. in her
assessment: ‘Actually we got on rather well. We shared similar tastes
in music and it seemed as if there was not that much of an age
difference between us. He was a very, very nice person. But he was
also a rather sad and lonely boy. It didn’t seem as if he had many
friends.’
In 1984, aged eighty-one, Ryan’s father, Alfred,
had died. It was the end of a long battle against cancer. At first
Ryan took the death of his father badly, sinking into a depression,
and he turned to his doctor for advice and support. According to
Leslie Ryan, his uncle, it was a terrible blow for the young man: ‘His
father, who he called Buck, was his life. When he went, something in
Michael seemed to go too.’
This might have been true in the first stages of
Ryan’s grief, but it was certainly not for long, according to his
cousin, David Fairbrass: ‘Michael was quite articulate, but a man of
few words. I had known him all of my life and you wouldn’t think there
was anything strange about him. I only met him with the family, not
socially, and he used to drop my auntie down to visit. I never saw his
guns, but at his father’s funeral he showed me his collection of
antique swords. After his father died, Michael became more outgoing if
anything. Alfred was quite a disciplinarian, but Michael used to look
up to him. Before Alfred’s death, Michael was shy, introverted and
insecure. But the change that came over him after his father had died
Was incredible. We could see him coming out of himself. We were all
quite pleased for him at the time. And when we heard about Michael’s
forthcoming marriage we were all very excited indeed. But we never did
meet her or hear any name mentioned.’
There was a single compelling reason why David
Fairbrass was never to meet this fiancee: she was but a figment of his
cousin’s imagination. Ryan might well have made some progress since
the death of his father in terms of the development of his own
personality. Yet the fact remained that he was an outsider, a loner, a
nobody whose life was so full of rejection and failure that he chose
what appeared to him to be a rather satisfactory solution. This was to
concoct an altogether more fanciful, successful and dynamic existence
which he knew he would never be able to achieve in reality. While his
everyday life might have been humdrum, Ryan’s fantasy life could
hardly have been more colourful.
Witness Ryan’s bizarre invention of a relationship
with a ninety-five-year-old retired colonel. Mrs Eileen North, Dorothy
Ryan’s closest friend, recounts the story of this elaborate fiction:
‘I worked as a school-dinner lady with Dorothy and my own mother lived
next door to the Ryan family. I suppose you could say that, relatives
apart, I knew the family better than anyone else. Mrs Ryan was devoted
to her son and it was she who told people how Michael had become
friendly with this colonel who employed a nurse and housekeeper.
Michael claimed he was going to fly to India because he had been
invited to his tea-plantation there, but that the flight had had to be
cancelled due to a bad storm. He was also supposed to be paying for
flying lessons for Michael . He was supposed to be the owner of a
hotel in Eastbourne, although he himself lived in Cold Ash. Not only
was he intent on leaving Michael his fortune, he was also due to
inherit a five-bedroomed house. Michael also told people that he was
engaged to the colonel’s nurse, but that the wedding was postponed
after she had fallen from a horse. Then the wedding was called off
when she refused to buy Mrs Ryan a birthday present. Oh yes, and this
colonel person was also meant to be buying Michael a Porsche, Ferrari
or Range Rover.’
The story Ryan spun to Edred Gwilliam, a dealer in
antique firearms, concerned not an ageing colonel but a young Irish
girl. Others were to hear this tale too. Ryan claimed that he had been
married to an Irish girl who had borne his child, but that the
marriage had run into difficulties after he had caught his wife in bed
with an elderly uncle for whom he had once worked. His estranged wife,
he told Gwilliam and workmates alike, had returned to Ireland with the
child. In any event, Ryan explained, the relationship between the
Irish girl and her mother-in-law had always been a troubled one.
Ryan’s hard-luck story had not ended there, for after the death of his
father he had been left a lot of money and he and a partner were in
business together, renovating properties in London. At one stage, Ryan
insisted they had ten or twelve men working for them, but his partner
had run away to Australia and left him bankrupt.
Dorothy Ryan had certainly believed her son when he
had spoken of the colonel from Cold Ash. It was she, after an, who had
picked up the telephone to the Fairbrass family in Calne, twentyfive
miles from Hungerford, proudly inviting her relatives to Michael’s
wedding. Edred Gwilliam had likewise believed his customer, who had,
after all, bought a pair of Queen Anne pistols, a holster pistol and
an antique naval sword from him over the years and had given him no
reason to disbelieve what he said. Nor was there any shortage of
additional fantasy. Other tall stories retailed by Ryan included his
claims that he had once run a gun shop or antique store in MarIborough;
that he had held a private pilot’s licence; that he had served with
the 2nd Parachute Regiment; and that in 1987 he had taken a trip to
Venice on the Orient Express. Every story was devoid of the slightest
trace of truth. But wherever Michael Ryan went two things now
accompanied him: firearms and fantasies.
Ryan had left school in 1976, just after his
sixteenth birthday, without a single qualification. For almost a
decade he had drifted aimlessly from one unskilled job to another,
with intermittent periods on the dole. He was a great disappointment
to his father, who had hoped for better things.
When Ryan did work, however, his style was at least
memorable. He once found a job as a handyman at Downe House Girls
School in Cold Ash, near Newbury, the town where the fictitious
colonel was supposed to have lived. But Fred Haynes, the school’s
gardener, remembers Ryan’s four months’ labour there for one reason
only: ‘He once shot a green woodpecker, which the rest of us found
very offensive.’
Between November 1985 and Easter 1986 the gun
enthusiast worked as a labourer at nearby Littlecote, the home of the
multimillionaire businessman Peter de Savary. Although the great hall
at Littlecote was decorated with well over a hundred guns dating from
the Civil War, Ryan apparently failed to show any interest in the
collection. Littlecote’s project director, John Taylor, whose task it
was to oversee the £6-million conversion of stately home into historic
theme park, remembers Ryan only for being ‘terribly over-mothered’.
Eddy Pett, also involved in the project, summed up Ryan’s personality
neatly: ‘Michael Ryan seemed a very nice chap to me. He was pleasant
enough, but he appeared to be someone who wasn’t getting to grips with
life.’
Pett was right: nothing seemed to be working out
for Ryan. But then things had never really gone his way. The job at
Littlecote lasted for only six months, after which Ryan resumed a path
that had long been familiar: back to the dole office. Then, in April
1987, after a year out of work, Ryan thought that he might have fallen
on his feet. The Manpower Services Commission was advertising for
people to work on an environmental improvement project. Sponsoring
this programme was Newbury District Council, which appointed John
Gregory as the scheme’s manager. One requirement was that applicants
had to have been out of work for over a year, a criterion which Ryan
was able to fulfil. Ryan knew that the job was poorly paid, at £64 per
week, but after a prolonged spell of unemployment he was happy to be
back in work. A week after his interview he was working again, this
time clearing footpaths and mending fences. At first all seemed to go
well and Gregory had no cause to complain: ‘Michael Ryan was a good
worker, a conscientious worker - and he certainly pulled his weight.
Although he was very quiet, he was also well-spoken and well-behaved.
I got the impression that he enjoyed working outdoors.’
But Charles Armor got to know Ryan rather better,
for he was directly responsible for supervising his work on the
project, along with some forty-five other men: ‘He was sullen and a
bit moody really, but he joined in the conversations with the lads. He
would take the mickey out of the chaps, but he did not like it if they
took the mickey out of him.’
As ever, Ryan boasted about this or that. And with
every statement he forged the inevitable link with the one area in
which he seemed to be better equipped and better informed than
everyone around hiiin: firearms. Ryan had learned long ago that it was
only in the world of guns that he could ever hope to distinguish
himself. Not by excelling at shooting - for he was just an average
shot - but through the awesome nature of his chosen field.
When Ryan went to work for Newbury District Council
his pattern of behaviour did not change, for his gun still accompanied
him every day. He would turn up for work with his small Beretta pistol
tucked between the waistband of his trousers and the small of his
back. He also carried a flick-knife, and kept another firearm in the
glove compartment of his car. It was all for his personal protection,
he explained to Charles Armor, and all the relevant paperwork was
available for inspection should it be required. But pistols and
ammunition had precious little to do with fixing footpaths and fences,
as Armor emphasized to Ryan: ‘I told him to his face that he had no
right to carry guns. I said that a licence didn’t mean that he could
carry loaded guns. So I felt it was my duty to report him to Mr
Gregory.’
Once, while working on a project in Calcot, Ryan
embarked on a familiar refrain, boasting to his workmates that he
could get them any gun they wanted. In fact, he said, he could get
hold of almost any type of military equipment they might have cared to
choose. And for sale on the spot, no questions asked, he had a box
full of flick-knives, which he was offering for the very reasonable
price of just £5 each. Next to these knives, in the boot of his car,
would be an assortment of shotguns and rifles. He even brought his
homemade bombs - Ryan Specials he used to call them - and rockets to
work, and one day decided to demonstrate one of the latter while
working by the Thames at Reading.
‘It nearly gave me a heart attack,’ Charles Armor
recalls. ‘It went up in the air, came down and took off again straight
towards some houses. I shut my eyes. It scared the living daylights
out of me, but then it dropped down to the ground.
Were Ryan’s activities just harmless fun? The
antics of an overenthusiastic amateur? Not according to Armor. Because
once, after Ryan had suffered a particularly harsh ribbing from two
fellow-workers, he lost his temper in a rather spectacular way. ‘He
said he would shoot them if they didn’t leave hirn alone,’ Armor
explains. ‘He was serious about it. He was gritting his teeth in
temper. I could see what was coming and I told them to leave hirn
alone.’
Ryan also boasted of clandestine nocturnal
expeditions during which he would use road signs for target practice.
At first Armor refused to believe Ryan. But after his recent rocket
display Ryan’s supervisor was not too sure what to believe. It was
only when he went to inspect a signpost on the Shefford Road to which
Ryan had directed him, that he realized that he had been serious after
all. For there he witnessed a road sign peppered with four bullet
holes. Armor knew that he now had to act, for the time had come for
Ryan to go.
Ryan pre-empted Armor’s disciplinary measures,
however, by walking out of his job on 9 July 1987. His departure was
true to form, for he left claiming that he had found a better job with
better pay. In reality he went straight back on the dole, where he
could claim £54 a week, just £10 less than his weekly wage.
Unemployment conferred on Ryan one major advantage: he could now
devote himself entirely to shooting. He had hardly visited the Dunmore
Centre in recent months; but now that situation could be redressed.
Ryan might not have been getting to grips with life, but he certainly
knew how to handle a gun. Here was where his heart had always been,
with firearms, not fences. He now had some serious shooting to do.
Within four days Ryan had joined another gun club.
This time it was the small, privately owned Tunnel Rifle and Pistol
Club, based in a disused railway tunnel in Devizes, Wiltshire. The
club had over 600 members, at least thirty of them policemen, and was
extremely well run. Probationary membership number R62287 was issued
in return for Ryan’s £50 joining fee, which he paid for with his
Barclaycard. Once again, for those whose job it was to vet prospective
applicants, Ryan cut a very credible and even respectable figure.
Andrew Barnard, a partner in the Tunnel Club, certainly harboured no
doubts about his eager new recruit: ‘He was a very unremarkable sort
of person. He was polite, very safe on the range, and never did
anything to give us the slightest worry. He seemed to me to be a
typical country person. He came over as perfectly bright and gave the
impression of being well educated. The only military gear which he
ever wore was a pair of Dutch paratrooper’s boots, which were always
well polished. Otherwise he was always smartly dressed. He would have
looked quite good with the green-welly brigade.’
A few weeks earlier, while he had been traumatizing
Charles Armor on the Manpower Services Commission project, Ryan had
applied to the Thames Valley Police for yet another alteration to his
firearms certificate. Apparently there had been a qualitative change
in the type of weapon he craved, for now he sought permission to own
two 7.62mm self-loading rifles. Ryan’s pistols and self-loading rifles
were known as Section I weapons under the 1968 Firearms Act, as
opposed to Section II weapons, which are shotguns. And in order to
obtain a certificate for Section I guns, an applicant must first
satisfy his local police authority that he is a fit person with a
legitimate reason for their possession. Once again, Ryan was able to
satisfy the Thames Valley Police, although he was not yet a full.
member of a club that had proper facilities for these weapons. He
enjoyed only probationary status at the Devizes centre, whereas his
Abingdon club, where he did now have full membership, did not at that
time have approved facilities for such weapons.
With his newly varied certificate, Ryan knew that
he was legitimately entitled to buy weapons of an altogether greater
menace, which was precisely why he had applied for the change. Having
obtained it, he could not get to the gun shops quickly enough. Their
staff now had no reason to deny him his prize.
On 15 July 1987 Ryan travelled to the pretty
Wiltshire market town of Westbury, where he made for Westbury Guns,
situated at 12 Edward Street. The shop’s presentation was typically ‘county’,
with stuffed vermin and books such as Shooting Made Easy in its
olde-worlde windows. Nigel Shirnwell. greeted Ryan. It was not the’
first time they had met. Before long a £310 transaction had been
agreed. Ryan produced his credit card once again, and paid a £50
deposit, and then pulled out his firearms certificate and driving
licence. This was sufficient documentation to persuade the gun dealer
to allow Ryan to pay off the balance, with interest, over a period of
months.
The upshot of the deal was that Ryan returned to
his car with a Chinese ‘Norinco’ version of the famous Russian semi-automatic
Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle tucked under his arm. This weapon,
known as the ‘widowmaker’ by the IRA, and favoured by terrorists all
over the world, is extremely powerful, and capable of firing thirty
times faster than a finger can pull the trigger, with each magazine
holding thirty rounds.
Despite the terrifying nature of the rifle’s
firepower, during the summer of 1987 thousands of AK47s were available
over the counter and by mail order in Britain at’bargain
basementprices. In fact, had Ryan shopped around, he could have
obtained the identical weapon for £50 less. It was on sale to anyone
with a firearms certificate for a standard 7.62min target, and more
often than not, credit was readily available too. The certificate
itself cost just £12.
When Shimwell sold Ryan his new weapon, however, he
did so without trepidation. Because in the world of gun enthusiasts
there was nothing unusual about the direction in which Ryan’s hobby
had taken him. Indeed, hundreds, if not thousands, of Kalashnikovs
were then in private hands in Britain. Ryan could hardly wait to try
out his new semi-automatic. On 23 July, and again on M July, he
used it on the club’s ranges, aligning the sight. He was now
practising virtually every other day: it was as if he was in training
for a particular event.
Unlike Ryan, many of the members of the Minnel.
Club were pillars of the establishment. One such member was Gerald
Sidney, a Somerset and Avon magistrate. He remembers his meeting with
Ryan well: ‘He was sitting in a chair at the top end of the rifle
gallery. He had just finished firing off a magazine from his
Kalashnikov. I had never seen him before. I said hello and he replied
that he had just been zeroing-in his new rifle. The gun seemed in very
good nick. The trouble was, when we looked at his targets his shooting
was all over the place. It looked to me as if he wasn’t that good a
shot.’
All the more reason, then, for Ryan to improve his
technique. On 2,4 and 6August he was back at the club, sparing no
expense for the 7.62mm cartridges which his new weapon was consuming
so greedily. In fact he was so thrilled with his new acquisition that
he decided the time was ripe to invest in another rifle. So it was
that on 8 August he paid £150 for a US Second World War M1 carbine,
and spent an additional £17 on fifty rounds of ammunition. The weapon
was purchased at the Devizes club itself, from Andrew White, the co-owner,
Ryan again proferring his Barclaycard. To Andrew White there appeared
to be little cause for concern. Nor was he the first to have taken
this view.
‘Michael Ryan was unusually safety conscious,’
White explains. ‘I should know because I sold him the M1.30 carbine
and taught him how to use it. I could tell by the Way he talked that
he knew all about their history. He visited the club about a dozen
times altogether and he was always rather polite. In fact he would
usually have a chat and a few laughs when he came into our shop. I
found him to be a very good shot for someone of his experience. He hit
an 18 in x 14 in target consistently at 100 metres. I had no doubts
whatsoever about selling him the carbine. It’s a very popular rifle
and very compact.’
Two days later Ryan was again back at the club
working on his shot, and again two days after that, when he invested
in an additional box of .30 cartridges for the carbine. Ryan’s licence
now entitled him to legitimately hold the following weapons: a 9min
Beretta pistol, a .22 Bernadelli pistol, a .32 CZ pistol, a .30
Underwood carbine and a 7.62min Kalashnikov rifle. Under the terms of
his licence he was also permitted to hold as many shotguns as he
required. Although Ryan’s collection had by now acquired a distinctly
military character, his neighbours were nonetheless unable to detect
any change in his behaviour. He appeared to be his old self, a
solitary figure always out walking his dog, yet invariably willing to
pass the time of day with passing neighbours.
On 18 August Ryan paid a final visit to the Tunnel
Club. Andrew White explains: ‘He phoned in the morning and said could
he come and shoot at two in the afternoon. He shot for one hour, paid
his range fee of £1.70 and used two targets. There were no problems
whatsoever and he just left the range saying cheerfully, "See you
about, cheerio." But I did notice a bit of a change in his personality
on that Tuesday. He was rubbing two pound coins together in his hand,
fidgeting with them between his fingers. There was none of the usual
chatting or joking about.’
If Andrew White thought that on 18 August Ryan
appeared a little edgy, Colonel George Styles was also on edge. This
nervousness was entirely attributable to his meeting with Ryan the day
before. Colonel Styles, also a member of the Devizes club, was
formerly the army’s chief firearms expert in Northern Ireland. He also
found Ryan to be a wel.11-presented young man in full possession of
his faculties. And yet the former soldier came away from his meeting
with Ryan with alarm bells ringing in his ears,: ‘When I met Ryan on
that Monday he was speaking to Andrew White, one of the directors of
the club, and holding his AK47 rifle. I started, to think that this
fellow must be a very, very important person to have got
permission for a Kalashnikov. Perhaps he was a member of the Special
Forces, or the police. Or in the England shooting team. I wasn’t
really sure. But he wouldn’t have got permission for it if he was just
an ordinary young man. We talked about the cleaning, stripping and
maintaining of the Kalashnikov for about ten minutes, during which I
whipped the top cover off the gun. But when I gave him the cover he
couldn’t even get that back on. I thought, how on earth was he allowed
to buy this gun when he doesn’t even know how to use it and he can’t
even get the cover back on?’
Colonel Styles n-tight well have been one of the
country’s leading firearms experts, but his assumptions about Ryan’s
shooting credentials were wildly inaccurate. Ryan was not a member of
the Special Forces. Or if he was, it was only in his fantasies. He was
not a member of the police, though he would no doubt have found their
Tactical Firearms Team of particular interest. And he was certainly
not in the England shooting team. Still, the acid test remained
whether or not these potentially lethal weapons were likely to be
abused. The Thames Valley Police had long ago made up their minds.
Their main concern had not changed over the years: that such a weapon
should not end up in the wrong hands.
Whatever his other peculiarities, Ryan had always
been responsible about his firearms. Nor was his interest merely a fad.
Indeed, one could not help but admire him when it came to his attitude
towards his dying father. For then his sense of correctness about his
weaponry had surely shone out. Two years earlier Alfred Ryan had been
losing his battle against lung cancer. Crippled with illness and
riddled with pain, he was eventually confined to a wheelchair. Aware
that his days were numbered, Ryan senior asked his son for some
assistance in bringing about his end, in giving nature a helping hand.
His request was simple and direct: would Michael please leave one of
his guns at his bedside, loaded with a single bullet?
