Then just prior to the 1987 general election I happened
to speak to Colin Irvine at a Labour Party election meeting. I asked him if he was tooled up and he said, “discretely”
and he then asked me a question about my brother Eric. I don’t remember the question but I do remember replying, “Why
what’s he done?” Irvine shook his head and refused to say what Eric had done. My asking about his tool/firearm
must have twigged his memory.
Later Eric told me that a bloke had hassled him at a night
club in Wellington/Porirua or thereabouts and he had pulled out his pistol (he thought he was James Bond) and had frightened
him off with it big time. He said, bloody good job that the bloke, in a panicked rush to get away, jumped over a wall, fell
several meters and sustained fatal injuries on concrete below. He also said that Irvine was involved in the investigation
(cover-up) and that Irvine was a real bastard. I remember seeing an item about the incident on TV (before Eric told me about
it) and that the cops were appealing for witnesses.
Eric lost his firearms licence, got the sack from his flash
(spy) job at the Security Intelligence Service and got away with manslaughter because the SIS and the cops, including Irvine,
engaged in a conspiracy to cover up Eric’s crimes so as to save both organizations the horrific embarrassment of having
to admit that SIS had employed a pistol-packin plonker. Makes the pie and the Playboy in the briefcase scandal seem a bit
lame. It’s easy to see why Irvine was so relaxed about vilifying my (nobody) name to the Ombudsman and posterity.
Eric’s crimes, manslaughter, presenting a firearm, unlawful possession of a loaded and restricted firearm. Bound to
be a few more charges that would have been thrown at a non protected joe blogs.
