Whether it’s Cliff putting in more and more effort, or my own name circulating in ever Higher (pun intended) circles, or both together, I don’t know. What’s certain is that my calendar is filling up with the names of the Reef’s true notables. My next interviewee is already a big fish—even though he lives literally and physically removed from public life, in seclusion among the “Five Hills.” A real honour that he agreed to meet me, and not just anywhere, but at his summer residence, nestled in the folds of Queen Anne’s skirt.
Professor Harper first gained local, then Scottish, then nationwide renown during the Lockerbie bombing case. As a prosecutor, he argued for the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as the executor and Gaddafi as the instigator. Great power interests swept aside his arguments. After a storm of degrading personal attacks, the professor increasingly turned toward international human rights. A screaming irony, but thanks to Donald Trump of all people, we now know that both the CIA and Mossad had orchestrated a smear campaign against Harper—the former because of Lockerbie, the latter because he supports the Palestinian cause.
Although the professional community—chiefly the European Public Prosecutor’s Office—stood in his defence, after the death of his wife (Philippa Urquhart, ed.), Harper moved with his children to the Reef. The year was 2000, the year of the Y2K panic. The political and physical blows raining down on the Reef didn’t spare him either. The British Family Court sued him on various grounds until his children came of age, anonymous denunciations harassed the family, while book after book on national self-determination and human rights appeared and entered continental education.
Thus, Professor Harper (actually “Jr.”) ended up at the head of the Reef National Prosecution Service—against all his protests. He is among the few who held their posts even after the Troubles and who later stepped down voluntarily.
Thank you for receiving me, Professor. Let me start with a personal question. How did “Lairg” end up in your name?
Fuck, I’m just stalling for time because I’m horrendously hungover. But the prof clearly notices and doesn’t care. Shit, fuck.
“Lairg is a tiny little settlement at the southeastern tip of Loch Shin (a lake in Scotland, on the edge of the Highlands, ed.).” He slowly lights a bong, takes a long drag, sweeps the grey strands from in front of his glasses, and exhales the smoke at me. Lennon would’ve looked like this if he had made it to eighty, I think. “There’s nothing there, but in spring tourists come, in my time mostly hippies. My father was a fisherman, my mother a schoolteacher. I didn’t want that life, so I ran off. With a bunch of van-lifers. We didn’t stop for two years. Travelled the whole Kingdom. We were in Galway, Ireland, when I met Janice. Wild night, she was everything the stiff British middle class wasn’t. By the next day she was my wife, nine months later my child, and I had a place at Cambridge. My uncle arranged it. He paid for our life the first five or six years. After university came the practice, then the aviation case, then the rollercoaster after Lockerbie. Not long after we lost Jan, the Queen knighted me.” He stares off. I don’t dare hurry him. “And then I had to pick a name. My family had fought there already in the time of the Roberts and Wallace, barefoot nobodies, but who knows how many centuries tie me to that village. So that’s how.”
Would you talk about the mood around the turn of the millennium in Britain and the Union—back when you were still in the Union? And what made you, as a single parent with two teenage kids—and forgive me— as a political pariah, move to the Reef, or rather its predecessor, the Patch?
He smiles. “Political pariah. Nice to hear. Interesting. Look, I was everything a lawyer could want to be and everything one wouldn’t want to be. On the front page praised, then on the front page trashed across the whole western world—and the eastern too. For my performance, and for its absence.” He shakes his head, squints at me above his Harry Potter glasses, and goes on. “Sometimes I liked to imagine they’d compare me to Kissinger in human rights cases. Messiah complex, that’s what it’s called. Pride, and one of the deadly sins.
“Britain thought—at least the misled masses—that the Kingdom still mattered in politics, in the world of tariffs, taxes, and fleets. No one told the British—or they weren’t taught at school—that the Empire’s time had passed and couldn’t be brought back. Try explaining to the people of Barking and Dagenham what we’d do without the Eastern Europeans and Bangladeshis. Look, I had a friend in Leith, owned a restaurant. Past tense. Both the restaurant and my friend. Brexit killed them both. The chef was French: deported. The sommelier from Brittany: deported. Sous chef: Dutch, deported. Commis de rang: Algerian-born, French, but in the 2010s that didn’t matter—Meloni’s and Orbán’s Europe tolerated and even encouraged these attacks. Back then we thought it was just a phase, it couldn’t get worse. We were wrong.”
That was the mood. What drove you to move—and specifically to the Reef?
“I’m a child of ‘68 parents. I almost met Jim (Jim Morrison, ed.), and Bruce (Bruce Willis, ed.) grew up one base over. Man, we were stoned, hated Nixon and Vietnam. The Rote Armee Fraktion was daily reality for us. Then the world changed. The shore turned into dry land. Lockerbie was a watershed. Everyone knew Gaddafi was behind the bombing.”
And then Janice died…
He fiddles with the pipe, visibly struggling with the answer, but gives it anyway.
“Yes. Jan died in ‘99. Heavy year. I was involved in the preliminary representation of the — REDACTED — case, and the legal circus around — REDACTED —. I admit, I made a fortune from it. Disgustingly much. But considering how much the franchise itself made, I don’t feel ashamed. —” He fumbles, then catches himself. “Ah, but that’s not the point, is it…?”
But rather how the story of moving to the Reef continued?
“Ah, if only that were all!” He adjusts his glasses, takes a deep pull from his ‘vitamin inhaler.’ “You know I actually met two of the Beatles? Out of four, two!” I didn’t know, and I don’t care. “But yes. Lennon was already dead, but McCartney was there when I was knighted. Harrison only died afterward. Sorry.”
I’m not sure what to do with the situation; the professor just goes his own way.
“Janice had a wish,” he starts again. “Wait—did I tell you Jan taught me to dance?” He brightens, and now I don’t know where the professional/ethical boundary lies. Hey, Jude, we’re dancing. The old man, wreathed in smoke, is grooving. Nah, na-na. I manage to sit for a minute. Bad luck, Dylan’s playing.
Professor Harper talks, even if I don’t always understand him. I usually don’t. I nod, because what else can I do. Tough gig, being finished. He talks about Janice, orders drinks in military fashion and receives them the same way. I think to myself, it’ll be a bitch to write this up at dawn. But at dawn we’re still sitting on the Shore, beside an illegal campfire, singing Bowie off-key. Very off-key. Space Oddity, what else.
Ground Control, sitting on the Channel shore with a twisted ankle: that’s an experience. Even though RMS never came to rescue us. Instead, I was saved by a flood of thoughts. My dealer’s kid, the new suit I ordered, my girlfriend’s dog licking my face. And the Channel waves, licking my swollen ankle. (Footnote: RMS did eventually show up and tried to take us away—we didn’t let them.)
RMS = Reef Medical System
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