Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  The other set of initials that had been crossed out was ES. Could that be Eric somebody?

  Jayne opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. Johnson noticed the movement.

  “What?” Johnson asked. “You thought of something.”

  “Yes. ES. Is that Eric Simonson?”

  “My God.” Johnson leaned back in his seat.

  Of course.

  Then he knew.

  “Shit,” Johnson said, lowering his voice. “They’re all reprisal shootings, then. Dessie Duggan, avenging the murder of his father back in ’84.”

  But who was BO? Which presumably had to be the Brenner referenced in the journal. Surely not Brendan O’Neill?

  But if true, it would explain perfectly why O’Neill had been so quick to push the detonator button when he saw Duggan climbing into the Audi at his farm. It was an opportunistic act of pure self-preservation. He saw a chance and took it.

  Johnson’s mind went back to the document on the USB flash drive he had taken from Duggan’s kitchen, which also had the initials BO on it. Brendan O’Neill, or Barack Obama? Surely Obama, but . . . ?

  But there was one set of initials and one nickname Johnson couldn’t place. He was about to ask the question when Jayne voiced it for him.

  “Beth, do you know who CC might be?” she asked.

  “No idea,” she said. “These were Will’s old army colleagues. I never met any of them at the time. It was all hush-hush because they worked in intelligence. I only met Gary years later, like I told you.”

  “It’s probably the one nicknamed Conman in your husband’s journal,” Johnson said.

  But again Beth shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t know.”

  Johnson had to see O'Neill immediately to talk through what he had learned. It would be a tough conversation.

  The phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and answered the call. It was O'Neill.

  Before Johnson could speak, O'Neill jumped in. “Joe, I’ve just heard that both Martin Dennehy and Danny McCormick were found dead this morning by the roadside. Sounds like both were classic touts’ punishment killings. Tortured, naked, shoes off, bags on their heads.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Sunday, January 27, 2013

  Belfast

  Johnson and Jayne waited for O’Neill in a coffee shop a couple hundred yards away from the Sunflower pub, where Johnson had seen Duggan and Dennehy attack Moira more than three weeks earlier.

  As the barista poured hot milk to make the cappuccinos they had ordered, Johnson glanced up at a television in the corner. A regional television news bulletin was underway, and a report about the explosion at Duggan’s house was just beginning.

  “So the police and firefighters must have finally been called in by someone,” Jayne said.

  Johnson’s ears pricked up as the reporter told how a rabbit’s foot charm, attached to a key ring, had been found at the scene of the incident. The rabbit’s foot had a small metal plate attached, on which was engraved the name Alfie Duggan and a date, December 19, 1984.

  Police were assuming the rabbit’s foot had belonged to Alfie’s son, Dessie, who was thought to have died in the explosion, the reporter continued. Police were going to have DNA tests done on the remains of the body in the car in order to confirm this.

  Just then, O’Neill walked into the coffee bar and saw the tail end of the report. He walked up to Johnson and raised a ragged set of black eyebrows. “I heard all this on the car radio as well. So Duggan’s definitely dead.”

  “Hmm,” Johnson said. “It seems that way. But if that’s true, then who killed Dennehy and McCormick?”

  O’Neill shrugged. “Don’t know. Could have been someone else in the brigade taking reprisals for Duggan. The person I’m sorry for, really sorry for, is Dennehy, and also his family. There have been a lot like him over the years. He tried to do the right thing, but it doesn’t take much. One small mistake.”

  Johnson felt suddenly humble and sad. Dennehy had paid with his life for passing on information that would save other lives—including, Johnson was well aware, his own.

  But at the same time Johnson had a sense of unease about what O’Neill had said.

  “I’m not so certain that Duggan’s definitely dead,” Johnson said.

  O’Neill shrugged. He ordered a cappuccino from the coffee bar cashier and pointed toward a free table in the corner of the room.

  Johnson pursed his lips as he turned and walked toward the table, O’Neill and Jayne close behind.

  “And if by some chance it wasn’t Duggan in the Audi, who was it?” Johnson asked. “The only obvious one is Liam McGarahan.”

  O’Neill nodded. “Suppose so, but I’m certain it was Duggan. I saw the way he was running. It was the same man who got out of the other car and then ran behind the house.”

  Jayne shook her head. “You can’t assume anything. Duggan could just have dropped the rabbit’s foot anytime. Doesn’t automatically mean he was in the Audi.”

  O’Neill shrugged again, then exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. Bollocks. This is turning into a monumental screwup.”

  That was something of an understatement, Johnson thought wryly. The G8 was due to begin the following day, and with President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron leading a bunch of world leaders into Belfast for the event, it had great potential to screw up significantly further yet. O’Neill might assume Duggan was dead, but Johnson felt he couldn’t afford himself the same certainty.

  “I know how you feel,” Johnson said, feeling a moment of sympathy for the MI5 man. “Same thing happened to me in Afghanistan, a long time ago. I lost an agent when a meeting went wrong.”

  “Not a good feeling.”

  “No, it’s not,” Johnson said. He paused. Perhaps now was the time to drop the bombshell. “Look, I need to put something to you, and perhaps you can just come clean with me here.”

  He watched O’Neill carefully as he shared how he had just come from visiting Beth Doyle and the details he had read in her husband Will’s diary. As he spoke, O’Neill kept a straight face, but he swallowed a couple of times, and there was a look in his eyes.

  “So, the name Brenner, in Will’s diary, and the initials BO on the piece of paper in Duggan’s bunker—that’s you, isn’t it?” Johnson asked.

  This time O’Neill couldn’t prevent his eyes widening a little. “What the hell,” he said slowly. Then his voice leveled out again, although Johnson was certain his face blanched a little. “Take my advice and don’t jump to conclusions about what you don’t know, given that you’ve come here with no background about all the shit that’s gone on here over the years.”

  He looked obliquely at Johnson. “And remember this: what you’ve read in Will’s notes, that’s one man’s view, not the way I remember it,” O’Neill said. He wiped his hand across his mouth, a thin film of sweat visible on his forehead.

  “Okay, so what was your view of it, then?” Johnson asked.

  “You can’t know what it was like back then,” O’Neill said slowly. “It was a bloody pressure cooker that we were living in down in south Armagh. Every day we would go out on patrols, not knowing whether we’d come back, whether we’d get a bullet between the shoulder blades, between the eyes. It drove us all gradually insane. Some guys couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate. It got to us all; it was just that some didn’t show it.”

  He looked Johnson straight in the eyes. “It was because of the snipers. You didn’t know whether they were there or not. It meant that you couldn’t walk at the side of the road because of the risk that someone might have planted a bomb under a drain or behind a wall. And you couldn’t walk in the middle of the road, because then you were a sitting duck. Alfie Duggan was the king of ’em all. And the thing was, after he escaped from Long Kesh, he still kept going, still kept taking us out.” Here he wagged his forefinger slowly around the room, looking first at Johnson, then at Jayne. “Took us out. One. By. One.”

  Jayne nodded.
“Can’t argue with that,” she said. “I saw it all at firsthand. There were a lot of young soldiers sent over here who just lacked the expertise, lacked the experience to deal with it. There was a bunker mentality.”

  “Yes, but what you did, both in ’84 and last night, was kangaroo court justice,” Johnson said, matching O’Neill’s gaze. “Why not just arrest Alfie that day, put him back in Long Kesh? He wouldn’t have come out again, would he?”

  O’Neill gave a derisive laugh. “Well, yes, he would have. He’d have been out as part of the Good Friday agreement, wouldn’t he, as it happened, like all the other IRA killers who were let out at that time. But let’s put that to one side. That day, it was the red mist that got us all. It was pent-up anger at seeing friends and colleagues gunned down, murdered, day after day. It just all poured out.”

  Johnson didn’t tell O’Neill that he was never going to persuade him of the merits of that point of view, no matter how long and hard he tried. Now was not the time for a debate about ethical soldiering.

  The issue of what he would do about O’Neill and his role in Alfie Duggan’s death would have to wait. That had suddenly become the elephant in the room.

  Instead he ran through the list of five of the six sets of names and nicknames mentioned in Doyle’s journal, confirming with O’Neill that they were all who he assumed they were. O’Neill confirmed them all.

  “Then that leaves one person,” Johnson said, his voice lowering slightly in pitch as he spoke. “CC. Who is CC? I’m guessing he’s the person nicknamed Conman in Will’s journal,” Johnson asked.

  “You’ve not worked that one out yet?” O’Neill asked. “Conor Campbell. Deputy chief constable before, under Eric, now confirmed in the top job as of two days ago. The only other realistic internal candidate was Norman Arnside.”

  Of course, how did I miss that, Johnson thought. He now vaguely remembered hearing something on the radio about Campbell’s appointment as acting chief constable, but somehow the connection with the nickname and initials hadn’t registered with him.

  “It was all over the news,” O’Neill went on. “Him and Simonson worked hand in glove for years. They got out of the army together, only a couple of years after the Duggan shooting. They joined the police together, got promotions more or less in tandem. He was always called Conman.”

  “So now you and him are the only two on Duggan’s list still standing,” Johnson said. “And if by some remote chance Duggan wasn’t in the Audi when you blew it up, then . . .” His voice trailed off. He didn’t need to say anymore.

  Johnson leaned forward. “This was why Donovan brought me in, wasn’t it? He wanted me to get to Duggan before Duggan got to him. It wasn’t really about his business at all.”

  O’Neill gave a slight nod. “He never discussed it with me, but I guess you’re correct, up to a point. But his business was taking a hammering; that was no lie.”

  Johnson knew that a significant number of British army soldiers had been prosecuted for killing Republicans during the Troubles. But plenty of them had escaped justice, as had very many Republicans responsible for the deaths of hundreds of police and troops in Northern Ireland.

  “What happened to the police files after Alfie Duggan was killed?” Johnson asked. There must have been files, he knew that. Any killing by security services would have a file of some kind, and there had been inquiries into some of them.

  O’Neill explained that the police facility at Carrickfergus, eight miles northeast of Belfast, was a high-security site where most of the files of that type had been stored. “But a lot of files went missing from Carrickfergus around that time and during the ’90s,” he said. “Some of them implicated people right up to the very top—and I don’t mean just the top of the army units out there or the MI5 teams. I’m talking about right to the top politically, at Whitehall and Westminster, as well as Belfast and Dublin, because official policy was that the army and police should operate according to the letter of the law. In practice, certain politicians effectively allowed all kinds of illegal things to go on.”

  “Blind eyes were turned, you mean?” Johnson asked.

  “A lot of blind eyes, I can tell you. Thing was, we were hanging, drawing, and quartering ourselves by writing everything down. The IRA certainly wasn’t doing that. And it wasn’t a game you could win by sticking to the law, especially if you were running agents, like me. If you wanted to protect your agent, you had to let certain IRA operations go ahead, which might involve innocents being killed. If you stopped an IRA operation, you left your agent open to being killed as a tout. It was a no-win situation then, and it still is. That’s why some of the files disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Johnson asked.

  “Yes. Stolen, taken, whatever. Once people knew that inquiries into some of these killings were starting, like the Stevens inquiry that everyone’s heard of, it became obvious that stones were going to be turned over and uncomfortable truths uncovered. So there were some odd incidents. There was an unexplained fire in a Carrickfergus incident room where investigators were going through files, many of which were destroyed. There was a burglary. So who knows—maybe the files relating to Alfie Duggan were among those that vanished.”

  Johnson was aware that the British government had commissioned three different inquiries by Sir John Stevens into the role of state security services in the killings of Irish nationalists. But as far as he was aware, the Alfie Duggan killing had not been among them.

  He glanced at Jayne, who raised her eyebrows. Maybe her friend Noreen, who had worked at Carrickfergus, might know something about the missing files. He made a mental note to ask her later—he didn’t want to raise that question in front of O’Neill.

  “What about Dennehy’s death?” Johnson asked. “You stopped a few IRA operations on the back of his information, and Dennehy lost—he got shot.”

  “Welcome to Northern Ireland,” O’Neill said. “Fifteen years since the Troubles supposedly ended.”

  He was right, Johnson thought. Dennehy’s death summed up the cynicism and sadness of the region’s recent history.

  And how can I really understand it?

  Johnson nodded slowly. “Okay, let’s try and look forward,” he said. “When I was in the bunker, I heard Duggan referring to Project Gyrate and talking about Gyrate being a goer. It was obvious to me he was talking about the G8.”

  O’Neill nodded and told how he had listened in via the hidden cameras and had also heard that conversation.

  “So what are we going to do about Campbell?” Johnson asked. “Is he going to be out on public duty during the G8? And what are the arrangements for the likes of Obama and Cameron? If by some chance Duggan’s not dead, then they’re all going to be irresistible bait, aren’t they? He could take out a US president and Campbell in one go. Or someone else in the brigade might be capable of handling a sniper rifle, even if Duggan’s dead.”

  “Yes, that’s a fair point,” O’Neill said. “I’m certain there’s going to be fortress-strong security for the G8. It’s what goes on around the fringes that worries me—for instance if they have a walkabout or community visit or something planned as part of the agenda. That’s usually the case, and that’s the weak point. I’ve not seen an agenda, but I’m trying to get one.”

  “Why don’t we just go and talk to Campbell?” Johnson asked.

  “We could,” O’Neill said. “But Campbell won’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole. He’ll pretend it’s not happening, like he’s done, and Eric Simonson did, for the past twenty-nine years, and just hope for the best.”

  A little like O’Neill was doing now, Johnson couldn’t help thinking.

  “What about someone further down the PSNI, then?” Johnson asked. “Maybe an upcoming deputy or assistant chief constable who thinks it might be a chance to make his name. Tell them what we know.”

  “We can do that,” O’Neill said. “But I’ve been there before—they’re an arrogant bunch and they’re yes-men. They won�
��t want to do anything to upset the newly appointed chief constable—they’ll be licking his backside, not trying to poke a sharp stick in his ribs. They don’t like to listen to us at MI5 because they think they’re doing a good job and they’ve got all the bases covered. There’s no love lost. In fact they don’t like to listen to anybody. So don’t think that as an American you can just walk in there out of the blue and they’ll listen. Second, it could open a massive can of worms if they start probing into what happened down at Duggan’s farm—for both of us, not just me. I mean, you broke in there and planted a surveillance kit.”

  “That was about doing something for the greater good,” Johnson said. “Could be an even bigger can of worms if they start digging into what Campbell did in ’84.” He leaned back and stared at O’Neill. “And into what you did, for that matter.”

  “There’s no proof. No files. No witnesses. Four out of the six are dead.” O’Neill shook his head and stood up. “You could say that was for the greater good, too. Alfie murdered a lot of soldiers.”

  O’Neill turned to face Johnson. “I need to go,” he said, “but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I agree we should try with Campbell. I’ll call him to chat about this and at the same time try and find out what the plan is for the G8. Then I need to go and try to explain to my boss why and how my main agent in the south Armagh brigade ended up dead in a ditch. I’ll call you later when I know more.” He walked out.

  Johnson watched him leave, then leaned toward Jayne. “Surely if there were files that linked Eric Simonson and Conor Campbell to a questionable incident, such as Alfie Duggan’s death, neither of them would have been appointed chief constable?”

  “Yes, correct,” Jayne said. “But if the files had disappeared, then who would know? Thing is, everyone knows that the Historical Enquiries Team has been doing a poor job on some of the cases, especially where it involved the military or the police killing Republicans. They’re the ones who should be 100 percent rigorous with this kind of thing, but they’re not.”