None Shall Divide Us

by Michael Stone

  He was smuggling in the drug in an artificial arm that a Prisoners’ Aid worker brought in for him. When I confronted him he said he took the ‘odd tablet’. I showed him the book and told him that the stuff ‘shrinks your genitals to a chipolata and two peanuts’. He stormed off. Two days later he said he wanted to show me something. In his cell, he dropped his trousers. I quickly moved to the open door. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him when he was standing in the buff holding his genitalia. He said, ‘Fuck, Mikey, you were right, look. I have nothing left.’ Although he was bloated, his skin was breaking out in blisters and spots and his genitals had disappeared, he didn’t stop using the drug and continued injecting straight into the muscle.

  Johnny was obsessed with sex and enjoyed a unique sex life in prison. He had his conjugal visits from girlfriends and he had a prison lover, a man called Harry. They were called ‘the girls’ because they wore pink posing vests and lycra shorts. Adair pierced his nipples using ice and a dart, in his own cell, telling me the piercing increased sensitivity. He got himself an intimate piercing ‘down below’ because, he said, his boyfriend really liked it. He also shaved off all his body hair, including anal and pubic.

  Loyalist prisoners nicknamed him ‘Willy Watcher’ because he would stand and stare open-mouthed at men in the communal and open showers and make comments about the size of their manhood. I constantly told him I wasn’t interested in his sex life, but all he would say was, ‘I like talking to you, Mikey.’ He asked me once if I’d ever ‘done it with a man’ and I was quick to point out that it wasn’t my scene. He then blabbed about doing it with a man, a man and a woman, two women and finally two men and two girls. He said he liked the sex games he played with ‘Big Aggie’, who would tie a lead around his manhood and drag him around the room, calling him ‘Bad Doggy’.

  Adair was getting on my nerves and there was no escape from him, even on visits. I swapped my conjugal visits from Saturday to Wednesday and he copied me. One day his head poked around my cubicle and he said, ‘My girlfriend wants to meet you, she has a tattoo.’ I then heard him saying to the girl, ‘Go on, show him, show him.’ The girl was wearing a tiny denim skirt and she pulled it up. She wasn’t wearing underwear and she had no pubic hair. Johnny’s name was tattooed in fancy writing across her pubic area. His eyes were on stalks as he said, ‘That’s true love, isn’t it, Mikey?’

  Adair’s favourite film was Highlander and he used to ask me who I thought would be the best actor to play him in a movie. I’d tell him to get a life and he’d say, ‘Ah no, Mikey, what about that Bruce Willis or Arnie Schwarzenegger?’

  He loved the pop group Bros and sang their hit ‘When Will I Be Famous’ over and over. He hadn’t a note in his head – he sounded like a cat stuck in a lift shaft. He also had several prison nicknames. Willy Watcher, for obvious reasons, then he and his pal Harry were ‘the girls’, again for obvious reasons, and then there was Spartacus. He gave himself that title after I told him about a television show on the history of ancient armies. The programme was about the Spartans and how they were encouraged to take lovers among their men so that during battle soldiers would never be sacrificed or left behind. When I told Adair this story, his eyes lit up. It was as if he had found the meaning of life. He loved the story, like a child loves a nursery rhyme, and he would tell it and retell it to his henchmen. Daft Dog was in love with the legend of the ultimate warrior.

  The Governor would always send for me when there was a ‘man management’ issue on the Loyalist wings. One day in his office he told me to take a seat and took out a video. He said he wanted to show me something. The Governor switched on the video and it showed Adair’s wing and the prisoners walking around, going into the showers and into their cells with a blow-up doll under their arms and a towel covering their modesty. I started to laugh, but the Governor pointed out that if this got into the papers it wouldn’t be ‘Prisoners Have Sex With Rubber Doll’, it would be ‘Stone and Adair Have Sex With Rubber Doll’. I went to see Johnny and asked him about ‘Sexy Suzy’ and told him I had seen the video.

  ‘It’s the lads’ bit of fun,’ he said.

  ‘What about diseases and hygiene?’

  ‘They rinse her under the hot tap.’

  I told him to burn it or I would kidnap Sexy Suzy and burn her myself. A week later she was destroyed in the exercise yard.

  Johnny never gave up pumping me for information. I told my fellow OCs, ‘When that wee guy gets out there will be trouble because he wants to be top dog’, and my predictions have now come true.

  In 1997 Tony Blair was made Prime Minister. Adair pinned his pop band photograph on the kitchen noticeboard and declared to the men on his wing, ‘Tony Blair was in a pop band and became the Prime Minister of the UK. I am Mad Dog Adair. If it’s good enough for the PM, it’s good enough for me.’

  The LVF leader Billy Wright was beginning to establish a profile. Johnny Adair’s alter ego Mr Showbiz didn’t like that. He would rant, ‘Who does that fucker Billy Wright think he is? He’s keeping all of us in jail,’ and then swing the other way, calling him a hero. He would sit in his cell writing his signature over and over. I asked what he was doing.

  ‘I’m practising.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Signing autographs when we get out of here. We are going to do some fucking, Mikey. All the women love heroes. We’ll never have to look for a shag ever again. The girls will be queuing up to get us in the sack. There’s me, Billy Wright and you, and we’re the real heroes of Ulster. We’re not like the rest. We are famous.’

  ‘No, we’re infamous.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘We are famous for being bad and, you know what, infamy gets you killed. Johnny, when they kill me and throw me into a rubbish skip, the last thing I will see before I die is you, already dead.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Mikey.’

  He walked away, head down and hands in his pockets. I didn’t see him for two months.

  I was beginning to feel like Adair’s personal counsellor. He would confide in me, I would tell him some home truths and he’d disappear for weeks on end. But one thing was certain: he always surfaced when he needed or wanted to talk. The childlike Johnny always felt the need to impress me. It was the big kid, the impressionable teenager part of his complex personality. When I saw ‘wee Johnny’ rearing his head, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Then he hit me with it: ‘Have you ever killed a woman, Mikey?’

  I asked him was he serious or was he acting the prick and he said, ‘No, Mikey, have you ever killed one, you know for a laugh, when they piss you off?’ I told him to ‘catch himself on’ but there was no stopping him.

  ‘Do you remember the Langley Street club? You get all sorts of women in there, women wanting to meet and play with the boys.’ I asked him what he meant and then he dropped the bombshell. ‘Mikey, let’s put it like this. If they ever dig up that section of the Westlink, you know the bit that runs along the bottom of the Shankill Road, well I am fucked.’ He burst out laughing. My cell door opened and Adair’s right-hand man, Harry, poked his head around the door. He wanted to know what Adair was laughing at and Adair answered, ‘I was just telling Mikey about the girls under the Westlink, you remember the two from Langley Street.’ Quick as lightning, Harry pulled Adair out of my cell and marched him up the wing. The two were arguing with one another and I could hear their heated words. Johnny shouted at his pal, ‘I don’t know why you are getting annoyed, you don’t even like girls.’

  I have thought about this incident many times and it has left me cold. I have four sisters, I have daughters and I have female friends. I can’t decide if Adair had let slip something very sinister and very real or if it was bravado, but I honestly believe the real Johnny has a secret buried under the concrete of the Westlink.

  Wright was assassinated by an INLA death squad just days after Christmas in 1997. Billy was doing his time in H6 and the INLA shared the block with the LVF prisoners.
I had warned Mogg, the Governor, that something bad would happen if the INLA and LVF were housed in the same block. I asked him if he understood the hatred. His exact words were: ‘We’ll be all right.’

  Wright was murdered on a Saturday and I knew something was up after the alarm went and all movement in the prison was stopped. Men had been queuing for prison visits. Prison life had been going on as normal, but when the emergency alarm went everybody had to stand where they stood. OCs got permission to move around the wings and I went straight to my other OCs, then went to see Adair. He was sleeping after an all-night drug-fuelled rave. I shook him awake. I told him Billy Wright had been shot dead. ‘Who’s Billy Wright?’ he answered. I reminded him of his hero story. When he finally came round, he said he wanted retaliation. I told him it was nothing to do with the IRA and we couldn’t get near the INLA.

  Adair ran a scenario past me. He said, if he got an RDG grenade in, would I wire it to one of the pec decks in the gym? I said nothing. But the potential incident was just violent retaliation and reminded me of an attack in the Crum when the Provos wired an old cast-iron radiator and killed two Loyalist remand prisoners.

  Four weeks later the Governor asked to see me. He said the death of Billy Wright was a serious incident and asked whether I had plans to hurt Christopher ‘Crip’ McWilliams, the INLA gunman who assassinated Wright. I told him that, if McWilliams smirked or made funny comments about Billy, I would punch him. I said I wouldn’t kill him. Mogg threw a file on his desk detailing the exact scenario Adair had put to me in the exercise yard, word for word. Only two people knew about wiring the gym with a grenade, and that was Johnny and myself. Adair had touted. Johnny Adair doesn’t know how to keep his trap shut.

  Adair was obsessed with Brian Nelson, the UDA double agent nicknamed Agent Orange, but he just couldn’t keep his trap shut. He loved to brag about how much Nelson’s secret service pals passed him top-weight, A-grade intelligence about possible targets. Pat Finucane was one of them, and other possible victims were Francisco Notarantonio and Gerard Slane. Adair sat in my cell and linked himself, C Company and Nelson to the death of the prominent lawyer with just eleven words. He told me: ‘I like Nelson, sure, didn’t we whack “fork” Finucane for him.’ The fork is a reference to the evening meal Finucane was sharing with his family when the two-man unit opened fire.

  It didn’t end there. Johnny confided in me that C Company couldn’t fail because he and Nelson worked hand-in-glove. I always knew his big mouth would be his downfall. He said, ‘C Company couldn’t go wrong because British intelligence was doing our targeting for us.’ Then his mood changed. He got angry and agitated and said the Intelligence Agencies had ‘pissed’ all over him. He was enraged that he had gone down for directing terrorism and Nelson had been given a deal, which included a new identity and life in England. He fumed: ‘After all I had done, Mikey, I didn’t think the bastards would stroke me like that.’

  In 1998, Mad Dog threatened to kill the Secretary of State Mo Mowlan after his request for early release was turned down. We were both in H7: Johnny was in D Wing and I was in A wing. The incident happened in the circle. The Governor had just handed Adair a memo from the NIO, which said the Secretary of State was refusing his early release because he continued to be a ‘major threat’ to society. I had also received the same correspondence. Adair was furious and even though he was accompanied by nine prison officers and surrounded by witnesses, he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘I’ll put one in her baldy head. I’m serious, Mikey, she’s fucked.’ Adair, OC of West Belfast, had vowed to kill the Secretary of State. He made a sick reference to the fact she was recovering from a brain tumour and sometimes wore a wig. Mad and Daft Dog was now a Sick Dog. I told him to shut his mouth but he didn’t listen. He didn’t understand that his threats had just legitimised the Secretary of State’s decision to keep him locked up.

  Adair had a chip on his shoulder about Mo. When she was shadow Secretary of State she came to the Maze to talk to us about the Loyalist ceasefire and the Peace Process. Adair was on the team and for the first ten minutes of the meeting chewed his nails constantly. It obviously irritated Mo, famous for her down-to-earth, touchy-feely approach, who got out of her chair, walked around the table and slapped Adair hard on the wrists. She told him to stop biting his nails because it was a disgusting habit. Johnny blushed from the top of his bald head to his feet. He has never forgotten that incident.

  By 1999, Adair was determined that the position of Supreme Commander was his – whatever it took. He resorted to intimidation and threats of execution. He harassed North and South Belfast. The only brigade he couldn’t get near was mine – East. He wore the OC for North Belfast down and now had one of a possible two OCs in his back pocket. South Belfast was harder to crack, so Adair waited until the hardmen of this brigade were on visits before sending in his henchmen to trash and burn cells. In response to the destruction of prison property, the authorities would lock down the prison and everyone was punished. Adair was a law unto himself. The South Belfast OC and myself rang out to our brigadiers looking for help. We both knew it was only a matter of time before someone was killed. I explained the situation to my man and he initially wanted me to barricade the wings. I told him that wasn’t an option because it showed the UDA/UFF had massive internal problems. I asked my brig whether, theoretically, if I had to take Adair out, I had permission. His answer was: ‘Do what you have to do.’ I had been given official clearance to kill Johnny Adair.

  I was incensed that Mad Dog was trying to take over the wings. If he had succeeded, none of our lives would have been worth living. It would have been hell on earth with him in charge. I had men coming to me saying they would have asked for an immediate transfer to Maghaberry. I would have also been prepared to give up my paramilitary prisoner status to become a conforming prisoner if Adair had succeeded in his game plan.

  I was pleased the UDA had given me the nod, not because Adair would lose his life but because the organisation had acknowledged the fact that Mad Dog was on a path which would lead to the UDA imploding and destroying itself.

  I prepared a homemade weapon. It was an old toothbrush with razor blazes inserted into the handle. I was going to cut his throat. The minute it was done, I would be handing myself into the prison authorities, saying Johnny and I had had a falling-out and I had killed him.

  It didn’t happen. Adair never came on to A Wing. He wouldn’t dare.

  My last conversation with Adair took place six weeks before my release. He shook my hand and asked to talk. He was the Wee Johnny that I liked until he opened his mouth.

  ‘Mikey, what the UDA needs is one good man to run the organisation.’

  ‘It won’t work. No one man is bigger than the UDA, no one man is bigger than Loyalism.’

  I told him that the Del Boy image had to go. He smiled at me.

  ‘Look, Mikey, the bottom line is, Loyalism doesn’t pay the bills.’

  ‘What about the men who have died?’

  He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Fuck them.’

  ‘Johnny, when we get out we are both going to have to watch our backs. You have made enemies among Loyalists.’

  ‘You’ve made enemies too.’

  ‘I know. Are you going to kill me?’

  ‘No, Mikey.’

  ‘Because if you are, join the queue.’

  23

  THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS RAMBO

  BACK IN 1989, MY YEAR ON REMAND IN THE CRUM HAD STARTED TO IMMOBILISE ME. My lonely life in the bowels of Crumlin Road jail was slowly turning my brain to jelly. I maintained a tough physical routine to keep my body in shape but my mind was dying because of lack of intellectual stimulation.

  I had my radio but it wasn’t enough. I craved human company. The day screws were the only contact I had. I needed to find something that would flex my brain and stimulate my mind. I had to find a pursuit that would occupy acres of my time or I would go mad. I was fed up with books and magazines. I wanted a hob
by that would allow me to switch off for hours on end. I was six months into my remand when I made a request to the Governor for some watercolours, brushes and paper. He smiled at me but refused. I didn’t like his smile. It was loaded with sarcasm. He said he was fascinated that a convicted terrorist, doing life for six murders, wanted to paint. Every week for six weeks I made the same request and every week I was refused. I wanted to paint. I knew it would give me a creative outlet in my drab cell. I knew it would break the monotony of my long days on the PSU.

  Painting was also a bridge to my past. The last time I was interested in art I was a boy of seven. I have always enjoyed painting and sketching. My first artistic creation was a sculpture of a collie dog made from toilet-roll holders, scraps of fabric and paint. It won a prize and went on display in the school foyer. As a young schoolboy art was my best subject and I was also interested in woodwork, but not for long. My enjoyment of these and academic subjects was ruined by one of my school teachers. After he beat me I lost all interest in learning and developed a hatred for educators. The day that teacher hammered the eight-year-old Michael Stone for giggling in the schoolyard was the day he also destroyed my budding talent and interest in art.

  As a teenager I was more interested in using my fists and feet than a paintbrush and, by the time I became a young UDA volunteer in 1972, brushes and paints were completely forgotten about. As a young man I did some street art, though not much. In Loyalist districts, street painting is a part of growing up. It didn’t matter if the end result was good or bad, it was the contribution that mattered. My first and only street painting was of King Billy on a white charger.

  After refusing to allow me artist’s materials for weeks, the Governor of the Crum suddenly had a change of heart. I didn’t get a tray of watercolours and brushes. Instead I was handed a reporter’s spiral-bound notebook and a pencil stub, just two inches in length. Each page on the notebook was numbered and I was told I had to account for every single page at the end of the day and hand in the pencil. If I didn’t co-operate I would forfeit my new art equipment.