Ten-Thirty-Three

by Nicholas Davies

  He handed over the murder weapon. It was one that Nelson had arranged to be imported from South Africa. It was neither the first nor the last time that particular gun would be used to kill someone.

  Alliance councillor Mr Tom Campbell (no relation to the dead man) commented the following day, ‘This is a horrible murder which bears all the hallmarks of a new sectarian murder campaign. I believe such a campaign has been designed by extremists to stir up community tension in the run up to the marching season and would urge anyone with information about this crime to put it in the hands of the RUC.’

  When Nelson met his handlers that day he was in a confident and positive mood, obviously pleased with his success. ‘I told you that we were going to take out the Provo taxi firms,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got news for you, we’ve decided to declare war on them, all of them. Now you’ll see some real action.’

  ‘Why are the UDA targeting taxi-drivers?’ one handler asked, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘What have you got against the taxi-drivers?’

  ‘They’re all in it,’ Nelson replied, ‘every fucking one of them. They’re all running errands for the Provos, giving them lifts, driving them on active service missions around Belfast. We’ve been watching them and all their drivers are part of the Provo terrorist organisation.’

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ he was told, ‘and you know it.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Nelson, his arrogance increasing by the minute. ‘You tossers think you know everything but you don’t. We have far more men on the ground working directly for us and they know what’s going on. They’ve told us that nearly all the Catholic taxis are being driven by Provos or their sympathisers. And we are going to target them.’

  ‘But you can’t say that about total strangers,’ Nelson was told in no uncertain terms. ‘Some of the drivers may be perfectly reasonable, law-abiding citizens who want nothing to do with the Provos. I thought we’d made that clear to you before. They might be taxi-drivers because there’s no other work about. You can’t go around killing innocent men for no good reason, for God’s sake. If the UDA persist in this idea, it is nothing but blatant sectarian warfare, and God knows where that might end. Don’t you understand that? Don’t your UDA bosses know that?’

  But Nelson was adamant and cocky with it. ‘That’s not the way we see it,’ he replied. ‘We know they’re all in it together, every one of them. It’s no good you lot saying we must do this, we mustn’t do that, because we know what’s going on in Belfast. Our men on the streets tell us what’s going on and they say all the fucking Catholic taxi-drivers are in the Provo game up to their fuckin’ necks. We know that unless you are, or have been, a Provisional, a member of the IRA, preferably having done time in the Maze, you won’t get a job as a taxi-driver in west Belfast. Get it? We know the Provos control all the Catholic taxi firms. It’s no good your pissing lot trying to make excuses for them because it won’t wash.’

  When Nelson had finally stopped talking, one of the handlers said, ‘Listen, let me explain this a little further. You must understand that such random killings could easily rebound on Protestant taxi-drivers. It’ll be tit-for-tat. You can’t think that the Provos will take this lying down. They’ll call up a taxi, just like your lot did, and top him. So where’s it going to end? Do you envisage this going on for weeks and months? Don’t be so fucking stupid and wake up to the reality of what you’ve done.’

  ‘Listen,’ replied Nelson, unfazed by the attack on him, ‘I’m one of those taxi-drivers and I’m prepared to take the risk. The Provos have got to be stopped – that’s why we’re all here. And this is one way of taking them out.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said the No.1 handler. ‘Officially you’re a taxi-driver but you never go out looking for work. If open warfare breaks out on the streets you won’t be risking your neck driving a taxi around the city because you’ll stay at home and never venture out. So don’t give us any more of your heroic shit.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Nelson looking downcast at being so easily exposed, ‘but you have to understand that the UDA see the Catholic taxi-drivers as easy targets; that’s the real reason they want to target them.’

  Before Nelson left that day his FRU handlers asked him to take a message to his UDA bosses explaining that attacking Catholic taxi-drivers was a disastrous idea because it could well backfire on the Protestant taxi-drivers and lead to open warfare. The FRU handlers tried to convince him that taxi-drivers weren’t anything to do with the conflict on the streets and they should be left out of it altogether. But when Nelson left the safe-house that day his handlers feared that the UDA would, more than likely, continue targeting their easy prey, the wretched taxi-drivers. It seemed to them that Nelson had become more hardline and more anti-Catholic since he began working for them. They recalled their first meeting with him back in 1985 when his overriding reason for wanting to work with Military Intelligence was to get back at the UDA leaders who had refused to take action against one of their own men who had tried to rape Nelson’s wife. But the more time he spent in his new job as the UDA’s chief intelligence officer the more virulent and bitter he had become towards the Republican movement. It seemed that Nelson had all but forgotten his anger at the UDA leadership. Now all his animosity was focused on those he saw as the enemy: the Republicans, Nationalists, Catholics and, in particular, the Provos.

  Edward Campbell was simply shot at random by thugs looking for easy targets. His murder shocked officers of the Force Research Unit because they saw the killing as the opening shot of what could be a new and vicious sectarian feud which would leave many innocent people dead. No matter how aggressive the FRU set out to be, there was never the intention that decent, ordinary Catholics or Protestants should ever be targeted.

  Six weeks later another Catholic taxi-driver was shot at the wheel of his vehicle but this was an even more appalling and cowardly attack by the UDA gunmen. Mickey Power, a handsome thirty-two-year-old, was a devout and deeply religious person who attended Mass at his local church every Sunday. He would also attend prayer meetings at Protestant churches in Dunmurry when members of the local community were praying for an end to sectarian violence and the troubles. Mickey Power had never been involved with the Provos, never been involved with politics, never been a member of a political party.

  On Sunday, 23 August 1987, he was driving his wife Bernadette and their three young children to Mass from their home in Netherlands Park, Dunmurry. When he stopped at the junction at the top of his street, a white Datsun Cherry drew up beside the Powers’ car. Mickey glanced over to see what the driver wanted and found himself looking into the barrel of a revolver.

  Not a word was spoken. The gunman, his face masked, just opened fire at point-blank range, hitting Mickey Power in the head and felling him in an instant. But the violent UDA gunman continued to fire his revolver into the head and body of his victim and as a result Power’s eight-year-old daughter was blinded, hit in the eye by flying glass. She was later rushed to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and doctors hoped that in time they might be able to save her sight.

  When the FRU handlers tackled Nelson about the murder of Mickey Power, a totally innocent man, he was unrepentant.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ he claimed. ‘I had no idea they were targeting this man Power.’

  ‘But you must have had some idea something was going down?’

  ‘No,’ he replied adamantly, ‘nothing at all. I hadn’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘But you must have discussed the matter,’ they argued, ‘you are the intelligence officer.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Nelson argued, ‘I’m just intelligence. I’m nothing to do with the military side and I don’t want to know. I tell you I hadn’t the faintest idea they were targeting Power. In any case, we heard that he was an operations officer with the Provos.’

  ‘Where did you hear that from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Nelson, ‘I was told, that’s all.’

  ‘Wel
l, we’ve checked him out too, and he was clean, totally clean. He had never been involved with the Provos or Sinn Fein as far as we know. So we would like to know where you got your facts from.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Nelson responded, trying to defend his UDA mates.

  ‘That’s bullshit and you know it,’ he was told.

  Nelson was also asked whether any other Catholic taxi-drivers had been targeted but he replied that he hadn’t the faintest idea. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see,’ was his answer.

  Three weeks after the brutal murder of Mickey Power, the UDA gunmen struck again, this time taking out another totally innocent young man who had no connection with the Provos, Sinn Fein or Republicanism. Jim Meighan was only twenty-two and engaged to be married to his childhood sweetheart, Anita Skillen. The young couple, who had met at school when they were fifteen, had planned to marry the following spring, 1988. A Roman Catholic, Meighan was an easy target for the UDA gunmen. His girlfriend lived in a Protestant area and each night he would take her back to her home in his Ford Cortina which was easily recognisable because of the custom work he had carried out on the vehicle. Having kissed her goodnight and seen her safely indoors, he would then drive back to his own house.

  As usual, on the night of 20 September 1987, the couple had spent the evening watching television and listening to music in Jim’s room at his parents’ home before setting off in the customised Cortina. Anita would say later, ‘We had just arrived outside my house around midnight and were saying goodnight when suddenly someone appeared at the window of the car and started shooting. I couldn’t see very much, just the flash of the shots as the gunman fired into the vehicle. I was lucky, I wasn’t hit, but Jim was killed instantly with a bullet in the head.’

  His mother said later, ‘They must have been waiting for Jim and Anita to drive up to her house as he did every night. They would recognise him because of the car. They could not have selected an easier target; an innocent young man without any enemies. I had always worried about Jim driving into a Protestant area every night but he felt confident because he was in his car and believed that he could drive away from any attack. But that confidence was misplaced.’

  When Nelson was called to a meeting with his FRU handlers the next morning he appeared nonchalant as if he didn’t know why he had been asked to attend the meeting. ‘What’s up?’ he asked cheekily.

  ‘You know what’s up,’ he was told, ‘the shooting of Jimmy Meighan last night.’

  ‘Can’t help you, don’t know anything about it,’ Nelson replied, all but dismissing the matter.

  ‘Did you hear about it?’ he was asked.

  ‘Only on the radio this morning,’ he said.

  ‘Did you know it was being planned?’

  ‘No, I’d no idea,’ he replied.

  The two FRU handlers tried to press Nelson, tried to persuade him to tell them what he knew of Meighan’s murder but he would not be drawn. He remained adamant that he had no idea the shooting was planned and claimed that news of the killing had been as much of a surprise to him as it had been to the Force Research Unit. Once again, it appeared, the UDA were hellbent on causing as much strife and fear among the Catholic community as they could. They didn’t seem to care a damn if they targeted Provos or totally innocent young people, as long as they were Catholics.

  But the UDA campaign of the summer and autumn of 1987 did have the effect of galvanising the Provos to hit back at Protestant targets. The Provo gunman, too, did not seem to care whether the people they targeted and killed were members of Protestant paramilitary organisations or ordinary people with no Loyalist connections, going about their daily lives. All that mattered to the IRA was to make sure a Protestant was murdered in this new round of tit-for-tat violence which had been so rife in the 1970s. As Alban Maginness, the SDLP councillor for north Belfast, commented after the murder of Jim Meighan, ‘There are two very effective units of the IRA and the UVF now operating in this area. Between them they are obviously trying to create a situation of complete instability and a breakdown of any semblance of law and order.’

  It seemed that the UDA leaders and those gunmen of the UVF and the UFF who carried out the killings had achieved one of their aims – to cause strife and mayhem and force the IRA to retaliate, thus creating fear and anarchy. But these weren’t the only people responsible for bringing about this dreadful state of affairs; the Force Research Unit, a secret arm of the British Army, could also be held responsible for the rapidly deteriorating situation between the two communities.

  Chapter Seven

  Partners in Crime

  By late 1987, the Joint Irish Section – sometimes referred to as ‘Box’ because the postal address of both MI5 and MI6 was simply a box number in London’s Curzon Street – were informed that the Provisional IRA and senior Sinn Fein politicians were becoming increasingly concerned about the level of activity on the streets of Belfast by groups of Loyalist paramilitaries. They seemed to be attacking Republicans with impunity, torching clubs and pubs and roaming the streets in their cars, stopping, questioning and then beating up any young Catholic men they came across. IRA intelligence believed that the Loyalists had adopted this new measure of blatant intimidation because the Provo cell network had become so secretive and so successful that neither Loyalists nor the intelligence services had any real idea of the identities of members of Provo active service units.

  This interpretation of events was readily accepted by the JIS as the intelligence coming in from agents in the field at that time was increasingly sparse. This meant that the never-ending battle against the Provisionals was even more difficult at a time when their bombers seemed able to strike both in the Province and on the mainland with little fear of their plans being thwarted by the intelligence services. The MI5 officers in the Province felt under pressure to produce results and they were not doing so. The Thatcher government was pushing hard for the intelligence and security forces to do all in their power to frustrate the IRA, keep them under pressure and thus keep down the number of bomb explosions in Belfast and on the mainland. This is why MI5 and Military Intelligence were happy to supply Nelson with all the computer back-up and information he required if such action resulted in a reduction in the Provos’ capability to kill and bomb any targets they chose.

  Because of the political pressure from Whitehall, the JIS decided that Brian Nelson’s unique position inside the UDA headquarters should be put to greater use in an effort to keep the Provos on the defensive. His handlers were ordered to encourage Nelson to continue targeting known Provo activists, Sinn Fein politicians and Republican sympathisers.

  One of the most audacious and rash shootings ever organised by the Force Research Unit with the assistance of their agent Brian Nelson was the plot to murder Alex Maskey, one of Belfast’s most well-known and well-respected Sinn Fein politicians. Maskey, a well-built man then aged thirty-five, and married with a young family, was at the forefront of politics in west Belfast. He was no fool; he anticipated that he was likely to be targeted by Loyalist gunmen from time to time and, as a result, took sensible precautions in his everyday life, becoming very safety-conscious. Whenever he left his house in the Andersonstown area of west Belfast, for example, he would automatically check for UCBTs (under-car booby-traps). His home, a three-bedroomed house on a large estate, was guarded by infra-red lights at the front and rear and had a spy-hole in the front door. He would never open either the front or back door until he was satisfied he knew the identity of the person visiting him, and he told his wife and children to be just as careful. He was taking no chances for he trusted no one knocking at his door. In the cauldron of hatred between the two communities in the late 1980s, this was the only sensible way to behave, checking everything and trusting no one.

  The name Alex Maskey came up during one of Nelson’s briefing sessions with his FRU handlers in the summer of 1987 just a few months after Nelson had taken over as the UDA’s intelligence officer. Maskey’s P-card was produced by th
e FRU and handed to Nelson along with up-to-date black-and-white photographs of the Sinn Fein councillor. His home address, his telephone number, his car and its registration number were also given to Nelson so that he and his UDA colleagues could check all the details Military Intelligence had on the man they considered to be a troublemaker. Nelson was also provided with a list of the politicians, friends and cronies with whom Maskey mixed in his everyday life. Not surprisingly, many on that list were members of Sinn Fein or the IRA. He was, after all, a Sinn Fein councillor.

  Armed with the P-card and details of Alex Maskey on the home computer installed by Military Intelligence IT experts, Brian Nelson set about examining the lifestyle of the man he knew would become not just another target for UDA gunmen but a highly political and high-profile victim of their new campaign.

  A couple of weeks later a rather downcast Nelson returned to see his handlers to tell them that he had grave doubts as to whether any of ‘his lads’ would be able to get close enough to take out Alex Maskey.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he was asked.

  ‘He’s too tucked up,’ Nelson replied. ‘It’s impossible to get close to him. We could hit him at a distance with a telescopic rifle but that’s too risky. We like to get in close, because it gives them no fucking chance.’

  ‘Have you checked out his home?’

  ‘Of course we have,’ Nelson replied rather petulantly, annoyed his handlers were treating him like a beginner. ‘We know what to do but this one’s difficult and highly dangerous. We believe it would be impossible to hit Maskey at his home. His house is situated on an estate surrounded by Republican sympathisers and his constituents. And the place is more difficult to get into than Fort Knox – infra-red lights, cameras all around the fuckin’ place and and bulletproof glass on his downstairs windows. The escape route would be difficult to secure – I’ve taken a long hard look myself. Have you guys any decent ideas?’