Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  In a wider sense, did the events of that evening spell the end of his investigation, assuming Duggan was now dead? Johnson weighed the question. In some respects, yes, but there was still an active dissident republican brigade in south Armagh that was certain to continue operational activities and almost as certain to continue illegal imports of tobacco and weapons unless action was taken.

  So the answer, in the short term, was no. He would like to finish the job. He had already been working without pay since Donovan’s death, so he might as well carry on. Money had never been his main incentive in life. But truth, justice, and professional pride were definitely still all at stake.

  Johnson munched his way through the makeshift supper of cheese sandwiches and tomatoes that Ronnie had hurriedly put together, then leaned back in Ronnie’s threadbare armchair and closed his eyes momentarily.

  His captivity at Willows Farm had lasted two days, but it had seemed much longer. He suddenly felt extremely weary, but in the same moment he realized he hadn’t been able to check for messages, either text or voice, that might have been left on his phone, which had been confiscated by Duggan.

  He asked O’Neill if he could borrow his phone to call his message service and dialed in.

  There was only one voice message: it was from Beth Doyle, who said that she had obtained photocopies of her husband’s handwritten memoirs from her son, Archie, but that she had second thoughts about handing them over and asked that Johnson give her a call.

  Johnson gazed at the ceiling and groaned to himself. Despite the chaos of the previous few days, the journals remained on his mind. Nothing was ever straightforward, especially when he needed it to be.

  The thought reminded him about the sheet of paper pinned next to the dartboard.

  “Jayne, can you email me the photo of the sheet of paper down in the bunker, please?” Johnson said.

  She nodded.

  O’Neill stood and surveyed the room. “We’d better get moving back to Belfast. I’ve got a feeling a shitstorm’s going to erupt tomorrow.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sunday, January 27, 2013

  Belfast

  The morning news bulletin on BBC Radio Ulster was heavily focused on the security clampdown that was well underway in advance of the G8 meeting, due to begin the following day.

  Cars were subject to random searches on their way into the city center, causing traffic backups. There were spot checks on hotels, and armed police were posted at key strategic points around Belfast, the newscaster said.

  But there was nothing about a dissident Republican being killed in a car explosion on a farm near Forkhill.

  Johnson flicked off the radio and glanced around the apartment just off Falls Road that he and Jayne had returned to in the Toyota, which they had picked up from O'Neill’s house in the early hours of the morning.

  Despite his tiredness, Johnson had woken at eight o’clock after just six hours of sleep, his head immediately buzzing, his adrenaline flowing.

  He instructed his cell phone company to disable his old SIM card and walked to a shop just along the road where he bought himself a new one, together with a phone. Then he restored all his data from a backup of his old phone on his laptop and sent messages to his key contacts with the new number.

  That done, Johnson rented another car, this time a black Mazda 323, from a different company and took a taxi to go and collect it. The process of reporting the previous one stolen would have to wait—he had no time for the inevitable bureaucratic nightmare.

  Now he could get back to business. He made two mugs of coffee and put one of them on the table in front of Jayne.

  “We need to go see Beth,” Johnson said. “She left a message saying she’s having second thoughts about handing the copies over.”

  “You think these memoirs will help us, do you?” Jayne said. She raised one eyebrow and sipped her coffee.

  Johnson shrugged. “Don’t know. But there are things going on here that I don’t understand. My feeling is there are issues that go way back. People aren’t prepared to talk about them openly—Donovan didn’t and he died. O’Neill won’t either. So maybe this will give us a way in. Don’t know. Might be wrong.”

  “It’s worth a try, I agree,” Jayne said, to Johnson’s relief.

  Twenty minutes later, Johnson and Jayne headed back to Portadown for the third time. He hoped that Beth was at home. He didn’t call ahead for fear that she might disappear.

  The storms of the previous night had blown out, and the skies over Northern Ireland were blue and almost cloudless; only large pools of water on the road gave a clue as to the turbulence.

  On the way into Portadown, they drove past a billboard on which some dissident republican graffitist had sprayed a sniper rifle crosshairs symbol, the letters IRA, and a slogan in huge black-painted letters: “We only have to be lucky the once.”

  Beth answered the door and did something of a double take to see them on the step. In contrast to their previous visits, she looked unkempt. Her gray hair hadn’t been brushed, and there was a tea stain on the front of her white blouse.

  “I had a real difficulty in persuading my son to send these copies,” Beth said. “He said he thought they were sensitive, and having read through them again, I can see why. I was up into the early hours reading them, trying to decide what to do, whether to let you see them or not. I now don’t think I’m going to.”

  “Could we at least discuss it?” Johnson asked. “And indoors. We don’t want your neighbors to hear.”

  She looked down at the ground and held the door handle tightly. “I don’t know,” she said and looked back up at Johnson, who attempted a smile.

  Then, slowly, she opened the door and indicated for them to enter. Once she shut it behind them, Johnson gathered himself and mentally ran through his argument.

  “Look, Mrs. Doyle,” he said, in as even a tone as he could manage. “This is not about your husband, it’s about something much bigger. It’s about the whole principle of justice and the process of securing it.”

  “Don’t give me that kind of high-moral bullshit,” Beth said, shaking her head.

  “It’s not bullshit. Things have happened which are very wrong, both legally and morally, and I really need your cooperation in ensuring that we do the right thing. It’s that simple. I don’t know what’s in that journal of your husband’s, but I’m certain it will help us understand what has happened. If they give us just a fraction of information as we try to find out what happened to your husband, then we should take them; otherwise we’re at risk of impeding justice.”

  Beth narrowed her eyes, as if in pain, and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth several times, clearly undecided.

  She led the way through to her kitchen and picked up a yellow folder from a rack, then clutched it across her chest with both arms folded against it. “I would like a commitment from you to keep the contents confidential, away from the media or journalists,” Beth said. “The only reason I’m going to let you see these papers is because I want to get to the bottom of what happened to Will. But I don’t want to stir things up and put my family in danger.”

  “You have my word that I’m not going to give anything to journalists,” Johnson said. “There have been enough casualties during this inquiry, and no, I don’t want to see anymore either.”

  “Thank you,” Beth said. “In that case, let’s sit down and you can go through it. I would rather you read it here first, so we can discuss it, rather than you take it away.”

  She led the way into her living room and handed over the folder.

  Johnson took it and looked inside. There were a few photocopied sheets taken from a handwritten journal, which he quickly flicked through. “This is all of them?” he asked.

  “No, this isn’t all of them. These are just the ones from 1984.”

  Johnson looked at Beth. “So why just 1984? I didn’t ask for any specific year.”

  “It’s the year you’re probabl
y going to be most interested in. You’ll see when you read them.” There was a note of finality in Beth’s voice that said she didn’t want to answer questions.

  Johnson shrugged and sat on the sofa. He took out the papers and began to read. The sheets were copied at high resolution, which made the precise, neat handwriting easy enough to read.

  December 15, 1984

  Another day chasing the S.Armagh brigade’s finest. Got my new motor, a Cavalier, from the 14th South Det bleeps this morning after they’d finally finished fitting it out with the usual array of toys—mikes, comms gear, covert video camera gear, tiny earpieces, engine cutout switch, brake light off switch, bulletproof panels, glass, etc. You name it—this car’s got it. Gadget paradise. So went out after lunch with Gazzer for the regular surveillance sweep around Forkhill, Cross, etc. Different route, different routine, every time. No Special Forces with us today for a change, as they’re all on roadblock planning duty. They plan, we deliver. A blitz planned for next few days—they want us to nail Alfie Duggan, somehow. He’s been on the run well over a year now from Long Kesh. The problem has been finding him. He’s clever, often one step ahead, on the move. But he’s had too many hits since getting out—three soldiers dead in the last three months, all long-range, 7.62mm rounds. It has to be Duggan. So patience is running out. The plan has previously been to arrest him. They wanted to catch him red-handed and nail him then so they can double his sentence. But like I’ve always said—bullshit, why bother? That’s not going to happen. How many more soldiers’ lives first? So plan B’s swinging into action—Conman’s masterminding it with Eric’s help. It makes more sense to me.

  December 17, 1984

  The tech boys gave us a briefing today on the new covert cameras now live in Bandit Country. Twenty-two of them, all with pin-sharp pics giving on- to two-mile views. Remarkable pieces of kit. There were twenty-five, but three have been found and “disabled” by the S.Armagh brigade already!! Idea is to use these to ID targets. The hope is Alfie D’s going to break cover pre-Christmas to see his wife/son. It’s a waiting game. We’re certain he’s being moved around safe houses—so he has to break cover sometime. The Don and Brenner not happy today at being stuck in (separate) car boots operating surveillance cameras in Drumintee and Cullyhanna, respectively, for five hours in the freezing cold, locked up more or less in the dark, where they can hardly move. Tough life. Crucial job, though. Probably it’ll be me tomorrow. Can’t fecking wait. Not.

  December 18, 1984

  Things now hotting up. Roadblock in place for much of the afternoon near our Bessbrook Mill base. It’s going down with the locals just about as well as you might imagine. The S.Armagh brigade retaliated with their own roadblock outside Forkhill. We left them to it—no point in starting a shooting match when we’ve got bigger fish to fry imminently, hopefully. The whole Det’s on a leave ban, a couple of people even recalled from holidays, and going into full operations mode now. Method we’re using to find Duggan is to concentrate on his son, Dessie, on the basis that he’s going to lead us to Alfie before too long. We put a tracking device on Dessie’s Land Rover Defender a week ago—we stole the vehicle off his driveway for an hour or so at 3 a.m., replaced it with another identical Land Rover with the same plates, just on the off chance he did wake up and look out of his window (unlikely), then after the device had been installed on the original, put it back again. Neat.

  December 19, 1984

  The call came at just after one in the afternoon when the speaker system at Bessborough blasted out a loud “Standby!” It was unscheduled—obvious something was moving. Sure enough, once we got into the operations room for a briefing, the pictures on the monitor screens from the covert cameras told their story. Everybody was focused on the one hidden in a tree on the Coolderry Road, down near Larkins Road and Slab Murphy’s farm. The operator zoomed in. Feck me if there wasn’t Alfie Duggan, Dessie Duggan, who was climbing out of his tracked Defender, and a guy nobody recognized with long black hair and a beard. We watched as they walked up the field, set up behind some bushes well away from the road with a sniper rifle that looked like an FN, and began a practice session. The operations officer running the show, Harry, stood up and pointed to six of us: me, Eric, Conman, the Don, Brenner and Gazzer. “You lot, in my office now.” I’d never seen him do that before—so I knew we were handling a delicate job. And Harry didn’t want the rest of them to know what the game plan was, either. After about five minutes in Harry’s office, I knew why. “I’ve had enough of being screwed about by this Alfie Duggan,” Harry started off by saying. So I virtually predicted what he was going to say next. The order was to set up a roadblock to catch Duggan on the way out, where the Coolderry Road went through a wood. Officially, we were to search and arrest him. But then Harry gave the unofficial follow-up. “Of course, he’ll go to pull a gun, at which point you don’t feck about. I’m not saying this, but you shoot the shit out of him. You know what I mean?” He looked meaningfully at each of us, right in the eyes. “It’ll be collective, nobody responsible, okay? I’ll back you to the hilt if needed.” And that’s pretty much how it happened. About fifty minutes later we were in position and had the block set up. An operator back at Bessborough was in our ear, watching off the video screen. So after the practice session was finished, we heard that the third guy, with the beard, vanished in the other direction toward Larkins Road and the Republic. But Harry seemed to know that Alfie would come our way, and so he did, in a green Rover 3500. It came around a sharp bend, moving fast. The driver saw our roadblock, and I thought for a second he was going to try and drive through it. But he braked hard at the last minute and stopped. We went three to each side of the car, all of us with Heckler & Koch HK53s, some with SIG Sauer P220s in our belts as well. Of course, Duggan didn’t go to pull a gun—he was putting his hands up. But he still copped it. All of us let rip, virtually simultaneously, though I think it was Conman who fired first. Everyone else was half a second behind him. My God, the car was shredded, and Duggan splattered all over it. But we did find an FN FAL in the back seat at his feet, so that was all right, then; it justified everything, no problem at all. Seriously? My guess is there’ll be hell to pay over this at some stage.

  That was where the photocopied excerpts ended. Johnson, his scalp feeling as though it had been pulled tight as a drum, looked up at Beth, who sat with her arms folded across her chest, staring at him, eyes wide, not speaking.

  Johnson’s brain was about to pop as he processed the implications of what he had just read. It was now obvious why Beth had been reluctant to pass the diary to him, given her husband’s role.

  But he was focused more on the other people who had clearly been involved in the murder of Alfie Duggan.

  Who are they?

  “Thank you for letting me see this,” Johnson said. Beth was clearly frightened about what would happen next. He leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “I can see exactly why you’ve been worried about it, but let me say this—you’ve done the right thing. It’s important.”

  Beth nodded at him, still not speaking.

  “There’s one very crucial thing I need to know,” Johnson said. “Did you know the men your husband is referring to? The ones whose names and nicknames he’s using.”

  “Only Gary Joyce. That’s Gazzer,” Beth said, a slight tremor in her voice. “We were friends with the Joyces. They were the only friends we really had out of the 14th, and that was years afterward, when we became proper friends. So I know Gary worked with him. The others I don’t know.”

  Johnson looked back at the journal. That left four others.

  Eric? That was most likely a real name, not a nickname. The Don? Definitely a nickname. Brenner could be either a surname or a nickname, and Conman was obviously a nickname.

  Then something flashed across Johnson’s mind.

  You can call me the Don, like most people. No need for Michael.

  That was what Donovan had told him on his arrival in Northern Ireland, mo
re than three weeks earlier. Johnson had continued to address him as Michael, but the nickname had lodged in his brain. It was probably a coincidence. Or could that possibly be whom Will Doyle was referring to?

  “Did your husband ever mention a man called Michael Donovan? And did he call him the Don?” he asked Beth.

  She wrinkled her forehead, searching the recesses of her memory, and gazed at the floor. “Might have done. It sort of rings a bell. But it was a long time ago. I can’t be sure.” She shrugged and looked up.

  Johnson felt he had been here before in his career, many times. Facing a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing and no obvious way of filling in the gaps. But that was how he had built his reputation—building connections in his mind and finding solutions, even when they were elusive.

  Another thought then crossed Johnson’s mind—an image of the sheet of paper stuck to the wall next to the dartboard in Duggan’s underground bunker. He was suddenly certain that one of the sets of letters that he had seen crossed out had been MD. Michael Donovan?

  “Jayne, do you have the photo you took of the sheet stuck next to Duggan’s dartboard, please?” he asked.

  Jayne looked at him and raised her eyebrows, then took her phone from her pocket and flicked through a series of images before holding one up in front of Johnson.

  He stared at it, then at the journal, his mind now working at full speed. “MD. Crossed out,” he said, thinking out loud. And if Michael Donovan was crossed out, was that a reference to his shooting?

  He looked at the other initials on Jayne’s photo. WD. Crossed out. Will Doyle? It had to be. Then there was GJ, also crossed out. Gary Joyce, Gazzer. Both Will and Gary had been shot dead by a sniper.

  Now he was making headway. So who was the Eric referenced in the journal? Johnson looked back at Jayne’s photograph again.