Once a Pilgrim

by James Deegan

  Three days after that late June operation, the Army source – the man codenamed Catweazle – had been taken from his bed by PIRA, gagged and hooded, and driven out of the city to Derry, well away from Belfast and those who knew him, under cover of darkness.

  He’d been bundled from the car into a house on the Tullyalley Estate, and taken upstairs to a soundproofed room which was lined with plastic sheeting.

  Never a good sign.

  There, according to the intelligence, he’d spent the next five days being tortured to death in a metal chair which was bolted to the floor.

  He was killed because the RA suspected – rightly, although they weren’t always right – that he’d been feeding information to the Brits.

  During his torture, desperate to give his captors something, anything, to make them go easy on him, the Weasel had named several others as collaborators, including the two men who’d left the cache in Clowney Street.

  With predictable and grisly results.

  Once they’d killed Catweazle and the other two innocent unfortunates, the RA had written off those particular weapons as being compromised – they could never be sure that the security services were not watching the location – and too dangerous to retrieve. It was a no-brainer – they were not short of kit, thanks to Gaddafi and the Balkan connections. In any event, not too long after the raid the organisation had renewed its ceasefire, and then there hadn’t been the need for them, anyway.

  The only other way they’d have been removed, short of the householders accidentally finding them, was if the Det/SAS had been sent back in to Clowney Street to get them out. The Army never originated these jobs themselves, they had to be tasked, because the political and intelligence ramifications of such actions went well beyond the mere job in hand. The obvious choice for the job would have been himself and Steve, and – for the following eighteen months at least, before Carr transferred back to Hereford – that call had never come.

  Why it hadn’t come was anyone’s guess, but it had been an extraordinarily delicate time, with the peace process motoring ahead and no-one remotely keen to rock any boats. Added to which, the TCG were always understaffed and overworked, with staff forever getting posted, or retiring, or dying, and its filing system – paper back then, and creaking at the seams – had been appalling, with files going missing on an almost weekly basis.

  Crazy as it seemed, it was entirely possible that the whole lot was still in situ, and that only he and Steve remembered it had ever existed.

  And Steve was a security man to the stars in Hollywood these days.

  Only one way to find out.

  And if the weapons had gone, then Carr would simply move on to one of a number of other possible locations.

  91.

  BY SEVEN THAT evening, John Carr had driven aboard the Stena Superfast VIII, parked up and made his way upstairs.

  Baseball cap jammed down on his head, collar turned up, scarf on.

  Heading straight out onto deck – cold as it was.

  As he stood there, he tried to call Belfast to mind.

  He’d not been there in more than a few years – the SAS had been pulled out in the early 2000s – but he’d spent what must have added up to years of his life in the place, and he quickly found that the mental map in his head was as good as it had ever been.

  Allowing for a few demolitions, and new ‘Peace Dividend’ buildings here and there, he was confident he’d feel right at home.

  It concerned him, a bit, that he’d be going in alone, with no back-up.

  In the old days he’d always had a team around him.

  Radios.

  Helicopters.

  Other soldiers watching his back, as he watched theirs.

  But he’d always enjoyed a challenge.

  And he had one thing in his favour.

  Back then, he’d been a professional soldier, operating under the rules of engagement.

  Constrained by them.

  Now, not so much.

  The people he was up against paid no heed to the rule of law; neither would he.

  He hadn’t asked for this shit: they had brought it to him and he was going to make them wish they hadn’t.

  Not long after he’d boarded, the throb of the huge diesels became more insistent, the screws began churning the black seawater, and the ferry moved slowly into the night.

  And Carr turned his thoughts to killing Pat Casey.

  The act itself would be easy enough.

  The question was whether Carr wanted to spend the next thirty years of his life behind bars.

  That basically came down to when and where and how the job got done.

  The when and where parts of that equation were simple enough. Thanks to his political career, Casey’s movements were easy to predict – he held regular surgeries, he appeared at public meetings, he travelled to and from Stormont.

  What about the how?

  Partly, that was dictated by what he was trying to achieve. Assassination is an art in itself. Sometimes you want the enemy to know their man has been hit – it’s an act of terror. This was not one of those times. Carr wanted to kill Casey to avenge the deaths of Parry and Murphy, and end this, but he wasn’t remotely interesting in sending any messages. He wanted the whole thing finished, and forgotten.

  So ideally he’d make it look like an accident.

  But to do that you need to get alongside your man, and Casey was bound to be protected.

  If he couldn’t make it look like an accident, what then?

  A bomb? Carr was highly experienced in the manufacture and use of explosives, and it would have been a simple enough matter for him to improvise a small device, and make it look like it had been planted by some old Loyalist hand. But bombs were messy, and he couldn’t guarantee that no innocents would be hurt. He also couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t start a whole new tit-for-tat war, and he definitely didn’t want the heat that would follow such a dramatic assassination. Every piece of CCTV examined, every ANPR image of every car. Every spare PSNI body on overtime, spooks, maybe even his old Regiment… He’d prepared some sort of alibi, but he wanted to keep the odds as good as possible.

  So a shoot, then? Assuming the pistol was still in place under the boards in Clowney Street, the actual killing would be a piece of piss. Pistols were always chancey – the short barrel makes accuracy a lottery, and he’d seen men miss a standing target at closer than ten feet in the heat of combat – but Carr had been one of the SAS’s best shots. He knew he could do Pat Casey at twenty metres, maybe even twenty-five – though he was confident that he could get a lot closer than that at any one of a dozen locations, pretty much any day of his choosing. Just walk up to your man, pistol to the back of the head, single shot, good night Vienna.

  Trouble was, then you were back to the heat that such a hit would bring. The shot would be heard if not all around the world then certainly in 10 Downing Street. The political noise, the press, the VCPs... All very bad news.

  A knife? A ‘robbery gone wrong’ – the sort of thing they’d used against Mick Parry? It had a pleasant symmetry to it, but a knife meant close personal contact with the victim, which meant the possibility of DNA transfer in both directions. And then, walking down the street with a knife covered in blood…?

  Pretty much the same went for strangling or clubbing Casey to death.

  Carr stared at the black sea and pondered the problem almost all the way to the Northern Irish coast, and it was only as the ferry began to slow that he hit on the answer.

  What if he could send everyone rushing off in another direction in the hunt for the killer?

  Misdirection.

  Carr smiled to himself.

  It had a synchronicity which pleased him.

  92.

  HE DROVE OFF the ferry in Belfast and immediately headed south, to start looking at his list of ‘rentals’.

  He didn’t stand out from the crowd, and he knew he didn’t stand out from the crowd, and yet he couldn’t shak
e off the feeling that he was being eyeballed from the moment he was off the ferry and onto the black tarmac.

  Sure, it was probably paranoia. But paranoia had kept him and many of his friends alive over the years. The chances that any mates of Dessie Callaghan knew he was here had to be close to zero, but young men don’t make old men if they don’t consider the odds now and then.

  So he took a circuitous route out of the city, doubling back several times through the Saturday evening traffic, and pulling over to the side of the road and stopping, just to check he wasn’t being followed. It wouldn’t defeat a trained and competent surveillance unit, of the sort his old mob could mount, or even the best the police could throw at you. But he was confident that the Provos had no such capability, and by the time he was heading to south Belfast on the A24 he was sure that he was not being followed.

  The first two addresses on his list were impractical – both were jammed in close to neighbours, in well-lit estates – but the third was ideal.

  A small former farmhouse on the edge of a golf course – the eighteen holes presumably cut out of what had once been the farmland – it had a longish drive and high hedges all around. And no alarm. The girl at McGirk’s had assured him that the owner was prepared to fit one – and, at £1400 a month, so he should.

  Carr could park his car in the streets nearby, approach on foot, and be almost certain that he’d remain unseen.

  He went to the other two, just in case, but neither were as good as the little farmhouse.

  So he headed back to that address and was inside in fifteen minutes.

  Using what little ambient light made its way inside the building, he familiarised himself with the layout – though he’d be using only the upstairs toilet and one room to doss down in, he needed to know all the entry and exit points – and had a nice stroke of luck when he located a set of keys in an otherwise empty kitchen drawer. He could now lock the house up, and get in and out quicker and easier.

  Most of all, he wanted there to be no obvious sign of his ever having been there. So he repeated a regular mantra to himself: Leave nothing, wear gloves.

  Once he was satisfied that he could get out of the place quicker than anyone could get in, he lay down on the floor of his chosen room, head on his day sack, and tried to get a little sleep.

  But his adrenalin levels were just too high, and eventually he gave up and lay there, waiting.

  93.

  JOHN CARR SLIPPED OUT of the farmhouse at just after 1am on the Sunday morning.

  Waited in the shadows for a short while to see if anything stirred.

  Nothing did, so he walked to the black Audi, got in, and drove off.

  Found the Falls.

  His guts tightening a little.

  Every sense straining.

  Unarmed, he felt highly vulnerable.

  The streets seeming to shrink in on him.

  Every alley, every privet hedge, every doorway hiding a possible threat.

  He’d dealt with bad men and worse jobs in every continent, but nowhere felt like Belfast; he’d not set foot in the fucking place in a long time, but it still exerted a strange hold on him.

  It was probably the weird disconnect between the outward appearance and the hidden reality.

  In Baghdad, say, or Sangin, everything was alien, and it didn’t seem all that odd that bad people wanted to kill you.

  But Belfast could be any British city, with its Tescos and its pubs and its double yellow lines and bus stops and park benches – and, suddenly, a guy who looked like you, and spoke your language, and watched Match of the Day, and liked the same music, and drank the same lager, might seize his moment to shoot you, or bomb you, or stab you in the throat.

  Nothing personal, I just hate Brits.

  Yes, it was probably that disconnect, coupled with the legacy of his youth: Belfast had provided John Carr with his first experience of soldiering in the face of the enemy, his first taste of the business of death.

  He had first gone there back in 1989 with 3 Para, on the tour when the incident that had started all of this had gone down, and he’d walked those streets on and off for the next decade or more.

  Early on in DPM, with an SA80 at the ready, as part of many a Parachute Regiment patrol.

  Later in civvies, with a pistol, working undercover with the Det, and with the SAS.

  He’d spent more days and nights in this dirty, grey city than he could remember, or wanted to remember.

  And when he wasn’t staring at those graffitied walls and pacing that fag butt-Coke can-chip paper-and-dogshit-strewn asphalt, he’d been dug into hedges in cold, wet fields out somewhere in the green, empty, hateful cuds.

  Always watching, listening, waiting.

  People watching, listening, waiting for him, too.

  He shook himself, turned into Clowney Street, past the hunger strikers’ memorial, and the fading mural linking Ulster to the Catalans, PIRA to ETA.

  Drove past the target house.

  It looked to be in darkness.

  Promising.

  His instinct was to completely disassociate his car from the house, but this was not a military operation; he wanted it close, a lifeline for a quick exit from the area if things went wrong.

  So he pulled into the first empty space at the intersection of Clowney Street and Ballymurphy Street.

  Parked the car, locked it, and walked back down Clowney, and past the front door of the house.

  He paused outside for a half-second – breaking every rule he’d been taught about surveillance, now – and saw no sign of life.

  He continued down Clowney towards Beechmount Avenue.

  Came to the alleyway which ran along behind the houses.

  It was barred by a big, galvanised mesh fence and gate.

  Seven foot tall, had to be.

  Padlocked.

  Shit.

  That wasn’t here in 1996.

  He paused again, now.

  Pulse hammering.

  Same alleyway as all those years ago. But back then he’d had a Sig in his pants, Steve by his side, and a radio link to the TCG, and some of the finest fighting men the world has ever seen thirty seconds away.

  Now, none of that.

  He looked around himself. No-one in sight.

  Over that fence and into that alley, and there was no turning back.

  He almost walked away.

  Almost.

  Every challenge he’d set himself, he had met.

  P Coy.

  Selection.

  Operations.

  Pull yourself together, John, he thought. Quitting’s never been an option. You’re not starting now.

  ‘Qui ose gagne,’ he whispered.

  Took a firm hold on one of the steel uprights and hoisted himself up and over in one smooth, fluid movement.

  94.

  HE ACTUALLY COULDN’T believe how easy it had been. Exact same lock, which was a piece of piss to pick.

  All quiet upstairs.

  The under-stairs cupboard had even less shite in it than it had last time.

  He worked in complete darkness, by touch and from memory.

  Holding his breath and gritting his teeth as he fiddled with the skirting.

  Lifting the floorboards.

  Groping under the floor.

  He felt the bag, and – slowly, carefully, quietly – pulled it out.

  He unzipped the bag and looked inside, using the lock screen from his mobile for light.

  All still there, exactly as it had been left all those years ago.

  He pulled out the AKSU-74: it felt good in his hands.

  Leave that where it is.

  Get the Browning.

  He took out the pistol, and pulled the slide to the rear.

  Placed it on the carpet.

  Took out thirteen rounds and loaded the magazine, each metallic snick sounding like a handclap in the still darkness.

  He picked up the pistol and gently inserted the magazine into the handle.


  Allowed the slide to go forward under control, loading the weapon.

  A light tap at the back to make sure it was fully home.

  Dropped the magazine out and inserted another round into the top of the magazine and replaced it.

  Fourteen rounds in total: the extra one doesn’t sound like much until you hear the click of an empty weapon.

  He put the Browning into his waistband, amazed at how different he felt now.

  Then he hesitated.

  Who doesn’t need an AK?

  Fuck it, I’ll take the lot.

  In for a penny, in for a pound.

  With no need to photograph anything, and no need to worry if the householders woke up in the morning and wondered whether everything was exactly where it had been, he was back outside and walking back down the side alley fifteen minutes after entering it.

  The reassuring weight of a loaded Browning Hi-Power tugged at his jeans, and the remaining rounds and magazines weighed down his coat pockets.

  The AKSU and spare mags were in the bag over his shoulder.

  He was trying and failing to keep the grin off of his face.

  And then he turned the corner to the seven foot steel gate, and froze.

  A few feet away, on the other side, two men – mid-twenties, both six foot tall and well-built.

  Wearing T-shirts despite the cold, which was making clouds of their breath.

  Must be just coming back from a night out.

  Shit.

  One of them about to turn a key in the padlock.

  The other looking straight at John Carr through the mesh.

  ‘Who the fuck are you, pal?’ said the man, and his mate looked up from the padlock. ‘And what’s in your bag? Get your fucking arse over here, now.’

  Carr said nothing.

  Considered his options.

  There were only two of them, and they were both shitfaced.

  But he didn’t fancy fighting two guys, shitfaced or not, in an alley in west Belfast.

  He turned around, and calmly started walking in the opposite direction.

  Behind him, the man shouted, ‘You stop there, you fucking scrote. D’you know who I am?’