None Shall Divide Us

by Michael Stone

  As we drove, the two men in the back continued the beating. I could hear the crack and thud of fists on flesh but I no longer felt any pain. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Another voice broke into my consciousness: ‘Jesus, he’s dead, quick, get him to the garage’, and I thought, I’m going to be skinned alive here. I am going to die a horrible death. I started to laugh and one of the men in the back said, ‘The bastard’s not dead, he thinks he’s on a day out.’ He punched me in the face. I knew they would torture me and mutilate my body before delivering the death shots. My face was caked with blood and mud. I had teeth missing, blood was pouring down my throat and spilling all over my captors and the car. I heard the voice of the man sitting on my chest saying, ‘Jesus, lads, I’m covered in the fucker’s blood. He’s bleeding all over me. We need to get him to the garage.’

  In the rush to take me to my death in a backstreet garage the four men had overlooked one thing. They had only partly closed the back door of the car. Even though I was drifting in and out of consciousness, I still managed to fight back and kick it open. My legs were dangling out of the back, dragging along the motorway. I was wearing rubber-soled Dealer boots and I could feel my feet getting warm from the friction of being dragged along the motorway. I wanted to prove that there was still a spark of life left in me and I wasn’t going to my death quietly. The only image I had in my head was of a Hellman’s Mayonnaise advert in which Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog run home so fast Carolgees’s feet go on fire.

  The punching continued. There was nowhere left on my face and neck, so they moved to other parts of my body. I’d had martial-arts training. Tommy Herron taught me that if you strike a blow directly underneath the heart it is possible to rupture a vein and stop it beating. ‘He-art, he-art,’ I shouted at them. I wanted to speed up my death by encouraging them to give me a direct punch to the heart and to continue punching until I stopped breathing. They didn’t understand. They thought I was having a heart attack. The truth is, I wanted to die before they got me to the garage where a gang of IRA men would be waiting to torture and kill me.

  I heard the voice of the man sitting on my chest say, ‘Paddy, the bastard’s having a heart attack’ and the passenger say, ‘Don’t hit him any more, we need the fucker alive.’ The car screeched to a halt.

  ‘Fuck, the peelers. They’re everywhere.’

  Two men lifted me out of the car and dropped me to the ground with a thud. I landed on my shoulder and neck. They were out of the car and dragged me down the embankment out of view. There was no traffic. The four hadn’t given up and continued to beat me. One was a redhead. I will never forget him. I was on all fours trying to get my breath back and he ran at my head like he was taking a penalty. My head flopped back with every blow. I had one eye that wouldn’t open and I wasn’t sure it was still there. I thought it was kicked out of its socket. The other was still open and I could see the blue lights in the distance.

  I could also see a large slab of concrete lying on the hard shoulder and two of the four men trying to lift it. I heard one say, ‘I can’t lift this, it’s too heavy’, and the other tell him, ‘Bring him over to it and bash his head off it.’ I was thinking, Just drop the bloody thing on my head and finish me off.

  The police had arrived.

  ‘Citizen’s arrest, officer, citizen’s arrest.’

  I was covered in blood and unable to move. They were covered in my blood and standing by a massive concrete slab and beside a hijacked car. The RUC had arrived in the nick of time and put their own lives on the line to whisk me away from that hate-filled mob. They could have been ambushed by a West Belfast unit of the IRA who could have been on the motorway within minutes. One of them radioed for help. He knew he had a tiny window of opportunity to get me out of the area before an IRA unit arrived and tried to snatch me back.

  Meanwhile a young officer, his hand shaking, pointed his gun at the crowd and me. The four men released me and moved back. The crowd, a little further back, were still moving forward and hurling missiles and the stones and lumps of wood were bouncing off the RUC men and me. The officer knew there would be a bloodbath if the IRA arrived and opened fire and they, in turn, were forced to return fire. The RUC moved quickly and while the young one continued to point his gun at the small crowd, one of his colleagues rolled me towards the Land Rover, leaving me in the recovery position. ‘Are you police or are you Army?’ he asked me. I couldn’t speak. My mouth was full of blood and bits of teeth. He was interrupted by a teenager who said, ‘Mister, I was told to give you these.’ He threw down at the policeman’s feet an empty magazine from my Browning and the fly-off levers from one of the grenades. The Republican mob had been picking my debris up as they followed me to the motorway. They knew they were handing over evidence. The Ruger and the Browning were never recovered and were used in Republican killings after Milltown.

  Two RUC men lifted me and put me in the footwell of the Land Rover. I was like a rubber man and drifting in and out of consciousness. They saved my life. I was minutes from being tortured and chopped up. By now I was losing a lot of blood and two officers started doing first aid, slapping my face, asking my name and trying to stop me from slipping into unconsciousness. Over their radio I could hear details of an attack at Milltown cemetery. Two were confirmed dead. One young policeman tapped my shoulder and said, ‘Did you hear that, you got two of them, isn’t that brilliant?’ I did answer him. I said, ‘Yeah, fucking brilliant, mate.’ It was said through a busted mouth, broken teeth and blood gushing down my throat. It was said when I was punched senseless, barely conscious and lying in a heap on the floor. I didn’t sit up in the back of the Land Rover, cock my head and say, ‘Brilliant, mate, yes, a job very well done.’ It wasn’t like that. I didn’t gloat. I knew I was facing life behind bars. I was a heap of skin and bone lying in the footwell of an RUC vehicle thinking, This is fucking brilliant, just brilliant.

  I could hear a heated discussion between police officers about which hospital to take me to. The Royal Victoria had the nearest casualty department, but one officer, a sergeant, thought it was too risky because it was in the heart of Catholic West Belfast and too dangerous for both them and me. An IRA active-service unit could be at the hospital within minutes. A network of sympathetic workers would keep Republicans informed of my arrival for treatment there. So I was taken to the City Hospital in South Belfast, which is surrounded by Loyalist districts.

  In Accident and Emergency I was handcuffed to a metal trolley. My coat was removed and the rest of my clothes were cut from me. I lay on the trolley in my underwear. Four policemen stood guard, but I wasn’t going anywhere. My legs weren’t working. The doctors and nurses didn’t know who I was or what had just happened. I could have been involved in a car crash, for all they knew. The doctors complained to the police that they couldn’t do their jobs, but the uniformed officers refused to budge. One of the officers from the Land Rover again asked me whether I was working for the police or the Army.

  The walking wounded from Milltown also started pouring in. I was lying there, almost naked, in double handcuffs, and they were looking at me. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone realised who I was. I looked around and spotted a tray with a lot of medical instruments, including scissors and scalpels. I felt helpless, unable to defend myself. I knew that sooner or later, someone would grab one of those sharp implements and stab me.

  The detectives arrived and were given permission by the doctors to interview me. The police, puzzled by the unexpected and clinical nature of my attack, wanted to establish exactly who I was and who I was working for. One said, ‘Where are your guns?’ I told him I threw both weapons down the motorway embankment. But there was still ammo in my coat pocket. I had been in custody twenty minutes. The coat was lying on the floor. He poked at it. He didn’t put his hand inside but carefully removed a speed strip and said, ‘Oh fuck.’ The speed strips were RUC issue. The detective approached my trolley. He took my hand, put the speed strip in my
open palm and pressed my hand around it. I couldn’t fight back because I was handcuffed. It was now the only ammunition with my prints on it.

  He asked me who I was. I said nothing. He said he had my mates and they were badly injured. I still said nothing. If the guys had been caught, it sounded like the big lad went down fighting. He asked my name. I told him it was John Gregg. I had meant to say, ‘John Smith’, one of my aliases, but my father’s name came out instead. The name was fed to RUC headquarters, which has a detailed database on the whole population. It came back blank.

  The detective continued, ‘Someone will have recognised you. Your family is in danger.’

  ‘My wife knows nothing.’

  ‘Who are your pals?’

  ‘I have no pals. I worked alone.’

  He leant in towards me. He was wearing a black leather jacket and when he leant forward it flapped open. I could see his Ruger. My brain said, ‘Grab it and get out’, but I couldn’t because I was ’cuffed. He jumped back and clasped his chest.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  ‘I am in nothing.’

  It was an automatic response. I said it because I didn’t want members of the UFF, Red Hand and other freelancers arrested and questioned about the operation. The two detectives nodded to nurses that they were finished with me and I was wheeled into X-ray. They followed, allowing the nurse to remove one handcuff, and stood at the side of the machine protecting their private parts when it took images of my body. After I was X-rayed the detectives continued to question me but I was now beginning to focus. Again they asked me who I was.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

  ‘We need to question you about a serious incident that happened today.’

  Silence.

  ‘Your family is in danger. We will arrest your wife and your kids.’

  ‘Michael Stone, 47 Ravenswood Park. My family knows nothing’.

  My details were fed into the RUC database, and when the detective came back he said, ‘We need more information. We need to know about your mates.’ He kept insisting they were injured and I was hoping that if they were caught they’d had the good sense to deny all knowledge of Milltown.

  The doctors OK’d my transfer to Musgrave Park Hospital, a highly fortified military unit. I was destined for Ward 18. Musgrave Park is where paramilitary prisoners from the Maze and Crumlin Road are sent when they are sick or injured. It is a prison within a hospital and is guarded by armed soldiers. I was handcuffed into a wheelchair and taken to the hospital in an ambulance with a police escort. A nurse and a porter also travelled with me, and as the porter pushed me to the waiting ambulance he whispered in my ear, ‘The word is you got three and one of their top men, Kevin Brady, and the police are glad.’ The name meant nothing to me. Brady wasn’t my target. I’d been beaten to within an inch of my life and was now facing life behind bars for killing three men who were not my targets.

  Ward 18 had four beds. I was the only patient. The nurses offered me painkillers but I refused them. I was concerned they might have been laced with something to make me talk. I left them on the bedside locker. I could hear young men chanting outside. They had obviously followed me from the City Hospital and were shouting, ‘I-I-IRA, I-I-IRA. Someday, we’ll get you, you bastard.’ The doctors gave me another check-up and gave the go-ahead for another round of questioning. Two detectives from Grosvenor Road RUC station arrived. They introduced themselves and said they wanted to talk to me in connection with a serious incident. They asked me where I lived and I repeated my address. They asked about my mates, saying, ‘Didn’t they fuck off on you?’ At that point I asked to see the nurse. I told her I wasn’t feeling well and had a very bad headache. I told the detectives I would talk in the morning. I told them I would talk about other things too. Their eyes lit up.

  The Army patrolled the corridors surrounding Ward 18. At 11 o’clock that night a Wessex helicopter hovered above the compound. It flew so low it shook the ward and the windows vibrated with the downdraught. A drip frame crashed to the floor and the glass of water sitting beside my bed tumbled and smashed into pieces. The duty nurse came running in to me and said she was frightened. The RUC officer posted at the door of the ward ran down the corridor to find out what was going on. Then the chopper took off. I have no idea what it was all about. Perhaps the Army was trying to spook me.

  Next morning, before the detectives arrived, I crawled on all fours to the bathroom. It was very basic. There was a bath, a toilet and a small handbasin, but no mirror, just a small piece of reflective steel nailed to the wall. I looked at myself and the image glaring back at me was grotesque. My face was distorted, broken, twisted and unrecognisable. Quasimodo was staring back at me. One eye was clamped shut and my head was the size of a portable television. Half my face had no skin on it.

  The minute I started running the taps, a massive viewfinder screeched open. An RUC officer was looking in at me. I waved at him sarcastically and he waved back. The water was cold, but I slid into it anyway. My body didn’t feel the coldness. The water turned red, then brown, with blood and mud from the bog meadow. I lay back, completely submerging my body and face, and the policeman came running in. He thought I was trying to drown myself. I told him to fuck off and leave me alone. I stayed in the bathroom for an hour, running bath after bath until the water eventually heated up and the blood, matted in my hair and ground into my skin, finally came away. I made the return journey to Ward 18 on all fours. My legs were still not working.

  I was offered food and milk but refused to take them. The staff gave me water and I threw it away, crawling back to the bathroom to drink from the bath taps. A box of chocolates arrived. The RUC delivered them to my ward. I told them I didn’t want them. It was a one-pound box of Quality Street. They had taken the wrappers off every chocolate and kept all the purple hazelnut caramels. The chocolates ended up in the bin.

  Nine officers were detailed to question me, three of them from Grosvenor Road and the other six from various city-centre RUC stations, and they took turns, in relay teams of three and four, to interrogate me. Sessions lasted up to eight hours. One senior Grosvenor Road detective told me my home was searched and they found nothing. They told me they ripped the house to bits.

  ‘I hope you haven’t arrested my wife.’

  ‘We haven’t. What organisation do you belong to?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Were you on drugs?’

  ‘You tell me, you have enough blood samples.’

  They moved to another part of the ward. Within earshot one said to the others, ‘They are all denying him. He has no owner. The UDA has made a statement saying they don’t know anything about him. They say he is too extreme.’

  So there it was. The UDA denied me and denied my involvement in a UFF-sanctioned operation backed by two brigadiers. To this day I don’t know if the cops said those things deliberately to get me to react. I said nothing. The questioning continued.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A loner.’

  ‘Did you act alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any more like you?’

  ‘We are a new breed.’

  The cops thought Milltown was a one-off and I was a Loyalist nutter, so I started reciting intelligence I had on Martin McGuinness and Owen Carron. I watched their mouths drop. Within the hour the RUC had set up a computer in the corridor outside my ward, and the information was fed into it. All I heard from the corridor was the senior detective shouting, ‘Who the hell is this fucker?’

  After a while I broke the silence and told them I was ready to make a statement and was ready to tell them everything. The detectives said they needed me to write it down. I couldn’t write because my hands were swollen from protecting my face during the beating at the motorway.

  The interrogation teams kept reminding me of my promise to tell them everything and I reminded them that we had a deal: I talk and they don’t arrest my family. I started by saying I undertook sanctions for all
the major Loyalist paramilitaries: the UDA/UFF, the UVF and the Red Hand Commando. I talked about Milltown first because it was the jurisdiction of the detectives quizzing me.

  They started to ask me about the weapons. I asked them whether they had been recovered from the motorway, but they refused to say. They wanted to know where I got the two guns. I told them I stole them. I told them about the Loyalist arms hide on Shandon golf course, and a team of RUC men searched it and found nothing. The hide had been emptied many months ago. I wasn’t sending the cops on a wild-goose chase. I told them to search Shandon because I wanted to have fun at the expense of the middle-class snobs who played there. The Ruger was never mentioned, although they knew it was security forces-sourced. They wanted to know who accompanied me at Milltown. I said I acted alone. I would not have any co-accused.

  I told a detective about the assassination of Paddy Brady and that I shot him with an automatic shotgun using number-four cartridges, but I did not tell him what make the weapon was.

  My mouth was still busted and speaking was difficult. I acted the numbskull. I made my interrogators believe I was of low intelligence. It was part of my game plan. I played a deliberate hand. I threw swerves. The detectives would ask who accompanied me on other active-service operations. I always said the same thing: ‘I drove a car to Taughmonagh and picked up two volunteers, one would drive and one would be the back-up man. He would hide in the footwell of the passenger seat and I would lie across the back seat.’ This was a complete fabrication. I said this to protect the active units and to divert suspicion away from those I worked with, be it in the UFF, the UVF or the Red Hand Commando. The police thought they were making progress and would send the details back to RUC headquarters to try to crack the mystery of the two volunteers. I did this to protect my associates and the freelance volunteers who assisted me in my work.