Shaun Clarke - Death on Gibraltar

The nearest Sean had come to recorded involvement in the ‘Troubles’ was when, in 1982, he had been arrested on the word of an unknown ‘supergrass’ who had denounced him as an IRA hit man. Resolute in protesting his innocence, Sean was strongly defended by many friends, including Father Murphy, who all viewed the arrest as yet another example of the British tendency to imprison innocent people on flimsy evidence. Released a month later, Sean returned to his peaceful activities and, in so doing, reinforced the conviction of most of his friends that he had been wrongfully accused.

‘They’re so keen to find themselves some terrorists,’ Father Murphy told him, ‘they don’t bother with facts. Sure, they only had to run a proper check and they’d have found you were innocent.’

‘Ackaye,’ Sean replied. ‘Sure, that’s the truth, Father. They probably didn’t care who they arrested – they just needed some fish to fry. We’re all at risk that way.’

In fact, as only a few, highly placed members of the IRA knew, Sean was a dedicated freedom fighter who would go to any lengths to get the Brits out of the Province. To this end he had joined the IRA while still at school and soon became an expert ‘engineer’, or bomb maker, responsible for the destruction of RUC stations, British Army checkpoints, and, on more than one occasion, lorries filled with soldiers. Thus, though he seemed innocent enough, he had blood on his hands.

But he was not a ‘mad dog’ like Daniel McCann and took no great pleasure in killing people. Rather, he viewed his IRA bombings and, on the odd occasion, shootings, as the necessary evils of a just war and despised the more enthusiastic or brutal elements in the organization – those who did it for pleasure.

As Mad Dan McCann was one of those whom he most despised, even if only from what he had heard about him, never having met the man, he wasn’t thrilled when, in early November 1987, after receiving a handwritten message from his Provisional IRA leader, Pat Tyrone, inviting him to a meeting in Tyrone’s house, he turned up to find McCann there as well.

Sean had long since accepted that once in the IRA it was difficult to get beyond its reach. Like the killing of Prods and Brits, he viewed this iron embrace as another necessary evil and was therefore not surprised that the message from Tyrone was delivered to him by another Provisional IRA member, nineteen-year-old Dan Hennessy, who drove up on a Honda motor-bike to where Sean was sitting on the lower slopes of Slieve Donard, gazing down on the tranquil waters of Strangford Lough. Braking on the slope just below Sean, Hennessy propped the bike up on its stand, then swung his right leg over the saddle and walked up to Sean with a sealed envelope.

‘From Pat Tyrone,’ Hennessy said, not even bothering to look around him at the magnificent view. Hennessy was as thick as two planks and only in the IRA because he thought it would give him certain privileges in Belfast’s underprivileged society. In fact, he would be used as cannon-fodder. As such, he would almost certainly end up either in a British prison or in a ditch with a bullet in his thick skull. It was an unfortunate truth that such scum were necessary to get the dirty work done and that most came to a bad end.

‘How did you know I was here?’ Sean asked as he opened the envelope.

‘Tyrone sent me to your house and your mum said you’d come up here for the day. Sure, what the fuck do you do up here?’

‘I read,’ Sean informed him.

‘You mean you beat off to porn.’

‘I read books on history,’ Sean said calmly, unfolding the note. ‘This is a good place to read.’

‘You’re a bloody queer one, that’s for sure.’

Sean read the note. It was short and to the point: ‘Sean: Something has come up. We need to talk. I’ll be home at four this afternoon. Meet me there. Yours, Pat Tyrone.’ Sean folded the note, replaced it neatly in the envelope, then put the envelope in his pocket and nodded at Hennessy.

‘Tell Pat I received the message,’ he said.

‘Ackaye,’ Hennessy replied, then sped off down the slope, still oblivious to the magnificent scenery all about him.

To Sean it was clear that Hennessy loved only himself – not Ireland. He was a teenage hoodlum. Vermin. A former dicker elevated to the Provisional IRA ranks and dreaming of better things. An early grave is all he’ll get, he thought as he packed up his things and prepared to cycle back down the lower slopes of the mountain. And it’s all he’ll deserve.

Disgusted by Hennessy, Sean was reminded of him as he cycled back through the grim streets of West Belfast, where he saw the usual depressing spectacle of armed RUC constables, British Army checkpoints, Saracens patrolling the streets and, of course, the dickers, keeping their eye on the every movement of potentially traitorous Catholics, as well as the Brits and Prods. Like Hennessy, most of those ill-educated, unemployed teenagers were hoping to eventually break free from the tedium of being mere lookouts to become active IRA members and kill some Prods and Brits. As their dreams had little to do with a love of Ireland, Sean despised them as much as he did Hennessy and others like him, including Mad Dan McCann.

He was reminded of his contempt for Mad Dan when, entering Tyrone’s two-up, two-down terraced house in one of the depressing little streets off the Falls Road – a strongly Republican street barricaded at both ends by the British Army – he found McCann sitting at the table with Tyrone in the cramped, gloomy living-room, both of them drinking from bottles of stout and wreathed in cigarette smoke.

‘Have you come?’ Tyrone asked, using that odd form of greeting peculiar to the Ulster Irish.

‘Aye, sure I have,’ Sean replied.

‘You look fit. Been out ridin’ on that bike of yours again?’

‘Aye. Out Armagh way.’

‘Sean rides his bicycle all over the place,’ Tyrone explained to Mad Dan, who was studying the younger man with his dark, stormy eyes. ‘He sits up there on the hills, all wind-blown, and reads history and studies the Irish language. He’s our wee intellectual.’

‘Aye, sure I’ve heard that right enough,’ Mad Dan said. ‘He’s got a right brain on his head, so I’ve been told.’

‘You’ve met Dan?’ Tyrone asked Sean.

‘No,’ Sean replied. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ he added, turning to McCann, but finding it difficult to meet his wild gaze.

‘All good, was it?’ Mad Dan asked with a leer.

‘All right, like,’ Sean replied carefully.

Mad Dan burst out into cackling laughter. ‘Aye, I’ll bet,’ he said, then stopped laughing abruptly as Sean pulled up a chair at the table in the tiny living-room. The walls of the house, which belonged to Tyrone’s mother, were covered with framed paintings of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and numerous saints.

A real little chapel, Sean thought, for Tyrone’s ageing mother. Certainly not for Tyrone. Indeed, when he looked at Tyrone, he knew he was looking at a hard man who had little time for religion, let alone sentiment. Like Sean, Tyrone lived for the cause, but his motives were purely political, not religious. For this reason, Sean respected him. He did not respect McCann the same way, though he certainly feared him. He thought he was an animal.

When Sean had settled in his hard-backed chair. Tyrone waved his hand at the bottles of stout on the table in front of him. ‘Sure, help yerself, Sean.’

Sean shook his head from side to side. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘I’m all right for the moment.’

‘Oh, I forgot,’ Tyrone said with a grin. ‘You don’t drink at all.’

‘Nothin’ but mother’s milk,’ Mad Dan said. ‘Sure, wouldn’t that be right, boyo?’