Dead Man Running: A True Story of a Secret Agent's Escape from the IRA and MI5 (7 page)

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Listen,’ he said, ‘the other night I came out of my house down the road and saw some kids kicking shit out of my car and I chased them away, told them to stop kicking other people’s cars, causing damage which the owner had to pay for. They ran off, jeering and laughing, and I warned them that if I saw them again I would catch them and give them a good clip. When I saw you running down the road past my car I thought you were one of those kids, so I gave chase. I’m sorry.’ His explanation seemed perfectly plausible and I believed him. He made no effort to escape my clutches and I was sure he was no IRA killer intent on getting me. For a start, he had a strong Geordie accent. I suddenly realised I had over reacted. But I couldn’t say anything to him; I couldn’t explain why I had reacted so violently, nor tell him that I had been within an ace of kicking the shit out of him. I knew it was just a nervous reaction to being chased by someone late at night who seemed intent on breaking into my house. A few minutes later we were shaking hands, exchanging names and he promised to buy me a pint. We said ‘goodnight’ with a laugh but when I walked back inside the house I leaned against the door, closed my eyes and sighed with relief thinking of what might have been. ‘Shit,’ I thought. ‘I’ve got to get this IRA nonsense out of my head otherwise I might end up one day killing some poor innocent bastard.’ As I looked around I also knew I had to do something to improve my dreary, squalid flat so I phoned my old handler Felix and told him of the conditions in which I had been placed. ‘You wouldn’t put a dog in a place like this,’ I told him. ‘It really smells and is quite filthy. I’ve tried to improve things but it really is awful.’ ‘Listen,’ Felix said, ‘go and buy a cheap camera and take photos of the place, inside every room, including the kitchen and bathroom, so that people can see how terrible it is. Then send the photos through to the Chief Constable’s office, along with a letter, so that he can make the judgement. If it’s that bad, Marty, we’ll have you out of there, find you some other accommodation.’ ‘I’ll happily send the photos to the Chief Constable. I’m not kidding you, Felix,’ I told him, ‘you would be disgusted if you came and saw the condition of the place, I promise you.’ ‘I believe you, Marty. Don’t worry. Just get those photos and send them over. But don’t forget the letter. Okay?’ he said. ‘I’ll do just that,’ I told him. I sent the letter and photographs to the Chief Constable’s office and Felix phoned me later to say that he had seen the photographs and wholeheartedly agreed with my description of the place. He seemed more shocked that the Northumbria Police Special Branch should put one of the RUC’s agents in such dreadful accommodation. He said that he would urge the RUC Special Branch in Belfast to speed up the application for the funds which were due to me so that a modest house could be bought for me. Felix knew that I hoped Angie, Martin, then two, and Podraig, who was just six months, would be joining me shortly. He warned me, however, that I would have to wait for a few months for all the red tape and paperwork to be drawn up, finalised and authorised. He did assure me though; ‘Don’t worry, I will make sure decent accommodation is found; we can’t have you living in some pigsty.’ Ever since I had arrived in Wallsend I would speak to Felix each and every day at exactly 2 p.m. We arranged that I should be standing by a telephone box in Wallsend at that time and he would phone through to check that I was okay and not feeling too lonely. Sometimes we would chat for an hour, talking about everything under the sun. And I noted he was always cheerful, telling me amusing stories, making me laugh as though wanting to keep up my spirits. He wouldn’t, of course, call me at home for fear his calls were intercepted by the IRA. He knew that the IRA had extensive contacts working inside British Telecom which they would use time and again for tracing people in Northern Ireland and sometimes in Mainland Britain. Indeed, using the telephone network to track people they wanted to target was one of the IRA’s most favoured methods of ferreting out people who had gone into hiding. The IRA hierarchy hated losing anyone who had joined the cause and then worked for the Government or the RUC. Agents and informants such as me were always high on the IRA’s target list because to catch and kill a former IRA member worked wonders as a warning to any other person planning to defect, or even contemplate working for the RUC. For the first four weeks of my life on the mainland I also had the company, for at least an hour a day, of two RUC Special Branch officers who were detailed to watch over me and care for me. During their stay in England they lived in Northumbria police accommodation and would drive over to see me each day. I believe that the reason they came visiting was to ensure that I didn’t high-tail it back to Belfast, for they rightly concluded that I was feeling alone and miserable and obviously missing Angie and my boys. The Special Branch had known other informants who had been taken out of Belfast and housed in safe accommodation on the mainland, provided with new identities, passport etc and who then, feeling homesick, had made their way back to Belfast without informing anyone. These people worried the shit out of the RUC because, on occasions, they had highly sensitive material locked in their memories which the IRA would have loved dearly to learn about. Sometimes the RUC managed to intercept them, explain the risks they were taking and arrange for them to return to England. On other occasions the IRA reached them first and they had been taken away, questioned by the IRA’s feared Civil Administration Team and then shot. Throughout those first few weeks I wanted to speak to Angie on a daily basis but I realised that could have been dangerous both for me and, more importantly, for Angie and the boys. My SB friends told me to be very wary of calling her at her home number but to try to call a phone box at a prearranged time. But I was so happy that she was coming over to England and bringing the boys with her that it was with great difficulty that I refrained from calling her. I was also worried that she might have a change of heart; that her mother might persuade her to stay in Belfast. But she didn’t – she was as good as her word. I was a bundle of nerves when I travelled by train to Stranraer, praying that nothing would go wrong, so keen and eager to see Angie and the boys. But I didn’t let the occasion go to my head. I knew there was every possibility that the IRA might, somehow, have heard of Angie’s plans to join me and I was taking no chances. I didn’t walk all the way to disembarking point but stayed in the background, finding a vantage point from where I could see Angie coming off the boat but no one could see me. I checked everyone as they walked from the ferry just in case I recognised someone from my days with the IRA. But I saw no one and when I felt the coast was clear I ventured out to welcome my family to Britain. Angie looked tired and worried and the children hardly recognised me at first because they had not seen me for four months. I gave Angie a hug and a kiss and told her how wonderful it was to see her again. She seemed nervous and somewhat strange, as though holding back. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Sure I am,’ she replied. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘Are you sure no one tailed you?’ I asked, worried in case Angie had been told by the IRA to act normal when she met me, warning her that giving any hint she was being tailed would result in instant death for her and the boys. That was a typical IRA ploy which they had used time and again, especially when planting bombs. I looked around, checking to see if anyone suspicious was hanging around nearby, but saw no one. ‘You’re like a cat on a hot tin roof,’ Angie said, smiling. ‘Will you calm down, relax? I told you no one knew we were leaving and no one’s tailed us.’ ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, still not certain that Angie was telling me everything. ‘Yes, I’m certain,’ she said. ‘Now stop worrying, pick up these cases and give me a hand with the kids.’ Suddenly I realised I was being paranoid and foolish, that I had been living on my own for too long, letting the IRA dominate my thinking rather than pushing those fears to the back of my mind and getting on with my life. As we walked to the railway station to catch the train to Newcastle I realised how lucky I was to have Angie and the boys with me again. I felt a warm glow of happiness as the train sped through the wild and beautiful Scottish countryside but I realised that Angie, sitting across from me, seemed concerned and apprehensive. She seemed so young and vulnerable and I made a mental note to stop feeling so pathetic and show some strength of character. Then she caught my eye and smiled, looking more confident, as though a great weight had been lifted from her mind. I leaned forward, gripped her hand and squeezed it gently. We said nothing but looked into each other’s eyes as the train rattled along, each of us holding one of the boys as they slept beside us. I had warned Angie of the terrible conditions in which we would have to live but explained that the RUC were trying to sort out somewhere else, though the red tape and paperwork necessary would mean we would have to put up with the present accommodation for a few months. In fact, I had no idea how long it would all take but I hoped, for Angie’s sake, that it wouldn’t be too long. I had persuaded her to come and live on the mainland and she didn’t deserve to live in a slum, especially as the health and safety of Martin and Podraig were uppermost in her mind. ‘My God,’ she said, as she walked into the flat and looked around at the dingy surroundings. ‘From what you said, Marty, I thought things would be bad, but I never realised the flat would be this bad.’ ‘I know,’ I told her. ‘I warned you. But remember I had no choice. This has been rented for me by the Northumbria Police and nothing will change until the RUC find me some accommodation. I’m sorry, Angie, I really am but there’s nothing I could do. I wanted everything to be nice for you and the boys but I couldn’t do any better for now.’ ‘We’ll make the best of a bad job,’ she said. ‘Now give me a hand with the cases and let’s get the place sorted out.’ Within a week of Angie’s arrival Felix phoned with some good news. The RUC had forwarded £4,000 for me to buy a second-hand car, a Ford Fiesta, to enable me to drive Angie and the boys around, to make us feel free and mobile, rather than being holed up in a dreadful flat day and night. For Christmas that year I was determined to get away from Wallsend because we would have probably felt very lonely while everyone else around us would have been enjoying their festivities with members of their families. So I rented a cottage in Scotland for a week and we had a wonderfully romantic holiday. Although the boys were still very young, Martin, in particular, loved opening his presents. Angie relaxed and laughed and smiled and seemed to enjoy herself but on Christmas Day there were tears for she missed her family terribly. She thought of her parents, her brothers, her sisters, cousins and aunts and uncles and everyone enjoying themselves together at their Belfast home and realised that she would not be seeing any of them this year or any year in the future. I believe on that Christmas Day Angie realised for the first time that coming to England had been a permanent move; that she would never again be able to return to Belfast, even for a fleeting visit and that she would, in effect, be cut off from her family forever. She fully realised that once the IRA knew she was living with me they would always be waiting for her to return, to question her and find out all they could about my whereabouts. By moving to England, Angie had exiled herself permanently from Belfast as I had and she found the break with her family very, very hard to take. Throughout the cold, hard winter that was Newcastle in January and February 1992 I could see that Angie was becoming more restless and homesick though she tried to hide her feelings. However, in later February we had some good news. I was informed by my Northumbria Special Branch contact, a man called Alan, that I had been given permission to look for a house in their force area which the police would purchase for me. I would also be given £6,000 to equip the house from top to bottom with everything from curtains to carpets, beds to sofas, a washing machine and dryer. But £6,000 would be the maximum. My expectations soared, realising that a lovely new home might help to make Angie feel better and perhaps persuade her that life in England was not so bad. I knew that a new home wouldn’t stop her missing her parents back home but I just hoped it would make her realise that life with me and the boys was a big enough compensation. I couldn’t be sure. Seconds later my expectations were dashed when Alan told me that the RUC had informed him that I could only buy a house for a maximum of £25,000. ‘What?’ I said, in amazement. ‘£25,000? What the fuck are they on about? You can hardly buy a rabbit hutch for that amount in Newcastle. I’ve got a girlfriend and two children living with me; I can’t buy a one-bedroomed flat somewhere.’ ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ said Alan. ‘I’m just passing on messages. You’ll have to take it up with the authorities.’‘Fucking right I will,’ I told him angrily. I felt dejected and miserable, realising that once again I was being screwed. The following day I phoned Felix in Belfast and told him what I had been offered by RUC headquarters in Belfast, who had passed the message to me via the Northumbria Police. He could hardly believe his ears. ‘Jesus, Marty,’ he said, ‘they’re fucking you about something rotten. I don’t know what they’re doing giving you a maximum of £25,000. Let me look into it. They can’t do that to you. It’s not as though you’re living on your own, not now Angie and the kids have joined you. I’ll be in touch.’

Felix urged me to get the local paper and search through the ‘Houses for Sale’ notices to see what the current prices were for modern, three-bedroomed houses in and around Newcastle. Later I would tell him that to buy a good, modern house in a respectable area of Northumberland would cost about £50,000 but that older, cheaper houses in less salubrious areas could be bought for about £40,000. Some weeks later I was informed that the RUC department responsible for resettling agents and informants in England had decided to permit to buy a modern, three-bedroomed house for about £50,000. I began looking around again and found a brand new home at South Beach, in a new private development in Blyth. The cost was £52,000. The RUC agreed to purchase it for me and we moved in during May 1992. Angie and I had great fun buying everything for the home with the £6,000 we had been given to furnish the place. Angie seemed happier and more loving and relaxed than ever. She loved the new home and felt this was the right place to bring up the boys, a good, clean, tidy and hygienic house where she didn’t feel the boys to be at risk. But that same month, 48 hours after Angie and the boys had spent the day shopping in the MetroCentre, Europe’s biggest shopping complex south-west of Newcastle, the place was fire-bombed by an IRA active service unit. Seven fire-bombs exploded in seven separate shops, causing minimal damage but striking fear into the 120,000 shoppers who were there at the time. Three other incendiaries were discovered and successfully defused in three other department stores at the Centre. But the fire-bomb attack would have been far more serious if an off-duty RAF serviceman had not spotted an incendiary device – something ordinary shoppers would not have noticed – at a sports shop. That night, news of the MetroCentre bombing was splashed on every TV news with pictures showing the damage and the risk to shoppers and passers-by. Anti-terrorist police chiefs believed a team of four IRA bombers – two men and two women – had travelled across from Larne to Scotland and then by train to Newcastle in exactly the same way Angie had come over with the boys only a few months before. The police chiefs believed the active service unit had been staying in a safe house somewhere in the north-east of England, probably around the Newcastle area, where they had been handed the fire-bombs and trained how to prime them. Angie sat on the sofa that night and I could see her shaking, trying to control her fear and emotions. There were tears in her eyes and I felt so terribly guilty that I had been responsible, utterly responsible for persuading her to share her life with me. I had never asked her permission to work for the RUC as a secret intelligence agent; I had never even hinted to her that I had joined the IRA. She had known nothing of my double life and had never asked me. Now, here we were hundreds of miles from the bombs of Belfast and it seemed the IRA bombers had followed us to where we were trying to live in peace and safety. Those fire-bombed unnerved Angie. In her years of growing up in Belfast, where fire-bombs and massive explosions had often been a weekly occurrence, the torching of the MetroCentre in Gateshead sent shock waves through her. ‘What are we going to do?’ she said looking at me, sounding both miserable and sad. ‘There’s nothing to do,’ I replied. ‘Those bombs weren’t aimed at us.’ ‘But it means the IRA have people living here in Newcastle. They might even be in our neighbourhood, in our street and we wouldn’t know. But if they see you and recognise you then we’re done for.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, trying to reassure her, desperate to rebuild her confidence. ‘But I can’t help it, Marty,’ she continued. ‘I can’t help worrying. I have a fear that they’ll never give up; they’ll continue to chase and to hound us forever and I can’t take that. I don’t think I would be able to live with that, fearing that at any time they might plant an under-car booby trap, killing or maiming Martin and Podraig, or put a fire-bomb through our letter-box. You know what they can do, Marty, you’ve seen it time and again in Belfast and it’s always the innocent who get injured, maimed and killed.’ ‘But it’s much worse in Belfast,’ I protested, ‘It may be,’ Angie said, ‘but somehow I can face the troubles and the violence in Belfast. It’s my home, Marty, and I don’t seem so vulnerable there. Here I wake at night and stay awake for hours worrying myself about what might happen to us. It’s just me, Marty, I can’t help it.’ ‘I understand,’ I told her. In fact I understood too well. I knew that night that Angie would return to Belfast and take Martin and Podraig with her. She knew she was risking being interrogated by the IRA but I didn’t try to dissuade her from returning. To have stopped her would have been unfair, especially if I had been taken out. It would have been even worse if the IRA had got one of the boys by accident. She would never have been able to forgive me for stopping her returning home, telling her that everything would be fine in England when, in reality, I had no idea whatsoever that she and the boys would be safe with me. In some ways I agreed with her thoughts because I knew I was a prime target. I had been told so by Felix and other SB men. I also knew that the IRA would never stop looking for me and that was a hell of a lot of baggage for Angie to carry around with her for so many years. It was bad enough for me but it had been my decision to work for the RUC and now I would have to learn to live with it.