Resurrection Man (7 page)

Statement of John Arthur McGrath:

I John McGrath would like to state that the events I describe in the following happened as if in a dream so that it was as if I did not participate although I know that I did and this is a source of regret to me. We drove up to the gate of O’Neill’s depot at ten o’clock in the morning of 10 May 1975. I remember a sign Trade Only at the gate which gave me a moment of panic at being recognized as not being trade. I felt foreign to my own nature from that moment. We stopped the car at the entrance to the warehouse. We got out and walked in. Mr C’s eyes were lit up and he looked from side to side as if his head was afflicted by madness which I also started to feel, although I had no notion of a bloodbath at this or any other point. I do not wish to give the full name of Mr C.

There was another man with us who I also do not wish to name as he is notorious for being involved in killing and has not a spark of mercy in his nature. This man I shall call Mr M. He had wrote out this car parts order which was a fake on a piece of paper tore from a children’s exercise book. He seemed to be in high good spirits at this point. Two assistants came up to us and Mr M handed one the note but before they could read it Mr C had them covered with a gun he took from his pocket and he said lie down on the ground. They lay down at that point.

Then Mr M said where’s the office? One of the assistants looked up at us and pointed. I would like to say that there was
no look of fear on his face or on the other one’s. They seemed to lie down in a kind of blind disbelief. I remember Mr C said we should’ve brought a van and took some of the car parts that were sitting round the place but M said we were there for the money. M kept looking at me and saying things like are you all right and smiling at me to make me feel part of things. Apart from the incident with Frames which was a mistake with a gun going off by accident this was the first time I ever done anything like that and I hope I will never be involved again. This is a statement of my remorse.

M indicated that I should go with him to the office. I cannot remember how he said it or if he used words at all. We went up these old wooden steps which creaked with a noise to wake the dead. M seemed to change somehow as we went up as if it was a climb to murder. He had these blue eyes which seemed to get smaller and he did not speak.

The office had two glass windows looking over the depot and a glass door. There were two men inside. They looked up and seen me and M outside the glass. You could see them looking nervous and talking to each other but you couldn’t hear them through the glass. Seeing them and all it was still like they weren’t really there. It was like watching an event that happened some time ago recorded. M opened the door and we went in.

I had never been in a proper office before and it was just like you imagined a real one, or one on television. There were green filing cabinets and a desk with this big typewriter on it. I had this notion to type my name on it like a typist with big fingernails but M saw me and said not to do it.

The older man came forward and asked what we wanted. He had grey hair and was like your uncle or someone you know well who gives you that look like he was disappointed in you but not surprised to tell the truth. M said that we come for the money and that we were serious. He said it was early on Monday morning and that there was no money yet in a voice like everybody knows that. The younger one didn’t say nothing
but just looked at us. I am sorry for the younger one. M said for them both to kneel on the floor. The older man looked at him and he said it again to kneel.

I am of the belief now that robbery was not the motive for the actions of M on that day and that he had the whole thing planned from the start. There have been questions as to the mental state of M in that period and I would like to state that there was no sign of madness from when we reached the office but that he was calm and smiling during the incidents described.

When they were kneeling on the floor with their backs to us M put his gun to the older man’s neck and I put my gun to the younger man’s neck who started to say something. I think it was a Roman Catholic prayer. This seemed to cause
displeasure
to M. He fired his gun and mine went off also. I remember nothing of the office after that except that there was more smoke from the guns than you would think and that it gave you a taste in your mouth like when you touch a battery with your tongue to see if there is still any power left in it.

We went out of the office. Downstairs we saw that the other two were shot as well. M went behind the counter and looked until he saw headlights for his car. There was much laughter and talk in the car on the way back and no mention of the money. M said that I done well but I knew what would happen if I opened my mouth. I wish to say that I have now embraced Christian values and express repugnance at my deeds and that having made this clean breast I am at ease now in Christ.

Persistent bombing began to alter the outlines of the town centre. The tallest buildings were demolished, so that it seemed as though some inscrutable intent was at work; looking towards the bay from the slopes of the Cavehill you began to detect the alien skyline of some ancient plundered city. People were displaying new forms of anxiety, and the membership of evangelical churches was increasing rapidly. There was a rise in the number of informers shot. They were abducted from their houses at night and found hooded and gagged in alleyways or on roadside verges outside the city. During the period of abduction the house of the informer was isolated by a terrible and intimate silence as though the inhabitants were dead from plague. The house was haunted by the knowledge of the victims’ difficult confessions, the
tentative
and halting descent into a narrative of betrayal. The army moved in slowly on their bodies. They were studied from a distance, the location circled by helicopters. The official
justification
for these exercises was that the area had to be checked for booby traps but there were elements of mourning involved; the careful movement of torches among trees after dusk, the distant beat of rotors, a sense in the air that instinctual patterns of loss were being exhibited.

Following Hacksaw’s confession Victor was re-arrested and charged with the O’Neill killings. Herbie was confident he could
persuade McGrath to name Victor at his trial. Victor was assigned a cell on D-wing in the Crumlin Road. Most of the other inmates knew Victor. He no longer had to project menace. He joked with them, asked about wives and girlfriends.

The prison building was a geometric expression of rigorous morality. There were tiered levels of wrought-iron catwalks, ornate routines of containment and humiliation. With its
corridors
and long perspectives it seemed a place for penitents moving in procession, chanting the mournful stanzas of their contrition.

Many of the prisoners on the wing were young and demoralized, queuing for Valium outside the pharmacy on weekdays, treasuring the plastic capsules as symbols of a secret brotherhood with tendencies towards oblivion. It was easy for Victor to assert his superiority. Within a month his cell had become the centre of the wing. He was at home in closed societies with their stringent and predictable codes of
behaviour
. At this time he felt at his most powerful. His life was a thing hedged with magic and the possibilities of renewal. Alone in the dark he listened to messages tapped on the
hot-water
pipes, signals aimed at no one in particular, circling the prison and going unheard in empty boiler rooms and roof cavities, a subdued and confidential tapping long into the night.

Once a week Victor was interviewed by Herbie. The detective made Victor curious. He gave the impression of a man at the limit of endurance, possessed of an exhausting knowledge. He questioned Victor for hours about obscure incidents: a fight outside a pub, the theft of a car, a suicide found in the Lagan. His interrogations were conducted in perplexed digressions.

‘You are in a strange position Victor.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘What does it feel like to be in the same prison as the man who is going to give evidence against you?’

‘Nobody’s giving no evidence against me.’

‘Hacksaw’s doing a pretty good imitation of somebody’s going to give evidence against you, Victor. Must be a lonely position. I saw him the other day. Blood seems to have drained from his face. Comes out of that cell like something dug from the ground.’

‘I wouldn’t take a pension to be in that fucker’s shoes.’

‘I bet you stare at him in the dining hall, sitting at a table on his own with the head down in case he meets somebody’s eyes. Do you know what sensory deprivation is? You end up floating in a tank. You can’t hear or see nothing. Nobody can stick it for more than an hour or two. They start to have hallucinations. There’s madness under the skin but you know that, Victor. That’s what I want Hacksaw to feel in his cell. I want him to have visions. Spinning bright lights when he shuts the eyes. Staring out the window at the sun till it becomes a wheel of fire in the fucking wilderness? Because that’s when I reckon he’s going to break down and name you, am I right?’

‘All I know is I feel sorry for him.’

‘How come you feel sorry for him? Is it because he’s alone? Because his family’s been ostracized by now? That they’ve got McGrath is a tout painted on their gable wall and got blankets soaking in the bath in case somebody bucks a petrol bomb through the living-room window in the middle of the night?’

‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ Victor said, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes dreamily. ‘I feel sorry for the cunt because he’s already dead.’

‘Dead’s something you’d know about Victor, am I right?’

‘You don’t catch Victor Kelly out that easy, Herbie,’ Victor said, smiling at him.

Dorcas visited. When Victor was brought into the room she was already seated at the other side of the table like some unrelenting protagonist. He could feel her studying him as he
crossed the room, alert for weight loss, signs of internal struggle, taking inventory of her son. He would sit down and light a cigarette before he spoke.

‘Well, ma,’ he’d say, ‘anything strange or startling?’

‘You don’t look yourself Victor. When will it end?’

‘Listen ma, take her easy. It’s not so bad in here. I’m doing a lot of reading and all.’

‘Victor, I wrote a rake of letters. I wrote to the police about their error. I wrote to the papers about the innocence of my son and the low state of justice in this country.’

‘You don’t have to do things like that, ma.’

‘I done it and I may as well not have done it for all they’re interested. They had this photo of the mayor at a flower show in all the papers the other day while there’s scandal all the time under their noses. It’s a case of hand in glove, Victor.’

‘I read your stars for you this morning. They said to exercise caution in financial matters this month. They said somebody close would surprise you.’

‘Meaning maybe your da will open his mouth for once and talk to me. Honest to God, Victor, you’d think the man was swore to silence on the Bible, that it was damnation to let a word escape. I should of never married him. He’s like a silent allegation of blame or deceit in the house. You’d not be as lonely in a prison cell.’

‘I’m not lonely, ma. I’ve got a lovely big blondie girl up in the cell so I have.’

‘I can’t understand that McGrath turning tout on you. If you’d seen my face when they told me it was a mask of disbelief. You never done nothing to turn his hand against you like that. Loyalty to friends is a quality in you like your mother.’

‘I got these books out of the library here, ma, that explain Hacksaw. Some people is drove to lies. I can’t explain it, like they have to make themselves important. They’re small people. They lack convictions in their life like I’ve got. They invent things and say things like they went out with some famous
woman or shot somebody when they haven’t. I started work in the hospital here and I have these conversations with the doctor about it.’

‘That’s good. Talk with a doctor. I wish you’d quit going around them clubs and all when you get out.’

‘Ma, I can’t explain it. I think deeply here. I got a job to finish. The Catholics in this town think they can just take over, the IRA and all. Walk all over you if you let them.’

‘Your da has me drove mad, Victor.’

‘Wait till I tell you something about this place, ma.’

Sooner or later during the visit their conversations began to diverge. It gave Dorcas a helpless feeling, herself talking about one thing and Victor talking about another. It was as if Victor was already back in his cell and she was back turning the key of the house which always seemed vast and echoing after her absence, a cavernous depot for the storage of marital silences.

Victor began to work in the prison pharmacy. First of all he was just pushing a trolley around, giving out prescriptions. He had a white coat and joked with the patients.

‘Here’s Doctor Victor. Got the pills to heal your ills.’

Waiting for the prescriptions to be made up he would sit in a corner of the pharmacy. It was a place that seemed replete with possibilities. There were gleaming instruments, locked drug cabinets made of green metal and rows of small
prescription
bottles. It was a place which made death and illness verifiable qualities, something measured in pipettes and remote from the human frame. It seemed possible that they could make you die in extraordinary ways here, deft and calculated modes of extinction.

The doctor in fact never spoke to Victor. He was a small man who became involved in small tasks – polishing his glasses, arranging the surface of his desk in neat formations
of records and prescriptions. This was his first act every morning. It was a fixing of the boundaries that Victor
understood
, an act of seclusion.

There were medical textbooks on a shelf below one of the drug cabinets which Victor would open at random. He was drawn to words he could not understand. Prophylaxis.
Descriptions
of states he could not imagine. Toxaemia, pyrogenesis. They seemed to him like the separate volumes of a book of transformation. There were other books there on the forms of mental illness. Victor concealed some of these under his shirt and brought them back to his cell where he kept them hidden. When he opened them at night they seemed like a description of a huge building beyond his comprehension. He had
frightening
thoughts of dimly lit vaults, miles of passageway, directions indicated by strange inscriptions. He dreamed of crypts where the unnamed case histories in the book were sunk in thousand-year sleep. Narcolepsy. His reading was slow and painful but he persisted. He admired willpower. He sat at the small table in the cell although it would have been more comfortable on the bed. The position of the body was
important
. He began to understand that reading required rigour from the body, acts of piety and self-denial. He read until his joints were stiff and his hands were cold and difficult to manipulate. He used his finger to follow the words and his lips moved to invoke each syllable. There was hidden power here, the voice raised to an incantatory pitch.

Victor wanted to get into the drug cabinets in the
dispensary
. He consulted a prisoner on the ordinary wing who was doing time for housebreaking who told him that old-fashioned safes and cabinets were much easier to force open from behind. When the doctor was doing his weekly clinic Victor moved the cabinet out from the wall to find that the back was secured by four small screws. It was a matter of seconds for him to remove the top two and bend the panel back. He reached in and removed a small jar, taking a quick glance at the contents before he slipped it into his pocket. It contained
purple and white capsules which seemed to possess the necessary colours and dimensions of the serious drug capable of producing fundamental change in the organism.

Later that night Victor examined the bottle in his cell. The drug was called dexidrine. Victor couldn’t believe it. It proved that he was lucky. Dexidrine was one of the drugs that McClure had mentioned to him. Blow your fucking brains out, he had said. Carry the head clean off you, leave you speeding out of the mind for two days. Victor held the capsule up to the light and the coloured grains inside shifted. It had a kind of internal animation, an authoritative feel in the hand. He imagined the drug rushing to his head and the emphatic glint of its crystals in the brain.

A week afterwards PO Matt McCulla was on duty in the lookout above the recreation yard. It was January and McCulla could see his breath drifting across the beam of the arc light beside him. He had his collar over his ears and his cap pulled low over his eyes. He had the universal stance of men on guard duty in watch-towers, border huts, unheated
sentry-boxes
. Men staring into pine forests and frozen wastes, watching the dark as though pledged to it.

McCulla sensed movement from the prison building behind him and turned. He saw a man lowering himself out of a
third-storey
window. A rope of knotted sheets dangled below him and he began to move slowly down the blankets, his face pressed closely against the brickwork as though it was an eroded text worthy of scrutiny. The end of the rope was short of the ground and if the man managed to drop off he would still be trapped. Escape was impossible. But McCulla realized that if the man descended another six or seven yards they would be at eye-level ten feet apart. They would be required to hold something approaching a conversation, to acknowledge each other as men who encounter each other in a wilderness. McCulla opened his mouth to shout, but he had been standing alone in the darkness for four hours and his voice seemed to have absented itself into the night, so that what came out was
hoarse and alien, something directed from the fringes of a mob, a phrase of incitement.

Victor released his grip on the wall and allowed the rope to rotate so that he was looking down on McCulla. He was feeling exultant, suspended from the roof of his known world. He could see the shipyard and the city hall, traffic in motion, lights on the slopes of the mountains and the black water of the lough where the light ceased. It seemed that he could see how the city operated, that at its heart there was a set of mechanical principles, requirements to be fulfilled, and that they were within his grasp. He had taken two capsules of dexidrine an hour earlier, feeling its effects first as a kind of feral wariness, an impeccable state of alert in which he felt capable of detecting sounds beyond the range of the human ear. This was followed by a restless desire for activity when he began to knot together the blankets and sheets from his bed then let them out of the window.

Hanging there he could see the screw’s white face below him. He felt like a piece of something icy and brilliant. He knew that if he attempted to escape he would succeed in a series of hairs-breadth calculations. He imagined it in the papers. Daring breakout. Fugitive from justice. But he knew that he had to deal with Hacksaw. McCulla watched in silence as Victor climbed back towards the window.