THE BIG READ: ‘Gun horror with loyalist terrorist gave me PTSD’

SOMETIMES all it takes is the smell of nicotine from someone’s clothes, and I tumble back through whatever internal time machine operates inside my head to find myself staring into the barrel of a gun – the mouth of the muzzle a black, hard, empty circle like the heart of a black hole.

The fingers on the hand holding the gun stink of stale cigarettes, and there’s a black rind of old hashish under the fingernails. I watch those fingers as they curl around the trigger and squeeze – the gun ready to fire straight into my face.

Psychologists call it a flashback. I call it one of my slip-away moments. I might be sitting in a restaurant and someone who has been smoking outside will walk past me. I catch the whiff of nicotine from them, unexpectedly, and I’m back in 1999.

I’m 29 again and I’m sitting in the living room of a loyalist terrorist in Northern Ireland. He chain-smokes cigarettes and joints. I smoke myself but the continual reek of tobacco is starting to make me feel sick. I’ve known this man quite some time. I’m a reporter, and covering Ireland and paramilitary violence is one of my specialities. I come from Northern Ireland but I live in Scotland and write for Scottish newspapers.

Every time I travel back to Northern Ireland to cover some murder or bombing or rioting, I meet up with a selection of paramilitary contacts so I can understand what’s going on with republican and loyalist terrorists. This man is one of these contacts.

I arrived at his house a few hours ago and we’ve been drinking. I’ve had a few, and he’s had too many. He’s also started to smoke joints, crumbling hash into Rizla papers on the table that sits between us. He’s drunk and high and he’s also got a gun on the table. The Good Friday Agreement may have been signed a year previously, supposedly bringing peace to the country, but there’s still killing.

A solicitor called Rosemary Nelson, who represented Republicans, had been murdered not long ago, and there’s a sense that the north could erupt again. That’s why I’m here.

Ostensibly, I’ve met this contact to talk about what’s going on within loyalist terrorist organisations, but I’m also interested in him. I like to write about more than just the bare facts of the news. I want to include some human dimension in my reporting, so I always try to find out what makes these killers I speak to tick. What’s a gunman like when he’s being a dad? What does a terrorist commander do when he goes shopping with his wife? These questions interest me. I tell myself that I’m trying to understand the men behind the monsters so readers can understand them too.

My contact has a son aged around eight. He loves him with the fierce passion that only a dangerous man can love their child. We’ve been talking for hours and he’s been fidgeting with his pistol – all the while cleaning it, taking it apart and putting it back together again, putting bullets into it, taking bullets out again. There are weapons all over his house. The windows are bullet-proof glass, and it would take a tank to get through the reinforced steel front and back doors.

I feel I’ve come to know this man well enough over the years to ask questions which might reveal a little more about him as a human being rather than just a gunman and terrorist. So I ask him about his child. Does he worry that the life he lives might influence his son, that his kid might grow up to be like him?

There are times when you can see violence appear in the eyes of other men. My contact slowly looks at me and his eyes are stony, they narrow – he holds my gaze, hard like a strangling grip, and there’s silence for a moment.

Then he speaks. “What did you say?” he asks – but it’s no question.