Anatomy of a Killing: Life and Death on a Divided Island by Ian Cobain

Author:Ian Cobain [Ian Cobain]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Granta Books
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Glen dived through a thorn hedge, cleared his pistol and took stock. He could see men moving around near the filling station and pointing at the hedge. His boiler suit was covered in blood, and he was bleeding from his mouth: it later transpired that the impact of the shot against his body armour had damaged his left lung. He assumed that no local person would have reported the shooting to the police, and that the gunmen would have an opportunity to make a second attempt on his life. ‘I had never been shot before and was alone and wounded in this Republican area with the nearest haven of safety the Unionist village of Coagh, five miles away.’

Behind the cover of hedgerows, Glen made his way to a bungalow about three hundred and fifty yards away. He slipped in through the unlocked back door and checked out each room, finding a large-scale map of the area pinned to the wall in one bedroom. ‘Luckily for me, the bungalow had a telephone.’ He dialled 999 and asked for the police. The operator initially assumed the call was a hoax, intended to draw officers into an ambush. ‘I told the police operator my name and that I was a part-time lance corporal with G Company, 8 UDR, based in Cookstown. I also told them that my civilian job was a plumber for the Housing Executive and I had been shot and wounded twice and needed help and medical attention.’5

Another who survived a close-quarter assassination attempt was Brian McKee, the former soldier turned RUC constable. Brian was the owner of the red 1750 Allegro whose registration number had been noted by Harry early in 1978 as he waited at the bus stop near the local police barracks. ‘We knew the driver was a peeler,’ says Harry, using the slang term for a police officer. ‘We decided to do an operation.’

Brian was one of the many policemen who lived in Lisburn and viewed it as a safe place. ‘Lisburn was a garrison town,’ he says.

One morning, running early on his drive from Lisburn to west Belfast, Brian decided that instead of calling in to one of the army bases where he regularly liaised with units on tour in the area, he would drive into the police barracks at Andersonstown to see if there was any post waiting for him. ‘I decided this on the spur of the moment: it wasn’t a planned thing, it was a last-minute thing. It was a normal day.’

At the same time, Harry and another member of his ASU were requisitioning a black taxi, which they drove to the top of the Falls Road. Harry went to the rear of a petrol station where he had hidden some traffic cones that he had taken the night before from roadworks on the Glen Road, one of the area’s main thoroughfares. The two men then laid the cones out on the Falls Road, to force traffic entering the city into a single file.

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