Dissident loyalist figures in the Portadown area went to ground shortly after the murder of Richard Jameson on Monday evening, according to well-placed sources. Politicians and clergymen called for no retaliation, but the fear and the expectation were that these appeals would go unheeded.
Mr Jameson (46), a businessman who security and loyalist sources say was the UVF commander in Portadown, Co Armagh, was shot several times around 6.30 p.m. as he parked his car at his home on the Derrylettiff Road, a country area about five miles from Portadown.
A lone gunman approached the passenger side of the vehicle and fired eight shots from a handgun. Mr Jameson, a married man with three children, was struck four times. He was pronounced dead on admission to hospital.
The gunman escaped in a car driven, it is understood, by an accomplice. The murder prompted a wave of condemnation and in particular caused intense anger among members of the UVF, which is currently on ceasefire.
UVF and security force insiders believe the killing was the work of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), which claims to be on ceasefire.
The North's First Minister and local MP, Mr David Trimble, said he wanted to discourage speculation about the murder because it only served to heighten tension in the area. However, senior loyalists said such comments were academic and futile.
A Progressive Unionist Party source said it would be a waste of time for the PUP, the political wing of the UVF, to urge the UVF not to respond. "We have only so many cards we can use with the UVF. Because of the calibre of the man, there would be absolutely no point in us asking them to hold their hand. It wouldn't do any good," he said.
He realised that were the UVF to break its ceasefire, it would pose major difficulties for the PUP, "but we don't have influence here. Politics doesn't come into the equation. It's beyond that."
A UVF associate put it more chillingly. "These people have bitten off more than they can chew. The UVF will make sure that nobody else attacks any of their members," he said. "And this won't be a case of tit-for-tat. The people who did this will be wiped out completely."
Whoever killed Mr Jameson must have known that they were setting in train the potential for a very divisive inter-loyalist feud.
His family have said he was not a UVF leader, but security and loyalist sources said not only was he commander of the organisation in Portadown but he was a senior figure in the central UVF structure.
A UVF source said Mr Jameson was a man who believed in the power of dialogue. He said he was totally opposed to drug-dealing, and this may have been the motive behind his murder. "This is not about turf wars [between the UVF and LVF]. It's about not giving in to a bunch of gangsters and drug-dealers," he added.
Mr David Ervine and Mr Billy Hutchinson of the PUP said LVF drug-dealers killed Mr Jameson. Mr Ervine said he was murdered by "nefarious forces masquerading as loyalists".
Tensions between the UVF and LVF have been at breaking point for several months, despite some failed attempts at mediation in which Mr Jameson was involved.
In the past six months the UVF, after a number of incidents, recovered loyalist paramilitary control in Portadown from the LVF, which was weakened by the murder of its leader, Billy Wright, and the arrest of a number of its leading members.
The UVF made a concerted and successful attempt to regroup, which caused friction in Portadown. Tensions boiled over on December 27th when UVF and LVF members were in a brawl at Portadown Football Social Club, in which Mr Jameson and 11 others were injured.
Loyalist insiders believe that those who ordered and carried out Mr Jameson's murder came from outside Portadown, although they may originally have been based in the town. After the UVF regained the upper hand in the town, the remaining senior LVF figures moved out of the area to places such as Antrim, Ballymena, Dungannon, Cooks town and Armagh, they said.
There is suspicion that Mr Jameson's killers may be part of a hardened gang established some years ago by Wright and one of his senior lieutenants, which is now based outside Portadown.
Some informed observers, while acknowledging that the UVF was again the dominant loyalist paramilitary force in mid-Ulster, questioned whether it could eradicate the remaining LVF organisation, as it is threatening.
As one source said, "The UVF said the same when Billy Wright broke ranks, but they couldn't deal with him". He conceded that since then the LVF was much depleted, "but there are still some hard men there", he added.
In the meantime the remaining LVF members in Portadown, most of them low-level, have taken extra security precautions while those living elsewhere will also be on their guard. There is considerable fear and tension in the town.
Notwithstanding the numerous appeals for calm and no reprisals there is a growing sense of inevitability that this feud will escalate. "There will be no knee-jerk reaction to the murder, but there's no doubting there will be a reaction," said one informed loyalist.