Kevin Myers: There are two things to remember about Michael Stone, the loyalist murderer now touting his autobiography everywhere: one, that he has three homes, and two, he says he used to smear his bullets with garlic purée, as taught him by his mentor, Tommy Herron. The garlic causes blood poisoning, you see, and kills the victims in seconds.
Yes indeed, Tommy Herron, that epicurean terrorist. Under his influence, in 1970s East Belfast, garlic purée was all the rage amongst the UDA. The UVF, however, favoured tumeric; and the Red Hand Commandoes preferred truffle oil, though if necessary, asparagus and Parma ham would do. The Woodvale Defence Association believed that essence of oyster lightly flavoured with balsamic vinegar and a hint of coriander, was even more effective on your bullets.
Look, I haven't read Michael Stone's book, and I won't, until I get a free copy; the man already has three homes, and I see absolutely no reason why I should help him buy a fourth. He is a killer; and like a lot of killers a fantasist, and, of course, in the salon-circuit he is all the rage: Michael Stone writer, Michael Stone artist, Michael Stone dedicated loyalist assassin who only targeted republican terrorists.
So much bilge. Unlike most of the people gushing over the Stone biography I knew Tommy Herron, and he was an illiterate, brutal thug. He once alleged (purely fancifully) how a loyalist had been run over by a British army personnel carrier. The poor wee Protestant had been decapitulated, he said.
It was Tommy Herron, declared Michael Stone in one interview, who revealed his killing talent by taking the 16-year old Stone to a quarry and letting him play with his (Herron's) Alsatian: and then Herron gave the boy a .22 pistol and ordered him to shoot the dog. Stone obliged, shielding his face with his hand in order to prevent any doggy brain splattering over him.
This prompts just one question. Just how many dogs did Tommy Herron have? Because I've heard this story so many, many times about so many UDA killers. Poor Mrs Herron must have been run off her feet raising wee puppies on which Tommy could test the mettle of his young volunteers.
- Ach, no, Tommy, no, not this un here, he's sweet so he is.
- Sorry, love. We've all got to discombulate for Ulsturr.
- Aye, Tommy I suppose you're right there.
- Discombulate and nimbulise and mebbe even disconfalgrationise.
(It says something about the criminal British security policies of the time that Herron, a serial killer - of Catholics, certainly: of canines, I'm less sure - was licensed to carry a handgun).
Tommy Herron was murdered by fellow-loyalists in 1973. Another eleven years passed before Michael Stone says he did his first killing, and his career of murder then consisted only of IRA terrorists: though he doesn't say whether he stuck to Herron's preferred method of death by garlic, or whether he had graduated onto aniseed, nutmeg or maybe tamarind, for that certain sub-continental touch.
So: are we to believe this dedicated loyalist killed nobody at all during the high noon of a young man's killing potential, his late teens and early twenties: and once he'd started, he only killed terrorists? I see. And the UDA, which specialised in the indiscriminate murder of Catholics, apparently not merely started his interest in haute cuisine terrorism, but also - uniquely - allowed him to pick and choose which Catholics he would kill? Ah yes: very likely.
What do we actually know about Michael Stone? That he is a dedicated killer? Certainly. But more than that, he inhabits some world of his own imagination, which conjures garlic purée as magic-potion ju-ju killer into the grubby terraces of East Belfast 30 years ago. That imagination also enables him to be a successful painter. And now he's promoting his book on the chat-show circuit, wowing witless interviewers who believe every word of his mumbo-jumbo fantasising.
But most significant of all, he is the owner of three homes: one in Northern Ireland, one in the English midlands, and one in northern France. This one more than the going norm: most ex-terrorists just have the one holiday home, usually on the Ards peninsular, or in Donegal. To have three homes looks a trifle indulgent, but further proof that in Peace Process land, the wages of sin are property taxes, housekeepers and dog-minders, not least to mind the dog from its owner..
Victims don't write books; victim's families don't write books. Just terrorists. The literary model for the killer-as-writer was Ernie O'Malley. A fantasist like Stone, he wrote an almost lyrical account of the murder of three captured British officers in 1921 in Fethard. He too oozed the cant of the artist-killer, flaunting the exquisite sensitivity of the terrorist unflinchingly attending to a regrettable historical necessity: poor, creative me.
Of course, it's better that people write rather than shoot: but only to a point. The books that fed the moral appetite of the IRA for killing in the 1970s were the memoirs of O'Malley, Barry, and Breen from 1919-22, all reeking with a bumptious pride and a maudlin (though bogus) regret.
They served as a vital testament that authorised another generation to kill as they had done: and are the memoirs of today going to have a similarly evil effect tomorrow?