Gangster by John Mooney Read Free Book Online Page A

captors were going to murder him—shoot him through the side of his head to make sure he died. He sat with an expressionless look on his face. It seemed unthinkable that the Provisional IRA would kill him now. He probably contemplated an escape. He could run, maybe overpower one or two of his abductors and head off into the night. He figured there were about four of them and possibly two more outside keeping watch. What if he made a run for it? He probably pictured the escape route in his mind and thought about how long it would take him to get to a safe house. But he knew they would catch up with him; if not on that night, it would be some other when he least expected it. That was the way the IRA worked. There was no escaping them; they would catch him eventually. Gilligan likened them to birds of prey. They moved silently above, occasionally plunging on unsuspecting prey. If they didn’t kill, they would make demands that had to be met. No criminal ever stood up to them because they had strength in numbers, and if you took on one, you took on them all. When people working the streets talked about the army, they talked about the IRA.
    Gilligan could never deal with the ‘politicos’, as he called them. The IRA did what they did out of belief; his only belief was in financial rewards. He had no interest in their war and hated the way they threw their weight around. [1]
    Although he was not the enemy, as in some British soldier or Special Branch detective, he knew he was in danger, having overstepped the mark. His kidnappers had repeated to him what they wanted over and over again, but he refused to give in, declaring they would have to kill him because they were not getting what they wanted. Now his captors were thinking about doing just that. Shooting him dead for IR£77 million worth of stolen bearer bonds.
    Gilligan was resolute; the bonds were worth dying for. He was about to find out whether the IRA felt the same. For a criminal protagonist like Gilligan, republicanism meant nothing; the IRA was merely another organisation he and his ilk had to deal with occasionally. Years before, he had tried to ingratiate himself with the leaders of the Provisionals’ Dublin Brigade by allowing an old garage he owned in the Crumlin area of Dublin to be used for storing stolen vehicles, weapons and explosives.
    Inside Gilligan’s garage, the cars stolen by the IRA would be prepared for use in a bombing, robbery or assassination. The vehicles would have false registration plates fitted along with industrial shock absorbers to conceal the weight of the explosives or mortars hidden in their boots. The arrangement worked well until Gilligan started to tell anyone who crossed his path that he was an IRA sympathiser whose garage was being used for the cause. He had good reason to let this be known publicly. His adversaries would be far less likely to cross him if he had strong IRA connections. But the IRA had other ideas—once they heard about his loose talk, they were gone. What past favours he had done for the Provisionals were irrelevant now. They wanted the bonds.

    On 2 May 1990 at 9.30 a.m., John Goddard, a 58-year-old messenger with the financial brokerage Sheppard’s, was taking his usual route along King William Street in London’s financial district. He had travelled the route many times previously with no security problems, delivering certificates of deposits and treasury bills to the financial houses.
    On that particular morning, Goddard was carrying 301 bearer bonds worth IR£292 million in his satchel. These were in bearer form and as good as cash to anyone in possession of them. There was nothing unusual in Goddard’s satchel. Every day London’s financial houses borrowed and loaned money using certificates of deposits, or CDs and treasury bills used by the Government—bearer bonds. He suspected nothing when he saw a young black youth approach him on the street, until he produced a knife and demanded he hand over