Gangster (14 page)

By the time Europol notified Carty about the MOT’s inquiry, Operation Pineapple was well under way. In less than a month, the Irish end of Gilligan’s operation had been documented, extensive reports on his financial dealings compiled and, above all, his most trusted lieutenants exposed. The squad started making life decidedly uncomfortable for Gilligan, although he didn’t know it was a co-ordinated effort.

Carty’s decision to concentrate on his finances inevitably caused his officers to visit accountants and investment brokers, a necessary move that was unheard of. ‘We had hit maybe 20 investment brokers’ and accountants’ offices. People were kind of looking at us, asking what were we doing. This sort of investigation was new. But it was what we needed to do,’ he said. And this is how the investigation progressed.

The team also utilised the information that was now flowing in from Europe. To get more concrete evidence, Carty sent Eddie Rock, a superintendent in the GNDU, with McGinn to the Operation Wedge meeting in The Hague on 18 June. The two officers returned with even more information.

Finally, after weeks of hard work, liaison meetings and sleepless nights, Carty told his crew they had enough evidence to start making arrests. At midday on Monday, 23 June 1996, the team gathered in the incident room. ‘I gave out the orders to arrest those around him, anyone who was close to him to get more evidence, to build up a stronger case,’ he recalled. ‘We had picked the interrogation teams, search teams and we were going to bring in Geraldine, Tracy and Carol Rooney. She, in particular, had a story to tell that would have opened other doors.’

The meeting lasted less than an hour. After it had finished, Carty left in the company of McNally. As far as they were concerned, Gilligan’s days were numbered.

Chapter 12

A Time to Kill

‘I thought he was only going to fire one or two shots at her, but he emptied it into her. Fair play to him.’

BRIAN MEEHAN SPEAKING TO CHARLIE BOWDEN

The problem Gilligan faced was how to stop Guerin from proceeding with the assault case. In contrast to his expectations, the threats hadn’t intimidated her to the extent that she dropped the charges or even temporarily ceased writing about crime. On the contrary, she continued writing, producing stories that would be posthumously described as her best work. Gilligan did not possess such inner strength. The prospect of incarceration in Portlaoise Prison unsettled him. He looked on the journalist as an inconceivable woman. ‘Who does she think she is?’ he asked Meehan rhetorically. That she would dare arrive at his home, ignore his threats, name him on the front page of the
Sunday Independent
, then attempt to press charges against him, he could not understand.

For the first time since his release from Portlaoise, he was running scared. He became ‘more intense’, Warren would later say. This behaviour soon turned to obsession. Like his father, Gilligan had an explosive personality that shaped his life. He would strike out at anything that threatened or annoyed him, without a second thought. There was no calming him. He became prone to mood swings. Geraldine’s harsh but tranquillising words had no effect on him. Neither had Rooney’s. He could not sleep at night, enjoy himself or relax to any great extent. The mere mention of Guerin’s name agitated him.

In March, two summonses had been delivered to Jessbrook notifying him that he was to appear before Kilcock District Court on 14 May charged with the assault. On the morning of the trial, he arrived at the court accompanied by Geraldine and a gang of young men, all clutching mobile phones that rang incessantly.

In the months that followed the attack, Guerin developed an outright animosity towards Gilligan. The Operation Pineapple team and the IRA were not the only ones inquiring into his wealth. She had made it her business to learn more about him, his criminal organisation, his henchmen and the crimes they engaged in. Outside the courthouse, she came face to face with her attacker for the first time since he assaulted her. There were no words spoken but there was a sense of tension in the air. Turley had brought his wife to the courthouse along with a colleague from the
Sunday Independent
. Gilligan could not hide his contempt and eyeballed her. Geraldine was more direct in her approach; she walked up to Guerin and told her she would not forget her. All this went unnoticed in the hustle of the court sitting.

The case was adjourned when it came up for hearing due to a legal technicality. Judge John Brophy fixed a date for mentioning the case, 28 May. Gilligan walked away from the court a free man. It was at this point that he noticed a photographer taking his picture. He despised cameras, never mind photographers armed with telephoto lenses. The photographer took only one picture as he walked away. Gilligan stared back defiantly, not knowing whether to cover his face with his hands, or pretend he was innocent and walk away smiling. The media bothered him. Where would his photograph appear? Would his business acquaintances recognise him? He felt a deep sense of rage. Apart from members of his family and a select group of acquaintances, he had never allowed anyone to point a camera in his direction. Now his photograph could appear on the front of Irish newspapers alongside articles about how he attacked Guerin, threatened to rape her son and murder her family. He had spent the last few years trying to conceal his criminal background—the convictions, robberies and links to paramilitary outfits. He considered himself a businessman whose wife ran a highly successful riding school and socialised with the high flyers of Dublin’s social scene. In truth, he was a gangster, and Jessbrook represented the proceeds of crime. Now, the house of cards he had spent years cleverly constructing was about to be exposed for what it was.

Gilligan was deadly serious when he said he was not going to allow Guerin to destroy him. At a party held after his first court appearance, he stood in a corner surrounded by former inmates of Portlaoise. One joked that he would be back in his cell soon enough for beating Guerin. Gilligan was not amused. ‘I’m not going back to prison, no matter what. That bitch is going to be sorry she ever messed with me,’ he growled. Coercion had not scared her. Threatening to rape her son appeared not to have any effect. There was only one way to stop her as far as he was concerned.

What follows in the rest of this chapter is what gardaí believe happened and what a prosecution was subsequently to allege in the Special Criminal Court in the trials of John Gilligan and Brian Meehan.

A week after his first court appearance, Warren visited Gilligan in Jessbrook. Gilligan collected him at the Spa Hotel in Lucan. During the drive, they spoke about money laundering and the enduring success of the business, which was going from strength to strength. An invitation to Jessbrook was an important occasion for Warren, still a relative newcomer to the cartel. His criminal credibility was not particularly impressive, so when the opportunity arose, he bragged that he had broken into a house and stolen a motorcycle. This aroused Gilligan’s interest.

Warren recounted how he and one of his friends had been drinking in the Speaker Connolly pub in Firhouse on the outskirts of Dublin. His friend’s name was Paul Cradden. He lived on the Corrib Road in Terenure. When they left the pub, the two headed towards Dún Laoghaire where Cradden’s employer, Ian Keith, managed a large house on Royal Terrace. Keith was a motorcycle enthusiast. His most prized possession was a Kawasaki racing bike.

‘Paul showed me where the garage was. I jumped over the wall and got into the garage. I then opened the door. He pulled a cover off the motorcycle.’ Warren examined the bike. It looked valuable. He noticed a sticker affixed to its windbreak. It read Genuine Oxford Grip. They decided to take the bike. Warren had parked his small van in a nearby lane way and the two pushed the bike into the van. ‘We didn’t know where to go with it or in fact what to do with it,’ he said. He rang a friend, Steven McGrath, who lived on St Enda’s Road in Terenure. McGrath was a hackney driver and owned a garage. ‘We gave him some story about repossessing a bike.’ They brought the stolen bike to his garage and stored it there.

After they arrived at the equestrian centre, Warren walked the land with Gilligan who gave him a guided tour of the arena and livery facilities. Workmen were installing seats in the show-jumping arena. Gilligan brought up the subject of the bike. He seemed interested in it. ‘Just keep it,’ he told Warren. ‘Don’t do anything with it, I may need it,’ he said.

John Traynor was encountering similar difficulties with Guerin. Their relationship had turned sour, if not bitterly hostile. In talking about Gilligan, the Coach had unwittingly implicated himself in the drug business, though not by design. In due time, she realised that virtually everything he had told her was lies. With Traynor, she concluded, it was impossible to distinguish between the truth and lies. Yet what seemed most dreadful to her were his sexual perversions, which she accidentally learned of. Finally seeing Traynor for what he was, she decided to write about him. She made one mistake though—she kept her line of communication with him open.

There is no doubt that she thought this was a shrewd manoeuvre. Rather than lose what was clearly a good source of information on Gilligan, she continued meeting him, but recorded each conversation using a tiny dictaphone she carried in her pocket. Traynor certainly knew the type of reprisal Gilligan’s gang had planned for Guerin and, with a degree of irony, hinted as much to her in an obscure way during their last meeting. For the first time since the two had met, Traynor warned her about Gilligan. ‘Even last week, when you were saying about Gilligan and what he’s capable of, and trying to stop me going to court, it makes me more determined. It’s the way I am,’ she told him.

He said: ‘If he never done anything, at the back of your mind, you know what he’s capable of.’

The Coach’s engagement in the narcotics trade caught Guerin by surprise. But once she had ascertained his specific role in Gilligan’s operation and the cannabis trade, he became a legitimate target for her investigations. Her mistake was to tell him about what she knew and that she intended to name him in the
Sunday Independent
. There is a suspicion that he toyed with the idea of murdering the journalist himself. The windows of her car were smashed around this time in what appeared to be an act of vandalism. Traynor, however, admitted responsibility and paid for the damage. Guerin confided that she suspected that Traynor was testing the car windows to see if they were bullet-proof. But rather than resort to violence or use intimidation, he turned to the courts.

On Thursday, 13 June, Traynor arrived at the offices of Michael E. Hanahoe on Parliament Street, a solicitors’ firm, where he spoke to Michael Hanahoe, one of the most respected solicitors practising in Dublin. That day he displayed all the hurt of an innocent man who was about to be wronged. He said Guerin had called him to say she was preparing a story for publication that would link him to the drugs trade. The article was due for publication the following Sunday, 16 June.

Traynor, who had a noteworthy ability to charm, said he was at the end of his tether with Guerin. She had threatened and tried to cajole him—legal redress was his only solution. The lawyer listened attentively and in proper fashion advised an injunction. Traynor accepted his opinion and told him to do whatever was necessary. Hanahoe picked up the phone, called the law library and arranged a consultation.

Traynor explained his predicament once more. What he told his lawyers was a mixture of lies and half-truths. For obvious reasons, he denied any association with the ‘narcotics trade’ as he called it. He concocted a story about how Guerin had, two weeks earlier, lunched with him in the Greyhound bar in Harold’s Cross in Dublin. Minutes into the meeting, he said, Guerin announced that her editor had received a Garda report together with a photograph from a Garda file. The photograph was of him. The report, she suggested, linked him to Thomas Mullen and another criminal, two heroin traffickers from Dublin, though he didn’t mention either by name. ‘This confidential report was never produced to me, nor was it ever offered to me, nor was it ever subsequently forwarded to me at any stage by her, or by anybody,’ he said. By that afternoon, he had secured the injunction impeding the publication. Traynor kept Gilligan fully briefed on his case, which the latter viewed as a good way of disseminating black propaganda against Guerin. Anything to damage her reputation would do.

While Guerin was a brilliant journalist in many ways, she was ignorant of the criminal psyche. She did not understand the danger Traynor represented, or his ability to double-cross. The likelihood of Gilligan mounting an attack had crossed her mind, but she saw her own well-founded fears as a weakness in herself. This was her first mistake. Her second oversight was that during one of her many casual conversations with Traynor she told him she was due before Naas District Court at 11 a.m. on 26 June to be judged on a speeding offence.

One of Gilligan’s inherent character flaws was a preference for the company of fools. He and Meehan discussed shooting the journalist, yet neither could see the inevitable chain reaction it would cause. On the contrary, Meehan agreed with Gilligan’s general outlook—he too reckoned Guerin had to go. Meehan steadfastly agreed with Gilligan’s thwarted view of his predicament. He possessed neither conscience nor intelligence. A more ambitious criminal would have seen Gilligan’s return to jail as something of a probability rather than a possibility, and as an opportunity for him to take control without sparking off a bloody feud. Whether it was lack of self-confidence or devotion to his boss, he stood firm behind Gilligan, believing the business would certainly fall apart if the boss was jailed for the assault. This was the worst scenario imaginable for Meehan. Without Gilligan to organise regular cannabis deliveries from Holland, he saw his career as effectively finished. This encouraged Meehan, who saw no distinction between attempting to murder Foley and assassinating one of Ireland’s best-known public figures. On the contrary, he thought such an act would heighten his standing in the underworld. He had not the slightest comprehension of the consequences his actions would have, no matter which way he rationalised the situation. Gilligan also had a passionate hatred for Guerin. He despised what she stood for; his business was no business of anyone else’s. This was his rationale.

On 19 June, Gilligan rang Warren asking whether he had possession of the stolen motorcycle. ‘Do you still have it?’ he enquired of the bike. Warren confirmed he did. ‘Is it where anyone would see our faces? I have Brian Meehan with me.’

Warren sensed the urgency in his voice. He said the bike was in his friend’s garage at the rear of St Enda’s Road. ‘No one will be around, you can have a look,’ he promised. They arranged to meet in the car park of the Terenure House.

Thirty minutes later, the two gangsters arrived. Warren sat in Gilligan’s car and directed them to the garage. He looked over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. They pulled up outside the garage and scuttled in. Parked inside was the powerful-looking Kawasaki.

Working like a mechanic, Meehan commenced an examination of the bike, methodically checking its suspension, brakes, indicators and balance. He saw the keyhole on the fuel tank had been drilled to allow a refuel. The back indicator lights were also broken. Some farings were missing. Should the bike break down, it would mean certain trouble.

Warren couldn’t help but wonder why Gilligan was on edge. His body language was that of a man possessed. Never before had the little man seemed so distracted. But the months Warren had spent working under Gilligan’s tutelage had given him an unnatural ability to keep his mouth shut and not to ask questions that he didn’t want to know the answers to.

Happy with his cursory examination, Meehan said the bike would do. Gilligan then ordered Warren to fit it out with new plates and indicators. They left in Gilligan’s car. He offered to drop Warren back to the Terenure House where he had left his car. Gilligan drove, Meehan sat in the front passenger seat and Warren sat in the back. Then, out of the blue, Gilligan turned to Warren and in a matter-of-fact way said: ‘I have been told not to trust you, but I will.’