But for Denis and Jean Carville, the memory of what happened on that Friday will haunt them
to the end of their lives. For it was on that day that the youngest of their three children, also called
Denis, went out for the evening, never to return. The nineteen-year-old youth had come home
from work, had tea with his family and then, after resting for a few hours, had gone out to enjoy
the weekend. He set off in the white Ford Fiesta his father had bought him, picked up his girlfriend
who lived nearby and drove for a few miles to a local beauty spot, popular with courting
couples.Denis was a happy young man. He had been born and raised in the small town of Lurgan
in County Armagh, where he still lived with his parents and his sister Una. His only brother,
Michael, had married and moved to live nearby. The Carville home was a modest, pebble-dashed
house across the street from their local Catholic church. Denis had trained as a carpenter and was
employed as a joiner by a local building firm. He enjoyed his weekends, which were spent on his
hobby, fixing and tinkering with his car, and in the company of his girlfriend Lynn Hughes, whom
he planned to marry before long.When Denis parked his car at the beauty spot on the shores of
Lough Neagh, he was totally unaware that he had driven into the middle of a murder plot that had
been drawn up just one week earlier by a gang of Ulster
Loyalists, a group incensed by the Provisional IRAÕs
terror campaign and determined to resist any move towards the creation of a united Ireland. Denis
did not realise he was placing himself in danger because he had no interest in politics and no
involvement in the sectarian strife that had raged in his native land from before he was born. He
and his mother had just returned from an autumn holiday in Spain and, therefore, Denis would
probably not have known that two weeks earlier, while he had been abroad, another local youth
and his girlfriend had also chosen to park their car at the very same beauty spot. Colin
McCullough, a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment, had been shot dead by an IRA gunman as
he sat talking to his girlfriend in their car.A week after that murder and a week before Denis
parked his car close to where it had occurred, a group of Loyalists had gathered in a Lurgan pub,
the Dolphin Bar, to plot their revenge. They decided to send a chilling message to the IRA. An
eye for an eye; a Catholic youth for a Protestant youth; a tit-for-tat retaliation against any Catholic
youth whom they might find at the beauty spot over the coming weekend. The Loyalists agreed
that the planned murder would be carried out by one of their most experienced killers, Billy
Wright, whose notoriety as a Loyalist assassin had already won him the nickname, ÒKing Rat.Ó
As the conspirators departed from their meeting on Saturday, September 29th 1990, they knew it
was likely that, one week later, local news bulletins would be reporting that vengeance for Colin
McCulloughÕ s murder had been visited on the Catholics of Lurgan. The conspirators could feel confident
because they were, in fact, key members of a larger organisation, which had been running a secret
campaign of political assassination for some time, directed mainly against IRA terrorists and
Republican activists. They were part of an unprecedented Loyalist coalition which had formed in
response to the IRAÕs twenty-year terror campaign and to a growing fear among UlsterÕs one
million Protestants that the British Government could not be trusted to prevent further moves
towards the creation of a united Ireland. This coalition had come together in the Ulster Loyalist
Central Co-ordinating CommitteeÑÒThe CommitteeÓÑwhich had a membership of around sixty
people, drawn from the business community, the professions, Loyalist paramilitary groups such as
the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Freedom Fighters and, most significantly, from the
higher ranks of the locally recruited security forces, the Ulster Defence Regiment [UDR] and the
Royal Ulster Constabulary [RUC]. This secret terrorist organisation, whose existence in October
1990 was totally unknown to the public in Britain and Ireland, had already sanctioned and
organised many murders. It was the brainchild of William ÒBillyÓ Abernethy, a manager in the
Head Office in Belfast of the National Westminster BankÕs subsidiary in Northern Ireland, the
Ulster Bank. Abernethy combined this respectable position within the Belfast business community
with an apparently selfless commitment to his community, through his past part-time membership
of the local police force, the RUC. Abernethy had a strong personal motive for creating a new
Loyalist organisation to wage war on the IRA. His younger brother Colin, an uncompromising advocate
of the Loyalist cause, had
been the victim of a particularly cold-blooded IRA assassination in 1988. Shortly after his
brotherÕs murder, Abernethy had decided that the best way to deal with the Republican menace
was to unite the forces of the entire Loyalist family; he set his new Loyalist coalition, those who
had formed the Committee, the task of eliminating IRA activists and Republicans. The Committee
was given the job of sanctioning and organising assassinations based on accurate intelligence and
effective logistical support provided by high-ranking RUC and UDR officers devoted to the
Loyalist cause.The Committee had suddenly emerged in mid-1989 as the most important Loyalist
terror grouping because it was able to call on the active support of these senior police officers
within the RUC and UDR. Many members of the local security forces had grown increasingly
disillusioned with the British GovernmentÕs policy towards Northern Ireland and with what they
saw as a half-hearted effort to defeat the IRA. These disaffected RUC and UDR officers had
formed themselves into another unknown and illegal body within the security services, called the
ÒInner Force.Ó Though the disgruntled and subversive officers continued to wear the uniform of
the British Crown and to take the QueenÕs shilling, they routinely supplied official intelligence
information to AbernethyÕs terrorist committee so that the Loyalists could identify and eliminate
those deemed suitable targets for their assassination campaign.Abernethy had forged a particularly
close relationship with one of the most senior officers in the RUC, a former Head of Special
Branch and an Assistant Chief Constable, Trevor Forbes OBE. ForbesÑthe effective head of the 
unofficial Inner ForceÑhad emerged in the 1980s as the
RUCÕs most controversial officer because his shoot-to 
kill policy had put him at the centre of the notorious Stalker Affair. Although he had
succeeded in sabotaging an official investigation by a team of English detectives under John
Stalker, he had subsequently been Òlet goÓ from the RUC and had decided to occupy himself in
retirement by continuing his war against the IRA in an entirely unofficial but equally effective
manner. ForbesÕs access to high-level RUC intelligence and his intimate knowledge of police
operating procedures, acquired over a life-time career with the RUC, enabled AbernethyÕs
Committee to function smoothly. Thanks largely to Forbes and the Inner Force, the Loyalist death
squads were able to remove their targets with ruthless efficiency and to do so without any serious
risk of detection. Naturally, Forbes was careful to avoid being seen in the company of the Loyalist
paramilitaries who carried out the killings. He never attended the meetings where the logistical
details on specific attacks were discussed and settled. So he did not attend the meeting in the
Dolphin Bar in Lurgan on Saturday, September 29th 1990 when the conspirators reviewed the
crucially important intelligence information received from the Inner Force about police deployment
in Lurgan over the coming weekend. He left the planning of the forthcoming murder to his friend
Billy Abernethy and other Committee members, including the chosen assassin, King Rat.And so it
came about that, exactly one week after the sub-committee meeting in the Dolphin Bar, two
on-duty RUC police officers belonging to the Inner Force in Lurgan began, on the night of Friday,
October 5th 1990, to search for a Catholic youth who 
would satisfy the designated criteria for the planned assassination. The officers
drove to the beauty spot and began to check car number plates in an effort to establish the
identities of the drivers parked on the lough shore. After a time, they selected their intended
victim, who was sitting in a parked car registered to someone living in a Catholic area of Lurgan.
Satisfied that they had found a suitable target, someone who met all the criteria that had been
explained to them by their Inner Force superiors, the two RUC men then drove the short distance
to the car park of the Silverwood Hotel on the outskirts of Lurgan, where King Rat was awaiting
their arrival. They guided the gunman back to the beauty spot and pointed out the car in which
Denis and his girlfriend were sitting. King Rat, his face covered with a mask, walked up to the car,
tapped the window with the barrel of his gun and demanded identification from Denis. After the
frightened youth had produced his driving licence the gunman, careful to avoid any mistake, sought
confirmation of the youthÕs religious affiliation by asking him to provide the name of his priest.
Once Denis had confirmed that he was a Catholic, King Rat told him to turn his head away and to
look out the front window of the car. Then, without uttering another word, the gunman fired a
bullet through the back of the young manÕs head. Denis died instantly. Lynn Hughes, the horrified
and terrified girlfriend, now experienced what Colin McCulloughÕs girlfriend had suffered after
the IRA murder two weeks before. Lynn, shocked and distraught, fled from the scen 
e and kept running until she reached a farmhouse where she reported what had happened. By this
time, the two police officers had guided King Rat out of the murder area and helped him make
good his escape. Then, their mission completed, the RUC men went back on duty.Shortly after
the murder, the dead youth's parents were roused from their bed to learn the terrible news. In
the days that followed, the killing was universally condemned. A photograph of the smiling
innocent boy, taken at his brothers wedding not long before, was flashed on television screens
around the world. For a brief moment the name, Denis Carville, encapsulated the primitive and
hate-filled conflict that had lasted so long and inflicted so much misery on so many. After the
funeral, which was watched by the gloating assassin, attention quickly moved on to a fresh atrocity
and the Carville family was left alone to grieve for the son they had lost. Although seven years
have passed since the murder, the Royal Ulster Constabulary has neither arrested nor charged
anyone with the crime. Officially, the case remains open and under investigation. Yet, long before
his retirement in December 1996, the then RUC Chief Constable Sir Hugh Annesley and other
senior officers were informed that Denis Carville was murdered by King Rat, Billy Wright, at the
behest of Ulster Bank manager Billy Abernethy and his Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating
Committee.In October 1991, just a year after the killingÑtwo high-ranking RUC detectives were
handed a dossier containing the first-hand testimony of a member of the murder conspiracy,
someone who had been present when the full Committee had met, shortly after the murder, to
review how the assassination had been carried out. This testimony revealed that Billy Abernethy,
Billy Wright and other Committee members had met in the
Dolphin Bar, where they had initiated the sequence of events which led to
Denis CarvilleÕs murder a week later. From the day the dossier was given to the RUC by
Britains Channel 4 Television, October 7th 1991, the RUC Chief Constable and his most senior
officers have known the identities of those responsible for the Loyalist assassination campaign
which, in 1989, 1990 and 1991, ended the lives of many Republicans and Catholics in Northern
Ireland. The dossier contained the names of nineteen key members of AbernethyÕs Committee,
including those of the former RUC Assistant Chief Constable Trevor Forbes OBE, a prominent
Belfast solicitor, an apparently respectable Presbyterian Minister and the richest car dealer in the
province. Instead of arresting, interrogating and charging these murder conspirators, the RUC
allowed them to remain at liberty and to continue their murder campaign. Why? For what reason
did the RUCÕs Chief Constable disregard the confession of one of the murder conspirators?
Why did he allow the RUC to suppress the truth about collusion between members of his police
force and Loyalist terrorists? Why did the British Conservative Government, which also received
a copy of the Channel 4 dossier on AbernethyÕs Committee, assist the RUC in containing the
scandal? And how many more innocent Catholics in Northern Ireland were subsequently
murdered by Loyalist death squads as a result of the failure to arrest those involved? This book
will answer these questions by telling, for the first time, the full story of collusion between the
British security forces and the Loyalist death squads, between the RUC and the secret terrorist body 
which organised the assassination of numerous Catholics
and Republicans in Northern Ireland between 1989 and 
1996Ñ the Committee.