Captain Robert Nairac was a Grenadier Guards officer serving in Northern Ireland when on 14 May 1977 he was abducted and murdered by the Provisional IRA. Mystery surrounding the circumstances of his abduction and the fact that his body has never been found have provoked a minor literary industry. This must be the most comprehensive account yet.
Nairac was serving in South Armagh as a liaison officer between the army, the SAS and police Special Branch. He was not a member of the SAS but had vastly more freedom of action than most soldiers, able to travel where and when he chose in civilian clothes with a pistol under his left armpit. On the evening of 14 May he informed a superior officer that he was going to the Three Steps Inn at Dumintree, a well-known Republican haunt where there was live music. There, he seems to have pretended to be a sympathiser from Belfast (he had a good ear for accents and could pass as Irish), even getting on stage and singing Republican songs with the band.
However, he aroused suspicions, at least in part because, despite it being a warm night, he kept his jacket on while everyone else was in shirtsleeves; if he had taken it off he would have exposed his 9mm Browning army issue pistol. He was either followed or lured outside where, during a struggle, his pistol was discovered. He was an Oxford boxing blue and there was a significant fight — teeth, hair and blood were later found — before his abductors got him into a car. He was driven across the border where he was brutally beaten and interrogated. He twice attempted to escape and was eventually shot, without having given away any information.
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