‘The only thing I know is that I’m not an informer.’ Yet as soon as the book was published, Bradley’s North Belfast neighbourhood was tagged with graffiti identifying him as a tout. ‘I’m just telling my story,’ he protested, insisting that he only wanted to ‘put on record the truth of life in the IRA’. Eventually Bradley was forced to flee Belfast, seeking exile in Dublin. Ostracised and in poor health, he drove one day to a car park beside a Norman castle on Belfast Lough and took his own life.
