Shoot to Kill (1990 film)

Part One

Northern Ireland, 1982. A surveillance team, tipped off by an informant, tracks a trailerload of improvised explosives to an isolated barn. During the night the barn is searched, and a listening device is placed in it, but the signal is erratic. A battery is stolen from a dumper truck on a construction site. Although the area has nominally been put off-limits by Special Branch, a car with three uniformed police is cleared to investigate. RUC Chief Constable Sir John Hermon is preaching to a school assembly nearby while the car approaches the site on the Kinnego embankment. His text includes the injunction to "render not evil for evil". As he finishes, the car is wrecked and blasted into the air by an enormous bomb − the explosives from the hayshed. In police cells, the informant is roughly hauled from a group with whom he has been picked up. But in the privacy of an interview room the mood is quite different. He holds out for £5,000 to name the men who set the bomb.
The RUC's Special Support Unit undergoes practice training for a hostage release, briefed to use "speed, firepower and aggression". Constable Robinson goes in, but it is a dummy hostage he shoots. The IRA informant, who has named Eugene Toman, Sean Burns and Martin McCauley as the perpetrators of the Kinnego bombing, picks out a man to Toman and Burns, photographed by a surveillance operative. They are going to try to kill this man, an RUC reservist. The special support unit are briefed. The unit are to set up a roadblock when they get the signal from the surveillance group, and use what they have learnt to stop these men. After a long surveillance, the team are stood down − just as Toman and Burns leave the house for their car. They chase the car and open fire; but when the car is later examined, its occupants all dead, they are found to be unarmed − and the driver is not McCauley, it is Gervaise McKerr. A uniformed CID detective turns up, but is told to go away and get a cup of tea; the support unit have all been sent away, he can interview them tomorrow. At RUC headquarters, Sir John fixes a line with senior officers: they must conceal the existence of the source, so they will say there was a routine roadblock at which an officer was injured; this is given to the media. Meanwhile, at the SSU barracks, DCI Flanagan sorts out what they will say has happened with his team. They will say they saw flashes from the car; they assumed they were under attack; so they returned fire. This is what Constable Brannigan tells the CID officer the next morning, denying that he fired any shots after the car had stopped.
The informant leaves Special Branch a message to expect another delivery at the hayshed. At the hayshed he meets Michael Tighe, a local who is there to feed the owner's dogs. Later a surveillance operative spots Martin McCauley in town; McCauley offers Tighe a ride on his bike. They go to the hayshed, where McCauley calls Tighe into the barn to look at some old rifles that he has spotted. The listening device operator informs DCI Flanagan, who gives the order to "clear the barn". The dogs outside bark, alerting the men, and then a track of bullet holes cuts across the door, and Tighe is hit. The SSU burst in, as the bugging operator listens, and warn McCauley to drop his weapons. The reels of the tape-recorder turn as an SSU man discusses whether to finish the wounded McCauley off. His colleagues counsel not: it is too open. But there is no ammunition, and there are no explosives. Tighe's house is raided, but the police find nothing. As they leave, they tell his parents that he drew a gun at a roadblock; the police had to kill him. At the barracks, the SSU men listen to a television news report: on a routine patrol, they had seen a gunman entering the barn, and heard the sound of a rifle being cocked. Entering the barn, there had been a man standing on a hay bale pointing a rifle in their direction. They had shouted two sets of warning, then opened fire. "This year's Nobel Prize for fiction", quips one of the SSU. In hospital McCauley listens to a television report of Tighe's funeral, which emphasises Tighe's lack of paramilitary links; McCauley is charged with possession of firearms and conspiracy to murder.
A senior officer carpets DCI Flanagan and his Detective Inspector for the failures of the SSU, culminating in their having "topped the only Taig in County Down with no connection to the paramilitaries". Flanagan thinks he can rectify the situation. He is told that those on high "won't wear it". Flanagan suggests they may be able to get hold of Dominic McGlinchey. The SSU is briefed. McGlinchey, head of the INLA is public enemy number one. An informer has suggested to two INLA men, Roddy Carroll and Seamus Grew that they cross the border and bring over McGlinchey "for some action". Their car will be tailed by Armagh Special Branch as it goes south of the border, with the SSU standing off close by − without being spotted by the Garda. Nobody is to touch it until it is stopped at a roadblock in the north. The SSU will be backing up the army, who will be handling surveillance. But the tail is held up going south at the border crossing and loses its target. That night an SSU car looking out for Carroll and Grew on the southern side of the border is spotted by the Garda; one of the SSU men telephones in from a call box to say he will be going back north, when Grew also comes to use the telephone box. The SSU pair hurry back to the north and switch cars, but are unable to confirm how many are in the target car. The Detective Inspector controlling the operation gives orders to the team to "crash out" the surveillance and get to their positions. But Constable Robinson is unable to find the checkpoint site, until he crashes his car into the back of an Army Land Rover. As he and the soldiers assess the situation, the suspect car drives through. He and his colleague are picked up by a second SSU car, and they catch up and overtake the target car, forcing it to a stop. The SSU open fire with their handguns, pockmarking the doors of the car with bullet holes. Robinson opens the door and shoots the driver several times. But there is no sign of McGlinchey; and Grew and Carroll were unarmed, with no sign of any weapons.
Back at barracks, Flanagan debriefs Robinson. Flanagan tells him that they were on a routine security patrol; they received a radio message to stop the suspect car, which had crashed through a checkpoint injuring an officer. They drove alongside the other car, and he had waved his cap out of the window to signal it to stop. Robinson protests that this is not what happened. But Flanagan tells him it is a question of national security, and he is bound by the Official Secrets Act: "The law requires that you say what I tell you to say." Meanwhile, an officer is made to roll on the ground by the roadside to establish forensic support, the armourer changes the date that the weapons were issued to hide the scale of the operation, and the transport officer is told to dispose of Robinson's crashed car without an accident report. Questioned by CID, Robinson asserts that he had shot in self-defence, initially from his car − Grew's car had revved up, its door had opened, and Robinson had heard a loud bang, making him feel his life was in danger. But the CID officer is unimpressed. According to forensics, Robinson had not shot Grew from a distance through the car door; Robinson had been three-foot away, and Grew had been unarmed. He needs a statement that fits the facts. Robinson protests that he is only saying what he has been told to say. Placed on trial for murder, Robinson tells the court how a superintendent, a chief inspector and other officers had told him to lie and given him a story to tell, to protect the fact that they were acting on information from an informer, so that it should appear as a chance encounter rather than a planned encounter.
In the Northern Ireland Office a meeting discusses how to deal with the fall-out from the trial. An outside inquiry is proposed, a suggestion supported by the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions. The RUC's Sir John Hermon is not happy; but is mollified that it is to him the inquiry would report, with the RUC responsible for the implementation of any findings. John Stalker, deputy chief constable of the Greater Manchester force, is recommended to head the inquiry. Stalker is contacted, and assured that the minister wants an in-depth inquiry, and any findings will be acted on − a telephone call that Stalker records. Arriving in Northern Ireland, Stalker and his deputy DCS John Thorburn meet Hermon in an otherwise empty golf club restaurant. Over brandies after their meal Hermon warns Stalker that there is a shoot-to-kill policy all right − one carried on by the terrorists; and it is Hermon, not Stalker, who will decide what gets referred to the DPP. They are not in Manchester, they are in the jungle now, and should be prepared accordingly. Stalker and his team are shown to what will be their offices, in an old hotel that the RUC now also uses for band practice, and adjacent to an RUC firing range. As they start to move in, a reel-to-reel tape recorder is capturing their every word.

Part Two

Stalker and Thorburn brief the detectives who will be the inquiry team, imagining that most of the work will be ploughing through a mass of paper records. But CID produce only three thin files on the cases, with only a few pages in each. At Special Branch headquarters Thorburn seeks the intelligence files on the deceased. Cups of tea are forthcoming, but no files. Stalker goes to see Hermon. Thorburn is allowed to see the files, but forbidden to take notes. A priest takes Stalker and Thorburn to see the McKerr family, to ask whether the RUC might specifically have been after Gervaise; but the McKerrs also are unforthcoming. Thorburn and Stalker interview Robinson, but he will not add anything to what he said in court, and refuses to name the officers who created the cover story. Nobody will talk to them. Stalker asks Thorburn who he thinks was responsible for the cover stories, and Thorburn suggests Flanagan − but Flanagan has been promoted by Hermon, and is now lecturing the top brass at Bramshill in England. Back at their hotel, there is a telephone call from a Catholic RUC sergeant, warning them that their office and their phones are bugged. He is about to give them some names at RUC Special Branch to look out for, but the call goes dead.
Thorburn wonders how Brannigan's story will stand up at trial. But the judge dismisses the prosecution case before the defence is even called, commending the three blameless SSU men for bringing the deceased to justice − in this case "to the final court of justice". Stalker orders a ballistics reconstruction to find out what really happened in the case, while Thorburn speaks to the pathologist. The conclusions from both are clear: rather than having fired only during the chase, Brannigan must have shot the wounded Toman in the back as he was trying to get out of the car, entirely contrary to Brannigan's statement of where he had been standing. However, when this is put to Brannigan he merely tells Thorburn he was doing his duty − something which would have been his duty whether or not he was in uniform, he protests, and something that Thorburn as a Scot ought to understand. Brannigan angrily seeks out Detective Superintendent Anderson, a senior Special Branch officer, and complains that Anderson is not doing enough to protect them. Anderson responds that the matter is in hand. In Whitehall, the minister notes a press story reminding that the SSUs had been sanctioned "at the highest level"—a public warning to him from the RUC. The DPP contends that it is in all their interests to keep the RUC "under pressure". But "not so much that the lid blows off", a Home Office official responds.
Thorburn shifts the focus to the shootings of Grew and Carroll, and sends some of the team out door-to-door to try to find an independent witness; meanwhile Thorburn himself confronts the armourer with the changed date. The team find that there was a witness; she had seen the car that crashed into the Army Land Rover. Thorburn goes to see the transport officer, who tells him there was no accident report − as had been instructed in a memo he produces, from the head of Special Branch himself. The armourer too explains who had ordered the changed date: it was the investigating CID officer. Interviewed, the CID officer protests that it had been "Special Branch business": procedure counted for nothing against national security. He rejects the allegation about the armourer's log; but, stung, tells Thorburn and Stalker that if they really want to know what it's all about, they need to look at the Kinnego embankment. Stalker and Thorburn review a television news report of the incident; a television researcher tells them the rumour at the time was that it had been another Special Branch foul-up. Thorburn looks up the computer record for the explosion, which identifies Toman, Burns and McCauley as the likely perpetrators. The intelligence is sourced to an informer; but when Thorburn keys in the cross-reference access it comes back as classified. Stalker and Thorburn go to the hayshed; Stalker is not pleased: "They must have known we would find out. Who do they think we are? Pinky and bloody Perky?" But Thorburn wonders whether there is more to it than that. Are Special Branch just protecting their source, or did they deliberately allow the explosives out of the hayshed to preserve his credibility? How else could it have got past their surveillance? Stalker tells him he has caught the Ulster bug: seeing conspiracy behind everything. A tape ironically repeats Thorburn's words: the hayshed is still wired for sound.
Thorburn interviews the source's handlers, probing them: How much had the source been paid? How much had he been paid so far in all? £20,000? £50,000? Could he have set up Toman and Burns, just for the money? Could he have deliberately planted the rifles in the hayshed? The answer comes back: "Have you not any idea what we're up against here? These are not ordinary villains who come quietly. This is the front line." Thorburn wants to see the man. Not likely: "His value to us is beyond estimation. You will never be allowed to compromise that position." Stalker and Thorburn go to see Michael Tighe's parents. They are surprised to hear that the parents had never been interviewed by the RUC. Stalker wants to know what the parents would want to see come out of his inquiry. The mother is quiet, stoical: "We've lost our son, Mr Stalker. Nothing you can do will bring him back to us." Moved, Stalker resolves in the car that he is going to "have those buggers". At the trial of Martin McCauley, the judge calls Stalker and Thorburn down from the public gallery to the press box − he wouldn't want them to miss anything. Constable "Y" testifies that he had heard a metallic noise from inside the hayshed, like a gun being cocked; and his sergeant had shouted warnings, several times. In the lobby outside, Stalker tries to talk to McCauley's solicitor Pat Finucane to set up a meeting with McCauley. But Finucane will have none of it. An RUC man haragues Stalker for the embarrassment he has caused the force, talking to a "flaming Provie", someone who is even worse than the IRA, and whose brother is a wanted terrorist on the run. Back in the trial Constable Y is questioned by McCauley's counsel about his claim that Tighe was standing above him on some bales with a rifle, yet the exit wounds were below the entrance wounds. "I wouldn't be in a position to say, my Lord" responds the constable. Back at the inquiry offices, the head of Special Branch is surprised when Stalker opens the interview with a formal caution, on the grounds of suppressing evidence and misleading the DPP. The RUC officer requests to talk to Stalker alone in private, and soon leaves − but he has brought with him the source's intelligence file, which Stalker hands Thorburn to read. Stalker goes back to listen to the trial, but gets a message to come out to talk to Thorburn. The file has been weeded as usual, but left in it is a record of a conversation the informer had with Tighe by the hayshed − so there must have been a listening device there the whole time. Stalker and Thorburn hurry to the DPP to get the trial suspended. If the tape contained discussion by the SSU men as to whether to finish McCauley off, this could be dynamite. But the DPP is more cautious. He does not think that anything they have said would prevent the continuation of the prosecution of McCauley. But he assures Stalker and Thorburn that if they did come up with evidence to support their speculations, his office would take it seriously. At the trial, the judge sets aside the whole of the RUC evidence on the basis that they had all initially falsely stated having seen a man armed with a gun going to the hayshed − something that they had been told to say by one of their superiors. He nevertheless finds McCauley guilty, but sentences him to a two-year suspended sentence.
Thorburn and Stalker question a young RUC constable who confirms he had been monitoring the tapes when Tighe and McCauley had been shot in the hayshed. But, he tells them, he cannot discuss the contents of the tape unless instructed to do so by his senior officers, under the terms of the Official Secrets Act. Stalker asks Hermon for the tape; Hermon says it is not his to give − it belongs to MI5. Thorburn asks to interview the informant. Hermon says it is out of the question − the informer belongs to Special Branch. Stalker reminds him that it is Special Branch he is there to investigate. Stalker informs Hermon as a parting shot that in connection with his inquiry, he will be wanting to interview the RUC's most senior officers, including Sir John himself, under formal caution. Back at the inquiry offices, Stalker delivers an angry appraisal of the situation to his team. Special Branch have been acting as a firm within a firm; it is like some death squads out of a banana republic − well not any longer. They are there to ensure the rule of law; they cannot descend to the terrorists' level; and Stalker is going to find out how high up it goes. All the while his words are being followed and recorded by RUC Special Branch. Stalker goes to see MI5 at their Gower Street headquarters in London. The MI5 officer is unctuous, telling Stalker that MI5 will not stand in his way, and wishing him good luck; but as Stalker leaves, the officer makes a call: "We may have a slight problem". Stalker is not the only one who had been on the move. The Detective Inspector from RUC Special Branch has gone to Belfast Airport, then talked to Flanagan at the Police College, and finally seen a prisoner in a northern English jail. The prisoner, David Burton, is visited by two detectives from Greater Manchester Police. He can help them with the Quality Street Gang, he tells them: they should keep their eyes on a businessman called Kevin Taylor. And why has Taylor never been successfully investigated? Because he has a protector... John Stalker. Stalker and his team interview Flanagan, who seems blasé, even enjoying the situation. Of course he had met the SSU men to debrief them: this was policy, they had to get the story straight. The process had been like a "Chinese Parliament", a consensus had emerged, though no one person could be said to be responsible. He denies that the unit's "firepower, speed, aggression" equated to a shoot-to-kill policy, something which had not existed, it had been a media invention. On Kinnego, he vehemently denies Thorburn and Stalker's assertion that he had knowingly let the explosives out of the hayshed. But he accepts that evidence was tampered with to protect the source − in the interests of national security: it was policy. Stalker calls it perversion of justice, and Thorburn wants to know how high up it went. But for Flanagan, he and Stalker are on the same side, even if they play by different rulebooks. Stalker may think they're like a "death squad, from some banana republic, out of control"; but this is the only way they can maintain control. They could take the bandits out, all of them, in one operation "if that was the way we worked"; so where's the shoot-to-kill policy? Stalker presses about the tape; but about this Flanagan cannot answer − in fact, he will "have to talk to somebody before he can answer any more questions". In Manchester, the two detectives present their findings to a senior officer. He in turn knocks on the door of the chief constable.
Stalker and Thorburn turn up for a formal appointment with Hermon, but find he is out of the office, and not going to be back. In Manchester, the police arrive to search Kevin Taylor's house. At RUC Special Branch, Stalker and Thorburn arrive with authorisation for the tape and its transcript. But they are told nothing can be released without Hermon's express permission. They sit down, saying they will not leave without it. The police at Taylor's house find a photograph album with a picture of Taylor and Stalker with their wives, at a black-tie event. Back in Ulster the Special Branch chief comes back with a transcript, claiming the tape has been wiped. But in the car Thorburn finds the transcript describes nothing but inaudible voices, muffled noises, the sound of wind. From his Manchester office, Stalker complains to the Regional Inspector of Constabulary who had originally proposed him. He needs the tape: he is just a hair's breadth away. He intends to finish this job. "No doubt of that, John" the Regional Inspector of Constabulary responds, and assures Stalker he will get back to him. At a police conference in Scarborough, the Home Office advisor, the Regional Inspector and the MI5 officer sit in discussion. The Regional Inspector is not happy, but they are all agreed. "It's the lesser of two evils" opines the Home Office advisor. Colin Sampson, chief constable of West Yorkshire, is shown in. They have a little job for him. Stalker receives a telephone call at his smallholding in the country. Back in his office, Sampson informs Stalker that he is under investigation and will be asked to take extended leave. Sampson will also take care of the inquiry in Northern Ireland from now on. As he leaves the building, Stalker is surrounded by a media scrum. Thorburn is alone in his office with the evening newspaper, on which it is front-page news. The young female detective from the inquiry comes in, looking for his assurance that there's no truth in the allegations. "If they'd have wanted a whitewash, they picked the wrong team, sir", she continues. "We were so close". "Aye, weren't we just" responds Thorburn, and turns out the light.