This mural celebrating the life of William Bucky McCullough is on Hopewell Crescent, off the Shankill Road in Belfast.

In 1981, the Irish National Liberation Army shot McCullough as he took one of his daughters to school. His death conferred martyr status on him and his family enjoyed the benefits.

Yet recently the younger McCullough was forced to pay out £4,000 pounds in order to be allowed to return home from England where hed fled thanks to the feud within the Ulster Defense Association, of which he like his father had been a member. The money was paid to the local UDA commanders to buy Alan McCulloughs safety -- he had been on the losing side of the dispute that had pitched Johnny Mad Dog Adair and his supporters in the Lower Shankills C Company against the rest of the organization and claimed the lives of four people. But on May 28, McCullough disappeared in the company of the Shankills UDA commander -- the successor to Adair, who is now in jail -- and was not seen again until his body was dug up last week in a field just outside North Belfast. Reports claimed that he had been tortured before being shot.

McCulloughs payout was clearly not enough. The mainstream UDA wanted revenge regardless. Four months earlier, Adairs supporters had shot and killed John Gregg, also known as Grugg, the UDAs North Belfast L to R: Neil O'Keefe, Mons. Tom Leonard and Connie Doolan. commander. In response, the UDA forced many of Adairs supporters to flee to England and put their most prominent members on a death list. The feud left behind a legacy of bitterness, and a desire for revenge, on both sides.

Alan McCulloughs death has deeply angered many former C Company members who still linger on the Shankill. They are incensed that he was betrayed. They are mostly in their late teens and early 20s. Said one who knows them: Theyve no conscience.

Now they want revenge.

This is the second time that the death of a McCullough family member has been surrounded by intrigue and betrayal. On the morning of Oct. 16, 1981, at around 9 a.m., Bucky McCullough walked with his daughter down the garden path to his parked car, about to take her to school. He may or may not have noticed a motorcycle with a passenger heading toward him. The driver was Rabbie McAllister, one of the INLAs top gunmen. The passenger was another INLA hitman, Bronco Downey. For some time before, the INLA had been watching McCulloughs house through a pair of binoculars from a vantage point in the nearby Unity Flats, a Catholic enclave. They had noted his comings and goings. McCullough had been linked to a series of attacks on Catholic targets, including a hand grenade attack on a bar in the New Lodge Road district. McCullough had been betrayed by people within his own organization, just as his son would be 22 years later. Thomas McCreery and Jim Craig, two renegade UDA men, had been passing on information to both the Provisional IRA and the INLA about UDA men as potential targets; their most famous victim, Lennie The Shankill Road Butcher Murphy would be shot by the Provisional IRA a year later. But McCullough would be their first.

However, that is just the beginning of the web of intrigue that entrapped Bucky McCullough.

One of the two INLA men who took part in the attack was a police informer. McAllister had been working for the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch since about September 1981. After he was arrested in February 1982, he signed a statement about it, in the hope that it would benefit him at his trial. In the end, it did not. He was sentenced to 766 years for five murders. Obviously, it brings up the sorts of questions raised about other instances in which informers were apparently allowed to take part in serious crimes, including murder, while at the same time working for the security forces. McAllisters link to the police did not stop him getting involved in another murder a few months later when the INLA shot former loyalist leader John McKeague. It turned out that McKeague, the founder of the Red Hand Commandos, had worked for British army intelligence, though at the time of his death he was inactive.

Some 22 years on, the murky world of Belfasts paramilitaries has not grown any less so, as the fate of William McCulloughs son bears witness. Those who know the Shankill, are aware of the rancor the killing has caused; they believe that it will not end with his death. Alan McCullough was active in Adairs C Company. Many of his friends are deeply angered at how he was betrayed, and they hold the new local leadership of the UDA responsible. From his prison cell, Adair has been raging at his killers. He denounced them to a Belfast Sunday Newspaper. They are nothing but pimps and criminals, he said. You take it from me, you see these people who done that to that poor lad, they probably werent even involved in the conflict. Im sad any loyalist has lost his life, but I believe it will continue to happen.

Before the murder of McCullough, Adair had been isolated and discredited, and his supporters in disarray. Last Friday evening, a group of women protested the murder outside the Diamond Jubilee pub, a UDA gathering place. The UDAs betrayal and killing of McCullough has disgusted a lot of people on the Shankill, insiders said.

They have played into Johnnys hands, one said.