Leave us alone - message from Scappaticci's house

A woman glared through the glass panelled front door of Freddie Scappaticci’s west Belfast home today and made it clear he was in no mood for talking.

Her face contorted with rage, she spat out the words: “We are not talking to you. All you want to do is print s***.”

Less than 24 hours earlier Mr Scappaticci – the man alleged to be Stakeknife, the British Army’s top spy in the IRA – had sensationally emerged in the city to protest his innocence.

His brief reappearance had raised more questions than answers, but there was no sign he was prepared to elaborate.

Others inside the immaculately kept semi-detached house in the staunchly nationalist and republican Andersonstown district angrily rejected all approaches.

While the middle-aged lady issued vitriolic demands for privacy, two younger women were dispatched to retrieve an envelope dropped in the porch.

When they discovered the letter was a request for an interview with Mr Scappaticci, it was torn up and thrown on the road.

Even though they were hostile, the scene at the house was in complete contrast to the locked and apparently empty property days earlier when the Stakeknife revelations hit the front pages.

Sunlight streamed in through the open porch door and windows, as if the 57-year-old builder was declaring he had nothing to hide.

There was no sign of security around the home either, apart from a standard burglar alarm box fitted to the wall.

Neighbours who claimed they had not known the identity of the suspected agent living in just doors away were shocked he was still there.

One man painting and decorating close by said: “I thought a hothead would have shot him by now just on suspicion.

“Every organisation has its maniacs and the IRA is no different.”

According to the 66-year-old, who refused to be named, Mr Scappaticci was innocent of the spying allegations.

“If he had did even a tenth of the claims against him he would have walked straight into the arms of the British Army. Any tout would be out of here at 100 miles an hour.”

Other neighbours claimed they knew nothing about the man at the centre of the furore.

Many were reluctant to talk at all, but pensioner Noreen Campbell admitted she was mystified by the allegations.

“It’s a puzzle I just can’t work out,” she said.

“If he was supposed to be so high up in the Ra (IRA) and doing all that stuff he wouldn’t be here.

“He would know what would happen to him.”

Mrs Campbell, who has lived in the area since the houses were built in 1952, only knew of the Scappaticcis from an earlier generation.

“His father used to park ice cream vans in the drive, but I don’t know Freddie.”

As she tried to work out the many twists in the tale, her gardener suggested one way of getting to the truth.

He asked: “If he’s guilty surely the Brits would have him taped, so why don’t they produce a tape and prove it?”