There was a bitter little rhyme once popular with Irish republicans which ran: Captain Nairac was a spy, Where is Captain Nairac nye?

Out of some 3,300 victims, the story of the murder of the Ampleforth and Oxford-educated Grenadier Guardsman continues to exercise a compelling hold on the mythology of the Troubles.

This morning's arrest of a 57-year-old man seems to flow from a BBC Northern Ireland television documentary aired last year on the 30th anniversary of Captain Nairac’s abduction, killing and disappearance.

The programme’s major coup was an interview with Terry McCormick, a South Armagh republican who was the first to assault Nairac on the night of May 15, 1977. McCormick followed him out of the Three Steps Inn after the officer, then serving undercover with military intelligence, drew attention to himself by pretending to be an IRA man from Belfast, chatting up a local woman and singing a rebel song.

McCormick gave a fresh account of what happened to Nairac after he was abducted by members of the Provisional IRA and smuggled over the border, in a tale which has been retold many times. He admitted to being the man who pretended to be a priest, urging the 29-year-old captain to make a full confession before he was shot.

Nairac, weakened after an hour’s brutal interrogation, stuck to his cover-story to the end, saying only: ”Bless me father, for I have sinned” before being finished off.

According to McCormick, the story that Nairac’s body was put through a meat grinder and fed to pigs – first told by the repentant IRA intelligence officer Eamon Collins in his searing memoir Killing Rage (Collins was later beaten to death by South Armagh IRA members) – is not true.

His body was buried in a shallow grave on land near where he was killed in Ravensdale, Co Louth, but when it was grubbed up by animals it was moved and “given a funeral” elsewhere, site unknown.

His remains are still officially the subject of an investigation by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, which is hunting for those “disappeared” by the Provisional IRA.

After Nairac’s murder McCormick immediately fled to the United States, where he is still living. Six men were subsequently convicted of Nairac’s murder and manslaughter, while another three suspects, including McCormick, went on the run.

McCormick is now 65 years old and full of remorse. He is now, he said, ‘‘a completely different person . . . It’s something that will never ever leave my mind. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t say a prayer for Captain Nairac.”

It is impossible to know how many men and women today find themselves in the same position as McCormick, struggling with their consciences over deeds committed during a long outbreak of inter-communal sectarian madness which appears to be over for good.

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