Robert Nairac was a model British soldier when, at the age of 28, he was abducted, interrogated and murdered by the Provisional IRA. Thirty-one years on, a man was arrested yesterday in connection with the crime.

Captain Nairac's posthumously awarded George Cross was accompanied by a citation speaking of his “analytical brain, physical stamina and above all his courage and dedication”.

But what if the young Grenadier Guardsman, on secondment to 14 Intelligence Company (14 Int), a covert surveillance unit, had not taken a Triumph Toledo from Bessbrook Mill on the evening of May 14, 1977 and driven to his death? What if he hadn't chatted up a girl in the Three Steps bar in Drumintee, South Armagh, telling her that he was an IRA man from Belfast looking for a route across the border?

And what if he had managed to give the slip to the men who attacked him in the pub car park as he left that evening after singing rebel songs — the same men who beat him to a pulp, drove him across the border and shot him after failing to extract any useful information from their captive?

The story of Captain Nairac still exercises a compelling hold on the mythology of the Troubles.

The arrest in South Armagh of a man, named locally as Kevin Crilly, 57, from Jonesboro, came more than a year after a television documentary interviewed one of the gang members, providing new details of his death.

Terry McCormick fled Ireland after the murder and has been living clandestinely in the US ever since. Mr McCormick said that he had thrown the first punch at Captain Nairac, who dropped his Army-issued Browning pistol.

An hour later, after the officer had been brutally interrogated to no avail, Mr McCormick pretended to be a priest, hoping that in his stupor Captain Nairac would give away useful security information. “Bless me father for I have sinned,” was all the officer, a practising Roman Catholic, said.

He was shot and buried secretly. His body has never been found and its location remains 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.

According to Mr McCormick, the report that Captain Nairac's body was ground up 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.

The captain's 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.

Two others involved in the killing fled with Mr McCormick. Six others were subsequently tried and convicted of murder and manslaughter, one of them in the Republic of Ireland.

Even the convicted men spoke of the bravery that Captain Nairac had shown as they finished him off. “I shot the British captain. He never told us anything. He was a great soldier,” said Liam Townson in his confession.

But had Captain Nairac not been murdered, how would his reputation have fared? Some of his colleagues have claimed that he was a loose cannon and should never have been operating without authorisation or orders in bars frequented by IRA men.

Allegations have been made that he ran a gang of Portadown-based loyalist terrorists who were behind massacres. It is possible that had he lived, Captain Nairac might today be the focus of inquiries into collusion between the security forces and paramilitary groups. What is certain is that his death was not deserved.

Mr McCormick says that he does not know where the body is. Now 65, he is full of remorse and, he says, “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.”

Whether or not the police charge any suspects and apply for extradition warrants for those wanted for the crime living in the US, the family of Robert Nairac simply wish to mourn him with a proper burial site.

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