Frank Conway’s neighbours on his quiet residential road in England didn’t know who he really was. To them, he was the portly Irish man who lived reclusively in a big house behind a high hedge on their smart road on the edge of Guildford, an hour southwest of London, deep in suburban Surrey.
Conway’s daily life was as nondescript as his surroundings. He mostly stayed inside. He walked his dog. He kept his head down. He lived alone.
His neighbours had no clue the Belfast man’s real name was Freddie Scappaticci, a brutal killer who also spent years spying for the British military inside the IRA’s internal security unit. He was the double agent known as Stakeknife.
Scappaticci, born to an Italian family that came to Belfast in the 1940s, grew up in the Markets area of the city and was an active IRA member from the…