Billy Wright was buried yesterday and the men in black were everywhere, shielding mourners from the eye of the camera. Portadown was dead, shut down, kaput. Every shop from Dunnes Stores to the meanest huckster shop closed its doors.
Virtually nobody was on the streets apart from the ubiquitous men in black.
There was fear and foreboding in the air. This was a big occasion: a caudillo of loyalism had gone down and there would be hell to pay.
The funeral went at a snail's pace. Groups of mourners took it in turns to carry the coffin. Women carried a wreath that said simply "Billy". Twenty men with tight haircuts and white shirts with black armbands flanked the cortege.
The silence of the procession was broken as a group of stewards peeled off to hunt down camera crews and photographers. Film was purloined and strewn along the roadside.
A steward made off with a metal component from a BBC camera. The media were kept as far from the cortege as possible and there were stern warnings not to film any faces.
Shopkeepers, too, had been warned but with subtle and sinister politeness. Leaflets headed "Mark of Respect" were circulated in the name of the Loyalist Volunteer Force:
"As a mark of respect to the late Billy Wright, it is requested that you accordingly close your premises today, Tuesday, 30th December, 1997, between the hours of 12 noon and 6 p.m. Your co-operation is noted and appreciated."
Mourners were less subtle. "I hope you boys are going to write something good", reporters were told in tones of considerable menace. Another message: "You're not supposed to be taking pictures of us, or writing stories on us."
No big-name politicians walked behind the coffin and nobody with money either. Few of the mourners looked prosperous or well-heeled. The Rev William McCrea of the DUP performed a brief service at Wright's home in Rectory Park but left the house before the cortege departed.
There was real grief in the air and faces in the crowd looked dazed and subdued.
A man's life was over. The grave waited with two boards laid on top. At the side a tarpaulin protected a mound of clay from the rain. Loyalist flags flew at half-mast from lamp-posts on the street.
There was heavy security. Troops stood guard on bridges and RUC Land-Rovers prowled the housing estates. Overhead a spotter plane flew round and round. A lone piper played Abide With Me before a banner bearing the letters "LVF". The sky was grey, the wind bitter and biting.
A friend of the deceased and former loyalist prisoner who served a life sentence for murder, Pastor Kenny McClinton, paid tribute to a Billy Wright his enemies and victims would have had trouble recognising: "He was a complicated, articulate and sophisticated man of high integrity and a product of the troubled times in which we came through."
Perhaps with the lapse of time Wright, like other feared warlords before him, would have bought a good suit and become a statesman, tossing out soundbites at Stormont and being welcomed at the White House.
In the hate-filled hell-hole that is Northern Ireland that did not prove possible before the avengers struck. A few miles away, Seamus Dillon, who died as a reprisal, was also buried: two more needless and wasteful deaths in the cycle of violence. As the funeral ended the crowd dispersed, many of them ordinary looking people, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandchildren. They went home to make the tea and probably watch the news. It could have been a crowd at any funeral, anywhere. Except for those men in black.