Angry locals milled around outside Johnny Adair's two-storey house in Belfast's Shankill Estate early this morning, hours after the convicted UDA terrorist was put behind bars.
In Adair's home, decorated with four loyalist flags, the lights were on until well after midnight as friends comforted his wife Jane after an armed RUC raid which took place around the same time as he was arrested.
Bunches of men and youths stood around the pedestrianised close, keeping a nervous eye on the lower Shankill Road which was virtually deserted but for the army checkpoints.
Sitting on the front steps outside a house two doors down from Adairs', a group of women and young people criticised the RUC who they claimed had "come into the street like a herd of animals and put guns to people's heads and started beating them".
"What I'd love to know is how they can blame one man for this," said one young woman. "One man can't tell people what to do."
"The UVF is allowed to murder our people and they're blaming one man for this," said another. "The UVF started this." Locals said the RUC swamped the area with up to 30 LandRovers, damaged the rear windows of Adair's home to gain entry, and smashed the microwave oven in his kitchen. They said the police had also damaged a community house for children and turned over rubbish bins.
By midnight, the heavy RUC presence around Adair's estate had cleared, but the area remained tense.
Earlier, normality of sorts had returned to the Shankill Road with dozens of soldiers and RUC officers keeping an uneasy peace between feuding UDA-UVF loyalists.
Twenty-four hours after the road was brought to a standstill by violence following the double murder of two local loyalists, shops reopened and buses and taxis ran again. Locals stood chatting on corners in the sunshine while Union Jack, UVF and UDA flags flapped in the breeze.
The only visible remnants of Monday's violence were the shattered glass and smoke stains in the offices of the Progressive Unionist Party, the political wing of the UVF, and the bullet-riddled brick facade of the prisoner support office of the Ulster Democratic Party, which has links with the UDA and UFF.
Both premises were damaged in attack and counter-attack after Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood were shot dead by UVF gunmen at close range, while sitting in a Land-Rover on nearby Crumlin Road.
In his drop-in advice centre on the Shankill Road yesterday, the Ulster Unionist Party's Mr Chris McGimpsey was fielding urgent queries from families who, he said, had been forced to flee the Shankill Estate by the UDA.
Some Housing Executive tenants are trying to get rehoused in the Protestant coastal town of Bangor, while others want to stay in the Shankill area, he said.
"I've tried to rehouse 14 to 15 families intimidated out of their homes since this violence started last Saturday," he said. "All have been put out of the Shankill Estate by the UDA because they are non-UDA. We don't ask anybody why they are being put out of their houses. If it was UDA families being put out by UVF people, we would be helping them as well."
Mr McGimpsey said people were angry that the loyalist community was tearing itself apart. "One girl told me she was born on the Shankill Estate and had lived there all her life," he said. It was "her home, it wasn't a UVF or UDA area".
The Shankill Estate is heavily festooned with UFF and UDA banners, murals and loyalist flags, and red-white-and-blue kerbstones.
Farther up the road, two elderly women who paused outside the damaged PUP offices said they were apprehensive about future violence. "They never should have let them out of jail," said one. "They are wee Hitlers, that's what I call them. They just want to control other people's lives," her friend added.
Baroness May Blood, a local community worker, said the fear on the road on Monday had been palpable, with people rushing for shelter in their homes. "I think these people have to resolve it among themselves," she said.