It looked like one last desperate play for a moment of attention — Michael Stone's final act with Stormont as his stage.

That Friday morning in November 2006 it was David Ervine who called me from Parliament Buildings to tell me of the attack. I thought he was winding me up, and almost dismissed the call. That is how unbelievable it was — that Stone who belongs in yesterday's war, would re-emerge in this way.

He is a walking, talking, contradiction — someone who appears confused by the peace, a man seemingly unable to live without the past, in which he had his place and his part.

Contrast the Michael Stone of 2006 with the killer in the cemetery in 1988 — all that gunfire and those exploding grenades back then. Were we looking at the same man with the same murderous intentions?

In his war Michael Stone broke many people and many families, but his part in that conflict looks to have broken him also. That is not to excuse anything he did — not to offer sympathy. It is just an observation.

To me, Stone looks broken, very different from the man I interviewed in 1998 while he was on parole.

It was May 1998 — the morning after his Ulster Hall rally and in between the Good Friday Agreement and the referendum. It was an interview the Government and political loyalists did not want broadcast, fearing damage to the “yes” campaign. Stone was seen and heard on television that evening.

I asked him about Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, and his plan to kill them at that IRA funeral in Milltown Cemetery.

Was he in any way “relieved or glad” that he had not succeeded, given that Adams and McGuinness had delivered the IRA ceasefire?

“With hindsight, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but, yes, I suppose so,” Stone replied.

That was Michael Stone speaking 10 years ago in 1998, apparently accepting Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness as part of the developing and changing political process.

So, what then was November 2006 all about? Only Michael Stone has the answer.