I'm reading Anna Burns' "Milkman", set during the Troubles in the 70s, and came across this line: "Either way sooner or later, courtesy of the renouncers, your corpse would be the latest to to be found up an entry with with the obligatory tenner in its hand and the bullets in its head." Just curious what this is referring to. (It's a great novel by the way.)
This question was still on my mind, so I did a little of my own research this morning and figured I'd share, in case anyone else was interested.
I think this passage is probably a reference to the practice of the Royal Ulster Constabulary/Police Service of Northern Ireland giving low-level informers paltry sums of money in exchange for information about the IRA's activities. According to Jim Auld, director of Community Restorative Justice Ireland:
Low-level criminals were being encouraged by the police to engage in that activity and also in watching individuals within the community that they came from with the understanding that they wouldn't be charged. And at the same time they were spending small amounts of money to watch individuals. And the term here was 'ten pound touts'. (Quoted in Bert Preiss's Conflict at the Interface: Local Community Divisions and Hegemonic Forces in Northern Ireland)
Ron Dudai notes in his article "Informers and the Transition in Northern Ireland" (2012) that 'ten pound touts' was a common term that helped paint an image of informers as both despicable and pathetic. I have to question how common this phrase actually was, as I don't get all that many hits when I search the term, and it's not like we're talking about ancient history here. I get one 2002 article from the Independent, a 2018 blog post written by a priest, and the sources I already mentioned above—that's about it.
The blog post characterizes this as a 'perceived practice' as opposed to something that was actually happening, and I certainly couldn't find any concrete examples of the police paying off an informer with as little as £10—not to say that it didn't or couldn't have happened. I also couldn't find any references to the IRA leaving money on or around bodies to send a message...but when I re-read the Milkman passage from, I'm not even sure that's what it's suggesting—it seems just as likely to be suggesting being taken out shortly enough after taking the money that the £10 is still in hand. And of course that passage is a hypothetical scenario in the mind of an 18 year old girl, so the fact that this practice may or may not have actually happened is not inconsistent with the fact that it at least seemed to be an idea people had of what was going on in their communities.
Anyway, that's my best guess so far, but I'd still be interested to hear more if anyone knows anything else about it.