Genuflecting your way out of dodge.

I loiter in the park across the road from the church, plucking up the necessary courage.
Eventually, after a few minutes’ prevarication, I know I have no choice. I come out of the park, cross the road and walk slowly through the car park of St. Joseph’s, my heart pounding.
Normally I don’t have a problem doing high profile funerals. Like most reporters who cover them, I have my own way of doing things - a technique that has stood by me and got me out of there in safety for more than a decade.
Some reporters look completely conspicuous at funerals, walking into the church with their eyes wide open in fear, a notebook in one hand, a pen in the other. They stick out like a sore thumb, especially when they congregate together. Like sheep.
I usually dress down, maybe in a shirt and jeans, rather than a suit. I’m not trying to show any disrespect to anyone - it’s just that I don’t want to look like a reporter. Some of my colleague joke that my undercover outfit actually makes me look like a cop. All I need is a doughnut, but I’ve had too many of them so I’ll pass on that.
In the church, I try to hide in plain view. I ignore my colleagues, and they do the same to me. I walk in, trying not to show any hesitation. Without breaking my stride, I focus on one pew and head for it, as if I know the church really well.
Then I sit there, surrounded by other mourners for the duration of the funeral mass. I have a small digital Dictaphone in my hand, which I turn on just before I enter the church. It stays on until I leave the church, usually at communion. With luck, nobody even notices me. Job done.
But the funeral of Patrick Eugene Holland was no normal funeral. And I was extremely nervous as I opened the door of St. Joseph’s Church in Bonnybrook, Coolock, north Dublin at 10.40am on Monday.
There were two main reasons for my trepidation.
I like to think that I’m anonymous, that nobody knows me. I’m not one of these high profile reporters whose name and photographs are everywhere. I don’t really do television, so I always think that I can walk down any street and nobody would recognise me.
But I received a phone call a few minutes before the funeral was about to begin. It let me know there was a problem. Photographers Mick O’Neill and Jim Walpole had both been assigned to cover the funeral. They had taken up positions in different areas, ready to shoot anyone who went in to the church. As I stood in the park, getting ready to go into the church, Mick rang me. He told me that some men who I really did not want to be there had just walked into the church.
Each of them would recognise me and each of them would be far from happy when they saw me.
Then there was the rest of the mourners. We knew it was going to be a small funeral, but not that small. There were only around 50 mourners - the church could easily hold 400. I knew there would be nowhere for me to hide.
But I knew I couldn’t stay away. The story was too big and there were at least three other reporters inside. I couldn’t let them get the scoop and go back empty handed to the office. Fear is a great motivator and I’m more afraid of failure than than I am of most criminals.
So I entered the church.
It went wrong as soon as I got to the door. It opened well enough, but when I tried to let it close smoothly (and quietly) behind me, it became stuck. I then spent what felt like hours trying to pull it closed.
When I turned around and faced the congregation, several people were staring at me - including the men who did not want me there. I felt their eyes boring into me.
But I’d come too far to stop. I started walking, heading to my right where a sea of pews awaited me. Like before, I tried to show no hesitation. I told myself when I was going in to turn right and that’s just what I did. The only problem was that the aisle I picked was empty; I was literally the only person on that side of the church. I thought, briefly, of stopping and heading to the centre aisle where most mourner were sitting. But I immediately ruled that out: it would have been far too conspicuous.
I picked a pew, genuflected, and sat down, glancing down at the Dictaphone hidden in my hands to make sure the red recording light was glowing red.
Fr Kevin Moore delivered a fine sermon.
Dutchy Holland was someone whom I interviewed in the Rome apartment of his lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano in April 2007. He was an immensely personable, likeable even, man.



Me interviewing Dutchy Holland in Rome. Copyright Irish Daily Star

I had a good chat with him for about an hour and it was only at the end that I knew he was a killer. I asked him if he had, as gardai are satisfied, killed Veronica Guerin. He replied simply: “No. No way.” But I could tell he was lying. He hadn’t even managed to convince himself he was innocent. So he’ll be remembered as the man who shot dead an Irish crime reporter to most people.
But not to his family.
As Fr Kevin said, they remember a loving, caring uncle and granduncle.
“Patrick’s instincts were always to be helpful to others,” he said.
“He enjoyed swimming and in his younger days saved a person from drowning by jumping in to save him.
“They recall the person that they knew and the good home and background from which he came.
“The fondness that they always had for him will linger on.”
Dutchy was loved by some people.
Just as we sat down after a Hail Mary, I felt my mobile phone vibrate in my pocket.
Because I was at the funeral and was trying to keep my head down, I was not going to answer it. But something, perhaps a sixth sense, made me take it out of my jeans pocket.
I looked at the message and froze.
It was from another reporter in the church. It simply said: “X and X have clocked you and look angry.”
Oh shit.
I put the phone back in my pocket, considered things for a millisecond and got up. There's no point in being a hero. Anyway, I had gotten what I went there for, the priest's sermon. Time to get out of dodge.
I left the pew, genuflected and walked calmly, but quickly, out of the church.
I didn’t look back until I was out of the church grounds. Then I snatched a quick glance to see if anyone had followed me out. There was nobody there.
I had parked my car about 500 metres away and made sure no-one was following me before I got into it and drove off.
It was only when I was about a mile away that I finally relaxed.
I knew I was safe. Until next time.

“I’m sorry. I’m truly, deeply, sorry.”

“There he is Jim! There.”
“Where? Where?” Jim Walpole replies, looking in two directions at the same time as he instinctively brings his camera up, ready to shoot.
“He’s standing directly opposite us, on the other side of the road,” I say, nodding as subtly as I can towards our target, Martin Kirwan. Up until a few months ago, he was one of the senior commanders of the Irish Civil Defence; a real pillar of society. Today, however, he is up in front of Judge Patrick Clyne in court 46 of Dublin District Court at the Bridewell, beside the Four Courts complex. He is up on charges of indecently assaulting a young boy 20 years ago.
We really need his photograph. We’ve been waiting at the entrance to the court for almost an hour: now he’s in our sights. We have to get him.
I need not worry: the ever dependable Jim has him. “Okay. I see him. Don’t move. Stay there and don’t move an inch – I’m going to get him from here.” For once, my bulk comes in useful as Jim snaps Kirwan over my shoulder. The target didn’t see a thing: he’s too busy hugging three women, either friends or family, who are standing by him. Kirwan then walks towards us and Jim steps out of my shadow to hose him down. Kirwan doesn’t even break his stride. He keeps walking, ignoring Jim as he fires off shot after shot from just a few feet away.
We satisfy ourselves that the man we photographed is Kirwan. Jim’s work is done: mine is just about to begin.
I follow him into the court complex. I turn into the joint entrance to two courts, go up the stairs and turn right into 46. As soon as I walk in, I scan the body of the court for Kirwan. I quickly spot him, sitting on the second bench back, with his female supporters. A few moments later, Judge Clyne enters and it begins.
Kirwan was the first person on the list and his case is called quickly. But the acoustics inside court 46 are appalling and I struggle to hear what the judge is saying. As this is an indecent assault case, I’m expecting it to be held in camera. In this case, it means the public will be told to leave and only people directly connected to the hearing will be allowed to stay – and bona fide journalists. I hear the judge mention the phrase and get ready to show my press pass to prove I’m a working reporter.
But, rather than ordering the court to be cleared, the judge gets up and walks out, telling the court he should be back in five minutes. About 10 people walk after him, heading through a door to the right of the bench.
I quickly realise this is going to pose me a problem: the judge is going to hear the case in his chambers, rather than clearing a packed court. But how the hell am I going to get in? You can’t just walk into a judge’s private room...
As my panic mounts that I’m going to miss the whole thing, the Garda sergeant who accompanied the judge out of the court comes back in. I approach him and ask if I can cover the case. He goes back to the judge and, a few moments later, returns and asks me and another reporter for our ID. Once he’s happy, he leads us into the judge’s chamber.
I was thankful for two things: firstly that the judge let us in and, secondly, that I was there to witness one of the most moving and dignified and uplifting, but heartbreaking court cases that I’ve ever attended.
There were around 12 people in the small room. As soon as we walked in, the injured party said he was happy for the case to be covered and that he wanted Kirwan named in the media – but he wanted nothing printed that could identify him. I had to say a few words to the Judge, to assure him that we would abide by that. (I get nervous when a judge addresses me: the last time was about four years ago when my mobile phone went off in court. That was fun.) Once Judge Clyne was satisfied, the proceedings began.
Kirwan had pleaded guilty in a previous hearing to several counts of indecent assault on the then boy in 1988 and 1989.
Now it was the victim’s turn to talk.
He stood opposite the judge, dignified and proud in an immaculate suit. His wife stood right beside him, on his left, gently consoling him, being there for him. His mother sat down a few feet away from him, a family friend comforting her, braced for what she was about to hear.
The victim, now in his late 30s, tried not to cry as he described the devastating effect Kirwan’s abuse has had on him for the last 20 years. He tried to keep the tears at bay, but he simply couldn’t. The more he spoke, the more upset he got. He spoke of the trust that he felt for Kirwan as a child; how he felt privileged because Kirwan treated him as an adults; how Kirwan’s abuse led to him suffering depression for more than a decade.
All the time his mother was sitting, in tears, close by. It was hard enough to look at the victim, but almost impossible to look at his mother. What, I kept wondering, must she be thinking during this victim impact statement? How hard must it be for her to sit there and listen to her beloved son talking about how this man had abused him, not once, but several times. You can only imagine the pain she has felt and will continue to feel because of the actions of Kirwan, previously a highly regarded member of the community in Dunboyne, Co Meath, where the abuse took place.
Then Kirwan opened his mouth and said something that it looked like the victim and his family had been waiting more than two decades to hear: sorry.
“I’m truly, deeply sorry,” he said as the victim held his gaze.
He offered €3,000 in compensation – but the victim said he didn’t want his money, so it was split between One in Four and the ISPCC. He’ll be sentenced in November.
I think the victim got something much more important than money that day: validation.
I’ve spoken to loads of victims of abuse over the year and they are always eager for the abuser to be named – and perhaps shamed - in the media. Looking at this case, it suddenly hit me why. The abuse that children suffer is always in secret, hidden away so that only the victim and the perpetrator know about it: one is either to afraid or ashamed to talk about it, the other is not going to tell anybody what he is doing.
So the abuser’s reputation is untrammelled: they are often pillars of society, like Kirwan. Only the victims know the truth. All the time the victim is being abused, or suffering the horrendous after effects of the abuse, the abuser is well regarded in his community. That’s why the victims oftentimes seek the abuser to be named. They want the world to know what they – and only they – have known for so long: that the person who abused them was not the saint that everyone thought.

That's a really stupid question

THE mobile buzzes gently to let me know I have a message.
I pick it up and have a look, hoping it’s a contact with a good story.
No such luck. Instead it is from a colleague who was with me at a press conference held by the Garda Representative Association in Killarney, Co Kerry a few hours earlier.
He was listening to the recording he made of the conference – and felt compelled to tell me how much of a muppet I was.
“Just listening bak to my tape,” the text said, “Why do u ask so many stupid questions? I know ur stupidity levels are out of ur control, but please reduce number of questions. Thank you.”
I thought this was actually a tremendously funny text and you really need to know the personality of the texter to realise the spirit in which it was sent. I just laughed and showed it to everyone. They laughed as well.
At least he said thank you. And he probably had a point on this occasion; I suppose I did hog the press conference somewhat.
But it was one of the few times my career where I can think of the two things in which I am interested most – crime and languages – were together. I was always fascinated by crime and studied Italian and French at university, so the press conference obviously attracted my interest. (As an aside, I’d strongly advise any young person who wants to be a reporter to study languages. It opens up a lot of doors. And if you speak a language, you’ll get foreign gigs much more often than some hack who relies on speaking loudly and slowly in English to a Spanish cop or Italian politician. My language skills have got me to some weird and wonderful locations I would otherwise never have seen were it not for work. I also think foreign language training helps with your journalese.)
The speaker at the presser was Detective Garda Tom O’Sullivan, who is attached to the Interpol National Central Bureau at Garda HQ in Phoenix Park. He’s also a qualified interpreter and translator; so he clearly knows his stuff.
He was worried that there was no vetting in their home countries of foreign interpreters working for gardai in Ireland: there’s not much point checking them on the Irish system without being able to confirm that they are conviction free in whatever part of the world they come from.
He was also concerned at the possibility that foreign gangs could plant members of their outfit into a Garda station as an interpreter. That stands to reason. If there are no checks in someone’s own country, it’s quite clear the system is open to abuse. His points were well made. I hope I didn’t bore him too much.
But I did ask more than my fair share of questions, hence my colleague’s kind text message.
Like most newspaper reporters, I tend not to ask too many questions at press conferences. In my line of work, the pressers I attend are usually after murders. I, and other paper people, usually leave the questions to the broadcasters. They need quotes from the local superintendent, or chief, for the TV or radio. They need the basics: the what, when and where of the murder for their next broadcast. They have to be there for that – we lazy paper reporters can simply lift those details from the news. There’s not much point in asking the who or why at any press conference. They won’t tell you. So it’s much better to speak to someone off the record, and away from the cameras, for the really important information. In addition, broadcasters like to be seen, and heard, asking the questions – I think their editors believe that helps their station brand. That’s fair enough.
And, sometimes, you don’t have any questions to ask. It’s actually hard, particularly at the start of your career to ask questions of someone, especially in authority. Sometimes your mind goes blank, followed by your face turning red.
Also, you really have to be fully prepared before asking some people questions – any weakness and your part and you target will turn on you. The two people I prepared most before I rang them were Ian Paisley Junior and President Mary McAleese, when she was a law professor at Queen’s University of Belfast in the mid 1990s. They were both the same. They let you ask a question and then demolished you if there was any wriggle room, or mistake, in what you had put to them. It was great training, however. You soon learned to stop asking silly questions.
For me, the worst I ever heard of was in the aftermath of a gangland murder last year in Dublin. There was a press conference the next day, a Saturday, so I wasn’t there. But a pal rang me a short time afterwards, convulsed with laughter. The victim had been shot as he enjoyed a pint in a pub, before the killers fled.
In the scrum of the press conference the next day, the Super was fielding the usual questions, when a hack asked him: “So, did the killers make an immediate escape?” What did the reporter think the gunmen did, have a pint themselves before casually strolling out of the pub?
Sometimes it’s better not to stick your head above the parapet at a press conference – or you’ll get a text like I did at the GRA.

I spy with my little eye...

A sudden movement in the rear view mirror catches my eye. A car is coming towards us from behind. It weaves from left to right as it drives up the road, coming to a stop a few feet behind us. I turn around and look. It takes a few instants for my brain to figure out that the writing on the bonnet – ECILOP in thick blue lettering – is supposed to be read in a mirror.
“Oh Shit, Mick,” I hiss at my colleague, photographer Mick O’Neill. He’s sitting in the back of the people carrier. “What?” he asks. He still keeps his eyes on our target, a building 100 yards away on a road that snakes away from the one where we are sitting. “It’s the cops.” I say. “Oh. Right,” he says, calmly. I feel my face burning. I hate cops coming up to you when you are on a stake-out. You never know whether they are going to say `cool’ and leave us at it – or tell us they’ll arrest us if we don’t move on. We’ve had complaints, you know.
The complaint came from a local citizen. As the cops grilled us in a polite and friendly way, he lurked at his driveway, about 10 yards away.
It came as no surprise that the cops were on to us. We’d been sitting at the same spot for, by that stage, three days, or around 36 hours. In the movies, you can do a stake-out for that length of time with no problem – in the real world, you’re spotted within minutes. After that, it’s only a question of whether people confront you themselves, or call the police: in this case it was both.
Mick and I were in Locks Heath, a suburb of Southampton. We were looking for Bob Campion, the third leg of the ménage a trois involving David Bourke and Jean Gilbert. While we were there, the jury in Bourke’s murder trial was out, considering its verdict. Campion had not come over to Ireland for the trial; we knew we had to get him. By the time we got there on the Friday, he’d already down an exclusive sit-down interview with The Irish Daily Mail and, as it turned out, the Irish Independent used a local agency to get a few words with him. No pressure, so.
The only problem was there was no sign of him when we arrived. After about four hours sitting 30 odd yards from his ground floor flat, I lost the head and decided to knock. There was no space for Mick to get a photo as the flat is surrounded by trees and a shed. But at least we’d know if he was there. Foremost in my mind was the fact that we’d be wasting time and money if we camped out here – and he was not. Or worse, just say some paper had bought him up and he was enjoying some hotel somewhere, while we were sitting outside his flat in a rented Zafira for days on end.
But when I knocked, there was no sign of him and it looked as of the flat was deserted. So we settled down to wait. And wait. And wait. And then wait some more.
People started no give us strange looks after around 30 minutes. I was in the driver’s seat; Mick in the back. Mick looking towards the flat complex, me looking in the rear view mirror, just in case. At first, people simply walked past, assuming we were workmen or visitors to other houses. Then, when they came back, they saw we were still there and, understandibly, became suspicious. Nobody approached us on day one: we were there from midday to 11pm. Nor was there any sign of Campion.
The next day, we got there at 4.30am. We had learned that Campion did night work, so we had to get there early, just in case he finished his shift at that time. We parked up, just as dawn was breaking. Nothing. Not a thing all day. By 8pm, the night had come – Mick remarked it was the first time he’s ever seen the dawn and dusk in the same job. I had to agree. We’d whiled away the hours listening to radio, talking crap and constantly scanning the area for Campion. We'd even played I Spy. I won hands down. I broke his serve when I guessed AV was the air vent on an old people’s home opposite us. He couldn’t get D for daffodils, either.
At around 3pm a neighbour approached us. “Curiosity has got the better of me...” “Ah,” I said. “We’re journalists from Ireland and we’re here hoping to talk to a man who lives down there,” I said, pointing to Campion’s flat. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, but he has been mentioned in a high profile murder case. He was the boyfriend of a woman who was killed by her husband. We just want to give him an opportunity to talk to us. But we have to wait for him to come...” “That’s fine,” he smiled. “Very interesting, actually. A murder case, you say. How exciting.”
So the hours passed. The neighbour would occasionally come out of his house, see us and nod conspiratorially towards us.
We were back the next day, a Sunday, at the same time. By 1pm we were going out of our minds with boredom, so the arrival of the second man at least broke the tedium.
I lowered the window and greeted him. “Hello,” he said. “I’m the local neighbourhood watch secretary and I just wonder what you are doing here. You have been noticed by a good few people...”
I went through the rigmarole of explanation. He then asked me for ID – something at which I silently bridled. There’s only one group in society to whom I have to show credentials – police. Everyone else can kindly go away. I made an exception in this case – hoping that would placate him and he wouldn’t call the boys in blue. I grudgingly showed him my card.
He nodded and walked away. But 15 minutes later the cops arrived. Mr Neighbourhood Watch had tried to contact my newsroom on the numbers on my card: the only problem was the numbers were Irish and did not have the international code. Hence him not getting through.
The police were actually fine. They took our details, listened to our story and said we weren’t doing anything wrong. Mr Neighbourhood Watch sidled up as we were talking to the police. He made some comment to officer before turning round – and walking straight into a lamppost.
“Now that’s Karma,” I said to the cop, who stifled a laugh.
The cops went away and we waited some more. It was actually the Monday, after 48 hours watching, that Campion emerged. “There he is,” Mick shouted. He hosed him down with his camera from the car, loosing off maybe 30 shots. When he gave the go ahead, certain that he had good pics, I got out of the car and approached him. “Mr Campion, I’m a journalist from Ireland...” “Good for you,” he said and kept walking.
But I managed to persuade him to talk, even though he kept walking up the road. All the while, Mr Neighbourhood Watch was watching from a distance – roaring at us to leave Campion alone.
But the wait was worth it. It always is.

“I can’t face that. I can’t. I can’t even think about that.”

As she gets out of the car, I softly shake her hand. I thank her for the interview and tell her I’m going to say a little prayer for her daughter. She smiles, sadly, nods her head and walks away.
I sit back into the car. My colleague Gary Ashe is doing the driving. After a few seconds, he glances over at me and says: “She’s way past the crying stage, isn’t she?” “Yeah,” I reply quietly. We drive on, heading to our hotel, job done. Audrey Fitzpatrick walks into the bar and back to her search for her little girl. Back to her living nightmare.
Gary was right. Audrey was indeed way past the crying stage. It’s more than a year since her daughter Amy Fitzpatrick disappeared as she walked home from a friend’s house in Calahonda, near Fuengirola on Spain’s Costa Del Sol. In the 14 months since her disappearance, Audrey has campaigned tirelessly – desperately - for Amy; for her not to be forgotten. But there has been nothing in return. No sightings; no phone calls; no emails; no sign of life.
But still she goes on with her campaign. Always fighting. Always available. She agreed to meet me and Gary with only half an hour’s notice. We were in Spain last week on another matter – the unsuccessful appeal of Dermot McArdle – around 200 kilometres from Calahonda in the city of Granada, at this court. But we were flying out of Malaga, which was only 30 odd minutes from Audrey, so I gave her a call to see if she would facilitate us with a quick interview. You can never tell when you make such a call: some people won’t be interested, others will be happy to talk.
As soon as I introduced myself over the phone, I knew Audrey would talk to us. She readily agreed to meet us half an hour later in Tricky Ricky’s pub, a de facto HQ forn the Amy campaign. When we got there, she was standing at the bar with a friend. She gave us a big smile and told us she was delighted we had called – anything, she said, to keep Amy’s name in the papers.
But she admitted it’s getting increasingly more difficult to keep the campaign going. Neither she nor her partner, Dave Mahon, have been able to work since Amy disappeared, but they have spent a fortune. “How much?” I ask. “Oh, easily over €200,000,” she replies. She tells me that Dave was able to check his mobile phone and see that he alone has spent €10,000 on credit for it since January 2008.
They had a decent amount of savings, but now they are in serious trouble. Dave is trying to get back into work, but his field – property – is even more badly hit in Spain than in Ireland. They have not paid their €2,000 a month mortgage since Amy vanished – and now the bank have warned them they are in real danger of losing their house.
That would be, she says, devastating on two counts: firstly, no one wants to lose their home. But, probably more importantly, it’s Amy’s home. “I am really desperate to keep the house because Amy could walk back in at any second,” Audrey insisted.
She was telling us this as Gary drive us back to the pub. Minutes earlier, we had taken Audrey to the spot where Amy was last seen, moments after leaving her friend’s house in New Year’s Night. It was obviously distressing for her, but she managed to pose with a poster of Amy for us.
But you can only imagine what was going through her head as she stood at the spot where her young daughter was walking when somebody took her, for that's what probably happened. The likelihood of Amy running away and not being in contact with friends or family is too unrealistic to even contemplate. And as I looked at her graciously posing for Gary, a single thought kept bouncing around my head: how could any parent deal with things Audrey is having to deal with?
How can she function on a day to day basis not knowing where her girl is? She must just be on auto pilot. The agony must be unbearable. Every waking minute, second,is taken up with looking for Amy.
Which is worse, I wondered: the thought that something horrible has happened to Amy –or the fear that something horrible is still happening to her. Both must be unbearable.I asked Audrey, somewhat nervously, if she had accepted the possibility that Amy could be dead. “No,” she said, quickly. “I can’t face that.
I can’t. I can’t even think about that.”
Instead, she is convinced that someone, perhaps someone who knew her, has taken her. She is hoping against hope that the person still has her and will let her free one day.
Maybe events more than 1500 kilometres north east will prove her right: maybe you never should give up hope.
It was nothing more than a coincidence, but while we were talking to Audrey, Josef Fritzl was in the dock in the Austrian town of St. Poelten. It was the Tuesday of Fritzl’s trial when we met Audrey. On that day, Elizabeth Fritzl’s video evidence was played to the jury, so some of the shocking details had emerged by the time Audrey spoke to us.
For me the parallels were stomach churning. As we drove away from meeting her, and after Gary’s comments, all I could think about was this: just say some fucker has Amy in a dungeon somewhere? Just say that poor, defenceless, girl is going through the same hell that Elizabeth suffered? A shiver went down my spine at even the thought of it.
And, as we drive away under the Spanish sun, I say a silent prayer for Amy.

“We’re an army fighting an army.”

He sits across from me in the quiet pub. He has a soft and friendly face. After only a few minutes chatting I can tell he’s the sort of fella with whom, in normal circumstances, you’d quite happily shoot the breeze as you drink a pint. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I actually l liked him, but the truth is I got on famously with him. We connected with each other. We could have been friends in other circumstances.
But these weren’t normal circumstances.
The man facing me was far from being a normal person. He was actually a leading member of the Real IRA and he was telling me why he was fighting his war. And all the time, when he’s explaining to me why it’s necessary to take the war to the British, why the Sinn Fein leadership can’t call themselves republicans, why they are the real IRA and why he’ll keep on at it as long as is necessary, there’s one thought swirling through my head. As I listen to him I just keep thinking `how can this guy be so, well, normal?’ He should have two heads or something.
It had taken me months to get to meet him.
It was early 2003 and my friend John Mooney and I were working on our book, Black Operations, the secret war against the Real IRA, at the time. We could have taken the relatively easy way out and relied on the police on either side of the border for our information. We, especially John, had gotten a lot out of the good guys, but we both knew we needed more. We knew there was no point writing about the Real IRA unless we spoke to them.
I’d long had a professional interest in them. After the Omagh bomb in August 1998, they rang me to declare firstly their responsibility for the atrocity and then, a few hours later, a ceasefire. I can still hear the tinny voice – caused by a distorter – as the anonymous caller gave me the statement. When I started to ask him questions, the cheeky fucker simply said: “Michael, we picked you because we thought you wouldn’t ask us anything.” Thanks a bunch.
But receiving a phone call from a paramilitary organisation is one thing: getting to meet a representative face to face is another. How could we get them to talk? There was no secret formula; all we could do was work and work and work until someone agreed to meet us. We went at them from the outside. We spoke to one person who came to trust us. He let another person know we were sound. Finally, after months, he told me to expect a call from someone else.
The call eventually came late on a Thursday, I recall.
It was a private number and he told me his name. It actually wasn’t his name, but the name I had been waiting for. “I understand you want to meet.” “Yes.” “Okay, I’ll see you at 10.30am on Saturday. Be outside XXXXX.” “Grand. How will I know who to meet?” “I’ll know you.” The phone then went dead.
I arrived 10 minutes early. I stood waiting outside the pub in Dublin, nervously scanning the street to see if anyone coming towards me looked like a terrorist. Then I noticed movement to my left. Stupidly, I hadn’t checked the pub itself. He came out of it, quietly called my name and beckoned me in.
As I sat opposite him, I quickly sized him up. Jesus, I thought, he looks like a regular head.
What he was saying, however, was miles away from regular. In a quite well known suburban pub, we spoke about the creation of the organisation, why they split from the Provos in late 1997. He told me of Garda Special Branch bursting in on him and getting him to the ground at gunpoint, his arms behind his back. He spoke somewhat unkindly of one cop I knew –although naturally I didn’t let him know I knew the detective: he really didn’t like him.
He was an extremely articulate man. He told me that, for more than a decade, the IRA had not been killing for the Republic. He and others had seen the writing on the wall for that long. They knew the Provos were shaping up for a settlement well short of a United Ireland. What, he asked, was the point in killing for anything less than a 32 county republic?
He really did believe he was a soldier. More, he believed he was a senior commander of the only, real, army in Ireland. I clearly remember him saying that the strategy was changing from bombs (like Omagh) to killing a soldier. “We’re an army fighting an army,” he said. “We should be taking them on. How better to show that we don’t accept them being here than to go after them?”
The years passed and the meeting – and another I had with him – faded in the memory. Once the book was done, I moved on. Sure, the RIRA were largely a spent force. I concentrated on reporting in drugs, paedophilia and husbands killing their wives. I merely cast an occasional glance at them. I thought, stupidly, they were finished as a force.
All that changed on Saturday night.
John Mooney, who has kept up a professional interest in the RIRA, rang me late in the evening to tell me what had happened in Antrim. I was shocked. He wasn’t. Coincidentally, a few hours earlier he had filed a piece for the Irish edition of the Sunday Times warning the dissidents were intent on shooting members of the security forces. And then the memory of my meeting with the senior man came back to me – especially his belief, hope even, that British soldiers should be targeted.
Most people in Ireland will have been horrified by what happened on Saturday night. But some, maybe even him, will probably be celebrating in a pub tonight.

Who's the rat?

He’ll have to go back one day.
He’ll have to walk in and attempt to get back down to work and concentrate on whatever tasks are assigned to him. He’ll have to try, somehow, to put to the back of his mind the terror that has been visited upon him just because he happens to work there
But, most of all, Shane Travers will have to ignore the fact that somewhere in the College Green branch of the Bank of Ireland is the person who betrayed him.
And what’s worse, he won’t have a clue who it is. It could be the guy who passes him on the corridor; it could be the woman who stands a few feet away from him as he goes outside for some air. It could be just about anybody.
Someone in that building is directly responsible for what happened to Shane Travers last Thursday. He, or she, is directly responsible for his girlfriend Stephanie Smith, her mother Joan and nephew Stephen being held at gunpoint, tied up, bundled into a van and dumped in an abandoned house in Co Meath.
Someone, somewhere, in that building sold out his or her colleagues for probably a few hundred grand.
When the dust dies down over the massive Tiger kidnapping last week, when we’ve all largely forgotten about it, Shane Travers will still have to face his demons. He will, unless he is posted somewhere else in the bank, have to work in the same building as the person who set him up. That will be tough – he’s bound to be looking more closely than ever before at everyone who works there, wondering was he or she the one?
As the Garda investigation continues into the raid, officers are fighting several fires at the same time. They are obviously desperate to get their hands on the rest of the €7.6 million that was stolen in the raid. They recovered some €1.8 million when they stopped a car after a chase on the M50 late on Friday night. It was some feat to get any of the money back within such a short period of time - but it means almost €6 million of new and unused Euro notes are still out there.
The Garda units will also be trying to gather enough evidence for the robbers themselves to be charged.
They’re one of the most vicious and prolific in Dublin. They’re all young men, in their 20s, and some of them have a fearsome reputation for violence. In one instance recently one of the 10 or so people involved in the gang even followed a Garda to his home and poured acid on his car, before leaving two shotgun cartridges on the vehicle. If they do that to a Garda, what would they have done to Shane Travers if he put up a fight?
But another key element of the Garda probe will be to get the rat in the bank.
It’s inconceivable that the gang had no internal help in this one – they simply knew too much about the bank. Not only did they know where Shane Travers lived, but they also had key details on other workers in the vault. For example, they gave Mr Travers photographs of the homes of several of his colleagues to show them when he went in to the bank on Friday morning. And they also gave him a photograph they had of one of his bosses. The not so subtle message was clear: if the money is not handed over, we are all in trouble.
That is one explanation why the tight security procedures within the bank were not followed on Friday morning – it wasn’t just one worker who feared for his life; it was all of them.
The gangs and the gardai have been fighting a war for the best part of a decade when it comes to banks and cash. When the criminals carried out good old fashioned armed robberies in branches, the banks invested significant resources in upgrading security there. So then the robbers targeted cash in transit vans – and Achilles heel in terms of security. So, again, the security companies reacted by beefing up security there. Then it was the turn of the criminals to target the weakest link of any security system: the people who use it. Vulnerable security staff were targeted in their own homes and ordered to drop off cash – or else their loved ones would be harmed. Again, cash companies reacted by bringing in new security systems. In the case of security vans, for example, money can only be released centrally, staff have no access to cash and the vehicle itself is monitored by satellite.
When it comes to banks, like College Green, a single employee can’t simply walk in and take out €7.6 million in hard cash. There are other layers of security that will prevent that. Well, that was the theory – but last week showed criminal gangs can be cunning as well as vicious.
They knew they’d fail if they targeted Travers alone. So they encouraged his colleagues to cooperate by informing them they were in just as much danger as he was. The Bank was just lucky the gang didn’t get away with more cash: they gave him four laundry bags, which he filled with €7.6 million. If they’d given him more bags, he’d have filled them too. There was around €100 million in the vault – God knows how much they could have gotten away with.
While gardai are hopeful that they have enough evidence to charge suspects in relation to the incident tonight, it’s clear there are people out there who were heavily involved in this who have not been arrested. They’re sitting back, waiting for the fuss to die down, waiting for the time they can move the cash out of Ireland. All the notes are new, so it will have to be laundered abroad. But, even if they only get one third of their face value, it’s still a huge amount of money.
And there’ll be one bank employee who will be waiting to get a significant cut in return for an act of treachery – unless the gardai come knocking first.