Interview with Inspector Brennan O'Neill

“Name's Brennan O’Neill, chief inspector of the Cork Garda - that’s the local police here in the Republic of Ireland. I've worked and lived in Cork for many years now.  Seen just about everything there is to see.  But there was this one case back in 96...well, let me start at the beginning. The part I didn’t connect to this case.  Until later.

“I was up visiting my Mum in Belfast when my old RUC buddies asked for my help.  Seems a young lad found a bomb in an old alleyway next to an abandoned warehouse.  But the warehouse wasn’t completely abandoned.  The RUC found some open containers in there with a few weapons, probably left in haste when the police arrived. Sophisticated weapons.  The kind that suggested a well-financed loyalist group was up to the devil’s work.

“I thought about that incident for months afterward when I returned to Cork.  Who put up the money for laser-sighted missile launchers, and managed to get them into Belfast without anyone being the wiser? And what if an escalated war between the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries moved to the Republic?  There were enough bloody terrorists in both camps to maim and kill innocents at will.

“It was a gray misty morning in early May when I got the call from a constable in Bantry Bay.  The dead man was one Eamonn Conor, son of John Conor, a powerful shipping magnate with offices in Belfast, Cork, and Plymouth, UK.  That got our attention.  So did the information Sergeant Regis Muldoon pulled off the computer. Seems Eamonn’s wife, Beth, had filed complaints of physical abuse.  She and her son were living alone in a cottage above Bantry Bay.

“Except she’d disappeared, taking her son with her.  It didn’t look good for her, particularly when we found a bloodstained pair of scissors in her tool shed. The other suspect was Peter Deagan, a powerfully-built mechanic over in Bantry.  Turned out I’d remembered him by the code name “Dragoon” when he was interrogated by the RUC on suspicion of building car bombs.

“The witness that ID'd the body wasn’t telling me the whole story by a long shot, so I had him drop by the Garda HQ for a more personal get together. I had to shake his story. It didn't ring true for one, and he was very nervous for someone not involved.  He described the car well enough and we finally did locate it.  Found more evidence to incriminate the dead man’s wife.  Too much evidence, I thought.  Like she was being set up, nice as you please.  But by who?  And since the body was dropped in the bay, where was the actual crime scene?

“For the rest, you'll have to read, The Burren Weeps. It's all there, bombings in Belfast, crime scene investigations in Cork and Bantry Bay, and a hair-raising canter on the Cliffs of Moher. It's by a fellow named Jim Hammond to whom I related the case.”

Publishers and agents may contact Jim Hammond at jim@jim-hammond.com or  505-264-0123.