As well as holding leftwing views, like millions of others, Don Blaney believes that Ireland should be a 32 county republic. But he doesn’t just believe that a republic would best serve the Irish, whatever their religious or ethnic background, he also believes – as someone who has helped people regardless of their nationality – that Britain would be better off as a republic. He views the British royal family as propping up a corrupt class system and they are little more than ‘robber barons’ whose wealth comes from what he calls ‘thievery’ from subjugated peoples.

A favourite line of his mother’s when viewing their large estates and royal regalia was a dismissive: ‘And none of them can show a receipt.’ I was once with him at a sports event in London when he steadfastly refused to stand for ‘God Save the Queen’ despite him being seated on one of the front rows. He detested Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party and, as it set about creating one of the most unequal industrialised nations in the world, he decided that his best course of action was to return to County Cork with his young daughter in 1991 where he built a house almost single-handedly and devoted his life to bringing up Siobhan. Back in Ireland as a single parent and away from the issues that stirred him into action in his twenties Don’s activism dwindled to occasionally going to Amnesty International meetings in Cork city.

Now in his thirties the fire was reduced to a flickering flame. When in his forties, Siobhan left home for university and Don’s love of literature reignited; he decided to set up a book publishing business and I was delighted to work with him again. So if that’s the man I know, then why was he arrested for the illegal possession of ammunition for a Kalashnikov  assault rifle by police investigating one of the biggest bank robberies in history; and how did my novel What Goes Around become a piece of evidence at his trial? The truth involves a series of unfortunate coincidences (for Don Blaney), a police investigation that was not all that is seemed; a deal between the Sinn Fein and the Irish Government; an IRA operation that was so secret even most of its members did not know anything about it; and an IRA member who was at the heart of the money laundering operation while simultaneously working as an agent for the Irish police, An Garda Siochana.