It was around midday before Don Blaney returned home from his uncle’s house and it
quickly became obvious that he had missed a lot of excitement while he had been away.
Don’s next-door neighbour called to him and said that he had found two partially burned
Northern Bank pound notes in his garden and rang the police. On arrival to collect the
notes, the police asked if there had been any fires that could have been the source of
the scorched notes. The neighbour couldn’t think of any, but his six-year-old daughter
tugged at his hand and said: ‘What about the flames coming out of Don’s chimney,
dad?’ It was an innocent remark from an innocent child that referred to a chimney fire
which had occurred two weeks before, but it was enough to prompt a major police
mobilisation. ‘They were at your door while you were out,’ said the neighbour, ‘and I’ll
think they’ll be back very shortly.’

Don was doing his usual chores when the knock on the door came less than an hour
later. The police (or guards as they are called in Ireland) were on his doorstep in
numbers, some of them armed. He was placed under arrest, handcuffed and made to
sit in his kitchen. Occasionally, the police would take turns to shout aggressively into his
face about money from the Northern Bank. After an hour of fruitless searching a
sergeant entered the kitchen with a plastic lunchbox in his hand. ‘What’s this?’ he asked
Don.

The first feeling of foreboding started to stir within Don as he told the sergeant that he
had never seen the box before. The police officer then opened the lid and showed its
contents: 220 rounds for an AK47. Don looked hard into the sergeant’s eyes and said:
‘You have to be fucking joking me!’ But it was no joke and Don would spend the next
three days deprived of sleep and under heavy interrogation in a Garda station in the
north of Cork city.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/feb/19/northernireland.northernireland