Before I get onto just why my novel What Goes Around found its way into this trial, I think it best to tell of the developments, both positive and worrying, for Don in the lead-up to his first appearance at Cork’s Circuit Criminal Court in Cork city in November 2008. On the positive side, his solicitors had received the lab reports which stated that there was no forensic evidence that linked Don to the lunch box or any of the rounds of ammunition that were found in his house. Also, the services of one of Ireland’s most eminent barristers had been secured to act for the defence. Tom Creed SC was the great ‘silverback’ of Cork’s Circuit Court and he had played a part as advocate for either the prosecution or for the defence in some of the country’s most high-profile trials. Don, who had attended courts in England when members of his youth group had found themselves on trial for a range of offences had met with several barristers and was not greatly impressed by most of them. When I asked him what he thought of Tom Creed he replied: ‘The man has an exceptionally sharp mind and in any other circumstance I would enjoy meeting and talking with him.’

There was not that much evidence for the prosecution to work with. In the intervening years since his first arrest back in 2005, the guards had failed to turn up anything incriminating about Don’s character. After trawling through years of financial records the investigators had only found regular donations to good causes; that he had lived a modest life and drove small old cars, that there was no evidence of him attending any republican fund-raisers, political meetings, funerals or memorials; in fact, there was nothing to link him to the Irish republican movement but for his friendship with George Hegarty. All the evidence the prosecution had was the box of ammunition, two deactivated rounds that a gun shop owner in England had given Don when he had enquired about different types of ammunition as part of some research and an illustrated book about firearms, from pistols to sniper rifles, that Don had bought in a newsagents and used to fact check when editing a manuscript. It may be difficult for younger readers to believe but in the days before the World Wide Web most people relied on reference books rather than Google and as well as the book on firearms Don had a small library to turn to when checking that events or objects in a story were accurate. But of course, the guards were not interested in what else lay on Don’s bookshelves.

And that’s how my novel became a piece of evidence. He had told the guards of his work as a literary editor and that there was a copy of a book he had edited called What Goes Around which was only inches away from the firearms book they had taken. Not only are there many references to firearms in the story but also the AK47 gets mentioned several times and technical details of the weapon also feature in a conversation between two characters about the comparative merits of the Kalashnikov and the Armalite. I know nothing about guns but I felt that the characters needed to display some level of expertise and it was Don who did the research and provided me with the facts. He had told all this to the guards during his interrogation but his explanation was only met with well rehearsed expressions of scepticism. The police did not believe Don had anything to do with publishing and told him that he would have to come up with a better story than that.