Cocaine Wars by Mick McCaffrey

Skerritt hit the car with the golf club, before the vehicle left the scene. Mark Skerritt stated that he knew who the knife-man was, but he was not prepared to identify him, for fear of a revenge attack being carried out on him.
    Detectives interviewed Declan Gavin’s friend Eamon Daly, and he told them about Gavin’s movements on the night of the murder. After the twenty-first birthday party in the Transport Club, they headed into town but then separated, with each going to a different nightclub. They arranged to meet up again at Abrakebabra. Before the stabbing incident, Daly saw Gavin outside ‘kissing a bird’, but she had left the scene before the Nissan Micra arrived.
    Daly remembered a car pulling up outside Abrakebabra with at least three people in it. He said that a man got out of the front passenger door wearing a balaclava and carrying a knife. ‘He was roaring and shouting like he was psyching himself up’ was how Daly described him. After the stabbing occurred, Andrew Murray gave Daly a lift to nearby Dolphin’s Barn Fire Station to get an ambulance. While they were on the way to the station, they were pulled over by Gardaí. The Gardaí had heard about the murder and thought that the pair speeding down the road might have been escaping the murder scene. They soon discovered that Daly and Murray were simply trying to get help for their dying friend.
    Gardaí eventually found out that the man who carried out the murder had been talking to John Malone before the incident, but they did not know this when they interviewed the twenty-one-year-old in the hours after of the killing. Malone was undergoing basic training at Cathal Brugha army barracks. He was living in Saggart but was originally from Drimnagh. He made a statement describing how he and a group of friends arrived at Abrakebabra after 3.00 a.m., where they saw Declan Gavin ‘talking to a girl’. They were at the steps outside the Irish Permanent, which was next door to the restaurant. He said he saw a ‘silvery coloured Micra’, and that the driver of the car ‘said something to me’. He then observed a man in the front passenger seat wearing a balaclava and carrying a knife, while there were ‘two or three in the back. I didn’t get a good look at them.’ Malone then stated that the knife-man chased Declan Gavin to Abrakebabra, before pushing the door open enough to get his arm in and swing at Gavin with the knife.
    On 29 August, Malone was interviewed again but was not detained. He elaborated on his first statement, saying he ‘knew two or three people in the car’, and said a number of those in the car were saying: ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ ‘I knew these people were looking for Declan Gavin as they had been fighting with him for years.’ He stated that he knew the knife-man, the driver and one of the rear-seat passengers, but he refused to name them and said, ‘I am afraid for my family’s lives, that they would be in danger.’
    When interviewed by Gardaí on the morning after the murder, Justin Beatty, from Tallaght, said that he had taken ecstasy and three or four lines of cocaine at the Castle nightclub in Finglas, so he was ‘off his head’ when he arrived with his mates at Abrakebabra. He said he did not see the stabbing because he had been relieving himself at the time, but heard screaming and a woman saying: ‘He has a knife’, and saw people running. After that he saw the Nissan Micra speed away from the scene, and he ran into the restaurant to see what had happened. He could not get into the kitchen because the manager closed the door on him. He kicked in the door and saw Declan Gavin lying injured on the ground.
    Andrew Murray, a soldier in the Irish Army, was at the Castle nightclub in Finglas with Justin Beatty and three other friends. He initially told Gardaí that he witnessed John Malone talking to the occupants