those terrible killings is locked away in people’s hearts. He must have known there would be so little left to find now, a few hazy memories, the dregs of evil filtered through failing minds.’
Daly’s curiosity was strongly aroused. Maps were a way of taking on an unknown landscape, seizing it and making it one’s own through detailed observations and connections. But why would an elderly priest want to chart such grim territory?
The abbot spotted the glint of interest in his eyes.
‘If you feel you must, you have permission to visit his room and examine his maps. The door’s unlocked. I’m sure to Father Walsh the room had its own order, and he knew where everything lay, but to the rest of us it was an abysmal mess.’
The curtains were drawn in the cell-like space of Walsh’s room. Daly pulled them aside to reveal an elderly scholar’s room, stacks of paper everywhere, folders of newspaper clippings, legal notebooks, and old-fashioned cassette tapes. The priest had glued several sheets of paper on to the largest wall in order to accommodate a sprawling map of the border areas of Tyrone and Armagh. Across the top, he’d written in block capitals ‘THE TRIANGLE OF DEATH’. From a distance, the map resembled a medieval cartographer’s life’s work, overgrown by a forest of names, dates and arrows, and pockmarked by red pins. On closer inspection, Daly was able to make out the macabre details: the pins representing the locations of murders, mostly perpetrated by Loyalist paramilitaries within a triangle of about thirty townlands and parishes.
Daly scanned the map and pages of handwritten notes. Father Walsh had been a curate in a number of border parishes during the 1970s, and the memories of tending to grief-stricken families had stayed with him. He knew he had witnessed a pivotal point in Irish history. After moving to the monastery in the early 1990s he had begun carefully writing down what he’d seen and heard, corroborating the details with eyewitnesses, and then later with disgruntled former police officers and ex-informers.
To Daly’s eyes, there was an amateurish air to the research – the efforts of an ordinary man to record history rather than a professional historian or a well-connected journalist. The notes were strewn everywhere, bringing back memories of twisting lanes, checkpoints in the dark, the blood-spattered porches of isolated farms, and men with hoods roaming the darkness of border country. The names and dates flickered by without offering him any clues. He was confronted by a feeling of helplessness. Father Walsh’s investigations focused on the year 1979. A year of unparalleled savagery. In total, 121 sectarian murders. It was also the year his mother had been killed, and he felt an instinctive recoil. The priest had spent his final days slowly dissecting the events of a brutal year and staring into its bloody blackness. Somehow, he had discerned a pattern. Daly could see that much. He had listed the same names and weapons repeatedly, the movements of a paramilitary gang linked to some of the murders, their vehicles, a Luger 47 and the surnames Mitchell, Browne, Agnew and McClintock. Each murder was somehow rooted in the details of the others.
Daly was so absorbed by the map he didn’t hear the abbot approaching. Suddenly Graves was there in the room standing alongside him. He looked more diminutive than when he had been sitting at his desk, and his face had grown paler. He waved at the map in a disheartened way.
‘How did it get so bad?’ His voice was that of a tired confessor contemplating an overwhelming abundance of sin. ‘I remember the start of the seventies and the civil rights marches, the campaigns for better housing and fair employment. It all seemed to herald a new dawn for Northern Ireland.’ The words tumbled from the abbot’s lips. ‘How did we end up with murder gangs and medieval justice, vigilantes pursuing revenge with guns and bombs? Where were the
Daly’s curiosity was strongly aroused. Maps were a way of taking on an unknown landscape, seizing it and making it one’s own through detailed observations and connections. But why would an elderly priest want to chart such grim territory?
The abbot spotted the glint of interest in his eyes.
‘If you feel you must, you have permission to visit his room and examine his maps. The door’s unlocked. I’m sure to Father Walsh the room had its own order, and he knew where everything lay, but to the rest of us it was an abysmal mess.’
The curtains were drawn in the cell-like space of Walsh’s room. Daly pulled them aside to reveal an elderly scholar’s room, stacks of paper everywhere, folders of newspaper clippings, legal notebooks, and old-fashioned cassette tapes. The priest had glued several sheets of paper on to the largest wall in order to accommodate a sprawling map of the border areas of Tyrone and Armagh. Across the top, he’d written in block capitals ‘THE TRIANGLE OF DEATH’. From a distance, the map resembled a medieval cartographer’s life’s work, overgrown by a forest of names, dates and arrows, and pockmarked by red pins. On closer inspection, Daly was able to make out the macabre details: the pins representing the locations of murders, mostly perpetrated by Loyalist paramilitaries within a triangle of about thirty townlands and parishes.
Daly scanned the map and pages of handwritten notes. Father Walsh had been a curate in a number of border parishes during the 1970s, and the memories of tending to grief-stricken families had stayed with him. He knew he had witnessed a pivotal point in Irish history. After moving to the monastery in the early 1990s he had begun carefully writing down what he’d seen and heard, corroborating the details with eyewitnesses, and then later with disgruntled former police officers and ex-informers.
To Daly’s eyes, there was an amateurish air to the research – the efforts of an ordinary man to record history rather than a professional historian or a well-connected journalist. The notes were strewn everywhere, bringing back memories of twisting lanes, checkpoints in the dark, the blood-spattered porches of isolated farms, and men with hoods roaming the darkness of border country. The names and dates flickered by without offering him any clues. He was confronted by a feeling of helplessness. Father Walsh’s investigations focused on the year 1979. A year of unparalleled savagery. In total, 121 sectarian murders. It was also the year his mother had been killed, and he felt an instinctive recoil. The priest had spent his final days slowly dissecting the events of a brutal year and staring into its bloody blackness. Somehow, he had discerned a pattern. Daly could see that much. He had listed the same names and weapons repeatedly, the movements of a paramilitary gang linked to some of the murders, their vehicles, a Luger 47 and the surnames Mitchell, Browne, Agnew and McClintock. Each murder was somehow rooted in the details of the others.
Daly was so absorbed by the map he didn’t hear the abbot approaching. Suddenly Graves was there in the room standing alongside him. He looked more diminutive than when he had been sitting at his desk, and his face had grown paler. He waved at the map in a disheartened way.
‘How did it get so bad?’ His voice was that of a tired confessor contemplating an overwhelming abundance of sin. ‘I remember the start of the seventies and the civil rights marches, the campaigns for better housing and fair employment. It all seemed to herald a new dawn for Northern Ireland.’ The words tumbled from the abbot’s lips. ‘How did we end up with murder gangs and medieval justice, vigilantes pursuing revenge with guns and bombs? Where were the
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