Cushla discovers Michael’s records of police torture

Cushla discovers Michael’s records of police torture among the case papers in his flat, where private notes and photographs preserve evidence that the formal legal process does not make visible. The discovery turns Michael’s objections to the courts into a record of specific young men’s experiences, while foreshadowing the stark difference between what his files document and what is accepted in Tommy McGeown’s trial.

The Discovery in Michael’s Flat

Cushla arrives at Michael’s home after a nearby bomb explodes. She finds his bed empty, puts on Michael’s cardigan, and notices the papers stacked across the dining table. A whiskey glass, pipe-stained tissue, and slips marked with names or words sit among the documents. In the uneasy quiet, with a record playing, the papers begin to seem less like ordinary clutter and more like evidence of something threatening.

The thickest stack is labelled with the names Kelly, McAleavey, and Coyle. Cushla draws it toward her and finds copies of statements the three men had refused to sign, police photographs, and accounts each had written about arrest and custody. The records make clear that Michael has gathered and kept material concerning their treatment, rather than relying only on what the authorities have chosen to record.

What the Records Establish

The accounts describe arrests in which doors were forced open, followed by a police lineup where a woman identified the men’s positions while officers held a blanket in front of her. The young men also recorded being hooded and subjected to noise and electrical cables. Photographs show signs of serious physical abuse. Cushla is disturbed by the material and asks herself how anyone could deal with such evidence every day; the documents disclose both the scale of the abuse and the burden of Michael’s work with it.

The records also connect the men’s written testimony to visual evidence. Their own accounts sit beside police mugshots and photographs of their bodies, creating a counter-record of custody that can be compared with the official handling of their cases. The files do not make the legal system answer for that evidence in this scene, but they establish that Michael possesses material directly challenging any account that treats the arrests and custody as unproblematic.

Legal Context and Later Proceedings

Michael’s files give material form to the position he has voiced in other settings. At dinner with Penny and Victor, he argues that Diplock courts, which proceed without juries, are unfair and would not be tolerated elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Cushla has also heard him object to Republican prisoners’ treatment by the courts. The papers she finds are not merely an expression of that political disagreement: they contain statements and photographs documenting the experiences behind it.

The discovery gains further significance from the later account of Tommy’s trial. A newspaper reports that he refused to recognize the court, offered no defence, and was convicted on evidence described as forensic and circumstantial. Cushla recognizes his image as resembling the mugshots in Michael’s files. The contrast is consequential: Michael’s papers preserve accounts of coercive police custody, while the public report of the trial presents the conviction through the evidence accepted in court. The scene does not establish that the files concerned Tommy’s own custody; it shows instead the wider legal world in which his case, and Michael’s evidence-gathering, belong.

Evidence, Exposure, and Risk

Cushla’s discovery also changes her understanding of what Michael’s work entails. She sees not an abstract legal argument but a carefully assembled record of named young men, refused statements, and injuries documented in photographs. The intimate setting of the flat makes the evidence feel precarious: the documents are in Michael’s home, alongside the objects of his daily life, as a bomb has just sounded nearby.

The novel places this private archive against official processes that determine which accounts count. Michael’s objections to juryless courts and Cushla’s later encounter with the trial report frame the records as a challenge to the authority of a single, accepted version of events. In the discovery, the papers themselves become the means by which experiences absent or obscured from public judgment can be seen.