Michael Agnew is shot dead

Michael Agnew is shot dead in his bed shortly before eight in the morning, in front of his wife. The novel does not stage the killing directly: it reaches the reader through reports, the reactions of those around him, and the later account of Tommy McGeown’s trial. That indirect presentation makes the murder both a personal rupture for Cushla Lavery and a public argument about law, political violence, and the stories used to explain them.

Professional convictions and the records he kept

Before his death, Michael is shown arguing that the Diplock courts, which proceed without juries, treat Republican defendants unfairly. At a dinner, he challenges Victor’s dismissal of prisoners’ complaints and maintains that the system would not be accepted elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The exchange leaves the table strained: Michael’s argument is not abstract to him, but his defense of young people caught in a political and judicial system he regards as unjust.

His work is made materially visible when Cushla finds the papers in his house. Among the files are statements the accused had refused to sign, police photographs, and accounts of arrests and custody. The records document allegations of abuse, including the use of hoods and electrical equipment. Their presence shows Michael preserving evidence that official proceedings might not otherwise make visible. Cushla recognizes the gulf between those records and the public categories of accused, court, and evidence; she also sees the emotional burden of a practice that required him to confront such accounts repeatedly.

The files give the murder a political context without proving that Michael’s legal work caused it. His public position placed him in conflict with those who regarded defense of Republican prisoners as support for them. The distinction matters: Michael argues for fair treatment within the courts, while the later claim of responsibility recasts that work as complicity with an enemy institution.

The news of his death

Cushla first hears that Michael has been shot dead while she is at the Lavery bar. The announcement reaches her amid ordinary work and other people’s condolences. She responds by washing tankards and repeatedly cleaning the sink, moving with a stiffness that makes practical routine seem like the only action available to her. When Eamonn touches her arm, she walks away, leaves the bar, and crosses the car park toward the esplanade. Her grief is registered in bodily disorientation rather than explanation: even as she tries to leave, she turns as though Michael were still beside her.

The death becomes public news. In the bar, a television report shows a march on Stormont and earlier footage before identifying Michael as a senior counsel killed in front of his wife. The report also shows the stretcher being carried from the house. Two Royal Ulster Constabulary men are outside, with others on the driveway, and a civilian-clothed man stands by the rose bushes beside a parked car. The sequence places the killing within the visible apparatus of policing and broadcast coverage, but it cannot make the private loss comprehensible to Cushla.

At the funeral, Gina voices the shame she feels at attending after someone from their community has carried out the murder. Later, the radio reports that the Provisional Irish Republican Army has claimed responsibility, alleging that Michael served a corrupt judicial system. Gina condemns the perpetrators even while referring to them as people from her own side. Her reaction reveals a divided communal language: proximity and belonging do not erase the horror of the act, yet the murder is immediately framed through competing claims about loyalty and justice.

The later account of Tommy McGeown

The novel returns to Michael’s death through the newspaper coverage of Tommy McGeown’s trial. Cushla reads that Tommy refused to recognize the court, offered no defense, and answered no questions; he was convicted on evidence described as forensic and circumstantial. The report also places his trial within a wider concern about the danger of working in the judiciary and the recruitment of teenagers into violence. These details connect Michael’s professional world to the young people who become caught in it, without turning a conviction into a complete account of motive.

The newspaper recalls that Tommy had been repairing a path at a house opposite Michael’s. When rain began and the family was out, Michael invited the boy in for tea. Cushla imagines him making the tea and trying to put an awkward teenager at ease. She then wonders whether Tommy saw a photograph of Michael in wig and gown and mistook him for a judge, or whether the opportunity to kill him occurred later. The text marks these possibilities as Cushla’s reconstruction, not established facts. Her final image of Tommy’s anger and desire to belong is an attempt to understand how the ordinary encounter might have been transformed into an opening for violence.

Consequences and narrative significance

Michael’s death is followed by the police questioning of Cushla about her relationship with him and about Tommy’s notebook, which contains her telephone number. She explains that she gave it to Tommy so he could contact her if the family needed shopping. That small practical connection becomes part of an inquiry into a murder whose personal and political strands cannot be neatly separated. Her private attachment to Michael is now exposed to institutional scrutiny, while Tommy’s written record enters a process that organizes the killing as a case.

The event’s significance lies partly in this collision of accounts. Michael had challenged the fairness of courts and kept records of what he believed their procedures concealed; after his death, the court and the news reconstruct him, Tommy, and the murder through testimony, evidence, and political claims. The novel leaves the chain between a cup of tea, a young man’s later conviction, and the killing shadowed by uncertainty. What remains certain is the cost: Michael is dead, Cushla’s grief continues beyond the public report, and the language of justice becomes inseparable from the violence committed in its name.