Geraldine Finucane is curled up on an armchair, her feet tucked neatly under her, in a room overlooking an enormous back garden.
Birdsong and the gentle lilt of wooden wind chimes are interrupted by the appearance of a cat at the window, and she pads across a wooden floor to feed him in the warm morning sun.
“He belongs to the new people from two doors up and he’s decided he’s going to live here, he prefers this house to his own,” she says, rolling her eyes and smiling.
Electric gates and a discreet security camera are at the front of the detached red brick property on a quiet leafy street in north Belfast; this is the house that she and her husband, the solicitor Pat Finucane, moved into in January 1986 with their three children, having met as students at Trinity College Dublin in the late 1960s.
To her right, a cream panelled half-door gives a glimpse of the kitchen’s deep blue walls, where on a Sunday evening in February 1989, as the family sat down to dinner, Pat (39) was shot 14 times in front of them by loyalist paramilitaries. Her youngest child, John, was just eight years old.
One bullet ricocheted and hit Geraldine.
“Mummy still has the shrapnel in her ankle. She beeps going through airports,” says her daughter, Katherine, perched on the edge of a blue sofa beside her.
“Well, there’s tiny wee bits,” says Geraldine, “it could have been a lot worse and when I went to the hospital, they more or less took it out like a skelf [splinter].
“I suppose some people would like to hear about it [the attack] but I just don’t think it’s something ... to speak about.”
The Irish Times has been invited to the Finucane family home exactly a week after Northern Secretary Hilary Benn announced a public inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder.
The British government’s decision brought an end to the 35-year campaign led by Geraldine and her children for a full inquiry after a series of government commissioned investigations uncovered British state collusion in the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) killing – revelations that led to an apology by former British prime minister David Cameron in 2012.
[ How the public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane got over the lineOpens in new window ]
Pat Finucane, who grew up the Lower Falls area of nationalist west Belfast, was the first defence solicitor murdered in the North’s Troubles; the case attracted international media attention and calls for an inquiry were backed by leading legal and human rights groups as well as influential US politicians.
US lawyer Kerry Kennedy, daughter of former senator Robert F Kennedy and niece of former president John F Kennedy, was among the many people to contact the family over the past week.
Two days before Benn’s announcement in the House of Commons, Geraldine Finucane packed up her caravan in Spain, put it in storage, and drove more than 1,400km to Belfast with her eldest grandson, Piaras, travelling through southern France to show him the dramatic views from the Millau viaduct, before boarding the Cherbourg-to-Dublin ferry.
“I drove, he navigated,” she says, beaming.
The 74-year-old has driven the route alone for many years to spend entire summers in northern Spain – they discovered the region on a family holiday with Pat – and the family, which includes seven grandchildren, come over to visit.
Asked if they had a sense the inquiry was secured after Benn requested a face-to-face meeting, the mother and daughter reply at the same time: “No, not at all”.
“We didn’t allow ourselves to think of anything really either way, it was just a case of, ‘oh here we go again’,” says Katherine.
When Benn informed them of his decision – the family’s legal team headed by Peter Madden, Pat’s friend and legal partner, was also present – there was silence.
“It was really quite unbelievable,” adds Geraldine.
Through the decades, she has become the face of the campaign but remained intensely private about her personal life.
Her two sons, John (the Sinn Féin MP for North Belfast) and Michael, both solicitors, have taken on a more public role in recent years.
“I just kept it ‘campaign’. I never spoke about myself,” she says quietly.
A Northern Protestant who grew up in a middle-class household in east Belfast, she recalls a media interview she gave about 10 years after her husband’s murder:
“We were in the studio beforehand and a journalist said to me, ‘now Geraldine, you’re here to give your views as a middle-class Catholic. And I said, ‘but I’m not Catholic’. And he went, ‘What! How did I not know that?’
“Because I’m called Geraldine, everybody presumed I was Catholic. But I just thought it was none of their business. I’m not anything now but I was brought up a Presbyterian and went to Sunday school and church with my granny.
“I didn’t even know west Belfast existed in those days. I knew nothing about the politics of the place.”
In 1968, she went to Trinity to study English, philosophy and geography, during a period when there was an influx of Northerners heading south; Pat Finucane, the eldest of eight, was among them.
At that time, Catholics had to get a letter from the bishop seeking permission to attend the “Protestant” Dublin university.
“But Pat never asked permission, he just went, after his best friend went the year before. The first thing he did was sign up for the football team and was captain for two years.
“My friend’s boyfriend played soccer, so that’s how I met Pat.”
Trinity was “an oasis” and she lights up talking about their cinema dates to watch double showings.
“When you went into Trinity, there was no sound. You could spend days in there and not realise that Dublin was on the outside.”
After graduating in 1972, the couple planned to spend the summer in Dublin and came up to Belfast on a June weekend.
“Pat’s brother, John, was killed in a car crash that weekend. We stayed.”
They rented a flat in the republican Lenadoon estate in west Belfast – “it was the quite experience in Lenadoon in the 70s I can tell you, especially coming from east Belfast” she says – and moved to north Belfast in the early 80s “because it was cheap”.
After serving his legal apprenticeship while Geraldine worked as a secondary-school teacher, Pat Finucane established himself as one of the North’s most high-profile solicitors, winning a series of landmark cases against the British government.
We had no idea about the threats; Pat was never told about any of them. If we had been made aware ...
In 1981, he represented hunger striker Bobby Sands. He also had loyalist clients but his caseload against the British state led to him being labelled an “IRA lawyer”.
At home, Pat’s work was never discussed and their only security was a burglar alarm.
The mother and daughter joke about the jotter on the “telephone table” in the hall, with Pat teaching his children to take detailed messages.
“You had to put the date, you had to say who had phoned, you had to get a phone number for you to call back, and you had to take message. And by God, if you didn’t do it right, you were in big trouble. I should have kept those jotters,” says Geraldine.
Katherine recalls taking calls from police stations as a 10-year-old.
“I do remember going, ‘God, that was a policeman on the phone’ or it could have been a client. It was just my daddy’s job.”
It would later emerge that MI5 agents were warned on three separate occasions that the UDA planned to kill Pat Finucane, from as early as 1981.
“We had no idea about the threats; Pat was never told about any of them. If we had been made aware ...” says Geraldine.
Three weeks before his murder, there was an outcry when a British junior home office minister, Douglas Hogg, claimed in the House of Commons that a number of unnamed solicitors were “unduly sympathetic” to the IRA.
Geraldine Finucane remembers standing in her kitchen feeling “worried, really worried” following the Hogg statement.
“But up until that point, no, I wasn’t concerned about our safety. When he was killed, there were a lot of questions that needed answering ... and it all started to tie in.”
Death threats were made against her in 2000, and for the first – and only – time she considered moving out of the family home.
“I was in my 50s and the options were, leave the jurisdiction, move house or stay here and have the house secured. I left for eight weeks.”
Nobody in their right mind would go for an inquiry because it’s taken us 35 years. Who wants to put themselves through that?
Asked if there was ever a point when she felt like quitting the campaign after successive UK governments refused an inquiry, she shakes her head and speaks about the overwhelming public support, particularly from strangers.
“One day I was in Ikea and this man came up to me and said, ‘keep going’. Katherine said to me, ‘who’s that?’ and I said, ‘I haven’t got a clue’. Touch wood, I’ve never had someone come up and say something nasty.”
“You literally can’t go anywhere without someone coming up to mummy,” adds Katherine.
Some of the information unearthed through the Finucane inquiries has shed light on other high-profile sectarian murders by the same UDA gang.
“At one point, I realised exactly what we were dealing with – that it wasn’t just the murder of one man, this was a strategy that affected a lot of people,” adds Geraldine.
“Apart from wanting answers for myself, that was another reason why I knew I could never give up.”
In the wake of the public inquiry being granted, unionist politicians accused the British government of creating a “hierarchy of victims” with other families instead referred to the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), the new UK body set up to investigate Troubles-era crimes.
[ Will extent of British state collusion in Pat Finucane’s murder be revealed?Opens in new window ]
The Finucanes reject any suggestion of favouritism in their case; Benn singled out its “exceptional” nature following a British government commitment to an inquiry 20 years ago.
“I was talking to someone recently about this and they said, ‘all my mother wants is an apology’. Not everybody wants an inquiry, others want inquests and civil cases,” adds Geraldine.
“Nobody in their right mind would go for an inquiry because it’s taken us 35 years. Who wants to put themselves through that?”
What has helped keep her “sane”, particularly during Covid, is her love of horses and her garden.
Though petite in stature, she is strong from “mucking out 20 horses” in stables every weekday.
“When you leave, I’ll put my horsey clothes on and go up to Ballyclare,” she says.
“I bought Sasha, a mare, when Katherine was about 15 and took a foal out of her, Otis; I rescued Weeker, then I bought BB and Rosie. Now I just have BB.
“I rode horses when I was younger, I’ve only recently stopped because by the time I go up there and muck out, there isn’t time to ride. The grandkids would have went up when they were younger.”
She is also a soccer fan and has travelled to England to watch Crystal Palace matches.
“I took John over when he was about 10 or 11 to see Manchester United when they weren’t very good and you could get tickets, because I thought, well his daddy would have been taking him to see them. The first two matches were against Crystal Palace and I used to stay with my friend from school, who lives in Manchester.
“I might be going over to see West Ham in January, my friends have season tickets and they live in London.”
No date has been set for the inquiry but she believes Benn wants to “move quickly” on it.
Acknowledging the time it has taken to get to this point, Geraldine Finucane said all the she ever wanted was the truth.
“It’s been a long time. It’s only when you look back at where you started and where you are now, and what has come about ...”
Seeing us out the door, she extends her hand and gives a warm, firm handshake.
“We’re ready for the next chapter,” she says.
