"You did at the start," she said to him. "I changed everything in the kitchen so it made it easier to go into that particular room."
"There's a haze around that," said John quietly from a comfy chair on the other side of his mother's lounge overlooking the back garden.
Pat Finucane, 39, was killed at 7.25pm on 12 February 1989, when the front door of the family's double-fronted redbrick home in north Belfast, in which Geraldine, 74, remains today, was kicked down by two men as the couple and their three children were eating a Sunday roast in the kitchen.
As Pat, still gripping his fork, rose from the table, a total of 14 shots were fired. Six bullets struck his head, one or more of which had been fired at a range of 15 inches.
One ricocheted, hitting Geraldine in the ankle, as the children, John, eight, Katherine, 12, and Michael, 17, cowered under the table.
The loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) claimed they killed the 39-year-old lawyer because he was an IRA officer, a claim for which no evidence has materialised.
Scant effort was put into the police investigation.
John recalls finding a spent bullet cartridge from the attack in one of his socks a few days after the murder. He said: "I remember showing up in the morning and saying, 'What's this?'" A hard question for a grieving widow to answer.
"I must have ironed [in the kitchen] on the Sunday," Geraldine said. Further spent cartridges were found under the kitchen cupboards when Geraldine did a spring clean.
Over the last three and a half decades, as a result of campaigning by the Finucane family and others, an extraordinary story has emerged of the British state's complicity in the murder of a lawyer who had simply proved to be a thorn in its side.
This story is from the November 18, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the November 18, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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