Big Read: Veronica Guerin’s last story – John Traynor, the mysterious killing of a priest and missing documents

She never got to tell that tale due to the criminal getting an injunction against her

Veronica Guerin pictured the week before her death with John, ‘The Coach’ Traynor. Picture by Brian Farrell

Maeve Sheehan

They first met in a coffee shop on Montague Street, near St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. She had phoned the day before, introduced herself as the journalist Veronica Guerin and asked to meet. When he asked why, she said: “It’s in your interests.”

She “astonished” him by recounting an “escapade” he had with a garda friend and telling him she was going to write about it. She talked about Martin ‘The General’ Cahill, and his romantic entanglements, about which “she knew a great deal more than I did”.