A Dream of Death Read online

  While there was prestige in filing for titles such as the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, the nature of the UK newspaper industry of the early 1980s meant that the very best money was always to be made from selling salacious stories to the tabloids, including The Sun, Daily Star, News of the World, Mirror and Sunday Mirror. A strong story for one of the tabloids could pay two or three times as much as a story in the broadsheets. Hence, it was usually work supplying the London-based tabloids that became the bread and butter for every provincial news agency.

  Financially, Mr Bailey was doing very well, and for most of the 1980s he was as busy as he wanted to be. It helped that this was still the heyday of the newspaper industry in the UK and most titles had very generous budgets for freelance work in the provinces. From working with one freelance agency, Mr Bailey eventually set up his own operation and increased the number of titles he was supplying from his Cheltenham base.

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  In 2016, recalling that period of his life, Mr Bailey noted how he had gone from writing simple stories about school events for his local paper to supplying articles for some of the most prestigious news organisations in the world. ‘I acted as a news correspondent for local, regional and national newspapers as well as television,’ he said. ‘I was an occasional member of the Sunday Times Insight team and I also worked in-house for BBC local television in Bristol and for HTV West. Over the years, I authored thousands of news items.’

  However, while working on a story in 1986, he made a trip that would radically alter the course of his life. That year, he made a short visit to Ireland and visited west Cork for the first time. It made a lasting impression on the 29-year-old. The laid-back lifestyle he witnessed in west Cork shone an unflattering light on his chosen life in Cheltenham.

  In describing his work in Cheltenham, Mr Bailey would later refer to the articles that proved most profitable for his agency as ‘frivolous’. After the breakdown of his marriage, he grew increasingly unhappy with his work in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bristol, and even London. Almost unbeknownst to himself, the trip to Ireland had lit the spark of a desire to start a new life and focus more on his artistic interests, such as music and poetry.

  His 1986 visit to Ireland prompted Mr Bailey to re-evaluate where his life was going. He would ultimately make a total of three visits to Ireland before deciding, to the astonishment of his friends, family and colleagues in both Gloucester and Cheltenham, to abandon his career in England and permanently relocate to west Cork.

  A significant element in his decision to move to Ireland, as he would acknowledge in court proceedings to come, was his growing disillusionment with journalism, and the demands of his freelance job. Working as a freelancer can be a profitable option, but it is also one of the toughest fields in the industry, particularly when dealing with tabloid papers, which have an insatiable appetite for lurid stories. Operating a freelance agency can be even more demanding. A freelance is only as good as their last major story, they can never afford to be off-duty and they are constantly defending their market from other freelancers who are only too eager to poach work from them.

  While getting work published was one thing, getting subsequent payment for it was another matter; it meant a huge amount of administration in submitting and then chasing invoices. For someone who loved poetry, who adored the reflective, almost mystical aspect of nature and who was also very sociable in terms of his fondness for music, art and cultural events, operating a successful UK news agency would inevitably prove to be a draining experience.

  In 1991 Mr Bailey said goodbye to his Cheltenham and Gloucester friends and moved to Ireland. He initially stayed in Waterford with some acquaintances to give him time to decide on his next move. He was able to secure some casual farm work in the south-east to earn an income, before he decided, after a brief interlude in Wicklow, to move west to the Mizen Head area of Cork. Wild, rugged, and with a bohemian feel, thanks to its thriving population of migrants from all over Europe, North America and Asia, west Cork had long been a haven for artists, film stars, musicians, industrialists and even drop-outs.

  West Cork would eventually boast resident celebrities such as Jeremy Irons, Sinéad Cusack, Neil Jordan, Jeremy Paxman, Roy Disney, David Puttnam, Graham Norton and Carol Vorderman. The area became so fashionable that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, briefly holidayed in west Cork with the Puttnams. But it wasn’t just celebrities who were attracted to the place. An area near Dunmanway became home to one of the biggest New Age encampments in Ireland. Organic and vegan foods were commonplace in west Cork years before becoming popular in Irish cities. The region even boasted its own Buddhist retreat.

  Mr Bailey secured a job working part-time at a fish factory in Schull and became a regular on the social scene in Schull, Skibbereen, Bantry and even smaller villages like Goleen and Ballydehob. The tall Englishman with an avid interest in all things Irish soon became a well-known figure in west Cork.

  It was while working at the Schull fish factory that he first met Welsh artist Jules Thomas. She had gone to buy fish as part of her weekly family shopping and struck up a conversation with the former journalist. Given his own time studying in Wales, it was natural that they quickly became friends.

  Initially he rented a room from Jules Thomas at her property at Liscaha, a short distance outside Schull. This was where she had her art studio and was raising her daughters. Not long afterwards, they began a relationship. ‘We became friendly and then we became lovers,’ Mr Bailey explained. As the relationship developed, he would work around the Liscaha property, help Ms Thomas’s children with their homework and attend cultural events with her across west Cork.

  Ms Thomas was an accomplished and successful artist. Born in Wales, she would later confirm that she had wanted to be an artist from the tender age of just three. She had studied at Dartington College of Arts in Devon. Dartington was founded in 1961 on the estate established by Leonard Knight Elmhirst, one of the Bloomsbury set of 1920s London. For a time, Dartington served as one of the most prestigious arts-focused colleges in England and boasted connections with George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and Julian Bell.

  The Welsh artist then graduated from the prestigious Kingston College in London with a qualification in art and three-dimensional design. It was her search for artistic inspiration in landscape that eventually led her to Ireland in 1973. She based herself in west Cork, where she raised her three daughters, Saffron, Virginia and Fenella. When Ms Thomas first met Mr Bailey, her daughters were aged between ten and seventeen.

  Her art – gorgeous landscapes and seascapes – was inspired by the rugged west Cork countryside, which she would call home for the next 40 years. From her Liscaha studio – a dedicated art room at the pretty cottage outside Schull named The Prairie – she sold works both in Ireland and overseas. Ms Thomas secured prestigious commissions, including a display of wildlife murals for the Mizen Head Visitor Centre and works for the Jameson Heritage Centre, the Skellig Experience Visitor Centre, the Killaloe Visitor Centre and the Kenmare Heritage Centre. She would also supply a wildlife mural to Lulworth Cove Wildlife Centre in Dorset in the UK. Her work was exhibited at the Lavit Gallery and at various other arts events in Cork. Many of her artworks evoking the magic of the Irish landscape have been exported to Irish-Americans in the US.

  Their shared love of the arts would underpin a relationship that would prove, by their own admission, to be both a loving union and an emotional, occasionally volatile rollercoaster. But despite this, almost 30 years later the couple are still together and still living at The Prairie in Liscaha.

  Fascinated by Irish history and the Gaelic language, Mr Bailey avidly read everything he could about Ireland and west Cork. The local landscape, folklore and culture slowly began to infuse his writing, both in his poetry and in the diary he maintained daily. What he originally intended to be lyrics for songs and ballads eventually emerged as poetry reflecting rich Irish themes including nature, fa
rming, history and the landscape. Some were also incredibly personal, dealing with the question of how someone might fit in with this history-soaked land.

  Like many other Englishmen before him who had moved to Ireland and fallen in love with the local culture, Mr Bailey even decided for a time to go by the Gaelic version of his name – Eoin O’Baille. His musical instrument of choice at parties and arts events even became the bodhrán.

  Many of his new Irish friends were sufficiently impressed with his poetry to suggest that he show his works to the famous west Cork-based poet John Montague. Mr Bailey had undertaken some gardening work for the New York-born poet and his American partner, the author Elizabeth Wassell, so it was easy to arrange for some of his poetry to be submitted to them for an expert opinion. The literary couple, who had fallen in love in the US despite a 28-year age difference, had relocated to west Cork in 1993, and they readily agreed to offer the Englishman whatever help and advice they could.

  Mr Montague – who died in the south of France in December 2016 – was sufficiently impressed by Mr Bailey’s work to encourage him to continue with his writing. He also made a number of suggestions about how the young Englishman could hone his craft. Later, the poet made the aspiring younger writer the gift of an old typewriter. In return, Mr Bailey would submit his poems to the couple with such affectionate handwritten notes as ‘To the Bard, John, and to the Lady Elizabeth’.

  It was a fledgling friendship that would not last, with contact effectively easing after Mr Bailey’s 1996 assault on Ms Thomas, and then ceasing after his arrest by gardaí as part of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder investigation. In an interview with Emily Hourican for the Sunday Independent in June 2010, Ms Wassell said the couple were appalled when they learned about the full details of Mr Bailey’s assault on Ms Thomas – an attack that required hospitalisation.

  For the next few months, the couple continued to offer Mr Bailey gardening work at their west Cork home. He had spoken of his remorse about the domestic violence incident and his determination to change his life. Both felt they could best help him by providing work and supporting his attempt to address his own personal issues. But they began to slowly reduce the number of occasions on which he would be invited into their kitchen to discuss his poetry or to local literary events. Contact ended after Mr Bailey’s first arrest by gardaí in February 1997 in connection with the du Plantier investigation.

  On 10 January 2000, Mr Montague wrote an article about the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier for the prestigious New Yorker magazine. The piece was headlined ‘A Devil in the Hills’ and it brought the already high-profile Toormore killing to the attention of an even greater global audience.

  It immediately became apparent that the article had greatly offended Mr Bailey, in particular the references to his poetry and the newspaper articles he had submitted about the killing in December 1996 and January 1997. One reference in the magazine article was to the fact that Mr Bailey had submitted ‘scraps of songs and poem ballads’ for consideration. Mr Montague wrote that ‘there was a glimmer of talent there but it needed a level of discipline which he seemed unprepared to give’. The article also contained a line that claimed the Manchester-born journalist was effectively ‘unruffled by his [new-found] notoriety’.

  While he has steadfastly refused over the years to comment on the New Yorker article, it is abundantly evident that Mr Bailey considered the piece a personal betrayal by a poet he held in high esteem – not just of his relationship with the poet but also of the writings of which he was so intensely proud.

  Mr Montague later became extremely wary about the aftermath of the article and claimed he had received a message from Mr Bailey that informed him, ‘Don’t bother coming back to west Cork.’ Mr Montague, who spent time in the US and France each year before returning to his home in west Cork, was sufficiently concerned to contact gardaí to let them know to when he would be away for any extended period of time.

  Afterwards, Mr Montague rarely spoke of his former protégé. One of the few remarks he passed publicly about Mr Bailey was to say: ‘I don’t think anyone knew Ian really well, even himself.’ Ms Wassell would go on to describe Mr Bailey to The Scotsman newspaper as ‘a lost soul’ who had clearly come to Ireland to rediscover himself.

  ‘I always felt Ian was a man who didn’t seem to have his own moorings, so he overcompensated with a great show of narcissism. The way he refashioned himself into Eoin O’Baille made him seem, at least to some people in the community, a little unstable,’ Montague said.

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  Earlier, in 1993, Mr Bailey had signed up for a community employment project in west Cork but began to feel the itch to get back into journalism. His first ventures involved submissions to a publication operated by the environmental campaign group Earthwatch. He also got involved in working on a script for a film that was being shot locally, which was shown to both former Minister for Arts Michael D. Higgins and Academy Award-winning producer David Puttnam, who lived locally and was hugely supportive of local arts events.

  As well as learning the bodhrán, Mr Bailey’s fascination with all things Irish led him to study the Irish language and, in particular, the meaning of ancient Gaelic place names across west Cork. He became a member of local storytelling groups and offered to read his poetry at various local events and festivals. On one occasion, he proudly displayed his new-found talent on the bodhrán at a summer festival on Cape Clear, an island just a short ferry ride off the coast from Schull.

  His interest in all things Gaelic was apparent to all. For a time, even articles he submitted used the by-line ‘Eoin O’Baille’ rather than his English name. He also began to sign off conversations to friends and neighbours with ‘Slán’, a departure from his usual ‘Cheers’ or ‘Good luck’.

  Mr Bailey made for a colourful figure in west Cork, a place famed for never suffering from a shortage of bohemian characters. His height and good looks had always made him stand out from the crowd, but now his dress sense added to the impression he made. The journalist at one point favoured rustic fisherman-style jumpers and could easily have passed for an extra in Ryan’s Daughter. In later years he would wear hats decorated with pheasant feathers, brightly coloured scarves and walking boots.

  Some revelled in Mr Bailey’s company, charmed by his flair for the dramatic and his love of both music and poetry. He became a familiar face on the west Cork arts and festival scenes, often proving the heart and soul of the party. Others, however, were less enamoured and found him a strange character. A former neighbour, Brian Jackson, would comment years later that some considered him a ‘strange man’. Mr Jackson said he had heard Mr Bailey’s hobby was ‘destroying religious artefacts’.

  Others felt his propensity for walking alone late at night and into the early hours of the morning with a large tree branch he called his ‘thinking stick’ was highly unusual, even by the eccentric behaviours of some in west Cork.

  As he worked to build up his journalistic contacts in west Cork, Mr Bailey also undertook a range of casual jobs. He did gardening work around Schull, which, for a time, led locals to describe his craft as ‘New Age gardening’ because of his preference for using natural west Cork materials in his work, such as driftwood, bog timber, wildflowers and locally excavated rocks. He also did odd jobs for friends and neighbours to earn a little extra cash. At Liscaha, he helped with the vegetable garden, raised chickens and turkeys, and chopped firewood for the winter. In years to follow he would develop a successful market-stall business, offering organic vegetables and homemade pizza at farmers’ markets across west Cork.

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  After five years in Ireland, by 1996 Mr Bailey was expanding his journalism to the point where he was now ready to submit material to the two biggest media outlets in the area: the Southern Star and The Examiner, both of which would pay for acceptable material. The money involved may not have been substantial, but any such commissions or freelance earnings would be a welcome supplement to the family income at
Liscaha.

  Many of the articles he submitted reflected his interests, such as stories involving nature, wildlife, the arts and local festivals. His aim was to establish himself as a ‘stringer’ or local freelancer for The Examiner – a position that could lead to further opportunities. Just when Mr Bailey seemed to have found the life he was looking for in a place that offered itself as a muse to his art, his entire world was thrown into chaos by a journalistic assignment that, at the outset, looked like a long-awaited opportunity to make a name for himself and earn paid work, not only from Cork-based publications but also national titles based in Dublin, including the Irish Independent, where my predecessor as southern correspondent, Dick Cross, was now dealing with the horrific discovery at Toormore.

  Around lunchtime on 23 December 1996, Mr Bailey received a telephone call from The Examiner while he was in the middle of last-minute preparations with his partner and her children for Christmas in less than 48 hours’ time. He was cutting a tree to help decorate The Prairie and assisting with killing and plucking turkeys for Christmas dinner. The call relayed the shocking news about the discovery of a body in nearby Toormore. Mr Bailey was the closest journalist to the area and the newspaper wanted to know if he had heard anything locally. He decided to go to the scene – with fateful consequences.