The last time Rosemary Nelson was in London, she was visiting the Prime Minister. She was not impressed. She told me our leader spent the duration of the discussion picking fluff off the couch on which he was lounging, and then picking fluff off his suit. After an hour, he dismissed the delegation with the words, "Must go. Got to sort Kosovo out." They'd been hoping he might show some interest in sorting Portadown out. It's a much more straightforward issue, and is his responsibility.

She was coming over again next week for a meeting of the London Robert Hamill Campaign, which was founded to support her and the Hamill family in their fight to establish the truth about Robert's death. I was looking forward to seeing her. I liked her very much.

The last time I saw her, in February, she was sitting in that BMW, after dropping me off at Belfast International Airport. I'd spent the weekend at her house. Her son, Christopher, had given me his bed, and I slept surrounded by images of Manchester United. Her daughter, Sarah, is the same age as my daughter and I promised I'd bring my little girl with me next time so they could play. The house was full of older boys, most of them friends of Rosemary's other son, Gavin. In fact there were so many, I never did work out which one Gavin was.

Paul, her husband, made the dinner. This was usual. Rosemary had told the local paper in a feature article that she relaxed after a hard day by preparing French cuisine. The children were highly amused by this because it was complete bollocks. Rosie was a determined and courageous person, and brutally honest on most occasions, but she didn't have much patience with silly questions.

She had got me over there for two fund-raising events, one in aid of the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry, and another in aid of the Hamill family, on Garvaghy Road in Portadown. Pat Finucane was the solicitor murdered ten years ago, with, it is widely believed, assistance from the security forces. He was a friend of Rosemary's. She crammed a lot into the ten years that passed before she met the same fate. A great many people in Lurgan and Portadown depended on Rosemary Nelson.

The Hamills, like many people in mid-Ulster, have been feeling utterly wretched since Monday. It will soon be the second anniversary of Robert's death. Rosemary has led the campaign that has built up international pressure for justice in this case. She was talking to Michael Mansfield about a private prosecution of all those involved in the killing. She was hoping to meet with Imran Khan, the Lawrence family solicitor, to talk about the striking similarities between the cases. If anything, Robert's case is the more shocking.

The Crown Prosecution service dropped charges against five men accused of Robert's murder. They had been arrested two weeks after the killing. One man was detained immediately after the incident but then released without questioning after only a few minutes. The police did not collect forensic evidence at the scene, nor even declare a crime scene. They did not administer first aid. Their official line is that Robert was not the victim of an unprovoked sectarian attack but that he died in a gang fight, although none of the eye-witnesses support this version of events. Indeed all of the eye-witnesses agree that four armed officers present failed to intervene while four young Catholics were set upon by about thirty Loyalists.

The reason for the attack was that Robert and his friends were trying to make their way home after a night out, and that they were of the wrong kind. Rosemary's interpretation of sectarianism in Northern Ireland is probably the only one that makes sense: it is a matter of racism. Although there are not literally two races, Loyalists see themselves as belonging to the superior settler culture, that civilised a barbarous land. They see Catholics as backward natives, tolerable only as long as they know their place. Rosemary did not know hers.

But Rosemary's death was not the kind of casual drunken lynching that happened to Robert. It was very well planned. Whoever planted the bomb probably knew that they would not be disturbed, because the Nelsons were away for the weekend. It was a sophisticated device. Rosemary, unlike Robert, was not just a Catholic, but a high-profile irritant, persistent in her criticism of the Orange Order and her complaints against the police. She had been threatened directly, receiving bullets in the post. She had also been told by many clients that RUC officers had threatened she would be killed. She had also received information from inside the RUC, about possible collusion with Loyalists.

These facts, added to the unusual security presence close to her home before the bomb ignited, have led to the widespread belief in the area that RUC personnel colluded in her murder. Top Unionists immediately denounced anyone who suggested such a possibility. Ronnie Flanagan, joined them, but has felt the need to call in British and American police to oversee the investigation. I hope this is in part because the Prime Minister is paying more attention to Rosemary now than he did when she was alive.
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