In 1990 Columba McVeigh’s brother, Oliver, now 54 and a sports photographer, read in Martin Dillon’s book The Dirty War that Columba had been executed and secretly buried in the Irish countryside. ‘They shot and buried him like a dog,’ he says. He chose not to tell his ageing parents. ‘It was agonising. I thought, what benefit is it for me to tell them? I wanted to protect my mother and father.’ Equally agonising, he often encounters a local IRA boss whom he knows was involved in Columba’s abduction. ‘He may not have been there, but he would have been fully aware. The information would have come from him and through him.’