When Mairia Cahill met Ian Bailey
The Englishman facing a renewed attempt by French authorities to extradite him over the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in 1996 agreed to an interview last week with Mairia Cahill
IT was the painting that caught my eye at first, glistening in the West Cork sun. Pink and purple rushes, Monet-like, offset with green and yellow hills in the background. I never buy art — mostly because pieces like this are out of my reach monetarily — but was drawn to it.
I was delighted when the stallholder, a slight woman with a gentle manner, explained her painting technique.
Behind me, I was half aware of a local woman coming over to the man standing on the next stall, wood carvings laid out in front of him, to wish him luck. A booming English voice thanked her, explaining that he was in court next week.
He moved over to me, asking about my Northern accent, and at that moment I realised I was chatting to Ian Bailey and his partner, Jules Thomas. I said nothing about knowing who he was. I didn’t want an uncomfortable scene. I went on my way, painting under my arm.
Later, I became aware that we were staying around five minutes away from where Sophie Toscan du Plantier, the French national so brutally murdered in Toormore in December 1996, had lived.
It’s a beautiful place in summer. Stony hills with splashes of purple heather and rushy orange crocosmia frame the landscape, while blue sea rolls around the focal point, the Fastnet lighthouse, apparently the reason Sophie chose the area.
She had raised the height of her bed so she could see the lighthouse out the window, its turning light a beacon at night reflecting on Roaringwater Bay.
Maybe it’s the fact I am 39, the same age she was when she died fighting for her life, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind. How does something like that happen in a place so remote and rugged?
Bailey was the prime suspect, though never put on trial in Ireland. A French court tried him in absentia in 2019 and found him guilty in a trial widely criticised for going ahead without the accused present.
This week, he fights another attempt to extradite him. I wanted to speak to him and made contact. He agreed to an interview last Thursday.
I found him sitting on a bench at Schull pier, wearing a straw hat to ward off the sun. He had been cutting grass and was tired.
He can be gruff, though was polite, and happy to talk about his poetry, less so about the Du Plantier case. He wanted to know what angle I was taking. I told him I had no idea whether he had murdered her or not but that I would write fairly. He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of acceptance and we began.
There was no need for me to ask did he murder the woman known to locals as Sophie Bouniol; he was immediately at pains to deny it.
He has been accused of being publicity hungry in the past, though he says he did not seek interviews but responded to requests. While some publicity has been damaging, it has helped Bailey, too.
“Way back, a false narrative was created — that I somehow murdered a French lady — and I had nothing to do with it. Things have shifted and turned and people have come up and apologised to me because they believed initially that I was somehow the murderer.
“Subsequently, because of information that’s come into the public domain, they realised that I — and my partner, too — were victims of a grave miscarriage of justice.”
He hasn’t helped himself over the years, joking with a former editor that he did it to further his career.
“I certainly wasn’t the only suspect. I know I was framed, they [gardai] put me in the frame. One of them [whom he names] has already said to a friend of mine that I was the ‘ideal suspect’. I think this was a case, as an academic lawyer [he has three law degrees], of what I would call result-orientated investigation.
“Something occurs, and somebody who the authorities do not like and want to put in the frame, and they just go at that, and they don’t look at any other evidence. And we know that statements were falsified, changed, altered lost.”
He continues: “There are many victims of this. Myself, Jules, our families, the French family, and there are other victims — even the community here is a victim.”
I challenge him: “It’s interesting you say that, because anybody looking into the case would agree that the victim in all of this, the original victim, was Sophie Toscan du Plantier.”
“Absolutely,” he says, eyes narrowing, “but then there are secondary victims…”
The case, I say, has cast a shadow on a beautiful area. “Oh, it’s a complete anathema to the whole place and it’s a beautiful place, the people are beautiful. It’s quite wild, you have to work quite hard to be here and to be imaginative and creative. I’m sorry, I’m getting tired now, I can tell…”
He rubs his temples and we take a break. I wonder if he is annoyed by my comment about the woman whose life was stolen from her. I wonder if maybe I’m being unfair to Bailey. He has had a lot to endure.
“This is the third time I’ve been subjected to a European arrest warrant; I don’t think there is anyone else in the world who has ever experienced that,” he says wearily.
“It’s a form of torture. I try not to let it get to me too much but it’s difficult.” It’s something he refers to as a “John Wayne state of mind” in one of his poems.
Was it strange to see a trial in which he was the accused unfold in another country?
“I took the decision that I was just going to ignore it and I was just going to carry on with doing what I was doing.”
He copes by practising “detachment meditation”, wood carving and writing poetry. If he loses this week, legal wrangling will continue, but he knows he could well be
facing the prospect of the rest of his life in a French jail for something, he says, he did not do.
“It’s not a situation anyone would want. It’s horrendous for myself and for Jules. We’ve both suffered collectively and differently.”
The last time he travelled outside Ireland was in 2007, to Barcelona. The risk of arrest meant he could not go to his mother’s funeral in 2014.
Jules has had her personal life delved into, in particular the fact that she has been a victim of domestic abuse by Bailey. When I point out that she took flak for deciding to stay with him, he agrees.
“She’s supported me through thick and thin.” His next phrase is unintentional but unfortunate: “The one thing is at this stage that neither of us have any skeletons in our closet.”
Despite their problems, it is clear they are close. “We started the markets in 2000. I get real enjoyment out of that. I sell my poetry and I have a second collection out.
“A lot of it was written when I was being bonfired on a pyre of lies [in Paris] and I used the poetic muse as a form of cathartic defence mechanism.”
The photographer arrives and tells us to talk among ourselves while he snaps away. Ian offers to recite one of his poems. He suddenly becomes animated, chanting to the rhythm of the sea below. “On the land an army/Of men and women/wait to see the iasc/ Off the boats/Into bins and/ Down the hatches/Slit their throats/And process catches.”
It’s a poem called Erin’s Herring, about the fish plant opposite us, which he worked in when he first came to Schull, his “special place”.
We dine there, al fresco, and talk. Before ordering, I ask him about writing. He misses journalism and the thrill of seeing his copy in print. We explore poets. He likes Heaney but isn’t a fan of John Montague.
The latter, now deceased, savaged him in a written piece and once said while he had talent, he did not apply himself. Bailey smiles, pointing to his two published poetry books.
We talk about Covid-19. He laments not being able to go out for cultural nights or sing in the local church due to lockdown.
I ask him about a story that appears on the West Cork podcast about the murder. The presenters comment on a typewriter with plants growing out of it. Bailey tells them he bashed out the keys with a hammer.
Montague had given him a typewriter. Was this the same one? “No,” he says, “but his typewriter has gone the same way.” He maintains he does not dislike Montague but complains he was “extraordinarily mean” with money.
Writing has got him into trouble, too. During previous libel cases, some disturbing self-penned aspects surfaced. He wrote about his sexual fantasies and about a previous violent episode with his partner. There was the line “I made you feel death was near”.
Bailey says he felt violated, his innermost thoughts aired to all. He felt his writing had been taken out of context.
Aside from the podcast, which he cooperated with, there has been renewed interest. A book by Ralph
Riegel, which Bailey thinks is “fair”, is selling well.
Film-maker Jim Sheridan, and separately, Netflix are exploring making films.
“I know there are people here in Ireland who know I had nothing to do with this.
I’ve even been told as much by certain people and yet nobody is coming forward to acknowledge that.”
When I ask what he means, he says: “There are people who know, I’m sure, who did do it, and know I had nothing to do with it.”
He finishes his haddock and chips, stands up, empties a glass of white wine and leaves. I sit for a while thinking. He has suffered for 23 years, accused of a crime he claims he is innocent of.
Speaking with him, it is clear that has become adept at resisting any attempt to imply that he was in some way responsible. Having spent the afternoon with him, either way the man has endured more than many.
‘The one thing is neither of us have any skeletons in our closet’