ireland, irish, ulster, ireland, irish, ulster, Sinn Féin, Irish America

(Suzanne Breen, Irish Mail on Sunday)

No-one knows how long Pamela Brankin lay dead in her Birmingham home before her body was found or how she died. But what is agonisingly clear is that unbearable grief had long engulfed the mother whose only son was murdered at Massereene British Army base.

Until her last breath, Pamela was tortured by thoughts of the night in March 2009 when her beloved son, Mark Quinsey (23), and his friend Patrick Azimkar (21) died in a hail of bullets as they collected food from pizza delivery cars outside the Co Antrim barracks.

Their regiment was just hours away from leaving the North for a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Some soldiers had gone into town for a drink. Mark and Patrick made the fatal choice of staying in the base and ordering takeaway food.

Three weeks ago, 51-year-old Pamela's body was discovered in her home. The local coroner is still investigating how she died. She had been severely depressed. Her death came just 10 days after the fourth anniversary of the dissident republican attack in which her son was slaughtered.

"He was my beautiful blue-eyed boy," she told me in the only interview she ever gave. "I couldn't have wished for a better son. I think of him dying on his own outside the barracks. I should have been there to comfort him. I held him in my arms after I brought him into the world. I should have been there, holding him, as he left it."

This is the first time Pamela's words and thoughts on the massacre have ever been printed. She spoke to me at length in 2010 on the first anniversary of the dissident republican attack but the interview wasn't published at her request.

She was a tormented soul. Heart-broken at the loss of her son, fearing that his killers would never be brought to justice, and angry at the British Army. Pamela was haunted by the belief that major security lapses had occurred at the barracks and her son's death had been avoidable.

She gave away the medal and the photograph of Mark signed by the Queen that the army had awarded her. "I couldn't bear to look at the medal," she told me. "I wanted to put it in the bin. What was it – a useless piece of metal. I don't want their medals or their photographs. I want my son back and I want the truth."

My relationship with Mark Quinsey's family goes back to May 2009, two months after Massereene. I had taken the Real IRA claim of responsibility for the shooting on my mobile phone. The paramilitary group later gave me their account of the attack.

The family's request came to my work email address. "My name is Steven Hughes. I'm the uncle to the young soldier killed at Massereene. Myself and Mark's mother were hoping you could help us," it said.

The family explained how they'd questioned the army about the lack of security at the base and about precise details of the shooting. They said they'd met a wall of silence.

"We have had the odd sympathetic ear but no answers," Mr Hughes continued. "Please could you help us?"

At the time, I was fighting a major legal battle with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) who was demanding my mobile phone, computer and notes under the 2000 Terrorism Act. If I lost the case, I faced up to five years in jail.

So I was wary of Steven Hughes' e-mail. Was it an attempt to try to lure me into betraying journalistic confidentiality and sources? Had the security services put the family up to it? Yet to ignore those brutally bereaved would have been heartless and so I replied.

Events proved the family were completely genuine. Never once did they ask me anything with which I was uncomfortable or would compromise sources. I sent them articles I'd written about the attack. They gave me details of their dealings with the army. The official account of the shooting differed substantially from that of dissident republicans.

The family came under intense pressure from some in the security services not to talk to me. They were told doing so would jeopardise the police's legal attempt to seize my phone and notes and that it would also endanger the prosecution case against Colin Duffy and Brian Shivers who were charged with murdering the soldiers. The family carried on regardless.

When I interviewed Pamela Brankin in 2010, she was crushed by the weight of her loss. Grief had eaten away at the once vivacious, fun-loving woman.

She suffered seizures and mood swings. She broke down in tears countless times during the interview.

Pamela was born into a hard-working family in Birmingham. Her father Peter was a builder, her mother Lynette was a factory worker. "Pam was a real looker," recalled a close friend. "She aged dramatically after Mark's death but she used to be a head turner.

"She was a typical working-class girl. She never had huge ambitions about getting a big job or making her mark on the world. She just wanted to get married and have kids, to love them and be loved."

Pamela married Bill Quinsey, a British soldier, with whom she had two children – Mark and Jaime. The couple later separated but remained friends. Pamela adored dressing up, nights out, dancing and having fun.

She holidayed whenever she could afford it. She fell in love with Greece and the warmth and kindness of its people. She talked of retiring there and spending days strolling along sunny beaches and olive groves, and ending the night with the locals in the tavernas.

Pamela lived for her children. She worshipped Jaime (29), a fitness instructor, but her bond with her son was extra-special. Mark Quinsey hadn't grown up determined to join the British Army. He just drifted into it, relatives say. He was an ordinary lad

who liked football and fishing. There was nothing militaristic or macho about him. He joined the army to get a job, escape Birmingham, and see the world.

Pamela told me how she had spoken to Mark on the phone just hours before his death. "I've tortured myself wondering if I could have said something that would have changed things and made him take more care," she said.

"But I wasn't worried about him in Ireland. I didn't even know there was still an IRA. I thought that was all in the past. I was terrified about him going to Afghanistan because of the Taliban. I never believed Ireland was dangerous."

Two balaclava-clad gunmen fired 63 times at the squaddies and the pizza men as they stood outside the barracks. CCTV footage, later played at the murder trial, showed Mark repeatedly shot while standing. He is then seen falling to the ground. He tries to crawl away but one gunman walks over to him and finishes him off.

Pamela and Mark's grand uncle, Steven Hughes, were appalled when they discovered the poor security at the barracks. Thirty-six hours before the dissident attack, then PSNI Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, had warned that the threat against police and soldiers was at its highest level in a decade.

Despite this warning, Massereene wasn't put on high alert. Soldiers told Mark's family that the only base where security was raised was MI5 headquarters in Holywood, leading to suspicion that some lives were more valued than others.

Massereene was protected only by civilian guards with handguns. Mark's family questioned why, with the existing security threat, soldiers armed with rifles weren't used instead.

Given the significantly increased threat, the family said the soldiers should have been confined to base or, at least, assembled and warned of the danger they were facing. Instead, they were let wander around oblivious to the risk.

"Why didn't they even give Mark and the lads bullet proof jackets?" Pamela asked. "No-one will answer these questions. Mark's didn't have to die. I gave the army my son, my lovely boy. I thought they'd look after him but they didn't. They let me down and they let Mark down. Why won't they be honest now?"

When asked by reporters immediately after the attack if security at Massereene was lax, Brigadier George Norton – then the British Army's commanding officer in the North – retorted: "I would deny that completely."

But in the recent trial of Brian Shivers, charged with the soldiers' double murder, the prosecution has itself referred to major security lapses. "Brigadier Norton was never held to account," said Steven Hughes. "Indeed, he has been promoted to Major General since Massereene. I'd like to ask him a few questions."

Several months after the attack, Pamela visited Massereene for a military ceremony to honour the murdered soldiers. "I hated the hypocrisy," she told me. "It was so fake, bigwigs pretending to respect Mark. Had they really cared for him and the other soldiers, they'd have had proper security at the base. The only part of the ceremony I found comforting was talking to the young soldiers who were Mark's friends."

Pamela couldn't understand why republican paramilitaries had viewed her son as "a legitimate target". They are "sick, evil men", she said. "What harm did Mark ever do to the people who murdered him? How was he oppressing them? He wasn't beating them up or destroying their lives. The only time he left the barracks was to go into Antrim to shop or socialise. Why do they think killing my son will improve the lives of anybody in Ireland?"

Shortly after our telephone interview, Pamela rang to tell me she wanted to return to Ireland. She had relatives in Donegal. She would fly into Derry, meet me, and then stay with her family across the Border.

A few hours' later, she'd changed her mind. She didn't want to come back nor did she want the interview already conducted to be printed. It was an often repeated pattern. Relatives would arrange for Pamela to meet politicians willing to help her campaign for the truth about Massereene. She couldn't wait to meet them, then she'd cancel at the last minute.

She was in constant emotional turmoil. Eventually, we agreed I'd print the information she gave me but not attribute it to her. Many phone calls from Pamela followed in coming weeks. Rambling conversations lasting hours. Her pain at losing Mark was as raw as the day he died. "I'll never get over this," she kept saying. She rejected all suggestions to contact victims' groups who could help her.

Over the next three years, I heard from relatives that she remained deeply troubled. They feared she had a death wish. She turned to alcohol to numb her grief but it never did. In September 2011, the car she was driving crashed into the wall of a house near her home.

Pamela spent six weeks in Birmingham's QE2 hospital. She was on a life support machine for three weeks. When she regained consciousness, she was unable to speak. Eventually, she talked again but her mobility was seriously limited. She walked with the aid of a stick. It was the second car crash in which she had been involved. Her family wanted to help her. They just didn't know how.

In November 2011, Colin Duffy and Brian Shivers went on trial in Antrim Crown Court for the Massereene murders. Pamela attended some hearings. I caught glimpses of her in the courthouse but was never allowed to even say hello. Every day, the Quinseys and Azimkars were ushered in and out of the court through a side door so the press had no access to them.

But I heard Pamela sobbing as details of Mark's horrific death were relayed in court. Patrick Azimkar's mother, Geraldine, reached over and held her hand. The case ended with judgement withheld until the New Year.

That Christmas, Pamela refused to put up a tree or even have Christmas dinner. "Mark loved Christmas. It's not Christmas without him," she told her family. In January 2012, leading republican Colin Duffy was acquitted of the double murder but Brian Shivers was convicted.

It was a double-edged sword for the Quinseys. They were pleased at the guilty verdict but perturbed at only one conviction when many more republicans had obviously played a role in the attack.

When Brian Shivers' murder conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal in January, Pamela's already fragile mental state slipped further. She left angry, incoherent messages about the verdict on relatives' phones.

Shivers, who is terminally ill with cystic fibrosis, faced an immediate re-trial for murder. But when he was released on bail last month, Pamela fell into the depths of despair. She told relatives she believed no-one would ever be convicted for Massereene. "Mark will never get justice," she sobbed.

To lift her spirits, her daughter Jaime took her to Crufts for Mothers' Day. It was a great idea. She loved dogs and it was the first time in months her family had seen her smile. The last photographs of Pamela alive show her patting, kissing and hugging dogs – rare precious moments of happiness in a life which had become tormented.

But despair and depression soon returned. Just a week later, Pamela was dead. Four years after Mark's murder, she finally escaped the mental hell in which she had become imprisoned. Now her family, who themselves have been through so much, are left to cope with yet another agonising death.

Pamela's story is tragic but sadly not unique. Even after 40 years, we're still ignorant of the appalling human cost of the Northern conflict. Every shooting and bombing takes not just the immediate victim but leaves a hidden trail of pain and suffering far beyond. Countless broken hearts and tortured souls struggle to cope behind closed doors long after the atrocity has become yesterday's news.

This article appeared in the April 7, 2013 edition of the Irish Mail on Sunday.

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