One of the final signals of the collapse of the Dublin drugs gang at the centre of the Veronica Guerin investigation emerged last month. Relatives of the gang leaders approached other criminals in the city seeking their support in restarting their drugs-smuggling operation.
Gang members on the run from gardai had sent 150kg of cannabis from Amsterdam to Dublin. But the Guerin investigators had been tipped off. The drugs were seized in Glasnevin on September 15th.
At about the same time the brother of the gang leader had made approaches to a northside criminal, known as an exceptionally tough figure, to see if he would assist in their plan to reestablish the gang.
The gang leader's brother called to the man's house while he was out and spoke to his wife.
On learning of the visit, the northside criminal drove to the other man's house in Clondalkin and threatened him in front of his family and neighbours. The northsider told the man to stay away from him and his home.
Such a threat to such a close relative of the gang leader would have been unthinkable within the Dublin criminal fraternity a year ago, such was his power and reputation for violence.
The story of the northsider's threats to the gang leader's brother spread quickly through the city's underworld. The word, as they say, was out on the street that the gang which murdered Veronica Guerin and had once been the most powerful and feared criminal organisation in the history of the State was finished.
The northsider had good reason to be suspicious of, and antagonistic towards, what remains of the gang. It has been known for some time that the gang was riddled with informants who had given up its leading members to the gardai, and through them to police forces in Britain and Europe.
Its entire drugs smuggling operation had been uncovered and broken up. It had once reached a point where it was supplying the main drug dealers in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and, through contacts with ex-republican and loyalist paramilitaries, Belfast.
At its height it was importing 300kg of cannabis a week, shipping the drugs from Amsterdam to Cork in boxes marked as machine parts and then driving the boxes up to Dublin.
At wholesale value a kilo of cannabis in Dublin is worth between £2,500 and £3,500, depending on quality. (The inflated figures given in relation to drugs seizures, valuing a kilo of cannabis at £10,000, are based on the final price on the street, where it eventually sells at £10 a gramme.)
Even so, the gang had a weekly income from cannabis alone of almost £1 million.
The gang's arsenal of more than 100 guns has been seized. Almost the entire extended network of more than 200 members has been arrested. Many will eventually face charges.
It has been clear for most of this year to any observant criminal that associating with the gang which killed Veronica Guerin would inevitably lead to prison.
When it embarked on the plan to murder Ms Guerin, the gang had not foreseen any of this. Gardai close to the investigation say the gang leaders had begun to see themselves as impervious to State sanction.
The leaders were awash with cash and splashed money around. They did appear to have an extraordinarily free run for almost the two years before Ms Guerin's murder.
Gardai were fully aware that they were major criminals. The leader and his second-in-command had both served sentences in the State's high-security prison, Portlaoise, where they met and developed close links with exmembers of the highly violent terrorist group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
After their release in 1992 they are believed to have negotiated a loan of £800,000 from Martin Cahill to establish their agreement with their Dutch/Lebanese suppliers in Amsterdam. Cahill had made this money partly through the sale of the artworks, including the Vermeer painting, stolen from Russborough House in Co Wicklow in 1986.
Cahill seems to have been attracted to the deal because he was tiring of direct involvement in crime and wished to semi-retire to the safer role of financier. He apparently made a fatal mistake in his deal with the emerging drugs gang.
Although the IRA admitted responsibility for shooting Cahill dead near his home in Ranelagh in August 1994, senior gardai now firmly believe he was shot dead by an INLA man in the pay of the new drugs gang. According to one report, the killer was paid £25,000.
The gardai believe the gang shot him simply to avoid repaying the £800,000. They also believe the IRA leadership may have been duped into admitting responsibility for the murder by Dublin members who could also have been in the pay of the new drugs figures.
The killing of Cahill by the gang, information which gardai have only recently been able to substantiate, established it as the most powerful in this State. Only public exposure threatened its leaders' remarkably lavish new lifestyles.
Ms Guerin had begun to write articles in late 1994 about the gang, although she was apparently not fully aware of the extent of its activities. In response, in January 1995, it sent a north Dublin drug addict to her home to shoot her dead.
The gun misfired and she escaped with a wound to the leg.
After she had again begun to write about the gang, it made a more concerted effort and she was shot dead on June 26th, 1996.
From that point, in the face of massive public pressure, the State responded with new laws and the establishment of the investigation which, in only the past few months, has finally led to the gang's demise.