An atrocity had befouled the city, shrouding it in shock and shame. And then there was a moment of beauty.
Hundreds of people gathered at the Creggan estate in Derry on Friday afternoon to honour Lyra McKee, yards from where she was shot, in the sort of vigil all too familiar from the Troubles.
Grim expressions, hushed conversation, bouquets left by the police cordon, tributes to the dead.
The 29-year-old journalist’s death during a riot on Thursday night – shot by a republican dissident who was targeting police – stamped this corner of Northern Ireland with tragedy on the 21st anniversary of the Good Friday agreement.
Just one person pulled the trigger – likely to have been a member of the New IRA, police said – but Northern Ireland’s politicians stood guilty of creating a vacuum.
Disputes between the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and Sinn Féin collapsed power sharing 2017, unleashing toxic polarisation that has poisoned any remaining good will from that first Good Friday in 1998.
And then the vigil at the Creggan estate produced that rarest thing: a hymn of harmony.
Arlene Foster, who once compared Sinn Féin to a crocodile, made her way through the crowd. It was the DUP leader’s first visit to this republican heartland.
“Why did I come today? I came to stand in solidarity with all of the people who are here today,” she said. “I want to say: your pain is my pain. It doesn’t matter whether you are Catholic or Protestant. Whether you identify as Irish or British.”
It was time to tell the gunmen enough is enough, she said. “I come with my party colleagues to simply stand with you today and, on this holy day of Good Friday, to remember that there is an Easter Sunday and there is hope and we look forward to that hope. I ask you to cling on to that today.”
There was a pause. Then came applause, long, warm, sustained applause. The people of the Creggan, not far from IRA murals and Sinn Féin posters, clapping the heir to Ian Paisley.
It felt like a glimpse of another Northern Ireland, one that had realised the Good Friday agreement’s vision of reconciliation.
“Arlene got a beautiful reception,” said John Boyle, a councillor for the moderate nationalist SDLP party. “The people of Creggan – I’m proud of them. People are hurt and angry. What happened on this street was not done in the name of the people of this city. It could be a cathartic moment.”
Fr Joe Gormley, the parish priest, praised the DUP leader for making her first visit to the Creggan. “I hope and pray it will not be her last.”
Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, said it was a day to stand in solidarity. “It’s an opportunity to say that together we need to move forward. We want to make politics work.”
To make politics work is an ambitious goal when Brexit has destabilised Northern Ireland’s constitutional framework and widened the gulf between nationalists and unionists.
But alongside the hope seethed anger. A young woman was dead.
Residents expressed disgust at the New IRA. “It’s great to see the community letting these people know they’re not welcome,” said Brian Friel, 38, a republican who yearns for a united Ireland. “They need to take a good look at themselves and just go away. They’re parasites on the community. They use Brexit to hype up what they call their war effort. It’s just an excuse.”
There was scorn for the New IRA’s attempt to blame the death on the police entering the Creggan to seek guns and explosives in advance of suspected attacks over a weekend when republicans mark the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising.
“No one blames the police. Or bloody Brexit,” said one woman in her 60s, who declined to be named. “It was nobody but the New IRA that shot that girl.”
McKee’s partner, Sara Canning, told the crowd McKee’s death had “left me without the love of my life, the woman I was planning to grow old with”.
She said her partner’s “hopes and dreams and all of her amazing potential was snuffed out by a single barbaric act. Lyra’s death must not be in vain because her life was a shining light in everyone else’s life and her legacy will live on in the light that she has left behind.”
Stephen Mallett, a community leader, said government austerity measures, aggressive policing, poverty and joblessness had bred a generation of disaffected young men.
Some had proved receptive to the New IRA’s message, repeating a cycle of radicalisation that Provisional IRA went through 30 years ago, he said.
“Up until last night I was really worried. Young people were rallying to their cause.” McKee’s killing had changed everything, said Mallett. “Now they’re dead in the water. They’ll get no quarter from anybody. Until last night I was willing to engage with them. Now I don’t want to even see them.”
