`None of the normal qualities'

DOCTOR Jim Donovan will be told later this month if he is to lose both his legs. Seventeen years after the director of the State Forensic Lab was blown up in his car, he now faces the prospect of a double amputation.

The scientist was driving to work on the morning of January 6th in 1982 when the device planted under his car blew up. Surgeons reconstructed his foot, using shards of bone to replace his missing toes. There followed years of pain from the injury and on the site on his back where skin was taken for grafts. Last month he underwent surgery to implant a device to pump blood to the legs to keep the skin on his injured limbs alive. The surgeon had to cut his back without anaesthetic, so nothing vital would be severed.

Less than a week after that surgery the BBC screened Vicious Circle, yet another film version of the life of the man who may end up costing Dr Donovan both his legs. A third film is due for release based on the life of Martin Cahill, the Dublin criminal known as The General. "It's difficult to stomach," Dr Donovan says. "First of all that somebody should be so glorified. It is a glorification of one of the most disgusting human beings."

He cites the example of Cahill returning from a robbery when one of his accomplices overdosed on heroin in the back of a car. "Cahill dragged him out of the car, pulled his boots off so there would be no forensic evidence to link him to the robbery and left him to die. Even the worst of the Provos would have taken one of their associates to a hospital. But Martin had none of the normal human qualities you'd expect."

Dr Donovan first became involved with investigations relating to the Cahill family in 1976. His doctors should know later this month if the latest attempt to save his legs has been successful. If not, the next question will be how far up the legs to carry out the amputation, as much of the tissue was damaged. Dr Donovan's main concern is his ability to continue working.

Two months before Cahill was shot dead in 1994 as he sat in his car near his home in Ranelagh one of Dr Donovan's neighbours approached him. "She said, `I don't want to upset you, but . . . ' and went on to say she had seen a small squat man with black lanky sort of hair wearing an anorak standing on a wall between our gardens watching the house.

"Whether he was going to attempt to kill me again I'm not sure."