How do you tell your son that his mum has been murdered?

IT WAS a father and son building Lego together a courthouse, two cars and a motorbike. But this was not a game. Graham Turley was trying to explain to his son, Cathal, that his mother had been murdered.

It was a harrowing half hour of radio with Sean O'Rourke on the News at One on RTE yesterday. Mr Turley described the moment nine days ago, when he tried to explain to a small boy what the rest of the country was still trying to come to terms with.

It wasn't until Wednesday night that he saw his wife's body, he said. "For two to 21/2 hours I was walking around outside, still with the belief that it wasn't Veronica, still with the belief that somebody had stolen her car and it wasn't her.

"And until I had to go in and identify her, and give her a kiss and a hug. Then I got the thump in the heart that said, `This is Ronnie here'."

Mr Turley said he returned to his mother's house where Cathal was staying. "He was just getting into bed. And I couldn't say to him at that time of night, Mum's gone. She's gone to holy God's house. And she won't be coming back.'"

So the following morning, with the chaplain from his local church, Father Declan Doyle, they used the Lego, dropped in by a neighbour, to reconstruct what had happened on the Naas Road.

With a child's curiosity for detail Cathal asked his father questions. "And where did they hit mum? he said. And I said they hit mum three times around the heart and they hit her in the neck and then there's two bullets still in the car somewhere, they think. They're not exactly sure.

"And he said, `Is mum coming home?'

"And I said, No she's not coming home. But she's going to be here minding us. Because remember we talked about this before."

"Oh, I got it, he says, she's with God and she'll be looking down on me and everything I do from now on."

Mr Turley spoke calmly of the woman he described as "the most cherished thing I ever wanted.

"I don't think I'll ever come to terms with it. It is, maybe, a little bit of bravado on my behalf. I'm just trying to keep myself on this level that I know she would have kept herself on. Until afterwards when I can sit down on my own."

Mr Turley said he was not aware of any threats against Veronica in the weeks before her murder. They had had a "family meeting" after she was shot the first time.

"I said Let's pull in the reins and sit down and talk like husband and wife do for the first time, I said `Well, what do you want to doe Do you want to keep this up,' And she said, `I love this.'

"I said `Well, I'm not going to interfere with you, if that's what you want to do.' " She was, he said, besotted" with crime reporting.

"When she got into crime it was like putting on a turbo charge. She saw this little niche, and you could see the little light coming on when she was on the phone to a particular person. Most of the time I would never know who she was talking to because she would never say who the person was."

Last Saturday, the day of her funeral, was the first Saturday he had a lie in years, although he was in the church for 9 a.m.

"Because Saturday in our house was turmoil 6 o'clock, half five starts. And you'd get an odd nudge maybe at half past five, quarter to six, `Is there any chance you'd got and get me a packet of smokes would you go down and get the papers, this kind of thing."

Mr Turley said he would go to houses, where she was waiting to talk to someone, with new batteries for her mobile phone.

One day he got a phone call to come home and found her gone with a note on her car saying, Gone to Coolock Garda station, he said.

In the station he went into the cell area. "And I heard this roaring laughter of Cathal and Veronica behind this solid door and it was that Veronica was locked up, for a small duration. And herself and Cathal were telling stories to each other.

"Because Cathal decided that he wanted to go with the guards in the Black Maria. And he did. And he wanted to be locked up like a criminal. And Veronica saw the light of this. And the pair of them were locked up. It was to pay a parking fine which was sorted out.

"I'll never forget the echoing laughter of the two of them up and down Coolock Garda station."

There was laughter again in the funeral home, he said, when he took Cathal to see her body.

"We went in and Veronica was there and it was just the three of us. And we had a chat and a cuddle and a laugh, as we always did, the three of us together. And we talked and Cathal was saying, `Mum, you re very cold'."

Yesterday would have been his wife's 37th birthday.

"Veronica's cards will be displayed. She's there with us. There's no time that Veronica won't be here any more as far as I'm concerned. And it will be a family day."