THE blue Garda ledger has a date stamped on the top of the first page - June 7th, the day Jerry McCabe was murdered. In the three days since then, the pages have filled with names, addresses and comments. Hundreds of them.
Some of the people from the toughest areas in and around Limerick have filed into Henry Street Garda station to sign the book. At times queues formed and everyone who signed was thanked by the desk sergeants. They see each name as an expression of the revulsion people feel about what happened in Adare on Friday morning.
Some of the names have been written by children. Others include comments like "A waste of a life".
On Saturday a New York police officer signed the book, adding his badge number. "On behalf of the New York City Police Department," he wrote, "our condolences on your loss as well as ours - we are one."
The condolence book started out as an ordinary Garda ledger left on the desk. Then one garda organised a small table and a colour picture of his friend and colleague.
Focused on an intensive investigation to find the gang who killed Jerry McCabe, most of his colleagues have not had the opportunity to mourn him.
In the shock of what happened, there is also the sense among gardai that it could have been any one of them. The postal lorry was one of two cash escorts on Friday morning, involving four gardai.
Jerry McCabe and Ben O'Sullivan may not have known, until they turned up for work that morning, which escort they were on.
In the station one colleague talked about how difficult it was for one photograph to sum up the man some people had known and worked with for more than 20 years.
The book of condolences will be given to Jerry McCabe's widow, Ann, and their five children after the funeral.
