Finucane murder investigator could take top police job in Northern Ireland

An English police officer who has spent years investigating some of the most controversial areas of policing in Belfast is bidding to become Northern Ireland's top policeman.

Hugh Orde, a Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner, will be interviewed on Wednesday for the post of head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) as successor to Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

He has just spent two and a half years in charge of the inquiry into the 1989 murder of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane. One of the most controversial killings of the Troubles, it has given rise to allegations of collusion by the Special Branch and other intelligence elements.

The report of the investigation, due in the next few months, is expected to be highly critical of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, now renamed the PSNI. It will also recommend many changes. Mr Orde, if appointed, will thus assume responsibility for putting his own recommendations into effect.

The other two applicants are both assistant chief constables with the PSNI. One, Alan McQuillan, has been prominent in overseeing the policing of the recent riots in north Belfast. A graduate, he spent three years in Wales as assistant chief constable with Gwent constabulary.

The other contender is Chris Albiston, an Englishman and Oxford graduate who transferred to the RUC from the Metropolitan Police in 1989. He served with the RUC Special Branch before spending a year as police commissioner with the United Nations mission in Kosovo.

The successful candidate will face the challenge of managing major changes to policing in the wake of the decline in terrorist violence. He will alsohave to handle the many controversies thatdog the service, which include not only the Finucane case but also the allegedly deficient investigation into the 1998 Omagh bombing.

In a BBC television interview last week, Mr Orde commented on two details of the Finucane case. He confirmed that the RUC had recovered the gun used to kill the solicitor and then handed it over to the Army, which replaced parts of the weapon. He also confirmed that a cassette tape on which an informer admitted to Special Branch detectives that he had been involved in the murder had been lost. He said the tape "has never been found – we have searched high and low for it."

Last week the former CID detective superintendent who headed the murder inquiry said Special Branch had not told him that one of its informers had been involved in the killing. Alan Simpson said he was almost certain that, if had been given this information, he could have secured a conviction.