An hour before Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered I was walking down London’s King’s Road and received an uncomfortable call from someone clearly upset by something I had written the day before. My mood changed abruptly and I headed for Sloane Square deep in thought. Writing was an unglamorous occupation – hard work and not always satisfying when losing friends and making enemies.

My thoughts then turned, with an irony that still disturbs me, to Daphne, for whom this – and far worse – was a regular occurrence. Still thinking of her, I reached Sloane Square... by which time she was dead (a second call from Malta). My scream cut through the eerie, yellow sky that hung over Central London on October 16. I suddenly wanted to go home.

Daphne was all manner of paradoxes: at once Malta’s quintessential ‘emancipated’ woman and the creation of our traumatic political past. She actively championed civil rights and freedoms, but could also appear prurient, parochial and conservative. She was intolerant of opposing views, incapable of rising above party-political difference (and in so doing divided friends and families); yet she pursued truth – her passionate view of it – with outstanding courage and with a ruthlessness (recklessness?) that sometimes compromised her own and her profession’s ethical standards.

She was a beacon of hope, a point of reference for the many who admired the way she spoke her own mind (and theirs). She rightly challenged the powerful and influential, but with less justice intimidated and silenced the meek and the ordinary. Incisive, thought-provoking and sidesplittingly funny, she could just as easily be off-hand and cruel. She was a ball-breaker in a patriarchal society, who still seemed curiously hell-bent on destroying free-spirited women whose views did not chime with her own.

She was a fiercely protective mother, for whom other people’s private lives and children were ‘fair game’. Her stamina was prodigious, her knockout blow fatal. It was hard to go up – and equally hard to go down – to her level.  Like the girl in the nursery rhyme, when she was good she was very good; when she was bad...

I was caught between a compulsion to admire her and a pressing need to challenge her. Yes, we were public adversaries in recent years; but we liked, admired and respected each other professionally, at least until 2011 when it became clear that Daphne wouldn’t tolerate anyone attacking the Nationalists or sympathising, however slightly, with Labour.

Hugely knowledgeable, resourceful and clever, Daphne was equally capable of sensationalism. She was humane, compassionate and level-headed when addressing matters of race and migration, but was unforgiving and prejudiced against many of her ‘own’ kind.

An acclaimed journalist, she frequently lacked objectivity; and although ahead of her time, she was far more ‘of the island’ than she realised. Her coverage of many issues was selective, even riddled with factual inaccuracies, spin and fabrications; but much was well-researched and secure. Her conclusions were both ‘leapt’ and ‘reached’. She was often stuck on her own version of the truth, but her adroit mastery of the English language gave that truth authority. People took what she wrote as ‘fact’. Awesome power, awesome responsibility.

This indefatigable, remarkable, admirable and flawed woman is finally at peace

Her murder has left devotees and detractors alike reeling and shocked. My own horror is the growing conviction that she was killed, not for something she said, but to prevent something she was going to say. So the problem isn’t necessarily neatly buried in our past, recent or otherwise: it might be stalking us right now. And that’s a spine-chilling prospect. People who write out, watch out.

But fearlessness was Daphne’s hallmark. She had no brakes or boundaries. She was bold, brazen, hubristic and basically unstoppable. Her end, macabre, heinous and despicable, was a Greek tragedy. Debilitating illness or fading away into oblivion were simply not going to happen. Daphne is now as controversial, divisive and prolific in death as she was in life.

Maltese society was dominated by her powerful journalistic persona. Ordinary citizens, columnists, journalists, media houses, politicians, even the judiciary, all trod carefully. Many refused to take her on, or refer to her by name. I did, knowing I’d be the next voodoo doll for pinning. A no-win situation: suing her made you undemocratic, not suing her made you ‘guilty’. For all her championing of free speech, she’d censor, block or rubbish you into silence.

This indefatigable, remarkable, admirable and flawed woman is finally at peace. She’s a martyr to many, a defining moment to all. Of crucial importance is that the case is handled properly. The eyes of the world are on us, though of course they are no more important than our own. Yet Daphne’s death is connected with that world – the world of international crime, beyond our own historic corruption, which now embroils us.

In the immediate context, people like Ramon Mifsud will have to go, never to return.  And it’s high time that the office of Police Commissioner enjoys the trust of both sides. Unfortunately this particular Commissioner has consistently failed to inspire and impress.

A spotlight has been shone on Malta’s ugly underbelly. Previous governments have had their fair share of high-profile cases, all of which have pointed to short and long-term mistrust of our public institutions. But murder is murder, and this the murder of murders.

There was nothing bland or vanilla about Daphne. She will be missed because, although she made life impossible for many, she was the most vivid expression of our very partisan way of doing things. Moreover, she does not belong exclusively to her unconditional admirers. She was a part of all our lives, even on the battlefield. And we too have to make sense of what has happened. In my own shock and sorrow I am left wondering whether Daphne marks the end of an unhappy era of deep division, or whether, Cassandra-like, she was a prophetess of far worse to come.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com