It is also the most troubling. Last week it was revealed that the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) took the decision in secret to end efforts to create a proper inquiry into the death of Finucane, who was known for his defense of IRA suspects.

By so doing the NIO has refused to abide by the commitment of the British government, given during the peace process talks, to hold an official inquiry into the murder.

The Finucane case has come to embody all that was wrong throughout the Troubles with the concept of justice in Northern Ireland.

There were many cases of government sanctioned killings masquerading as paramilitary murders during the Troubles. Very few, however, involved a non-combatant, a person who was by very definition upholding the law and the right of accused to be defended, like Finucane was.

That is why the murder has continued to stink to high heaven. Numerous inquiries have taken place, but at this point the sad reality is that the truth may never be known. The reason for that could well be the fact that the British state could hardly live with that truth.

Yes, the IRA carried out horrific atrocities. Yes, Loyalist paramilitaries did too. But the evidence in the Finucane murder case points to a crime committed with the full knowledge and support of a Democratic government.

Put simply, outrageous though it may seem, it appears the murder could have been ordered from the very lofty heights of Downing Street itself, and that a cover-up of immense proportions has since taken place.

Four weeks before he died Douglas Hogg, a minister in the Margaret Thatcher government, told the British Parliament, “There are in Northern Ireland a number of solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA ... I state this on the basis of advice that I have received, guidance that I have been given by people who are dealing with these matters.”

Finucane’s widow Geraldine said Hogg’s remark “was frightening, and when this was reported it stopped Pat in his tracks. To be perfectly honest, it frightened me to death.”

With good reason. A month later her husband was dead, gunned down in a hail of bullets in front of his young family and wife.

“We had just sat down to have our evening dinner. There was a bang, and the rest was just horror and blood,” remembers Mrs. Finucane.

Who gave Hogg the green light to finger Finucane for assassination? How high in the British government did it go?

How damning were those orders. This was not Chile under dictator Augusto Pinochet or Franco’s Spain. This was the Mother of Parliaments, the seat of representative government, and a minister of Her Majesty’s government was fingering a lawyer for death.

Little wonder then that the cover-up continues and that we now may never get to the bottom of the Finucane death.

But the consequences for the North have been dramatic. Even in the cold clear dawn of the new era brought about by the peace process, the murder of Finucane is still too toxic to be brought to light.

The Finucane family will never rest as long as the cover-up continues. Nor will the stain on the British government lessen over time, until and unless they address the truth behind one of the most notorious killings of the Troubles.

Last week’s decision shows they are still a long way from facing up to the truth.