‘I waited for her comin’ home up the laneway. I knew where she’d pass, and I waited in the gateway. I was goin’ to use a big stone. There’s lots of them on the roadway there. But I found that post, a big heavy wooden thing, and I just swung it at her. I hit her a few times.’

‘Why did you want to do that to your sister?’ Swallow asked, watching Vizzard’s pencil flying across the pages of his notebook.

‘I didn’t tell you the full truth about her and the priest. Well, a lot of what I said was true, about him botherin’ her and makin’ to get close to her and all that. But I didn’t want to say what was really goin’ on.’

He hesitated. Swallow saw that he was blushing deeply.

‘Tell me, Dan.’

‘Well, truth is that she was leadin’ him on. Oh, I could see it, and I said to her, “You shouldn’t be makin’ free with him. He’s a priest. He’s God’s anointed. If you put temptation in his way, it’s a terrible sin.”’

‘What did she say to that?’

‘She told me that it didn’t matter. She said that Protestant ministers get married, and that he said he’d turn Protestant and marry her. But I knew that was just her imagination. A priest can’t leave the priesthood.’

‘You’re not telling me you killed her because she had developed some sort of an idea about Father Cavendish?’

‘I am so.’

‘But why in God’s name?’ Swallow asked. ‘How could that justify doing what you did to her?’

Flannery frowned.

‘You’re a Catholic yourself, aren’t you?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.’

‘Then you should understand the shame and the sin that would be involved. My poor mother would rather die, and my father would turn in his grave. The idea that their daughter would descend to the level of a prostitute, throwin’ herself at a priest!’

Swallow struggled for words. In his years as a crime detective he had encountered many strange motives. This was beyond his experience, or indeed his imagination.

‘If I said I didn’t believe you, Dan, it would be because I can’t conceive of anyone choosing to do violence to a young woman, much less your own sister, whatever you might think about her behaviour.’

‘Well, Mr Swallow, your standards and mine are probably very different. You don’t have any difficulty it seems workin’ for England against your own people, your own country and your own faith. So I don’t imagine you’d understand how someone like me could want to stand by their principles.’

Swallow shook his head.