I call his number but much to my annoyance, it goes straight to voicemail. He may well be on duty, in which case his personal mobile might be switched off and in his locker. He doesn’t always carry it on him while on shift. I wouldn’t dare call him on his work-issued phone. I leave a message, not giving too much away, asking him to call me as soon as he can.

Then I set about listening to my interview with Jamesy Harte again. I don’t know if it’s because of the day’s events, or that I spent the morning with the Doherty family and visiting Kelly’s grave, but sadness about the whole situation washes over me.

There is no doubt the Doherty family have been left broken and no amount of time in the world will heal their grief. It’s so raw that it’s actually physically painful to watch.

But then I think of Jamesy. Small, grey Jamesy with what seems like not an ounce of wit about him. Like he could be manipulated – but I didn’t buy that he himself could be a manipulator.

‘I was an easy target. I’m not as smart as some of those people. You think I don’t know that I’m not clever?’ I listen and remember how he had tapped the side of his head as he spoke as if trying to get it to work properly. ‘I didn’t know big words, or what to say. I didn’t have a fancy suit to wear to go and see the judge.

‘No one wanted to help me, you know. Because they said I was wrong. They said I was bad and I’d done it. But it wasn’t me. I don’t know who it was, but I didn’t do it. My mammy used to tell me that Derry was the best wee city in the whole world. That we all took care of each other. But Mammy was wrong.’

There is an audible sniff. I remember that he became agitated. His long, skinny finger poking at the melamine table in front of us. His fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

‘People only like you if you fit in,’ he said. ‘You look different, or sound different, or act different and you’re out. I was out.’

His voice was laden with rage and grief. It’s understandable, if this was a great miscarriage of justice and he has lost seventeen years of his life to jail, and the life he has now bears no resemblance to the life he had before.

But back then, could that desire to be seen, by a community he felt excluded him, could that have really driven him to do something so horrific? No matter how I weighed it up in my head – I couldn’t see it. I just couldn’t picture him as guilty.