Inside the vestibule Richard had made a brief statement for the cameras. ‘I would like to reassert that I was not responsible for the death of Conor Harris. I was fully prepared to mount a complete defense against these charges of manslaughter. I am an innocent man.’

There were boos and catcalls from the restive crowd.

Peter Culhane asked that his family be allowed to peaceably resume their lives. He asked that the media ‘do the decent thing’ and leave them be.

Eventually the bailiff shouldered a path through the crowd and the family were able to leave.

The Harrises left without speaking to the media.

The crowd outside the Four Courts shouted things like ‘A mockery of justice!’ and ‘One law for the rich, another for the poor!’ These cries were taken up by a number of columnists and editorial writers. Pundits and interested parties began to say that the problem was larger than the machinations of a few private-school past pupils. They began to say that the flaw was systemic, that the country’s legal institutions were hidebound, or riddled with incompetence, or archaic, or corrupt.

After a week or two, the story died and was replaced by something else.

And that was that.

But it isn’t the trial or the ‘miscarriage of justice’ or the old boys’ network or even Richard Culhane in prison that I keep thinking about, that I keep going back to, helplessly, again and again. What I keep going back to is the night itself, the night of 31 August 2004, the night about which so much has been publicly written and secretly said. What I keep going back to is the night that Conor died.

54

For Richard Culhane, the night’s drinking started early, and this would be a problem later on.

Richard met the lads in Stephen O’Brien’s house in Dalkey where, in the massive living room at 5 pm, they cracked open their inaugural cans of cider. This was a ritual: the first can was always chugged, and the last to finish had to buy a round when they got to the club. In this case, Barry Fox was the loser. He was subjected to a brief round of masculinized derision. Then, this first hurdle having been cleared, everyone opened their second can and started to relax. This early drinking was what counsel for the defense would later call an aggravating factor. And the people who started drinking earliest were Laura Haines, Barry Fox, Stephen O’Brien and Richard Culhane. By pulling strings with their parents, all of them had managed to get the afternoon off.

At 5.30 pm Conor Harris got home from work and, still wearing his suit and tie, ate dinner (a lamb curry, cooked by Eileen because Brendan had been missing all day, supervising a new menu at the flagship restaurant).

The last thing Conor said to his mother was, ‘See you later, Mum.’

I am struck afresh by the banality of this.