Various people claimed to have heard Stephen O’Brien say various things. This is the version that seems to have been agreed upon. This is the version produced by consensus.

We fucking showed that little cunt.

This can’t be happening.

Laura said that the next morning she looked at the star-spangled hoodie and found that it was covered in blood. The DPP has theorized that Laura was standing much closer to the fight than she remembered. They have also theorized that the blood on the hoodie came from Richard Culhane’s fist, which was damaged during the fight. DNA tests might have shown who the blood belonged to, but Laura washed the hoodie as soon as she woke up, and no traces of the blood remained. She washed it even before Richard Culhane arrived at her house to tell her that Conor was dead.

Like everybody else, I think the blood was Conor’s. But I don’t know this for sure.

At the trial Laura was asked if she had seen Richard Culhane deliver the third and final kick (bang) to Conor’s head. She said she couldn’t remember. But I think she saw it. I think she saw that kick. I think she was one of the people who were privately convinced – convinced beneath the public need, the clamour, for decorum – that Richard’s kick had been the fatal one.

Of course I knew about none of this that afternoon outside Simmonscourt Pavilion when I stood, fiddling with a cigarette and covertly admiring Laura Haines as she stood in cool repose, finishing her apple and putting the core into a pocket of her Adidas rucksack.

She was waiting for Richard Culhane. He had offered her a lift home from her last exam. Conor was busy that day. What was he doing? Nobody remembers; I have no way of finding out. My story is full of gaps. All I have are theories.

I saw Richard’s car swing into the Pavilion gateway. He had the windows down and his muscular right arm rested on the hot metal of the doorframe. He was smoking a cigarette. This last detail was so odd, so out of character, that I wondered for a minute if it was really him, if perhaps he had loaned his car to some other Brookfield boy for the afternoon. But no: it was Richard. He too wore aviator shades, and he smiled at Laura as the car slowed and stopped, and as she walked around the bonnet to get to the passenger door Richard dropped the cigarette, half-smoked, on to the ground beneath his window.

Laura got into the car and for a moment they sat there, affectless as godlings, inscrutable behind their sightless silver shades.

I wanted to be them. I wanted to be both of them, Laura as much as Richard. They were so completely of their time and place, so sure of themselves and so beautiful, that I could only envy them. I envied them their immediate future: the exam post-mortem in the comfy kitchen, the drinks in Harry’s later on that night. And I envied them their lives, those perfect, glancing, stylish lives that only they seemed fit to lead.