Conor was a heavy drinker. Even by the standards of his class and generation, Conor was a heavy drinker. It seldom did him any harm. But at the Brookfield Debs, he overdid it. I can tell you exactly what he drank that night, because he told me all about it. Before he even left the house he and Fergal Morrison, his closest friend at Brookfield, had shared a half-bottle of Smirnoff vodka. At the Debs itself Conor and Fergal matched each other drink for drink: Two glasses of wine at dinner, six pints of Guinness, a White Russian, three gin and tonics, a shot of sambuca, two shots of Jägermeister, two bottles of Miller. By this stage Conor’s eyelids were swollen and he was shouting a lot. Somehow he got into conversation with Sarah O’Dwyer. Sarah O’Dwyer was Fergal Morrison’s date for the Debs. Somehow Conor ended up scoring Sarah. Fergal staggered back from the bathroom and saw them kissing in a corner by an empty table.

‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, MAN?’ Fergal screamed, more in amusement than in anger. He was very drunk.

Conor refused to apologize.

Fergal waved Naomi over.

When Naomi realized what had happened, she started to cry.

Conor stared at Fergal and shouted, ‘WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT FOR, YOU PRICK!’ He put his palms on Fergal’s chest and shoved.

Fergal fell backwards.

Conor made to jump on top of him but some Brookfield boys grabbed him by the arms and told him to calm the fuck down.

‘I’ll fucking kick your face in,’ Conor shouted at Fergal. ‘And your fucking bird’s, too. She is one fucking ugly bitch, man. You can fucking have her.’

Fergal agreed to take Sarah home. Naomi said she would call a taxi. Conor stopped her by the door. He apologized for a long time.

‘I’ll throw myself on the tracks,’ Conor screamed at her. ‘Is that what you fucking want?’

‘The DART’s not running, man,’ someone said.

‘I’ll go down to the tracks and fucking lie there. Do you want me to do that? I’ll do that for you, Naomi. I fucking love you, alright?’

Conor had started to cry.

Someone said, ‘I’m telling you, man, the train’s not running for like another four hours. You’ll be lying there a long time.’

Naomi said she would forgive Conor if he let her go home.

After Naomi had left, Conor went to the bathroom to throw up. Then he sat in a cubicle and cried for half an hour.

There was an incident with the bouncers when Conor tried to leave. Conor tried to start a fight in the foyer. The bouncers were very tolerant. They put him in a taxi and told him to fuck off home.

In the words of certain people – spoken after the fact, after Conor was dead – ‘Conor Harris was no angel.’ During the trial, these words were uttered in various places: in Gleeson’s in Booterstown, where Peter Culhane and Maurice O’Brien often went to drink; at dinner parties and in offices and in the waiting rooms of costly clinics; even in newspaper offices (though never in print). Nobody said it on the record. It was very much the unofficial view. And, like all unofficial views, it expressed a valid if partial truth.