‘No, no, I don’t think so. But some time during the festival, either that night or some other time, he saw her, targeted her. He was way too clever to do anything then – but he met her afterwards. Trust me. She changed after the festival, got more distant from us, and from her school pals. Was growing up, we thought … And then we knew that something serious had happened. Ann first. And the blood … on the sheets … and the bruises. That was the 12th of December 1998, nearly two months after the festival, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday. A Saturday night, Sunday, it was, when Ann … But we never knew who it was.’

Sean stopped.

‘She never said. Never would. But I know now. I know it was him.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘And the emergency?’

‘It’s what I read in the Echo today. That he’s coming back to Cork, next week. For the Film Festival,’ Sean said. ‘I want to make sure the bastard doesn’t do it again.’

2

‘So, what do you think?’ Sean asked.

It was tenuous, at very best, is what I thought. Sean had a broken heart and was searching for answers: the ‘emergency’ was no more than a poignant attempt to atone for not being able to save his daughter. I had seen it before, relatives replaying the incomprehensible so often that insignificant occurrences garnered meanings invisible to outsiders. And, after a while, two and two no longer added up to four. I knew that what Sean was suggesting could have happened. Anything was possible. But, with a deceased complainant, and no evidence whatsoever, this allegation looked like a non-starter in every way.

And now wasn’t the time to tell Sean any of that. His only daughter was dead by suicide. He had to wake up to that knowledge, and to her absence, every single day. I couldn’t reject him straight away, not after the effort he’d made to find me, though I knew that there was little or nothing I could do.

But I could respect him, and respecting him meant giving what he had told me the time and the consideration it deserved. I would send him home to his wife and, later, when he was rested, I’d let him down gently. There would be no need to mention the probability that Jeremy Gill was completely innocent. I reckoned that, deep down, Sean knew that already.

‘I’ll need to do a bit of thinking about this,’ I said. ‘Give me your home and mobile numbers and I’ll give you a ring to arrange a meeting as soon as I know more. One thing I forgot to ask, does your wife – Ann is it? Does she know you’re here?’

‘She does, but she thinks that there’s nothing you can do. She thinks I’m only upsetting myself more. She says that whatever I do, I can’t bring her back.’

Sean paused.