Since then, Rhona had been murdered, and so much else had happened. And yet, in the middle of all the chaos, Davy and I hadn’t been able to keep our hands off each other. Worse, he had been to my parents’ house for Sunday lunch. Now he had started organising home improvements for me. It had to stop, I knew that. And soon.

But not yet.

Upstairs, I started thinking about the case again. I was going to make no progress here. And I had to get out of the house before I started kicking the walls.

Now, I was walking towards UCC, looking for Lorcan Lucey who had been on the festival youth jury with Deirdre. I had left a couple of messages for him but he had never returned my calls. According to his timetable, he was giving a lecture in the west wing of the Quad right now. I wasn’t expecting much from him but I had to cross him off my list. Going by Fort Street was the more direct route, though, if I went that way, I would be confronted with the charred corpse of my car. Instead, I walked up Barrack Street, the ancient road in and out of the city from the west. At one time, almost every house had been a shop or pub. Now, many were derelict or vacant, while others had been converted into rough living quarters for students and other renters. Dotted amid the wreckage were well-cared-for owner-occupied homes. And the few remaining businesses traded with pride and defiance. Halfway up, Tom Barry’s pub glowed like a sapphire.

At Denroches Cross, the road divided. I took the lower fork and looked behind me before turning sharp right through the gap on to Wycherley Terrace. If anyone was going to jump me and drag me into a car or split my cranium with an axe, this was where they’d do it, a short low passage underneath and between two houses. But the road was clear.

The closer I got to College, the more stolen road signs and heaps of empty beer cans were visible inside grubby windows. Formerly a leafy suburb, most of the area had been colonised by students now. For eight months of the year, the ordinary residents had to endure the horror of Thursday nights in term time, and Rag Week, and Hallowe’en, and the ‘Twelve Pubs of Christmas’ vomit fest. It was all very far from Newman’s Idea of a University.

But at weekends, and out of term, and coming up to exam time, the streets were as quiet and pleasant as they had always been, and the student presence meant that there were cafes, well-stocked local shops, hairdressers, even a bank, that might have closed otherwise.