I nodded. My heart was racing. Maybe Joey had seen Deirdre with Jeremy Gill? If so, he could provide the corroboration the case so badly needed. Like I had told Davy, the Visitors’ Book entry with Gill’s signature was circumstantial evidence at best. More facts were needed to make the Muskerry piece of the jigsaw truly valuable.

‘You know how Deirdre told me there was someone else,’ Joey said. ‘I told you that already.’

‘I remember,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t tell you the full story.’

‘Joey, where is this going?’ Mark Henchy asked.

‘It’s going exactly where I want it to go, with me walking out that door over there. If I took your advice, I’d end up in Cork Prison. Now let me talk, for fuck sake.’

He paused.

‘Where was I? Oh yeah. I said I don’t know who she was with. That was a small bit true. I didn’t know his name. But I saw him. I was, ah, I happened to be, em, passing her house. Oh fuck it, I may as well come clean …’

He laughed bitterly.

‘I passed by there a fair bit. A lot.’

He paused again. He had been stalking her, I realised. That was why he hadn’t said anything about it before. He stared at me, daring me to make a comment. But I didn’t and, after a time, he started talking.

‘I cycled by, any chance I got. Before school. After school. During school, sometimes. Going to and from rugby training. And at the weekends. All the time hoping to see her, praying that if I bumped into her, if she saw me, she might change her mind. Anyway, one of the days, I saw her getting dropped off.’

‘Dropped off?’

‘Yeah. From a car.’

Rhona had said that Gill drove a Toyota.

‘Do you remember the make?’ I asked.

‘Course. A yellow Fiat Cinquecento. 96C. I don’t remember the rest of the reg.’

Not a Toyota. And there was no way in hell a card-carrying Dubliner like Gill would drive a Cork-registered car.

‘It was a girl’s car,’ Joey continued. ‘But it was a guy driving it.’

‘Did you recognise him?’

‘I didn’t, but he did seem kinda familiar.’

‘Can you remember what he looked like?’

‘Fat fucker. Brown, light brown hair. Harry Potter glasses.’

I took my phone out of my bag.

‘What the fuck she was doing with a loser like him was beyond me,’ Joey said. ‘I couldn’t believe I got dumped for that. I told no one. Seriously, it’s even hard talking about it now. Only for where I am, I’d have been happy to leave that particular memory buried.’

‘Will you take a look at this photo and tell me if this is the man you saw?’

He took the phone and replied immediately, ‘Yeah, that’s him. But where’d you get the photo?’