I expanded it and handed him the phone again.

‘You’re in it too,’ I said. ‘That man is the former education officer of Cork Film Festival. His name is Daniel O’Brien. Do you remember meeting him?’

‘No. Maybe. I was so bored at that fucking workshop thing, I remember very little. Hey, he was a good bit older than us, though, like eight or ten years? Maybe he wasn’t the new guy after all. Maybe she was with someone better.’

She was with someone far worse.

‘Was it soon after the festival you saw the drop-off, Joey? Could it have been something to do with Deirdre’s work on the festival, her stuff with the youth jury?’

‘Coulda been soon after, coulda been later on, coulda been any day of the week,’ Joey said. ‘It was definitely him, though. So is that enough for me to walk?’

‘It’s enough for me,’ I said.

What Joey had told me did little for my case against Jeremy Gill, but it was new information nonetheless, evidence of a closer bond between Deirdre and Daniel O’Brien than anyone seemed to have realised. I would definitely have to talk to him and find out what he knew. My only link with him was Marie Wade. I needed to shake that tree again.

But first I needed to tell Garda Ruth Joyce that I wasn’t proceeding with my complaint against Joey O’Connor. And I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.

As I left the Bridewell, the sky was clear. I decided to walk to the Opera House to see if I could catch Marie Wade after work. On the way there, I passed the steps where Deirdre had walked to her death, but I didn’t stop, and I tried not to think about how she must have felt.

I should have paused to pay my respects. Marie had left by the time I arrived.

‘Sure, accounts always closes at five,’ the box office assistant said in a way that suggested this was a well-known fact.

‘I’ll know the next time,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I’ll give her a ring.’

But when I stepped back out on to Emmett Place, the rain had started again. I nabbed a taxi on the quay, got in the back as quickly as I could, and sent Marie a text asking her to call me as soon as possible.

Back home, I checked my email. There was a message from Gabriel McGrath requiring me to attend a meeting the following day at the office with him and Dermot Lyons, the partner designated to deal with ‘issues arising’ from what Gabriel referred to as ‘recent unhappy events’. My bad relationship with Dermot was well known. The fact that the rest of partners had chosen him to investigate implied they were against me.