‘Ah now, in all fairness,’ Aifric said, ‘poor Jessica wasn’t the prettiest so he’d hardly have bothered with her, would he?’

I didn’t think attractiveness had much to do with the behaviour Aifric was describing, but I smiled anyway.

‘Do tell me more,’ I said.

‘Nothing to tell. Coming in a little too close to check on the work I was doing, hand on the shoulder, hand on the back, drifting down a bit too far, brushing up against me as I passed. You know yourself, you can’t say anything because it’s not visible to anyone watching, might even be accidental, though you know in your heart and soul it isn’t. Dirty article. Probably fits right in in Hollywood. But, yeah, actually, that’s the funny thing, I remember now. I said it to Deirdre at some stage, maybe on the way home, something about Gill being, I don’t know, a creep or something, but she was having none of it. Maybe he hadn’t done any of it to her. Though he gave her a lot of attention, all right. I remember that. I forgot about him. Next creep came along, I suppose.’

‘But you didn’t forget.’

A shadow passed across her face.

‘No,’ Aifric said. ‘We don’t, do we?’

I shook my head.

‘Did you ever see Gill again?’ I asked after a moment.

Other than in the media, she hadn’t. He had made no attempt to contact her and she wasn’t aware of any contact with Deirdre either.

After, I replayed what Aifric Sheehan and Colm O’Donnell had told me. Both of them had portrayed Gill as vulgar, obvious and intrusive, grist to the part of me that wanted him guilty.

But Jessica Murphy hadn’t seen any of that. And when Aifric had said to Deirdre that Gill was a creep, she had disagreed vehemently. I had to admit that Jessica’s story and Deirdre’s reaction evidenced a very different narrative, one I liked a lot less.

A pitched battle was going on inside me, I realised, between a reasonable rational lawyer and an Old Testament avenger.

And that thought scared me a lot more than Jeremy Gill did.

13

After several tries, I had finally managed to get my hands on the most valuable document in Cork – the City Council Residents’ Parking Permit sticker. The proofs needed made getting a passport look easy but meant that, for a tenner a year, I could park for unlimited periods on the streets near my home. I walked most places so, most of the time, my black Golf stayed parked. But I needed it now for the trip to the O’Connor motor dealership on the Kinsale Road.