‘Thanks for your help, Joey. Will you call me if you remember anything else about Deirdre after the Film Festival, anything that might help?’

‘I told you to leave,’ he shouted, hands by his side, fists clenched.

Shaking, I drove off. Joey had a vicious temper and a history of violence. And he’d cared about Deirdre. Loved her, probably. What might he have done as a teenager, his desires thwarted? Deirdre had kept saying it was her fault.

Might she have been talking about Joey?

I had taken a few steps forward with my investigation into Gill, but this was a giant step back. Impulsive, brute-strong, and with a proven disregard for the law: if you were casting a violent rapist in a TV crime drama, it would be hard to look beyond Joey O’Connor. He had loved Deirdre, was crazy about her, Jessica had said, but the flip side of love is hate: for proof, sit and listen to the proceedings in any courtroom anywhere any day of the week.

And what about Jessica? What if she had known more than she’d said? Had she been jealous of Deirdre’s relationship with Joey? Why hadn’t she told me about Joey’s convictions? She must have known. What if he had sought comfort with her after Deirdre had rejected him? Might Jessica have been protecting Joey by pretending to dislike him?

None of it felt right, but in the end the only reason I could come up with for eliminating Joey as a suspect was that I wanted Gill to be the guilty one.

It was another night of broken sleep, my sense of unease about Joey and my concerns in advance of Jeremy Gill’s imminent arrival in Cork made worse by the fact that Davy wasn’t replying to my messages. I had sent him two texts during the day. My iPhone told me he’d read them. But he hadn’t replied.

By 3a.m. I had had enough. I deleted the conversation from my messages and put my phone upstairs in the living room, on silent. Back in bed, when I wasn’t thinking about Davy, Deirdre went around and around in my head, along with the old voices, and the blurred pictures I’d failed to delete.

Her coming to collect me for a visit, coming in a taxi, her at the gate, Doreen walking me out to her, us getting the smell.

‘I don’t think Mum’s well enough to take you out today, Finn. Go back in while we have a chat.’

Me watching from the door.

Her shouting.

‘I am not drunk, how dare you, give me my child!’

Doreen closing the door on her.

Her hammering on the wood, her face peering through the bubble glass.

Her, and not her.

The noise, that’s what I remember most.

Breaking glass.

Shouting.

Crying.

The quiet with Jim and Doreen.

Me starting to call him Dad.