‘Not a sausage. I didn’t know him all that well – I was only in for a few weeks managing the volunteers. He was fun to be around but we weren’t super-pally.’

‘Was he from Cork, do you know?’

‘Let me think,’ Marie said.

‘No,’ she said after long while. ‘Not Cork. I think he was from County Clare. Is it important for you to find out?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It might or might not be. If you remember anything else, will you let me know?’

‘Of course I will. Ready for the next one?’

We were at the bottom.

‘I might forgo that, I think.’

‘You should give it a go some other day,’ Marie said. ‘You’d be surprised how quickly you’d get into it.’

Yeah, I thought as, five minutes later, I sat slurping a latte in the window of Cork Coffee Roasters, I’d be truly amazed. Even Davy had never tried to make me take on Patrick’s Hill.

Back at the office, I had enough time to try Lorcan Lucey’s number again before the Carneys arrived for their appointment. There was a possibility that he hadn’t heard the first voicemail. Whether he had or not, he hadn’t bothered to call back. I left a second message and phoned the Philosophy Department at UCC. The department administrator, Noreen, told me that Dr Lucey was at lectures all afternoon and that she’d pass on that I was looking for him, though she didn’t know when she’d see him and couldn’t possibly say when he’d be in his office. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or being evasive.

‘That’s a pity,’ I said. ‘I have a visitor coming to stay from the Philosophy Department in Bangalore University and I know that he’s keen to attend some lectures in UCC. He mentioned Dr Lucey’s work in particular. I’m not sure what it’s about but he was talking about an exchange programme and foreign students or something like that.’

‘Oh. That sounds important.’

‘It might be, Noreen. You’d be the expert on that kind of thing. I’m just thinking, I wonder would it be possible for you to email me Dr Lucey’s timetable? It would make everything a lot easier, less hassle, and we could leave them both to their own devices.’

In less than a minute, the timetable was sitting in my inbox. Lucrative foreign students opened doors at UCC, and at all the universities, but I was shocked at how easily the lie had come to me.