‘Before you go, there’s one last thing,’ I said. ‘It’s not to do with the case itself, it’s just that by its nature this is a situation where the Gardaí have a lot of expertise and, even though no prosecution is possible, I think it might help if I showed the file to a detective Garda I know well, and trust. Her name is Sadie O’Riordan, from Coughlan’s Quay Garda Station. She was in my law class at UCC, actually. Would you authorise me to talk to her about the case?’

‘I talked to the cops and it was a complete waste of time,’ Sean said.

‘Do if it helps,’ Ann said, giving Sean a poke in the arm. ‘Don’t mind this fella.’

‘Oh sure if the boss says yes, then who am I to question?’ Sean said. ‘Good luck.’

I’d need luck, and plenty of it, if I was to earn the trust the Carneys had placed in me. For a while after they had gone, I stared out my window at the darkening sky, my stomach swirling. By now, Jeremy Gill had arrived in town. He might even have reached City Hall. Soon, he’d be making his way to Cork Opera House.

And I would be there to welcome him.

15

If I craned my neck, I could see the spot where Deirdre had stepped into the biting January waters of the Lee’s North Channel. I was standing in the bay window on the top floor of the Opera House, high above the river where my sister had floated on the way to being dead, her suicide a tragic mirroring of her own history. Our mother had gone with the river too, though Deirdre had known nothing of that, and I had never looked beyond what little my mam had told me, had never sought out the inquest records or Garda reports, had never investigated what the newspapers had said, had tried to suppress all of it.

And yet I had leapt at the chance to investigate Deirdre’s life and death. What would a psychotherapist say?

‘Are you thinking about jumping in?’

I jolted, then turned around. It was Sarah-Jane Carey, the Film Festival PR.

‘They say it’s cleaned up since they did the main drainage, but I wouldn’t fancy a swim all the same, would you?’

‘Sarah-Jane, you gave me a fright! But hang on, I’m not in your way, am I?’

The window, with clear northern light and the river in the background, was a popular location for PR photos.