I looked around me at the rows of heads in front. Mary from the B & B was sitting in the same row as Phyllis and Liam, Tony and Stan were in the row behind, and the back row appeared to be occupied entirely by the newcomers in town; I spotted Derek and Amanda, and Jude’s two daughters and grandson among them, although the two families were separated by three or four seats. Derek was wearing a purple T-shirt with the words Sligo Ironman Challenge 2019 across the shoulders, and it made me think about the conversation I’d just had with Jude. I wondered if Derek’s childhood with a bullying father and brother had made him determined to be physically strong and fit as an adult.

When Jude spotted his daughters, he gave me a nod and went up to join them, leaving me with Maeve. Sue looked up at her father and moved Peadar onto her knee to make room for him. The toddler often ended up on his aunt’s knee rather than his mother’s, I noticed.

The councillor finally finished his speech with a reminder that sandbags could be collected from the fire station. Then he stepped aside and Molloy stood up to address the crowd.

“Good evening, everyone. As you all know we have an additional crisis aside from the floods. A man died here last night under very strange circumstances. A visitor to our town.” He gave an almost imperceptible nod to Derek and Amanda whom he had spotted in the last row and they bowed their heads. “As most of you also know, he was also bitten by a snake, though I must add that no link has been established between the bite and the man’s death. And the good news is that the snake has now been captured and, importantly, we have confirmed that it is a harmless grass snake.”

There was a general hum around the room as people absorbed this latest development. Maeve gave me a wink.

“Can we eat him, if we run out of meat?” shouted some wag from the corner.

Molloy ignored him and continued. “The fact remains that we are treating this man’s death as suspicious. We are investigating it as best we can, under very difficult circumstances. Clearly we don’t have the back-up and expertise we would usually have in a case like this because of the difficulty in accessing our town, so we ask all of you to pass on all and any information that you think might be useful in bringing the perpetrator or perpetrators to justice.” He paused, phrasing his next few sentences carefully. “Also, I’d like you all to be vigilant, to exercise caution and concern for your own safety, and for your friends and neighbors. I do not wish to cause unnecessary alarm, but the reality is that since the town is cut off, the perpetrator is likely to be still among us.”