He thanked me and looked down. “I’ve just been helping Amanda ring their kids.”

“That can’t have been easy.” It hadn’t occurred to me that Bob and his wife would have kids, but of course it was more likely than not. I noticed Mary had chosen not to mention them.

“It wasn’t.”

“How old are they?”

“Twenty-one and nineteen – two boys. The younger one’s hysterical. The awful thing is that they can’t be with their mother because the roads are impassable.”

I looked at his face. “Are there any other aunts or uncles who can take them in? Grandparents?”

He shook his head. “They have no relatives to speak of. I’m their father’s only sibling and Amanda was an only child. Both sets of grandparents are dead.”

“That’s hard. For all of you.”

He smiled weakly. “We’re twins, did I tell you that? Bob and I. I know we don’t look alike but we’ve had very different lifestyles.” Like most people recently bereaved, he used the present tense, and I didn’t correct him. “We started out looking quite similar.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

There was silence between us for a few seconds, then he raised his head and looked at the ceiling. His eyes were wet. “I feel so bloody guilty. This blasted cycle was my idea and it’s been a disaster since the beginning. First the weather and then this. And now we’re stuck here, in this wretched place, in the middle of nowhere and Bob’s kids can’t even get to him.”

I decided not to mention that he’d previously expressed a desire to return to Inishowen. I guess a place takes on a different feel if your brother is murdered there. Instead, I delivered the usual “if there’s anything I can do” line and left him to head up the stairs on whatever errand he was on, quietly shutting the front door and taking myself back down the path.

I glanced up at a sky that was grey and threatening again before climbing into the car – it seemed the weather hadn’t finished with us yet either – and I started the ignition. I was amazed the Mini was still going. I was starting to feeling affection for my little car again.

I had just begun to reverse when I heard a shout and I looked up to see Derek Jameson emerge from the house dressed in a waterproof jacket and hiking boots. I stopped the car and wound down the window.

He came over and leaned in. “I want to see where Bob died, and I’ve just realized that I don’t know where it is. I thought that you would. Can you show me? We can go in the Lexus.”