Returning to the obituary, I read that, in 2011, it was discovered that the salary Jameson had been taking from his charity vastly exceeded that which had been sanctioned by the board. This wasn’t unheard of – there’d been a few scandals of this sort of late – but I did wonder if this was what Jude had meant when he said that for Bob, charity began at home. The obituary said that the Charities Commissioner had investigated but that it was quickly rectified. Two years later, Bob Jameson was given an award for his work with the Jameson Grace Charity.

The piece finished by saying that Bob Jameson enjoyed sailing and rugby, and was a regular at any rugby matches where Ireland or Connaught were playing – the picture at the top of the obituary showed him cheering Ireland at a Six Nations match. It said that Bob was survived by his wife Amanda, two children Oisín and Finn, and his brother Derek.

I sat back, chewing on a pen I’d picked up. The overall impression was that the excessive salary had been a blip, that in any event he’d done so much good that he was worth it. Which was pretty much the message I’d got from Derek earlier. But was it true? Jude Burns certainly felt differently. I flicked through the other obituaries, but they all had pretty much the same information.

I looked for Lissa Bennett’s husband Chris. But there was nothing. Not even a Facebook page.

Before I turned off the computer, I had a quick look at the main news sites since I hadn’t been able to get hold of a newspaper, and found that Glendara and Inishowen were dominating the national news. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised; a town cut off by floods was news enough but throw in a mysterious death and a snake and we’d have journalists invading the town if they could get here. That was one advantage of being cut off, I supposed.

People had uploaded photographs and videos and the papers had included some of them in their articles. The clip Leah had sent me of the gate being blown off was there, along with an image of a massive sinkhole into which a tractor had fallen, and another of what looked like a small grove of trees growing out of the middle of the road, but was in fact a collapsed bridge. I shuddered. These were live updates of what was happening just outside my door.

Before I left, I did one last check on the bathroom, emptying the basin again and placing it back under the leak.

Chapter Thirteen