‘I used to blame myself for him being unfaithful, can you believe that? I used to think I must be ugly, or stupid, or that I was no use in bed. But I met a very handsome fellow at a big legal party last St Stephen’s Day, and this fellow gave me so many compliments and was so flirtatious that the scales fell away from my eyes, do you know what I mean? I suddenly understood that the fault had never been mine, not in any way at all. It was simply the way that Garrett always was, and always would be. As far as he was concerned, the only reason that God had put women on Earth was for Garrett Quinn’s personal pleasure – the pretty ones, anyway. It would have been deeply ungrateful of him not to enjoy what God had so generously given him. Sacrilege, almost.’

‘But he never took off the claddagh band, or the wedding ring. So – like you say – he was still being loyal to you, in his own disloyal way.’

Orla turned to the photograph of Garrett above the fireplace. ‘I miss him so much that it’s making me ill. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. When you find out who murdered him, don’t let me anywhere near them, because I swear that I’ll scratch their eyes out.’

‘I have to go now,’ said Katie. ‘My dogs will be pining for their supper and their evening walk. But I’ll keep you informed so. I promise.’

She gave Orla a brief hug, and like before, she could feel her bony ribcage through her black silky blouse. Then she smiled and nodded goodbye to Andrew, and left. It was chilly outside, and she shivered and quickly buttoned up her coat.

As she unlocked her car, she noticed that one of the houses further up Tivoli Park had a CCTV security camera under the eaves. The owner had obviously angled it to cover his own front garden, but when Katie looked up and down the street, she considered that it might possibly have caught an image of the silver Range Rover that Orla said she had seen there on Monday and Tuesday.

She crossed the street. A bright light popped on when she entered the front gate, and she could see lights inside the hallway and behind the curtains in the living room. However, there were no cars parked in front of the garage, and when she knocked there was no response. She knocked again, and waited, but it was clear that there was nobody home. She made a note of the house number and went back to her car. She would send Detective Scanlan up here in the morning to see if she could download the past week’s CCTV footage from the owners’ hard drive or cloud server, depending on how they stored it.