‘I’ve no idea at all. We have friends who live in Castletownroche, and sometimes we go above to visit them, but we always use the main roads. In any case I can’t think why Garrett would have been driving up to see them by himself, on a day when he was supposed to be in court.’

Now she took her eyes away from the door and looked at Katie directly.

‘You saw him yourself, didn’t you? You saw him in his car?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘What did he look like? Did he look like he was at peace?’

Katie was about to say His car was totally gutted, Orla, it said so on the news, but then she realized that Orla would never have seen the incinerated occupants of any burned-out vehicles, and probably imagined that Garrett had simply died of smoke inhalation. She wouldn’t have realized that his car had been reduced to nothing but a blackened skeleton and that he himself had been charred beyond recognition, head to toe, except for his claddagh band. By the time the press photographers and cameramen had reached White’s Cross, his Jaguar had already been sheeted over with a tarpaulin and loaded on to the back of a rescue lorry, ready to be driven to Midleton.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He looked peaceful enough.’

‘That’s something, then.’

There was another long pause between them. Orla lowered her eyes now and she repeatedly moved the salt shaker and the pepper mill backwards and forwards as if she were playing a thoughtful game of chess. Katie could tell that she had something she wanted to say, but was having difficulty working out how to say it.

‘Where will you have him interred?’ she asked her.

‘In St Mary’s, in Clon. That’s where he came from originally, Clon, and he still has family there. But then you knew that already.’

‘Yes, I did of course. I’ve known Garrett ever since I was first stationed at Anglesea Street.’

Orla moved the salt and pepper until they were side by side. Checkmate.

‘And you were lovers?’ she said.

‘Orla, that was a long time ago now. It didn’t last for long and as far as I’m concerned it’s over and forgotten. All I’m interested in now is finding out how Garrett died, and if his death wasn’t accidental, then who could have killed him, and why.’

‘He told me about you and him, the night that you finished. He went to confession, too, that Sunday.’

‘Well, he loved you and he didn’t love me, so he must have felt guilty about it.’

‘You weren’t the only one, you know. There were others. I could write you a list, and I’d bet you know some of them, or even most of them.’