‘Anyway, the idea came to me, and I thought, Why not? So I told Heaney that the main suspect was dead. “I can’t talk about it in front of the camera,” I said. “What I can do is give you the background and show you a witness statement or two.” I let him have a look at a few statements: one about the gambling debts, another about the argument on the morning of the party and a couple more from people who’d claimed that O’Grady had gone missing from the party. The young eejit thought that was enough.’

‘And?’ asked Conor.

‘What I didn’t tell him was that O’Grady had disappeared because he’d been upstairs with Lourda Ryan. You know what that old house was like – you were in it often enough. There were so many nooks and crannies, you could have hidden a football team upstairs.’

‘You’re joking me.’ Conor pictured Lourda Ryan, a compact woman with red hair and teeth like a racehorse.

‘Indeed and I’m not. Apparently, herself and O’Grady had a fling.’

They walked on, past the ruined cottage where, as children, Conor and Tom had made a den. Now the building was obscured by a thicket of brambles. In the near distance, the new wind turbines made a swishing sound.

‘Why didn’t Lourda come forward to say he was with her?’ said Conor.

‘She did. She told me. It’s in her witness statement.’

‘But, later, after the documentary, why didn’t she make it public? She knew O’Grady had an alibi.’

‘Come on, son, think of her husband. Johnny Ryan: best known for being handy with his fists.’

Conor stared at the rutted path. This being Kilmitten, everything had to be said through a layer of euphemism.

His father continued: ‘Yes, Johnny hit her. Once, back before Father Galvin’s death, she had the guts to come and make a complaint. I talked to him, he denied everything, and she changed her story. The Lord only knows what he would’ve done if he thought she’d been carrying on with Noel O’Grady. As you know, Lourda’s dead now. As is Johnny.’

‘So, back then, you took a gamble that she wouldn’t come forward?’

‘It wasn’t much of a gamble.’

Conor shook his head. ‘God bless her, she had terrible taste in men.’

He father gave a half-smile. ‘Crazy as this might sound, she claimed O’Grady treated her well. “He makes me laugh,” she said, “and everybody needs a laugh.”’

‘What about Paula and Marty?’

‘There was no love lost between Paula and her father-in-law. She’d no difficulty believing that he was responsible for the priest’s death. Not that she liked people talking about it. She said it was hard on the kids.’