‘I asked you not to go interfering.’

Conor held the phone away from his ear, like a teenager trying to avoid a dressing-down. He didn’t need to hear the precise words. The disappointed tone, coloured by intermittent flares of anger, was enough.

‘How did you find out I was there?’ he said eventually

‘I still know a few people.’

Tom told you, thought Conor. But why? Because he was scared?

After his father had hung up, he leaned back against the sitting-room wall and slid down until he slumped onto the floor. Thankfully, Sharon was at work. He was bone weary, his body hurting, as if he’d run a marathon.

What a mess he’d made of the meeting with Tom. What a total, gold-plated fiasco. He’d screwed up, rushing in, piling one question on top of another, making stupid assumptions like a half-witted beginner. He should have been more restrained. Not only had he antagonised the guy, he’d allowed him to slip from his grasp. He recalled the scene: Tom standing over him, head jutting out like a meerkat’s, face saying a thousand things and saying nothing.

Conor’s connection to the crime had impaired his judgement. He couldn’t decide whether Tom’s father owing money to the priest was significant or not. He was pretty sure that Tom hadn’t been aware of the debt. At the same time, he was more convinced than ever that his friend knew something about Father Galvin’s death. But what? And how? Had someone – one of his parents? – revealed that information? Or, as Nina believed, had he noticed something when he went back to the house? Like she’d said, though, it was no more than a hunch. A hunch based on a conversation that had taken place twenty-five years earlier. It was flimsy stuff.

Conor didn’t see Haulie – genial, entertaining Haulie – as a killer. Yet he also reckoned that, when pushed, most people were capable of anything. He’d met more than one charming murderer. He’d met mild-mannered rapists. God-fearing smack dealers. Many otherwise blameless lives contained one violent incident. One rogue night. How he wished he could view Tom and his family dispassionately. In other circumstances, he might have chewed it all over with his father, but that was out of the question.

He thought of Nina. If anything, she’d looked worse than the last time they’d met: dead-eyed, gaunt, all her lustre stripped away. She’d chatted about her daughters, her parents, her brother, her job. She hadn’t mentioned Julian. You didn’t have to be a detective to suspect he was the problem.