Sinéad was looking at her anxiously.

“But Dermot wouldn’t lie,” she said.

“Of course not,” Aifric said. “But it’s so easy to get things muddled. Especially if you’re being asked about the detail of things days after the relevant night and if you were drinking at the time.”

“Yes.” Sinéad looked down at her phone. She still looked worried. Something more seemed to be bothering her.

Aifric looked down at the phone, too.

“Sinéad,” she said. She waited for the other woman to look up. “Something’s niggled at me about this. I mean, Dermot and Robert were flatmates, presumably they were friendly. It seems odd to me that Dermot would have been so very sure that Robert never came home. I just wondered if the gardaí put him under pressure at all, when they interviewed him?” She held up one hand. “I’m not suggesting anybody did anything inappropriate or anything. I just can’t help but wonder. Those situations can be so tense.”

Sinéad said nothing for a long moment.

“It’s just really, really important that we get a sense of the whole picture before the case goes to trial,” Aifric said. “Much better that we know all this beforehand rather than to get ambushed with it later.”

Sinéad looked distinctly uncomfortable. She hesitated once more, then let out a sigh. “Look, to be honest, Dermot and Robert weren’t friends. Actually, Dermot didn’t like Robert much.”

“Any particular reason why?”

A shrug. “I don’t know. From the way Dermot talked about Robert, I just got the impression that they were very different people. Dermot is like me, a bit of an introvert. It sounds like Robert was the opposite. And then . . .” Sinéad stopped herself and shook her head.

“And then?”

“Well, then there was Laura.”

“What about Laura?”

“Look, please don’t say I said anything. I really don’t want Dermot to think I was going behind his back. But, like you said, it will come out sooner or later, and I wouldn’t want . . .” Sinéad let her voice trail off.

“What, Sinéad?” Aifric said.

“Dermot . . . I think he had a thing for her. Laura, I mean. He was always going on about how she was too good for her hairdressing job. How he could see that she could do so much better, but she couldn’t see it herself. Dermot thought she was too good for Robert, too. He said that he thought Robert was holding her back, doing nothing to build up her confidence.”

“Right,” Aifric said. “Did he speak to anyone else about his feelings for Laura?”

“No, I doubt it. He didn’t even speak to me about it. Not openly, anyway. But it was just obvious, the way he would talk about her. Like he knew her better than Robert did, as if they had this connection.”

“And did they?” Aifric said.

Another sigh. “I don’t think so. That’s what’s so sad about it all. I mean, look, I didn’t know Laura, so anything’s possible, I suppose. But Dermot followed her all over Facebook, you know, liking and commenting on every post she put up, and I never saw her reciprocate. She just seemed to ignore him, largely.”