Colin wrinkled his nose in displeasure, and Aifric moved on.

“Dermot claims that he’d been watching a series of movies all evening. He exchanged a series of text messages with a friend throughout the evening, about the movies. So, I spoke to the friend. She’s not on the prosecution witness list.” Aifric opened her file and took out the relevant papers, holding them ready in one hand in case Colin should ask for a closer look.

“And Dermot’s telling the truth, up to a point. Dermot and his friend Sinéad exchanged text messages from eight p.m. until after midnight. The exchange was pretty steady, a back-and-forth every ten minutes or so, sometimes more frequently, sometimes with a bit more space between them. But at no point was the gap longer than twelve minutes. Except here, at ten p.m.”

“What happened at ten p.m.?”

“Sinéad sent Dermot two text messages, both open-ended, both asking for his view on particular elements of the film. Dermot didn’t reply until ten forty-six p.m.”

“So he did fall asleep.”

“We can’t prove it, not for sure, but we can certainly use this. And there’s more. Sinéad tells me that she believes Dermot himself had a crush on Laura. He disliked Robert, and may have been jealous of him.”

Colin gave her a paternal smile. “Well done, Aifric. That’s excellent work. All this, and you only got disclosure the day before yesterday?”

“Yes, thank you. I thought we should line up some rebuttal witnesses. Robert’s friends, perhaps, may be able to give evidence regarding the planned holiday abroad—that’s what Robert claims they argued about in the pub, a holiday he was planning with his friends. There’s one other witness who is problematic—she claims to be a close friend of the victim. Says that Laura was afraid of Robert, that Robert had threatened to kill Laura if she left him.”

Colin grimaced. “Oh dear, that is rather damning, isn’t it?”

“Well, at first glance . . . but there are some issues with Evelyn’s statement. If Mr. Keyes would arrange to interview some of Laura’s other friends, I think it might prove very worthwhile. We may find that we get conflicting evidence—Robert seemed to feel that he had a good relationship with Laura’s friends when I spoke with him. He gave me some names . . .” Aifric held the list up to Colin, but he waved it away.

“Why don’t you make that suggestion to Johnathon, and let’s see what he says? This case isn’t very well funded, you know. As I understand it, the defendant has a limited budget for legal fees, so Johnathon has to allocate that budget carefully. And looking for rebuttal witnesses among the friends of the victim is a high-risk strategy. They tend to want a conviction, whatever the relationship was before the murder. You put them on the stand, and they might just say anything.”

“Yes . . .”

“But! This case will be wonderful experience for you. Given the evidence, it may very well come down to which of us is the more convincing advocate on the day. Mano a mano. I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy the challenge. It’s why we all got into this game, isn’t it?”