“What else? What did you like about her?”

He made a face. “I don’t know—I’m not good at this stuff. I never know the right thing to say.”

“There’s no right answer. Just tell me the first thing that comes to mind.”

“She was . . . sporty, I suppose. She liked to run, and I’m into sports myself, so we had that in common. And I suppose I liked that she was serious about her work. She was training to be a hairdresser, but she wanted her own place one day. Wanted to work for herself.”

“And you want that, too?”

He nodded. “I’m not interested in working for someone else for the rest of my life. I’ve been saving up to buy my own van and tools.”

“That’s great. Good for you, Robert.” It came out sounding patronizing, not at all the way it had sounded in her ear, but he didn’t seem bothered.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “With legal fees and whatnot, I suppose I’ll have to start again. Assuming I get out of here at all.”

Aifric hesitated, telling herself not to ask questions she didn’t want to know the answer to. “You spent your savings?”

“Well, yeah. Mr. Keyes. You, I suppose. Legal fees, you know. Twenty thousand euro, gone. Took me four years to save that up. I’ll have to start all over again, when I get out of here.”

“Do you have any assets, Robert?”

“Assets? Like, what, a car or something?”

“A car, a house, things like that.”

He shook his head. “You must be joking.”

Twenty thousand euros. It wasn’t enough for a murder defense—Keyes must have applied for legal aid. If Robert qualified, Keyes could end up making tens of thousands on the back of this case. Legal aid barely covered costs for the lawyers who did the job as it should be done. For lawyers like Keyes, who cut corners everywhere, it could be quite profitable.

“You know, with Laura, that was where we were different. Her parents have money. If she’d been ready to start her own place, I reckon they would have fronted her the cash.”

“Did that bother you? That Laura would get a leg up, where you had to work so hard for your own start?” She half-expected him to get angry, to blow up at her, but he just shook his head, and his eyes were sad.

“Laura has . . . had . . . an older sister, Louise. Louise is very clever—she’s at university, winning prizes and that.” Robert waved a hand vaguely. “Laura’s parents never stopped talking about her—Louise this, Louise that. Laura always felt like she was a disappointment to her old pair. I think that’s why she took hairdressing so seriously. There’s a lot of money in those successful salons, you know. If she had her own place someday, that would show them all, wouldn’t it?”

“Laura didn’t get on with her family then?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. She was really close to them, particularly her sister and her ma. It’s just, she never thought she was good enough. My da’s dead, and my ma’s on disability, but . . .”