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‘Of course it’s murder. That prick killed her, dumped her body in the river like she was a piece of trash and then walked away.’

‘And who are you referring to?’

‘Her ex-boyfriend. Robert fucking Hayes. He’s a nutter.’ Noel paused. ‘What do you mean by foul play?’

‘Her death is currently classed as suspicious,’ Kirby said. ‘We need to wait for the post-mortem, but …’ He stopped. The brutality of Noel’s mother’s death was not something he liked sharing.

The lad shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about upsetting me. Social media has already described it in gory detail.’

‘That’s all hearsay. I’d advise you to stay off social media for the time being.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Is your brother coming home?’

‘Not yet. I told him to stay there until I know more. I’ll have to organise her funeral, won’t I? I’ve no money saved and I doubt Mam had either. I’ll have to get a credit union loan. Mam was a hairdresser and I never saw her with much.’ He paused and picked at a perfectly manicured cuticle. ‘Then again, she was saving a bit to put Jerry through college, that’s if he did well enough to secure a place. She did her best for us, she was a good mother and I’m going to miss her so much.’ He sniffed, but no tears fell.

Martina said softly, ‘It might be better if you had someone here with you. We can appoint a family liaison officer.’

‘Don’t want or need one of those. I’m not a child.’

‘I know, but someone being here could help. Have you any other family? Relations?’

Noel scrunched his eyebrows, thinking for a moment. ‘As far as I know, there’s just me and Jerry now.’

‘What about your dad?’

‘He died. When we were little.’ He tugged at his ear lobe and his eyes seemed to have hardened.

‘And is your dad Jerry’s dad too?’ Kirby butted in.

‘What sort of question is that?’

‘Can you answer it?’

Another ear tug. ‘I can’t remember when Mam was pregnant with Jerry, as I was only a child, but Dad died and then there never seemed to be a man in her life. Not until that prick Hayes muscled in on her.’

‘You really don’t like Robert, do you?’ Kirby said. He caught Martina eyeing him with some sort of veiled message. He had no notion what she was trying to imply.

‘No,’ Noel said.

‘He says you called to his work a couple of weeks ago, shouting at him. Why was that?’

He raised his shoulders as if to deny it, then his body slumped. ‘Because Mam got into real bad form after a phone call. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on, but I knew it had to be something to do with him. Warned him off. That’s all I did. She was too good for the likes of him.’

‘But I thought you said she had stopped drinking, bingeing or whatever, once she met him.’

‘Yeah, okay. Doesn’t mean I have to like him, and I never did. He has this weird smile that kind of says he knows something you don’t. Do you get me?’

‘Like he’s hiding a secret?’ Martina leaned forward. She’d noticed that too.

‘Yeah, exactly.’ He smiled at her. ‘I asked Mam, but she never noticed it. So she said.’

‘He told us he knew her in Galway,’ Kirby said, ‘in the eighties.’

‘What?’ Noel jumped up but sat back down as quickly. ‘He’s a liar. She never said anything about knowing him before.’

‘Okay, that’s grand. Where and when did they meet when she started going out with him?’