Old God's Time

Fleming visits Tom to ask about the investigation into Matthews’s murder in the mountains. They have had no luck re-examining the old evidence for DNA samples, but they have found two blood types—Matthews’s and one other. Tom remembers going swimming at a family beach with either Fleming or Billy; he can’t remember who. In the present, Fleming asks if they took blood samples from suspects. Tom feels ashamed that they didn’t; he implies that Billy did and they must have been lost since there no centralized, formalized system for storing evidence. Tom says Billy suspected Byrne of the murder.

Fleming reveals that Wilson and O’Casey went to interview Byrne, and Byrne wouldn’t speak about the molestation accusations without a solicitor present. However, they also asked him about Matthews’s murder. Byrne was near the scene and heard the murder take place. He claims he saw Tom nearby immediately afterward; they called the police, and Billy arrived. This clashes with Billy’s notes, which claim that he and Tom arrived together. Tom says Byrne is lying; otherwise, he would’ve reported this at the time. Fleming thinks he kept quiet to avoid further trouble for himself but is telling the truth now that he knows he’s going down.