The formality of the Four Courts can't conceal the private tragedy of Siobhán Kearney's death, writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
There was a moment in court last Monday when defence barrister Justin McQuade was flicking casually through the thinner of two garda photo albums that have been submitted as exhibits in the Brian Kearney murder trial. It was mid-afternoon and the air was stuffy - the time of day when tired minds can wander. Journalists were hunched over their notebooks and the court's gaze was held by a nervous witness being led through an innocuous part of his testimony by prosecuting counsel Denis Vaughan Buckley.
As he thumbed, almost absentmindedly, along the plastic pages, McQuade fell on one of the middle photos and held the ring-binder open in his hands. Suddenly, those just behind and to his right stiffened in their seats. A good many - including the McLaughlin siblings and Brian Kearney's daughter, Aoife, from a previous relationship - recoiled instantly. Others stared.
Inadvertently, McQuade had revealed an image that had been viewed until then only by the jury, the legal teams and Mr Justice Barry White. It showed the figure of a blonde woman in red tartan pyjamas and a light-coloured sweater, a white blanket over her lower body. She lay on dark floorboards, near a wardrobe, a flip-flop and a sinuous purple-coloured flex by her side.
The photograph was recognisable as one that had already been described in court; the scenario it captured had been reconstructed in the words of witness after witness. It showed nothing that should have come as a surprise.
But it did. More than that; it came as a thumping shock. The incongruously vivid juxtaposition of violent death amid everyday suburban detail - a Dyson vacuum cleaner, a flip-flop - was a reminder that, for all the trappings of public spectacle, what is being played out in the detached formalism of the Four Courts is in the end a harrowing private tragedy. It also suggested the layers of emotional insulation some of those in court draw upon; here, momentarily, those layers had been pierced.
Mostly, this week, it was only the rare signal - a tear pushed away or a quivering lip - that threatened the McLaughlins' composure, and the protagonists, just like everyone else who turns up at court No 3 every day, have settled into something of a routine.
Brian Kearney, who denies the murder of his wife, takes his seat every morning to the judge's left, at the end of a row filled mostly with family: two brothers, a daughter and, since Tuesday, his parents. Wearing his wedding ring on his left hand, he sits at an awkward angle to the rest of the court, staring fixedly at the bench, his eyes rarely following witnesses as they file past.
No more than a few yards away, in the belly of the courtroom, the McLaughlins occupy the same row of seats each day, the women's striking blond hair and dark clothes marking them out from everyone else.
There is Owen McLaughlin, Siobhán's father, who told of forcing in the bedroom door on the morning of February 28th, 2006, to find his daughter lying on the floor near the en suite bathroom. "I put a hand on her leg and it was cold. I knew she was dead," he told the court on Monday.
Others later spoke of Owen coming down the stairs, "hysterical", to tell them of his chilling discovery. In court, he seems to absorb every word, occasionally bowing his angular face and every so often throwing a glance towards the accused. On Wednesday, he shed a tear for the first time as more fragments of that morning were pieced together.
FURTHER ALONG THE row is Brighid McLaughlin, an artist and former journalist, who told the jury that Brian Kearney approached her that same morning and said: "Poor you, Brighid, and all that's happened to you and Michael." Brighid's husband, Michael, had died on July 4th, 2003.
"I thought it was a very odd thing to say, extremely odd," she told the court. "It put me back. He sat down and hyperventilated then but it was very strange behaviour."
Brighid and Aisling arrived together at the house at Knocknashee, Goatstown, at about 10.45am that morning. When Kearney arrived half an hour later, "I told him to get out, but my mother told me to stop," Aisling said. They're joined most days in court by their mother Deirdre and siblings Ann Marie, Niamh, Deirdre and Owen.
After four days of evidence, the Kearney marriage has become something of an open book. From the accounts of Aisling McLaughlin and Brian himself - as told to gardaí shortly after his wife's death - we know of the couple's first meeting in Mulhuddart 17 years earlier ("She was 21, I was 31. I thought she was older. She looked so in control of the place"), of their on-off engagement, their marriage and "wonderful" honeymoon in Granada, their newlyweds' dream of a yacht and their purchase of a €2.2 million house in Majorca - later to become the boutique Hotel Salvia.
We know, too, of the rockier times that were to come. One of Siobhán's closest friends told the court that she noticed a week before her death that her friend wasn't wearing her wedding ring. She presumed it had just fallen off. Siobhán had been discussing a separation with her solicitor in the weeks leading up to her death, and though Brian had been aware of this, he said it had come as a shock to him.
Michael O'Reilly, a firefighter, told Patrick Gageby SC, for the defence, that when he spoke to the McLaughlin family downstairs on the morning of the 28th, Siobhán's mother told him that her daughter was "going through a rough patch" and had been looking for tablets the night before.
According to two of her closest friends, however, Siobhán was in good form in the days leading up to her death. One of them, Anne Clohessy, had dinner with Siobhán and her child the day before she died. They chatted that day about what school the boy would be enrolled in; Siobhán was in "her usual positive form". She had an appointment at the local hair salon for the morning of the 28th, and one with a legal adviser on March 9th.
The prosecution's case, summarised in his opening speech to the jury by Vaughan Buckley, is that Siobhán Kearney died from strangulation that had been made to look like suicide. He told the jury of eight women and four men that the case before them was based on a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence. They would hear from experts who would tell them the vacuum cleaner cord found wrapped around the body could not have borne her weight for long enough.
ALL WEEK, FEBRUARY 28th, 2006, has been the point where witnesses have inevitably ended up, as if this is the axis on which all else turns.
In his statement, Kearney told gardaí his wife had been out with their son until about 9 or 9.30pm the night before. When she got home she asked Kearney to put the child to bed while she went upstairs to the attic room to answer business e-mails. He fell asleep reading the boy a bedtime story and slept through the night, only waking once to take the child to the toilet.
He didn't notice anything amiss.
The next morning, Kearney told gardaí, his son woke him at 7am. He rose, got ready for work and gave the child his breakfast. As he was about to leave, he tried the door to Siobhán's room but found it locked. That was unusual - they wouldn't even lock the bathroom door. He shouted "I'm off", gave the boy a kiss and left the house.
According to Colm Ward, who was working at Kellihers Electrical in Sandyford Industrial Estate, Brian Kearney, an electrical contractor, would call there every morning between 8.30am-9am to meet his employees before delegating work. He said Kearney arrived between 7.50am and 8am on the morning of his wife's death, "somewhat earlier" than usual.
Kearney told gardaí he was at work when Siobhán's mother rang him later that morning to tell him to get back to Knocknashee. "She said, there's been a terrible accident. Siobhán has had a terrible accident."