WEEK TWO and the reel marked "February 28th, 2006" continues to turn, each successive frame giving a new vantage of the same familiar scene.
Yesterday it was the turn of Det Insp Martin Cummins, who was responsible for the day-to-day running of the case that opened that day, with the discovery of Siobhán Kearney's body in the bedroom of her house at Knocknashee, Goatstown.
He told the court of his arrival at the house in time for her to be pronounced dead at 11.35am and of his conversations with Brian Kearney that morning.
How he had told him that Siobhán and the boy had been out the previous night. How, after returning home, Siobhán went up to the attic room to use the computer. How they slept in separate rooms. And how he checked her door shortly before 8am the next morning and, hearing no response, shouted: "I'm off. [ Our son] is downstairs."
Insp Cummins initially asked for photographs to be taken because he thought he could be dealing with a suicide; the shots would be useful for the coroner's inquest.
"However, having made certain observations and heard certain things, I decided that the situation was a lot more sinister," he added.
Later that evening, Insp Cummins and two colleagues visited Brian Kearney's parents' house not far from Knocknashee to ask for the clothes he had been wearing that day. His mother fetched the clothes, telling the officers she had washed them earlier because they were "sweaty and soiled".
Det Garda Jeanette O'Neill, one of several scenes-of-crime examiners to take the stand yesterday, detailed the laborious fine-combing that took place at the Kearney house that week.
She logged everything in the room: the photos strewn on the floor and the key that lay among them, the unmade bed, the lamp (switched on), the safe (locked), the blind (pulled down), the watch, the mobile phone, the handbag, the vacuum flex.
When Garda O'Neill ran through the items she bagged, tagged and took from the house, the list seemed to go on for five minutes, leaving the court to wonder at what gardaí had left behind. There was a black T-shirt, a pair of men's jeans, a few pairs of shoes, two hanging bars from the wardrobe, some ties, belts and scarves, a towel from the bathroom, linen from the bed and the lock from the bedroom door.
Brian Kearney - joined in court yesterday by his father, two brothers, his daughter and his aunt - looked restless during the two-hour sitting. He shuffled in his seat, apparently unsure what to do with his hands. Occasionally he would pinch the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes. Beside him, his brother assiduously jotted notes, as he always does.
In her usual seat in the middle of the courtroom, Deirdre McLaughlin, Siobhán's mother, kept her head resting on her left hand for much of the afternoon only occasionally casting her eye towards the witness box.
Yesterday was a "short but intense day", as Mr Justice Barry White put it, but it was long enough for the strain to show.
