After 18 days of intensely emotional and physically draining evidence, the trial of Joe O'Reilly didn't quite end with a whimper, but something close, writes Kathy Sheridan.
Gardaí, media, families, friends and the customary wall-to-wall onlookers had squeezed themselves back into Court 2 after lunch. It was noted that three expert witnesses who had given mobile phone evidence during the case were back and occupying reserved seats.
Old-timers nodded sagely, murmuring that we were about to get a re-run at the phone evidence. Suddenly, without fanfare, Mr Justice Barry White announced : "The evidence has concluded in this case".
All eyes were on the jury, the nine men and two women who will decide the fate of the man accused of murdering his wife, Rachel.
Looking tired but alert, they listened intently as the judge explained what comes next. Counsel had not anticipated that the evidence would finish today and they were being given the opportunity to "fine-tune" their cases in the afternoon.
"It seems to me that you will be retiring to consider your verdict just before lunch on Friday. . ." If they hadn't reached a verdict by 7pm tomorrow, he would have to send them to a hotel for the night.
There was a solicitous inquiry as to whether this would pose difficulties for any of them, they nodded . . . and so it ended.
The defence had opened its case at about noon, after legal argument without the jury. It produced two witnesses in total, and finished up an hour later.
First up was Derek Quearney, the 46-year-old ex-Army man and subordinate of Joe O'Reilly at Viacom, who had told gardaí that Joe O'Reilly was with him at the Broadstone bus depot on the morning of Rachel O'Reilly's death.
Neat, suited, bespectacled and about a foot smaller than his accused colleague, they provided an interesting contrast.
When they showed him a Powerpoint demonstration of the phone masts in March 2006, "it showed [ Joe O'Reilly's] phone going up around the north side. . ." "It is very, very possible that I'm wrong [ about the timings]", he conceded. "I just can't explain the lapse of 30 to 40 minutes. . ."
Last up was Joseph O'Shea, a Dublin County Council glazier from Coolock, and acquaintance of Joe O'Reilly since schooldays at Greendale Community School in Kilbarrack. He was here because when he read in the Herald last week that Joe O'Reilly was saying that he was at the Broadstone bus depot the day his wife was killed, "a light came on in my head. Switched on. It just came into my head that I seen Joe O'Reilly at Broadstone. . ."
A combative exchange between himself and prosecution counsel, Denis Vaughan Buckley, about two-hour working days, the elusive concept of "wet time", and whether he was familiar with the King's Inns saw a break-out of smiles in the court.
Among the few not smiling were the Callaly family.