It’s not that we meant to sit on our laurels after Joseph Muscat resigned. But however sceptical we all intuitively felt, many people still thought Robert Abela deserved a chance to fulfil his promise of ensuring there’s no impunity.

Of course words come easy. His predecessor said he would leave no stone unturned even as he proceeded to get his chief of staff to help cover up any stones that might have been hiding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassins.

That’s what Byron Camilleri did when he swept up Lawrence Cutajar to a consultancy job to make sure no one gets to the fact that our police chief, no less, tipped off a key member of the murder conspiracy about his imminent arrest, even providing details about which properties of his the police planned to rummage through to find evidence of his involvement.

For weeks we smouldered in our own homes curfewed because of Covid-19 and numbed by the blanket postponements of the court proceedings that made many people so angry at the end of last year.

On 1 June the court proceedings restarted and the cesspit was reopened wafting its terminal stench of death. We felt again that desperate frustration that we could not rely on our institutions to get anywhere without being pushed. After all, so many bent cops were involved there’s hardly anyone left to do the arresting.

Yesterday it was encouraging to read that we added to Melvyn Theuma’s and Yorgen Fenech’s fear of consequence when they were still hoping their powerful connections in politics and the police could help them avoid arrest. If there’s any part I want to play in this overstretched, multi-tiered rendition of Macbeth, it’s the ghost of Banquo forcing the baddies to shit themselves in front of their scared but knowing dinner guests.

There was a bit of Macbeth’s panicky reaction when he realised his eyes were made the fools of the other senses, in Byron Camilleri’s response to this afternoon’s protest. Here he is trying very hard to look indifferent.

‘Nobody panic,’ you can hear him say on his back as his horse rushes off the field. ‘It was deliberate.’

Sure, Byron.

I wonder what you’re more nostalgic for: the days of Covid lockdown when protesters stayed at home or the days when you watched them chase Owen Bonnici and Konrad Mizzi down the road and you giggled in the background waiting for your hour of greatness.

Well here it is, Byron. And here we are.

Photos: Robert Agius.