There’s no smugness in that remark. Perhaps there would have been if she was still alive and she would be entirely entitled to feel vindicated at last. But being proven right cannot help her now, nor her family for the loss they continue to suffer.

Many people are like pebbles. The water can reach them, wet them, surround them, and smother them. But the water cannot get in them. Not even today will they admit to themselves Daphne Caruana Galizia was right.

This is not about Daphne having guessed a secret written in an envelope that has just been opened. She was put through hell on earth for trying to bring out to us what was happening in that bank.

Seeing those photos of Ian Abdilla coming in and out of Pilatus Bank during the Egrant inquiry makes my blood boil even now. Consider that he was leading an enormous investigation at the bank about allegations that it was used for bribery and corruption by Joseph Muscat.

Independently of what you might think about the conclusions of that investigation, the point I am trying to make is that Ian Abdilla walked in and out of that bank ignoring the egregious crimes that are now being prosecuted.

Great police work there. He’d say in his defence he was really only sent to find out if Michelle Muscat owned Egrant. What would he have done if he was sent to fetch a lost pen by the police chief and found eviscerated bodies on the floor in the room where he found the pen? Would he have said it wasn’t his job to investigate?

All those newspapers and media houses that carried Daphne Caruana Galizia’s reporting had been right, even if they temporarily had to remove their coverage because Ali Sadr came down on them with his pezzonovante American lawyers.

David Casa had been right to draw the attention of the European Banking Agency even though the FIAU had given Pilatus Bank a clean bill of health.

Protesters had been right to insist Pilatus Bank is taken out along with the entire criminal system of money laundering that Joseph Muscat had enabled since his election.

We had been right.

Those geniuses celebrating Labour’s victory on the steps of Pilatus Bank were wrong. But they’ll never know it. They’ll continue to think Daphne had been lying. They’ll continue to say all those politicians and activists who called for criminal action were just a clique of disgruntled Nationalists.

They’ll continue to believe One TV who every day speaks about activism and journalism, again proven right while they’re proven wrong as if the demand for justice amounts to a cheap conspiracy to steal power from Labour.

Pebbles, the lot of them.

It should perhaps be pointed out that charges in court are not in themselves justice. They are a necessary step to get there but it has taken so damn long. All this time, all these delays, simply help the accused get away with it. I think it is reasonable to expect that it will be many years before the case that was started today reaches any form of conclusion.

One nice way of saying it is that our country is ill-equipped to properly fight major crime. A less nice way of saying it is that before and after their arrest we like to make it easy for the criminals to fuck us over.