Rachel

The crash was deafening. Metal clanging on tiles. Shouting voices. Rory’s and Sean’s voices, which always sounded more Irish when emotions were high.

Rachel and Detective Campbell rushed downstairs and were confronted with chaos. Overturned chairs, two grown men wrestling on the floor, Detective Mani apparently unwilling to pull them apart.

‘Stop it!’ Rachel screeched. ‘Stop it, the two of you. STOP. IT.’

They stopped. Rory hauled himself off his brother. Sean got up more gingerly, dusting himself off. Her first thought was: Thank God the kids didn’t see this. Then she realised the stupidity of that thought.

She turned on her husband, furious. ‘What the hell was that about?’

‘There are disgusting videos on the dark web that might be our daughter. One of his fucked-up flatmates might be responsible.’

‘What?’

‘Josh is a pervert,’ Sean added, as though he’d been on Rory’s side all along. ‘Watches child porn. He’s got into my phone before. He could’ve stolen images from my camera roll.’

Rachel’s first reaction was that the connection seemed too random. A stranger fixating on Bridie on the strength of photos from Sean’s phone, and then tricking or abducting her? Things like that didn’t happen in real life … Did they?

‘Let’s see these photos,’ Detective Mani suggested quietly.

Sean straightened a chair and plonked himself down. They gathered around him, peering over his shoulder at his scratched phone screen.

There were a lot of photos. Of Bridie and Emmet, both. The kids grinning, pulling faces, fake-posing.

Rachel didn’t know what to make of it: Sean seemed to have photos of little else but his niece and nephew; the photos were goofy more than provocative. The horror of imagining a paedophile seeing these innocent images and forming sexual fantasies.

Detective Mani took details of the flatmate’s full name and his phone number. ‘I’ll get someone to look into Josh,’ he promised. ‘But just a caution. Deep-fake videos are more common than you think. Images can be lifted from anywhere – social media accounts, school websites, old phones – and photoshopped onto existing pornographic recordings. What I am saying is that the existence of these videos on the dark web, disturbing as they are, might not be related to Bridie’s disappearance. In my view, Matias Cabrera is a much stronger lead given that he directly threatened you and your family, Rory.’

‘Who is Matias Cabrera?’ Rachel asked, feeling dazed and several steps behind.

Rory met her eyes, an apologetic cast to his face; there was something he hadn’t told her. He sighed. ‘A customer. We installed air-con at his place a few months back. I came across a lot of cash in the attic, and he thinks I tipped off the police.’

‘You mean he’s a criminal?’

‘Yes.’ Rory’s eyes were downcast. ‘He’s been charged with drug trafficking.’

Rachel grabbed the back of a chair, reeling from this new development. How had Rory not said a single word about this before now?

Detective Mani gestured for her to sit down. ‘Just a few more questions for you, Mrs Sullivan. We can do this alone, if you would prefer?’

Now he wanted to know about her secrets. If there was anything – or anyone – in her life that could have put her daughter in danger. Probably thought that he had a better chance of extracting sensitive information if her husband and brother-in-law were out of the room.

It was time to admit the full truth about Nico.

‘My husband can stay,’ she said, wetting her dry lips. ‘Sean, you too, if you want to.’

They had to stop hiding things. All of them.

Sean didn’t want to stay. ‘Nah, I’m done.’

Detective Campbell asked for permission to return to Bridie’s bedroom. Rachel had already observed her careful and respectful manner in checking under the mattress, behind drawers, between the books on Bridie’s crammed bookcase. She had no issue with the detective being left alone in the room.

Detective Mani picked up his pen, and Rachel decided to get straight to the point.

‘I had a short affair,’ she blurted out. ‘It ended last month. Nico didn’t take it well. He bombarded me with phone calls and texts and declarations of love. Yesterday, he confronted me in the supermarket carpark.’

Rory’s hurt radiated from across the table. They could sort out the blame and their hurt feelings later on. Once they’d determined whether Matias Cabrera or Nico Theroux or sleazy Josh Canterbury had anything to do with their daughter’s abduction. All she could do was lay her own cards on the table, be brutally honest.

‘Nico tailed me in his car from home. He was angry, crazy, telling me I’d made a terrible mistake. I was firm with him, really firm, but perhaps I went too far and humiliated him? Look, I’m grasping at straws here, but maybe he used Bridie as a way of getting back at me?’ Then another terrible thought. ‘I don’t know how or when, but he could have downloaded photos of her from my phone.’

‘Fuck!’ Rory’s expletive reverberated around the room. ‘Who is this guy, really?’

Good question. Nico was obsessive. Nico didn’t take no for an answer. And Nico knew about the concert; she even remembered mentioning the split tickets to him. He’d followed her on several occasions. Following her last night would have been more complicated but not impossible.

She couldn’t bear to look at Rory. The truth was, there were things they hadn’t told each other. Not in the months and weeks leading up to this. Not even last night, as they called Bridie’s name for hours on end, searching the precinct. He hadn’t told her about Matias Cabrera – who had obviously threatened him in some way – and she hadn’t revealed that her lover had turned into a stalker.