‘You know I’m dropping Maria and Cáit down to my parents later, don’t you?’
Louise poured fresh grapefruit juice into two glasses. Tom was poking at the fruit and Greek yoghurt in the small bowl in front of him. So far, none of it had made it into his mouth. His wife had put the healthy dish on the table minutes after he’d sat down, her expression brooking no dissent.
‘Aren’t you going to thank me for making you breakfast?’ she asked, handing him his glass.
‘When you offered to make me brekkie, I thought you meant something fried. This is dessert.’
‘Tom Reynolds, have you looked at your tummy lately? Do you know that where you’re carrying those extra few pounds is the most dangerous place in the body and a big indicator you could be making yourself a candidate for heart disease?’
His wife had been watching a lot of healthy eating shows recently.
‘And don’t think I haven’t noticed your diminishing supply of cigars. I mean, you brought boxes back from Cuba. How fast are you smoking them?’
He sighed dramatically.
‘Anyhow,’ she continued, ‘I was thinking I’d stay down with them in Wicklow for a while. It’s a little cooler by the sea and – don’t think I’ve lost the plot – but I kind of don’t want to let Maria out of my sight at the moment. With what’s going on and everything. I know you won’t miss us here, I’m only telling you because I won’t be around to pop in to help Sean with June.’
This time, Tom sighed for real.
‘What’s up?’ Louise asked, force-feeding him a grape. ‘Aside from having to investigate five murders and a missing girl.’
He swallowed, distractedly.
‘I thought Sean would have been on to me by now. He rang Moya Chambers and I’d lay money he’s talked to Emmet McDonagh. Probably Linda, too. I don’t feel like I can ring him about work but I miss his advice.’
‘He’s just giving you space,’ Louise said. ‘Call him, why don’t you?’
Her husband nodded, silently mulling as his wife poked a spoon of yoghurt into his mouth.
‘Jesus, Louise,’ he said, coming to. ‘I’m not the baby.’
‘Well, stop bloody acting like her, then. Eat your breakfast, fatso. I’m off for a shower. What time is your meeting?’
‘Not until eleven. Laura and Michael stayed in Cork last night. I’m giving them a chance to get back.’
‘Can we have a chat?’
‘Snap.’
Laura and Brian had both intercepted Tom as soon as he entered headquarters.
‘Can’t it wait until after this meeting?’
‘Eh, I want to talk to you about the guards who handled the investigation in Cork,’ Laura said. ‘I’m not sure it’s for everybody’s ears.’
‘Interesting. I want to talk to him about the investigation in Kerry,’ Brian added. He blinked several times. He’d recently taken to wearing contact lenses but the heat was making his eyes dry. He was happy, however, to stick with vanity over comfort. Although not yet forty, Brian was already balding; he had to at least dispense with the glasses. Not to mention the fact that far more blokes had come on to him in the last three months than in the last three years.
‘As they say in the hip shows you kids watch, let’s walk and talk,’ the inspector said, breaking into a stride.
By the time they arrived at the incident room, his growing sense of unease had become a whole ton of concern.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Give this lot in here the salient facts about the investigations at the time, but maybe leave out some of the more colourful commentary. It’s relevant because it paints a picture of how the women were perceived and the responses to their disappearances, but terms like the village bike are not something I want bandied around. Even if it’s just reporting what somebody else said, you can’t presume that every officer in here is going to dismiss it. I don’t want that kind of rubbish seeping into people’s heads.’
Laura and Brian nodded and followed Tom into the team meeting.
Somebody, most likely Ian Kelly, the sergeant in charge of rank and file, had managed to source a few fans and had placed them strategically around the large room, blowing welcome gusts of air. The windows were opened as wide as they could go. It was makeshift air conditioning, but it would have to do.
Pictures of the five confirmed victims, taken when they were alive, had been pinned to the boards beside the recent snap of Fiona Holland. Smiling women, all unaware of the tragic fate their futures held.
‘Thank God I have a buddy who works in electrical supplies,’ Ian said, handing Tom a report of the uniforms’ activity from the previous day. ‘Seeing as we blew all our funds on those poxy see-through boards. Great investment, what?’
‘But they’re so shiny,’ Tom said, drily. ‘Okay, boys and girls, let’s call this meeting to order. I imagine we all want to get back out into the field quickly, if just so we can be a few degrees cooler. Let’s get updates on how informing the families went first. We also have the final reports from pathology and crime scene. Then we’ve the interviews with staff in Glendalough. What else?’
‘The woman who says she was almost abducted in April of this year,’ Ian said. ‘The one that got away.’
‘That’s it. Right, Ray, you lead off. Bring everyone up to speed on the interviews with the Holland, O’Hara and Dolan families.’
Tom propped himself against a window as his deputy ran through his update. How long could this heatwave last? It had to break at some stage.
‘There are marked similarities in the circumstances of the Una Dolan and Fiona Holland cases,’ Ray said, arriving at the final part of his report. ‘A single young woman, making her way home from a nightclub alone, not seen again – though she went missing at night and Fiona vanished in broad daylight. The family doesn’t know if Una was seeing anybody at the time; apparently her and the folks were going through a bit of a rough patch. They thought she needed to grow up and move out, so it was hardly surprising she didn’t tell them everything. Her friends claim there was nobody special but they also say that Una was the secretive type. The consensus is that she was a man’s woman, not a girl’s girl, if that makes sense.
‘Anyhow, they did say she was chasing some chap the night of her disappearance but he got off with another in their circle, so Una stormed off in a huff. The girl he went with can’t even remember his name – she said she was with him the once and never again. The guy moved on. He was only doing casual work in the town.’
‘Where was Pauline O’Hara last seen?’ Laura asked.
‘She was shopping in Waterford City the day she went missing,’ Ray responded. ‘She was last seen waiting for her bus home that evening with a few Superquinn shopping bags.’
‘Thanks, Ray,’ Tom said. ‘Laura and Michael?’
Laura gave the room the rundown on Mary Ellen Lehane and Treasa Lee.
‘Treasa is the oldest victim, that we know of,’ she concluded. ‘She was thirty-three and in a relationship. According to her family, the boyfriend was serious but she didn’t see it like that. She was a beauty, as you can see from her picture, and she was popular. The guards in Cobh weren’t quite as blunt as the sergeant who looked into Mary Ellen’s disappearance, but they did assume at the outset that Treasa was off partying and would eventually turn up with the mother of all hangovers.
‘Her father gave that no quarter. He was adamant she had come to harm. Said she rang him every day without fail and wouldn’t dream of just going off the radar. Apparently, when she was younger, she’d suffered from depression. After that, she made it her job to check in regularly, so her folks wouldn’t worry. The father was right to be concerned, of course. She was last seen walking out of a small industrial estate on the outskirts of the town after leaving work. She was off the next day and told her colleagues she planned to go clothes shopping. There was nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘Boyfriend’s name?
‘Eric Weber, a German. He moved back there at the end of 2009. We’re checking to see if he has returned to Ireland since.
‘Brian and Bridget?’ Tom called the remaining detectives’ names.
Brian stood up, forehead furrowed in concern.
‘We made one trip – to Eimear Johnson’s family in Kerry. There are worrying similarities in how people reacted to her disappearance. Eimear was twenty and a single mother. She lived with her folks outside Steppingtown in south Kerry – more of a village than a town. Last seen going home after a night out, walking alone. Her case was investigated thoroughly, we checked up on that. It was mentioned to us a couple of times, however, that Eimear had a reputation. People assumed she’d done a runner. We were told nobody knew who the child’s father was, that sort of thing. Her parents are devastated. They were adamant she wouldn’t have left the baby willingly. Said she doted on her. They did say that she was young and liked her nights out but her mother said Eimear never neglected her daughter. Even after a few drinks, she’d be up the next morning getting her breakfast and so on.’
Brian shrugged, to indicate that was all he had.
‘Okay,’ Tom said.
He walked over to the boards and picked up a marker.
Underneath each victim he began to fill in the corresponding facts, speaking as he wrote.
‘There are similarities between all the victims. For the purposes of this room only, I’m including Fiona Holland in our analysis. Each girl was making her way home alone from somewhere when she went missing. They’re all in a tight-ish age range, nineteen to thirty-three.’
The inspector stood back and looked at the pictures again.
‘Their features are different,’ he continued. ‘But they all have small frames, going by these photos and their files. Could that mean a woman did take them? I know Linda said probably not, but let’s not rule it out.’
He wrote ‘female abductor’ with a large question mark beside it.
‘Several times the word “reputation” has come up, with the exception of Pauline O’Hara, who was, we believe, in an abusive relationship. She was kidnapped in 2006 and then there was a gap until 2008. Had she not been buried in the same place, I’d have been inclined to think that somebody else had murdered her. But perhaps, after his first victim, the killer changed his M.O.
‘We know for certain two of the victims had boyfriends. This is where I want us to look closely, keeping those charm bracelets in mind. We need to check up on Treasa’s bloke – Eric. And Pauline O’Hara was living with a Steve Moore. He’s an interesting character. Violent, an attention seeker, and the sister said he worked in a wholesalers delivering to regional supermarkets, which gives him mobility. We need to track him down and get his work records. Let’s see where he was when the other women went missing.
‘On top of that, Fiona Holland’s family believe she was seeing somebody who was hitting her. They don’t know who it was but we’d better make sure it’s not Stevie-boy from Waterford. Pauline O’Hara’s sister told us she thought Steve Moore was twenty-six in 2006, making him approximately thirty-two now. She didn’t know his exact age, but apparently he and Pauline used to joke about her having a toy boy because he was a few years younger. Perhaps he moved to Meath and maybe Fiona’s into older men.’
Tom paused to cap the marker.
‘What we haven’t got,’ he said, turning to the room, ‘is anything that links all these women. Their killer is the common denominator, but how did he target them? There are too many likenesses, bar with Pauline, for them to have been picked at random. It can’t have been through their jobs. Fiona doesn’t work. Pauline worked part-time in a doctor’s clinic as a receptionist, Mary Ellen on her family farm. Treasa worked for a computer manufacturer. Eimear had no job. Una worked part-time in a clothes shop. They weren’t all members of the same club, nor do there seem to be any shared interests outside of drinking and partying, again, Pauline being the notable exception. So how did he choose them? Did he move from town to town – is that how he got to know them? Yet, Linda thinks he probably lives closer to where he buries his victims. So does he have a family home up this end of the country and rentals in the southern region?’
Tom perched on the edge of a desk and waited for his team to make suggestions.
‘He lives near them for a while,’ Laura suggested. ‘That’s how he gets to know their backgrounds. Most of them come from villages or small towns and neighbours talk. As we’ve already discovered.’
‘So we’re looking for somebody who moved in and out of the area in a relatively short period before the women disappeared,’ Tom said. ‘That makes your taxi driver in Glendale a real person of interest.’
‘Yep,’ Michael said. ‘Barring the fact he dropped her home and was back in the pub within fifteen minutes and stayed there for the night.’
‘How do we know he dropped her home?’ Ray asked. ‘What if he brought her somewhere?’
‘They searched his house,’ Michael responded. ‘If he brought her there, he moved her again very quickly. Where to?’
‘I want that house checked again,’ the inspector said. ‘Make sure the local guards didn’t miss a hidey-hole of sorts. It might have been a cursory search, something to appease the family. Where did the taxi driver come from and where did he go afterwards? We need all of that information.’
Michael nodded, though he didn’t relish the thought of the long haul back down to Cork.
‘Right, that’s what we have on the victims,’ Tom said. ‘And there’s a lot to follow up on. Let’s look at these reports.’
‘Pathology,’ Ray said, getting another nod from his boss. He hated being pitched into the spotlight but was getting a little better at it. Up until the last few months, that was. Now, he worried about what Laura was thinking while he was talking, whether he was spitting as he spoke, if his shirt was tucked in and lots of other entirely irrelevant things.
‘Moya has confirmed, as best she can given the decomposition of the earlier victims, that asphyxiation was the cause of each woman’s death. There are no bullet or stab wounds. Also no blunt force trauma, which poses the question of how he gets the women to go with him. The boyfriend angle is the most convincing in that scenario.’
‘Did she pick up any traces of chemicals he might have drugged them with – is that possible after time?’ Laura asked.
‘Una Dolan was the best bet for that,’ Ray answered. ‘And no. There was nothing traceable in her system. In fact, Moya says each of the women appeared to be in tiptop condition. There was no damage to the sexual organs. She didn’t find any evidence of post-mortem intercourse on Una, so if it was him who dug her up and reburied her, it wasn’t for that reason.’
Tom shook his head, both in relieved disgust and also amazement that Ray had got that bit out without gagging.
‘There was one injury on Una that you could read as being consistent with resisting the final attack. A fractured little finger. Aside from that, the bodies aren’t giving us much. Oh, one other thing: none of them were emaciated. Moya was able to check that based on the bone density. He was feeding them while they were in captivity.’
‘So, we’ve a compassionate murderer,’ the inspector said, his voice hard. ‘Thanks, Ray. Okay, moving on to forensics. Ah, Emmet, thanks for coming in.’
‘You’ve not a lot to thank me for, I’m afraid,’ Emmet barked in his usual affable way as he planted his wide bottom on a straining chair. ‘Aside from Mark’s little moment of genius down at the site with those flowers, we’ve nothing for you. The sheets the victims were wrapped in were clean and there were no foreign fibres on the bodies. He might have given them different things to wear while he held them captive, but the fabrics in the graves correspond to the colours and designs matching the items each woman was wearing when she disappeared.’
Emmet sighed as he removed his glasses to clean the lenses.
‘The only lead we have for you, Tom, is something that, from what I hear, is fairly obvious. Those flowers he planted would have been likely to come from the south-west of the country and Cork or Kerry would be a good bet. So, perhaps he’s from there? And, as Mark said, he knows his plants. You’ve discussed flexibility – maybe he’s a sales rep for a gardening company?’
‘The Hollands own a landscaping business,’ Ray said. ‘Does he work for them?’
‘Is it one of the Hollands?’ Laura followed up, her eyebrow raised.
Tom nodded, thoughtfully. They’d plenty of avenues to pursue but little actual evidence.
‘Thanks, Emmet. Ian, bring us up to speed on what the rest of the team have been up to.’
Ian loosened his tie and ran a handkerchief over his bald head to wipe away the visible sheen of sweat.
‘No problem. Okay, first off, Glendalough has been reopened to the public. The burial site remains cordoned off. For now, anyway. The media are mad to get inside the “valley of horror”, as they’ve named it. I think it will attract a different sort of pilgrim from here on.
‘We’re making our way through the interviews with the staff. Strangely enough, so far we don’t have a single sighting over the course of the six years of somebody carrying a body through the place. People do camp in Glendalough and the car parks tend to have vehicles in them, even at night. Nobody would have considered it out of the ordinary to see a car or van there out of hours.’
Ian sipped some water before continuing.
‘Anyhow, there are a lot of people who work in the park, over one hundred and fifty in total and that’s not including the volunteers. You’ve rangers, general operatives, the Visitor Centre staff, workers from the hotel at the entrance … the list goes on. We can’t ask people for alibis for any date in particular because we don’t know what nights the bodies were buried. The only dates we have for certain are the kidnap dates, so we’re going with Fiona Holland’s, last week. Of the people we’ve spoken to in the last twenty-four hours, over a quarter have no alibi for when Fiona went missing. They were either working on their own in various sections of the park or were alone at home.
‘We haven’t spoken to those in the hotel yet, which amounts to seventy-odd of that one hundred and fifty I mentioned, but we are going to be asking them to go over their guest register for anybody who checked in each year around spring/summer since ’06.
‘One more thing. We looked into those bracelets found with the victims. They’re all sterling silver and part of a range that’s readily available in Debenhams nationwide. They sell thousands every year, both here and in Britain. The chances of us tracking down the buyer are slim to none.’
‘More good news,’ Tom said. ‘What about the young woman we think he tried to abduct in Clare earlier in the year, the daughter of the guard?’
‘I spoke to her father,’ Ian said. ‘There’s no new information on the car she said pulled up beside her – he looked into that himself. But, after a little coaxing, he admitted that she drinks in that pub regularly and he’s always on at her for making her own way home. He didn’t say anything about her being a handful, nowt like that, mind, but I got the impression he’s not happy with her lifestyle.’
The inspector winced. ‘A handful.’ And Ian meant nothing by it.
He would delegate tasks for today and then he would seek out Chief Kennedy to have a word about the original garda responses to the missing women reports.
Kennedy had retained most of the furniture in Sean McGuinness’ old office but had added a flat-screen TV, which he kept tuned to the national broadcaster’s twenty-four-hour news channel. McGuinness would have thought that a ridiculous expense. The new chief had also installed a special orthopaedic chair that had cost another small fortune. Kennedy insisted he had back problems, which, in his less charitable moments, Tom imagined came from bowing to lick the boots of his superiors.
‘Inspector, come in. Good to see you.’
Kennedy did indeed seem pleased to see him and again Tom felt ashamed for thinking such mean-spirited thoughts about the man.
‘I’m trying to get proper air conditioning sorted out for the incident room,’ he said, pulling out a chair for the inspector. ‘But you know what the civil service mandarins are like. I’m banging my head off a wall. They’re just short of suggesting I go down there and flap my arms to create a breeze.’
‘We’re managing,’ Tom smiled, feeling more contrite by the passing second. He’d spent the morning cursing the lack of cool air downstairs, blaming his boss. Ian’s fans were a poor substitute and Tom was sick of having to change his shirt after every team meeting.
‘It’s not good enough in this day and age. I’ll get our offices in this building modernised if it kills me. The job is hard enough without having to deal with continuous budget cuts. Anyway, don’t mind me. How can I help?’
‘Well, it’s to do with modernising, as it happens. I’m getting some curious reports as to attitudes towards the Glendalough victims by some of our colleagues.’
Kennedy’s face transformed from its normal docile expression to one of alarm. He sat forward, elbows on the desk.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The woman who went missing in West Cork, for example, Mary Ellen Lehane. She told her family that the sergeant down there had tried to rape her. When she was reported missing, he didn’t officially record her disappearance for a full month. He appears to have conducted an investigation of sorts, but the Lehanes claim he was quick to dismiss their concerns at the time. His conversation with Laura and Michael would lead me to believe that. He used some choice words to paint a picture of her as promiscuous and said he believed she’d run off of her own accord.’
Tom hesitated. Kennedy’s face was getting redder. This must be a nightmare for the man – the thought that the gardaí hadn’t done their jobs properly. He was all about procedure. The lads in West Cork were about to be landed in a ton of shit.
‘There’s a similar story in Kerry,’ the inspector continued.
When he’d finished, he paused and waited for Kennedy’s response. The man seemed lost for words. He got up from his chair and stood in front of the window, his back to Tom, hands clasped behind him.
‘I’d be concerned,’ Tom added, observing the epaulettes on Kennedy’s narrow shoulders, ‘that some of our colleagues had an attitude towards these women that may have negatively affected the original investigations into their disappearances. And given what we suspect – that this man held his victims before he killed them – that really worries me. I think it’s something we will need to address. I thought we’d moved on from that sort of carry-on. I mean, Mary Ellen Lehane disappeared in 2008. There’s enough training nowadays to knock that kind of prejudice out of officers.’
Kennedy returned to his seat and sat down wearily.
‘This is very concerning,’ he said, picking up a pen and fiddling with its lid. He seemed unnaturally calm.
‘I agree,’ Tom answered. ‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll have to think about it for a while. This has to be dealt with carefully. We have to make sure we don’t overreact.’
‘Well, I don’t think we should be jumping up and down, making this the focus rather than the actual case. But if these disappearances weren’t investigated properly, the chance to save one or more of these women may have been missed. We can’t let that go.’
Kennedy adjusted his glasses and pushed back into place the fringe that had fallen onto his forehead.
‘Of course not, Inspector. But, in all our responses to allegations of garda impropriety, we must remember what this force is up against. Gangland crime is on the rise. Guards are risking their lives every day to protect the citizens of this state, with fewer and fewer resources. We need people to respect their local guards. Fear them a little, even. Not think that if they drop a scurrilous word here or there, the force will start turning on itself.
‘You said it yourself; the sergeant in West Cork investigated the girl’s disappearance. We have to accept he had local knowledge and work with him – not against him.’
Tom was disappointed. He’d expected more from the chief. Moreover, he felt like he was being lectured on something about which the man in front of him had very little actual experience.
‘I’m well aware of the dangers officers face,’ he said, his voice steady. ‘There isn’t a member of my team who hasn’t had direct or indirect threats made to them in the course of murder investigations related to gang feuding, including me. But in all my years working for this force, I’ve learned that the way to earn the respect of citizens is to do my job and to ensure that the people who work for me are doing theirs. I fail to see how ignoring or airbrushing incompetence and lack of professionalism serves that aim. It certainly hasn’t worked for us in the past.’
Kennedy sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.
‘It’s good to see there are still some idealists in the force, Inspector. And I’m not saying you’re not correct in your assessment of this situation. I will look into this, as I said, but let’s concentrate on the job in hand. Your goal is finding a serial killer, not reviewing the performance of your colleagues around the country. Let me worry about whether the missing persons investigations were hampered by any undue prejudices. And, Tom, before you go, I want an assurance that this exchange won’t go beyond this room. It’s for your own good. People might misunderstand your intentions. You know as well as I do that we have to be seen to be team players.’
The chief’s voice was even. But the threat in what he’d said was implicit. The inspector had never felt so belittled by an immediate superior. It was the opposite reaction to the one he’d been expecting and it was deeply worrying.
There was no point arguing with Kennedy.
There was one person the inspector wanted to talk to, though.
Sean McGuinness.