‘I think Fiona was seeing somebody, yes. I didn’t know her too well. Only that she was one of the Hollands. Everybody knows the family. You’d see her about the place. Since they closed our shop, either myself or Bart make the effort to get to Luttrell village once a week.’
Wednesday found Tom and Michael sitting with Garda Paul Hackett in the large open-plan office in Trim garda station. He and Sergeant Bart Healy had manned a smaller station in the Hollands’ village up to a few months before, until it became another casualty of cutbacks.
‘Do you know the name of the man she was seeing?’
Garda Hackett shrugged apologetically.
‘Bart said she had somebody on the go. She’s a looker, Fiona. Not in a flashy, modern sort of way. There’s something … ethereal about her. Fairy-like. You notice her. I’d say she had the blokes queuing up around the block.’
‘Not you, though?’ the inspector asked.
The uniformed guard shook his head fiercely, appalled at the suggestion. He pointed at his ring finger.
‘I’m newly married, Inspector. Not to mention the girl is only nineteen. She’s barely an adult. Despite everything.’
‘Despite what?’
‘The way she acted, by all accounts. Like she was a grown woman of the world already.’
They were waiting for Bart Healy, the man in charge of Fiona’s missing person case. It was now four days since the discovery at Glendalough and eleven days since the Holland girl had gone missing.
They were making some headway. Most of those they wanted to talk to in Glendalough had been interviewed. They were compiling lists of sex offenders in key counties. And they were making their way through Steve Moore’s old contacts to find out where Pauline O’Hara’s former boyfriend had ended up after he left Waterford.
But the team was no closer to knowing what had happened to the five victims, or to discovering Fiona Holland’s whereabouts.
The inspector woke up every morning with a knot in his stomach that felt like he’d done hundreds of sit-ups the night before. It didn’t help that he was sleeping in an empty house with no distractions, now that Louise was down in Wicklow with the girls.
Today should see more progress, though. Laura was returning to West Cork to check out the former house of the taxi driver in the Mary Ellen case. In a surprise twist, when Tom had delegated the task to her, she’d requested that Ray, not Michael, accompany her on the trip.
‘I’ve no problem with that,’ he said. ‘Do you mind me asking why, though?’
Laura went quiet for a moment.
‘I don’t want you to worry about this …’ she started, and Tom began to worry. Was this the start of the Ray/Laura romance and was he being primed for future pair-up requests?
‘It’s Michael,’ she said, proving him wrong. ‘We sorted it out, but when we went down to West Cork we found ourselves a little at odds about the sergeant down there. The Doyle fella. I’m not saying Michael was in the wrong. If anything, I want Ray to come down so I can see if I’m jumping to conclusions too quickly. If Ray thinks Doyle is straight up, then Michael got it right and I was the one off-kilter.’
‘But you think you got it right,’ Tom said. ‘Or you wouldn’t have brought it up with me yesterday.’
‘Well, yeah. But better to be sure. Mary Ellen isn’t here to follow through on her allegations that Doyle tried to rape her, but if he really is a danger to women, we should be aware.’
The inspector had agreed. And so, Michael was accompanying him. Ray had been handed his golden ticket.
‘Morning, folks. Sorry I couldn’t get here quicker. I was up at the Hollands’ when Paul rang.’
Bart Healy shook the two detectives’ hands firmly. He was in full uniform, whereas everybody else in the station was down to shirtsleeves, including the visiting Dubliners. The day was overcast, but if anything the heat had become unbearably close. Oppressive. A good thunderstorm was required to break the spell and it felt like one was brewing.
‘How are they holding up?’ the inspector asked.
‘As well as can be expected. I’m trying to talk Richard out of offering a reward. He wants to put up €20,000 for information. That sort of money – we’d spend the next six months dealing with crackpots.’
Tom nodded in agreement with Bart’s assessment of the reward risk.
The sergeant sat down with them and rubbed his eyes. He had huge bags under each one, dark shadows on a pale face. Beneath the tiredness, he was a handsome man – thick, curly brown hair, a broad smile on a kind face. Young-ish, perhaps in his late thirties.
‘You’re doing a good job up here, running the show,’ the inspector said, reassuring him.
‘Well, I’m glad to see you, to be honest. We’ve had so many resources cutbacks, it’s impossible to run proper search parties for Fi. Her family and the locals are helping, but it’s not good enough.’
‘I hear it all the time. Let’s hope the Hollands are right and she’s just taken off. But let us assist you, just in case. Can you fill us in on what you know already? We’re really desperate to get to the bottom of this boyfriend business. Her mother and brother both intimated there might be somebody dodgy in the background.’
Tom thought Bart stiffened when he mentioned Fiona’s brother. He knew he was right when the other man began to speak.
‘Yes, well, to be honest, Fi could have been going out with a choirboy and Fergus Holland, and her father too, to be fair, would have had a problem,’ he said. ‘The men in that family are extremely possessive of the women. Fergus acts more like a bodyguard than a brother. The dad puts Fi on a pedestal, but he’s a bit less obvious about it.’
‘How do you mean?’ Tom probed. ‘Is this something you’ve noticed yourself, or is it commonly known?’
Bart shook his head.
‘It’s no secret. That’s why Fi kept everything from her family, I’d guess. There was trouble a few times, Fergus coming into pubs in the village and dragging her home. We got called in once or twice when he started fights with a couple of local lads, accusing them of screwing his sister – yep, those words and loud enough for everybody to hear, including poor Fi.
‘He’s always been a bit funny but he went off on one when she had the wee one last year. Got drunk one night in his local – I was there too, as it happens. You should have heard the filth coming out of his mouth about her. Disgusting. She was a young girl. Entitled to have a bit of fun. And to be honest, I think the more upset he got, the more she slept around. Just to prove a point.’
‘Jesus,’ Michael said. ‘Sounds messed up.’
‘I know. Richard doesn’t need to go around swinging his fists. He’s an important man – if you get me. You wouldn’t want to be getting on the wrong side of him if you want a job in the county. They mollycoddled and suffocated that girl, the whole lot of them, and as payback, she told them nothing. Well, they’re paying for it now.’
‘It’s hardly their fault she’s gone missing,’ Tom interjected.
Bart crossed his arms, his posture defensive.
‘Sorry. I don’t mean to sound flippant. Of course they don’t deserve this. All I mean is that, you always knew … I don’t know how to say this without it coming out wrong –’
‘Try,’ the inspector said.
‘Well, if you’d known her, you’d understand. Something was always going to happen to Fi. You could just see it coming – like a car crash. She pushed her boundaries, was always looking to provoke a reaction, in any form. Everything at home was safe and cosy, but that girl liked danger. And she sought it out. Even when she came to regret it.’
‘Regret what?’ Tom asked, noting the sergeant kept slipping into the past tense for Fiona. He already had her dead and buried. The inspector hoped he wasn’t speaking like that to her parents.
‘You asked was she seeing somebody. She was. Keeping it to herself, as always, but one of her girlfriends confirmed it for me. He’s a bad one. Older than her. Loves himself and the drink. By all accounts he could get a bit handy with Fiona. She never said it to her family or friends, but the odd bruise was noted and they told me she’s been subdued these last couple of months. The thing is, from what I know of her, she’d think she’d be well able for somebody like him. But Fi is a slip of a girl and this fellow is a strapping lad with a nasty temper on him.’
‘You know him, then?’
‘Aye. She was seen leaving his house in the village the afternoon she went missing. I haven’t mentioned his identity to the family yet. I’m afraid Fergus will be down there, stirring up havoc. But he was our main person of interest until all this serial killer business kicked off. Not necessarily that he’d murdered her – we just thought maybe she’d done a runner from him, or he’d promised her they’d go off together. I thought he might try to get money out of her folks or something.’
‘I see. What’s his name?’
‘Stephen McCabe.’
The inspector and Michael exchanged a glance before Tom turned back to Bart.
‘Stephen, you say? Not Steve? And he’s older than her? What age is he?’
Bart rubbed his jaw.
‘Thirty, I think. Maybe his mates call him Steve, I don’t know.’
The inspector felt a frisson of excitement. Could this be Steve Moore using a different surname? Moore would be about thirty-two now.
‘Has he always lived in the village?’ he asked.
‘No. He’s like most of us in this county, Inspector. Blowins from Dublin and elsewhere. The Hollands are native, but half the village is from beyond the borders. He moved to Luttrell a couple of years ago. He works in a restaurant here in Trim.’
‘Interesting,’ the inspector said. ‘We might catch up with him here then and have a chat. If he was abusing her, sure at least we can give him a scare.’
Bart smiled grimly.
‘I’d be in favour of that. Little toe-rag. She deserved better, Fi. Beautiful girl.’
‘There’s nothing else, is there?’ Tom asked. ‘Anybody who might have had it in for Fiona? We can’t rule out the possibility that her case isn’t related to the Glendalough discovery. We’re checking the sex offenders’ list to see if anybody has relocated here recently, but you’d have local knowledge of that, wouldn’t you?’
Bart shook his head.
‘I can’t think of anybody who was gunning for the girl. She caused a lot of jealousy among females, I can tell you that. Young and old. And, as I said, the brother is a loose cannon. But I can’t see anybody taking her. I really just thought, like most of the village, that she’d done a runner.’
Tom believed him. It was the recurring theme of this case.
‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t Fiona’s file mention that she was a mother?’
Bart shrugged, a red dot in each cheek.
‘I suppose it just slipped our minds. You’d never think of Fiona as a mother. If you knew her, I mean. Her folks are raising the child.’
‘Still,’ Tom said. ‘It’s a fact. And the baby’s father might come into play if she’s not found.’
‘I can’t see him being found either, Inspector,’ Bart replied. ‘He’s been on the missing list for quite some time.’