Ray and Laura hadn’t yet searched the cellar. A crime scene unit was en route from Cork City, Emmet McDonagh having secured its speedy deployment.
In the meantime, Laura phoned Glendale village and summoned Sergeant Ultan Doyle.
‘We can’t rule out the possibility the cellar is just a coincidence,’ she said to Ray, as they waited. ‘The taxi driver might not have even known about it, let alone kidnapped Mary Ellen and held her there.’
‘One step at a time,’ Ray said. ‘Let’s see if our super sergeant found it when he searched the house.’
Doyle pulled up a few minutes later, car tyres sloshing on the wet approach to the cottage. They met him at the door.
‘DS Brennan – good to see you again. I don’t think I’ve met your partner, have I?’
The sergeant offered his hand to Ray.
‘DS Ray Lennon,’ he replied, shaking it. ‘We’ll show you what we found, then we can have a chat.’
At their request, Doyle had brought torches and bottles of water. By now, they needed the light for inside the cottage as well as for the cellar.
Ray shone the torch at the open trapdoor and the hole in the floor.
Doyle looked at the two of them, bewildered.
‘Were you aware that this was here when you searched the building?’ Laura asked.
The sergeant shook his head.
‘No. But … what does it mean? Are you saying – are you actually implying that Cormac Ryan took Mary Ellen and kept her here? I told you already. We have about twenty witnesses who say he was back in the pub fifteen minutes after he dropped her home. It would have taken him half an hour to drive here and back – not including the time to get her into the cellar. Presumably, she’d have put up a fight.’
‘What sort of car did he drive?’ Ray asked.
‘I can’t remember. A saloon of some sort. A taxi driver’s car. Probably a Toyota.’
‘With a large boot?’
Doyle’s eyes widened.
‘You think he had her in the boot of the car the whole time? That he went back into that pub and sat there drinking orange juice and playing darts while she was locked in the car outside?’ The sergeant shook his head in disbelief. ‘No. That’s incredible. I mean, what sort of psychopath could do that?’
‘The sort who kidnaps and murders five women, then buries them in a scenic valley,’ Laura said, her voice laden with scorn. ‘Did he take any more taxi jobs that night, do you recall?’
Doyle flinched. His eyes flicked to the hole in the floor as he struggled to make sense of the new information.
‘No. He didn’t. He stayed in the pub for another hour. Then he went home. Alone.’
‘It’s interesting you recall that so clearly,’ Ray observed. ‘Was there something unusual about it?’
‘Yes,’ the sergeant said, his voice hushed now. ‘He would have normally stayed until closing time and ferried some of the locals home. He said he fancied an early night.’
‘I see. So, when you did come up here to search the house, how did he seem? Were you in this room much?’
Doyle cupped his jaw and nodded, worriedly.
‘Yes. I sat at the table. It was in the middle of the room, just over that trapdoor. We talked for a while. He made tea. Jesus … he made tea and we sat here drinking it. This can’t be right. If she’d been down in that cellar, surely I’d have heard her? She would have called out for help, wouldn’t she?’
Ray shook his head.
‘That trapdoor is several inches thick. If he’d tied her up and gagged her, you wouldn’t have heard her through that and the carpet. And that’s if she was conscious. He could have knocked her out, or given her something.’
The other man closed his eyes and groaned.
‘Mary Ellen,’ he whispered, shaking his head. ‘I … I can’t believe it. It can’t be what you say—’ Doyle stood up and rushed to the sink, where he relieved himself of the contents of his stomach.
Ray turned to Laura.
‘Makes a nice change, huh?’ he said.
‘What?’ she asked, distracted.
‘It’s usually me vomiting at a crime scene.’
The atmosphere in the incident room was tense. A copy of the letter that had been addressed to Tom was now projected onto the wall. The original was in the lab being analysed by Emmet’s team.
‘Okay so, first off, I’ve spoken to Ray and Laura,’ the inspector said. His face was bathed in the projector light; the edge of one of the words appeared as though it was scribbled on his cheek.
‘They’re at the former home of the taxi driver who was questioned during the Mary Ellen Lehane disappearance in West Cork. They’ve discovered a cellar under the house, cleared of everything bar a bed frame. Now, we can’t get too excited. Laura reckons the cellar is an old feature of the cottage – built to accommodate rebels during the War of Independence. It might be that this man, Cormac Ryan, has absolutely nothing to do with our case. A satellite forensics team in Cork is examining the scene, but they have their work cut out for them. Mary Ellen went missing four years ago.
‘We’re also working with the local guards down there to establish where Ryan went after he left West Cork. He claimed he was going to live with relatives in England, but our job is to establish if he ended up in any of our counties of interest.’
‘Sir?’ Bridget Duffy’s hand shot up. ‘Is the taxi-driver thing his method? We discussed before how all of the women just seemed to disappear – nobody was spotted being pulled into a car screaming or resisting. We talked about him posing as a boyfriend, but what if he didn’t know them at all, or only knew them as a cab driver? It’s the one car that a single woman will get into on her own with a man, without thinking anything of it. And, in a lot of these places, there’d probably only be one or two taxis in operation and the locals would know the drivers.’
The inspector nodded. ‘That’s a good theory, Bridget. If he was taxiing in their areas for any length of time he’d probably be told all sorts about everybody in the town. People talk to cabbies. He could have selected the women on the basis of the gossip about them.’
‘Can we issue any alerts to the public while we’re trying to find this Cormac Ryan?’ Michael asked. ‘I suppose we can’t really issue a decree that women stop getting into taxis.’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘There’s not much we can do until we track him down. Of course, we don’t know if he was legally using a taxi plate or if that was even his real name. How many taxi licences are there in use in the State?’
Bridget keyed the query into Google on her phone, her snub nose scrunched up in concentration.
‘About … twenty-five thousand,’ she said. ‘But a large concentration of that is in Dublin – ten thousand licences are registered in the capital. If you take what’s left, you’d have to imagine at least one third of it, about five thousand, are registered in our counties of interest.’
‘No, we’d have to work with national statistics,’ Tom said. ‘He could have got his licence in Dublin before moving down south. Twenty-five thousand. That’s a phenomenal number. And, as I said, he could be driving somebody else’s taxi or using an alias. But at least it gives us something to go on. We’ll need to examine all the cases again and look for a taxi link.’
He turned to face the image projected on the wall.
‘So – this communication. We’ve no way of knowing if it’s from our man or a crank. We haven’t had a calling card from him prior to this, so we’ve no handwriting to compare it with. And he doesn’t say anything about the murders that would indicate he has knowledge beyond what the general public has been given.’
‘He barely says anything at all,’ Bridget said.
They all stared up at the sloping script.
Three sentences, twelve words in total. And it sent a shiver through the inspector each time he looked at it.
I took Fiona like the others. You won’t find her. Forget her.
‘There’s some trouble outside.’
Ray had come to stand by Laura’s side. She was waiting in the kitchen, concentrating on the light now emanating from the hole in the floor. The forensic scientists were working their magic.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Nora and Elizabeth Lehane have arrived. They want to speak to you and give Doyle an earful.’
‘Shit. I’ll go out to them.’
‘Best if you do. Hey, before you go, should I book us in overnight back in the village? There must be a B&B or something up there. It’s a tourist area, right?’
Laura couldn’t help but shake her head. It was all she could do to stop herself from laughing hysterically. For so long she’d wanted to have this time alone with Ray, when she thought that she might have a chance with him. She couldn’t decide if he really didn’t know the effect he had on her or if he was a game player. Either way, she was getting tired of the whole silly thing.
‘I’d rather go back up to Dublin,’ she said, resolutely.
‘Why? I mean, it’s late in the day already. By the time we’re finished up here … we’ll be exhausted at the wheel. It’s a four-and-a-half-hour drive.’
‘I’ll do it,’ she said, ‘if you’re too tired.’
‘It’s not that. I …’ he sighed. ‘I thought the boss might want us to stay down here, in case something else needs to be checked. We can’t do this drive every other day.’
‘Oh,’ she said, from behind a smile of ice. ‘There was I thinking you just fancied getting me alone in a B&B.’
She spun on her heel, chestnut curls swinging, and exited the kitchen. Ray stood reeling in her wake. What the hell was that about?
‘I knew you’d be back.’
Nora Lehane grasped Laura’s hands in hers and squeezed.
‘Aye. I said it to Elizabeth. “That girl cares.” Was it that Cormac fella? Have you found something in there? Can I see?’
Mary Ellen’s mother’s eyes were wild, in keeping with the rest of her appearance. The rain dripped from her hair and face and she was shivering in a soaked cotton cardigan that provided little protection against the elements.
‘Why are you standing out in the rain?’ Laura exclaimed, appalled. ‘Come into the hall!’
‘I told them they couldn’t come into the house,’ Doyle barked from behind her. ‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘You noticed that, did you?’ Laura snapped. ‘Better late than never, I suppose.’ She guided Nora and her mother in the door and glared angrily at the sergeant as Elizabeth flashed him a triumphant look.
‘Now. At least it’s dry in here. Look, there’s nothing for you to see. We’re just searching the house to see if there’s any possibility Mary Ellen was held here. But we’ve found no evidence of that yet.’
‘You’ve found something, though,’ Elizabeth said, in response to her mother’s crestfallen face. ‘We heard about the cars coming down from Cork City. Ye wouldn’t have summoned them for no good reason.’
‘I know the land around here,’ Nora interjected, her eyes fixed on Laura’s. ‘I know this area. All of the houses this way have hidey-holes built into them. The men who blew up the army barracks in Cork in 1920 were from this part of the world and their neighbours took them in when they were on the run. That’s what you found, isn’t it? A place he could have hidden her. I should have realised. I’ve thought about nothing else for the last four years. Lord, why didn’t I think of that?’
Laura sighed.
‘Nora. Elizabeth. I’m determined to find out what happened to Mary Ellen. The team I work with will turn over every stone. The experience you had with –’ she looked around to make sure he wasn’t eavesdropping ‘– Sergeant Doyle, it’s not going to be repeated. As soon as we have anything concrete, we will let you know.’
‘It wasn’t just Doyle,’ Elizabeth said.
‘What?’
‘Laura,’ Ray had come through from the kitchen. ‘Forensics want to talk to us.’
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the two women. ‘Just give us a few minutes.’
Laura followed Ray back into the room he’d come from and looked expectantly at the forensics expert.
‘Have you found something, then?’ she asked.
‘Yes and no.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘We’ve found absolutely nothing to indicate Mary Ellen or anybody else was ever held down in that cellar.’
The two detectives exchanged disappointed looks.
‘But it’s not all bad news,’ the expert continued.
‘How can there be good news following that?’ Ray asked.
‘Well, that’s the point. We should have found something. That cellar was built for a purpose – storage, hiding people, whatever. At some point in its past, a person or people were in that cellar. We should have picked up something – even historical. A hair, some blood, any indication of human DNA. But we didn’t.’
‘It’s been scrubbed,’ Laura said.
‘Either that, or somebody built the thing while wearing full protective body gear and nobody has been in it since. You can come down if you like. Take a look. You won’t be contaminating anything.’
Ray went down the ladder first.
The ground underfoot was solid, the stone walls bare.
Ray turned on the spot, even though he knew there was nothing to see, bar the solitary bed frame in the corner.
Laura walked over to the sole piece of furniture – the old brass bedframe, bolted to the floor.
‘It was probably less hassle to leave the frame there.’ The forensics expert confirmed what she was thinking. ‘But I’m not sure why it was stuck to the floor like that to begin with.’
‘He could put chains on the bolts,’ Ray said, and Laura felt her stomach somersault.
She hunkered down and placed her hand on the slats, closing her eyes. Was this were Mary Ellen had lain? Staring at these walls, looking up at the trapdoor and praying it would open? Had it been pitch dark, or did he leave her a light? What had he done to her on this bed?
She was torn from her reverie by a sudden wail.
Nora Lehane was standing over the trapdoor staring down, her mouth hanging open in suspended terror. Behind her, they could hear Elizabeth roar at Doyle to leave her mother alone as he attempted to pull the older woman away.
‘She was here,’ Nora croaked, her face pale. ‘My baby was here, the whole time.’
And then Doyle was joined by reinforcements and Mary Ellen’s mother and sister were half pulled, half pushed out of the kitchen. Laura remained frozen to the spot, shivering in the cold stone prison.
She felt as though the ghost of the dead woman was standing beside her.