The major incident room they’d been allocated in headquarters was twice the usual size, impressing upon its new residents the magnitude of the job at hand. Desks and IT equipment had been provided for the additional personnel and brand-new glass evidence boards stood at the top of the room. They’d been recently secured by Joe Kennedy to replace the white display boards previously used by the teams in the NBCI. Tom couldn’t get to grips with the see-through effect. He had bemoaned their arrival to Louise one night, sniping that Kennedy had probably got the idea from one of the Swedish detective series he fantasised about starring in.
‘Don’t they always solve their cases in those shows?’ his wife had responded, before retreating behind the pages of her latest Scandinavian thriller.
The boards were being put to use now.
Detective Sergeant Michael Geoghegan was writing down names called out by Laura Brennan. She was making her way through a stack of files on the desk beside her, pausing every so often to fan herself with a redundant folder. Laura was dressed in a light cotton blouse and pleated skirt, stylishly cool but still too hot. Michael, casual at the best of times, was wearing a pair of Nike shorts and a blue polo shirt, a sweat patch visible under his raised arm.
Tom made his way across the room, nicking a bottle of chilled water from Ray Lennon’s desk en route. He’d walked from Moya’s lab to headquarters, but by the time he left the Mater the late-morning sun was already belting out higher than average temperatures. He too was sticky with perspiration.
‘Boss, we need air-conditioning in here,’ Michael griped. ‘The ink is nearly sliding off the board.’
‘I’ll get some fans sent up,’ Tom said. ‘They’re not going to shell out for a state-of-the-art air-conditioning system because of a once-in-a-century heatwave, Michael. This is Ireland. We’ll probably be building snowmen next week. Right, are we ready to start?’ He’d spotted Ray ushering the last of the squad into the room.
The inspector’s usual team was all present. Twenty rank-and-file gardaí had also been assigned.
Natasha McCarthy, the head of the Sexual Assault unit, had turned up to listen in. They’d no idea yet if the killer was also a rapist, but the inspector welcomed her presence nonetheless. Natasha was an impressive operator, dogged in her approach to her work. She’d overseen a large increase in the number of sexual assault cases brought to trial. Unfortunately, the justice and legislative systems had yet to catch up with her progressive drive. Most of those she caught either walked free or were handed down sentences that were an insult to their victims. Still, she persisted.
Her determination and ambition were necessary, from a personal perspective as much as anything. Natasha’s father was from Mali and she was one of the few mixed-race members of the force, and one of the only senior gardaí of colour.
Linda McCarn was there too. Tom had become quite adept at not overtly reacting to the psychologist’s unconventional attire. In fact, at this stage, he’d be more surprised if she arrived wearing an outfit that could be considered normal. Today she’d donned a white toga-like dress, tied at the waist with a rope-belt, and Grecian sandals. Her brown corkscrew curls were swept up in a patterned gold headscarf. She looked like she’d popped in en route to the Colosseum.
In fairness, of all of them, she was the best dressed for the weather.
‘Settle down,’ Tom yelled over the noise.
He gave the room a moment or two to come to order.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m glad to see so many of you here and I’ve no doubt we’ll end up being supplemented by guards from around the county and beyond when we establish the victims’ identities and origins. The workload for this investigation will be immense, so let your loved ones know the summer holidays are over.
‘Folks, what we’re dealing with is something we all hoped we’d never encounter. We’ve five victims and the only conclusion we can draw is that a serial killer is operating in Ireland. Maybe even killers, plural. Pathology has brought in specialists from London and the crime scene unit is also consulting with international experts. We have the State’s leading criminal psychologist, Linda McCarn, with us today, and she’ll give us some guidance on the sort of individual or individuals we might be dealing with. I’ll be referring to the murderer as he, but in reality we don’t yet know the gender or the number of perpetrators.
‘Now, we’ve a lot to get through and it’s hot as hell, so I’m going to bring you up to speed on pathology’s findings so far and then I want us to start talking crime scene, IDs and suspects.’
When Tom had finished updating the room on Moya’s work, Michael raised his hand.
‘Boss, are we working under the assumption he’s taken Fiona Holland? Her parents are in a right state. They’ve turned up at their local station looking to know if we’ve found their daughter’s body.’
‘We haven’t,’ Tom answered. ‘Make sure the family liaison officer is with them. As to whether our killer has her or not, I do not want anybody to mention outside this room the possibility of her being the latest victim. The media will make its own assumptions but we’re not speculating for the sake of their headlines. Let’s be conscious of her family. However, amongst ourselves, we must consider that he might have her. Everything about her disappearance is alarmingly similar to Una Dolan’s last year, bar the time of day.
‘And considering it appears that this man keeps his victims for a period before killing them, there is the further possibility that she might still be alive. I’ll go see the Hollands myself and discuss her missing persons case with our colleagues in Meath. Now, back to potential IDs. Laura?’
The detective sergeant stood up beside the list of names on the board.
‘Right, so, we’re being assisted by the Garda Missing Persons Bureau in compiling these names. The guys over there are terrific. It’s unbelievable the volume of cases they deal with. In 2011 alone, they compiled over eight thousand files. By the end of the year, they had it down to twenty-three outstanding cases. Most files close themselves – the report was a mistake, somebody returned home, that kind of thing. Sometimes, the missing person was in an accident. And then there are the suicides.’
She paused. They all knew the statistics for suicide in Ireland were amongst the highest in Europe.
‘Since the Bureau was founded, back in the early eighties, it’s built up an open caseload of over fifteen hundred missing persons. They’re the people who never came home, or whose bodies weren’t discovered. In the last few years, a fair proportion of that number is speculated to be young migrant women and children sold to sex traffickers.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Tom could see Natasha McCarthy nodding. She was familiar with the facts and figures.
‘Myself and DS Geoghegan worked with the Bureau to narrow down the number of missing adult females reported over the last ten years aged forty and under at the time of their disappearance, whose cases were never solved. We cast the net as wide as a decade in case the perpetrator kept some of his victims for lengthy periods before he killed them. We’re working on the assumption that they’re all relatively young, based on the pathologist’s advice so far, but forty seemed like a good starting point.’
She turned to the board.
‘This is what we’re left with. Eighty women between the ages of seventeen and forty, missing since 2002, who never turned up again. These are the high-profile cases, but we’re running a secondary list. Fiona Holland is the most recent name. The name before hers is one we’re familiar with – Una Dolan.
‘There are a few on the list that we think we can rule out, for example, women with a history of depression or suicidal tendencies. One woman, Pauline O’Hara, was apparently in an abusive relationship. It was her partner who reported her missing, not her family, who were satisfied she’d left him and was safe somewhere. Even leaving those examples aside, we’re still left with a lot of names and we only have five bodies. Also, these are all white females, on the basis of what Moya Chambers has advised. If it turns out one of the victims is of a different race, that number will increase.’
Tom scanned the list. Some of the names were familiar and he could recall their faces and those of their worried relatives at the missing persons press conferences. Women who’d just vanished with no warning, no signs that anything was amiss.
‘Patterns,’ he said. ‘If he is taking them in spring and keeping them for a few months – does that narrow it down?’
Laura and Michael exchanged a glance that said the inspector had hit on something.
Michael stood in front of the board and began to write something beside several names, underlining as he went.
When he’d finished, he moved aside. There was a collective intake of breath as everybody absorbed the new information.
The detective had pinpointed five names. Beside them, he’d written their age at the time of their disappearance, the county they’d gone missing in and the date they’d vanished.
Una Dolan, 24, Waterford, April 29th, 2011
Eimear Johnson, 20, Kerry, February 26th, 2010
Treasa Lee, 33, Cork, May 2nd, 2009
Mary Ellen Lehane, 25, Cork, April 17th, 2008
Geraldine Lougheed, 30, Tipperary, March 25th, 2007
‘In amongst so many missing persons, it’s not as obvious,’ Laura added. ‘In those two-page spreads the tabloids run about a potential Irish serial killer, they usually lump in a fair few of the women listed here, even names that the Missing Persons Bureau says we can discount. But these five definitely fit a pattern. Young women who went missing in spring months and were concentrated in a specific geographic area.’
‘It seems a bit convenient for us that we’ve got it down to five names already,’ Tom observed. ‘Are there really no other cases of women who disappeared over those months in each year? February to May is a long period.’
Laura nodded.
‘That’s the secondary list I mentioned. There are, of course, but these are the names that jumped out. For example, a woman went missing in March last year, forty-two, three teenage children. The family say her disappearance was out of the blue and not in character. But her file shows she went missing twice previously and had a history of mental health issues. The woman I mentioned earlier – Pauline O’Hara – went missing in February of 2006, but for the reasons I outlined, we haven’t included her. Until we’ve DNA and dental confirmation, we should probably assume that any of the women who are named here could be one of our victims. These five are leading the race.’
‘If he sticks to those months and that region, should that give us comfort then on the Fiona Holland front?’ Bridget Duffy asked. ‘It’s July and she went missing in Meath – that’s a fair distance from the Munster province.’
The inspector had been wondering that himself and he looked to Laura and Michael expectantly. Laura cocked her head at Ray, who stood up with an air of apology, and Tom knew he was about to say something that would put everybody in the room back on edge.
‘Once Laura and Michael had established the pattern, I had the lads downstairs look up reports of attempted abductions during the spring months of this year. Back in April, a woman claimed that a man tried to lure her into a vehicle outside a pub in Clare, but apparently another car pulled up and he sped off. She was drunk and couldn’t give a description of the man or the car, and the pub’s CCTV camera was broken. Our colleagues down there took the report seriously because she’s the daughter of a local guard. The driver of the car that apparently scared the man off said he saw a vehicle speeding away but it was too dark to see its colour or make.’
Tom rolled his shoulders to relieve the tension that had built up. A trickle of sweat made its way down his neck between his shoulder blades. To cap it all, his fledgling beard was itching like crazy.
‘So,’ he sighed, ‘you think he tried to take a woman in keeping with his habits, but was scared off, and the next opportunity that presented itself was last week with Fiona Holland?’
Ray shrugged.
‘That’s a possibility. The other being that she’s not connected at all. He might have somebody we don’t know about yet, or maybe he’s stopped.’
‘What do you think, Linda?’ Tom asked. ‘Enlighten us as to what we’re dealing with here.’
The inspector perched on the edge of his desk, giving the criminal psychologist the floor.
Linda stretched both her arms above her head, exhaling loudly as she considered her contribution.
‘Well, darling,’ she drawled, in her husky upper-class Dublin accent. ‘I can tell you what the research would indicate. It’s highly unlikely you’re dealing with a woman, or at least a woman acting alone. We know that more than eighty percent of serial killers are male and in their twenties and thirties, and physically, strangling would be beyond most female perpetrators.
‘So, as you say, you’re most likely looking for a man or men. Serial killers tend to target Caucasian women, which fits with your victims. But in terms of anomalies, it is unusual for a serial killer to remain so organised over such a long period of time. The discipline required would lead me to believe you have a single killer. If it were a pair, one of them would most likely have broken ranks at this stage. Most repeat murderers, as many of you know, tend to escalate their crimes – seeking the rush of the kill more frequently. But that’s if they’ve taken their victim with the sole intent of ending their lives. If this man is abducting women and holding them captive for a period, their deaths might not be the end goal. He might want something else from them – sexual gratification, torture, or even just their company. The deaths might come about because they’ve served their purpose or refuse to comply.’
Linda stood, her tall, thin frame striding over to the display wall. She held out her hand for Michael’s marker.
‘May I?’ she asked Tom, indicating the board.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Right, then. The crime scene you’ve found shows signs of careful planning and organisation. That would indicate the killer is older and has a high IQ. He’s most likely burying them in that same spot for a reason. Maybe he works there and can visit their graves regularly?’
Linda turned to the board and wrote:
Single Caucasian male
Older 35+?
Strong/fit
Glendalough resonates
‘We have a theory as to why he’s chosen that location,’ the inspector said, and explained the idea that had struck him when he’d stood at the lake with Laura.
‘Yes, the religious symbolism of Glendalough could be relevant,’ the psychologist agreed. ‘His way of making peace with the victims and himself. The proximity of the actual cemetery might mean something. Also, there’s a round tower in the monastic settlement. That has fairytale connotations – sleeping princesses, that sort of thing. The fact that he gave them all gifts, the bracelets that you mentioned, would imply that he does care for his victims, in his own warped way. Perhaps they remind him of somebody and that time of the year is the key.’
This time she wrote:
Lost a loved one in spring? – Abandoned? Divorced? Murdered? Accident?
‘It’s unlikely that he managed to forcibly abduct all of these women without anybody spotting some sort of commotion,’ she resumed. ‘That would lead me to believe he either spied on his victims for a period to establish their routines and then snatched them when they were alone, or he was able to entice them to go along with him. You should speak to the woman you think was an attempted abduction earlier this year and see if her being outside that pub on her own late at night was a regular occurrence. Did she go there every Friday and usually walk home alone, that kind of thing?
‘He’s probably handsome, or has a harmless appearance. He might wear glasses. Women tend to find men wearing spectacles less threatening. Or perhaps he’s a professional of some kind – a doctor maybe, somebody who can get his hands on a uniform that women find reassuring.’
Linda hesitated, her writing hand poised mid-air.
‘If Fiona Holland was taken to compensate for him missing out on that intended sixth victim last spring, then he has deviated from his usual routine. Acting on opportunity as opposed to planning – I would consider that escalation. However, he’s not grabbing women off the street willy-nilly, so he’s still controlled and we have to assume he functions quite normally – even when he has his victim in situ.’
‘Does he live in the region he’s abducting them from?’ Tom asked. ‘Or closer to Glendalough where he buries them?’
Linda frowned.
‘Hmm. Now there’s a question. It’s more likely that the Munster region is his hunting ground and he buries them close to where he lives so he can keep an eye on them, visit them, that sort of thing. So you’re looking at Dublin and its surrounding counties for his home – Wicklow, Kildare. I’d pay special attention to Meath, where Fiona lived. It would fit with the escalation theory that he would take somebody from near his home, possibly somebody he’s known for a long time. He might be a man who travels a lot and especially to the south – a sales rep, something like that. Most serial killers are occupationally mobile. It’s entirely in keeping with the facts that he would kidnap and kill in one place and dispose of his victims in another.’
She turned and wrote: Geographically mobile.
‘Why does he do it?’ This was Ray. He’d crossed over to where Tom was sitting and reclaimed his half-empty bottle of water, throwing his boss a dirty look.
‘I can give you all the clichés, and unfortunately they’re usually true. It’s most likely, unless we have an extremely rare, utter psychopath on our hands, that the killer comes from an abusive background and that he was either abandoned young by a parent, or later by his wife. But none of that will be apparent in his day-to-day behaviour. What you should also be on the alert for is a groupie. Somebody who wants to be involved with the case.’
As she was writing this, she continued to speak over her shoulder.
‘You should keep an eye, too, for a direct link to one of the victims – most likely the first or second. It’s highly probable that he was consumed with the desire to kill one specific woman and he’s been trying to recreate that feeling ever since. I say first or second because he may have killed a stranger first so he could be sure he was capable of doing it.’
Tom had been listening so intently he’d completely forgotten that he’d been sweating prior to Linda standing up. In fact, his body temperature seemed to have plummeted. It didn’t help that the psychologist was describing the most horrific things in such a polite, matter-of-fact way.
‘At the scene,’ he said, wanting to squeeze every last drop of valuable knowledge from her, ‘Emmet said that the body we think is Una Dolan appeared to have been dug up and reburied, shallow enough that she was easily found by the dog. The other bodies were much deeper. What motive could the killer have had for digging her up?’
Several officers in the room turned a distinct shade of green – including Ray, despite being already aware of the grisly fact.
‘Do you remember, Tom, a couple of years ago we got into a conversation about that book your wife loves – Wuthering Heights?’
The inspector had to scan his memories. Jesus, Linda McCarn forgot nothing. He had it now. A cosy sitting room in a convent in Limerick, the psychologist picking up the discarded favoured book of one of the nuns central to a case at the time.
‘I do,’ he confirmed for Linda.
‘And do you recall, we talked about that horrific but beautifully poignant scene when Heathcliff digs up Cathy because he needs to see and hold her one last time?’
‘That’s disgusting!’ Ray exclaimed.
Linda shrugged.
‘There is one other explanation, if it indeed was her killer who dug her up.’
‘Which is?’ Tom prompted.
‘He wanted her and the others to be found. He’s tired of doing this without you knowing. He’s either inviting you onto his dance floor or …’
‘What, Linda?’
‘Or he wants to be stopped.’