He looked at the framed photo of his own family. Wife, daughter, granddaughter. They should not occupy the same abyssal plane as these photos. He knew better. He was putting his own photo in the desk drawer when Lynch came into the office, eating a bacon sandwich folded in a greasy napkin and carrying an envelope. He pushed the envelope across Carlin’s desk and tapped it.22

‘There’s the address,’ he said.

Carlin opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper and a monochrome photo of the same young woman, this time holding the baby and leaning back on an old Transit van. He looked at the van’s plate in the photo and at the address scrawled on the paper.

‘It’s still registered to them?’

‘Yep.’

‘At this address?’

‘Yep.’

‘Mortgage?’

Lynch finished chewing and swallowing his sandwich before answering. ‘Rental.’

‘You tried calling them?’

‘No answer.’ Lynch wiped his hands and mouth on the napkin. ‘Maybe they’re out shopping.’

‘What about the landlord?’

‘A few late payments, nothing weird. Said she hasn’t heard a peep from them in months.’

Carlin set down the photo and the paper. ‘What about the camera in the chamber, the laptop, any luck?’

‘Computer forensics is on it.’ Lynch spun a couple of the photos around to face him. ‘Black-and-white film, old school. They’re pretty good. By the way, I looked into the phone records for the shooting box.’

‘And?’

‘There are none. It’s never had a landline. They might have used wireless or something. We’re looking into it. For now, it looks like if there was money, it was right there in the middle of bedlam. Speaking of which, I take it you heard about the passports.’

‘What passports?’

‘At the shooting box.’23

Carlin took off his glasses. ‘What are you talking about? We’ve just got back from the shooting box.’

‘Forensics found them after we left. They didn’t tell you? I thought they would have told you.’

‘Jesus, lad, get to the point.’

‘About fifty Eastern European passports were found taped to the biker under his leathers. Serbian, Latvian, Croatian. You name it.’ Lynch looked at the photos and ran a hand over his expensive haircut. ‘This is big, isn’t it?’

Carlin picked up the photo again.

63

They drove with the baby asleep between them. The rumble of the engine and the road beneath them a meaningless drone, white noise. Orla sat looking out the passenger window at a vast petrochemical plant out on the edge of the sea. She felt drugged and unreal with lack of sleep and adrenaline. It was Liam who finally broke the silence.

‘How do you go to take photos of a church and come home with a case of money?’

‘It was an abbey.’

He looked between her and the road, his face stone. ‘Don’t, Orla. I mean it. We fled our house. Our home.’

‘It’s only a rental.’