At first they didn’t worry, any more than my family were worrying across the road—I got the sense Mr. Daly had been a bit snotty about inconsiderate modern youth, but that was all. It was Dublin in the eighties, it was safe as houses; they thought she had headed out early to do something, maybe meet the girls for some mysterious girl reason. Then, around the time Rosie was missing breakfast, the Shaughnessy boys and Barry Hearne had shown up with the note.

It was unclear what the three of them had been doing in Number 16 bright and early on a cold Monday morning, but I would have bet on either hash or porn—there were a couple of precious magazines doing the rounds, smuggled in by someone’s cousin who had been over to England the year before. Either way, that was when all hell had broken loose. The Dalys’ account was a little less vivid than Kevin’s—his eyes slid sideways to catch mine, once or twice, while they were giving us their version—but the general outline was the same.

I nodded at the case. “Where was that kept?”

“The girls’ room,” Mrs. Daly said, into her knuckles. “Rosie had it to hold her spare clothes and her old toys and all—we didn’t have the fitted wardrobes then, sure, no one did—”

“Think back. Do any of you remember the last time you saw it?”

No one did. Nora said, “It could have been months before. She kept it under her bed; I’d only see it when she brought it out to get something.”

“What about the things inside it, can you remember when you last saw Rosie using any of that stuff? Playing those tapes, wearing any of those clothes?”

Silence. Then Nora’s back snapped straight and she said, her voice going up a notch, “The Walkman. I saw that on the Thursday, three days before she went. I used to take it out of her bedside locker, when I got home from school, and listen to her tapes till she got in from work. If she caught me she’d give me a clatter round the ear, but it was worth it—she had the best music . . .”

“What makes you so sure you saw it on the Thursday?”

“That’s when I’d borrow it. Thursdays and Fridays, Rosie used to walk to work and back with Imelda Tierney—do you remember Imelda? She did the sewing with Rosie, down at the factory—so she wouldn’t take the Walkman. The rest of the week, Imelda had a different shift, so Rosie walked in on her own, and she’d bring the Walkman to listen to.”

“So you could’ve seen it on either Thursday or Friday.”

Nora shook her head. “Fridays we used to go to the pictures after school, a gang of us. I went that Friday. I remember because . . .” She flushed, shut up and glanced sideways at her father.