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.

Mr. Daly said flatly, “She remembers because, after Rosie ran off, it was a long time before I let Nora out gallivanting again. We’d lost one by being too lax. I wasn’t going to risk the other.”

“Fair enough,” I said, nodding away like that was perfectly sane. “And none of you remembers seeing any of those items after Thursday afternoon?”

Head-shakes all round. If Rosie hadn’t been packed by Thursday afternoon, she had been cutting it a little close to find a chance of hiding that suitcase herself, specially given Daddy’s Doberman tendencies. The odds were starting to shade, ever so slightly, towards someone else doing the hiding.

I asked, “Had you noticed anyone hanging around her, giving her hassle? Anyone who worried you?”

Mr. Daly’s eye said, What, apart from you? but he managed not to share. He said evenly, “If I’d noticed anyone bothering her, I’d have sorted it out.”

“Any arguments, problems with anyone?”

“Not that she told us about. You’d probably know about that kind of thing better than we would. We all know how much girls tell their parents, at that age.”

I said, “One last thing.” I fished in my jacket, pulled out a bunch of envelopes just big enough to hold a snapshot, and handed out three of them. “Do any of you recognize this woman?”