The jeep cut through the silent village like a roaring storm trooper pushing through pristine snowy silence. She dialled the local Garda station only to hear the call being redirected to the larger town three villages over. Barbara was probably right. It would take the squad car an age to get here. Liv hung up before they answered – what was the point in wasting everyone’s time, especially if it was only kids? This was Ballycove after all; it wouldn’t be much more than a couple of fourteen-year-olds. Liv was used to dealing with far scarier night owls in A&E on any given Saturday night.

When she pulled up outside Barbara’s door, it hardly looked like CSI Ballycove. If anything, the road and all of the gardens looked as peaceful as the graveyard just a short distance away. She decided to investigate before going inside to check on Barbara and she set off around the perimeter of the house, letting herself in through a side gate that probably should have been properly locked to begin with. She stuffed her phone inside her jacket. The torch, apart from making her feel like Nancy Drew, picked out the uneven path easily. The garden, which had probably once been quite productive (Eddie told her his dad had spent many hours here, growing vegetables and pottering about), was faded now. It was a long stretch of overgrown grass and weeds on either side of the path, uneven where drills had once been dug out, but flattened out roughly with each passing season of neglect.

At the end, a shed, made of scrap pieces of wood and corrugated sheeting, hunkered back against the wall. The door, swinging open in the breeze made Liv jump but she managed to stifle down a small surprised squeal. There was no-one there. It seemed the culprit was just an old door that someone had forgotten to close. She checked inside, flashing her torch around the little shed in case there was a stray cat or dog huddled safely from the falling snow. The last thing she wanted to do was lock some poor sheltering animal up for perhaps days or weeks on end. She had a feeling that no-one came near here from one end of the week to the next, not Barbara and certainly not Eddie.