‘I see. So, when you did come up here to search the house, how did he seem? Were you in this room much?’

Doyle cupped his jaw and nodded, worriedly.

‘Yes. I sat at the table. It was in the middle of the room, just over that trapdoor. We talked for a while. He made tea. Jesus … he made tea and we sat here drinking it. This can’t be right. If she’d been down in that cellar, surely I’d have heard her? She would have called out for help, wouldn’t she?’

Ray shook his head.

‘That trapdoor is several inches thick. If he’d tied her up and gagged her, you wouldn’t have heard her through that and the carpet. And that’s if she was conscious. He could have knocked her out, or given her something.’

The other man closed his eyes and groaned.

‘Mary Ellen,’ he whispered, shaking his head. ‘I … I can’t believe it. It can’t be what you say—’ Doyle stood up and rushed to the sink, where he relieved himself of the contents of his stomach.

Ray turned to Laura.

‘Makes a nice change, huh?’ he said.

‘What?’ she asked, distracted.

‘It’s usually me vomiting at a crime scene.’

The atmosphere in the incident room was tense. A copy of the letter that had been addressed to Tom was now projected onto the wall. The original was in the lab being analysed by Emmet’s team.

‘Okay so, first off, I’ve spoken to Ray and Laura,’ the inspector said. His face was bathed in the projector light; the edge of one of the words appeared as though it was scribbled on his cheek.

‘They’re at the former home of the taxi driver who was questioned during the Mary Ellen Lehane disappearance in West Cork. They’ve discovered a cellar under the house, cleared of everything bar a bed frame. Now, we can’t get too excited. Laura reckons the cellar is an old feature of the cottage – built to accommodate rebels during the War of Independence. It might be that this man, Cormac Ryan, has absolutely nothing to do with our case. A satellite forensics team in Cork is examining the scene, but they have their work cut out for them. Mary Ellen went missing four years ago.

‘We’re also working with the local guards down there to establish where Ryan went after he left West Cork. He claimed he was going to live with relatives in England, but our job is to establish if he ended up in any of our counties of interest.’