‘Sir?’ Bridget Duffy’s hand shot up. ‘Is the taxi-driver thing his method? We discussed before how all of the women just seemed to disappear – nobody was spotted being pulled into a car screaming or resisting. We talked about him posing as a boyfriend, but what if he didn’t know them at all, or only knew them as a cab driver? It’s the one car that a single woman will get into on her own with a man, without thinking anything of it. And, in a lot of these places, there’d probably only be one or two taxis in operation and the locals would know the drivers.’

The inspector nodded. ‘That’s a good theory, Bridget. If he was taxiing in their areas for any length of time he’d probably be told all sorts about everybody in the town. People talk to cabbies. He could have selected the women on the basis of the gossip about them.’

‘Can we issue any alerts to the public while we’re trying to find this Cormac Ryan?’ Michael asked. ‘I suppose we can’t really issue a decree that women stop getting into taxis.’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘There’s not much we can do until we track him down. Of course, we don’t know if he was legally using a taxi plate or if that was even his real name. How many taxi licences are there in use in the State?’

Bridget keyed the query into Google on her phone, her snub nose scrunched up in concentration.

‘About … twenty-five thousand,’ she said. ‘But a large concentration of that is in Dublin – ten thousand licences are registered in the capital. If you take what’s left, you’d have to imagine at least one third of it, about five thousand, are registered in our counties of interest.’

‘No, we’d have to work with national statistics,’ Tom said. ‘He could have got his licence in Dublin before moving down south. Twenty-five thousand. That’s a phenomenal number. And, as I said, he could be driving somebody else’s taxi or using an alias. But at least it gives us something to go on. We’ll need to examine all the cases again and look for a taxi link.’

He turned to face the image projected on the wall.

‘So – this communication. We’ve no way of knowing if it’s from our man or a crank. We haven’t had a calling card from him prior to this, so we’ve no handwriting to compare it with. And he doesn’t say anything about the murders that would indicate he has knowledge beyond what the general public has been given.’

‘He barely says anything at all,’ Bridget said.

They all stared up at the sloping script.

Three sentences, twelve words in total. And it sent a shiver through the inspector each time he looked at it.

I took Fiona like the others. You won’t find her. Forget her.