‘Now. At least it’s dry in here. Look, there’s nothing for you to see. We’re just searching the house to see if there’s any possibility Mary Ellen was held here. But we’ve found no evidence of that yet.’

‘You’ve found something, though,’ Elizabeth said, in response to her mother’s crestfallen face. ‘We heard about the cars coming down from Cork City. Ye wouldn’t have summoned them for no good reason.’

‘I know the land around here,’ Nora interjected, her eyes fixed on Laura’s. ‘I know this area. All of the houses this way have hidey-holes built into them. The men who blew up the army barracks in Cork in 1920 were from this part of the world and their neighbours took them in when they were on the run. That’s what you found, isn’t it? A place he could have hidden her. I should have realised. I’ve thought about nothing else for the last four years. Lord, why didn’t I think of that?’

Laura sighed.

‘Nora. Elizabeth. I’m determined to find out what happened to Mary Ellen. The team I work with will turn over every stone. The experience you had with –’ she looked around to make sure he wasn’t eavesdropping ‘– Sergeant Doyle, it’s not going to be repeated. As soon as we have anything concrete, we will let you know.’

‘It wasn’t just Doyle,’ Elizabeth said.

‘What?’

‘Laura,’ Ray had come through from the kitchen. ‘Forensics want to talk to us.’

‘Excuse me,’ she said to the two women. ‘Just give us a few minutes.’

Laura followed Ray back into the room he’d come from and looked expectantly at the forensics expert.

‘Have you found something, then?’ she asked.

‘Yes and no.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘We’ve found absolutely nothing to indicate Mary Ellen or anybody else was ever held down in that cellar.’

The two detectives exchanged disappointed looks.

‘But it’s not all bad news,’ the expert continued.

‘How can there be good news following that?’ Ray asked.

‘Well, that’s the point. We should have found something. That cellar was built for a purpose – storage, hiding people, whatever. At some point in its past, a person or people were in that cellar. We should have picked up something – even historical. A hair, some blood, any indication of human DNA. But we didn’t.’

‘It’s been scrubbed,’ Laura said.

‘Either that, or somebody built the thing while wearing full protective body gear and nobody has been in it since. You can come down if you like. Take a look. You won’t be contaminating anything.’

Ray went down the ladder first.

The ground underfoot was solid, the stone walls bare.

Ray turned on the spot, even though he knew there was nothing to see, bar the solitary bed frame in the corner.