‘Ah, nothing really. It’s just, I was talking to Mary yesterday. I rang the house and she answered. Sean and June were at the doctor’s. She said her mother is deteriorating more rapidly than expected. They’re sending her for tests.’

‘For what? They know it’s Alzheimer’s.’

‘They’re concerned there might be something more at play. She might also have a growth on the brain. Shit! I have to stop, I can’t breathe.’

She wheezed to a halt as Tom silently contemplated what she’d said. How much more bad luck could their old friends endure? Was that what June had meant when she’d said it was ‘better this way’? Had she been having a lucid moment, referring to a possible tumour?

He sat up with a sudden jolt.

‘Louise, are you running on your own on that beach?’

‘What? Of course I’m on my own. I don’t actually have a lover in Wicklow, Tom. The whole elderly parents thing isn’t a ruse.’

‘Where’s your car?’

‘In the car park. What’s got into you?’

‘Do me a favour. Keep talking to me and walk back to the car. I don’t want you running this early on your own, okay?’

Louise said nothing for a moment.

‘Okay. But Tom, if the papers are anything to go by, I’m not exactly his type.’

‘I know.’

‘This one is really bothering you, isn’t it?’

He exhaled slowly.

‘Of course it is. A serial killer has been operating under our noses all this time and we didn’t clock it. Oh – also, tell Maria not to get into taxis.’

‘Taxis? There’s not much chance of that down here, love. There’s only one taxi man in the whole village and, anyway, everybody knows him.’

‘Yeah. That’s usually how it is.’

‘This letter is not giving us much.’

Tom was perched on the edge of Emmet McDonagh’s desk, chewing on a sesame bagel smothered in cream cheese. His wife’s absence had thrown up one positive – proper order at breakfast time had been restored.

‘The paper is common, the ink from a regular biro,’ the Tech chief continued. ‘There’s nothing to give us a clue to the environment in which the letter was written. One thing we did notice – the handwriting is forced – as in, whoever wrote it doesn’t write like that naturally. He faked his script. You can see it in some of the characters, look.’

Emmet pointed to the ‘v’ in ‘have’ and ‘n’ in ‘Fiona’.

‘He inclined the pen to the left and tried to keep the letters long and fluid, but those two are inclined slightly right and more blocky. His normal penmanship is so ingrained, his hand betrayed him and slipped into it automatically.’

‘Is that it?’ Tom asked, disappointed.