‘Not only can we not establish where he went when he left here, Inspector, but we can’t unearth his past either. I’ve put a lot of effort into this over the last few days. It’s been playing on my conscience, the thought that he could have taken Mary Ellen and had her in that house while I was there. We didn’t always see eye to eye but I wouldn’t have wanted to see her harmed. Nobody deserves that.’

‘No,’ the inspector said, wishing he’d hurry up.

‘Anyhow, Cormac Ryan said he moved to the area to get away from a stressful job. He told the locals that he’d worked for the Bank of Ireland. This was in 2008, in the middle of the financial meltdown. It was a credible story. But the bank has no record of a Cormac Ryan working for them at that time. They’ve a man with that name now – but he’s a completely different guy, in his early twenties. So I went down the taxi route. There, I was able to trace him back a couple of years. Well, from the point he got his licence, anyway.’

‘When was that?’ Tom asked. He’d set his team the task of tracking down Cormac Ryan’s taxi number but with all the Carney and Healy palaver, they hadn’t got around to it.

‘Two thousand five. Registered in Waterford. So that was actually his job even before he moved to the area. Anyhow, that’s where it gets sticky. I can’t find anything on him prior to 2005. It’s like Cormac Ryan didn’t exist. Then, when he leaves here, he disappears off the map. Two thousand eight is too far back to check for passenger logs on ferries or planes, but maybe he did go to Britain.’

Tom thanked Doyle and put the phone down. On the page in front of him, he’d written ‘2005, Waterford’.

Willie Callaghan had arrived and was standing in the doorway scanning the incident room and looking for the inspector.

‘Willie!’ he called and his driver approached, sitting in the chair Ray had recently vacated.

‘What do you need when applying to be a taxi driver?’ Tom asked.

Willie stroked his moustache.

‘When you’re applying to sit the SPSV test, that’s the one to get a taxi licence, you need to give them your contact details, a credit card, your public service number and your driving licence.’

‘Got any pals down in the test centre in Waterford?’

Willie had pals everywhere.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

‘Who are we looking up?’

‘Cormac Ryan. Got his licence in 2005.’

Willie dialled and Tom listened as he made small talk with his contact.