‘We’ll look at the staff,’ Tom said, patiently. ‘But this is a public park. There’s no entrance fee, no teams of security guards patrolling at night. The priority is to establish the victims’ identities and then trawl through the details of their lives to see if anything connects them.’

‘Hmm,’ was Kennedy’s reply, dissatisfaction coming off him in waves. The inspector wasn’t being reassuring enough. The new chief superintendent wanted his lead man to be confident to the point of arrogance and to promise a speedy result. He didn’t mind hearing Tom bullshit if it sounded convincing and could be then parsed and delivered to the press in comforting sound bites.

As the night wore on, the thorny issue of resources arose. The chief was in the middle of outlining what he thought he could get, versus what Tom needed, when Emmet McDonagh approached. Kennedy gave him the briefest of nods and left. The two department heads didn’t see eye to eye and Emmet was winning in the war of cool looks and snarky asides. Tom should have felt sorry for his boss; Emmet was a formidable foe. But Kennedy’s knack for rubbing people up the wrong way meant he must have done or said something to the Tech Bureau chief to warrant such treatment.

‘We’ve done all we can here,’ Emmet said, his wide shoulders sagging. ‘The bodies have all been removed from the ground and will be transferred to Moya’s lab shortly. She’s flying over a couple of colleagues from London to assist. We need to date them. None of the cadavers are fully decomposed, so we reckon they go back a few years, not decades.’

It was to Emmet that Tom voiced the concern that was plaguing him.

‘Where’s Fiona Holland? She’s not one of those bodies, but has he struck again? Has she been taken by a serial killer?’

Emmet sighed. He wasn’t the most tactile person, but he patted the inspector’s back in solidarity as the two men stared in the direction of the clearing where the five bodies lay.

‘I don’t know, chara. Maybe she’s run off with a fella. Maybe she’s done herself in. Who knows …?’

They left the rest unsaid.

‘You need to go home,’ Emmet insisted. ‘Get some rest.’

Tom glanced at his watch. It was nearing midnight. To give Kennedy his due, he’d stayed there all day, refusing to deal with the massive media presence outside the car park until they had a handle on the number of bodies and could make an informed statement.

Tom didn’t want to leave. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. How could he when there was the possibility they were working against the clock to save Fiona Holland’s life? His team would work alongside him without stop, if he asked them to.