‘I didn’t take her. I understand why you think I did, I went after a girl last April. I’d been watching her for a while. But I made a mistake. I forgot to put the roof plate on the car and when I pulled up beside her and asked her to get in, she started screaming. Another car came up behind me, so I drove off. It was a sign. I had to stop.’

Tom shook his head in disbelief.

‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘You were foiled in April and all of a sudden you have your urges under complete control? You dug up Una so we’d find her and stop you? Do you really expect us to buy that? You wiped clean every trace of your crime in the cellar in your West Cork house. Why do that if you wanted to be stopped? And now you claim it’s just a coincidence that Fiona Holland, who lives a couple of miles away, went missing in exactly the same circumstances as your previous victims, just a few months later? A girl who fits the very profile you were targeting – young, a little reckless, leaves her child at home with her parents – in fact, everything that angered you. That was just a strange alignment of the fates? Absolutely amazing.’

Lane was getting agitated, his body starting to tremble, the cuffs clinking against the rails.

‘I’m telling the truth,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘When the police came to the house I was staying in in Cork, it scared the hell out of me. I wanted to keep going, back then. I had to kill Mary Ellen a few days after I took her and it didn’t give me the same satisfaction. I knew I couldn’t risk taking a woman again in a location where I lived.’

‘This is a crock of shit,’ Michael snapped. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I’m telling the truth, I didn’t take Fiona. I wouldn’t be that stupid.’ Charlie lifted his head off the pillow and raised his voice.

‘You wouldn’t be that stupid?’ Michael snarled back. ‘You attacked a garda detective and tried to kill her. You shot me!’

The door to the room flew open and a doctor strode in, followed at a pace by two nurses.

‘Okay. That’s enough, detectives. My patient’s blood pressure is rising to dangerous levels. You need to leave.’

‘His blood pressure is rising?’ Tom retaliated. ‘I’m about to blow a gasket. Where is she, Charlie? Where’s Fiona?’

‘Inspector, if you don’t leave now, I am going to have hospital security come and remove you and your detective!’

Tom stood up. He kicked his chair back as he did.

‘We’ll leave,’ he barked. ‘I’m going to ask you one more time, Charlie. What have you done with that girl?’

‘Inspector!’