‘You can team up with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll take Fiona Holland and Una Dolan’s files. I’ll assign two to Laura and Michael and the last two to Bridget and Brian. That’s the six priority files covered and uniforms can take the other names. The travel distance poses a problem. We’ll get Laura and Michael to do the two Cork cases – Mary Ellen Lehane and Treasa Lee. The others can take Geraldine Lougheed in Tipperary and then go down to Eimear Johnson’s family in Kerry. We’ll organise those interviews as soon as we get the DNA and dental results back and make matches. We’ll be visiting the families informed, then. You and I can go speak to the Hollands later, they’re only up the road.’

Ray opened the office door just as Natasha McCarthy was raising her hand to knock.

‘Have you got five minutes?’ she asked Tom.

‘Sure.’ He beckoned her in and pointed to his deputy’s vacated chair. ‘Thanks for sitting in downstairs. What are your feelings about the case?’

‘Aside from revulsion?’ Natasha shrugged, fiddling with a gold chain that graced her long, elegant neck. ‘I’m not sure, Tom. I don’t know if I’ll be much help to you in this one. Oh, this weather!’

Tom watched amused as she removed her pale pink cardigan and dabbed at her underarms with a Kleenex from the box on his desk.

‘Don’t look at me like that – I bet you’ve changed your shirt twice already today.’

He smiled.

‘Good detective work. So, do you think our killer is a rapist?’

‘Who knows? We know rape and murder often go hand in hand. Especially when strangulation is the cause of the death. The perpetrator will keep his hands on his victim’s throat to control her during the attack, sometimes with the intent to kill but, more often than not, unaware that he’s actually choked her to death. Both types will come to associate the rush of murder with the climax of sexual intercourse and are likely to seek it out again. Linda would tell you that they’re ‘lust’ serial killers. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy – they met that description. But I’m not sure that’s what you have here.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, those who kill for lust tend to do it more frequently than once a year. The Americans think Bundy had over one hundred victims. The only possible anomaly you have is the digging up of the body. Bundy would sometimes have sex with his victims’ corpses. But if your killer did that up in Glendalough, Moya would have picked up something from the most recent cadaver.’

Tom placed his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on his hands.

‘I never thought I’d have to deal with something like this,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘I’ve seen all sorts of depravity in this job – but necrophilia?’