Nora stayed silent as her remaining daughter spoke, but Laura could see her body tense.

‘We don’t know,’ the detective answered, honestly. ‘They’re examining all the bodies we found. We think he may have kept her for a while and we believe she was … that he strangled his victims.’

‘I’ll be going up to see her.’ Nora broke the uncomfortable silence that followed.

The two detectives exchanged a glance. Nora caught it. Breathing heavily, she reached across Elizabeth and took a picture from the dresser. It was of a child, a smiling little girl, maybe seven years old. It had been taken on a summer’s day in a field not unlike the one outside. White vest and shorts over tanned arms and skinny, grazed legs, a smile from ear to ear under a shock of dark curls that looked too big for her tiny body. She stood in front of an apple tree with a swing hanging from its branches and you could tell she’d just leapt from its seat to pose. So full of life.

‘That’s Mary Ellen,’ her mother said. ‘That’s my baby. Whatever you saw up in Dublin, whatever he left of her, this is how she’ll always be to me. Lord, she hated school because it kept her indoors. All she needed to make her day was the sun shining. She would be out there making daisy chains and chasing bees, eating jam sandwiches. She was more tomboyish than her brother but pretty enough to charm the wings off a butterfly.

‘You know, she slept in my arms every night until she was three. When I reported her missing, your lot said she was an adult and was allowed off to do her own thing. I told them she’d been taken. I knew she had. If the man who took her didn’t kill her straight away then maybe she could have been saved, if anybody had taken me seriously. You wouldn’t help me find my baby, but you will allow me to see her. I don’t care if it’s only her bones. I’ll hold her one more time.’

Great big tears spilled down the woman’s cheeks, her face crumpling in despair.

‘We’ll see what can be arranged,’ Laura said, gently. ‘But it might be better, Mrs Lehane, if that’s the image you keep of Mary Ellen in your head.’ She pointed at the picture. ‘If you remember her like that, not as a body that’s been taken from the ground.’

Silence descended again, bar the sniffs of the distraught mother. Nora had no more words.

‘You wanted water,’ Elizabeth said, standing abruptly. ‘Come out to the kitchen with me and I’ll get you a glass. Mammy, I’m going to open the back door and let a bit of air in. It’s stifling in here.’