‘You’re going to hear things about my sister,’ she said. ‘They’ll tell you that she was … that she’d go off with anybody. That’s what they said to us when we went down to the station. Laughing and joking while my mother sobbed her heart out. It’s all lies. Mary Ellen was no convent girl. She drank like a trooper and smoked like a chimney. And yes, she had a boyfriend or two. But she wasn’t a slut. She wasn’t some selfish party girl who would have just abandoned Mammy and me. My sister used to bring her boyfriends up here. She didn’t keep dirty little secrets. And she’d got herself into enough dodgy situations to know how to take care of herself.’

‘She was your younger sister?’ Laura asked.

Elizabeth bristled.

‘Yes. By five years. But that doesn’t mean I was soft when it came to her. If I thought she’d just run off, I’d have told Mammy and saved her the worry all this time.’

‘Elizabeth, did your sister ever go with a man who was treating her badly? A chap who might have hit her? Did you get the impression she was hiding anything from you?’

‘I just told you; she didn’t keep secrets from us. And more – Mary Ellen wasn’t stupid. No matter how drunk she was, she never forgot where she lived. She didn’t take drugs or get pregnant. And she wouldn’t come home late at night without being accompanied.

‘She went with a few oddballs, but nobody I can think of who would have laid a hand on her. She wouldn’t have stood for it anyway. But somebody took her, and I think it was someone she knew. You know what the worst thing was at the time she went missing?’

‘What?’

‘Sergeant Doyle. He’s the most senior guard in the area. He came up here last night and it was all I could do not to spit in his face. Back then, he spoke about Mary Ellen like she was something you’d pick off your shoe. He got angry at Mammy because she kept going down and harassing him. I couldn’t go with her every time; I was trying to keep on top of the farm work. But she came back once and wouldn’t speak for days after what he said to her.’

‘What did he say?’ Michael asked.

Mary Ellen’s sister made a choked, angry sound.

‘He said that if – and he stressed “if” – something had happened to Mary Ellen, she had it coming.’

She turned to the two detectives, her face livid.

‘But I know the real reason why he didn’t bother to look into my sister’s disappearance.’

CHAPTER 12