‘But they’re so shiny,’ Tom said, drily. ‘Okay, boys and girls, let’s call this meeting to order. I imagine we all want to get back out into the field quickly, if just so we can be a few degrees cooler. Let’s get updates on how informing the families went first. We also have the final reports from pathology and crime scene. Then we’ve the interviews with staff in Glendalough. What else?’

‘The woman who says she was almost abducted in April of this year,’ Ian said. ‘The one that got away.’

‘That’s it. Right, Ray, you lead off. Bring everyone up to speed on the interviews with the Holland, O’Hara and Dolan families.’

Tom propped himself against a window as his deputy ran through his update. How long could this heatwave last? It had to break at some stage.

‘There are marked similarities in the circumstances of the Una Dolan and Fiona Holland cases,’ Ray said, arriving at the final part of his report. ‘A single young woman, making her way home from a nightclub alone, not seen again – though she went missing at night and Fiona vanished in broad daylight. The family doesn’t know if Una was seeing anybody at the time; apparently her and the folks were going through a bit of a rough patch. They thought she needed to grow up and move out, so it was hardly surprising she didn’t tell them everything. Her friends claim there was nobody special but they also say that Una was the secretive type. The consensus is that she was a man’s woman, not a girl’s girl, if that makes sense.

‘Anyhow, they did say she was chasing some chap the night of her disappearance but he got off with another in their circle, so Una stormed off in a huff. The girl he went with can’t even remember his name – she said she was with him the once and never again. The guy moved on. He was only doing casual work in the town.’

‘Where was Pauline O’Hara last seen?’ Laura asked.

‘She was shopping in Waterford City the day she went missing,’ Ray responded. ‘She was last seen waiting for her bus home that evening with a few Superquinn shopping bags.’

‘Thanks, Ray,’ Tom said. ‘Laura and Michael?’

Laura gave the room the rundown on Mary Ellen Lehane and Treasa Lee.

‘Treasa is the oldest victim, that we know of,’ she concluded. ‘She was thirty-three and in a relationship. According to her family, the boyfriend was serious but she didn’t see it like that. She was a beauty, as you can see from her picture, and she was popular. The guards in Cobh weren’t quite as blunt as the sergeant who looked into Mary Ellen’s disappearance, but they did assume at the outset that Treasa was off partying and would eventually turn up with the mother of all hangovers.