‘Anyhow, there are a lot of people who work in the park, over one hundred and fifty in total and that’s not including the volunteers. You’ve rangers, general operatives, the Visitor Centre staff, workers from the hotel at the entrance … the list goes on. We can’t ask people for alibis for any date in particular because we don’t know what nights the bodies were buried. The only dates we have for certain are the kidnap dates, so we’re going with Fiona Holland’s, last week. Of the people we’ve spoken to in the last twenty-four hours, over a quarter have no alibi for when Fiona went missing. They were either working on their own in various sections of the park or were alone at home.

‘We haven’t spoken to those in the hotel yet, which amounts to seventy-odd of that one hundred and fifty I mentioned, but we are going to be asking them to go over their guest register for anybody who checked in each year around spring/summer since ’06.

‘One more thing. We looked into those bracelets found with the victims. They’re all sterling silver and part of a range that’s readily available in Debenhams nationwide. They sell thousands every year, both here and in Britain. The chances of us tracking down the buyer are slim to none.’

‘More good news,’ Tom said. ‘What about the young woman we think he tried to abduct in Clare earlier in the year, the daughter of the guard?’

‘I spoke to her father,’ Ian said. ‘There’s no new information on the car she said pulled up beside her – he looked into that himself. But, after a little coaxing, he admitted that she drinks in that pub regularly and he’s always on at her for making her own way home. He didn’t say anything about her being a handful, nowt like that, mind, but I got the impression he’s not happy with her lifestyle.’

The inspector winced. ‘A handful.’ And Ian meant nothing by it.

He would delegate tasks for today and then he would seek out Chief Kennedy to have a word about the original garda responses to the missing women reports.

Kennedy had retained most of the furniture in Sean McGuinness’ old office but had added a flat-screen TV, which he kept tuned to the national broadcaster’s twenty-four-hour news channel. McGuinness would have thought that a ridiculous expense. The new chief had also installed a special orthopaedic chair that had cost another small fortune. Kennedy insisted he had back problems, which, in his less charitable moments, Tom imagined came from bowing to lick the boots of his superiors.

‘Inspector, come in. Good to see you.’

Kennedy did indeed seem pleased to see him and again Tom felt ashamed for thinking such mean-spirited thoughts about the man.