Jake opened the investigation file on his desk and began walking through the questions raised in each of his interviews. He had no doubt that Ava, Liam and Mason were all responsible for what had happened to the girls and their babies, though he kept coming back to the idea that there was another person involved … who?

Pulling out his phone to review the conversation between Liam and Mason in the hospital, Jake found what was niggling at him. The fingernails. After Liam saw Ava’s hand he’d almost collapsed. Seeing that had somehow changed his understanding of what had happened to her, and it was clear from the conversation that he didn’t think Mason Campbell was responsible … which confirmed that there must be a fourth party involved in the current events, and most likely what happened to the girls historically.

If someone had entered the chain of abuse the girls were subjected only to rip out their fingernails, how would they get access? It had to be through O’Brien. But why?

Power. It always came down to power. Was it someone who helped O’Brien smuggle children out of the state? An intermediary who took payments from them?

Looking through notes from his interview with Lilith, a quote jumped off the page at him.

… and a man with a gun brought her back to the house.

Lilith had remembered, as a young child, one of the older girls escaping the home and making it all the way into Dunton. She was returned to Ava O’Brien by her brother, Liam, and another man with a gun. Whoever that was, the woman who had turned the runaway in had first called the police. Which meant there had to be a record of her passing through the station. Jake had never thought to search for it.

He made himself a ridiculously strong coffee and began scrolling through computer records and picking through filing cabinets. He stepped outside regularly to inhale lungfuls of icy air to stay awake.

It took until five a. m. to find the answer. Or rather, not to find it.

There was no report in the past twenty-five years of a young girl being found living in a car park in Dunton, or indeed anywhere in the town. There were a staggeringly large number of complaints and allegations against two or three families—mostly branches of the Murphys—who were generally let off with a warning. But there was absolutely no trace of a lost girl returned to Liam O’Brien or the girls’ home.

Somehow, this was the clue Jake had been searching for. As an afterthought he spent an hour trawling old web pages and listings, looking for the counsellors who had previously established businesses in Dunton and the surrounds. He found three. Evelyn had been truthful—none had remained for longer than a few months.