Joy Turkington, missing for almost thirteen years, since she was fourteen. She had left her parents’ Armagh home one evening after a heated argument. Her parents had wanted her to remain in school, but she wanted to leave and get a job. She was last seen talking with a man in a pub in the town centre. She was buried in the graveyard at St. Mark’s Parish Church. The article had a photograph of her parents in the funeral procession, walking behind her coffin as if to their own graves.

Noreen Weaver, born in the Lisburn Road Workhouse in Belfast. A known thief and a prostitute, already a record of arrests and convictions for minor offences before she disappeared at the age of fifteen. Not being from respectable stock, no one much cared about her absence from the street corners she had frequented. Fifteen years she’d been missing before an aunt identified her corpse in the mortuary at the Royal Victoria Hospital. The aunt refused to take the body, and Noreen was given a pauper’s funeral.

A public inquiry was called by the Stormont government. Many people testified, but Mary Jackson did not, as a doctor had deemed her unfit. Instead, the inquiry relied on transcripts of interviews between her and the investigating police officers, along with statements from the medical professionals who had cared for her.

Sara continued to read, the story clarifying.

As far as the police could ascertain, the two women and the child had been living in the dug-out cellar of the farmhouse. The women had been in reasonable health, given the circumstances. Mary was small for her age, indicating a lack of good-quality nutrition. There were medicines in the home, intended for the farm’s livestock, but probably used for the women. Their dental health was poor; they had been given toothbrushes and toothpaste, but a lack of proper care meant cavities and decay had gone untreated.

Investigators speculated that the women and the girl had been used as house slaves, cleaning, tidying and cooking for the men. Post-mortem examinations indicated that both adult women had given birth to at least one child, possibly more, and it was assumed they had also been used for sexual gratification. Whether they were shared among the men or each took a wife, of sorts, was unclear.

Sara looked to the door across the kitchen, the one that led to the basement. She remembered the feeling of walking on graves and could not suppress a shiver. It took some effort to read on.