Evelyn’s statement swore the marriage was wonderful, childhood sweethearts living their happy-ever-after; the paper is gooey with how he still brought her red roses and told her every day that she was the love of his life. It sounds like bollix to me, but the neighbours didn’t contradict her – no one had ever heard them arguing, nothing like that. The financial records came up clean: Desmond and Evelyn weren’t rich, but they weren’t broke, either. Their parents had left enough, between them, to pay off most of the Murrays’ mortgage and Desmond’s taxi licence – and those went for anything up to a hundred grand, back then. There were no other debts; the current account had no suspiciously large deposits and no weird withdrawals to say someone had been buying coke or hitting the betting shops. Desmond had no history of mental illness. He had no criminal record – a few speeding tickets, few parking tickets, what you’d expect from a taxi man. His friends said he was a happy guy, outgoing, worked hard and liked his work, had no enemies and wasn’t the type to make any. Their version of the marriage didn’t match Evelyn’s – according to them, Evelyn basically kept Des prisoner, never wanted to do anything but cried for days if he did anything without her, freaked out if he didn’t answer his mobile fast enough – but none of them had ever heard Des say anything about leaving her, although most of them figured he was just sticking around for the kid and would be out of there the day she left home. This case isn’t sounding like a full box’s worth of mystery to me. I spot Gary’s signature, neater and younger-looking than the one I’m used to, at the bottom of a sheet.

‘Statement from Aislinn,’ Steve says. ‘Look.’

It’s signed in careful, round kid-writing. The day Desmond went missing, he and Aislinn didn’t talk much on the drive home from school; she had a homework assignment that she didn’t understand and she was worried about getting in trouble if she couldn’t do it, so she was mainly thinking about that. She didn’t notice anything odd about her da, but it sounded like she wouldn’t have anyway. The only thing that stood out to her was his goodbye, when he pulled up in front of their gate and she opened the car door to get out. He told her he loved her and to be a good girl, same as always; but then he pulled her over to him, gave her a hug – not part of their routine – and told her to look after her mammy. He watched her to the house and he was still there, waving, when she closed the door.

‘There’s your answer right there,’ Steve says. ‘The guy did a runner.’