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‘Where did he keep her for the weekend?’

‘God only knows. Probably somewhere in Galway. Hopefully Detective Sergeant Mooney gets a confession out of him.’

McKeown was ace at CCTV, and he soon called to Kirby again. Kirby leaned over his shoulder to look at the toll footage:Wilson’s car heading west at 19.00 hours on the same Friday. Then returning to Ragmullin late on Sunday, 22.05 hours, before heading back west at the toll before midnight.

‘The bastard,’ Kirby said. ‘Speeding too. Keep digging.’

‘I’ve ANPR on his car as well. He’s not going to talk his way out of this one.’

‘It’s obvious now that Edie Butler was the first to be murdered then he went back to Galway. I think his intended target was Imelda, but he found Assumpta. He was some fucker.’

‘What did Edie do that got her killed?’ McKeown asked.

‘She had to have been in the laundry the day the little girl was murdered. That made her a target.’ Kirby thought about it and added, ‘I wonder why Ann married him. According to Mooney, she was afraid of her husband. She must have known what he was like and what he’d done. He had abused her, after all. She was one of the girls trafficked, for want of a better word, to Knockraw, according to Assumpta’s notes.’

Garda Martina Brennan turned from the incident board. ‘He got inside her head. Made her feel it was all her fault and he was her saviour. She was like the abused partner in domestic violence cases, controlled and too frightened to leave. He must have given her a way out of the laundry. It has to be that. He offered her a different life and she snatched it with both hands. Little did she know that living with the devil for the rest of her life doomed her to a worse fate.’

‘You don’t know all that as fact,’ McKeown countered. ‘It’s hogwash from your course. Ann may have had a perfectly good life with him.’

Kirby spoke up before the two started a sparring match. ‘We may never know what went on between the two of them.’

‘Is his car being examined?’ Martina asked.

‘Yes, forensics have it in Galway, and they’ll also examine his house and his office at the radio studio where he worked. Theyhave Edie’s DNA profile, which I’m certain will show up in his car.’

Kirby’s phone rang.

‘Hello, Matt,’ he said, and mouthed ‘Mooney’ to the others. ‘Really? Yes, send it over. You don’t think it belongs to Ann, do you? In his car boot? Okay. We’ll have a look. Thanks. I’ll get back to you straight away.’

His email pinged and he turned to the computer to access the attachments Mooney had sent.

‘Martina, have a look at these snaps. The items were found wrapped in a towel, beneath the jack in the boot of Denis Wilson’s car. Anything familiar?’

She looked back and forth between the images on screen and the photos pinned to the board.

‘I have those photos scanned,’ McKeown piped up. ‘I can run them side by side on the screen.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ Martina said. ‘I’d swear on a stack of bibles that the items are the same.’ She looked up at Kirby. ‘This jewellery belongs to Edie. She wasn’t wearing any when she was found dead, but in all the photos we have of her she wears similar silver stud earrings, a thin silver bracelet and a silver chain with a small cross. All are an exact match for what was found in Wilson’s car boot.’

‘Why would he be so stupid as to leave them there?’ McKeown asked.

‘Men are stupid,’ Martina said. ‘And arrogant.’

‘Not all men,’ he countered.

‘Well, you are,’ she said.

‘Stop it, the pair of you.’ Kirby was tired, he had a headache and he needed a smoke. But most of all he wanted to go home to Amy. She’d texted to say she had something important to tell him. ‘I’ll let Mooney know that he now has physical evidence tying Wilson to at least one murder.’

‘You should talk to Edie’s sons,’ Martina said. ‘They need to know about this development.’

‘I’ll do it in the morning.’

‘You have a wedding in Connemara tomorrow,’ she reminded him.

‘So I have.’ He turned to McKeown. ‘Will you speak with them?’

‘I’ve a ton more CCTV to get through. I want to nail this bastard to every road he drove over the weekend.’