Read Online Red Ribbons by Louise Phillips - Free Book Online Page A

friend, Jessica Barry – what’s the story with her?’
    ‘I interviewed her when the initial missing person’s report came in, and she’s been interviewed again today by one of McCann’s team, both times with mother present. So far, she knows nothing other than the details of the last sighting.’
    Nolan pushed his chair back and the castors creaked into motion. ‘This is starting to sound like an investigation where nobody knowsanything. We have to get the information in guys, pull the people, neighbours, the postman, anyone on that CCTV footage, get talking to them all, we need to ask the right people the right questions before the Chinese whispers start taking hold. O’Connor, are you listening?’
    ‘One hundred per cent.’
    ‘What’s the story on known paedophiles?’
    ‘I’m going to handle that line myself.’
    ‘Good. Now, Matthews, pull those blinds down and let’s look at these visuals. O’Connor, you have a captive audience.’
    When the room darkened, everyone knew what to expect. Ordinarily the slide show would start with images and data from the main crime scene. But with no primary crime scene, the first of the images came from the burial site, taken at bird’s-eye-view level, including mapping and markings done by the forensic team. This would create a three-dimensional reproduction of the crime area – in this case, the burial site. This was O’Connor’s starting point.
    ‘Hanley examined a number of ways of gaining access to this area. It’s open terrain and the bad weather has probably eroded any clues that could have led us to the likely entry point the killer used. In the final analysis, Hanley concluded that there was no way to establish with certainty where the perpetrator gained access to the site. This had delayed things considerably, as his team had to use galvanised steps to examine the area, minimising any potential damage to possible entry points.’
    ‘Who was deployed to examine the roads leading to the scene – the main roads and walking tracks?’ Nolan looked to O’Connor, but Donoghue already had it covered.
    ‘Burke, anything of interest turn up there?’
    ‘No CCTV up that far. You reach a point halfway between the turn off for Friarstown and the climb towards the Military Road, and there isn’t even any road lighting. There was a guy hanging out at one of thelay-bys, sleeping rough in a car for a time earlier in the year, but he’s well gone.’
    O’Connor moved on to the next set of images, those taken from the grave area, with the young girl still lying in it. There was a concentrated silence as everyone in the Incident Room maintained what might appear to others as a cold, clinical approach to the evidence, but it was an approach that they had been trained to apply. O’Connor paused for a couple of seconds before continuing, knowing everyone was taking in the image of the schoolgirl dressed in her uniform. In death, her slim arms and tiny legs made her look even younger than she had been.
    O’Connor cleared his throat. ‘I don’t need to remind anyone here that even though the general public will never see these images, they will be imagining them, and I cannot overemphasise how high the stakes are. The abduction and murder of this young girl has understandably generated a huge outcry from the public. It has also brought an enormous interest from abroad, including a very high media presence, which is growing by the day.’ O’Connor looked over at Rohan, and got a nod back. ‘Just to say here, there is absolutely no direct evidence of any sexual assault on the young girl, but I don’t have to tell you, the jury is still out as to what the killer’s real intentions were.’
    When O’Connor had finished, Donoghue, as bookman, had the last word. ‘You don’t have to have a young family to think about how this girl will never get a chance to grow up, or how she might have suffered. We are at the height of this investigation, guys, and everyone in