‘She must have made quite an impression on you.’
‘They all stay with you in one way or another. If I’ve any regrets about Sandra Connolly, it’s that I never managed to get her to come out of her shell. I can’t say I ever saw the girl smile.’
‘And Alice Thompson?’
‘Different again. As I said, she was more confident and outgoing, but the two of them were as thick as thieves.’
‘So, they were close from the beginning?’
‘Sandra depended on Alice. She was a kind of shield for her.’
‘I’m not getting you.’
‘Alice became the mouthpiece for the two of them. At times, Sandra was more like her shadow than a separate person.’
‘Anything else odd strike you, Mr Gammon?’
Another silence. Lynch waited.
‘There was something else …’ Gammon sounded hesitant.
‘Tell me anything that comes to mind, no matter how irrelevant you think it is.’
‘After the girls left the Sacred Heart, they faced the world alone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They were both only children, and when the parents left Leach, one because of work commitments, the other for personal reasons, the girls stayed on in the village alone.’
‘What were the parents like?’
‘It’s a small place, Detective, and, I’ll be honest with you, none of them mixed well. They were odd folk, keeping themselves to themselves. The two men were okay, both quiet individuals, but there was something unsavoury about the mothers, each cold in the extreme.’
‘Were there any issues with social services, Mr Gammon?’
‘None that I know of.’
‘That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a problem.’
‘It was a long time ago, Detective. In the mid to late nineties, people tended to leave well enough alone. They still do, I suppose. Anyhow, it’s all water under the bridge now, but I often thought it was the reason the girls struck up such a strong friendship, their common bond the oddity of their respective families.’
‘I appreciate your frankness.’
‘Have you spoken to Barry Lyons?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘You’ll have your work cut out for you.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Barry didn’t take his retirement well. Teaching was his life. Afterwards, he pulled back, became withdrawn. He goes for weeks now without seeing anyone.’
‘A recluse?’
‘He has become a man of the woods, and once the woods have you, they say, they take your soul.’
Hanging up, Lynch thought again about his conversation with Kate. With Barry Lyons being a recluse, the mountain might have to go to Muhammad – and useful to have a psychologist tag along. He preferred working alone, but if he needed someone, he had no problem using them. He dialled Kate’s number.
‘Kate, something’s come up.’
‘What?’
‘It turns out that Sandra Regan and Alice Thompson were friends practically since birth. They’re both from Leach in Wicklow. I’ve spoken to their ex-secondary school principal, a James Gammon, and he’s told me enough to make me curious.’
‘Like what?’
‘There was a stark contrast between the two girls, one an introvert, the other much more confident, Sandra being the introvert. The ex-principal’s description of both sets of parents was strange, especially what he said about the mothers. I want to find out more.’
‘What can I do to help?’
‘I need to pay a visit to Leach. It turns out the principal from the girls’ national school is now something of a recluse, a guy called Barry Lyons. I thought it would be good if we spoke to him together. There’s no way of contacting him other than turning up on his doorstep.’
‘When do you plan on going?’
‘As soon as you can, but I really think we should go early in the morning. I did a stint in a small town in the Midlands a number of years back, and I know how these tight-knit communities operate. They’re slow to trust outsiders, even those in uniform. They only ever tell you the information in bits, a throwaway comment here, an observation there. As I said, James Gammon thought there was something odd about both sets of parents. If he’s saying that, then it’s probably true.’
‘Is it only Barry Lyons you want to interview?’
‘We’ll start off with him, but we’ll need to talk to others too. The local police officer stationed in Leach in the nineties passed away a couple of years back, but the postmistress is still alive, as is the postman. Like the school principals, they’re retired, but in the absence of the local police officer, they’ll know more than anyone else about the goings-on back then. A community can talk for ever about what it wants to say but when it comes to its secrets … well, we’ll need to be on our toes.’
‘Okay. Pick me up at half nine.’
‘Right – we’ll start with the recluse. If he’s a no-show, we can track the others down.’
Hanging up, he walked over to the police swipe board, added the parental links of Alice Thompson and Sandra Regan, and put a circle around the village of Leach. There was a story there, he thought, nothing surer.
SANDRA