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in Blessington, it will take him no time to get over.’
    ‘How much of an area are you going to cordon off? It’s a bitch of a place.’
    ‘As much as I have to – I’m not about to lose a step in this investigation and not be able to recover it.’
    ‘I’ll make a call to Shelley Canter,’ Frank offered. ‘She’s assigned as the family liaison officer.’
    ‘Good – just tell her to keep the family calm and informed. As of now, this could turn out to be nothing. There is no point in upsetting them unnecessarily.’
    ‘She knows that, and she also knows what the parents will be thinking no matter how this ends up.’
    ‘Just once we’re all working from the same sheet, Gunning.’
    O’Connor hung up and made his next call – to Robert Hanley. Hanley would be heading up the technical team and he had a reputation, even by techie standards, of having something of a Midas touch.
    ‘Hanley?’
    ‘Good morning, Detective Inspector.’
    ‘Are you on your way?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Me, too. First priority will be cordoning off the area. I’ll have a better idea of just how much when I’ve seen it, but it could be large.’
    ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
    ‘You know the drill, Hanley, if it does turn out to be the missing girl up there, I may be the one in charge, but as far as protection of the crime scene goes, you are God Almighty.’
    ‘Rest assured, Inspector. I won’t even let Nolan pass if it risks compromising things.’
    ‘Right, let’s get digging so.’
    Turning up the mountain road, O’Connor’s Avensis negotiated the steep climb on the narrow winding road that was barely able to takeone vehicle. He took all the bends at speed. O’Connor knew this area like he knew its surrounding suburbs and as he reached the point on the road where the city was behind him, he got that familiar sense of being right smack in the middle of nowhere.
    ≈
    Once the decision on the size of the area to be cordoned off had been made, a slow and methodical extraction of the ground began. There was no guarantee they would find Caroline’s body, but based on the knowledge of her disappearance, the proximity of the location to the centre of the city and the remoteness of the site where the recently dug soil had been found, there were enough things telling O’Connor that they were dealing with either a secondary or primary crime scene. Search teams were on hand to sweep the area, together with the community police and the guys from Tallaght, who often worked side by side with the Rathfarnham squad. Although Gunning was someone O’Connor neither liked nor had much time for, right now he was the man with most of the information, and O’Connor wasted no time getting as much as possible out of him.
    ‘Okay, Frank, fill me in. The dig will be slow, so we’ll be here for a while.’
    ‘Missing Persons were notified two days ago. Right now, they are just monitoring the information as we feed it to them.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘We’ve pulled the girl’s PC and mobile phone. She wasn’t allowed take her phone to school, so both it and her laptop were still at home. The IT guys are combing through them now. We have a number of contact points/sites being examined, but it’s too early to tell if they’ll be of any use. Buccal swabs have been taken from all members of the close family, along with the girl’s toothbrush and hairbrush, both bagged and tagged. If it is Caroline down there and the body isn’tclearly recognisable, we can check the DNA comparisons with what we have already.’
    ‘What about the house-to-house?’
    ‘It’s been intensive around the area she lived in – her school, local swimming pool and the last sighting. We have CCTV footage from some of the local businesses, quite a lot down from where she waved goodbye to her friend. Checkpoints monitoring movements around the area have been constant since she was first reported missing. Teachers, friends and family members have all been interviewed. The