Page 26 of The Trap by Catherine
That’s better. Now try and stay that way, OK? We’ve a while to go yet and I could do without a thumping bloody headache.
Anyway.
Where was I? Oh yes...
One night Amy was channel-surfing and I was readingTeam of Rivalswhen she stopped on a panel show, the kind where they stick two people you vaguely recognize and one person you’ve never seen before behind a desk, and get some guy who’s mostly on the radio to sit at another desk and react as they read the newspapers that you can read yourself the following day or even right now if you go online.
She only paused on it for a minute, but that was long enough for me to catch a woman who the brightly colored band at the bottom of the screen alleged was abestselling crime writersaying that if these missing women cases were the plot of a novel, your editor would make you rewrite it. “It’s unfathomable that he hasn’t been caught,” she said, as if making up crime novels qualifies you to know anything about committing crimes in real life. “Or evenseen. How has he done this that many times without anyone seeing it happen? And in a country this small, with all the technology we have now... I just don’t get how he can still be out there. I mean, it sounds to me like the guards know about as much now as they did when—”
Amy changed the channel, landing on an old episode of some painfully unfunny sitcom, and I went back to actually reading my book.
But I know that silly crime writer is not alone in thinking that my still being out here, free and unidentified, isunfathomable. I’ve caught snippets of similar discussions on phone-in radio, across the opinion pages, in the comments. (I know, I know—never read the comments. It’s hard not to, though, isn’t it?) At a bus stop once, I eavesdropped on two teenage girls who were talking about it. About me. They said there was some crazy theory on Reddit that explained everything, but I didn’t want to search for it on any of my devices. And anyway, itmusthave been crazy, because no one can explain everything except me.
But it’s a valid question.
HowamI getting away with this when so much of the technology that permeates our daily lives has a tracking component, and criminal detection, in terms of both training and tools, is probably as good as it’s ever been?
And still, now, three women later?
Although, as of tonight, I suppose it’s technically four women.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that my getting away with this—thus far—isn’t unique to me. This happened before, three decades ago, and whoever he was, he still hasn’t been caught. They never even found his bodies. You’re probably too young to remember it actually happening, but I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
After all, isn’t it your generation that are so obsessed with true crime that you listen to all those grisly podcasts while you’re putting on your make-up and doing your hair?
What’sthatall about, eh?
Now, I know what you’re thinking: things were different then. And they were. A lot different. Ireland was. Hitchhiking was practically a sanctioned form of public transport. My parents lived near Cork airport, and I remember there being young people stood on the hard shoulder on Airport Road with monstrous bags on their backs, crude cardboard signs in one hand, thumb up on the other. Outside of cities, there was no CCTV—and I’ll tell you this much, even now, there isn’t nearly as much CCTV in cities as you might think. You were mainly reliant, after the fact, on footage from private security cameras, all of which were pointed somewhere specific, like at an ATM. That’s why so many of the last images of the missing women from back then are gray, grainy stills taken from footage captured by cameras mounted on the ceilings of banks, post offices and corner shops, all of it impossibly pixelated on our modern screens.
And, of course, no one had a mobile phone, but we’ll come back to that.
I think it’s important to remind you at this juncture that I’m not trying to get away with it, remember? That was never my goal. Certainly not in the long term. I know that, some day, I will be caught. It’s inevitable.
One morning, I’ll be awoken by an exceptionally heavy knock on my front door and Amy will turn to me and say,Who’s that at this hour?and I’ll kiss her and say,Stay here, I’ll go check, and then I’ll take a mental picture of the way she looks at me because I know it’ll be the last time she ever does it, that she’ll never look at me the same way again, that I might not evenseeher again after that, and I won’t be sad about many things when all this ends but I think there’s a good chance I’ll be sad about that.
One of these times, I’ll perish on the mountain. If I keep going up, that much is true.
All I’m ever trying to do, really, is delay it.
To avoid it beingthistime, if I can.
Luckily, I’ve learned a lot from Amy’s documentaries. Over the years, and especially with the more recent ones, I found myself keeping a mental list of how those guys got caught. I watched and I took note and I learned. Now, I don’t think I can outsmart the authorities completely—and I think, actually, it’s fucking idiotic to think that—but I don’t want to make things easy for them either.
Youdohave CCTV now, obviously. Although, like I said, it’s not as widespread as you might think. And there’s things like automatic license-plate readers and cell-tower data. But we are also helpfully tracking ourselves. Did you know, for example, that unless you’ve turned it off, your Google account tracks your every move? Yes, your Google account. Youremailis following you everywhere you go and remembering where you were.
Did you know that?
Granted, you don’t need to concern yourself with that kinda thing any more.
My point is, if you’re trying to hide, technology is not your friend. Take that guy... Oh, what was his name again? The architect. You’re old enough to remember that one, surely? The trial was... what? 2014? 2015? The guards had text messages between the victim and the man they were coming to believe was her killer, even though initially they’d put her death down to suicide. So they get the cell-tower data from the presumed killer’s phone and it shows them that, during the day, the phone is mostly in Dublin 2 and that, in the evenings, it’s mostly in a South Dublin suburb. They figure this man, then, whoever he is, works in the first place and lives in the other. They also have data that shows that, on one particular day, the phone was in Dublin in the morning and in Galway city by the afternoon, which means its owner probably went through a certain tollbooth during a certain window of time.
Did you know what they did with that information?
Someone sat down at a computer and went through everysinglelicense plate that used the tollbooth, looking for a driver who fitted the bill.
Imagine how long that took, how many man-hours. And it was only going to work if he actually had taken the main road and not some other, roundabout scenic routeandif the owner of the car was the one driving it.
But it did work.
