Missing by Barry Cummins Read Free Book Online Page A

Maynooth,
and they dated for about two years. After Annie and Philip Brady broke up they remained on friendly terms, and Annie kept in regular contact with the Brady family, including Philip’s brother
Hilary and his fiancée. On the day she disappeared she was looking forward to preparing dinner the following evening for Hilary and Rita.
    Hilary Brady was concerned almost immediately about Annie. It was around eight o’clock on the evening of Saturday 27 March 1993, and he and Rita were standing outside Annie’s
apartment. He was ringing the doorbell, but there was no response. This was not like Annie: if she had to cancel the dinner engagement, surely she would have phoned. The apartment was in darkness.
Hilary couldn’t remember Annie’s phone number. He still had her home number in New York from many years before. It would be the afternoon in New York, and John or Nancy would definitely
have Annie’s phone number. ‘Nancy, I’m standing outside Annie’s apartment in Dublin, but I don’t have her phone number,’ he explained. Nancy gave him the number,
and they had a brief chat. Hilary tried the number, but there was no answer. It was now dark. They went for a drink in a nearby pub and tried again later. There was still no answer. The couple
decided there wasn’t much else they could do at that hour of the night, so they headed home.
    The next day Hilary called into Café Java in Leeson Street. What he was told only increased his concern. Annie had not turned up for work. She had been due in the day before, and had not
phoned to say she wouldn’t be in. It was quickly established that the last time anyone had seen her in work was about three o’clock on the Thursday afternoon. Hilary phoned
Annie’s flatmates, who had arrived home from the country. She wasn’t in the apartment. The ingredients she had bought were still in a plastic bag on the kitchen table. Hilary Brady made
another phone call to John and Nancy McCarrick in New York. ‘No-one’s seen Annie. She hasn’t been to work. She’s not at home.’
    Annie McCarrick was a confident woman, chatty and friendly. She made many friends in Ireland from the time she first arrived in 1987. For Annie McCarrick to decide to go for a walk alone in the
foothills of the Dublin-Wicklow Mountains was the act of a confident and resourceful woman. When she arrived back in Ireland in January 1993 her work papers weren’t in order, but she just
couldn’t wait to get back to Ireland, to her friends. When one job fell through because of problems with her work visa, she wasn’t too bothered: she just began looking for another job.
On 17 March 1993—nine days before she was murdered—she joined thousands of people in O’Connell Street, Dublin, where she celebrated St Patrick’s Day. She missed her family
back in New York, but she was where she wanted to be.
    No-one has ever been arrested for the abduction and murder of Annie McCarrick. There is no prime suspect. A number of men have been interviewed at length, but no-one has ever been detained for
questioning. One detective told me how three years after the abduction they thought they might have been on the verge of a breakthrough.
    I remember it was in early 1996. Gardaí in Blanchardstown in west Dublin were investigating the rape and murder of Marilyn Rynn, who was attacked as she was walking
     home following a Christmas party. During that investigation an extensive trawl was undertaken to establish who Marilyn had been in contact with in the hours before her death. And out of the
     blue, it hit us. One of the men who had been in Marilyn’s company, just hours before her terrible death, had also known Annie McCarrick. He had met Annie a number of times in the
     Sandymount area. Alarm bells started going off. Could we be about to get a break in Annie’s case? Could this be it? But it wasn’t: it was just a total coincidence. Another man,
     David Lawler, who was not known to Marilyn Rynn, was