Page 68 of Stolen Rebel

“Casting agencies. Anyone hiring for private work, murder mystery parties, that kind of thing.” He rubs his lips together, brows furrowed, his fingers moving between the keyboard and the mouse. Eventually, he sits back. “Nothing obvious. Whatever this was, it wasn’t arranged through legit channels.”

Darragh drums his fingers on the desk. “If this was done through some kind of back door, then I’m guessing it was a no questions asked scenario. Students are always looking for easy ways to make fast cash they don’t have to declare.”

“So, we, what? Visit every amateur drama school in a fifty-mile radius?”

He shakes his head. “That’s a dead end. We’d need to go school by school, hoping their records weren’t a pile of shite which⁠—”

“Takes time we don’t have.”

“Precisely. So instead of coming at it from the student angle, we start thinking about how Murray found these students. A cop can’t exactly walk into an amateur dramatics society or a drama school and ask if he can hire some students to act out a fake murder.”

“He’d use someone else.”

“Yep. A middleman. Something that puts space between him and the staging.”

He starts typing again, frowning in concentration. I leave him to it. This is Darragh’s bag. I can’t stand all that internet bollocks. Half an hour passes. I pace, sip my drink, pace some more.

“Pull up a chair.”

I set my empty glass down and pull a chair around to his side of the desk. “Found something?”

He nods, turning one of the screens in my direction. The screen is split: one side a web page and the other a spreadsheet with names, dates, and company registration numbers. I’m confused as fuck, but I keep my trap zipped and wait for him to explain.

“Murray needed performers to make his play work. Specifically, people who could stage something violent and convincing in a non-theater space, and make it convincing enough that Rowan would buy it as real. He’d also need the actors not to blab about it. That’s not a drama school noticeboard job.”

“Then what?”

“Immersive theater.”

“What the fuck is immersive theater?” Sometimes I swear Darragh was adopted. He’s so different to me and to Patrick. He’s also got smarts for days. I beat people with my fists. He beats them with his intelligence and, right now, intelligence is what I need.

“Something that exploded in the mid 2010s. It basically turns traditional theater on its head, making the audience a part of the show. Loads of small operators jumped on the bandwagon offering personalized experiences. It was pretty popular for hen and stag dos and corporate events.”

He scrolls down the screen. “A lot of these companies folded long ago, so I used a web crawler to trawl through archived web pages to see who was operating back then. I pulled every small immersive or private experience company operating in that time frame. This one caught my eye. It dissolved about five years ago.”

I peer at the screen. Bespoke live experiences for discerning clients. Discretion guaranteed. “Why would you need discretion to put on a skit for a stag do?”

Darragh claps me on the back. “My thoughts exactly, brother. Now check this out.” He scrolls down to the testimonials and points at the third one down. I read it, then read it again.

I needed a unique event organized for a small group at extremely short notice. Gina handled everything from end to end, no questions asked. Would recommend to anyone with unconventional requirements.

It had been left anonymously. I look at Darragh. “Murray.”

“I’m guessing so.”

“But why would he leave a testimonial?”

“Who knows? Company was owned by a woman. Murray could’ve been banging her, or maybe he wanted to and thought by leaving a review, he’d get into her knickers faster. Could be ego. Could be that he was so fucking proud of what he’d done that he couldn’t help himself.”

“Can you find her?”

He grins. “One of these days you’ll come to me with something truly challenging.” He waves a piece of paper in front of my face. “She works for a large hotel in Dublin as an events coordinator.”

I snatch the paper from his fingers and leap to my feet. “Then let’s fucking go.”

I hesitate at the bottom of the stairs, in two minds whether to tell Rowan what we’ve discovered about the murder, but I’m antsy to get going, to uncover the whole truth before I come to her with news that she will find difficult to swallow. That bastard Murray stole five years of her life and made me believe the woman I loved had set me up. Once I have all the pieces of the puzzle, I’ll pick him up and make him regret the day he fucking crossed me and stole what was mine.

“I’m driving.” Darragh flings the front door open and strides toward the garage.