FOR THE past three days the people of Milltown paid silent visits to Joyce Quinn's shop. Almost all the bunches of flowers they laid in front had no card and no name. The anonymous sympathy of a village, described by one man in a word. Numb.
The village had not yet heard that the Garda believed Mrs Quinn had been raped.
In the snow shower yesterday afternoon Joyce's husband, Comdt Ray Quinn, and their three children, Nicole (21), David (16) and Lisa (14) arrived at the shop with gardai.
They quietly loaded the flowers into the boot of the car. David picked up an unopened pile of morning newspapers. They were full of analyses of the Budget from Wednesday - the day Joyce's body was found.
On Wednesday morning the people in the small Co Kildare village had organised themselves for a search. Their shop owner had been missing for just over 12 hours. The only trace of her was her 1991 Citroen AX, abandoned in the grounds of St Brigid's national school opposite the shop. There was blood on the front seats.
Strong tea was poured in the Milltown Inn. Some of the searchers had been up all night. Outside gardai and army organised the civilians into teams. The Air Corps helicopter landed and took off from St Brigid's basketball court. Everyone knew something terrible had happened, but at least they felt they could do something about it.
The night before, David Quinn had found his mother's car by torchlight after searching for her in the grave ard with his father. The drawer from the cash till that she put on the back seat every evening was empty.
The school, with its 145 pupils, provided a lot of her customers. Locals said she would often have 20 children at a time in the small shop, all wanting 10 different penny sweets.
In the school windows cardboard Santa Clauses drooped under the weight of their cotton wool beards. Mrs Quinn's black leather shoulder bag had been thrown behind the fir tree hedge.
It was less than an hour into the search when the word spread that a woman's body had been found on a bleak patch of the Curragh, five kilometres away from the village, along the road Mrs Quinn would have driven home. Gardai said most of her underwear had been removed.
THAT evening Comdt Quinn appeared on RTE news. Trying to catch his breath, he appealed to the public to co operate with the gardai. He also appealed directly to the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen to "please start moving on the prison system and try to do something credible and sensible".
His compelling statement summed up the feelings of more than just one village: "Our family are in a terrible agony here. This is happening to too many families at the moment in this country. It seems to me we're losing the battle against crime. That's just it."
Joyce Quinn's weapons in her battle against crime were a mobile telephone and a can of mace. She would load the drawer of the cash till, with the day's takings of between Pounds 200 and Pounds 400, into the back seat of her car. It was a few feet from the shop door to the car door.
Other aspects of her security reflected the old attitudes of village life. The bolt on the lockup where she loaded briquettes and coal away every evening was open and rusted. One garda said it looked like it had not been used for a while.
On Thursday, Comdt Quinn said he had not meant to point a finger at Nora Owen. "It's every TD and every Minister that's been in the Dail for years. They're all responsible. They're all in some way to blame for this."
As a commandant he is responsible for liaising between gardai and army on large security operations and serious crime. "I never thought I would be doing it for my own wife," he said.
He added he did not want anyone "making political capital out of our misery in not trying to score off the present Government and I wish they'd stop scoring off each other and just do something about it."
On Thursday morning, as gardai hacked away the gorse at the Curragh looking for the murder weapon, a voice burst onto the two way radio, saying a set of keys had been found. Around the same time gardai combing the school grounds found a second set. The keys to her car were found near the car and the keys to her shop near her body. They didn't find the mobile phone.
Yesterday afternoon Chief Supt Feely said gardai now believed Mrs Quinn may have been murdered in her car, which was then used to dump her body on the Curragh. Her killer may then have returned the car to the school grounds at Milltown.
Gardai with green folders were visiting houses in villages and towns around the areas. Reports of a Frenchman seen acting suspiciously in the shop shortly before closing time were being played down. Chief Supt Sean Feely, leading the investigation, said the man was one of a number he wanted to eliminate from the inquiry.
Shortly after two o'clock that afternoon, the state pathologist, Dr John Harbison, arrived from another murder scene in Galway to Naas General Hospital. He left at about 10.30 p.m. according to nursing staff. His preliminary findings were that Joyce Quinn died after being stabbed in the heart. She had also been stabbed in the neck.
There is fear as well as grief in the village. Doors are answered "with worried looks and the lounge that hummed with activity on the morning of the search has gone quiet. There was little sign of any of the national school children, whose school had been closed for three days as gardai hunted for the knife used in the murder.
"When will it all stop?" asked one elderly lady as she passed by the family outside the shop. Joyce Quinn's brother in law said he wanted to thank the village, the gardai and the civil defence.
He said the family was grateful she had been found so soon.
Less than an hour after the Quinns collected the flowers two more bunches were dropped. And then a letter, sealed in a clear plastic sleeve and written carefully in a childish hand on a foolscap page. Half poem, half prose, it is called: "The Lady that will never be forgotten".
It is signed simply, "By a student from the school bus". The writer seems to have known Joyce Quinn only as the woman who would wave goodbye to her two younger children on their way to school in Newbridge, before turning to sweep her shop floor.
"As the teenagers climb off the bus I think of that woman once more. She used to wave at the bus with a broad warm smile, through the shop window as the children walk in the shop door. A woman so good natured. A woman so kind, but her heart warming face will never be seen again. Nothing exists only memories.