Breakfast-time, Eyre Square, Galway. A golden December sunlight cat ches on car wing-mirrors, as a couple of taxis queue up for the day's business. Sitting in a cafe just opposite the rank, Elaine Heenan clutches a paper coffeecup as she talks about her friend and colleague who died violently while on duty earlier in the week.
"She was chatty, she was mighty, she never had a bad word to say about anybody. Eileen was so full of life. And she just loved the road. She wouldn't have done anything else.
"Customers loved her. She was so talkative. She'd have talked to anybody. Me, I don't, partly because you get asked the same questions and you just don't want to get involved."
Elaine Heenan is one of six female taxi-drivers in Galway; and since she first heard the news of Eileen Costello O'Shaughnessy's disappearance on Monday morning she has been shattered, "completely thrown". It was so unexpected. "Of course, we get trouble, but most of us can deal with it. Most women would work nights if it suited, and it wouldn't have cost us a thought.
"Nights now? No, definitely not. Even though it's always better fun, and you didn't have to deal with the traffic of the day." She looks down at her cup, bewildered. "You know, my father used to drive taxis, and he would get beaten up. And whenever that happened, I used to go out and work for him instead."
There have been seven violent deaths in Galway in the last six months, but the discovery of Mrs O'Shaughnessy's body by a local farmer, Padraic O'Connell, in a muddy laneway outside Claregalway village six days ago has had an electric effect. Most recent cases have had a domestic link. The savage and apparently random nature of the assault on the 47-year-old mother of two has gripped a city which is synonymous with serious cultural experiences rather than with serious crime.
When her colleagues in Galway Taxis arrived on Monday morning at the murder scene, some nine miles from the city centre, Mrs O'Shaughnessy's body had been covered with a black tarpaulin.
Father Michael Mulkerrins, a local curate, was giving the Last Rites. She had been missing since 11.45 p.m. on Sunday, when her car was found abandoned three miles out.
As Supt Tony Finnerty from Mill Street Garda station thanked the drivers for their help in the search and appealed for more information, one taximan turned to this reporter. "You don't want to go down there," he said. His colleague had been so badly beaten she was almost unrecognisable.
Initial investigations suggest that robbery may have been the motive. Mrs O'Shaughnessy carried her takings in a money belt strapped round her waist. Diminutive and known for her Denis Taylor glasses, she wouldn't have been capable of putting up much of a struggle, according to Elaine. "Me, I would have, but then I am a bigger woman." On one difficult occasion Elaine remained in her taxi and called the gardai when a customer refused to pay.
Galway drivers would not have felt the need to "blow in", or call the office too frequently - until the events of this week, that is. "You pick up people on the street, you are running here and there," Elaine explains. "But you would blow in when you were finishing up."
Though there is conflicting information, Mrs O'Shaughnessy is reported to have made her last contact with her office at around 8 p.m. on Sunday and to have indicated at some point that she was heading out in the direction of Claregalway. There are still unanswered questions about the time it took to raise the alarm about her whereabouts.
Separated from her husband, Garda Tom O'Shaughnessy of Mill Street station, Eileen had two grown-up children. "She'd talk about them a lot," Elaine says. Even after Mrs O'Shaughnessy switched companies, the pair kept in touch. They often had breakfast together in Kate's on the Headford Road or Robert Lee's on Eyre Square.
"Eileen loved music. On her nights off she would often go to gigs in Salthill. And she would have travelled anywhere to hear Mick Flavin," Elaine recalls.
"You know, we're 10 years apart but there was only a day between our birthdays in February. We kept saying we would have a drink to celebrate. We didn't get round to it this year. And now we never will."