Blood Tide (Paula Maguire 5)

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Right.’ Guy stifled a yawn. ‘We could do with your help in the morning, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Aye?’ He looked wary.

  ‘I need a list of every single person on the island. Kids, men, women, old people, visitors. Everyone.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Quinn? You still alive?’ She’d managed to get through to the mainland on the payphone, relieved to hear his voice, a small and tenuous connection to the real world.

  Fiacra’s voice sounded tired. ‘Just about. Still in this fecking place, can you believe it? The consultant’s stuck in Tralee with the floods and they won’t let me go till I see her. You coping OK?’

  ‘Yeah. You heard about Matt Andrews?’

  ‘Aye.’ He grew sombre. ‘Sad news. But after all this time, it was always likely.’

  Paula hated that. The way people gave up on the missing once they’d been gone for more than a day. Following the statistics, not the story, behind each one. People did come back, sometimes after years. She’d seen it herself. ‘I suppose. Is that why the best you can send me over is a Met officer on his holidays?’

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased. You and the boss, back together.’

  ‘Hmph.’ It was shaky ground, the subject of her and Guy and their shared history. ‘Meanwhile, what are we meant to do with this body? Your evidence chain’s shot to shit and someone’s been into that boatshed and cleared it out.’

  ‘Aye, I know, bad luck, that. I’ll be out there tomorrow if it kills me. It’s hit the press over here that Matt’s dead so they’ll be losing interest soon – it’ll look like an accident. Cue lots of phone-ins to RTE about is it safe to go out in storms, blah, blah. Why doesn’t the government do more. Is it selfish to live on a remote island still. That kind of shite.’

  ‘I still don’t buy the accident theory. There’s too much that doesn’t add up.’

  ‘I know. But there’s nothing we can do for now.’

  She sighed. ‘OK. See you tomorrow, hopefully. That’s two nights away from my wean. You owe me, Quinn.’

  ‘Ah, sure you love it,’ he said, and she knew he was right.

  She hung up, and on impulse dialled Pat’s number. The same one she’d called as a teenager, sneaking furtive chats with Aidan, in the brief window when he was her boyfriend, before he’d cruelly dumped her. She knew it off by heart and always would. Her father answered, in his hoarse, tired voice. ‘Maguire.’

  That was how he always answered the phone, a hangover from his days as a cop, woken at all hours by what was invariably bad news. Whereas her mother had always answered more politely, reciting the phone number back in elocuted tones. ‘It’s me, Dad.’

  ‘Och, pet. We didn’t think you’d be able to get through in this weather. Isn’t it wild?’

  ‘I know. How’s Mags, did you see her?’

  ‘Saoirse kept her tonight and gave her her dinner but I called down on my way to the shops. She’s grand.’

  ‘How come you’re answering the phone?’ Usually Pat did the task, since PJ wasn’t exactly nimble on his feet.

  ‘She’s away to bed already.’

  ‘It’s early for that.’ Paula had a horrible thought. ‘Her scan, it wasn’t . . .’

  ‘She’s fine. Don’t you be worrying about that. Just tired from the hospital is all.’ He changed the subject. ‘Is it that Bone Island case you’re on, is that it? Saw it on the news.’

  ‘Yeah. Dad . . . we came here, didn’t we?’

  A small pause, as always when she skirted near the topic of her mother. ‘Aye, we did. A good few years ago now.’ He knew rightly it had been that last year, and he knew she did too.

  Paula could feel it, the weight of it straining the connection between them. The pain of not talking about her mother, twenty years of it. She thought of telling him for a mad moment – Dad, she left a note, I found it, she might be alive, she went away . . . But then what? He’d only married Pat, staunchly Catholic Pat, because both of them were convinced Margaret Maguire was dead. Any doubt and they’d never have done it, seized this small bit of happiness for themselves. So Paula couldn’t tell him. Maybe ever. And yet she still couldn’t stop looking, whatever the consequences. ‘I better go, Dad. Take care of yourself.’

  Her room was cramped, full of furniture that seemed to belong to different places. The wardrobe was so large Paula could hardly get the door open. At least there was a private bathroom, fitted out in seventies salmon-pink and with a mouldering shower curtain that wrapped itself damply about her legs. She ran some tap water into a grubby tooth-mug, realising she hadn’t drunk much all day, which probably explained her headache. But the water came out brown and metallic, and she poured it away again. She got into the sagging bed and tried her mobile, knowing it was pointless. Through a gap in the thin curtains, Paula could see the waves in the bay, still uneasy and white-tipped. She had to get off this place, this lump of rock in the middle of the Atlantic, get home to her child, but at the same time she knew the answers were all here. To who or what had killed Matt Andrews. And why. To where Fiona Watts was.

  She tried to shut her eyes, turning everything over in her mind. Niamh, so slight and sweet, holding a glowing poker. Andrea, so meek, putting her baby in the dogs’ kennel and locking the door. Cut throats and drowned men and the shattered glass of the lighthouse. Dark spreading out across the seas. And in the next room – so close she could hear him moving around, boiling the stupid too-small kettle – was Guy Brooking. Maggie’s father. Always bobbing back up like a cork, when she’d done her best to get away, reminding her they’d be bound together forever and he had no idea. Maggie was getting bigger now; it might start to show in her face. Why hadn’t she told him before? She’d argued herself out of it. Maggie thought Aidan was her father, and Paula had reasoned it wasn’t fair to add that shocker in on top of everything, not when Daddy had just been arrested and was sitting in jail. And Pat had been ill and Guy was still married, trying to make a go of things with Tess, and how could Paula tell him anyway? How could she tell him she’d let him think, for two years, that there’d been a test and Aidan was the dad? The main reason she hadn’t told him, she knew, was that she couldn’t bear to see the look in his eyes. He respected her, trusted her even, despite all their difficulties. And now, when she’d already lost so much, she didn’t think she could bear to lose that too.

  And Aidan. What about him? He’d lived alongside her for two years, and pretended he didn’t know he was not Maggie’s father. Hid the truth while Paula, and Guy Brooking too, had no idea a test had been done – by Pat, in secret. Whatever else Aidan had done or not done, she still didn’t know if she could ever forgive him for that. Couldn’t forgive him, couldn’t let him go. And telling Guy would mean an end to that lovely lie, that she and Aidan and Maggie were a family.

  Every time she tried to find peace, her mind was wracked. And this place, with its memories of her mother, made her feel she was drowning. The beach that day. Her mother’s red hair in the breeze. The picnic they’d had, sand in their ham sandwiches and cartons of Just Juice. PJ reading the paper against the sun, and her mother saying would you put that down, leave the news behind for one day. Not that her father ever could. They had that in common.

  She tried to sleep, settling her tired bones around the lumps in the mattress. Sleep, Maguire. Stop thinking of rotting seals and blood smeared on walls and cold, dead eyes. Gradually tiredness overtook her fermenting brain, and her breathing slowed. She had almost dropped off to sleep when something shot her wide awake. A noise? Someone at the door? Her lungs gave her the answer, as they began to crackle and heave – smoke. She could smell smoke. Then there really was someone at the door, a hammering. ‘Paula?’ Guy’s voice. One she knew well, calm but with an edge of – let’s do this now. ‘We need to get out. The pub’s on fire.’

  She had to be quick now. Put
on shoes, grab jumper, phone. No time for anything else. She wrenched open the door to find Guy with his coat on over dark pyjamas, hair mussed. ‘Come on. Stay with me.’

  He took her hand, and hers seemed to remember the feel of it, the long fingers and strong wrist. He guided her to the stairs, where smoke was already pooling round their ankles. ‘Where is it?’ she was whispering.

  ‘In the bottle store, I think.’

  ‘But that’s where Matt is!’ The body. They had to preserve it. Paula started to pull away from his grasp. ‘Maybe we can . . .’

  ‘Paula!’ His voice was sharp. ‘We have to get out of here, right now. Come on, you know that.’ His voice was starting to sound muffled. There was smoke in front of Paula’s face now. She couldn’t orientate herself – the front door of the pub was directly opposite the stairs, wasn’t it? But she moved forward and bumped into the bar. Everything seemed to have turned around.

  ‘Guy?’ She’d dropped his hand.

  ‘Paula? Where are you? The door’s this way!’ He seemed far away suddenly. Why was he far away? He’d been right at her side. She could see an orange glow, and illuminated by it the door of the stockroom. Matt was in there, dead and cold, his body holding the secrets to how he’d ended up in the sea. She had to try. She reached out her hand to the handle, which suddenly seemed to loom large, a round metal knob, and—

  ‘What are you doing?’ Someone had grabbed her arm, and was pulling her bodily away. She put up no resistance. What was she doing? The smoke was thick now, with a terrible reek of burning pleather seats and synthetic rubber, and Guy was swearing at the front door. ‘Can’t get the lock open. Bloody hell. See if you can . . .’

  See if she could what? She didn’t understand. The smoke was making her drowsy. The floor under her boots was starting to get warm. It wasn’t unpleasant. Then she seemed to lose her hearing, because she could see, almost in slow-motion, Guy lift up a bar stool and slam it into the glass of the front door, and there was a tinkle of glass – surely it must have been louder than that? – and cold, pure air was pouring in, clearing her head and her mind, and Guy was grabbing her again and shoving her out the door, throwing a coat after her saying put that on, it’s freezing, glass catching in her coat and hair, and then they were out into the night, the moon glinting on the sea. They were out. Guy was panting. ‘What the hell were you thinking? If you’d touched that knob the whole place would have gone up – not to mention you’d have barbecued your hand! Christ, Paula!’

  What had she been thinking? It was so strange, almost like her brain hadn’t been able to take it in. Paula looked up at him, and tried to explain, and promptly passed out.

  Bob

  2013

  ‘Sergeant Hamilton.’

  Some officers said they never forgot a face – they could pick a criminal out of a line-up, or nab him walking down the street, thirty years after their offence. Bob never forgot a voice. At the sound of his name in that raspy flat tone, he put the sponge carefully back into the bucket – scummy water splashed on his trouser leg – and straightened up from the car. Waiting to feel the muzzle of the gun against his head. When he didn’t, he turned, slowly. He hadn’t seen Sean Conlon in twenty years. The man had gone inside in 1999, finally caught for one of his many crimes. Waiting in prison, sitting on his secrets. Jail had left him sallow, jowly.

  ‘You’re out, then.’

  ‘Aye. Good behaviour.’

  Bob shifted his back foot. Ian was at his day-care, Linda was at the library. The man had found his address, although it wasn’t hard, when you lived in a small town. ‘What brings you here, Sean?’

  He scratched his ear. The bravado wasn’t as showy now, but he was harder, more compressed, a battle-scarred man of fifty. ‘Need a favour myself in return. You ever go back on our wee deal, Sergeant?’

  It took Bob a moment to even remember. ‘The footprints? Sean, that’s so long ago nobody cares.’

  ‘Somebody cares. About Dunne. Word is there’s a hit out on me.’

  Not unusual, when you’d made a career of murder. The IRA had been finishing each other off for years since the ceasefires, settling old scores, tidying up old witnesses. Good riddance to them too. ‘It’s none of my doing, Sean. You should know as much.’

  ‘Maybe. But I want – I want your help.’

  ‘My help?’

  ‘I want – away.’ He hated having to ask, that was clear. He must be desperate. ‘I want away from this town.’

  It was almost too much, to be standing in front of this man he’d last seen on the day before Margaret vanished. Had he taken her? Did he know something? Despite their ‘wee deal’, Bob had never known the truth. You couldn’t trust a liar. You couldn’t rely on a murderer. But he’d had to, back then. ‘I’m retired,’ Bob said shortly. ‘There’s nothing I can do for you.’

  ‘But I helped you!’

  ‘How did you? Told me something I already knew, and the very next day she’s gone? You’ve a funny notion of help.’ Bob turned to go, disgusted by the man and the dirt that seemed to cling to himself too. The deal they’d made. All for nothing.

  ‘But – I let her go.’

  ‘What?’ He turned back.

  ‘That woman. The one you – the one you were asking about.’

  Bob made a noise in his throat, turning to go, to push past the man if he had to.

  ‘Honest. We had her, aye. But I let her go.’

  ‘Prove it, then.’

  He said nothing. A ripple of fear went through Bob, all the way from 1993. Of course he’d thought the IRA had killed Margaret – where was she otherwise? He’d spent twenty years holding his breath, every time a body was found. Would it be her? And if so, would her body give up her secret, the one that meant she had to run and never come back? But to have it confirmed, that was a different thing. ‘Get off my land,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘Wait. We had her. You were right. She was a target. But I let her go. I helped her.’

  ‘You’re a liar. No one’s heard from her in twenty years. Where is she, then, if she got away?’

  Conlon shrugged. ‘That I don’t know. But I’m asking you now, help me like I helped her. Like I helped you.’

  Bob stared at the man. ‘Who is it that’s after you? Give me names.’

  He hesitated – a long habit of lying to the police.

  ‘Give me it, man, and if you can prove to me you helped that woman, I’ll see what I can do for you. If not, then God help you.’

  Conlon took an envelope from his pocket. Bob checked his watch – he couldn’t stand to have the man in his house, where Linda and Ian would soon be. Instead he opened the car, stuffy with the heat of the day. ‘Get in. Now you’re going to tell me everything you know. Everything, Sean.’

  That was the last time Bob would ever see Sean Conlon. He was dead that same night, beaten to a pulp in a pub car park, and Bob had hidden the envelope with the names and never said a word to anyone. Never said he’d known the man, and he’d helped him once, helped him get away with not one murder but two, all so he could draw on a favour when needed. And he never told anyone what Sean had to say about that day in 1993, about the last known movements of Margaret Maguire. He’d made a promise, and that didn’t end just because she’d been gone twenty years. All he knew was he’d had a strange, uncomfortable feeling he hadn’t felt in years – something that might have been hope.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When she came to she was lying on her side, coughing up soot onto the wet stones of the quay. Everything smelled of smoke and damp. Guy’s hands were on her, firm on her shoulder and hip, holding her safe. ‘Are you OK?’

  She sat up, still coughing. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. You had a funny turn – I couldn’t get you out.’ Guy sat back on his heels, his grey eyes wide with worry, s
oot on his face. He was wearing slippers, she saw. She didn’t realise people still owned slippers.

  She saw figures scurrying in the smoke from the pub, which seemed to be still standing – they had turned a hose on it. The smoke was black and acrid, but there were no flames left. She’d never had occasion to wonder how fires were dealt with on an island, when you didn’t have access to firemen or an engine. By the community, was the answer. She could recognise faces in the gloom. Oona from the Spar, a coat over her pyjamas, and Seamas, fully dressed in his waterproofs, Paddy the fisherman. Working together to save the place. ‘What happened?’ she asked Guy again, coughing up more soot.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘Lightning, something like that?’ she faltered.

  ‘I didn’t notice any.’

  She pulled herself up to sitting, still hacking up soot from her aching lungs. ‘The storeroom?’

  ‘Gutted. It started in there. All that booze as an accelerant . . .’

  Their evidence, the last that remained of Matt Andrews. ‘So . . . his body’s just gone?’

  ‘Convenient, isn’t it, if someone didn’t want an autopsy.’

  So this had maybe been done on purpose, by people who likely knew it was just the outsiders in the building. To hide whatever clues they might have taken from Matt Andrews’s body, burn them away forever. ‘And – do you think they knew we were in there?’

  ‘I think everyone on this island knows what we’ve been up to.’

  She shivered, pulling the coat he’d given her around her shoulders. It felt strange somehow, too heavy. Her legs were full and sluggish, her lungs still burning. A thought occurred. ‘Where’s Rory? Should he not be here for this?’

  Guy rubbed his eyes, leaving a smear of soot across them. ‘They went to his house,’ he said shortly. ‘He’s not there, and no one can find him.’

  ‘It’s very good of you to take us in,’ said Guy, wiping his boots on the mat.