A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4)

by Claire McGowan

  Paula averted her eyes from the dust sheets and tools left in her kitchen, a place that used to be just for her, and pushed out through the old-fashioned fly curtain to the garden behind. The garden had been her mother’s place, where she’d pegged out roses in the square of uninspiring soil, until the search team had dug it up in 1993. Looking for her body. Paula couldn’t be out there and not remember watching white-suited techs as they pulled up each long-nurtured plant. Wondering if they’d find anything. Hoping against hope they wouldn’t. This was before she’d got to the point of just wanting an answer, even if it meant knowing for sure her mother was dead.

  ‘Hiya.’

  Aidan and Maggie were on a blanket on the dry, yellowed lawn. The last rays of the day filtered down between the roofs of the terraced houses. He was wearing khaki shorts and a Springsteen T-shirt. His forearms were tanned from the summer; bits of the paper were spread about him. Bustling around, Maggie ferried sand from her little pit in the corner to another pile by the back wall. She wore a yellow sundress, clashing wildly with the red hair that was already curling over her ears. What with the hair and the milk-pale skin, she looked nothing like Aidan. Not even a bit.

  ‘Did you put cream on her?’ asked Paula.

  ‘Nah, I thought I’d let her get skin cancer, like. Course I did.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She collapsed down beside him in her jeans and T-shirt, kicking off her sandals and digging toes into the parched grass.

  ‘So are you all kitted out in the frock of your dreams?’

  ‘Don’t. I can’t cope with much more of this. I’m having an allergic reaction to the lace, look.’ She held out her arm to him and he rubbed it absently, engrossed in the paper.

  ‘Offer it up, Maguire. It makes my ma happy, anyway.’

  ‘I know.’ As usual his touch was enough to make her curl into him. Even after two years she didn’t take it for granted, having him there every day when she turned her key in the lock. ‘What are you doing there, Mags?’ she called out.

  ‘Sand,’ came the succinct reply.

  ‘I can see that. You’re making a bit of a mess, pet. Come here till I see you.’ She scooped up the toddler onto her lap, breathing in the smell of warm skin and sun cream. Aidan had indeed slathered the child with it.

  ‘Where were you, Mummy?’ Maggie twined her hands in Paula’s loosening hair, like a little monkey.

  Aidan said, ‘Mummy was away getting a big nice dress for her wedding to Daddy. And you’re going to be flower girl, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yessss!’ Maggie had no idea what being a flower girl entailed, and Paula had no desire at all for a big nice dress, or for any of it. But it seemed important to Aidan, to Pat, to Paula’s father PJ, who’d been married to Pat for the past two years. So she was doing it. The church, the big nice dress, the works. She rubbed her finger, where her engagement ring chafed in the heat. White gold, diamond and emerald. Not huge, but respectable. Something she’d never thought to see on her own hand. But there it was, there she was, there they all were, a happy family of three.

  ‘Can I’ve some juice, please, Daddy?’ Maggie tugged on his hair. Dark – so unlike her own.

  ‘Juice? Well, I don’t see why not. On you come.’

  She watched Aidan walk to the house, Maggie trotting after him in her green Crocs, holding up a hand, trusting. He was her daddy. That was all she knew. It could be true. They were making it true, with every day together and this wedding coming up. And although Paula was trying, so hard, not to search the child’s face for hints of resemblance – a breadth to the forehead, a turn of the cheek or mouth – she still found she could no more put the other out of her mind entirely than she could stop herself picking up Maggie into her arms whenever she was near.

  She paused in the garden with her arms curled round her knees, alone for a moment, feeling her mother around her in the pretty tiles on the wall, a plant that had survived the police digging, and wondered how that trip to the wedding shop would have been if things were different. If everything was different. But it wasn’t.

  Aidan stuck his head out through the fly curtain. ‘Will I go for a takeaway? I’m not cooking in this mess.’

  She pushed herself up. ‘Yeah, OK. Do you reckon they’ll ever finish?’

  ‘God alone knows. He just told me he has to knock off early as he’s getting a “wee tickle” in his throat.’

  ‘I’m getting a bloody massive tickle in my throat from all the dust they’ve left everywhere. It can’t be good for Maggie. Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘I dunno. Now the recession’s over they’ll be off doing someone else’s bathroom if we let them go. He said they’d maybe be finished this month.’

  ‘In the meantime we’ve no hob and we have to wash the dishes in the bath.’

  ‘We could always move in with Ma for a bit.’

  That really would be it sealed, her and Aidan and Maggie and their respective parents. A family. And she wanted that, she really did. It was just the wedding throwing her into a panic, the dresses, the fuss. The finality of it. That was all.

  Paula heard her phone trill on the counter, and got up and moved to the door, going inside to the cool of the kitchen.

  ‘Leave it,’ said Aidan, with his head in the fridge.

  ‘But—’

  ‘If it can’t wait till tomorrow they’ll ring you. Now, do you want Chinese or pizza or what?’

  Paula looked at her phone. It could be work. Someone missing, needing to be found and put back in their proper place. As a forensic psychologist, these were the cases that kept her up at night. She felt little hands round her leg – Maggie, toddling over. ‘Mummy, will you read me a story?’

  She reached down and picked the little girl up, feeling small legs and arms wrap around her. ‘Of course, pet.’ To Aidan she said, ‘Get fish and chips. We had to bust that Chinese last week for immigration violations.’

  He picked up the car keys. ‘Right so, fish and chips and mushy peas it is.’ The door slammed. Paula remained in the kitchen, standing by the sink in the last place she’d ever seen her own mother, her daughter in her arms, before Maggie started to wriggle down.

  ‘Mummy, I want a story now.’

  ‘OK, sweetheart, go and get one.’ The phone stayed on the side, ignored.

  Alice

  He’s watching me through the door.

  Please go away, I ask.

  He doesn’t move or speak.

  Please. I’m getting upset again. I need to go . . . please don’t watch me. Please.

  I know there’s no point in asking. It’s the rules. He has to watch everything I do. Pissing, showering, crying, bleeding – there are no doors in this place. Nowhere to hide.

  That’s what I want more than anything. A door. I’d give everything I have for one, even though I don’t have anything, not any more. I’m crying now. Or I would be if I had any liquid in my body. There’s a lot of that in here – dry crying. Squeezing more out of something that’s totally empty. I’m making a sort of huh-huh sound, like a dog after it’s been out in the rain. I’ve got no choice. I need to go, and he won’t leave.

  I cry as it starts to run out of me. I can hardly bear for anyone to see me like this, so I shut my eyes tight and imagine how it would be to totally disappear.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Morning, Maguire.’

  Paula banged her pass over the entrance to the police station, looking up at the familiar face. Gerard Monaghan, now Detective Sergeant, in a newly sharp suit to match. ‘Well, Sergeant. How’s Avril? I never see her these days.’

  ‘They have her on nights. Making her work for it, like.’

  ‘Any word on whether she’ll make CID?’

  ‘Dunno. The new boss’s not such a fan. He reckons we were all too matey with you-know-who.’ She and Gerard passed through another door. He swiped the pass which hung around his neck, waiting for it to work. ‘Fecking thing. You ever miss the old days?’

  Paula sighed. ‘All the time.
But no point in looking back.’ She was willing Gerard not to say the name that went with the face in her head, and he didn’t, and they both shifted off to their desks with desultory goodbyes. The PSNI station on the hill was a very different place to work from the missing persons unit she’d started out in. There were rules, and rotas, and phones were always buzzing and people shouting out codes. But she had to be there. There was no more unit now, just her and Gerard up here, Bob retired, Fiacra back in Dundalk with the Gardaí, Avril training as a PC, and – that was all she could think about.

  ‘There you are.’ A woman was sitting at Paula’s desk; fair-haired, in her forties, wearing a grey trouser suit. Helen Corry had retained the designer outfits from her days as Head of Serious Crime, even though she’d been demoted back to DS.

  ‘Here I am, yes.’ Paula put her bag down.

  ‘Fun time wedding shopping?’

  ‘About as much fun as stapling my eyes shut.’

  ‘I remember. Want something juicy?’

  ‘Yes, please. If I do one more internal assessment I’m going to scream.’

  ‘I’ve got a missing persons. Right up your street – a student from out at Oakdale College.’

  ‘Female?’ This was Paula’s area of expertise – missing women, lost girls. Trying to find them and bring them back.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Tell me the circs?’

  Corry spread out the missing persons form, complete with a grainy photo of a blonde, very slim girl. ‘Alice Morgan. Twenty-two, doing research into holy relics and Irish folklore. English. Her dad’s Tony Morgan.’

  ‘Should I know him?’ Paula picked up the photo.

  ‘You would if you were in uniform. He’s a life peer, high up at the Home Office. Lord Morgan, I should have said. Alice has been over here studying for a year or so.’

  ‘Oh, right! So it’s all hands on deck on this one?’

  ‘Yep.’ Corry stood up, straightening her suit. ‘Don’t take your jacket off, you’re coming straight out with me.’

  ‘Did Willis OK it?’ Usually, Paula was not supposed to go to crime scenes.

  Corry made her usual face at the mention of DCI Willis Campbell, their new boss. It was like someone chewing on a pickled egg. ‘Oh yes, nothing’s too good for Mr, sorry, Lord Morgan’s daughter.’

  ‘When was she last seen?’

  ‘Yesterday. It just came in this morning.’

  At least she hadn’t missed it by ignoring her phone last night. ‘Wait, what are you not telling me?’ Ordinarily, a missing person’s case wouldn’t be dealt with so quickly. She looked at the photo of Alice. A little slip of a girl. It was back, the pulse, the spark. She could do this, at least. She could find people when they were lost.

  Corry had started walking. ‘She was last seen in that church with the relic. You know, Crocknashee. She’d been working there. And they found blood.’

  ‘How much blood?’

  ‘Enough. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Right. We’re meeting Willis at the scene, he’s already there, and then we’ll search Alice’s cottage.’

  Paula had never heard Helen Corry talk about her demotion. Two years ago, there’d been a leak in a major case. A forensics expert had falsified evidence, and Corry had been sleeping with him at the time. People had died, and the fallout from it had knocked her off her hard-won perch. Outwardly, she was enjoying being in a more hands-on role, and only the look on her face when DCI Campbell was mentioned ever betrayed her.

  When they got to the site, which was some way out of Ballyterrin, the man himself had left his Mercedes, a car that cost more than a one-bed flat, right across the gate of the church. ‘Typical,’ muttered Corry. ‘I’ll just park mine on the road. I mean, it’s only a Fiat, clearly doesn’t deserve the room.’ She pulled up. ‘How much do you know about this place?’

  ‘A bit, I suppose. From school. They were trying to get away from that side of Catholicism when I was wee. You know, this kind of – idolatry.’ For years Paula hadn’t known what religion Helen Corry was. It didn’t matter, of course, but somehow you did need to know, you had to be sure where to put people. Never English friends, she’d no idea what religion most of them were. When they’d started working together properly, Paula had learned that Corry was indeed a Catholic name, but that her mother was Protestant, and they’d tried to bring their children up with no religion at all, in the cauldron that was seventies and eighties Belfast. Corry had gone to that rare thing, an integrated school, and so she often displayed strange gaps in her knowledge.

  ‘This land belongs to the Garrett family,’ said Corry, opening her door. ‘Mother and son, they live in the big house over there. But the church is owned by a trust which the son chairs. I just want to know if we’ll be treading on any religious toes.’

  ‘I think it’s deconsecrated now, so we should be OK.’

  She and Corry went up the path to the church. It was another close July day, a sigh of wind rustling dry blades of grass. The graveyard was full of ancient stones, collapsed like drunks, and the eroded faces of stone angels watched the two women as they slogged up the hill. Paula took off her jacket and carried it over her arm. ‘He’s here already then, Willis?’

  ‘Of course. There’ll be TV cameras. He’s not going to miss that.’

  ‘What is it you hate so much? Is it the hair?’ Streaked and bouffant as it was, Willis Campbell had more hair than any man of forty-eight had a right to.

  ‘That doesn’t help. Or the suits.’ Handmade, the paisley linings always prominently displayed as Campbell whipped his jacket off in order to patrol ‘the shop floor’, the suits were a source of great amusement in the station. When he was well out of earshot, of course. Corry went on, ‘But no, mostly it’s a Belfast thing. Every time he talks I just hear that posh Malone Road accent.’

  Fair-haired, well-dressed, smooth on TV – but for the upbringing, Willis wasn’t a million miles from Corry herself. Not that Paula ever would have said it.

  The door of the church was open. It led into a low-ceilinged drystone space, an old chill stippling Paula’s arms with gooseflesh. A dark smell of damp, and maybe something worse. She pulled her jacket back on as her eyes adjusted. Below her feet were stone slabs marked with names and dates. They were walking on graves.

  DCI Campbell himself was up near the cordoned-off altar, talking to someone in a white boiler suit. ‘Ladies.’ He advanced on Paula and Corry, smoothing back his hair with one tanned hand, his wedding ring glinting on a well-fed finger. He was married to Greta, a well-turned-out woman who worked as a primary school headmistress as well as bringing up four clever, musical, sporty children. Paula knew all about it from the Christmas round-robins they liked to send.

  Corry said, ‘I’ve brought Dr Maguire along – she has a lot of experience in this kind of case.’

  He gave Paula the kind of look he might give a man-made fibre. ‘Well, I suppose I don’t mind you consulting. This could be very high-profile, given who her father is.’ That explained why the Head of Serious Crime was at the scene of what was on paper a medium-risk missper.

  Corry was looking at a glass display case someone had installed near the entrance desk. Its door was closed, but it was empty. ‘That’s where it was? The relic?’

  ‘Was is the word. It’s gone, but the case is still locked and the alarm’s not gone off.’

  ‘And Alice is gone too?’ asked Paula.

  He gave her another pained look. ‘It seems that way. She was seen by a volunteer – a Mrs Mackin, she’s in the vestry – at around six last night. This morning Mrs Mackin came in to find the place lying open, no sign of Alice. So she went to get the chair of trustees, Mr Garrett, who owns the surrounding land, and they find the relic gone, and this mess on the steps.’

  ‘Can we have a look at the blood?’ Paula tried to see behind him.

  He gave her another look. ‘Let’s see if the techs have finished.’

  Behind him, steps led up to the altar of the churc
h, which was carved all over in religious symbols, twisting sheaves of corn and crowns of leaves. Above the tabernacle, the face of Jesus had been painted onto the stone wall in odd lurid colours, his eyes looking up to Heaven. Below him, the steps were splashed in dark red blood, several small pools of it, dried and clotting. A suited tech was crawling about the space, taking pictures. Campbell waved him aside. ‘Let the ladies see, please, there’s a good lad.’

  The man stood aside and took down his hood. ‘Kemal!’ said Corry. ‘Couldn’t tell it was you in that get-up. How are you?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, ma’am.’ Kemal, an Egyptian who had somehow fetched up in rural Ireland, always spoke in polite RP tones. He nodded to Paula, who gave him a smile, which quickly faded as she looked at the floor.

  ‘This is all you found?’ Corry asked Kemal.

  ‘Yes, just like this, spattered as you see.’

  Campbell was growing impatient. ‘So what do you think, Dr Maguire? I hear you can diagnose everything just by looking at a crime scene.’

  Behind his back, Corry was rolling her eyes. Paula didn’t rise. ‘I’d have to find out more about Alice. Anything that might make her disappear – boyfriend issues, mental health problems, if she’d ever tried to kill herself . . .’

  ‘You think this could be self-inflicted?’ He pointed at the blood. It had partially dried, but you could see there’d been a lot of it. Too much for a small injury.

  ‘It’s possible. But then there’d be a body, wouldn’t there?’

  ‘Should we be treating this as high-risk, is what I want to know?’

  In other words, did he leave it with Corry and the missper team, or did he take it for Serious Crime and himself? If it was likely to be a messy one – no easy solve, no obvious answers – he wouldn’t want it. Paula said her usual spiel. ‘Well, for someone her age, the most likely thing would be she’s gone off voluntarily. But when people do that they don’t leave blood everywhere, and they don’t tend to take priceless holy relics with them. Alice was working here?’