‘You’ve heard about Con?’ Katie asked her.
‘Cailin just told me. It’s desperate. I don’t know what to say to you.’
‘So long as you don’t say that he went out with a bang.’
Katie lifted her glass as if she were drinking another toast. Kyna looked over at Brendan. ‘I think DS Maguire should be going home, sir, don’t you? I can take her if you like.’
‘No, you’re all right,’ said Brendan. ‘I’ll take her myself.’
‘She shouldn’t be drinking any more, though.’
Katie finished her glass and held it up again.
‘You’re not my doctor, Kyna. Although I wouldn’t mind if you were. How about a parting glass, Brendan? If it’s not bad luck to mention parting glasses. You know, after that what’s-his-name. That Vaseline fellow.’
‘I don’t think so, Katie. I’ll be after taking you back to Cobh now. You’ll feel better when you’ve had a good long sleep.’
‘Come on, only a twinchy scoop.’
Brendan poured her a last small tot of vodka, which she downed in one.
‘Now, let’s be going,’ he told her. He took hold of her arm and helped her to stand up.
‘I’ll go to her office and pick up her bag for her,’ said Kyna. ‘She has a neighbour who walks her dogs for her, a Mrs Tierney. You should tell her that you’ve fetched her back – you know, so that she can keep an eye on her.’
‘I will, sure,’ said Brendan, although he didn’t ask how Kyna knew so much about Katie’s personal life.
Kyna stood and watched as Katie walked unsteadily out of the office, with Brendan beside her. Katie had managed not to cry, but Kyna was close.
‘Oh, dear Lord,’ she said, under her breath. ‘Please bring her some happiness.’ Then she went off to collect Katie’s bag.
55
Katie leaned against the front door with her eyes closed while Brendan sorted through her bag to find her keys. Behind the door, Barney and Foltchain were snuffling and scratching, and obviously wondering why Katie was taking so long to come in.
At last Brendan found the right key, and let them into the hallway. The dogs milled around them, their tails slapping against their legs, and they sniffed suspiciously at Brendan as he helped Katie to stumble along towards her bedroom.
‘It’s all right, children,’ said Katie. ‘Everything’s grand altogether. Your ma’s a little rubbery, like, that’s all.’
Brendan opened her bedroom door for her and she took three staggering steps before throwing herself face-down on the bed.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she slurred.
‘Listen, Katie,’ said Brendan, bending sideways next to the bed so that she could see him. ‘I’ll stay here for a while, okay, in case you’re sick or something. Can I fetch you anything now? A glass of water, maybe?’
Katie looked up at him with unfocused eyes. ‘No, you’re all right. I am home, amn’t I?’
‘Yes, you’re home. Try and get some sleep now and you’ll feel a whole lot better.’
‘Is this my bed? It feels more like a boat. Why does it keep rocking up and down?’
‘That’s the vodka, not the bed. It’ll settle down soon.’
Katie closed her eyes. She plunged immediately into a deep drunken sleep, so that she wasn’t aware that Brendan didn’t leave the bedroom, not at first, but stood next to the bed looking down at her, thoughtfully biting at his knuckle.
Barney stuck his nose in through the bedroom door, and made a wuffling noise.
‘Come on, boy,’ said Brendan. ‘Let’s get you two shut up in the kitchen where you can’t interrupt us.’
*
Katie started to dream. She was back on the beach at Garrettstown, on a warm overcast day, but this time she was lying on the soft sand among the dunes, and the long grass all around her was making a soft sizzling sound in the breeze.
Conor came walking up the dunes until he was standing over her. He said something but his voice was muffled and she couldn’t understand what it was.
‘Con?’ she said. ‘What is it, Con? What’s wrong?’
He didn’t say anything, but knelt down in the sand in front of her. He unbuttoned her trousers and started to tug them down, a little at a time, until he had managed to wrestle them right off over her feet. Once he had done that, he pulled down her thong and tossed that to one side, and then he opened her thighs wide so that she could feel the sea air caressing her between her legs.
Conor climbed on top of her, and she felt him part her lips with his fingers and slowly push his hardened penis into her.
‘Con,’ she whispered. ‘That’s beautiful. See, my darling, you’re not a eunuch after all.’
He slid himself into her so deeply that she could feel his curly hair against her vulva and his balls against the cheeks of her bottom, and the sensation was so arousing that she shuddered, and she squeezed her muscles against his smooth hard shaft again and again.
‘Oh my God, Con. It’s just like it was. It’s better than it was. It’s wonderful.’
She reached up and wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, and it was then that she felt that his chest was bare, even though she hadn’t seen him take off his clothes. She suddenly felt that something was badly wrong. She lifted up her head from the sand and opened her eyes.
By the light of her bedside lamp she saw that she wasn’t lying in the dunes at all, and that it wasn’t Con who was making love to her, but Brendan. While she was drunkenly sleeping, he had removed her trousers and her thong and pulled up her sweater and her blouse as far as her bra, so that her stomach was bare. He was completely naked, as fit and muscular as she remembered him, and with the same pattern of moles on his left shoulder. His eyes were dreamily closed as he was pushing himself in and out of her.
She smacked him across the face, hard, and kicked her heels so that she forced herself backwards up the bed and his penis flopped out of her.
They stared at each other. At first, neither of them spoke. Katie dragged the bedspread across to cover herself while Brendan shuffled down to the end of the bed on his knees and then stood up.
He cleared his throat, and then he said, ‘Come on, Katie, we used to be lovers.’
‘Used to be, sir, until you cheated on me. And what you’ve just done, that’s rape.’
‘Oh, what?’ he protested. ‘That was a friendly flah for old time’s sake, that’s all. You can’t call it rape if we were lovers before.’
‘Get dressed and get out.’
Brendan went over to the chair and picked up his underpants.
‘Fair play, Katie. Maybe I misread your signals. So let’s forget it, shall we?’
‘Signals? What signals? I was totally langered. I still am – except that now I’m angry and totally langered. Now fecking get out of here before I throw you out.’
Brendan pulled up his trousers and buttoned up his shirt. ‘This won’t go any further,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, “this won’t go any further”?’
‘You won’t be making any kind of official complaint?’
Katie sat up. She was rigid with rage. ‘Last night I was abducted and threatened with my life. Last night I saw an innocent young girl drilling holes in a fellow’s head. This morning I found out that my fiancé has blown himself up and other people with him. Because of all that I’m in shock and I’m shattered and I’m excusably drunk. And you thought that was the right time to take advantage of me, and rape me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Brendan. ‘Like I said, I misunderstood the situation altogether. I thought you might be needing some emotional consolation, do you know what I mean?’
‘If you really believe that “emotional consolation” means fucking a woman while she’s so wrecked that she doesn’t know what’s happening to her, then all I can say is that you’re the stupidest, saddest gombeen I ever met in my life. Now go.’
Brendan left, carrying his shoes in his hand. As soon as Katie heard the front door close behind
him, she went to the kitchen and let out Barney and Foltchain. Then she went into the living room, where a framed photograph of herself and Conor was hanging next to the fireplace. It had been taken in November, in the grounds of Blarney Castle, and they were both laughing.
She stared at it for a long time and she felt she ought to cry but for some reason she couldn’t. She could only think of the way that he had ended his letter. I know that you have the strength to bear the pain of what I have done to you, and forget that I ever was.
*
The following morning, the sky was black and thundery and hailstones were bouncing all over the road as Katie took a taxi into the city.
Moirin had obviously been told about Conor because she brought Katie a cup of coffee as soon as she sat down at her desk and said, ‘I’m so sorry to hear your news, ma’am. You have my condolences.’
Her first visitor of the morning was Kyna.
‘How’s the head this morning?’ Kyna asked her.
‘What do you think? I feel like my brain’s an anvil and all the hammers of hell are beating horseshoes into shape on it.’
She was half-inclined to tell Kyna about Brendan, but before she said anything about it to anybody, she wanted to work out for herself what she was going to do next. She could report Brendan to the Garda’s confidential recipient; or she could threaten to make a complaint if he tried to obstruct or overrule any investigations that she was carrying out, or restrict her funding. On the other hand, she could say nothing at all.
Kyna said, ‘I’ve heard from CUH. They operated on Lupul yesterday afternoon but he died during the night.’
‘Well, I can’t say I’m grieved about it. And it’ll save us a rake of work.’
Kyna hesitated for a moment, and then she said, ‘Would you like to meet up this evening? Somewhere quiet, where nobody knows us.’
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ said Katie. ‘That’s if you don’t mind listening to me moaning and whingeing for an hour or three.’
Kyna left, and almost immediately afterwards Brendan came into her office, smiling and looking smart and smelling of aftershave as usual.
‘Hi, Katie. How are you going on?’
Katie looked down at the files and messages that had been left on her desk, and started to leaf through them. ‘Did you want something, sir?’
‘I only wanted to tell you that I’ve had a thank-you call from Caoimhe O’Neill. Walter’s had his operation and all his breathing problems are sorted. As it turned out, the vet’s bill was only fifteen hundred euros.’
Katie raised her eyes from her paperwork. ‘Good. But that money wasn’t really for Walter, was it? That money was for me, to win me over. Well, let me tell you this, sir. I’m going to cost you much, much more than that.’
We hope you enjoyed this book.
About Graham Masterton
The Katie Maguire Series
The Scarlet Widow Series
Also by Graham Masterton
An Invitation from the Publisher
About Graham Masterton
GRAHAM MASTERTON trained as a newspaper reporter before beginning a career as an author. After twenty-five years writing horror and thrillers, Graham turned his talent to crimewriting. The first book in the Katie Maguire series, White Bones, was published by Head of Zeus in 2012 and became a top-ten bestseller. The series was inspired by Graham’s five-year stay in County Cork.
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About the Katie Maguire Series
Katie Maguire was one of seven sisters born to a police Inspector in Cork, but the only sister who decided to follow her father into An Garda Siochana.
With her bright green eyes and short redhair, she looks like an Irish pixie, but she is no soft touch. To the dismay of some of her male subordinates, she rose quickly through the ranks, gaining a reputation for catching Cork’s killers, often at great personal cost.
Katie spent seven years in a turbulent marriage in which she bore, and lost, a son – an event that continues to haunt her. Despite facing turmoil at home and prejudice at work, she is one of the most fearless detectives in Ireland.
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London, 1750
Beatrice Scarlet is the apothecary's daughter. She can mix medicines and herbs to save the lives of her neighbours - but, try as she might, she can't save the lives of her parents. An orphan at just sixteen, Beatrice marries a preacher and emigrates to America.
New Hampshire, 1756
In the farming community where Beatrice now lives, six pigs are found viciously slaughtered; slices of looking-glass embedded in their mouths. According to scripture, this is the work of Satan - but Beatrice Scarlet suspects the hands of men. As she closes in on the killer, she must act quickly to unmask him - or become the next victim herself...
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Also by Graham Masterton
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Graham Masterton, 2019
The moral right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781784976477
ISBN (XTPB) 9781784976484
ISBN (E) 9781784976460
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