A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4)

by Claire McGowan

  ‘We’re going to question the friends again,’ said Corry. ‘See if we can get some sense out of them.’

  He sniffed. ‘Well, you may hope you come up with something soon. Alice’s parents have just arrived. I want you to go and update them.’

  ‘What took them all the way out here?’ Paula asked, as they wound up the seemingly endless driveway to the hotel. She could hear the thunder of the river that ran past the place. Alice Morgan’s parents had insisted on staying outside of Ballyterrin, in a golf resort and spa that had opened pre-recession and been struggling on ever since.

  Corry swung the wheel of the car. ‘Nowhere in Ballyterrin good enough. And I think they wanted to be away from the press. They’ve not got the best track record with newspapers.’

  ‘You’d think they’d want to be nearer. For the search.’

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t get the feeling they’re very concerned either.’

  As they entered the hotel a deep calm settled over Paula. Despite the heat, a fire crackled in the lobby, which was scattered with soft grey sofas, the kind you could just sink into, like a cloud. The girl behind the desk wore so much make-up you felt it might fall off her in a perfect oval if you tapped her head. She spoke with a thick local accent. ‘Good morning, ladies, how may I help yous?’

  Corry took out her ID. ‘Rebecca and Anthony Morgan, please.’

  The girl’s face changed – though it was hard to tell with the make-up. The way people looked when they sensed something not right. A human instinct, to get away from the bad thing, protect what was yours, hope it wouldn’t come looking for you as well. ‘Oh yes. We’ve put yis in a nice wee room, so we have.’

  It was a shame about the hotel, Paula thought, as they entered the small meeting room. She liked to meet families in their homes, if possible – get a feel for them and their worlds, where they felt relaxed. In this room they were almost in an office, complete with notepads, uncomfortable chairs and little bowls of sweets on the boardroom table. A man in a polo shirt and slacks was pacing by the window, which looked out on the river. The woman at the table, tapping into her phone, was Alice a few years on. Same fair hair and tiny frame, the skin on her face pulled tight from tropical suns and surgery. The father was also ruddy, fit-looking. No more than fifty, she guessed. The wife could have passed for forty.

  ‘Lady Morgan, Lord Morgan.’ Corry was good at this. Victim liaison stuff, working the press angles, always thinking how things looked. ‘Thank you for coming over. This is Dr Maguire, our forensic psychologist.’

  Interviews held by Paula, an outside expert, could be shaky in court, so she usually did the background stuff, filling in gaps, trying to create a picture of what had happened. Feeling a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit was a technique that often worked, and here was one – Alice’s mother was angry. Totally pissed off. And that was odd for this stage, when hope was still alive. At this point parents would usually be worried, falling over themselves to help, trying to do everything right in the hope their child would be returned. ‘I can’t believe we’ve been dragged to this place,’ said Rebecca Morgan, looking round her as if the four-star resort was a backstreet slum. ‘Tony had a very important meeting today in Brussels.’

  Corry rearranged her shoulders slightly. ‘Well, you must be very worried, so let me fill you in. Alice was last seen in the church where she worked, two days ago.’

  ‘Who by?’ interrupted Tony Morgan. ‘I assume you’re following all this up.’

  The joys of a case where the girl’s father was a Home Office minister. ‘Of course, sir. I should explain, we’re lucky to have a lot of experience with missing persons in our team. Dr Maguire here was part of a dedicated cross-border unit in the town.’

  His eyes settled on her. The same as Alice’s, pale and somehow bloodless. ‘The unit that was disbanded.’

  ‘For funding reasons,’ said Corry smoothly. ‘Dr Maguire is very experienced, especially with cases involving young women.’

  His face changed, and she was suddenly hit with his charm, like a blast from a radiator. ‘We’re lucky to have you on the case. Please, anything you need to know, just ask. Alice – well, she’s been a little troubled, over the years.’

  ‘She’s most likely run off again,’ said the mother, laying her phone on the glass table with a click.

  Paula spoke. ‘Can you tell us a bit more about that?’

  She sighed and began ticking points off on her fingers. Her nails were two inches long. ‘Nineteen ninety-eight. We were in New York at a trade summit. Call from Alice’s nanny – she’s not in the house. We’re at the airport, flights home booked, and she’s found hiding in the stables. Quite pleased with herself, only cross that we weren’t actually on the plane when they found her. Two thousand and four – call from Alice’s school. I forget where we were. Darling? Where did we go that year, the Seychelles? Divine beaches. We were all the way back that time. Then in 2006, we get a call to say she’s been starving herself and they’ve had to put her in hospital.’

  ‘She was very ill,’ said her father, not looking round from the window. ‘They said she would die if she didn’t eat. So it was hard, but we couldn’t be here to watch her all the time and she couldn’t be trusted by herself. We did what we had to do.’

  Paula looked at Corry. ‘You mean—’

  ‘We had her sectioned,’ said Rebecca Morgan. ‘We got her into rehab, basically. Till she started eating. I mean, you don’t expect to have to feed your children when they’re fifteen years of age.’

  ‘And how long was she in there?’ Paula knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it from Alice’s mother. See if she flinched.

  She didn’t. ‘Two years. Listen, it worked. She did her A-levels, got into university. Then of course she flunks out again. Insisted on coming here, though, God knows why. She’d an Irish nanny once, spoiled her rotten, maybe that was it. It’s been years since she pulled this kind of stunt. I thought she’d stopped.’

  Corry frowned again. ‘Lady Morgan – I assumed you’d been briefed by your liaison officer – we are treating this as suspicious. I’m sorry to say it, but we did find signs of violence at the church. A valuable item has also gone missing. And there was blood, even.’

  If she’d expected a reaction to that, there was none. ‘Oh, she can bleed, if she has to,’ said Alice’s mother impatiently. ‘She was always getting hurt as part of her little charades.’

  ‘That’s enough, Rebecca,’ said Tony Morgan quietly. A look went between them, quick and sharp as a knife. ‘Look, Detective, obviously we’re worried about Alice—’

  They certainly didn’t seem it. Paula put her elbows on the glass table, willing herself to keep quiet.

  ‘—even though she has a history of this kind of behaviour. We can’t afford the publicity, with my profile.’ Meaning presumably that the old affair allegations would resurface. Paula said nothing. He went on, ‘Now, a contact of mine at the Met used to work with you here, I think. I’d like to ask him to consult on this case, if that’s acceptable to your team. We want Alice found with the minimum of fuss.’

  Oh no. Paula suddenly knew what he was going to say. Not him not him . . .

  ‘DI Guy Brooking,’ said Lord Morgan. ‘Do you know him?’

  It had been summer two years ago. Not the still, dead centre of it, like now, but the start. June, after a spring of bodies in the dirt and blow after blow hitting the unit. Gerard in hospital with a gunshot wound. Avril’s engagement broken off. And Paula, trying to look after a newborn Maggie, to take in that she was split in two now. If someone hurt her, Maggie would be hurt too. Paula of all people knew how it was to lose your mother. And Maggie had no father to hold her together in the aftermath. Something had to change.

  And then there was Aidan. And Guy. Guy and Aidan. When she was in hospital, recovering from an emergency Caesarean, Guy had given her some awkward words, stilted and confusing, about sorting things out. Maggie, he knew, was maybe his child. Paula had never told h
im otherwise, yes or no. But sometimes actions said more than words.

  The last day was when she’d told him. A bad day, one they didn’t think would actually arrive, even when the notice came that the unit was wrapping up, even when Paula was hired by the PSNI to work there instead, even when Corry’s disciplinary hearing demoted her, when Fiacra left and Bob retired and Avril got in to do her police training and Gerard made DS. It was just her and Guy, in the almost empty office space, on that last day.

  ‘Looks like crap,’ she’d said. The carpet patterned in squares of grey where the furniture had been, a tangle of wires near the wall, scraps of paper and Christmas tinsel and one lone hair grip. Avril’s, Paula guessed; she herself was never organised enough to pin her hair up.

  ‘Yeah.’ This was the first time they’d been alone since the decision, and the month they’d been given to shut down the unit.

  ‘So – where will you go?’ She’d heard rumours. Drugs. Gangs. Guy had a lot of credit in the Met, and this unit had been something of a backwater for him, taken only as respite when his work in London led to his son’s death. I thought I’d never have to see a dead child again, he’d said. About that, he had been wrong.

  ‘London. Gangs again – working with girls this time. Helping them get out, trying to improve the reporting rates for rape.’

  ‘Sounds good. Your sort of thing.’

  ‘I hope so. And you?’

  She stared at her scuffed shoes. ‘Corry offered me a job up there before she . . . A bit of a step back. More consulting work.’

  ‘Might be good, now, with childcare.’ Both their words were so neutral. He said, ‘I’d hoped we’d get a chance to talk before this. It’s gone so fast – and I didn’t like to come to the house to see you.’

  In case Aidan was there. Who was, at the very least, Maggie’s step-uncle. Whereas Guy was – nothing.

  He had turned to her, his hair a halo of light in the window. Paula knew this was her chance – the moment when things tilted that way or the other, one future or a different one. She turned away slightly. She’d never be able to say it if she looked him in the eye. ‘Aidan proposed to me,’ she said, still looking at her feet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know. It’s crazy.’

  ‘You didn’t—’

  ‘No, God no. That would be mad. It’s years since we – but, you see, me and him . . .’ Why was she so guilty, for God’s sake? Guy was the one with the wife. ‘Well. There’s a lot of history.’

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘It just seemed, you know, after everything, that we should give it a try.’

  ‘You think he’ll look after you? Both of you?’ He didn’t say Maggie’s name, and she was glad, because she couldn’t have stood it.

  ‘He’ll try.’

  ‘That’s enough?’ Guy knew all about Aidan’s drinking, his unreliability.

  ‘It’s all anyone can do.’

  The silence stretched between them, and she heard all his unasked questions, and she did not answer them, because she didn’t know how. Maybe she never would now. Aidan had decided for all of them. He’d be Maggie’s father, even if no test had ever said he was. Paula waited, helpless, for Guy to challenge her, fight for his own stake in Maggie, and in her too. He didn’t. The silence just went on, until eventually she couldn’t stand it, the empty office and the dust on the floor and the two of them with nothing more to say to each other. She went out, shutting the door on the unit and the past year. She hadn’t spoken to him since.

  Alice

  Later, the revenge comes. We are yanked from beds, lights slapping on. It’s sometime in the middle of the night. Each of us is pulled up, and a man goes round with a big set of hair clippers. He smells like fags and sweat, so thick it makes me gag. It takes a while to get round, and the girls are all screaming – so for about an hour it’s a room of screeching and buzzing, girls being held down, and hair falling on the floor, dark and fair and red, dyed and natural, curly and straight. Charlotte is still out so they do her unconscious. Her head is bleeding. Afterwards we’re a room of sobbing girls, bald and patchy, with huge eyes. We look like we’re in a concentration camp. We look nothing like ourselves, just ghosts, with no hair, no clothes, no flesh on our bones. Disappearing.

  He stands in the door. No more cheating at weigh-ins, girls. We’re closing the loopholes.

  Chapter Twelve

  Aidan was in the living room when she got back, late. As he was the paper’s editor – and it more or less ran on shoestring and paperclips – he worked from home a lot, looking after Maggie.

  ‘Well,’ she said, putting down her bag.

  Aidan was engrossed in a DVD of Breaking Bad and barely looked up. ‘Well, Maguire.’

  ‘Is she down?’

  ‘Not without a fight. I had to hang a blanket over the curtains before she’d believe me that it’s night-time. But it’s not dark, Daddy, she says.’

  Paula smiled, feeling the twinge of unease she always got when the word was used. It had been a risk, letting Maggie call Aidan Daddy. She didn’t know who’d started it – Pat, maybe. And it seemed too churlish to correct a toddler about the man who put her to bed most days, and so they’d left it, and now it was two years on, and Aidan was Maggie’s father. Except that now Guy might be coming back.

  She pushed the thought away and sat on the arm of the sofa, pressing up close to Aidan. He wore khaki shorts and a T-shirt, black hair flopping over his forehead, just like any dad in the town. His hand left the remote and crept round her waist, eyes not moving from the screen. It rested, strong and warm, on her hip, and she sank into the certainty of it. Ink on his knuckles, a smear of newsprint. This was her place. This would be her husband, soon.

  He said, ‘So, I was thinking this weekend we should visit the hotel. Get a sense of final numbers, confirm the menu and that.’

  ‘Um . . . might be tricky. I’ve got this big case on, the Morgan girl.’

  ‘You always have a big case, Maguire.’

  ‘I know. But this one . . . it’s strange.’

  ‘What’s happening with it?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Ah, here we go, pumping for the story?’ She elbowed him.

  ‘Can I not ask my fiancée about her day?’

  ‘Urgh. I hate that word.’

  ‘It’s what you are, Maguire. At least for a few more weeks.’

  Paula felt a nasty little lurch. God, the wedding was so soon, and he was right, there was still loads to do. ‘I know. No, there’s no sign of Alice Morgan. Though I see according to you she’s been kidnapped by tree-worshipping Satanists.’

  He shrugged. ‘Weird stuff sells papers. And we could be doing with the money, pay for this wedding.’

  ‘I’m more concerned about Oakdale. It’s a strange old place up at that college. What do you know about it?’

  He pressed Mute on the DVD. ‘Did a piece on it a while back. There’s some dodgy American cash behind it, but otherwise it’s just a sort of rehab with qualifications for washed-up rich kids. Hardly surprising one of them would go missing.’

  ‘If I gave you a few names, do you reckon you could do what you do best?’

  ‘And what’s that?’ He squinted at her.

  ‘Dig the dirt, of course.’

  ‘Maguire, I’m insulted. Who is it?’

  ‘Some of Alice Morgan’s uni friends. They’re just not quite ringing true.’

  ‘Rich kids with a dodgy past? That’s my kind of thing.’ His hand stroked her ribcage through her shirt. ‘But here, I resent the implication that’s the only thing I’m good at. What about other things?’

  Paula pretended to consider it. ‘Hm – can’t think of any right now.’

  ‘Do I need to jog your memory?’

  Paula leaned over and paused the DVD. On screen, a bullet left a gun and never arrived. Frozen in mid-air, before the damage was done. That was a missing person, a bullet in flight, never hitting the target. After a while, you started to long for the im
pact. To finally feel the wound that had been done to you, at last, so many years ago. She stood up. ‘Come on, then. Jog it.’

  Aidan stood up too, and caught her face in his hands, and kissed her hard. Her hands went to his hair, so thick and dark. He tasted of mint, and of himself, and . . . She pulled away. He tasted like he usually did – that was the problem.

  ‘What?’ he frowned.

  ‘You’ve been smoking again.’

  ‘I have not!’

  ‘Aidan. I can taste it on you.’

  ‘I go in a lot of smoky places – that’s where the stories are, you know.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. It’s just insulting.’

  ‘I’m no liar, Maguire. I might be many things but I’ve never lied to you.’

  But he had kept things from her. She put her hands on her hips. ‘Aidan.’

  He spoke cajolingly, hands around her waist. ‘Look. OK, the odd time, I still have a smoke. It helps put people at their ease is all. Some of these ould fellas, they don’t trust a man who won’t take a smoke or a drink. And I’m not on the latter, as you well know.’

  Did she know? She glared at him. ‘Are you still buying your own?’

  ‘No. I just cadge the odd one.’

  ‘I don’t want Maggie anywhere near it. I don’t even want her smelling it on you, OK?’

  ‘Catch yourself on, Maguire. I’ve grown up a wee bit now I’m a dad.’

  There was a tiny pause between them, which went on for a second more than was bearable, and Paula wondered if it would always be there, that pocket of making-do, of not-mentioning.

  There was a squawk from upstairs, right on cue. ‘Daaaaady!’

  ‘The woman herself,’ Aidan said. ‘I’ll go.’ He dropped a careless kiss on Paula’s hand as he went out, the kind of gesture between people with love to spare, to throw away. She saw his jacket over the chair, carelessly tossed as usual, no thought to tidying up after himself. She didn’t know what made her do it. She crossed the room, telling herself she’d hang it up, but then she was slipping her hand into the pocket, feeling the cold silver of the Zippo lighter which had been his father’s, and breathing the spicy smell of his rolling tobacco, the onion-skin rustle of his Rizlas.