A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4)

by Claire McGowan

  Ah, bollocks. It was hardly Guy’s fault Aidan had lost the head and ruined everything. And could she blame him, when she still hadn’t found the strength to talk to him about Maggie? She just had to get through this case, then everything could be sorted out. She tried to match his light tone. ‘Come on, if rioting was an Olympic sport we’d have medalled in every Games.’ Saw his look of relief.

  ‘Every summer, is it? There were riots the year Yvonne went missing too, weren’t there?’

  ‘Yeah. Shut the whole town down, my dad said.’ How history repeated. In 1981, a missing girl, a dead terrorist. Same now. And no answers to any of it, all of it a mystery tangled in on itself.

  Paula stopped suddenly. Yes, there had been riots the year Yvonne O’Neill was lost. It was why the police had taken so long to get out to Crocknashee – the roads had been blocked. No one getting in or out from lunchtime till nearly midnight.

  ‘Paula?’ Guy was watching her. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Um. Maybe. I don’t know.’ She pulled a piece of paper towards her and quickly made some sketches. Her lips pursed as she moved it, then counted on her fingers, muttering to herself. ‘No one in or out – not till late – but he was back in the afternoon. Yvonne’s mother saw his car! She said so!’

  ‘Who?’ Guy was looking baffled. He glanced at her scribbles. ‘Is that a map?’

  Paula tapped the big blob she’d drawn. ‘Ballyterrin.’ Then the small house shape. ‘The church. That’s where Yvonne was last seen. And Garrett’s alibi was he was at work. But Yvonne’s mother said his car was there during the day. Why would his car be there? There was no way he could have been there at four o’clock. Unless he never went into town at all.’

  She saw Guy was nodding, getting it. ‘What should we—’

  ‘Wait. I just need to check something first.’ Paula scooped up her bag. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  She knew she wasn’t supposed to. She knew she was meant to sit in the office, looking at files, observing, writing reports. But this, this she could do – find things out. Talk to people. Hear what they were actually saying, in the spaces between their words. And at the moment, she could not do anything else, not comfort her child, not save Aidan, not make Pat better. So she was going to do this instead – Willis Campbell be damned.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The woman had a small child by the hand, a little older than Maggie, eating a rice cake and wearing a blue T-shirt. A boy, maybe. They were almost in the door of the terraced house; the woman was fumbling with the keys.

  Paula smiled, tried to look non-threatening. ‘I’m looking for the family of Andrew Philips.’

  ‘I’m his daughter. Suzanne.’ Straightforward, but not warm.

  ‘Suzanne, I’m Dr Maguire from the PSNI – we’re investigating an old case which your father gave evidence in. The Yvonne O’Neill disappearance.’

  Suzanne put the key in the lock, without taking her eyes off Paula. ‘I think I remember hearing about that, yes.’

  ‘We interviewed Anderson Garrett at the time – your father gave him an alibi.’

  ‘That’s right. Dad worked for them for years and years. Then he set up on his own.’ Paula was surprised at the shabbiness of the terraced house, if her father had owned his own law firm. ‘What do you need from me?’ asked Suzanne.

  ‘Well, I think that Garrett couldn’t have been in work that day after all. There were riots, the place shut down – he’d not have been able to get home in time. But we have a witness says his car was there that day.’

  ‘So you’re checking if I know anything?’

  ‘Your father was the only one who could alibi Garrett, Suzanne – I need to check it out.’ She couldn’t explain that it felt like a loose end. One tug and the whole fabric might unravel.

  ‘Dr Maguire. My dad’s been dead a long time. I don’t know about that year – I wasn’t born – but I know the Garretts had some hold over him. Even after he’d his own firm, Anderson or the old lady could call – Anderson wasn’t much of a lawyer, by all accounts – and Dad would always go running. Mum used to tell him, that family says jump, Andrew, and you say how high?’

  ‘You don’t have any idea why?’

  ‘No. Like I say, I wasn’t born then.’ The little boy pulled at her arm, grizzling. ‘OK, OK, we’ll go in now.’ She turned to Paula, ponytail flipping. ‘I’m sorry I don’t know more. I hope you find something. Terrible, to be lost all this time.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  At the door, Suzanne turned back. The boy was inside, taking off his shoes with great song and dance. ‘Dr Maguire? I don’t want to speak ill of my father – but if it helps, well, we lost the law firm when I was twelve. And the house.’

  Paula stopped. Under her hand the wood of the gate was rough, sun-warmed. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Well, yes. The bookie’s shop. Dad was a gambling addict. So.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know if that’s something to do with it. Maybe he owed the Garretts money.’

  Paula thanked her, and she went into the house, and Paula went to her car. If Andrew Philips had lied, if the Garretts had forced him to because of debts, that could be it. The dangling thread they needed. And if Garrett had killed Yvonne, maybe he’d killed Alice too. She found herself thinking, what strangers our parents are. The people who bring us up, make our breakfast, give birth to us. They have whole lives we know nothing about. Her own mother’s life was as dark and impenetrable as the waters of Lough Derg, just like this case. But there was one person who might be able to shed some light on both.

  Alice

  It takes time to disappear. First, you have to plan. You have to get money out, a little every day, and put it away so you don’t spend it. Or if you have access to, say, a church collection box, you can get money there. Saint Blannad doesn’t mind – she protects the hungry. Seeing as I’ve been hungry since I was seven years old, she must really like me. Then you buy everything you need – clothes for sleeping out rough, a little tent maybe – but you get them a long time before. Because people remember, and they have CCTV – so wait until it’s been wiped. Move out of town so people get used to not seeing you every day. Pretend via Facebook you’re still skinny. Post up some old pics. G-chat your former room-mate to say you just saw her in the buttery – she’s there every day, stuffing her fat face, so she’ll believe you. Ask your nerdy friend – ex-friend – to wipe your phone for you. Get rid of all that search data about how to disappear. Make him think you’ve forgiven him. Laugh to yourself, because you never will.

  Next, you have to change your appearance. There are easy ways to do this – black hair dye you bought a long time ago, with cash. Scissors to cut it all off, glasses. But to really look different, you have to be different.

  You have to start eating is the main thing. I mean really stuff yourself. Put as much as you can in your mouth – it doesn’t matter if you see people who don’t know you well. They won’t comment on it to the police, because for all they know you always look like this. They won’t say, OMG, Alice got fat. The only person who seemed to notice was the Creep. I saw him look a few times, but of course he didn’t say anything. And he’d do his best not to talk to the police. Because when you’re trying to hide something, you do what you can to avoid them. And fuck me, did the Creep have something to hide.

  How can I do this? Me, who struggles to eat at the best of times? Well, it’s simple really – I got the miracle I asked for. Saint Blannad. I prayed to her, and then I could eat. She showed me I had to do it. So that I could die, and live again.

  Next, you need transport. You can’t get a bus or a train because they’ll have CCTV. I recommend, if you can, finding someone with a nice car they leave the keys in, because who would steal it all the way out here? Then you steal it. Trust me. They won’t tell the police. They won’t want the attention. You need to save the petrol, but you can buy some once you’re far enough away. Use cash. Everyone here still uses cash anyway, they like the feel of it in their fat
country hands or something. Put a hat over your face. You’ll look different by then – they’ll be looking for a small blonde girl, and you’ll be neither blonde, nor small.

  Next, you book yourself into an island retreat where they take cash and don’t ask too many questions, so long as you look holy enough. Stay there till the heat dies down. It’s perfect, because they don’t even watch the news.

  I’m not saying I achieved the perfect disappearance. I mean, of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t be writing this if I had. Duh. I made some mistakes. All the same, it was easier than it should have been. My so-called friends hadn’t seen me in a month or more, and my so-called parents longer. All they knew was I looked like my daily selfie. Blonde. Size six to eight. Funny how we believe what we see, even if we know the reality must have long moved on.

  Turning my phone on, that was a big mistake. I’d been using Katy’s – stroke of genius, that, pretending to be her. Copying her dumbass dyslexic style. Again, it was too easy. We believe what we see. But I couldn’t resist turning on my own phone, just for a second. To see the messages. To see if anyone wanted me home, loved me, missed me. I thought a minute would be OK. I was stupid, and I had to ditch the phone because of it. But – thanks to that fingerprint of Dermot’s, it all turned out well. Saint Blannad was looking after me.

  If it hadn’t been for that, I might have gone back by now. Pretended I’d gone mad or something. Just long enough to force them to tell the truth. Force them to admit they hurt me. But Saint Blannad had other plans for me, and so I stayed missing. Not going further away was a risk. Staying on the island was a risk. Going to my own search was a risk – I even talked to that red-haired woman they have working for the police. She looked right in my face and she didn’t know me. Because I’ve disappeared. In the realest sense of the word. And I ask myself sometimes – if I really want to be dead, why am I still around, haunting the place? Because I want to achieve the impossible. I want to be at my own funeral. I want to see my own search party. I want to see people cry for me. I mean, who could resist that?

  I think, if you’re honest with yourself, you would do the same.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Paula was accustomed now to the look Bob Hamilton got when she showed up at his door. Wary, tired, and a tinge of something like sadness. Nonetheless he showed her into his dust-free, airless living room, and she sat down on the overstuffed cream sofa. Linda was out with Ian at a physio appointment, he explained. Bob’s only son – same age as Paula – was severely disabled.

  ‘I bet you’re glad to not be out policing these riots,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, it’s terrible. You’d think they’d catch on by now, with the peace process fifteen years ago.’

  ‘I think they enjoy it, to be honest. Bit of a hooley.’

  He sat down opposite her in a matching armchair. On the mantelpiece, a clock ticked in the still air. ‘Did you want to ask me something about the O’Neill case?’

  ‘Sort of.’ She explained her epiphany of earlier, and her visit to Suzanne Philips.

  Bob, never one to react quickly to anything, thought it over for a while. ‘We missed that, then. I don’t know if the mother mentioned seeing the car, she was so upset at the time. There’s no way to prove it, though, if the man’s dead. You’d have to break Garrett.’

  ‘Or his mother.’

  ‘Well, yes. If I remember rightly, she doesn’t give much ground.’

  ‘You mentioned the families were having some kind of boundary dispute?’

  ‘It’s a long time ago now. But if I mind it, the O’Neills owned part of the access road, and the Garretts wanted to buy it so they could sell the lot to Oakdale College. But Yvonne’s family wouldn’t let it go.’

  ‘That’s a possible motive.’

  ‘Aye, maybe. But short of a confession or a body turning up, it’ll be hard to prove now.’

  ‘I know. But we have to try all the same.’

  Bob looked up slowly. ‘I want to tell you something else, while you’re here. It’s not my place, but . . . that Conlon fella. I heard about what happened – and I’m sorry for you.’

  She flinched. Immediately it poured into her, the shock and horror, like ice in her veins. Aidan killing a man. Aidan in prison. It could still catch her out, when she’d managed to think of other things for a while.

  Bob went on. ‘Do you know much about the hunger strikes?’

  ‘Yes – well, I was only born the year before. But people talk about it a lot.’

  ‘The year Yvonne went missing, there was a murder in town. During the hunger strikes. Local IRA commander, high-up. Had a direct line to the families of the strikers – and he was pushing for a deal. Rumour had it the British government were close to settling. There were six men dead by then. This fella thought they should take the deal, end the strikes.’

  ‘I heard about that. The riots it caused, I mean. But why wouldn’t they want to settle?’

  ‘Think about what happened after. One of the strikers elected to Parliament – it was a big, big thing. Huge. After that, thon Sinn Fein lot, they got taken seriously, like a real political party. But if it had all ended sooner, before ten men were dead . . .’

  ‘You’re saying they deliberately extended it? To get more capital from it?’

  Bob looked uncomfortable. ‘People have been saying that for years. There’s rumours there was a deal on the table, but they told the strikers there wasn’t. So they’d carry on, starving themselves to death. This fella that was killed, supposedly he’d found out the truth, was threatening to go to the press. His brother was on the list to strike next. They timed it, you know, so there’d be a wave of deaths, one after the other. Oh, it was very well thought out.’

  ‘So what’s that got to do with anything?’ She was impatient. Why this now?

  ‘Conlon. There was talk he’d done the murder. I had all this out of a Provo we lifted in the eighties. He’d have said anything to get his sentence cut. But we couldn’t tie Conlon to it, no more than we could tie him to your friend’s da’s murder.’

  He meant John O’Hara. Just one of many crimes Conlon had likely carried out over the years. Was a man like that better off dead? She pushed the thought away. ‘You couldn’t prove it?’

  ‘We hadn’t DNA in those days. It’s one of the cases the Prosecutor said we’d have to let go. Too far in the past. But Conlon was fingered for it, aye. Said he had an alibi. One of his women lied for him, like as not. He’d usually a few on the go.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this, Bob?’

  ‘We were told he was a marked man. Conlon. Knew too much, you see. The kind of fella who wouldn’t last long once the prison gates shut behind him. And . . .’

  As soon as he’d set foot out of jail, he’d been killed. Finally, she understood what Bob was driving at. She shook her head, struggling. ‘But Aidan hit him – he admitted it.’

  ‘Aye, but there’s hitting, and there’s killing. And who’d know how to kill a man like Conlon – your friend there, or some hardened Provo that’s been waiting thirty years to get revenge? I just thought, you know – maybe it might be worth a look.’

  Paula let out a long breath. ‘OK. Thank you. I’ll – I need to think about it.’ She got up. She saw his face slacken, no doubt with relief that she hadn’t brought up her mother again. Then she realised she was going to anyway. ‘Bob – I know you suppressed the statement. The one that said my mother was – seeing someone. A man. I just want to ask – did you do it to spare us? Me and Dad? Just tell me if I’m wrong.’

  Bob said nothing. The clock ticked a few more times.

  Paula nodded. ‘Thanks. Thank you for doing that. I don’t know if it – but I know you meant well. Do you know anything else at all? Did someone take her? Did she go with that man?’

  Silence.

  ‘Please, Bob. I’m – I can’t do this any more. I gave up, before. But if you do know something, please tell me now, so I can – I have some decisions to make. For me, and Ma
ggie, and what we do next.’

  She turned to find Bob’s eyes on her. Tired. Kind. ‘Paula.’ He never called her that. ‘I know it’s hard, that you don’t know, and you with a wean now yourself. I know you think I didn’t look hard enough. But I looked everywhere. I searched high and low for your mammy. The statement – I didn’t show your da because I owed the man, and he didn’t need to know his wife had some fella coming to the house. But if I thought she’d run off with him, I’d have said. I wouldn’t have left you all this time, not knowing.’

  ‘So you don’t . . .’

  ‘No. There was nothing to find. I promise you. Nobody could have looked as hard as I did.’ He took her hand – Bob, a man who would hardly look her in the eyes when she’d first started at the unit. She felt tears gather, bit her lip hard. ‘I promise you, pet. You can stop now. There was nothing to find. Nothing.’

  Paula felt her shoulders sag, and a terrible punch of sadness went through her. It was over. They would never know. And with the sadness came something else – something not a million miles from relief.

  Back in the car, she took out her phone and rang Corry. ‘It’s me. Any word from Avril?’

  ‘There’s going to be a start of term party tonight. They’ll all be there, Peter and Katy too. Avril said she’d be in touch every hour up to then, so we can be on standby.’

  ‘Right. Well, you know you said I should stop interviewing people? I maybe did it again.’

  Corry sighed. ‘Did you at least get a result?’

  ‘I think so. You might want to meet me at the Garretts’ house.’

  Alice

  The blood, I admit, I hadn’t thought of before. That was the hard part, I guess. But it came to me as I sat in the church thinking about what was under the floor, the bit that looks like a gravestone but if you look very carefully, lifts up. I thought about what he’d done to her. What they’d done to me. And about all the people who’d led me to be here, fat, my hair rat-brown and chopped, about to leave my own life. It was then I felt something on my thigh, running down it. Just like the day Charlotte cut me. I saw my jeans darken in a spot, and I touched it. When I took my hand away it was red.