Controlled Explosions

by Claire McGowan

  Copyright © 2015 Claire McGowan

  The right of Claire McGowan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2015

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 2830 7

  Cover photographs © Gregory Guivarch and Boris Mrdja/Shutterstock (landscape & sky) and Susan Fox/Arcangel Images (figure)

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Also By Claire McGowan

  Praise

  Controlled Explosions

  An exclusive extract from The Silent Dead

  For more from the Paula Maguire series

  About the Author

  Claire McGowan grew up in a small village in Northern Ireland. After achieving a degree in English and French from Oxford University, and time spent living in China and France, she moved to London where she works in the charity sector and also teaches creative writing. CONTROLLED EXPLOSIONS is the first short story in her Paula Maguire series. THE SILENT DEAD, her fourth novel and the third in the series, is out soon.

  About the Book

  Paula Maguire, forensic psychologist on the Irish border, returns as a teenager in this exclusive digital short story from Claire McGowan, proclaimed by Ken Bruen as ‘Ireland’s answer to Ruth Rendell’.

  1998 and future forensic psychologist Paula Maguire is still in school, being taunted by bullies. In particular one girl, whose family has paramilitary links, is calling her a rat. Even though Paula might not know why her mother went missing five years before, she’s sure she’s no traitor’s daughter.

  But words are nothing compared to what her policeman father, PJ, is dealing with. The hot summer is simmering with violence and the entire force is focused on finding a bomber leaving devices on the routes of Orange parades.

  When PJ is injured at the scene of a crime, Paula is shocked to find herself next in the perpetrator’s crosshairs. The threats at school don’t feel so empty now, but what connection could there be? As the possibility of first love appears, will Paula be able to find out in time to save herself and follow her heart?

  By Claire McGowan and available from Headline

  The Fall

  The Lost

  The Dead Ground

  The Silent Dead (coming soon)

  Controlled Explosions (A Paula Maguire Short Story)

  Praise for The Dead Ground:

  ‘Fast paced and engaging’ Evening Echo

  ‘Enthralling … evoked wonderfully’ Sunday Mirror

  ‘It’s a gripping and gory read and shows McGowan to be a thriller writer of exceptional talent’ Irish Independent

  ‘McGowan’s book is bloody and brilliant’ Angela Clarke

  ‘The Dead Ground is a fantastic and intense book that grips you right from the very first line … This is an intriguing and well plotted second novel in a series that should establish Claire McGowan as a leading author in the world of Irish crime fiction’ www.welovethisbook.com

  ‘Paula has such a depth to her and is one of the strongest female leads to be found out there … A terrific read’ www.lizlovesbooks.com

  ‘Claire McGowan has delivered another clever crime thriller … Right up there with the best of them … A good old fashioned who-done-it with a modern twist … Well done Claire McGowan, you have definitely secured your place on bookshelves alongside Karin Slaughter and Jonathan Kellerman ’ www.writing.ie

  ‘McGowan is a brilliant writer who knows how to keep the reader turning their pages waiting to see what happens next … This is a fresh, exciting and completely readable thriller’ www.louisereviews.com

  ‘An excellent read and one that has confirmed that I will be looking out for the third in the Paula Maguire series’ www.cleopatralovesbooks.wordpress.com

  Praise for The Lost:

  ‘This thriller is fresh and accessible without ever compromising on grit or suspense’ Erin Kelly, author of The Poison Tree

  ‘A brilliant portrait of a fractured society and a mystery full of heart stopping twists. Compelling, clever and entertaining’ Jane Casey, author of The Burning

  ‘A gripping yarn you will be unable to put down’ Sun

  ‘McGowan’s style is pacey and direct, and the twists come thick and fast’ Declan Burke, Irish Times

  ‘Engaging and gripping’ Northern Echo

  ‘Taut plotting and assured writing … a highly satisfying thriller’ Good Housekeeping

  ‘Claire McGowan is a writer at the top of her game’ www.lisareadsbooks.blogspot.co.uk

  Praise for The Fall:

  ‘There is nothing not to like … a compelling and flawless thriller’ S.J. Bolton

  ‘She knows how to tell a cracking story. She will go far’ Daily Mail

  ‘The characters are finely drawn, and it’s concern for them, rather than for whodunnit, that provides the page-turning impetus in this promising debut’ Guardian

  ‘Hugely impressive. The crime will keep you reading, but it’s the characters you’ll remember’ Irish Examiner

  ‘It’s a clever, beautifully detailed exploration of the fragility of daily life … The genius of this story is that it could happen to any of us, and that’s why it hits so hard’ Elizabeth Haynes

  ‘Immediate, engaging and relevant, The Fall hits the ground running and doesn’t stop. I read it in one breathless sitting’ Erin Kelly

  ‘Highly original and compelling’ Mark Edwards

  Ballyterrin, Northern Ireland, June 1998

  The town was burning.

  Sergeant Bob Hamilton felt the heat on his face, scorching through the sides of the armoured jeep – someone had held a light to the line of cars dragged across the road. When the flames went up, licking and hungry, you could hear the shouts. Pure joy. Like weans burning grass under a magnifying glass. That was the worst, how much they were all enjoying it. He raised a hand to his head, mopped the sweat off on the sleeve of his uniform. Hottest day of the year and they were gussied up in full riot gear inside the oven of the jeep. Four grown men – five if you counted the other. The smell of sweaty oxters and burning tyres. The jeep rocking to and fro as the crowd battered it, pushing, shouting. Every time a stone hit, Bob flinched. It was hard not to.

  ‘Which is it this time?’ The man next to Bob had to shout to make himself heard over the noise outside. He looked round at the police officers, who all stared straight ahead into their visors, ignoring him. ‘Is it going ahead or is it cancelled? What are they angry about?’

  No one answered.

  Bob could hear the weariness in his own voice. ‘This parade was meant to go ahead.’

  ‘So why aren’t they moving?’

  One of the other officers grunted. ‘Because there’s a feckin’ bomb in the way, that’s why.’

  The man perked up. ‘A bomb? Really?’ He reached fo
r his tape recorder, holding it higher.

  ‘There’s a suspicious device on the route.’ Bob gave the official version. ‘Bomb disposal are in. It’ll be made safe, it’s just … causing a wee bit of tension.’

  Someone laughed, a short, bitter bark in the confined space.

  The man with the tape recorder swung round for a second at the sound, then back again, like a dog with a bone it couldn’t crack into. ‘So these are Protestants out there? Orangemen?’

  Journalists. Always trying to make sense of it, why one half of the population wanted to walk down the road in orange sashes, beating drums, just because they’d done it for the last three hundred years since some battle had been fought on that site. Why the other side, after all this time, had decided they didn’t really want men in sashes and bowler hats coming down their road, and in order to make this point were setting the town on fire and planting bombs on their own streets.

  The truth was, it didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t even a very interesting street. A row of houses and a bookie’s on the corner, a run-down corner shop. The giant plastic ice cream outside it had bent over in the riot, and looked like it was about to melt all over the pavement. Bob knew the feeling.

  He tried to explain. ‘They’re some of both. Catholics who didn’t want it going ahead, Protestants annoyed at the hold-up.’ Personally he thought they were all scum, anyone from either side who’d set fire to the place they lived in. It was their town. Not much, but all they had. For the past three days, if you looked out the windows of the police station, at the sun reflecting on metal jeeps and plexiglass riot shields, it had seemed as if all of Ballyterrin was on fire. The town was in stand-off, some parades going, some parades cancelled, someone angry with every decision, and like as not showing that anger by setting fire to a few cars or trashing a few shops or even firing a few wee shots at the police. Businesses had put down their shutters and closed, roads were blocked with burnt-out cars, and half the town gone away on holiday to escape it. The Twelfth Fortnight, they called it. Traditionally it was the Catholic population fleeing overseas, letting the Orange Order get on with it for a few weeks, marching their marches and singing their songs and beating their drums. This year, with the Good Friday Agreement just signed in April and the new Parades Commission getting involved, well, things were … mixed up.

  The journalist, some English fella with an accent like grating machinery, was taking notes by hand now. Maybe, God willing, the batteries on his wee machine were dead. ‘And you, Sergeant, are you Protestant?’ They always pronounced it like that, with the t stuttering in the middle, instead of softened into a d like you did if you were local. Bob met the gaze of his partner – no, his deputy, he had to stop forgetting that – over the man’s head, and they both shrugged. Then PJ Maguire looked away. It was a hard habit to break, thinking of PJ as his partner, though they hadn’t been that for years. Not since Bob’s promotion, and everything else that happened in 1993. PJ was a Catholic, and for various reasons Bob wasn’t his favourite person, but dear God, the English. They hadn’t a notion what went on here. ‘Aye, I am,’ he said, thinking of the sash in the wardrobe back home, pressed and under plastic. One year he’d led this parade himself, now he was shutting it down. ‘But right now I’m just a police officer.’

  PJ’s radio buzzed and he listened for a moment. ‘They’re doing a controlled explosion. We better move on back.’

  ‘Can we watch it blow up?’ asked the journalist, scribbling excitedly in his notebook. ‘That would be amazing.’

  Bob Hamilton sighed, and watched his town burn.

  ‘Tout.’

  She could hear the word behind her, hissing in her ear. At the front of the class, the teacher was droning on about abortion.

  ‘Your ma was a tout.’

  Paula spun around, teeth bared. Everyone’s head was down, writing, but she knew who’d said it all the same. ‘Shut up!’

  ‘What’s that racket?’ The teacher, Mrs Reilly, was fat, like really fat. Once she was wedged into her seat she didn’t get out for anything. ‘Paula? Is that you talking?’

  She felt the red sweep up her face, the unfairness of it, as behind her a breeze of giggling broke out. ‘No, miss.’

  ‘In that case can you tell me why the Catholic Church doesn’t support abortion?’

  Paula sighed. The file paper in front of her was covered in doodles, stars and hearts. No notes on the lesson at all.

  ‘Well? I knew you weren’t listen—’

  Paula said, bored: ‘It’s because of the scripture verse “before I formed you in the womb I knew you”, that shows life starts at the moment of conception. Jeremiah one, five.’

  Another faint giggle, this time not aimed at Paula. She looked down at her paper again.

  The teacher said nothing for a few moments. ‘Well. That’s right. Now keep it down, please.’

  Behind her, Paula could feel Catriona’s beady eyes bore into her.

  Tout. Your ma was a tout.

  The worst thing about it: it was probably true.

  ‘Bunch of cows,’ said Saoirse, scowling, when Paula caught up with her in the science corridor. ‘You should tell someone.’

  Paula made a noise that was almost a laugh. You never told on people. Everyone knew that. The teachers did nothing, and you just got in more trouble on top of the bullying. ‘Yeah, sure I’ll do that. Duh.’

  ‘Anyway, what did you reckon to ER last night? Wasn’t it brilliant? I wish Dr Carter would marry me. He’s sooooo gorgeous.’ Saoirse was going to be a doctor; she’d always known it. Paula wondered sometimes if she knew it wouldn’t be exactly like ER.

  ‘Yeah … it was good.’

  ‘Listen. Forget about Catriona O’Keeffe. She’s just a little Provo bitch. Come on.’ Saoirse put her arm through Paula’s as they wandered down the hot corridor, with its reek of Impulse and PE kits. ‘We’re getting out of here, remember? One more year! Then we’ll be in Belfast, we can get our own flat, we can have people round for dinner …’

  But there’d be no getting out. There’d be Catrionas in Belfast too, lots of them. And everyone would know Paula’s da was a Catholic policeman and her ma was maybe a tout and maybe dead but maybe not. Sometimes she couldn’t stand it. She’d been starting to think, though she had no idea how to tell Saoirse, that maybe she’d go even further away than Belfast. Further than Dublin too. Maybe she’d go as far away as she could. Maybe she’d just keep running until it wasn’t possible to find her way back.

  ‘What’ve you now? I’ve Statistics, FUN.’

  ‘Eh … I’ve a free.’

  ‘Lucky. See you on the bus then.’

  ‘Yeah. See ya.’

  Saoirse had a normal life. She had both her parents, she had three brothers and two sisters. On Sundays they sat in a little row in Mass, all of them going up to Communion with clean faces and crossed hands. Paula, she had … well, nothing.

  ‘We put him inside. Didn’t we?’

  Detective Inspector Alec Johnson stared round the table. No one answered. He glared at the man furthest from him, who was tipped back in his chair, shirtsleeves rolled up. ‘Patrick. It was you made the arrest.’

  PJ Maguire didn’t like being called by his first name, Bob knew. Couldn’t blame him. If your name was Patrick, you may as well wear a T-shirt saying ‘I’m a Taig, please set fire to my house’. ‘Aye, sir, it was. Red Hugh’s in the Maze and he hasn’t put a foot outside it in three years. That’s a fact.’

  ‘So why are we still finding his signature bombs all over the routes of Orange Order parades?’ Johnson slapped the paper down on the table. It was the analysis of the device from earlier that day, the fifth they’d found that summer. A list of chemicals as long as your arm. Johnson liked to pace up and down behind you in meetings – kept you on your toes. Bob tried to concentrate. Johnson was talking. ‘See those long names? That’s fertiliser. We all know Red Hugh favoured fertiliser – he used to get subsidies for it on his farm. From the British Governmen
t. Then he put it into bombs to blow up British Army patrols.’

  ‘I doubt he appreciated the irony,’ PJ muttered. Bob stared down at the table. He could still picture the man at his trial. Mad eyes and a straggly beard like some Russian Commie – they called him Red Hugh because he’d got into the Provos via a dalliance with radical Marxism. That, and the brand of fertiliser he used leaked a red dye that was exactly the colour of blood.

  Johnson went on. ‘He uses these same detonators. He even uses this brand of copper wiring, but he’s in the Maze. So what’s going on? How is this possible?’

  No one had any answers.

  ‘Sir?’ A female voice, quiet but clear. It said – listen to me. I’ve got as much right to speak as you. ‘Do you not think maybe someone’s taken over Red Hugh’s bomb factory?’

  Johnson looked annoyed. ‘That’s where I was going next, Miss Corry.’

  ‘It’s Detective Constable.’

  Bob looked at her from the corner of his eye, which was close enough. It wasn’t right, all that blond hair and the short skirts. This Corry girl was from Belfast and had been pushed up the ranks, though she was barely even thirty. She’d appeared in the station at the start of parade season, after they’d found the first bomb. They didn’t even have a vacancy but there she was. And she had a baby, he’d heard. Who was looking after it while she was sitting here telling her elders what to do? Bob had been still on traffic at that age. Of course, things were different then.

  Bob had started at the station in 1968, on the same day as Alec Johnson, and Sergeant Ian Robinson had trained them both, showed them how to survive, how to look for car bombs, how to vary your route to work, how to get answers out of some cocky wee IRA shite with a balaclava in his back pocket and a bent lawyer on speed-dial. Until the day Robinson forgot his own rules, and started his BMW in the car park.

  They’d heard the bang three storeys up. Cups fell off tables and shattered. The windows bubbled in. Bob had frozen, tea soaking into his shirt and blood on his fingers from trying to catch the broken mug.