Read Online A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) by Claire McGowan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Claire McGowan
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been very helpful.’
He looked up in surprise as they rose. ‘That’s it?’
‘For now.’ Corry buttoned her jacket. ‘You won’t be going anywhere, of course, if we need you.’ She gave Paula a look, the meaning clear: enough .
Chapter Nine
‘This is the one you want?’ The wee lad who ran the storage facility was about eighteen, in a green polo shirt that bit into the painful acne on his neck.
‘Yeah.’ Coughing on the dust, Paula stepped into the unit. ‘Thanks, I’ll be grand here.’
He went, his feet clanging on the cold stone floors. Down below, he was playing the local radio station, Radio Ballyterrin, with important breaking news such as a herd of cattle getting loose on the road, and a suspicious package being blown up by Bomb Disposal. Northern Ireland was that kind of mixed-up place.
Paula had been given permission to access the archives earlier that evening, by an unnaturally helpful Willis Campbell. He’d said, ‘It’s hard to credit it. This other case happened on the same day, thirty years back?’
‘Thirty-two. I need to get the file out of storage, check a few things.’
He’d waved her on. ‘Yes, yes, do what you must. Oh, Dr Maguire?’
‘Yes.’ She’d paused, hating herself for adding: ‘Sir.’
‘I hear you get good results. I also hear you think the rules don’t apply to you.’ She said nothing. ‘I’d like to see more of the former, less of the latter, please. Then we’ll get along just fine, won’t we?’
‘I’m sure we will.’ She paused again, thinking – Oh, Guy . ‘Sir.’
‘Lovely.’ Then he’d added, as if remembering something he’d seen in a management manual: ‘You’re doing a good job, Dr Maguire. Carry on.’
But she wasn’t, she thought now, seeing the piles of archive boxes, labelled in what looked like Avril’s neat handwriting. Women 30–45. Yvonne would be in the box marked Women 18–29. A safe one, where Paula wasn’t likely to accidentally find her mother’s file. Of course, she had a copy of it in the desk at home. She hadn’t opened it in two years, but all the same it was there, while life went on around it. A nasty little secret on the underside of everything.
No, she wasn’t doing a good job. Alice had already been lost a day, and that meant the window for finding a missing person was closing. And with Alice’s background, suicide was the most likely thing. But why no body? Had she gone off somewhere alone to die, like an animal? And what of the strange coincidence about Yvonne? Paula found the right box, labelled 1970–90 (thank God for Avril; policing’s gain was admin’s loss), and pulled it out, grunting with the effort.
Paula read the file sitting on a squashy pile of boxes, by the dim light of the unit’s bare bulb. Soon she forgot about the cheerless surroundings, and the chill of the concrete walls. She was back in 1981, the year of her birth, and feeling it again – the first time in so long – the rush, the need to find and bring home the lost. Yvonne O’Neill, she noted, did indeed have a look of Alice Morgan. The fiancé who’d died had been the only man in her life, according to the RUC. No boyfriends, not even many friends, just her teaching job, among the same nuns who’d once been her family, and the invalid mother she’d gone back to every night. Yvonne had helped out with Girl Guides, visited sick neighbours. A good girl, you’d say. Paula looked at the old grainy photo of Yvonne, smiling, her hair falling in pale waves. Someone else had been cropped out of it – an engagement photo, maybe. There was a funeral order of service in the file too, the front reading David Alan Magee, 1 May 1981 . A picture on that of a young man in a denim shirt, also smiling. Paula fitted the two together, the edges making one photo, David’s arm slotting in place around Yvonne’s shoulder. So it wasn’t long after her fiancé’s death, the disappearance. Him dead. Her gone.
She ran a finger over
He looked up in surprise as they rose. ‘That’s it?’
‘For now.’ Corry buttoned her jacket. ‘You won’t be going anywhere, of course, if we need you.’ She gave Paula a look, the meaning clear: enough .
Chapter Nine
‘This is the one you want?’ The wee lad who ran the storage facility was about eighteen, in a green polo shirt that bit into the painful acne on his neck.
‘Yeah.’ Coughing on the dust, Paula stepped into the unit. ‘Thanks, I’ll be grand here.’
He went, his feet clanging on the cold stone floors. Down below, he was playing the local radio station, Radio Ballyterrin, with important breaking news such as a herd of cattle getting loose on the road, and a suspicious package being blown up by Bomb Disposal. Northern Ireland was that kind of mixed-up place.
Paula had been given permission to access the archives earlier that evening, by an unnaturally helpful Willis Campbell. He’d said, ‘It’s hard to credit it. This other case happened on the same day, thirty years back?’
‘Thirty-two. I need to get the file out of storage, check a few things.’
He’d waved her on. ‘Yes, yes, do what you must. Oh, Dr Maguire?’
‘Yes.’ She’d paused, hating herself for adding: ‘Sir.’
‘I hear you get good results. I also hear you think the rules don’t apply to you.’ She said nothing. ‘I’d like to see more of the former, less of the latter, please. Then we’ll get along just fine, won’t we?’
‘I’m sure we will.’ She paused again, thinking – Oh, Guy . ‘Sir.’
‘Lovely.’ Then he’d added, as if remembering something he’d seen in a management manual: ‘You’re doing a good job, Dr Maguire. Carry on.’
But she wasn’t, she thought now, seeing the piles of archive boxes, labelled in what looked like Avril’s neat handwriting. Women 30–45. Yvonne would be in the box marked Women 18–29. A safe one, where Paula wasn’t likely to accidentally find her mother’s file. Of course, she had a copy of it in the desk at home. She hadn’t opened it in two years, but all the same it was there, while life went on around it. A nasty little secret on the underside of everything.
No, she wasn’t doing a good job. Alice had already been lost a day, and that meant the window for finding a missing person was closing. And with Alice’s background, suicide was the most likely thing. But why no body? Had she gone off somewhere alone to die, like an animal? And what of the strange coincidence about Yvonne? Paula found the right box, labelled 1970–90 (thank God for Avril; policing’s gain was admin’s loss), and pulled it out, grunting with the effort.
Paula read the file sitting on a squashy pile of boxes, by the dim light of the unit’s bare bulb. Soon she forgot about the cheerless surroundings, and the chill of the concrete walls. She was back in 1981, the year of her birth, and feeling it again – the first time in so long – the rush, the need to find and bring home the lost. Yvonne O’Neill, she noted, did indeed have a look of Alice Morgan. The fiancé who’d died had been the only man in her life, according to the RUC. No boyfriends, not even many friends, just her teaching job, among the same nuns who’d once been her family, and the invalid mother she’d gone back to every night. Yvonne had helped out with Girl Guides, visited sick neighbours. A good girl, you’d say. Paula looked at the old grainy photo of Yvonne, smiling, her hair falling in pale waves. Someone else had been cropped out of it – an engagement photo, maybe. There was a funeral order of service in the file too, the front reading David Alan Magee, 1 May 1981 . A picture on that of a young man in a denim shirt, also smiling. Paula fitted the two together, the edges making one photo, David’s arm slotting in place around Yvonne’s shoulder. So it wasn’t long after her fiancé’s death, the disappearance. Him dead. Her gone.
She ran a finger over
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