A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘Nice one, Maguire. It’ll be on your head when Avril gets hurt by that dick Franks.’

Paula looked round; no one important could hear what Gerard was hissing at her. She pulled her seat round to face him. ‘Look, this is what she wants, yeah? She wants to be in the police.’

‘She doesn’t know what it means. Look at you and me, Maguire. I’ve been shot. You’ve had a knife stuck in you. And we’ve sent Avril in to that bunch of weirdos, who’ve more than likely done their own friend in?’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘Well, someone probably has. It’s not safe!’

‘I know! It’s never safe, though, is it? We just have to make the decision, is it worth it to us to try. And it’s Avril’s decision to make this time.’

‘Dr Maguire is right.’ Guy was coming over. Though she was glad of the support, Paula’s heart sank. Gerard was well aware that things between Guy and Paula were not strictly professional, and she didn’t want to be seen as a favourite. ‘Gerard,’ Guy was saying soothingly. ‘I know you’re worried. But we’ll be monitoring her the whole time. She’s been well trained. And this could be our last chance to find out what’s happened to Alice. Help protect other girls from danger. All right?’

‘All right,’ said Gerard moodily. ‘But I want to monitor the mic station.’

‘Sure, why don’t you go and tell them I okayed it?’

Paula watched him go. ‘It’s not that I don’t—’

Guy cut her off. ‘I know. You think this is the best course of action, and as you said, nothing we do is ever really safe. Nothing anyone does is. Could I have a word with you?’ A dart of distrust went through her. No one used that tone of voice, careful and polite, when they had good news to impart.

‘All right.’

‘Not here. In room four. I’ll get some tea.’

She sighed and stood up. The room, just along the corridor, was empty. She sat on the sofa waiting for him, enjoying just for a second the upholstered quiet of the small room, blinds drawn. Unbelievable to think she’d be getting married in just a few days’ time. How had it crept up on her? It had been easy when someone else was organising it, when it was still months away, just to push it out of her mind and get on with things, not stopping to think about what that meant. Being married to Aidan. Being his wife.

‘Here we are.’ Guy was in the doorway with two paper cups. Something complicated flashed through her – the familiarity of his face, his voice, the length of his body.

‘Have they found something? Dermot?’

‘No, it’s . . . something else has happened. Not about the case. I wanted to speak to you.’

That meant something about her mother, most likely. She swallowed hard.

‘They asked me to tell you,’ said Guy. ‘We just got word of it.’

Paula tried not to frown. She hated anyone using their ‘giving bad news to relatives’ voice on her – she’d spent too much time developing a version of her own. ‘Just tell me, whatever it is. Don’t do all that softening me up bollocks. Is it something about my mum?’ She tried to say it casually, but her heart had started to race all the same. How annoying. After almost twenty years with no news, her mother declared dead and her father remarried, she’d told herself she had given up, along with PJ and the police and her mother’s family and everyone else. But still the quickening of the pulse. It was a hardy little bugger, hope.

‘Not exactly,’ he said gently. She glared at him. ‘It’s about Sean Conlon,’ he went on, more briskly. ‘He’s going to be released from prison.’

Her heart stilled. ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow.’

Nothing to feel sick about. Just a man, a man who’d served his time, getting out. She’d been expecting it, hadn’t she? He’d served fourteen years, more than many terrorists. They didn’t even know for sure if he’d been involved in her mother’s disappearance. He had hinted at more knowledge, dropped riddles, but that was all. She found she was imagining his low voice, the watchful hunter’s eyes of the man, and rubbed at her arms, suddenly goose-fleshed. ‘Will he be back in town?’

‘Yes. He’s on full parole, and he has children here, of course.’

Innocent kids, going to local primary schools. Maybe even the same one Maggie would be at in a few years. Paula took a deep breath. ‘I suppose there’s no avoiding it.’

‘He served his time. It was a long sentence, as you know, compared to others. And there’s nothing concrete to link him to any other crime.’

‘Aidan,’ she said suddenly. ‘Will Aidan be told?’

‘I think they’ll only tell the families of known victims.’ Sean Conlon had also been a suspect in Aidan’s father’s murder – perhaps one of the masked men who’d shot John O’Hara dead in his newspaper offices. But again there was no proof. Aidan had been there too, hiding under a desk, and had watched his father die, but he’d been too young, too traumatised to tell the police anything. He hadn’t spoken for a whole month after the attack. Paula had been six, suddenly afflicted with nightmares, waking up screaming for her mother. They hadn’t known much worse was ahead, that Margaret too would be lost when Paula was thirteen.

‘I’ll have to tell him,’ she said. ‘I can, can’t I? I mean, I have to. He’s my—’ She didn’t know the end of that sentence. Aidan would be her husband after the weekend. It seemed so unlikely, especially with Guy perched on the low table, leaning on his knees, looking at her with his kind grey eyes.

‘Of course you should tell him. But Paula—’

‘What?’

‘Are you sure he won’t . . . well. He can be . . . impulsive, can’t he?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Guy bowed his head. She knew what he meant.

Aidan’s drinking. His fearless, reckless reporting. His firm belief that terrorists should never be forgiven, even if that was the price of peace. She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m just worried about you.’ He took her hand and stunned, she let him. ‘You seem so well these days. You’re doing great. I don’t want this to . . . throw you off.’

Paula took a deep breath and held it, trying not to lose her temper. Her hand lay in his warm one, as if she didn’t know how to remove it. ‘I’m getting married.’

‘I know that.’ She hadn’t invited him. He’d been away, and it was unthinkable anyway.

‘What I mean is, I don’t have time to be thrown off. It’s too late. Do you understand? It’s too late.’

Guy said nothing.
Don’t look at him don’t look at him.
She looked up. His gaze floored her. ‘I . . . I have to tell him.’ That was all she knew.

Guy sat back, his tone changing, the moment passing. ‘Of course. It’s not a secret. He may know already – good at finding things out, isn’t he?’ She bristled, but he’d meant it as a compliment. A small offering, perhaps, and she took it. She dropped his hand, stood up.

He said, ‘Paula . . . I’m sorry if this is maybe out of line. But would this not be a good time to get away from Ballyterrin? Take the job?’

She scrunched up her face until she was sure she wouldn’t say something rude back. How could he ask her that now? ‘Maybe. I better go now. Thank you for telling me.’ She turned in the doorway. ‘Conlon. He’ll never talk now, will he? I mean, if he ever did know what happened to her, if they hid her body somewhere. No incentive.’

‘No,’ Guy admitted. ‘I imagine he’ll want to keep his head down.’

And so her mother’s case, like so many others, would be swept under the carpet of reconciliation and peace and it’s-not-really-worth-the-bother, if it meant people not dying in the street again. Paula nodded again. ‘All right.’

‘Is it?’

‘It’ll have to be. It’s no more than other people have to stand. And some of them know for sure he killed their families.’

‘Some of them don’t, though. Stand it.’ He was referring to a case from two years ago. The one which had brought Corry down. The relatives of bomb victims, who’d abducted and killed the terrorists they thought responsible.

‘Well, I sent them to jail. So you can hardly think I’d do anything to Conlon.’

‘It wasn’t you I was thinking of.’

The silence stretched, and Paula looked at Guy, his unswerving moral compass, his belief in the law, his bafflement with Northern Ireland’s ‘leave it be’ approach to prosecutions. And thought of Aidan, his temper, his smoking, his small betrayals. And she made her choice again, as she did every day. ‘I better go and tell my fiancé.’

Guy stood up. His eyes were unreadable. ‘If I don’t see you before the weekend, I hope it all goes well,’ he said. ‘You deserve every happiness.’

She could hardly bear it, his best wishes for her marriage. ‘I have to go.’

She didn’t stop or look back till she was in her car, where she sat for a moment, breathing, hands on the wheel. She’d known this was coming some time, Conlon’s release, but all the same there was a small cold pocket in her stomach. The grit of soil under her nails, scrabbling in dirt, bones white in the moonlight. Only a dream, of course – she had no idea where her mother was, dead or alive. And now any possible answer seemed to get buried deeper with each year that passed. Maggie growing up, knowing no granny but Pat. It would be confusing later on, to explain why Granny and Gramps were the parents of Mummy and Daddy, but they’d find a way.

She started the car, pulled out into the heavy traffic. Headed to home and another difficult conversation with the man she’d chosen. Not her fault, any of it. But she couldn’t shake the sense that somehow, she had failed.

Chapter Thirty

‘Hello?’ No noise of Maggie running around or watching
Peppa Pig
. She must still be at Pat’s. The house was quiet, all the worktops neat and clean; well, neat as they could be with half the doors still missing. Dammit, she’d forgotten to ring the builders. She was letting too many things slide.

She saw the flutter of the fly curtain and poked her head out the door. He was sitting on the back step in his jeans and T-shirt, nursing the one Beck’s he allowed himself per day. She hated to admit it, but she counted what was in the box. One, one was OK. One was not a habit. One was not a problem. ‘Hiya.’

He didn’t answer. He was staring at the back wall, turned orange by the last of the sun. Paula sat down beside him. It was where she used to eat her lunch during school holidays in summer, her mother passing out a little plate of ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a beaker of warm Kia Ora. ‘Did you – Aidan, did you hear?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. I need to tell Ma.’ His voice sounded hoarse. ‘Couldn’t face going down for Mags yet. Sorry.’

‘It’s OK. Do you think she’ll—?’

‘Well, yeah, Ma’ll take it hard, but he can’t be inside forever.’

‘Right, right. I mean, he’s been in since 1999, that’s a long time . . .’ She tailed off. Sean Conlon, for all his suspected crimes, was actually serving time for a bomb which had killed two police officers. Samuel Walker. Oran Collins. She knew their names by heart. Oran was only nineteen. Walker had a three-year-old child. It seemed wrong to say fourteen years was a lot of time to serve for that.

‘You refused him parole once, didn’t you?’ Aidan took a swig of his beer.

‘I – well, I recommended he shouldn’t get it. It’s not really up to me.’ Two years ago, Paula had gone to see him, the man who’d hinted he knew something about her mother. ‘He was just messing with me, really. He has no remorse. He’ll never tell the truth now.’ She said it in a flat monotone.

‘Aye.’ Aidan set down his bottle with a chink and put his arm round her. ‘Come here.’

Shoulders dropping in relief, Paula leaned into him. The warmth of him. Hers to touch, and hold, and come home to. ‘I’m sorry. It’s crap. All of it’s crap.’

He played with a strand of her hair. ‘Well now, Maguire, as you say, fourteen years was a long time to be in. Plenty of murderers get less, or none at all. And if they’d got him for my da or . . . anything else before the Good Friday Agreement, he’d be out by now anyway, same as all that other scum.’

It was all true, and reasonable, and toed the line of what you were supposed to say in Northern Ireland now – in the spirit of putting down weapons after a thirty-year war and trying to live on together in the same small country. So why did she not believe him? ‘You can tell me if you’re not – I mean if you—’ She was trying not to look at the bottle but he picked it up all the same, removing his arm from her to pick at the label.

‘One beer. Same as always. I’ll not let that man affect one step I take from now on.’ He shifted, looking her in the eyes. ‘Maguire. You know I was a mess about my da for years. Could hardly bear to think of it.’

She nodded. It was true, yet he worked every day in the same office where it had happened.

‘Then I got ashamed of myself. Wallowing in it. Christ, my ma would cut off her arm if she ever thought she was being selfish by having something she wanted – but even she’d moved on. Even she had some kind of life. And then you were back, messing everything up—’

She said, ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to.’ He laughed a moment, soft, and her heart pulsed in gratitude. She grabbed his hand. ‘You’re right. Christ, they destroyed our parents, these men – him or whoever did it, someone just as bad – but they don’t need to ruin the rest of our lives.’

Aidan was looking off again. His hand enfolded hers, warm and calloused. ‘Thank God for you and the wee one, Maguire. Thank God.’

They sat for a moment. ‘What if we see him around town? I mean, you’re always in those scummy pubs.’

‘If it happens, it happens. What about you, though – he knows you said no to his parole?’

‘Yes, but I can’t start avoiding every lowlife that might have a grudge against me; I’d never leave the house.’

‘Just be careful. None of your mad running off to places or parking in dark streets.’

‘Oh, you’re the boss of me now, are you?’ His hand crept under her top, finding the place where her skin had torn, the knife splitting her. ‘OK,’ she relented. ‘I’ve been better, haven’t I?’ They both had. Aidan working hard, drinking less, being a perfect father. Her less obsessed with work, getting the house sorted, not putting herself in danger, staying one step removed from most cases. Pat and PJ down the road, Maggie growing up. The two little families, blown to pieces by bloodshed and war, were doing fine. Paula had even, as much as she could, managed to mute the desperate need to find out her mother’s fate. ‘We’re fine,’ she said, out loud, hearing the uncertainty in her voice.

‘We’ve been through worse,’ said Aidan. He too sounded faint, unsure.

Paula took a deep breath. ‘Um – it was Guy Brooking told me about Conlon.’ Aidan said nothing. ‘He – he’s back helping on this case.’ She looked at him sideways. He hadn’t reacted, went back to picking at his bottle. ‘You already knew?’ He squinted at the sun. Of course he’d known – he made it his job to know everything in town. ‘I’m sorry,’ Paula said. ‘I didn’t want to tell you – well, I thought he’d be away again soon, and with the wedding coming up . . . Do you understand?’

Aidan spoke. ‘Maguire. I don’t care about Brooking being here or in London or wherever he is. I’ve no beef with the man. But I care if you don’t tell me things. We’re both a wee bit too good at that, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So he’s here. Still with the suits and the Beemer and all?’

‘Well . . . I think it’s a Merc this time.’

‘Course it is.’ Aidan continued to stare out across the garden. ‘You’ll always have a choice, Maguire. We both will. Getting wed doesn’t change that, not really. As long you keep choosing me, I don’t mind if you work with him, or any God’s amount of fellas in sharp suits. So . . . will you? Choose me?’

She laid her head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of him through his threadbare T-shirt. The smell of the washing powder they used. This was home. This was it. ‘You know I will. Do you need me to say it? Out loud? Cos I was planning to save the vows for the weekend.’

In response he got up, draining his bottle, holding the other hand for her. ‘Come on, Maguire. I’m making you your dinner.’

She peered into the wreck of their kitchen. ‘Er, I assume something that doesn’t require a cooker?’

‘When I say make, you need to understand I mean “ring down to the pizza place”.’

‘Jamie Oliver, eat your heart out.’

He turned and kissed her suddenly full on the mouth, hard and fierce so she could hardly stand to look at him. ‘I mean it, what I said. Thank God you came back when you did.’

‘Oh, you’re glad I messed things up, are you?’

‘Aye, I am, but don’t expect me to say it again until one of us is dying. I am an Irish man, for all I can change a nappy. I’ve my reputation to think of.’