A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) (25 page)

Chapter Forty

There was a corpse on the bed.

Paula froze in the doorway of Martha Garrett’s room. There was no sign of Anderson in the house, so the team had fanned out across the land, searching for him. She had climbed the stairs in the farmhouse, where a chill crept over her skin despite the heat of the day outside. Through the open door, she could see the woman lying on the bed, still as a statue and just as pale, unmoving. Paula began to move towards it, heart in her mouth.

Then the corpse breathed. The woman was old, near the end maybe, but hanging on to life. She turned her head slowly, and Paula could see that her mind was as sharp as ever, ticking like a clock inside that husk. The voice came from somewhere far away. Her legs and arms hung, useless. ‘You’re back.’

‘Yes – we’ve come for your son. I’m sorry.’

She turned her face, slowly, to the light from the window. Paula moved closer. The room was full of the smell of old age, and the death of hope. ‘We think he lied. About Yvonne. And you knew too, didn’t you? What you said about him being in work – it wasn’t true. You got Andrew Philips to lie for you.’

No movement. A faint twitch in the corner of her mouth.

‘Mrs Garrett – there’s two young people missing over at Oakdale College. It’s too late for Yvonne, if she’s dead, which I think she is. But they have their lives ahead of them, if we can bring them back safe to their families. This has gone on long enough. So please tell us what you know. I understand why you lied for him, back then. He’s your son. But it’s so long ago now. Please help us find Alice. And Yvonne too, if you know where she is.’

Still nothing. Paula decided to play her last card. ‘We’re here to arrest your son. We think his alibi was a lie that day. So we’ll be taking him in again. We’ll be questioning him, in the station, for as long as it takes. We’ll charge him with killing Alice too, if we get enough evidence. And Mrs Garrett – you know he’s not in the best state. It will break him. Just tell me what we need to know, and maybe we can sort this all out quietly.’

There was a rustle. Paula looked and realised the woman was staring right at her. ‘You probably weren’t even born then,’ came the croak.

‘I was. Just about.’

‘Well, it was a bad time. People dying, people getting shot. And I’d had my accident – they’d told me I would never walk again. I had to do my best to secure our future. The college wanted to buy our land. I knew that would help take care of me, and Anderson too. He’d never have made a real lawyer. He’s bright, you know, a very clever boy. But he’s . . . sensitive.’

‘Yvonne’s family wouldn’t sell the land. Was that why?’

She sighed. ‘A bit of soil was all it was. I’d have given them a good price. But they were stubborn, stubborn and superstitious like all Catholics. Thought the land was special, just because of an old bit of bone. A relic, my foot. Probably belonged to a sheep or something anyway. I never heard the like. I asked Anderson to invite the girl over. She was pleasant enough, for all her idolatry. They both liked to go to the church and help out. I didn’t approve of the friendship – Anderson was raised Church of Ireland – but it seemed to give him comfort. He had some silly notion about being a priest for a while. And the girl – he took it badly when she left the convent to get married. I told him to bring her here and give her tea and ask her to reason with her mother.’

Paula held her breath. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I was up here, lying in my bed. I heard a scream, and a crash. Next thing I know Anderson is standing by my bed, shaking like a leaf. I’ve killed her, he says. I’ve killed her.’

So that was how the truth could come out, after thirty-two years of searching for someone who seemed to have vanished into the air. With three words spoken in a hot, airless bedroom by a near-dead woman. Paula was surprised at how calm she sounded as she asked: ‘He killed Yvonne?’

‘That’s what he said. They’d got into some silly row about the strikes. A lot of Catholics supported it, you know. Political prisoners, indeed. Murderers is what they were.’

Paula wondered if the woman even saw the irony. She went on, ‘I never knew whether she fell and hit her head, or she started to scream and he tried to quieten her, or what happened. If he tried to touch her or something. I honestly don’t know. But she was dead, in our living room. So I told Anderson he had to hide her.’

‘Where did he take her?’

‘There’s a place. You wouldn’t find it unless you knew. So he put her there – he was bawling like a baby – and I said I would sort it. I knew the RUC were too busy to bother with some girl going missing. So I spoke to Andrew Philips and we organised it all. Of course it was a shame. I had nothing against the girl. But it wasn’t worth my son rotting in prison for. He didn’t belong in there with that terrorist scum. He tortures himself enough anyway, with his silly hair shirts and those spiked belts. Catholic nonsense.’

‘And Yvonne’s mother? Waiting all this time?’

‘If she hadn’t been so needlessly stubborn, none of this would ever have happened.’ The voice, old as it was, was as cold and sharp as a blade.

‘Did you see her? Did you see Yvonne dead?’

A pause. ‘She looked peaceful, if that’s what you want to know. I don’t think she suffered. Why should my son go to jail for an accident?’

‘It happened in the living room? I noticed he was looking at something there, when we interviewed him. I couldn’t tell what.’

Her voice was steady. Almost tranquil. ‘Her finger, most likely. It’s in the jar there. Well, the bone of it.’

‘You mean . . . he took it? A trophy or something?’

‘Don’t be silly, dear. I made him put it there. To remind him. Since he was so obsessed with that stupid relic, why not have the girl’s as well?’

Paula’s head swam. ‘Remind him he’d killed her?’

‘Remind him what he owed me. I saved that boy. He owes me his life. He’ll never leave me now.’

Paula took a deep breath. ‘I have one more question, Mrs Garrett – where is she? Where is Yvonne, after all those years? She’s close by, I think. It’s time her mother knew where she is.’

The woman didn’t move for a while, and then there was the sound of rustling. She dragged herself from the bed and into the wheelchair by the side. Paula knew better than to offer help, as the woman moved slowly, slowly, dragging her legs like a dead weight. Then the squeak of the wheelchair turning. Paula watched as the claw-like hands propelled her over the room. On the wall was a framed map of the church. After a minute she realised Mrs Garrett was trying to point to something on it.

She took the stairs two, three at a time. Corry was in the kitchen, searching through cupboards of stale food, gloves on, nose wrinkled. Paula panted it out: ‘She’s in the church.’

‘Alice?’

‘Yvonne. They put her in the church.’

It was so close. They were there in minutes, Corry on her phone to gather the remaining officers. Two uniforms with guns opened the door, and there was Anderson Garrett. Crouched like an animal over the stone steps, still marked with Alice’s blood. At the sight of them his hands crept up, dazed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped, and Paula, hovering at the back, saw he’d been crying. ‘She . . . she was so pure. She was a nun. Then she stopped – for a man! I had to help her.’ He sank down, choking, the words forced out. ‘She supported those murderers. The hunger strikers. She brought flowers for them, here! At the shrine! It wasn’t right – I had to help her be pure again. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ He sagged down, and Paula saw he’d rolled up his sleeve so his pale arm hung, white and limp. Around it, a medieval-looking device, a belt of spikes digging into his doughy flesh.

Corry stepped into the church, lowering her own gun. ‘Anderson Garrett,’ she said, and her voice was clear in the still air. The stained glass threw colours over her face – purple and red and blue. ‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Yvonne O’Neill.’

Later, there were the usual ceremonies. The church sealed off, the white-suited officers examining it yet again. This time finding the small space under the steps, where the gravestone lifted up, and the body inside – just bones now, but enough left to show she had died wearing a yellow dress. And the scrap of newspaper too – the date on it 31st July, 1981 – that Yvonne had wrapped around a spray of white roses, when she left the house, expecting to be back safe in a few hours. Expecting to live out the rest of her life. Fall in love again, maybe. Get married, have children. Live to be thirty, forty, fifty even. She’d have been fifty-eight now, had she not gone to Anderson Garrett’s house on that hot day in July 1981. That was how it worked. One moment, one step out of place, and the rest of your life was paused like a film. A bullet shot out of a gun, never hitting home.

There were TV vans, and the rush of a solved crime, especially after so many years. The jar on the mantelpiece was removed, and the living room where Yvonne died sealed too, though there was unlikely to be anything left after thirty-two years. Despite all this, despite the solve, despite finding the bones of a girl everyone had given up on, Paula found she felt nothing. They had thought Yvonne was dead, and she was. They’d thought Garrett killed her, and he had, and thanks to his cunning, cold mother he’d got away with it all this time. He’d been arrested, weeping and shaking, and confessed, though he still denied knowing anything about Alice, and Paula thought this was probably true.

Later still, they were carrying Martha Garrett down the steps of her house in her wheelchair, taking her in to make a statement about her false alibi for her son.

‘God forgive you!’ They all turned at the shout. Dolores O’Neill was approaching, on shaky old legs. She still wore her slippers. ‘They found her, Martha. They found my Yvonne. And you knew where she was all this time! How could you? How can you live with yourself?’

Martha turned her head away. As officers helped Yvonne’s mother, and her legs went under her, weeping that her daughter had slept all these years, just on the other side of a hedge, the older woman closed her eyes. ‘Take me away.’

‘You shouldn’t have spoken to her by yourself,’ said Willis Campbell. Paula turned to see him on the church steps, suit pressed, hair neat, an irritated expression on his face now the cameras were gone. ‘It isn’t part of your role, Dr Maguire. It won’t be admissible.’

‘But she talked to me. And we’ve found Yvonne because of it.’

‘Yes. All the same I can’t have you behaving this way. We need to have a conversation about your behaviour, once this has all died down.’

Paula opened her mouth, her tolerance for him at an end. ‘Listen—’

‘Sir?’

He turned, annoyed, as Corry approached, peeling off her protective gloves. ‘What is it, DS Corry?’

‘I’m concerned about Constable Wright,’ Corry said. ‘She hasn’t checked in for the last two hours. There’s a party tonight, and her last message was a bit worrying. Maybe we should pull her out.’ Corry looked uneasily at the sky, turning all the colours of a ripe bruise as the evening lengthened. Red fire in the west. Night soon.

Campbell sucked in his breath. ‘But this is the worst possible time to take her out! If the lad’s about to show his hand, we should do our best to see it through.’

‘You mean . . . deliberately leave her in a dangerous situation?’

‘It isn’t dangerous yet, is it? Has something actually happened?’

‘Well—’

‘I think you’re missing the point of undercover work, DS Corry. You shouldn’t have sent the girl in if you didn’t think she could handle it. Just monitor things and go in only – and I mean
only
– if something happens. This is your last chance not to muck it up.’ He buttoned his jacket, smoothed his hair. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to do an interview with UTV Live in five minutes.’

‘But—’

‘What part of no do you not understand, DS Corry? Dr Maguire, we’ll continue this another time.’

After he went, Corry turned to Paula. ‘Listen to the message that came through. She only turned the mic on for a minute, but she must have known I’d hear it.’

She held up her phone. Through it came not Avril’s voice, but Katy’s, shouted over the noise of a party. Music, shrieks, laughter. ‘. . . you OK? You look a bit out of it.’

Avril’s voice. ‘Don’t know. That wine’s gone to my head.’

There was a splashing noise, as if they were in a bathroom. ‘Come on, do you want some fresh air?’

‘Yeah. Good idea.’ Avril’s words were slightly slurred.

‘Let’s bring you outside. Down to the lake where it’s quiet. I’ll get Peter for you.’

Avril made a sort of mumbled noise, and the recording went dead.

Corry switched it off. ‘See? Peter’s obviously given her something. And you know what happens after that.’

‘But Katy’s with her. Could she just be drunk?’

‘Katy didn’t stop something happening to Alice, did she? And you know as well as I do Avril hardly drinks. She wouldn’t risk it in this job.’

Paula was moving already. ‘We should go to Oakdale then. On our own, if Willis won’t give us the back-up.’

‘I’m going too.’ Gerard had appeared in the porch of the church. He was pulling off a white boiler suit, ripping at it. ‘Come on, I’m driving. If we go by the back roads we’ll beat the traffic.’

Corry said, ‘Monaghan, you shouldn’t . . . DCI Campbell has said we’re not to go yet. You’d be going against his express orders.’

‘I can’t leave her there! He’s a big lad, this Franks, isn’t he?’

‘Big enough. All right, you can come. But it’s on your own head.’ She looked at Paula too. ‘That goes for both of you.’

Alice

Please forgive me. Forgive me.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw him. When he came in I froze – he’s always telling me off for being there late, so I just sat quiet in the dark. He went to the steps, and I saw him kneel down. He was making a strange noise. After a while I realised he was crying. He stayed there for ages, crying and choking over the stones. I crouched there, praying to a God I don’t believe in that he would leave. He was wearing something strange – a sort of top made of like rope or something. A hair shirt? Did those actually exist? He spoke out loud.
I’m sorry
, he said
. Please forgive me. Forgive me.

He went, after what seemed like a hundred years. When I heard the church door close, I let out a big, shaky breath. I went to where he’d been, and I realised I could feel a small draught coming up from the steps. I knelt down, feeling around the old, cold stone. It seemed solid, heavy. Then I saw it. Cracks, where the dust hadn’t settled. I dragged the stone off – I was seeing stars, but luckily I have a bit more heft these days. Immediately I could smell it – rot. That weird smell that follows me round the church, but stronger. It was only a little space, big enough not to be noticed. But there was something down there. Bones. Bones around a yellow dress. I knew it was her right away. I just looked in, and there she was crammed in, broken and dead. There was still some hair on her skull. Blonde.

I sat there a long time, crying a bit. I had to tell someone. He’d done it. He’d be arrested. Yvonne’s mother would finally know what happened to her. Not like my mother – if I disappeared she’d just be glad. She wouldn’t spend years looking for me. No more difficult, ugly Alice. She could forget me, lie about her age without me there, living proof she was at least forty-two or had been a teen mum.

I don’t know how long I sat there for. I was numb – shock, probably. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. I sat there thinking about Yvonne and Rebecca and bloody Katy and Dermot and Peter. Garrett. Everyone who hurt me, rejected me, didn’t want me. And then it came to me. A way I could help people find Yvonne, and still vanish, not have to talk to the police. A way I could punish all of them – the people who’d brought us to this, me and Yvonne. Her broken in bits. Me whole, but only on the outside.

So I did it. I took the photo out of Yvonne’s old house. I made my plans. Then I let my blood run onto the altar – onto poor Yvonne. After all, it was the right time of year for it. Lúnasa. Sacrifice and blood running into the ground. An offering. And I knelt down and spoke to her.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to leave you. But they’ll find you now.
I blessed myself, like I’d seen people do in the church. Maybe I was getting quite into this Catholicism thing.

After it was done and it was all too late, I looked back at the relic. It looked lonely to me, suddenly, in its case. Shining away, preserved forever. And I sort of got it, right then. Why people think it can save you. Because it was part of her, something real across the centuries. And I want to believe too. I want to believe things can change and I’ll feel different one day. I want to believe there are miracles, because God knows I need one. I want to believe I can do this, and bury Alice, and be able to live. To eat. To feel all right. I looked at her for a while, the gold winking under the tired lights, and I felt myself walking towards her.
Come on
, I said.
Let’s get out of here.

After that it was easy. Sometimes it’s just as simple as deciding to do something, then doing it. I almost wished I could have told Tony. It’s what he always said (when he wasn’t knobbing my nannies, of course).
Just decide to do something, Alice, and then do it.
Hope you’re proud, Daddy.

Both of them, my loving mummy and daddy, were on the news earlier, pleading with whatever nasty man took me to give me back. I watched it in a pub, where I was charging Katy’s phone – I’ve been keeping it off now I know Dermot’s looking for me. I hope it’s not too late. It was a close one. They kept showing the footage of when Rebecca stood up and asked me to stop punishing them.
No.
No, I’m not done yet. There were old men in flat caps at the bar and they muttered to themselves. As well they might. Who wouldn’t run away, if they had a mother like that? Poor wee Alice. Poor wee me.

All right
? I jumped, spilling a bit of my Coke (full fat, I’ll have you know). The barman – a bit younger, a bit sharper – was clearing glasses.

Um – fine.
I tried not to sound English. Usually it comes out sort of American.

Have you ID?
he asked.

I’m drinking Coke.

Even so. We need ID for you to be in here.

Of course I don’t have ID. I’m dead, after all. Dead people do not carry ID.

I left it at home.
Home being my tent in the damp woods. He was still watching me. My damn picture – thin, blonde, sad – was on the screen. I wonder if he’ll call someone. Why can’t he just be a sozzled mess like the rest of the guys in this fucking country?

On my way back, through the horrible dripping bracken, my hood pulled up tight, I think someone is following me again. I hear a small sound. I stand very still. Around me, the rain drums on leaves.
Hello
? I try, quietly. No answer. Birds call out, enjoying the freshness of the rain. I go back to my damp tent. It smells of mildew and the crisps I ate last night. Alice has been gone for nearly three weeks now. It’s real. It’s on TV. I can’t stay here forever.

At first I was terrified in the woods. I’d never even been camping – it’s horrible. Having to wash with wipes and eat stuff out of packets and talk to no one. It wasn’t quiet, like I’d expected. There were all kinds of noises, animals and birds and the trees moving.

But after a few days, I started to feel safe there. There weren’t any mirrors, so it didn’t matter what I looked like. I wasn’t Alice any more. Alice was thin, and blonde, and careful. This girl . . . she’s got short dark hair, and she’s fat, and she smells. But she doesn’t care. And she has Saint Blannad, the bones of her, wrapped in a pillow case. That will keep her safe.

That barman has shaken me. My heart is beating hard under my stupid raincoat. I don’t want this any more. I don’t know why Alice is taking such a fucking long time to die. A crack outside, like someone stepping on twigs. I’m very still. Suddenly I realise I’m not angry any more. What I am is afraid.

I think someone else is here. I think someone is coming for me.