A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) (9 page)

Chapter Fourteen

‘I’m surprised she wanted to speak to us,’ said Corry.

‘Maeve can be very persuasive. She says rape victims get silenced, and it’s like another crime being done to them.’

They were driving through one of Dublin’s poorer streets, houses like weary faces, boarded-up windows and gardens full of rubbish. ‘Make sure you lock the car,’ Paula advised. Corry drove a sensible Fiat, and for a moment Paula thought of
him
– cars his one weakness in an otherwise straight-down-the-line personality. His BMW had been sold when he’d moved back to London. She wondered who was driving it now.

On the radio the news played. ‘
And police in Ballyterrin are searching for the missing daughter of Home Office Minister Lord Morgan. Alice Morgan was last seen—’
Paula reached over and turned it off. Corry glanced up, but said nothing. They both knew they needed to find something, and soon.

The door of the small semi was opened by a young woman in a tracksuit and Uggs. She had straightened hair and polished nails, chipped off at the tips.

‘Colette?’

‘Yeah.’ Her eyes wary.

‘I’m Paula, Maeve’s friend? This is DS Corry. Are you OK for us to ask you a few questions?’

Colette raised a finger to her mouth and nibbled the top, as if thinking it over. Then she moved back and they followed her in. A TV blared in the living room. Colette shut the door on the rest of the house, which was filled with voices and running feet. She perched on the edge of the sofa. Paula indicated the TV, which showed a morning talk show. ‘I’m sorry. Would you mind?’

Colette used the remote to mute it, though the picture continued to distract Paula. ‘Maeve said a girl went missing.’

‘Yes. A student at Oakdale College. And she’d been going out with one of the boys you—’

‘Which one?’

‘Peter Franks.’

Colette leaned forward and took a cigarette from a packet on the table, flicking a light over it. Paula breathed through her nose.

Corry said, ‘There’s no evidence he’s involved, but we do know he has a history of violence.’

‘Not proved.’ She pulled a stray piece of tobacco from her lip.

‘No, but are you able to tell us what happened?’

‘The Guards said nothing happened.’

‘I know. But Maeve believed you, didn’t she?’

Colette’s face, her eyebrows plucked into expressions of permanent disapproval, didn’t shift. She was eighteen, Paula knew, but looked older, defeated somehow, her eyes already dull. ‘Well, like I said in my report. I knew a group of lads from the school. We’d meet down the shopping centre and muck about. They asked would I come round to the gates one evening and they’d sneak me in.’

‘And you wanted to?’

‘I wanted to see inside. We never got to, you know. And they were nice fellas. Smart. Cute, like. Talked like your ones off telly. They’d chat to you instead of just . . . grunting. So me and my mate Carly went. I got some whiskey out of my da’s cupboard. And then. Well, we drank. But I got really drunk really fast. Like that wasn’t normal, I’d been drinking since I was twelve, I can hold my booze. Carly said she was going but one of them had his arm round me and I liked him. I thought maybe he’d get off with me. I don’t know after that, I was really off my face. I don’t remember, except their faces, like coming at me out of a fog, and I couldn’t move, and the smell – sweaty boys and aftershave. Then I woke up. Must have been hours later. They’d gone and I was lying on the ground, all by myself. I was boking my ring up. My jeans and pants were off – I found them a wee bit away. I was all – I was sticky, and I’d been bleeding.’

A moment of silence. ‘What did you do?’ asked Corry.

‘I ran off home before I got caught. I had to squeeze through the fence, like, and it hurt – everything was sort of burning. I got into the house and had a bath. My ma shouted at me for wasting the hot water. Then I went to school.’

‘When did you go to the Guards?’

‘Mammy caught me scrubbing myself in the bath about a week later, and I told her the whole thing. I couldn’t stop bleeding, you see, and she knew it wasn’t the right time for that.’

Corry’s voice, which could strike fear into the hearts of the most hardened policemen, was very gentle. ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you, Colette. Can you tell me about the Guards?’

‘There was no evidence – too late. And I’d been drinking with the boys. And – it wasn’t exactly my first time. Someone from the college came and talked to Ma and Da, said they could even prosecute me for being in there if I didn’t drop it. Trespassing. Ma said I had to be more careful. Da called me a wee slut.’ She shrugged. ‘So. Nothing happened.’

‘Your report would be on file?’

‘I guess so. Don’t think they really believed me. I kept crying, and they only had men officers.’ She glanced coolly at Paula, taking a drag on her cigarette.

Paula said, ‘Thank you for talking to us. I know it must be hard. Do you remember anything else, anything at all?’

She exhaled slowly. ‘Laughing. I remember hearing it, even though I was out of it. Someone just laughing on and on, while I was lying there.’

‘Thank you,’ said Corry, writing it down.

The door opened and a young girl in a tracksuit burst in, carrying a squalling tow-haired toddler. ‘Ma says you’ve to take him.’

Colette pulled the child onto her lap, nursing him, soothing him with small noises. He wasn’t much older than Maggie, three maybe, with a helmet of fair hair. ‘Mammmmy, who’s these people?’ he said, sucking his thumb.

‘Just visitors. Shush now, be a good boy.’ She glanced up at them. ‘I called him Tiernan. It was – I wanted to go to England. But we couldn’t afford the boat or that. So. I just had to. You know how it is.’

Paula’s head swam. ‘Colette – do you mean . . .’

‘Maeve didn’t tell you? I was pregnant after it. We found out after the Guards dropped the case. I had to stop school and all, but he’s – well, he’s mine now. And it’s not his fault, poor wean.’ She continued to nurse the little boy to her, the child of her rapist, one of her rapists, and Paula found herself thinking back to the gleam of the fair hair on Peter Franks’ head.

Alice

Out. I’m not sure if it even exists any more, or if it’s just something I imagined. Some days in here, it’s like the only world that exists is him, and me, and the other girls. The smells of blood and vomit and the white lights flickering overhead. The cuffs. The strip-searches. Being watched, all the time and every second of every day and night.

But I have to still believe in it, the idea of Out. In my head I start running through all the things I’ll do when I get there. Ride a horse again, feel it breathe and strain beneath me, put my feet out of the stirrups and lie along its warm back, hugging it. Go to the beach really early in the morning, digging my feet into the cold wet sand. Go to the cinema by myself and see three films in a row, right through. Ride a Ferris wheel, and scream when we reach the top, hanging there as if by magic, as if we’ll never come back down. Go to university – me, in a campus full of trees, in glasses and a scarf, laughing in a big group of boys and girls. The smell of autumn in the air – wet leaves and rain. I haven’t breathed fresh air in so long. It’s all I want in here. Magazines aren’t allowed and of course anything you can eat is pointless. If someone was coming – which they aren’t – I would ask them to bring a jar of outside air, so I could breathe it all down in one gulp. It isn’t too much to ask, is it?

Charlotte asked me:
What would you do to get out?

Anything
, I said.
Anything.

Her eyes were glittering.
Pinky swear?
She held up her cold finger, like a white witch, and we swore. And for a while, we played the game. The Ana game. And we were pure.

But of course she won. Because she’s dead. But soon, very soon now, we’re going to be even.

Chapter Fifteen

‘Will we be able to use any of that?’ They were walking back to the car, which was unmolested, though being watched from a distance by a crowd of young men in sportswear who looked like the most sport they ever did was running away from the police.

Corry unlocked it. ‘If we can prove Peter did something similar to Alice . . . She could have been traumatised, run away, or even done something to herself.’

‘Maybe he did more this time. Made sure she couldn’t tell anyone.’

‘Maybe. But we can’t bring him in without any evidence. Still, we can use the previous allegation, if something comes up. In the meantime we’ll have to watch them – all three of them.’ She shook her head grimly, looking back at Colette’s house. ‘I can’t believe they tried to prosecute
her
.’

‘Let’s not forget that Ireland is a country that put a teenager under house arrest in the nineties, so she couldn’t have an abortion after she was raped.’

‘I know. I know.’ Corry sighed. ‘It’s just hard . . . Doing this job, you have to know you’re on the right side. Otherwise you may as well give up and work in a coffee shop or something. Because if we don’t have that, we have nothing. And when it’s the state doing stuff like that – it makes it harder.’

Paula thought about it. They were the only people who seemed worried about Alice. Not even her own parents. Not even her closest friends. ‘If I went missing . . . I think I’d at least want to know someone was looking for me.’

‘Me too. Come on, belt up.’ Corry started the engine.

‘Where are we going now?’ Paula put her seat belt on.

‘I thought we might as well pay another visit while we’re down here.’

The girl was pretty in a pinched, overly made-up way, with long, straightened brown hair and a baggy cardigan over a vest top and jeans. She paused with her key in one hand in front of the tatty student house, plastic bag in the other. Hangover food, crisps and fizzy drinks and chocolate. Like a child would buy, if given money for the first time. ‘What?’ she said impatiently, as they approached. ‘You’re not the Jehovah’s lot, are you? We’ve told you we’re not interested.’

Paula heard Corry make a small noise in her throat. ‘It’s Alison, is it? Alison Carter.’

‘Yes – oh shit, are you the Guards? I’m going to pay it, I promise, it’s just I’m really busy with uni just now—’

‘Not the Guards,’ said Corry. ‘Can we come in, please?’

She was suddenly pale and polite, ushering them into the dirty, ash-stained living room and evicting the long-haired type who was skulking in there with a stern, ‘Fintan, will you go upstairs’, that made Paula sure there were drugs somewhere on the premises. Slumming it, at least for a while, all of them, before getting jobs in PR or a bank, probably.

‘Is something wrong?’ Alison perched on the armchair Fintan had reluctantly vacated. ‘Did something bad happen?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Corry, looking with distaste at the stained sofa cushions. ‘We’re from the PSNI and we’re investigating the disappearance of a girl up north. You may have seen it on the news. But I’d like a word with you about Katy Butcher.’

At this, Alison’s manner switched again. She groaned and sat back, so a space of flat midriff appeared between her skinny jeans and vest top. ‘Christ, you’re not here about Katy? That stupid bitch. She gave you my name?’

‘No, she didn’t mention you at all. Your school did. I just need to find out a bit about her background, her character. Before she went to university.’

‘Oh my God, did she know that girl who’s missing? I bet something weird happened. I bet she did something.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Paula, who was also trying not to touch any of the sofa cushions. She was sure there was a bodily fluid of some kind ground into them.

‘Because, hello, Katy is a total spaz. I haven’t spoken to her in like seven years.’

‘Why is that?’

Alison hooked her slim arms around her legs. ‘The thing about Katy is, right, she likes girls, but she’s in total denial about it.’

‘You’re saying Katy is gay?’ So why then would she claim Peter Franks was her boyfriend?

‘Duh. I said it to her when we were like fourteen, hello, you’re probably a lesbian and I’m not – I mean it’s not the gay thing, it would be cool, I’m just not into it – but she burst out crying and told the teacher I was bullying her. Then this one time, she was having a sleepover at mine and she tried to – urgh, I don’t even like talking about it.’

‘She made a move?’ Corry suggested.

‘Yeah, she like tried to . . . touch me. In bed. So I said I wasn’t like that, and she’d better sleep on the floor or something. She started to cry and said she’d go home, she’d walk – it wasn’t far, see, we were practically neighbours. Then like an hour later, middle of the fucking night, I hear my mum screaming. Katy’s in our bathroom, and she’s well, she used my razor, and she – cut herself. You know.’

‘She tried to commit suicide?’ asked Corry.

Alison made a noise. ‘If you call hacking at your wrists with a pink Gillette Venus suicide – like hello, do it properly . . . And there’s blood everywhere, like
everywhere
, it’s like a horror film, and she’s all puking and groaning, lying on the floor, and she left this . . . note . . . about how she liked me.’ Alison put her head in her hands. ‘Oh God. It was so embarrassing. I had to explain to my folks, and her folks, and it got all round school we were, like, lesbians. Urgh. She ruined school for me. I never spoke to her again.’

‘I see. Is there anything else you can tell us?’

‘I bet she was in love with that girl,’ said Alison shrewdly. ‘Was she? I bet she’s got something to do with it. She’s so weird. Honestly, I bet Katy knows something about it. Bet you a million pounds. Am I right?’

‘You’ve been very helpful,’ said Corry, getting up by way of answer. ‘What was it you hadn’t paid, by the way, a parking fine?’

‘Um . . . speeding ticket.’ Alison blushed. ‘I’m going to, I swear, I just—’

‘See that you do. Oh, and, Alison . . .’ – as a toilet flushed upstairs – ‘it wouldn’t be within my remit to search this place for drugs, but I could easily send someone round to do so. Make sure you clean it up. And if you have any information about Katy Butcher that we might need to hear, let me know immediately.’