A Savage Hunger

by Claire McGowan

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Blood stains the altar. Can she be found?

Paula Maguire, forensic psychologist is called in to investigate a missing girl and the disappearance of a holy relic in Claire McGowan's exhilarating fourth novel in the series, A SAVAGE HUNTER. The Paula Maguire series is sure to enthral fans of Stuart MacBride and Lee Child.

Victim: Female. Twenty-two years of age.
Reason for investigation: Missing person.
ID: Alice Morgan. Student. Last seen at a remote religious shrine in Ballyterrin.

Alice Morgan's disappearance raises immediate questions for forensic psychologist Paula Maguire. Alice, the daughter of a life peer in the Home Office, has vanished along with a holy relic - the bones of a saint - and the only trace is the bloodstains on the altar.

With no body to confirm death, the pressure in this high-profile case is all-consuming, and Paula knows that she will have to put her own life, including her imminent marriage, on hold, if they are to find the truth.

A connection to a decades-old murder immediately indicates that all may not be as it seems; as the summer heat rises and tempers fray, can Alice be found or will they learn that those that are hungry for vengeance may be the most savage of all?

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 320

Sample

Praise

Praise for The Silent Dead:

‘I read The Silent Dead with my heart in my mouth . . . brilliant’ Erin Kelly

‘In Dr Paula Maguire, [McGowan] has created a wonderfully complex character’ Irish Independent

‘A breathlessly exciting and intelligent thriller with a brooding atmosphere’ Sunday Mirror

‘I was gripped by The Silent Dead and was fully immersed in the world created by Claire McGowan’s fine storytelling’ www.forwinternights.wordpress.com

‘Deliciously satisfying’ www.louisereviews.com

Praise for The Dead Ground:

‘Fast paced and engaging’ Evening Echo

‘Enthralling . . . evoked wonderfully’ Sunday Mirror

‘Claire’s novels deal with all sorts of modern moral issues’ Belfast Telegraph (online)

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

‘Harrowing’ Image (magazine)

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 keeps-you-guessing mystery’ Alex Marwood, author of The Missing Girls

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

‘A clever and pacey thriller’ Sunday Mirror

‘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

‘An exciting, enthralling and tense read’ www.thelittlereaderlibrary.blogspot.co.uk

Praise for The Fall:

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

‘A cool and twisted debut’ Daily Mirror

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

‘Chills you to the bone’ Daily Telegraph

‘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

‘A brilliant crime novel . . . worthy of its label – “gripping”’ Company Magazine

‘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

‘A writer of great talent’ Michael Ridpath

‘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

‘Sharp, honest and emotionally gripping’ Tom Harper

‘Stunning. Beautifully written, totally convincing and full of character. Really, really good’ Steve Mosby

‘An amazing first book’ www.promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk

‘Intelligent and absorbing . . . Highly commendable’ www.milorambles.com



Prologue

Belfast, Northern Ireland,July 1981

The corpse on the bed was still breathing.

Hardly at all, in a harsh, erratic rhythm, so every few seconds you thought it had stopped. One. Two. Three. Four . . . Then it would start again and you’d drop your head in your hands and think: I can’t bear this. It got so bad you were counting the seconds of silence – one, two, three, four – just hoping in a terrible part of you that it would stop for good, just stop with this bloody agony and let it all be over, for God’s sake. Sixty-seven days of it. No one ever thought he’d be here after so long, still clinging on, still somehow not dead, while outside the walls the world marched, waved banners, howled insults. You wondered could he hear the racket, in this room with bars on the windows, or if his ears had gone as well as his eyes.

He’d gone blind ten days ago, his eyes turning milky, and then a sort of black colour that was terrible to see. He was stretched out on a sheepskin rug, the waterbed under him wobbling obscenely with each snatched breath. His skin would crack and split if he moved, opening in red, sore mouths that quickly turned black. At the foot of the metal bed, like a bad joke, sat a plate of bread; white, with the crusts cut off. Some beef spread; three apples, dried up. Just in case, they said. In case what? He was too far gone now to eat – a bite of that apple would kill him straight off.

You felt a hand drop on your shoulder. It was Rambo. Or so they called him, anyway; a tiny wee rat of a man. Sort of a bad joke. ‘Seen enough, son?’

You couldn’t answer, so you just nodded. You’d not expected this. You didn’t know what you’d expected, but not this. The hospital stink of shit and bleach, the skin so pale you could nearly see the blood struggling underneath, the black, gaping gums – Christ. It was all you could do to keep a lid on it, and you knew suddenly that if you tried to speak you would burst out crying like a wean.

The doctor, who hadn’t said a word or looked at either of you the whole time, took the corpse’s pulse again. Every hour at this point. Checking. Counting. You were waiting, he was waiting, all the crowds outside and watching around the world were waiting for the last moment, where the long, slow slide towards death finally ended, hardened into something permanent. When he finally let out his last breath. You could almost feel the hands on the triggers. The match held to the touch paper.

‘’Mon.’ The other man gestured and you got up, numbly, and followed him out to the corridor. It was less like a hospital out there and more like what it really was – a prison. Your DMs echoed on the stone floor and you blew on your hands. When you’d touched him, he’d been cold as ice, and you just couldn’t get the feeling off your skin. The man was dying. He was dying right in front of your eyes and you weren’t doing a thing to stop it. Somehow, you hadn’t understood that until now.

Rambo lit a roll-up, breathed in. ‘It’ll be soon, they said. Next three days. But it’s not too late – if they get an IV in him—’

‘They can help him?’ It didn’t seem credible. The man was so near death you could feel it in the room, see it moving up his body with his slow blood.

‘Aye. I know he’s far gone. But there’s still a chance to bring him back. They sometimes ask for it, when they’re near the end. When they don’t know where they are.’

You’d heard that. About the families who’d had to swear not to feed their sons at the end, as they screamed in broken voices for someone to take the pain away. Swear to just stand by and let them die.

‘And if he doesn’t go – well, you know how it’ll be. It’ll all be called off. The whole hunger strike. If he stops, they’ll all stop.’

‘But—’

‘The demands. They still don’t agree.’

‘But I thought we were close.’

Somewhere across the water, in leather-lined office rooms and under green shaded lights, people were deciding the fate of this man. Mrs T and her top men. Whether they should bring him back. What would happen if they let him die. Suicide, they’d been calling it, but to the people outside the walls, it was murder.

‘Aye, they’re close. Not close enough. Yet.’ It had gone so far now – the man drawing in death with every breath, the Army outside, the world watching. The Brits couldn’t be seen to back down, give in to terrorists. Your lot couldn’t accept less than they’d asked for at the start. Not when six men had already starved to death.

‘So . . .’

‘Word has it they might give in. Brits never thought it’d go so far. And there’s your man down in Ballyterrin calling for an end to it. People listen to him. If word gets out we’re close to an agreement – well, you see what’ll happen. They’ll take all the fellas off the strike. It’ll be over, and we won’t get what we started this for.’

And the man in there on the bed, the corpse, they could bring him back from the brink. Lazarus, walking out of his tomb.

You didn’t understand. ‘So what—’

‘Son. We need you. Are you ready to do your duty?’

At first you thought they were asking for this – your life, your body, the slow pain of starving to death over months. But then he spoke again, and you saw it wasn’t that they were asking for at all. It was worse.



Chapter One

Ballyterrin, Northern Ireland,July 2013

‘There now,’ said Pat. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’

‘Lovely,’ agreed the salesgirl, whose eyebrows had been so over-plucked she always looked like she was first glimpsing the prices of her own merchandise. ‘Add in some wee shoes and a veil, it’d be gorgeous, so it would.’

‘Gorgeous,’ Pat echoed. ‘What do you think, pet?’

Paula regarded herself in the mirror. She’d lost some weight since Maggie’s birth two years ago, but the lace dress was still cutting into her ribs, with its complicated architecture of hoops and boning and petticoats. Above it was her face, irritated by the overheated shop and confection of fascinators, shrugs, white satin shoes, and general frippery, none of it costing less than two hundred pounds. ‘It’s . . . nice,’ she tried.

‘It’s beautiful!’ the girl urged. ‘Handmade lace. French.’

‘Hmm. Yeah, it’s nice, but . . .’

‘If you’re not sure we can try more. There’s plenty more!’ Pat was giddy, overjoyed that her difficult son was finally marrying his childhood sweetheart, who was also, as of two years ago, her own stepdaughter. Paula herself felt some more complicated things about the situation. She’d have liked Aidan to be there, to examine the handwritten price tags, and give out a low whistle at the cost, and raise his eyebrows at her when the girl gushed about two grand being ‘nothing at all’, not for the ‘most special day of your life’, while telling dire tales of brides who’d ordered their dresses for cheap online and sure wasn’t the wedding ruined when it never turned up? Pat ate all this up, adding in ‘she never’ and ‘God love her, what did she do then?’ at the right moments.

The dress was lifted off by the woman’s claw-like hands, and Paula stood in the narrow cubicle, looking at herself in her M&S pants and bra, legs unshaven, toenails unpainted. Her red hair was scraped back in a plait, already plastered to her forehead with sweat, because for once the Irish summer was actually a summer. Her body had scars too – a neat one from the Caesarean that had birthed her daughter, a puckered white one where she’d once been stabbed. Paula thought of Maggie for a moment – toddling on the beach with Aidan, if he got organised enough to take her, in a little green swimsuit, her red hair in chubby bunches, Aidan lifting her up to splash over the waves. She wished she was there with them, not stuck here in womanland.

She wriggled back into her jeans and T-shirt, rattled the curtain. ‘That’s me changed so. Better get back to Mags, I’ve been ages.’

Pat said, ‘Oh, she’ll be grand. Aidan dotes on her, so he does.’

‘With her daddy for the day!’ twittered the girl. ‘Ah, isn’t that nice, he’s babysitting.’

Normally Paula would have retorted that it was hardly babysitting when it was your own child, but Pat’s sudden interest in a cabinet of costume jewellery was a sobering reminder that they could play dress-up weddings and happy families all they liked, but it didn’t change the fact no one knew if Aidan was actually Maggie’s father or not.

She allowed herself to think of the other, just for a moment – his straight back, the fair hair brushed off his face, his English accent clipping on the edge of words – and then she cut it off. There was no use thinking about Guy, because he was gone.

She drove up the road, afternoon traffic snarling the town, horns blaring in the unexpected swelter of the warm day. She’d taken off work to try on those dresses. What a waste of time, when she could have been doing something useful.

Opening her front door, she was greeted with a cloud of dust and a strange man in paint-stained overalls and a face mask. ‘Sorry, love. Be out in a minute.’ The builder was extracting a cigarette from his pocket. She was torn between wanting him gone so she could get into a cool shower, and the need for them to actually finish the work they’d been contracted for. The kitchen had been unusable for weeks now, since the builders had thoughtfully ripped out the cooker and sink then disappeared on other jobs, leaving most of the brown seventies cupboards still attached to the walls. Some of them had missing doors, like gaping teeth in a beaten-up face. Paula’s childhood home would soon look like a different place – somewhere that wasn’t haunted by memories.

Paula averted her eyes from the dust sheets and tools left in her kitchen, a place that used to be just for her, and pushed out through the old-fashioned fly curtain to the garden behind. The garden had been her mother’s place, where she’d pegged out roses in the square of uninspiring soil, until the search team had dug it up in 1993. Looking for her body. Paula couldn’t be out there and not remember watching white-suited techs as they pulled up each long-nurtured plant. Wondering if they’d find anything. Hoping against hope they wouldn’t. This was before she’d got to the point of just wanting an answer, even if it meant knowing for sure her mother was dead.

‘Hiya.’

Aidan and Maggie were on a blanket on the dry, yellowed lawn. The last rays of the day filtered down between the roofs of the terraced houses. He was wearing khaki shorts and a Springsteen T-shirt. His forearms were tanned from the summer; bits of the paper were spread about him. Bustling around, Maggie ferried sand from her little pit in the corner to another pile by the back wall. She wore a yellow sundress, clashing wildly with the red hair that was already curling over her ears. What with the hair and the milk-pale skin, she looked nothing like Aidan. Not even a bit.

‘Did you put cream on her?’ asked Paula.

‘Nah, I thought I’d let her get skin cancer, like. Course I did.’

‘Sorry.’ She collapsed down beside him in her jeans and T-shirt, kicking off her sandals and digging toes into the parched grass.

‘So are you all kitted out in the frock of your dreams?’

‘Don’t. I can’t cope with much more of this. I’m having an allergic reaction to the lace, look.’ She held out her arm to him and he rubbed it absently, engrossed in the paper.

‘Offer it up, Maguire. It makes my ma happy, anyway.’

‘I know.’ As usual his touch was enough to make her curl into him. Even after two years she didn’t take it for granted, having him there every day when she turned her key in the lock. ‘What are you doing there, Mags?’ she called out.

‘Sand,’ came the succinct reply.

‘I can see that. You’re making a bit of a mess, pet. Come here till I see you.’ She scooped up the toddler onto her lap, breathing in the smell of warm skin and sun cream. Aidan had indeed slathered the child with it.

‘Where were you, Mummy?’ Maggie twined her hands in Paula’s loosening hair, like a little monkey.

Aidan said, ‘Mummy was away getting a big nice dress for her wedding to Daddy. And you’re going to be flower girl, aren’t you?’

‘Yessss!’ Maggie had no idea what being a flower girl entailed, and Paula had no desire at all for a big nice dress, or for any of it. But it seemed important to Aidan, to Pat, to Paula’s father PJ, who’d been married to Pat for the past two years. So she was doing it. The church, the big nice dress, the works. She rubbed her finger, where her engagement ring chafed in the heat. White gold, diamond and emerald. Not huge, but respectable. Something she’d never thought to see on her own hand. But there it was, there she was, there they all were, a happy family of three.

‘Can I’ve some juice, please, Daddy?’ Maggie tugged on his hair. Dark – so unlike her own.

‘Juice? Well, I don’t see why not. On you come.’

She watched Aidan walk to the house, Maggie trotting after him in her green Crocs, holding up a hand, trusting. He was her daddy. That was all she knew. It could be true. They were making it true, with every day together and this wedding coming up. And although Paula was trying, so hard, not to search the child’s face for hints of resemblance – a breadth to the forehead, a turn of the cheek or mouth – she still found she could no more put the other out of her mind entirely than she could stop herself picking up Maggie into her arms whenever she was near.

She paused in the garden with her arms curled round her knees, alone for a moment, feeling her mother around her in the pretty tiles on the wall, a plant that had survived the police digging, and wondered how that trip to the wedding shop would have been if things were different. If everything was different. But it wasn’t.

Aidan stuck his head out through the fly curtain. ‘Will I go for a takeaway? I’m not cooking in this mess.’

She pushed herself up. ‘Yeah, OK. Do you reckon they’ll ever finish?’

‘God alone knows. He just told me he has to knock off early as he’s getting a “wee tickle” in his throat.’

‘I’m getting a bloody massive tickle in my throat from all the dust they’ve left everywhere. It can’t be good for Maggie. Is there anything we can do?’

‘I dunno. Now the recession’s over they’ll be off doing someone else’s bathroom if we let them go. He said they’d maybe be finished this month.’

‘In the meantime we’ve no hob and we have to wash the dishes in the bath.’

‘We could always move in with Ma for a bit.’

That really would be it sealed, her and Aidan and Maggie and their respective parents. A family. And she wanted that, she really did. It was just the wedding throwing her into a panic, the dresses, the fuss. The finality of it. That was all.

Paula heard her phone trill on the counter, and got up and moved to the door, going inside to the cool of the kitchen.

‘Leave it,’ said Aidan, with his head in the fridge.

‘But—’

‘If it can’t wait till tomorrow they’ll ring you. Now, do you want Chinese or pizza or what?’

Paula looked at her phone. It could be work. Someone missing, needing to be found and put back in their proper place. As a forensic psychologist, these were the cases that kept her up at night. She felt little hands round her leg – Maggie, toddling over. ‘Mummy, will you read me a story?’

She reached down and picked the little girl up, feeling small legs and arms wrap around her. ‘Of course, pet.’ To Aidan she said, ‘Get fish and chips. We had to bust that Chinese last week for immigration violations.’

He picked up the car keys. ‘Right so, fish and chips and mushy peas it is.’ The door slammed. Paula remained in the kitchen, standing by the sink in the last place she’d ever seen her own mother, her daughter in her arms, before Maggie started to wriggle down.

‘Mummy, I want a story now.’

‘OK, sweetheart, go and get one.’ The phone stayed on the side, ignored.



Chapter Two

‘Morning, Maguire.’

Paula banged her pass over the entrance to the police station, looking up at the familiar face. Gerard Monaghan, now Detective Sergeant, in a newly sharp suit to match. ‘Well, Sergeant. How’s Avril? I never see her these days.’

‘They have her on nights. Making her work for it, like.’

‘Any word on whether she’ll make CID?’

‘Dunno. The new boss’s not such a fan. He reckons we were all too matey with you-know-who.’ She and Gerard passed through another door. He swiped the pass which hung around his neck, waiting for it to work. ‘Fecking thing. You ever miss the old days?’

Paula sighed. ‘All the time. But no point in looking back.’ She was willing Gerard not to say the name that went with the face in her head, and he didn’t, and they both shifted off to their desks with desultory goodbyes. The PSNI station on the hill was a very different place to work from the missing persons unit she’d started out in. There were rules, and rotas, and phones were always buzzing and people shouting out codes. But she had to be there. There was no more unit now, just her and Gerard up here, Bob retired, Fiacra back in Dundalk with the Gardaí, Avril training as a PC, and – that was all she could think about.

‘There you are.’ A woman was sitting at Paula’s desk; fair-haired, in her forties, wearing a grey trouser suit. Helen Corry had retained the designer outfits from her days as Head of Serious Crime, even though she’d been demoted back to DS.

‘Here I am, yes.’ Paula put her bag down.

‘Fun time wedding shopping?’

‘About as much fun as stapling my eyes shut.’

‘I remember. Want something juicy?’

‘Yes, please. If I do one more internal assessment I’m going to scream.’

‘I’ve got a missing persons. Right up your street – a student from out at Oakdale College.’

‘Female?’ This was Paula’s area of expertise – missing women, lost girls. Trying to find them and bring them back.

‘Yep.’

‘Tell me the circs?’

Corry spread out the missing persons form, complete with a grainy photo of a blonde, very slim girl. ‘Alice Morgan. Twenty-two, doing research into holy relics and Irish folklore. English. Her dad’s Tony Morgan.’

‘Should I know him?’ Paula picked up the photo.

‘You would if you were in uniform. He’s a life peer, high up at the Home Office. Lord Morgan, I should have said. Alice has been over here studying for a year or so.’

‘Oh, right! So it’s all hands on deck on this one?’

‘Yep.’ Corry stood up, straightening her suit. ‘Don’t take your jacket off, you’re coming straight out with me.’

‘Did Willis OK it?’ Usually, Paula was not supposed to go to crime scenes.

Corry made her usual face at the mention of DCI Willis Campbell, their new boss. It was like someone chewing on a pickled egg. ‘Oh yes, nothing’s too good for Mr, sorry, Lord Morgan’s daughter.’

‘When was she last seen?’

‘Yesterday. It just came in this morning.’

At least she hadn’t missed it by ignoring her phone last night. ‘Wait, what are you not telling me?’ Ordinarily, a missing person’s case wouldn’t be dealt with so quickly. She looked at the photo of Alice. A little slip of a girl. It was back, the pulse, the spark. She could do this, at least. She could find people when they were lost.

Corry had started walking. ‘She was last seen in that church with the relic. You know, Crocknashee. She’d been working there. And they found blood.’

‘How much blood?’

‘Enough. Come on, let’s go.’

‘Right. We’re meeting Willis at the scene, he’s already there, and then we’ll search Alice’s cottage.’

Paula had never heard Helen Corry talk about her demotion. Two years ago, there’d been a leak in a major case. A forensics expert had falsified evidence, and Corry had been sleeping with him at the time. People had died, and the fallout from it had knocked her off her hard-won perch. Outwardly, she was enjoying being in a more hands-on role, and only the look on her face when DCI Campbell was mentioned ever betrayed her.

When they got to the site, which was some way out of Ballyterrin, the man himself had left his Mercedes, a car that cost more than a one-bed flat, right across the gate of the church. ‘Typical,’ muttered Corry. ‘I’ll just park mine on the road. I mean, it’s only a Fiat, clearly doesn’t deserve the room.’ She pulled up. ‘How much do you know about this place?’

‘A bit, I suppose. From school. They were trying to get away from that side of Catholicism when I was wee. You know, this kind of – idolatry.’ For years Paula hadn’t known what religion Helen Corry was. It didn’t matter, of course, but somehow you did need to know, you had. . .