If These Walls Could Talk

by Michelle McDonagh

Genres: Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Hazel McNamara is on the phone with her husband Darragh when she hears the screech of tyres. He screams her name - then, silence. The jeep he was driving is soon found, overturned in a field off the motorway, but Darragh has vanished. As days pass and the Gardaí investigate, Hazel's carefully built life starts to crumble.
She soon discovers that her charismatic property developer husband has been keeping secrets - personal and financial - that could put her family's safety and future at risk. But where is he? Is something sinister afoot, after he got into bed with the wrong people? And what is the connection to an abandoned mental asylum in a small town in County Galway? The answer, when she eventually gets it, will shock Hazel beyond belief.
Taut, unsettling, rich with suspense, If These Walls Could Talk is a gripping West of Ireland thriller about deception, obsession and the haunting truths we hide - even from those closest to us.

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 384

Sample

Hazel

They had been arguing when it happened. Well, technically, she had been venting her frustration with him and quite understandably too, albeit regrettable in hindsight. In her defence, it was a Friday night after a particularly long and stressful week. She was completely drained and Darragh had left it until the very last minute to tell her he wasn’t coming home. He’d called her from the hotel just before he left to say he had to head back to Dublin to sort out some urgent problem with a contract. She hadn’t really been listening, his excuse fusing into so many others. The same common denominator, his work taking priority over everything else.

The heated conversation had resumed in the car when he’d rung her from the road.

‘This is so unfair, Darragh.’ He knew she’d arranged to meet Clodagh and Rachel for brunch the next day. She had been looking forward to seeing her sister and friend face-to-face for a proper chat instead of their usual rushed and invariably interrupted phone calls. She needed to fill them in on the latest letter she’d received from the Medical Council, to unleash some of her stress, needing their assurance that everything would be okay, but now she’d have to cancel and go to Jack’s match instead.

‘I’m sorry, Hazel, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Do you think I want to miss the semi-final? I’d much rather be going home than having to drive back to Dublin in this weather. It’s not fair trying to make me feel even guiltier about it.’

His wounded tone sucked the oxygen from her anger. It wasn’t his fault an issue had arisen with the contract. Or that she was so stressed out. ‘I know you would, and I’m sorry,’ she said, softening her tone. ‘I’m just exhausted from it all.’

‘It’ll work out fine, Hazel, just keep telling yourself that.’ She wished she had half his optimism. ‘Why don’t you ask your dad to bring Jack to the match so you can meet the girls?’

She inhaled sharply. She knew she was cutting off her nose to spite her face, but there was no way she was asking her father. As a lifelong rugby fan, and a staunch Connacht supporter, he should have been an enthusiastic fixture at all of Jack’s games, proud as Punch of his talented grandson. She shouldn’t have to ask him.

She could hear the rain beating off her husband’s windscreen through the hands-free system, the smooth swoosh of the wipers, moving on the fastest speed back and forth, back and forth. ‘I’ll cancel the girls and go myself,’ she said wearily. ‘He’s put so much effort into training this year, it’s important that one of us is there to support him tomorrow.’

‘He’ll be grand. You mollycoddle that lad far too much. I’ll be there for the final if they get through, although in fairness, the chances of that … a hope against …’

The call dropped. He must be going through a bad patch on the road. She didn’t know what time he had left Athlone, but his event should have ended some time ago. There had been a dinner at a local hotel after the sod-turning, to which all the local movers and shakers who’d helped to make the Lakes project a reality had been invited. She couldn’t think of anything worse, but her gregarious husband would have been in his element shaking hands and slapping backs, ‘schmoozing’ with politicians, planners and local business people.

It was after ten now and pitch-black outside, ferocious sheets of rain sweeping in from the Atlantic and flinging themselves against the picture window of the master bedroom where she was reading in bed. It seemed to have been raining non-stop for weeks, rivers overflowing their banks, saturated sandbags slumped in the doorways of local businesses, cars stranded, and people down the south of the country even having to be rescued from their homes by boat. The living reality of climate change.

She hoped Darragh was taking it easy in such foul driving conditions, that the threat of speed cameras would lighten his foot on the accelerator.

She had just got back into her book when her phone rang again.

‘Sorry, the signal is brutal.’

‘Where are you anyway?’

‘I’m just a …’ His words drifted away again.

It was beginning to get annoying now. She wanted to read in peace, to try to escape the intrusive chattering of her own mind for a while.

‘I’ve lost you again, Darragh,’ she said, oblivious to the prescience of her words. ‘Just send me a text to let me know when you get to the apartment.’

‘Can you hear me?’ He was practically shouting.

‘Yeah, but you’re going in and out so just text me when you get there.’

‘Okay, will do. Tell Jack I’ll give him a shout in the morning before— Oh, fuck … FUCK! Haze—’

What the hell? ‘Darragh? Darragh, are you okay?’

There was a loud bang. Time seemed to slow down and speed up … a shrieking, smashing sound … a kerfuffle of scuffling noises that went on for a split second and for ever …

‘Haze … Haze …’ His voice pitched unnaturally high.

‘Darragh, what’s going on?’ She stopped breathing, the blood roaring in her ears.

’Haaaze …’ His voice came now from further away. A piercing scream caused her to jump out of the bed.

‘Darragh, Jesus Christ – DARRAGH, answer me, please! What’s happening? Are you okay? DARRAGH!’

A weird whistling sound …

And then …

Nothing.

They all sat at the reclaimed timber table in her vast open-plan kitchen/living space waiting for something to happen. For her phone to ring with the news that Darragh had been found, that there had been a perfectly rational explanation for him to be AWOL overnight.

For some reason, during the endless hours of the night, she kept thinking about those poor boys, William and Harry, being woken by their father to the devastating news that their beloved mother had died in a Paris tunnel during the night. Her own boys were a lot older than the princes had been when they lost their mother – Conor now twenty-two, a fact she still struggled to get her head around, Mikey, the messer in the middle, eighteen, and her baby Jack, just sixteen –but as she’d paced the house, willing her phone to ring and put her out of her misery, as the minutes ticked past, like days, the darkness outside faded into light, and the rain lashed the windows of the enormous glass box they called home, she’d struggled to find the words to break the news to them.

The 999 operator had remained so calm and unhurried, asking which service Hazel required when she’d called last night.

‘Garda, Ambulance, Fire Service or Coast Guard?’

And Hazel, with all her experience of medical emergencies, hadn’t known what to say. All of them? Her head was too full with worry about whether her husband was dead or alive. She’d stumbled over her words when she was put through to a male call-taker in the garda control room, telling him what she’d heard, but unable to confirm the exact location of the accident. All she knew was that Darragh had been somewhere on the motorway between Athlone and Dublin, probably closer to Athlone, where he’d been at a work event in the Hodson Bay Hotel.

A sergeant from Garda Headquarters in Galway had been in contact with her during the night. He was liaising with his colleagues in Athlone and other jurisdictions along the route Darragh would have taken from the hotel to Dublin. They had put out an ANPR alert for his vehicle but, as yet, it hadn’t been picked up. They had also checked all hospitals in the broad vicinity of the route, but nobody fitting her husband’s description had been brought in.

How had nobody come upon the scene by now, nearly eleven hours since the crash? It made no sense.

Unless there was another explanation. Maybe Darragh had hit an animal, a fox or a deer or something, and had just got a bad fright. But, then, why hadn’t he called to let her know he was okay?

Maybe he hadn’t crashed at all.

But I heard it happening! And where the hell is he?

Potential scenarios had been tumbling head over heels in her mind all night, her brain playing devil’s advocate.

Maybe he’d been involved in a minor collision that sounded a lot worse from her end than it had been – the way the crackle of a sweet wrapper or the cries of a child were amplified over the phone – and had banged his head, was a bit concussed, and had pulled in somewhere to recover.

Maybe he was sitting in A&E in a hospital the guards hadn’t checked, or perhaps he hadn’t been logged onto the system when they called because he couldn’t remember his name.

Maybe he had been forced to abandon the car and flag down a driver, who had brought him to Dublin.

Well, how come he hasn’t turned up at the penthouse, then? There had been no sign of him inside when Geoff, the owner of the other apartment on the top floor of the building – who had a spare key in case Darragh locked himself out – had gone in to check this morning, after getting no answer when he knocked repeatedly. If he was alive and in his right mind, Darragh would be acutely conscious of how worried she and the boys would be, of how distressed his parents would be. He’d have made contact by now. If he could.

Jesus Christ. Where the hell is he?

Her sister Clodagh, the first person she’d called after the emergency services, had wanted to come over in the middle of the night, but Hazel had told her to hold off. When it had got to 7 a.m. and there was still no sign of Darragh, she had called her eldest son, who had stayed in town last night, as he did most weekends with his girlfriend Grace in the university’s student village – a lot closer to the bustling nightlife of Galway city than their McMansion out in Furbo – and told him his aunt would be collecting him in ten minutes. Conor had been understandably shocked when she’d woken him with the news of his father’s suspected accident, but by the time he arrived home with Clodagh, he was more concerned about how Hazel and his younger brothers were doing. A typical first-born, responsible and conscientious, Conor had already been worried about her, given the pressure she was under at work, and the ‘incidents’ involving her car in recent weeks.

Mikey, who’d come crashing in the front door and down the stairs to the Pit, as they called his room on the bottom level, at around 3 a.m., had stared at her blankly after she’d finally managed to shake him to consciousness. He had blinked slowly a number of times when she’d told him his father was missing, as if he was trying to figure out whether he was dreaming. And Jack, her poor baby, had started to cry when he heard and leaned into her, his arms hanging loosely by his sides.

‘Are ye sure I can’t make anybody anything to eat?’ Clodagh broke into her thoughts, surveying the platter of flaky croissants and Danish pastries she’d brought – which would normally have been devoured within minutes by her nephews –sitting untouched in the centre of the table. ‘Scrambled eggs and toast, anyone? Or will I throw some sausages into the air-fryer?’

The boys shook their heads, the movement causing a pasty-faced Mikey to wince and lower his head to his arms on the table. The reek of booze off him would have knocked a horse. Hazel had handed him a pint of water and Dioralyte when he’d shuffled into the kitchen, but it clearly hadn’t helped much.

‘Thanks, Clodagh, but none of us have any appetite at the moment,’ she said. ‘I might cover that stuff and we can have it later.’

‘You stay where you are there and I’ll do that,’ Clodagh said, making a beeline for the cupboard that housed the cling-film. Her sister knew her way around the kitchen as well as Hazel did.

‘Should I ring again to see if there’s any update, Mom?’ Conor asked now. ‘This waiting is torture.’

‘I know it is, love,’ she replied, ‘but there’s no point. They’d contact us if they—’ She started at the harsh buzz of the gate intercom and picked up her phone to check the app.

‘There’s a guard at the gate, Hazel,’ her sister said, squinting at the sleek flat-screen monitor on the wall in the kitchen before Hazel had even swiped up. ‘Will I buzz her in?’

‘Wow!’ The uniformed garda stood gazing out the glass wall that framed the stunning vista, beyond the multi-level patio and outdoor dining area. ‘That’s some view.’

Hazel was used to people’s reaction to her spectacular home – Imeall na Mara, meaning edge or threshold of the sea –and its even more spectacular views across Galway Bay to the Aran Islands, stretching across the horizon from Aughinish Island to the Cliffs of Moher. Eyes widening, jaws dropping, incredulous that such a property could exist in this tiny village in the Connemara Gaeltacht. That the six-bed, six-bath glass behemoth could exist at all, outside a big-budget TV production set. Sure, hadn’t it been her own reaction the first time she had set eyes on it?

‘Yeah, it’s pretty wow, all right,’ she agreed.

The officer would probably be shocked to hear that Hazel would swap the incredible views and all 3,500 square footage of the place in a heartbeat for their old house in Salthill. A ‘lived-in’ three-bed semi-d – its ‘sea view’ a measly sliver above rooftops from the bathroom window – that had become a bit too cramped as the boys grew but would have been perfect with the addition of an extension.

‘Would you like to sit down?’ she asked the guard, indicating the table where the boys were sitting. The woman looked older than she’d sounded on the phone. Early to mid-forties maybe, around Hazel’s age. Her hair was tied back off her face in a ponytail, under a dark blue baseball cap with a gold Garda Síochána crest.

The guard nodded, taking the chair beside Jack. ‘How are ye doin’, lads? I’m Garda Claire Hynes.’

The shriek of the steam wand drowned the boys’ muttered response as Clodagh made coffee for the visitor.

‘I’m sure you’re all very worried about your dad, and I just want to assure you that we’re doing everything we can to find him.’

Clodagh placed a black coffee and the milk jug in front of the guard. ‘There’s loads of pastries if you’re hungry.’

‘I’m grand, thanks. I’m just after my breakfast,’ Garda Hynes said, with a smile, as Clodagh laid the plate of pastries in front of her anyway. ‘So as I already told you, Hazel,’ she said, ‘we’ve circulated Darragh’s details to all the hospitals in the vicinity of the route he’s likely to have taken and asked to be notified if anybody fitting his description turns up. I just have some questions that will help us in our—’

‘Have you checked CCTV along the motorway?’ Conor asked. ‘And speed cameras?’

‘Good questions, Conor. We’ll be doing that today. We don’t know exactly what time your father left Athlone yet, and we need to confirm this. Your mum is going to give me the numbers of the colleagues who were with him at the Hodson Bay yesterday.’

‘Oh, yes, I wrote those down for you.’ Hazel handed the guard the list she’d taken down earlier from Darragh’s PA, who had been understandably shocked to hear what had happened. ‘Sinead Dolan is Darragh’s office manager and executive assistant. She said she was one of the first of the team to leave the Hodson Bay, so she’s not sure what time he left, but Tom, my husband’s business partner, was still there when she was leaving as well as a number of others.’

‘This event they were attending was to do with a new housing development in Athlone, I believe?’

‘That’s right,’ Hazel said. ‘They turned the sod on the Lakes project yesterday. It’s one of the biggest developments the company has been involved in since it was set up seven years ago. It’s a massive project for the midlands, two thousand new homes being built within the next five to eight years. Construction has already started but the sod-turning was put back to tie in with the taoiseach’s schedule. It’s really just a PR exercise, but Darragh was very excited about it, especially after … Well, yeah, so there was a dinner arranged to mark the occasion and—’

‘Did you and the boys not want to go? To mark the occasion, like?’ the guard asked.

‘Christ, no.’ Mikey snorted.

‘Mikey!’ Hazel frowned at her son, before turning back to the garda. ‘We used to go to all those shindigs when Darragh started out. The boys were younger then, but the novelty doesn’t be long wearing off. They’re very much networking events for Darragh and we’re all pretty busy in our own lives now. I work full-time, Conor and Mikey are in college and Jack is in fifth year in school so …’

‘She wouldn’t have time anyway,’ Clodagh chimed in. ‘Darragh works in Dublin during the week,’ she explained to the guard, ‘and Hazel is flat out running the show here at home as well as being a GP in a very busy practice.’

‘That must be pretty full-on,’ Garda Hynes said.

‘It is but I’m lucky, really. They’re good lads and things have got a lot easier since Conor and Mikey started driving. And I have Clodagh, of course. I’d be lost without her.’ There was only a year and six weeks between her and her older sister, and they were very close. Clodagh had minded the boys when they were younger.

Hazel had cut back to three days a week while the boys were young, only returning to full-time hours when Jack started secondary school. While things had got easier in some respects, it was only natural she felt overwhelmed at times. There were days when it all felt too much. Like so many of her female patients and friends, she was trying to do it all, to manage the relentless juggle of work and home, children and ageing parents. Never-ending to-do lists and never enough time. The repercussions turned up in her surgery every day of the week: chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, so much bloody anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, headaches and digestive issues were only some of the symptoms her exhausted women patients presented with.

Hazel had been blessed with energy to burn, one of those people ‘always on the go’, but everyone had their limits and she’d already been close to hers when she’d got the call to go out to see one of her patients, Joanne Cronin, that fateful day three months ago. Now she found herself facing the nightmare of a formal investigation by the Medical Council. The surgery had been packed as usual, and she’d been running behind as usual because she wasn’t the sort of doctor who could rush her patients in and out in fifteen-minute slots, as if they were mere tasks that needed to be ticked off her to-do list. The last thing she’d needed that day was to be called away to what – having spoken to Joanne’s agitated husband Dermot on the phone – she knew would be a highly charged situation at the Cronin house.

Mentally swiping the images of that dreadful day from her mind, Hazel realised the guard, her sister and the boys were all looking at her. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. The lack of sleep is getting to me. What were you saying?’

‘Not at all, Hazel, sure you must be wrecked,’ Garda Hynes said, taking a small beige notepad and a biro out of her breast pocket. ‘I just need to ask you a few questions and then I’ll leave you in peace. Has Darragh ever gone missing before? Maybe turned up again after a couple of days?’

‘No,’ Hazel said vehemently. ‘He hasn’t just gone off on a bender or something if that’s what you’re thinking. He would never not contact us. He’s definitely been in some kind of accident, and he could be …’ she glanced at Jack: she hadn’t given him much detail about what she’d heard last night – he was upset enough without that ‘… injured.’ Seriously injured. Or worse.

‘And we have people out there looking for him as I speak. I just have to ask because, in many cases, people who go missing have a history of it. Now, I just need to take a physical description of Darragh.’

As the guard ran through her list, Hazel answered automatically.

Age? ‘Fifty-one.’

Height? ‘Five eleven.’

Hair colour? ‘Brown streaked with grey.’ She didn’t mention he had it professionally coloured, these days, in an upmarket Dublin salon. She’d dug out a couple of recent photos from the camera roll on her phone as requested.

Eye colour? ‘Blue.’ The same startling blue as Mikey’s eyes.

Any distinguishing features? ‘A beard. He wears it short, tidy.’

Tattoos? ‘God, no.’ Hates them, especially Mikey’s tribal sleeve.

Any idea what he was wearing when he was last seen? She showed the guard the image on her phone from the company’s LinkedIn page. ‘These are from the sod-turning yesterday. That’s Darragh there, in the middle in the yellow hard hat. I can send you this.’ Her husband was wearing a beautifully cut dark blue suit with a matching tie and a crisp white shirt.

Did he wear jewellery? ‘Just a watch, a Longines Hydro-something. Oh, and his wedding band.’

Usual place of residence? ‘Here at weekends usually and the penthouse in Ballsbridge during the week.

Place and date of birth? ‘University College Hospital, the Regional as it was at the time. Sixteenth of November 1973.’

A list of places regularly frequented? ‘He spent a lot of time at work. The company is based at the Spencer Building in Grand Canal Dock in Dublin city centre. Sinead can give you the exact address. Darragh’s a very social person, always out and about networking. He eats out a lot up there. Hawksmoor, Chapter One, Wilde in the Westbury would probably be his favourites. The Ivy too. And the Shelbourne would be one of his locals.’ All the in places.

Bank details? ‘I’ve written down his current and our joint account numbers for you.’

Details of medical conditions and/or medications he uses? ‘No serious medical conditions, but he does have high blood pressure and is on enalapril for that.’ Almost certainly undiagnosed ADHD also.

Details of social-media accounts he uses? ‘He doesn’t really use social media, to be honest, apart from LinkedIn, if that even counts as social media.’

Any other relevant information that might have contributed to him going missing? ‘No, not that I can think of.’

The guard asked Hazel to put together a contact list of friends, relatives and colleagues for her, then slid her notebook back into her pocket and got to her feet.

‘Right. I think that’s everything for now, lads. I might have a quick word with you, Hazel, before I go,’ she said. ‘In private if that’s okay.’

In private? What did she want to talk about that she couldn’t say in front of the boys?

Shit, have they found something?

Her mind rapid-fired questions at her as she led Garda Hynes back out through the double-height foyer.

‘This house really is something else,’ the g. . .