Free The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3) by Claire McGowan Page B

death. The neck ended in shredded flesh and veins.
    Paula, automatically and secretively, made a small sign of the cross as the cargo passed them by. She looked up to see Lorcan Finney watching her with an odd expression on his face. He gave her a small nod. Catholic , she found herself thinking, though his name alone could tell her that, and then immediately felt ashamed.
    Kira
    She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t know where the man lived. Of course there must have been one. He’d not touched their lives until that day, when Kira was already eight. But she knew it as if she always had – he lived in that big white house her bus passed on the way from school to Crossanure, out on its own. Of course there were other men too, but everyone knew he was THE man. The important one. The ringleader, it sometimes said on the news, and it made Kira think about a man with an evil smile and a top hat and whip, tigers dancing round him.
    This was back in March. After everything had been decided. After the trial didn’t work for those complicated reasons she couldn’t get straight in her head. It was easy in the end. Sometimes it was as easy as just getting up and doing it. Luckily Charlene wasn’t speaking to her anyway, so she didn’t have to explain too much. She’d got off at an earlier bus stop, with the girls from the Tooley estate. Charlene’s head snapped round, her frizzy curls bouncing. ‘Where’re you going?’
    Kira stuck her nose in the air. Charlene had sat down the back of the bus with Lucy and Sam today. So obviously it would be one of those days when they ignored Kira, laughed those loud laughs and said words she knew were about her. ‘I’m visiting my friend,’ she said coldly, gathering her bags.
    ‘You don’t have any friends,’ sneered Lucy. Kira gave her the look Rose had taught her – one that said, you are like a scummy little beetle under my shoe . Amazingly, Lucy shut up. Kira’s face was burning as she climbed down off the bus, but maybe no one noticed. She stayed fiddling with her bag and PE kit until the Tooley estate girls had walked off. They’d given her some weird looks and weren’t above having a go or making fun of her shoes. Soon the road was quiet. She got out the map she’d drawn herself, using the computer in school, and set off down the country lane.
    It was a nice day. Sun fair splitting the stones, Rose would say, which apparently was something Daddy also used to say way back. Little birds played in and out of the hedge and there was a nice coconutty smell off the gorse. She took off her blazer and rolled up her shirtsleeves as she walked along. She wished she had a drink. Rose used to give her a Capri Sun for the journey home, but Mammy never remembered. It seemed to take a long time to get to the man’s house, but eventually she did. She stared at his gates, which were closed and locked with a big padlock. It was very quiet. She could hear birds, and far away someone cutting their grass. It smelled like the countryside, a bit ripe and rotten, but in a good way. Kira decided to climb over the fence. It was high and jaggedy and she tore a hole in her school skirt, but she made it. Then she picked up her school bag and sneaked round the house.
    It was a really ordinary house. Quite big, but just with plain white walls. No flowers in the garden. There were three cars in the drive, white, black and silver. They looked like expensive cars. Jamesie would know what they were. She wondered would she ever see him again. She crept around the house, peering in the windows. A lot of the rooms seemed empty, with no carpets even or beds. One was a sitting room – sofas with plastic still on them and a massive TV. And the back of the house was a little patio with chairs on it, all dusty since it hadn’t rained in so long. He didn’t use any of this. You could see that. The back of the house was all windows, so you could see right into the nice white kitchen. Kira turned the