Free The Drowned by Graham Masterton

‘He’s not in his bed, mam,’ said Patrick, coming back into the kitchen.
    ‘Where is he, then?’ asked his mother. ‘He’s not in the toilet, is he?’
    ‘I looked in the toilet.’
    Mary Buckley turned off the gas under her frying pan, which was crowded with curled-up rashers.
    ‘I declare you lads are going to be the living death of me one day,’ she told the three boys, who were already sitting at the kitchen table waiting for their breakfast, the two older ones with mugs of sweet tea and Patrick with a glass of milk.
    ‘I swear to God he’s not there, mam,’ said Patrick, but in spite of that Mary left the kitchen and stamped upstairs and they could hear her crossing the landing and going into Tadgh’s bedroom. They even heard her opening his press and then slamming it shut.
    ‘Oh yeah,’ said Kevin. ‘He’s really going to be hiding in his press, like, underneath his porn mags.’
    ‘I even looked under the bed,’ said Patrick.
    ‘He stayed out the night, that’s all,’ said Bryan. ‘I’ll bet you money he was poking that Aoife O’Grady.’
    ‘Aoife O’Grady?’ said Kevin. ‘That minger? Jesus, if I had two dicks I wouldn’t give her one.’
    ‘Aw come on,’ said Bryan. ‘She’s not too bad from the neck down, like.’
    Mary came back into the kitchen. She was short and plump, with wiry red hair that was always criss-crossed with kirby grips. She was wearing a crimson boat-neck sweater, even though her husband, Neil, had died only five months ago of the lung cancer and her mother thought she ought to wear black for a year at least. Frankly, she was pleased that Neil had gone, with all of his coughing and moaning and spitting up blood, even if the boys were such a handful. Tadgh, the eldest at eighteen, was almost uncontrollable these days. The days were long gone when she could take the wooden spoon to him.
    ‘Well, if he thinks he’s going to get anything to eat when he comes back in, he’s got another think coming,’ she said, and scratched a match to light the gas again.
    *
    By seven o’clock that evening, however, there was still no sign of Tadgh, although he had usually finished shelf-stacking at Dunnes Stores in Ballyvolane by now and was back home for his tea. Mary was irritated that he hadn’t rung her to tell her that he was going to be late, but she wasn’t desperately worried. She assumed that he had gone straight from work to the alleyway at Barnavara Crescent where he and his friends hung out, drinking and smoking and buying flakka and breaking windows and making a general nuisance of themselves.
    She took her purse out of her handbag and was about to go into the living room to give the boys money to buy themselves pie and chips at Looney’s when her doorbell rang. When she opened it, she found her neighbour Shelagh O’Reilly outside, in a headscarf and slippers, looking even more like Mrs Brown from Mrs Brown’s Boys than Brendan O’Carroll.
    ‘Oh, Mary. Sorry to bother you, like, but is my Aidan here by any chance? I was expecting him home two hours ago because his cousins are visiting from Waterford. He didn’t come home at all last night and I’m starting to think that something might have happened to him, do you know what I mean, like? Some of them lads he mixes with, they’re right scummers.’
    ‘He’s not here, no, Shelagh. But my Tadgh didn’t come home last night either, and he’s still not back even now.’
    ‘Have you tried ringing him on his moby? I tried ringing Aidan but the only answer I got was nothing at all, like.’
    ‘I would have, but he’s bought himself a new phone and he flat out refuses to tell me the number. He said I kept ringing him to tell him his tea was ready and it spoiled his street cred, whatever in the name of God that is.’
    Shelagh looked along the road, as if she were making sure her Aidan wasn’t turning the corner on his way home. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll wait till dinner time and