Free The Drowned by Graham Masterton Page A

then I might go out looking for him.’
    ‘Why don’t you go round to Siorsa Mulvaney’s? The lads often go round to her place, don’t they, because she’s out at work all day?’
    ‘Well, I might just do that. I don’t know why exactly, but I have a fierce bad feeling about Aidan not coming home. I went to Psychic Betty only two weeks ago and she said that I had a bereavement on the way soon.’
    ‘Oh, stop,’ said Mary. ‘I’ll bet you anything you like they’re at Siorsa’s, all hung-over and hounding down a heap of takeaway chips.’
    ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Shelagh, again glancing worriedly down the road. ‘I think I’ll go round there and take a quick lamp just to reassure myself. Aidan’ll probably kill me for it, but I can’t shake off this feeling.’
    The clouds were low and grey and a few spots of rain started to patter on the concrete path. Mary took down a small red umbrella that was hanging in the hall and handed it to Shelagh.
    ‘You’d best go home first and put on your rushers. It looks like it’s going to be raining rotten in a minute.’
    *
    But Siorsa Mulvaney’s small terraced house in Lotamore Lawn was dark and silent, and when Shelagh walked around to Ashford Heights to see if Aidan’s friend Darragh O’Connor knew where he was, she found that Darragh, too, had failed to return home last night. Unlike Shelagh, though, Brenda O’Connor was relieved rather than worried, because Darragh had been nothing but trouble lately, refusing to find himself a job and smoking skunk in his bedroom and playing loud rap music at all hours.
    ‘Would you try ringing him?’ asked Shelagh. ‘I’d just like to know that Aidan’s okay.’
    Brenda invited her in to her cramped, gloomy living room, with its grimy beige leatherette couch and stained beige carpet. A huge overfed marmalade cat was lying on its back in front of the gas fire with its legs spread obscenely wide.
    ‘Would you care for a cup of tea in your hand?’ asked Brenda, lighting a cigarette and then lifting up the cushions on the couch to see if she could find her mobile phone. After a few minutes of searching she found it on the mantelpiece, standing up inside a souvenir mug from Austria with its handle broken off.
    ‘I don’t know why you’re fretting,’ she told Shelagh, blowing out smoke as she prodded out Darragh’s number. ‘Those boys are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. If you ask me, it’s other people they’re a menace to. I know your Aidan’s not such a bad lad, like, but Darragh’s driving us mental these days. We have the law parked outside so often the neighbours are beginning to think this is a fecking Garda station.’
    She tried ringing Darragh three times, but all she could hear was a message from Meteor telling her that he was unable to take her call.
    ‘More than likely hasn’t paid his bill,’ she said after her third unsuccessful try.
    Shelagh said, ‘I think I’ll go around to Margaret Martin’s. Maybe her boys know where Aidan is.’
    ‘Oh. The Terrible Twins? Well, you can try. You’re sure you don’t want a cup of tea?’
    *
    The Martins lived half a kilometre further down the Old Youghal Road and by now the wind had risen, so that Shelagh’s umbrella kept blowing inside out and she had to screw up her face against the rain.
    Margaret herself was out getting the messages but Granny Martin was at home – a tiny, bent woman with a white bun and a black shawl and half-glasses, but a very sharp tongue.
    ‘No, Conor and Stevey didn’t come back last night and what a blessing that was. Those boys need their mouths washing out with Irish Spring.’
    ‘And they’ve not been home this morning?’
    Granny Martin shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if I never saw neither of them never again, I can tell you. I know they’re both their mother’s bars-of-gold and she won’t hear a word against them, but as far as I’m concerned they’re two