Free A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) by Claire McGowan

the signature on one report in the file – Patrick Maguire. Her father. He’d remember this case – like her, he never let go of the ones he couldn’t find. She took the file and locked up the cold little room. Full of names. The ones they would maybe never find.
    Paula couldn’t get used to her dad living at Pat’s. She’d been going to this house all her life, since her mother had taken her as a child, whispering admonishments to keep quiet and be good. Then as a teenager, the odd time for parties or Christmas visits, keeping an eye out for Aidan, who hadn’t uttered a word to her at all between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. When suddenly they’d been going out and she’d been round here all the time to sneak into his room, burrowing her hands under his school shirt, gulping in the smell of him as if he was the air she breathed.
    She was remembering all this as Pat came to the door, slowly, visible through the panes of coloured glass. ‘Ah pet, there you are. She’s asleep. Will I wake her?’
    ‘Ah no, I wanted a word with Dad anyway. Leave her be a while.’ Pat was looking tired, Paula thought. Dark circles under her eyes, a stiffness in her shoulders. She hoped it wasn’t from running around after two-year-old Maggie all day, who was currently into everything she shouldn’t be. PJ helped, but his old leg injury meant he couldn’t do the running, stop Maggie from slipping out an open door or feeding her sandwich into the video player or her fingers into the electric socket (really, it was exhausting).
    ‘He’s in the lounge. I’ll make you some tea – I haven’t baked, but I’m sure you’re not eating biscuits anyway, with the big day so soon!’
    Paula was, in fact, still eating all the biscuits she could get her hands on – the lack of a functioning kitchen didn’t lend itself to healthy eating – but she let it go. PJ was in front of the horse racing, his leg propped up on a pouffe, the Irish Times crossword open in front of him with his glasses folded on it. Somewhere between now and Paula leaving for university – her eighteen, him mid-forties – her father had aged. ‘Well, pet.’ He took the glasses off and rearranged some cushions for her to sit down. ‘Where’s Lady Muck?’
    ‘Having her nap. I’ll leave her for a while yet. Wanted a word with you.’
    ‘Aye?’ PJ always looked wary at such things. When he’d told her he was marrying Pat, three years ago, and Paula had told him in return about Maggie coming, they’d had a lot of awkward conversations that veered closer to the emotions than PJ, being an Irish man, would have liked.
    ‘A work thing. An old case that’s come up again.’
    ‘Oh, right so.’ Relief. Work was safe in a way the topics of her mother and her child were not.
    ‘Did you work on Yvonne O’Neill’s disappearance? Remember that?’
    It took PJ a moment. ‘Oh aye, the wee blonde girl. God, that was a bad summer. We were up to our eyes in riots and shootings. The hunger strikes, you know.’ He turned his eyes on her, suddenly alert. ‘What’ve you found? Did we miss something?’
    ‘No, no. It’s just she went missing from the same place Alice Morgan did. You know, this new case.’
    PJ nodded. ‘Aye, I never thought. Crocknashee church. Strange old place. But that was thirty-odd years back. You’re thinking there’s a connection?’
    ‘No idea.’ Paula sank back in Pat’s squashy armchair. Once, in here, in 1999, when Pat had gone into the kitchen to make tea, she and Aidan had pressed themselves into the carpet, kissing with a blind fury. She blinked, trying not to let the memory show on her face. Even the ornaments and pictures were the same – the photo of Aidan’s father, John, holding the boy on his knee. 1983. Three years before he’d been gunned down in his office, in front of Aidan. Pat and John’s wedding picture, all seventies hair flicks and sideburns, had been tactfully taken down, replaced by one of Pat and PJ on