Read A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) for Free Online Page A

Corry had put on the incident room board – frail, lost. Where are you? Paula couldn’t help but feel that the signs – the empty kitchen, the blood in the church – were all crumbs someone had left, if only she could follow them.
    Gerard appeared at her desk, a ham sandwich in his hand – if he didn’t eat every fifteen minutes he would slip into a coma, apparently. ‘Corry wants you,’ he mumbled, chewing.
    Behind him was a young policewoman in uniform. Paula smiled at her. ‘Well, Constable Wright. Not arresting me, I hope.’
    Avril blushed. ‘Ah, stop it. It’s bad enough I have to wear this. I just hope I make CID quickly.’ The black police uniform, slacks and a stab vest, wasn’t Avril’s usual pastel attire, but her face was flushed and pretty as always when Gerard Monaghan was nearby.
    The two were very careful to be discreet at work. Gerard, at twenty-nine and already a DS, was her senior. Avril had been an intelligence analyst for the missing persons unit before getting a taste for policing. Paula wondered how it was working out for them. Gerard’s Republican family and Avril’s parents – her father a Presbyterian minister – had so far refused to meet. Avril would also not countenance living with a man she wasn’t married to.
    Gerard shoved the last of his sandwich in his mouth, chewing exaggeratedly to make Avril laugh. She shook her head. ‘You’re awful. Sorry, Paula.’
    Paula thought they were doing OK. Gerard’s big lug of a face was also trying hard not to laugh. ‘Isn’t she a sight in that get-up?’ he said to Paula. ‘I keep expecting her to Taser me.’
    ‘Ah, give over.’ Avril slapped him lightly on the arm. ‘I better head on, Paula, but I’m dying to hear all about the wedding. What’s your dress like?’
    Paula grimaced. ‘Um . . . I haven’t got one yet.’
    ‘Oh! But is it not . . . eh, a bit late?’
    ‘When’s it again?’ said Gerard, through lumps of ham.
    ‘The seventeenth.’ Avril shook her head at him. ‘Honestly. I’ve told you a million times.’
    Paula got up. ‘I know, I don’t have much time. Soon. I’ll do it soon. I’ll see you anyway. Better find out what Corry wants.’
    ‘Your man Garrett might be weird, but he was right – this is the third relic theft since last year. In Dublin they lost a preserved heart out of a church, and another place had the jawbone of Saint Brigid nicked, if you could credit it. People were seen hanging about the church both times – seemed like a professional job.’
    Paula said, ‘What do they want them for? Some kind of ritual?’
    Corry laughed. ‘Nothing so voodoo. They probably just want to sell the gold casings. The recession, you see.’ Saint Blannad’s finger appeared to be a white half-moon of bone. In the pictures it rested in a gold, velvet-lined reliquary, which had been locked in the glass case in the church. ‘So that’s one angle,’ continued Corry. ‘Burglary gone wrong. Also, as you suspected, Alice was anorexic. Listen to this: in her teens she was in a private clinic for two years, and she dropped out of her first university in England because of it. Explains why she’s twenty-two and only an undergrad.’
    ‘What are her parents like?’
    ‘Well, you know about her da. This is the mother. Rebecca Morgan.’ Corry held up a picture from a newspaper. A woman hurrying from court, with short blond hair and a grey suit. The kind who got manicures, and went to the hairdresser’s once a week. ‘That was taken when there was that hoo-ha, the affair allegations about our esteemed Lord Morgan – when he was made a life peer, remember? They sued the paper that broke the story. Rebecca swore blind he was at her side on the nights he was supposedly with those girls. Paper had to give them half a million.’
    ‘How old would Alice have been then?’
    ‘Let’s see, 2005 – about fourteen. Anyway, the Morgans have been at a conference in Dubai, so they’re travelling