Read Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) for Free Online

streaked with grey from overflowing gutters. There was a fine view of Cork City to the south, with the spires of Holy Trinity Church and St Fin Barre’s Cathedral rising above the rooftops, and all of this locality around Military Hill was now one of the most expensive areas to buy a house. However, it looked as if the Crounans had been running short of money for some time. The car parked at the side of the house was a 2007 Honda Civic, with a large dent in the passenger door.
    Mary Crounan appeared, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She was a small woman in her late forties with curly dyed-black hair, wearing a purple jumper and a purple skirt. Katie thought she must have been very pretty when she was younger, but she had one of those plump babyish faces that doesn’t age well, and at the moment she looked tired and anxious.
    ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Maguire, from Anglesea Street Garda station,’ said Katie. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán.’
    ‘Yes? What do you want?’ she asked them. Before Katie could answer she glanced quickly up and down the street as if to make sure nobody was watching them.
    ‘I think we’d better come in,’ said Katie. ‘This isn’t really something we can talk about on the doorstep.’
    ‘It’s Micky, isn’t it?’ said Mary Crounan. ‘Have you found him? Is he all right?’
    ‘Please, let’s just go inside,’ said Katie.
    Mary Crounan led them along the hallway to a large, chilly living room. The furniture was all baroque and enormous, which made Katie feel as if she were Alice and had drunk a potion that had made her shrink six inches. The Wonderland feeling was heightened by the immense mirror that hung over the marble fireplace.
    ‘Why don’t you sit down, Mary? said Katie.
    ‘What’s happened to him? He’s not hurt, is he? They haven’t hurt him?’
    ‘The bakery’s closed. Can you tell me the reason for that?’
    ‘We tried to keep it running between us, me and Lenny O’Dowd, the manager, but in the end we couldn’t cope. Where’s Micky? Please, tell me Micky’s all right.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Mary. There’s no other way to tell you this, but Micky’s dead. Some remains were discovered yesterday and we’re ninety-nine per cent certain that it’s him. I’m really, really sorry.’
    Mary Crounan nodded, and continued to nod, as if she had known all along that her husband had gone. At the same time, though, tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on to her purple jumper, like a sparkly necklace. She clasped her hands in her lap, twisting her wedding ring around and around.
    ‘Did he suffer?’ she asked. ‘They said they would hurt him. Please God, tell me that they didn’t hurt him.’
    ‘We don’t know yet exactly how he died, Mary. But who was it who said that they were going to hurt him?’
    ‘I can’t tell you that. I can’t.’
    ‘Where has he been this past week? Did somebody abduct him?’
    Mary Crounan stopped nodding and shook her head instead, very emphatically. ‘I shouldn’t even have said “they”. There is no “they”.’
    ‘Mary,’ said Katie, ‘Micky didn’t kill himself. Somebody did it and we need to find out who it was, and as quick as we can, in case they try to do it to somebody else.’
    ‘When did you last see Micky?’ asked Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She was standing by the window, looking out. She had grown her blonde hair recently and braided it into a coronet, so that she looked almost Eastern European, especially since her grey overcoat was so square-shouldered.
    ‘Last Friday morning,’ said Mary Crounan. She took out a scrunched-up tissue and wiped her eyes. ‘He was going to the bakery first and then for lunch with Donal Neely from the tourism committee. He went to the shop all right but about half past one Donal rang up and asked me where he was. He thought he might have forgotten their appointment, but Micky never forgot anything. He even remembered my mother’s birthday, God bless