The Drowned: A Short Story Read online

  THE DROWNED

  A Katie Maguire Short Story

  Graham Masterton

  Start Reading

  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About The Drowned

  The River Lee has always been a part of life – and death – in Cork. Now the bodies of five young men have been found by divers, locked in their car on the riverbed. A tragic accident? Or something more sinister?

  As the volunteer divers begin the macabre task of extracting the bodies, DCI Katie Maguire investigates a crime where all is not as it seems...

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About The Drowned

  The Drowned

  About Graham Masterton

  About the Katie Maguire Series

  About the Scarlet Widow Series

  From the Editor of this Book

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  ‘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 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 wastes of space, twice over.’

  *

  Katie was buttoning up her black hooded raincoat, ready to go for lunch, when Detective Dooley knocked at her door.

  ‘Oh, Robert,’ she said. ‘How’s it going with Danny Phelan? Has he given you any more information on those stolen cars yet?’

  ‘Not yet, ma’am, but we’ll wheedle it out of him before too long, I can promise you that. If he had two brains, that fellow, he’d be twice as stupid. No – what I came up to tell you about, there’s five young men been reported missing from their homes in Mayfield. They’re all friends, all about the same age – seventeen, eighteen, and a pair of twins, both nineteen. Their families are al
l downstairs in one of the interview rooms and Ó Doibhilin and Scanlan are taking down their particulars now.’

  ‘Five of them? How long have they been missing?’

  ‘This is the second day now. The last they were heard of was about half-past ten on Tuesday evening when they were all going down to Havana Brown’s to see what girls they could pick up.’

  ‘Has anybody checked if they actually went to Havana Brown’s?’

  ‘The twins’ father went down there late last night and showed a photo of them to the bar staff. Like, it’s not easy to identify anybody in Havana Brown’s because it’s all flashing lights, and the music’s so loud it makes your eyes wobble. But because they were twins one of the girls behind the bar definitely recognized them. So they were there at least, the twins, even if the other three weren’t.’

  ‘All right,’ said Katie, looking at her watch. She was due in the circuit court at 3.15 p.m. and she wanted to have something to eat before then. Her breakfast had been nothing but an oat and honey bar which she had eaten while she was driving in from Cobh. ‘I’ll come down and make myself known to them. If it looks like it’s appropriate to put out a news bulletin, we still have time to make the Six-One News this evening and tomorrow morning’s Examiner.’

  Together she and Detective Dooley went down to the interview room. Detectives Ó Doibhilin and Scanlan were facing the mothers of the missing teenagers across the table – Mary Buckley, Shelagh O’Reilly, Brenda O’Connor and Margaret Martin. The twins’ father, Jim Martin, was sitting against the right-hand wall with Donal O’Reilly, Aidan’s stepfather. Jim Martin was stocky and grey-haired. Donal O’Reilly was thin and ginger, although his hair was turning grey at the sides. Both men looked as if they were twitching for a smoke, biting their nails and jiggling their knees.

  Detective Ó Doibhilin stood up and offered Katie his chair. He had brushed-up hair and looked almost too young to be a fully qualified detective. Detective Scanlan looked young, too, with her long brunette hair tied up with a scarf, but she always spoke crisply and with authority, as if she wasn’t prepared to tolerate any contradiction.

  ‘Everybody,’ she announced, ‘this is Detective Superintendent Maguire. She’ll be in overall charge of any search that we set up to find out what’s happened to your boys.’

  Brenda peered at Katie and said, ‘Didn’t I see you on the telly a couple of nights back? You was talking about that riot over the water charges.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Katie, sitting down. ‘That’s all quietened down now, thank God. People have a right to protest about what they pay for their water, but they don’t have a right to toss rockers and turn cars over.’

  She looked at each of the parents in turn and then she said, ‘I expect Detective Ó Doibhilin and Detective Scanlan have been taking down all the details about your boys – when you saw them last and when you expected them to come home. What they were wearing. Can I ask you if they’ve ever gone missing like this before? Even for just one night?’

  ‘Well, for one night sometimes, now and then,’ said Mary. ‘But my Tadgh always comes back in the morning wolfing for his breakfast. And he’s never been away for this long without giving me some kind of an explanation for where he’s going, even if I know that it’s not exactly the God’s honest truth.’

  ‘Every one of the five lads has a mobile phone, as you’d expect,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘Not one of them answered any of the calls their parents put in to them yesterday, and today their phones are all stone dead. Mary’s son, Tadgh, never told her his number, so she wasn’t able to ring him, but even when his provider gave us the number and we tried to get through to him there was no response at all.’

  ‘My Darragh’s stayed out a few times,’ said Brenda. ‘I can’t say that I know where he’s been, or what he’s been up to, and if I ask him all I get is, “Mind your own beeswax, you nosey old cow.” But this is the longest he’s been away without calling even once, if only to tell me that he’s going to be stopping out longer.’

  ‘They’re grand boys, my Conor and Stevey,’ put in Margaret. ‘They’ve been in bother a few times, but it’s like they can’t help attracting it. I think it’s them being twins. People take advantage because they know that they’ll always look out for each other.’

  ‘The girls, especially,’ said Jim, their father. ‘As soon as they clap eyes on Conor and Stevey they think, Hallo – two for the price of one, like.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Jim!’ Margaret protested. ‘I always brought them up to have respect for women.’

  ‘You haven’t overheard them crowing about it,’ said Jim.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Katie, ‘as soon as Detective Ó Doibhilin and Detective Scanlan have taken all the background details about your boys and a full description, we’ll notify all our officers and make sure that they’re keeping their eyes peeled for them. You’ve fetched in photographs, I hope?’

  Detective Scanlan opened up a manila folder to show Katie the pictures the parents had given him. Tadgh, squinting at the sun with a caravan behind him. Aidan, sitting on a wall with a grinning girl with frizzy blonde hair. Darragh, in a bar, with a cigarette in his mouth, holding up a bottle of Satzenbrau and winking. Conor and Stevey, arm in arm, posing with some of their friends in the Peace Park.

  Katie looked through them slowly and carefully, trying to assess what kind of boys they were. Their parents would have been surprised how much she was able to learn about them from their clothes and haircuts and the poses they were striking for the camera. Cocky, vain, and not too bright. The sort of lads who had constantly hopped off school and then wondered why they couldn’t land a decent job.

  All the same, she couldn’t help thinking that these were all happy pictures. Almost all the photographs that relatives brought in when their loved ones went missing had been taken in brighter times. On holiday, or in pubs, or standing in their rose-filled gardens in the sunshine, with their pet dogs beside them. Cheerful photographs like this always heightened the tragedy when those same smiling people were found half-decomposed in a ditch by the N25, or floating face-down in the river Lee, or dead of an overdose in some tatty mobile home in Gurra, their bellies hugely inflated with hydrogen sulphide gas.

  ‘Well, I’m pure glad you came to tell us about this so quickly,’ said Katie, closing the folder. ‘For some reason people have the impression that they need to wait at least forty-eight hours before they report anybody missing, but that simply isn’t the case. The sooner we know about it, the better the chance we have of locating them.’

  *

  Katie went across the road to the Market Tavern for a Cajun chicken wrap and a glass of pineapple juice, as well as a bit of craic with Ken behind the bar.

  Ken was constantly nagging her to marry him, ‘I’m a fool for redheads, Katie – especially beautiful redheads with green eyes and the fillum-star figures like yours. If we were married, we could have beautiful red-headed daughters and you could wipe all the penalty points off my driving licence.’

  ‘Well – if we were married, I wouldn’t have far to walk to work, would I?’ Katie teased him. ‘The only trouble is, Ken, even though you’re the nicest pub landlord in Cork, I don’t actually love you.’

  ‘Jesus, Katie. You don’t have to be in love to be married. Suppressed hatred, that’s all you need.’

  As soon as she returned to her office, Detectives Ó Doibhilin and Scanlan came in to see her with their report on the missing boys.

  Detective Ó Doibhilin said, ‘We checked with Sergeant Twomey up at Mayfield and four out of the five lads had form for anti-social behaviour – vandalism, mostly, breaking windows and damaging parked cars. They’ve also been cautioned for hobbling sweets from the local shops, and Darragh O’Connor was caught carrying a knife and being in possession of a small amount of cannabis.’

  ‘In other words, they’re all typical Mayfield boys,’ said Katie. ‘Is there any indication that any of them are linked to a serious gang?’

  ‘Not so far as we’ve been able to find out,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘And there are no notifications that any of them have been involved in any major incidents lately.’