That Gallagher Girl Read Free Page B

Scandinavian thrillers.
    Reaching into the pocket of her jacket, she extracted an email printout.
    Río – finally found what I’ve been looking for! It’s a working oyster farm – OK, I know that hardly fits my boyhood dream of becoming a fisherman, but it’s the next best thing! Might you have a gander at it for me? It’s a mile or so along the beach from the Villa Felicity – or whatever the place is called now – you probably know it? The guy who sold it to me is from Kerry, and inherited it from his uncle. There’s a cottage with it – he said he’d leave the key in O’Toole’s so you could check it out. (I’ve a feeling it might be in need of your interior design skills!) I’m very excited by this – it’s come up at just the right time!
    Your friend, Adair.
    PS: Will be bringing you back a present from Dubai – can’t say I’ll be sorry to leave!
    Oh, God. There was something so boyish, so affecting about all those exclamation marks!
    Río folded the printout and slid it back into her pocket, then turned in the direction of the path that would take her from the packing shed to the cottage. It wasn’t a cottage by definition, she knew – more a bog-standard bungalow. But hey – any single-storey dwelling on the west coast of Ireland called itself a cottage these days. The word ‘cottage’ had cosier connotations than ‘bungalow’, and stood a better chance of attracting the attention of potential buyers. The fact that this property came with an oyster farm attached, however, meant that offers were unlikely to be forthcoming. Who would be crazy enough to buy an oyster farm in the current economic climate? She wondered how much Adair had paid for it. She wondered if he had been suckered.
    Adair Bolger was a shrewd businessman – there was no doubt about that. Or he had been. During the reign of the rampant Celtic Tiger he had bought and sold and prospered with the most pugnacious of Ireland’s property barons. He had made headlines in the finance sections of the broad-sheets, and in the gossip columns of the glossies. But when it came to his personal affairs, Adair was purblind. He had spent millions building a holiday home for his (now ex-) wife Felicity during the boom years, but sold it for a bargain-basement price when the market imploded. He had acquired a pair of penthouses in Dublin’s docklands as pieds-à-terre for himself and his daughter (plus a couple more as investments), but these castles in the air were now languishing unoccupied and unsellable. He had escaped to Dubai to regroup just as the tentacles of economic malaise had started to besmirch the gleaming canopy of the world’s construction capital. Like hundreds of other Irish Icaruses, Adair Bolger had flown too high, had his wings scorched, and plummeted back down to earth. As he would put it himself, he was bollixed.
    And now Adair wanted Río to help him realise his dream of downshifting, and living off the fat of the land or – to be more accurate – the fruits of the sea. An oyster farm, for feck’s sake! Did he have a clue what oyster farming involved? Did he know that it was backbreaking, knucklegrazing work, work that had to be carried out in all seasons and in all weather conditions – mostly inclement because of the ‘R’ in the month thing? Did he know that demand for oysters had plummeted since recession had struck? Or that oyster farms on the coasts of all four provinces of Ireland were foreclosing, their owners emigrating? Río pictured the lucky Kerryman who’d sold Adair the property chortling up his sleeve like a pantomime villain, and rubbing his hands with glee as he cashed Adair’s cheque.
    The cottage and its outbuildings were hidden away in a quiet estuary of Coolnamara Bay. The man who had owned the farm had been a loner known as Madser, who had stockpiled junk and