The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3) Read Free Page B

since the disappearances.
    Guy waited until they were settled. His deputy, Detective Sergeant Bob Hamilton, ex of the RUC, still of the Orange Order, was blowing his nose loudly on a cotton hankie, the others reluctantly shuffling papers and slumping in seats. Guy frowned. ‘Where’s Avril?’ He looked at Fiacra Quinn, a young Detective Garda from over the border who was their liaison with the South.
    ‘How would I know? Got her nose in some wedding magazine again, no doubt.’
    ‘Would you fetch her? We need to start.’
    ‘Monaghan can go,’ said Fiacra grouchily.
    Gerard, sleeves rolled up and tie askew, gave a sort of grunt. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
    ‘Sorry, sorry!’ Finally in came Avril Wright, flustered and dropping papers, revealing the magazine she was carrying in among her briefing notes. A woman in lace and silk smiled out, radiant, and Avril hid it, blushing. The young and pretty intelligence analyst, who did her very best to overcome the disadvantage of being Bob’s niece, was getting married in the summer and had gone from being efficiency itself to an airhead with her nose never out of bridal magazines. Between her and Pat, Paula never wanted to hear the words ‘three-tier red velvet cake’ ever again. She herself was the sixth team member, though the bump of the baby was so huge it could probably count as a seventh for health and safety purposes. As Avril sat down, both Gerard and Fiacra shifted slightly in their seats, Fiacra to watch her, Gerard to pointedly ignore. Several months before, Paula had caught Gerard and Avril in some kind of strange, intense moment in the corridor. She’d never got to the bottom of it, and didn’t want to.
    It was no accident that this joint team was situated in Ballyterrin, biggest border town in the North, a crossroads of smuggling, terrorist activity and general shiftiness. No-man’s-land, they called it. The team was supposed to coordinate missing persons’ cases north and south of the border, make sure the right people were looking for the lost, see that no one fell down between the imaginary lines of the border. But sometimes, as with the case in front of them, it was difficult to understand why anyone would want to look for those who were gone.
    Guy gripped the back of his chair and launched into it. ‘Mickey Doyle.’
    A small sigh went round the room. Relief, maybe, or something else.
    ‘Definitely?’ Gerard.
    ‘He had his driving licence in his pocket.’
    ‘Did he hang himself?’ asked Fiacra, who hadn’t been at the scene.
    ‘He died by hanging in Creggan Forest Park, yes. But whether it was suicide or he was forced we don’t know yet. The car park has CCTV, which shows a white van driving up into the forest around two a.m. last night. It left again half an hour later, and Doyle certainly wasn’t driving it. No number plate visible, but it’s a start. There’s also this.’ Guy switched on the projector, illuminating something on screen. ‘The autopsy hasn’t been done yet, but the FMO found this in Doyle’s mouth.’
    On screen was a scrap of lined paper, and written on it in big, shaky capitals were the words: COLLATERAL DAMAGE. ‘Does anyone recognise that wording?’ asked Guy.
    ‘It was in their statement,’ said Avril, with her forensic recall of documents. ‘Ireland First. They made a statement after the bomb saying it wasn’t them, but even if it was, some loss was always inevitable in a war, something like that. Collateral damage, they said.’
    Bob Hamilton was shaking his head. ‘Terrible thing. Terrible, terrible thing.’ Paula knew he’d been working on the day it happened, back in 2006. So had Helen Corry, for that matter. Everything about this case was too close to home.
    But the idea of Bob working on it, or any case, made doubts worm in her mind again. She tried to focus.
    Guy was nodding. ‘So this seems to rule out suicide, and also the idea that the Five skipped the country together.’
    ‘It was kidnap