Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (55 page)

When she returned home, she found a letter waiting for her on the mat. The hallway had been stripped of its wallpaper now, and the carpet shampooed, so that any trace of David had been erased for ever. She hung up her coat and opened the kitchen door so that Barney could come jumbling out, wagging his tail and sniffing and wuffing.

‘Hello, Barns, you faithful long-suffering creature,’ she said. ‘What about some Applaws? Chicken and rice? Lamb? You name it.’

She poured him out some dry dog food and then she looked at the letter. She didn’t recognise the handwriting but it had been posted in Cork. She opened it and found a single sheet of lined paper that looked as if it had been torn from a notebook.

‘
Dear Kathleen,

This is by way of an apology even though I realise that no apology for what I have done will ever make amends.

After Caitlin and I broke up I went through what you might describe as a crisis, both financially and mentally. I know that I am a good detective but I have always found the job highly stressful. First of all I took out my stress on Caitlin but after she left I turned to coke, and some other stuff besides.

Not only did I lose most of my savings when our marriage collapsed, I found myself in deep debt to several drug-dealers. I went to Bryan Molloy asking for advice and he told me that there was a way out of my situation, which was to help him with the High Kings of Erin.

I know how wrong it was, but I was not thinking straight at all, and so I agreed. The way he described the plan, it sounded as if nobody would get hurt and only public money would be diverted.

I cannot tell you how bad I felt when it all went wrong and Brenda McCracken was killed and then Nessa Goold. The trouble was that I could see no way of turning back. Whatever I admitted to, I had no way of breathing life back into them.

I know now how much I have let you down and everybody else at Anglesea Street. I can understand that you will never forgive me but that is the burden I have to bear.

By the time you read this anyway I will have gone to face the judgment which I deserve.

Thank you for being a wonderful person. There is no more that I can say that will make you feel any better about me.

Liam.
’

Katie took the letter into the living room and switched on the lights. She sat down and read it again, with tears in her eyes and shaking hands. She tried Liam’s number again on her iPhone but there was no answer, so she called the station and asked them to send a patrol car to Liam’s house in Douglas to see if he was there.

‘If he doesn’t answer, break in.’

She waited for over two hours. She was already in bed when Sergeant Brennan rang her back, not sleeping but reading through some of the reports that she had been given that day. She had been hoping that verbatim interviews with a fifty-one-year-old accountant from Togher accused of petty money-laundering might send her to sleep.

‘There was no response so we forced an entry,’ said Sergeant Brennan. ‘The property was empty. Nobody there. We secured the property again before we left.’

‘Thank you, sergeant,’ she said.

‘You’re not thinking he might have self-harmed, ma’am?’

‘I don’t know, sergeant. I very much hope not. It’s hard to know what people are going to do when they feel like there’s no way out.’

***

She slept badly, even though she was so tired, and at 5.17 in the morning, when it was still dark, she climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom. The Clearblue pregnancy kit was waiting beside the toilet. Her period was due now so this was the time to use it.

At 5.30 she climbed back into bed again. Had David really loved her, in spite of the way that he had behaved towards her? Was aggression and violence his way of demonstrating how much he cared? Had he lodged his complaint against her for no other reason than he wanted her back?

He had taken Aengus Duggan’s bullets for her, after all, and sacrificed his own life saving hers. But now she could never ask him why.

His child would never be able to ask him why, either. His child that she had just discovered that she was carrying inside her.

***

She was drinking coffee in the kitchen the next morning, still wrapped in her dressing gown, when the doorbell chimed. Barney was alert at once, and ran along the hallway to the front door.

‘Who is it?’ she called out. ‘If it’s a parcel just leave it in the porch.’

‘It’s me,’ said a man’s voice. A very familiar man’s voice.

Katie’s heart almost stopped in mid-beat. She drew back the safety chain and opened the door and there he was, wearing a long white raincoat, tall and suntanned, with his dark curly hair much longer than when he had left her.

‘Hello, Katie,’ he smiled. He held out a bunch of red roses wrapped in cellophane, and said, ‘Pretty crappy, I’m afraid, but they were the best they had at the gas station, and noplace else was open.’

‘John,’ she said, and that was all she could manage to say. Her mouth puckered, and tears streamed down her face.

‘Hey –
hey
,’ he said, and stepped into the hallway. She put her arms around him and held him as tightly as she could. She breathed in and he smelled just like John, the same woodsy smell, and she couldn’t believe that he was really here and that she was hugging him.

He kissed the top of her crow’s-nest hair – once, and then twice, and then again. ‘I’m sorry I came so early. The plane came in from London at six. I had coffee in the airport to kill time but then I couldn’t wait any longer.’

Katie said, ‘It doesn’t matter, darling. Honestly, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I know I should have called you. I should have called you but I didn’t know what to say to you and I was afraid to.’

She looked at him with teardrops clinging to her eyelashes. ‘For goodness’ sake! What were you afraid of?’

‘I know it sounds crazy, sweetheart, but I was afraid you might have found somebody else. You haven’t found anybody else, have you?’

~

We hope you enjoyed this book.

The next gripping book in the Katie Maguire series will be released in Autumn 2015.

For more information, click one of the links below:

Graham Masterton

More books in the Katie Maguire Series

An invitation from the publisher

It is a sunny Saturday in county Cork, and an Irish wedding is in full swing. Drunk uncles are toasting the bride. The Ceilidh band have played for hours. No one could predict that the cutting of the cake would bring this wedding to a horrifying end.

The severed head of Micky Crounan, local baker, is grinning gruesomely up from the bottom tier of his own cake. Katie Maguire, of the Irish Garda, is baffled – until another local businessman goes missing in horrific circumstances. Soon Katie is on the trail of a debt-collecting gang calling themselves The Kings of Erin. But these are very dangerous men. And they will stop at nothing to throw Katie off the trail…

‘One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.’

Peter James

‘One of the few true masters.’

James Herbert

‘Graham Masterton’s best book yet, and that’s as good as they come!’

John Farris

‘His setting is unique, his killer is gruesomely fascinating, and his storyteller is visceral and graphic.’

Booklist

‘A superlative writer.’

Philadelphia Inquirer

‘The living inheritor to the realm of Edgar Allen Poe.’

San Francisco Chronicle

‘[Masterton] moves from the familiar and credible to the fanciful and disturbing. The drama is tense, the writing superb.’

Sunday Times

‘Multifaceted and fascinating.’

Los Angeles Times

‘A mesmerizing storyteller whose fascination with the finer points of human weakness and deft touch keep the pages turning.’

Publishers Weekly

G
RAHAM
M
ASTERTON
was a bestselling horror writer for many years before he turned his talent to crime. His most recent book,
White Bones
, was an Ebook hit, selling 100,000 copies in a single month. He lived in Cork for five years, an experience that inspired the Katie Maguire series.

Find out more on Graham’s website,
www.grahammasterton.co.uk
or connect with him on Twitter,
@GrahamMasterton

K
ATIE
M
AGUIRE

1 –
White Bones

One wet, windswept November morning, a field on Meagher’s farm gives up the dismembered bones of eleven women…

Their skeletons bear the marks of a meticulous butcher. The bodies date back to 1915. All were likely skinned alive.

But then a young woman goes missing, and her remains, the bones carefully stripped and arranged in an arcane pattern, are discovered on the same farm.

With the crimes of the past echoing in the present, D.S. Katie Maguire must solve a decades-old murder steeped in ancient legend… before this terrifying killer strikes again.

White Bones
is available
here
.

2 –
Broken Angels

As they came nearer, the black-clad body came into view, lying on its side in the shallows…

One cold spring morning in County Cork, two fishermen find a body floating in the Blackwater River: the mutilated corpse of a retired music teacher. His hands and feet are bound, and his neck bears the mark of a garrotting wire.

The Garda want to wrap this case up before the press get hold of it. But when a second man is found murdered, the body bears all the same marks as the first. And Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire fears this case carries the hallmark of a serial murderer…

Broken Angels
is available
here
.