A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) by Claire McGowan Read Free Book Online Page A

her.’
    He looked puzzled but reacted slowly, his features somehow flat, as if under glass. Paula found she was looking to see if his pupils were dilated. ‘Oh. Where do you think she is?’
    ‘Well, we don’t know, Dermot. She’s missing, as I said. We were hoping you might know something.’
    ‘Where do you think she could be?’ It was Paula’s standard question when people went missing, one that often yielded surprising results.
    ‘We thought she’d just gone off again,’ he said. Offhand.
    ‘Again?’ Corry flashed her gaze to Paula, steely. Let him talk.
    ‘Well – sometimes Alice wanted, like, headspace. You know. She said that’s why she was moving out of campus. So she could work on her summer project.’
    ‘You said again . Do you mean she’s gone missing before?’
    Dermot rubbed his head. ‘Uh – she told me once she used to run away a lot. At school and that. So we thought maybe . . . she went off.’
    Paula asked, ‘What about Facebook? When did she last post?’
    ‘Um . . .’ He took out a phone and scrolled through it. ‘She liked something Katy – that’s Alice’s room-mate, or she was before – put up about friendship. Katy’s always posting these crap statuses, oh I’ve had such a bad day, blah blah, just had the worst time ever. Just to make the other girls go are you OK, babe ? and all that. She’s so pass-aggy. That was yesterday.’
    ‘Tell me about you,’ said Corry, changing tack. ‘What are you studying?’
    ‘Applied Maths.’
    ‘And what’s that?’
    ‘It’s complicated. I don’t think it’s worth explaining.’
    ‘And you’ve known Alice a while?’
    ‘We met in freshers’ week. There’s a small class here so it’s easy to meet people.’
    Corry said, ‘I gather you dropped out of Trinity before this.’
    He looked irritated. ‘I didn’t drop out. I get anxiety. It wasn’t that bad. My parents over-reacted, made me transfer here.’
    Paula asked, ‘And when did you last see Alice, Dermot? I mean actually see her yourself.’
    He screwed up his eyes. ‘Um . . . I’m not sure. Not that long ago, I guess. A few weeks, maybe.’
    ‘And she seemed OK?’
    ‘Well, yeah. Same as normal really. Honestly, she’s probably just gone off for a bit of space.’
    Corry regarded him steadily, and Paula could almost hear her thought as if she’d said it: he’s lying . ‘So you aren’t worried about her, then?’
    ‘Well . . .’ For the first time Dermot paused. ‘I mean, of course I’m worried. She’s my friend.’ He straightened up. ‘Anyway, is it not early for you to be here? I thought you normally waited like twenty-four hours to do anything about missing people.’
    ‘We don’t wait if we have reasons to be concerned.’ Corry stared him down. ‘Do you think we do?’
    ‘I don’t know. Like I said, she needs space sometimes.’
    Corry held his gaze for a few more seconds, before nodding. ‘Well, if you hear anything that might help, please get in touch.’
    ‘We’re friends. Best friends. She didn’t have any other girl friends here. She got on better with the boys mostly.’
    Katy Butcher was a large girl, with thick-framed glasses that matched the nondescript brown colour of her hair. Katy was sitting hunched over, cross-legged on one of the single beds in the room she’d shared with Alice, also wearing a college hoody, despite the warmth of the day. Sad, low music played; Paula thought it was maybe Snow Patrol.
    Corry leaned against a dresser. ‘Would you give the music a rest, Katy?’ The room was small for two girls, one single bed under the window and another in the corner, stripped and unused. Katy’s posters – Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Marilyn Monroe; all the dead girls – crept over half the wall, then stopped, in an invisible line of demarcation.
    Katy put out a hand to turn off the iPod dock, and Paula saw it, underneath the thick black wristband the girl wore: a network of broad raised scars,