Disappeared by Anthony Quinn Read Free Book Online Page B

taxi.” His voice sank to a hoarse whisper. “Can I come over tonight? You’ll break my heart if you say no.” He walked a short distance away, greedily gathering the phone to his mouth.
    Irwin, who was at least ten years younger, represented the youth Daly fervently hoped he had left behind. The regular texts he received and his hushed mobile calls suggested an unruly love life. Daly liked his eagerness and the intense pitch at which he appeared to be living, even if most of his working week was caught up with routine investigations into criminal damage and house burglaries. However, there was a clumsy lack of caution about Irwin’s detective work and Daly feared that on some days his mind strayed from the scenery of the crime to inhabit romantic plots of his own making.
    Irwin returned, snapping his mobile shut.
    “You look like crap,” he said appraising Daly’s face. “All those lonely weekends are making you as irritable as a monk. That’s your problem you know, you don’t get out enough.”
    Daly’s separation was common knowledge amongst his colleagues. It was hard to hide that kind of thing in the police force. Only the sorted and settled rushed home on a Friday night with smiles on their faces. He nodded at Irwin’s comments as though they had provided a crumb of comfort.
    “There’s no such thing as fidelity anymore,” Irwin continued, winking. “Everyone’s either just getting on or off the relationship bus. All of us are single, the married ones just a little less so.”
    Daly turned away, feeling the discomfort of his marital status encumber him like a broken wing. The breakdown of his relationship with Anna had made her the focus of overwhelming emotions, just as she had been at the start of their courtship. He hoped these were transitional feelings before he adapted to the easy, glamorous life of bachelorhood that Irwin aimed to personify.
    However, watching the younger detective saunter up the drive, his hand rolling through his thick hair as he half-garbled, half-sang the words of some pop song, Daly wondered what indignities he would have to suffer along the way.
    A young police officer with a nervous expression on his face lifted the tape aside to allow them into the cottage. Daly felt the same way about entering the house of a murder victim as some people feel about breaking into a church. Something to do with disrupting the sense of solitude and peace contained within four walls designed to hold the violent world at bay.
    “Devine must have stepped on someone’s corns, someone well connected with a paramilitary outfit,” said Irwin, his enthusiasm returning. “Who do you think it was? The real IRA, the continuity IRA, the INLA, or the truly, madly, deeply IRA?”
    “Republican paramilitaries aren’t the only pack of dogs about,” replied Daly. “But I guess that’s where the smart money lies.”
    There were no signs of forced entry or a struggle at the front door, or in the cottage’s cramped rooms. Devine had left so suddenly he hadn’t bothered closing the back door behind him. Perhaps he had wanted to give himself a running start. The phone was off the hook, and in the scullery kitchen a pot of congealed porridge sat on the hob.
    “Every house tells its own story,” said Daly.
    Irwin stuck his finger into the porridge and tasted it. “This one must be ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears.’”
    The two detectives walked into a living room with an interior design that could have been delivered complete from the 1950s: On a long shelf, an ancient radio propped up a religious calendar and a dirty bottle of Knock holy water, nostalgic souvenirs of Catholic Ireland. On a table, a portrait of the former pope was winning the equal-rights war with a dusty statue of the Virgin Mary. Even the swathe of sunshine cutting across the room from the tiny window seemed to be frozen in time. Daly noted the picture of the pope was free of dust.
    He picked up the statue of Mary and blew off a