A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and the hunger strikes. ‘Wasn’t there some story about Saint Blannad?’ she called. She was trying to remember back to school, the drone of her RE teacher on a soporific afternoon. ‘She was starved, wasn’t she, and she had holy visions or something like that, and . . .’ She turned over another book. The Body as Power . A history of the 1981 hunger strikes. Same year Yvonne had gone missing. Had Alice known about the other girl?
    Corry’s voice echoed as if she was looking in a cupboard. ‘Come in here,’ she said.
    Paula moved towards the kitchen – there was barely room for the two of them. ‘What?’
    Then, she saw.
    The kitchen units and doors and fridge were entirely covered with pictures. Torn out of magazines and papers. Female bodies. Torsos, legs, arms – the faces cut or ripped off. Here and there were actual photographs of another female body. One hand could be seen holding the camera phone, the other lifting up whatever she was wearing. In some, a hank of blond hair was visible, but the face was always missing. ‘Is it her? Alice?’
    Corry nodded. ‘Selfies, is that what they call them?’
    ‘God, she was thin. Is there any food at all here?’
    With her gloved hands, Corry opened the fridge – nothing but a wizened apple and some dark nail polish. In the cupboards were some stale-looking packets of cereal and dried fruit and that was it. Even houses during the Famine probably had more to eat in them. ‘Her Facebook page is like this too – she posts one of those selfies every day. Even yesterday.’
    ‘Did we get her computer or phone? Bet we’ll find loads of links to pro-ana stuff.’
    ‘We’ve not found anything yet. She might have her phone with her.’ If she was alive, of course. At this stage – and this was what got Paula really hooked on missing persons work – everything was still possible. Alice might be perfectly fine. There was still hope. There was still a chance.
    Gerard had followed them through the kitchen doorway, and his face creased as he saw the pictures. ‘What’s that?’
    Paula opened another cupboard. ‘Thinspiration. Pro-anorexia stuff.’
    ‘That’s a thing?’
    ‘Be glad you’re male, Monaghan,’ said Corry, poking through a cutlery drawer.
    Gerard squinted. ‘So does she do this every day, take photos? Bit up herself, is she?’
    ‘It’s an eating disorder thing,’ said Paula. ‘She needs validation from people online to reassure herself she’s thin.’
    ‘Load of rubbish.’
    ‘Look at this.’ Paula indicated a headless picture of Alice in a bikini, her hipbones lifting the fabric like buttresses. ‘I’d say her self-esteem isn’t the best. She’d be at risk of drug use, self-harm – and suicide, sadly. And I bet if we have a look we’ll also find a bad boyfriend in the mix.’ Paula’s fingertip hovered over the picture, not touching.
    Corry shook her head. ‘Give me a nice gangland killing any day. Clean and simple.’
    Gerard said, ‘Like that one last month where the fella’s kneecaps were shot out all over the kitchen floor?’
    ‘At least that made sense. He didn’t do it to himself, did he?’
    Paula was still looking at Alice’s ribcage. She was gaunt, like an animal starving to death. She’d have hated how she looked, most likely. Probably explained the baggy clothes. But she’d chosen to cover her fridge with pictures of her near-naked body. Maybe so she’d punish herself if she allowed one morsel of food past her mouth. ‘Mortification of the flesh,’ she muttered.
    ‘Eh?’ Gerard was on his phone again, perhaps hoping for an assignment to something more clear-cut.
    ‘That was what Saint Blannad did, wasn’t it? She fasted for a year in captivity, supposedly, and was rewarded with divine visions. And Alice here is obsessed with the relic by all accounts, she’s spent the year studying it, she’s even moved out here – and she’s starving herself.’
    ‘A girl with anorexia at a shrine for the