The Galway Homicides Box Set Read online

  THE GALWAY HOMICIDES

  BOOKS 1-3

  The gripping Irish crime fiction series

  DAVID PEARSON

  Published by

  THE BOOK FOLKS

  London, 2019

  © David Pearson

  Polite note to the reader

  This book is written in British English except where fidelity to other languages or accents is appropriate.

  You are invited to visit www.thebookfolks.com and sign up to our mailing list to hear about new releases, free book promotions and other special offers.

  We hope you enjoy the book.

  This volume includes the first three novels of THE GALWAY HOMICIDES, a series of nine standalone murder mysteries set on the west coast of Ireland: MURDER ON THE OLD BOG ROAD, MURDER AT THE OLD COTTAGE, and MURDER ON THE WEST COAST.

  Further details about the other books in the series can be found at the end of this one.

  Table of Contents

  MURDER ON THE OLD BOG ROAD

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  List of Characters

  MURDER AT THE OLD COTTAGE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  List of Characters

  MURDER ON THE WEST COAST

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  List of Characters

  More fiction by David Pearson

  Coming Soon…

  Other titles of interest

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  MURDER

  ON THE OLD BOG ROAD

  DAVID PEARSON

  Chapter One

  Tuesday, 6:00 p.m.

  Ciara O’Sullivan left the shop in Galway just as soon as it closed its doors at six o’clock. It was a foul night, with the westerly wind driving the rain down onto the slick roads and footpaths, and Ciara wasn’t looking forward to the drive out to Clifden. But she had promised to visit her ailing mother, as she did every week, out in the old family home on the main street in the west of Ireland town.

  Ciara was assistant manager at the large, brightly lit emporium called ‘About the House’ on Galway’s Shop Street. As the name suggested, the shop sold all manner of household items, from a simple kitchen utensil right up to a full suite of furniture, or a bed, and even stocked a few rugs and carpets. Ciara had got the job there soon after graduating from University College Galway where she had studied retail management, and she enjoyed it immensely.

  Ciara was a good-looking girl, standing straight at five foot nine inches tall, with a trim figure, and a mane of shiny auburn hair that fell halfway down her back. She had inherited her mother’s high cheekbones, and with her large dark brown eyes and full mouth, she was very striking, and was often admired by the men who visited the shop. Some would say she was the epitome of an Irish cailín.

  She was glad she had parked the car nearby in Hynes’ Yard car park. This was no night for umbrellas, so she donned a sturdy tweed cap, pulled her raincoat tightly around her and with her head down, she wound her way through the narrow streets to the sanctuary of the car park where her little Ford Fiesta was waiting, out of the weather.

  Ciara had been very pleased to have passed her driving test first time the previous year, as this meant she could visit her mother regularly once a week to see that she was eating well, and had a good supply of medication, and that her house in Clifden was warm and dry on these winter nights. It had been a bit of a struggle to save up for the little Ford, and she didn’t fancy the idea of buying it on credit, but she had managed all the same, and loved the little car which seemed to be virtually indestructible, no matter what the occasion.

  The traffic in the city was heavy, and the incessant rain made progress slow. Despite the heater in the car being on full, the windows kept steaming up, and Ciara had to wipe them constantly to maintain a modicum of visibility. It was almost twenty to seven by the time she got free of the traffic and started out on the N59 heading for Moycullen and Oughterard. Her mother had asked her to stop in to Roundstone on the way, where the woman who ran the Lake Guest House, now empty of tourists at this time of year, had been making a new set of curtains for Mrs O’Sullivan’s spare bedroom, the old ones having literally fallen to pieces from old age some time ago. The woman who ran the guest house turned her hand to sewing as soon as the tourist season came to an end, to make some pin money for the winter months, and she was known to be an excellent seamstress.

  When Ciara got past Oughterard, the conditions deteriorated even further. The rain pelted down so that Ciara’s windscreen wipers could barely keep the window clear, and she had to slow down to hold the car on the correct side of the road, fighting the buffeting wind all the way. But west of Ireland people were used to these conditions, so she pressed on regardless.

  At Roundstone she managed to resist the insistence of the guest house owner to stop and have a cup of tea and some freshly made scones, saying that her mother would be expecting her and would be worried given the night that was in it. She took the curtains, which had been carefully sealed into two plastic bags, and resumed her journey out west along the old bog road.

  As Ciara emerged from the scant shelter of the hills approaching Ballyconneely, the weather got even worse. The rain was being driven horizontally off the sea
, and now mixed with salt water, was even harder to clear from the windscreen. Ciara slowed to a crawl and edged her way along with her headlights on full beam. She was thankful that on such a night, there was no other traffic about.

  As she approached the bridge by the beach, she saw that several large stones had been dislodged, and were strewn across the road. She brought her car to a halt, and realised that she would need to get out and move the rocks in order to continue safely. She cursed silently under her breath, and opened the driver’s door which was nearly taken off its hinges by the force of the wind. Outside the car, the strong wind was blowing a mixture of sea spray, mist and turf smoke from the cottages between the road and the sea, and she pulled her jacket tightly around her. She moved the obstructing stones away to the side using both her hands and feet, and as she finished with one large stone, placing it in the ditch on the left-hand side of the road, she spotted a large piece of what looked like red fabric in the gully itself.

  She went over to where the cloth was sticking out, and as she approached, she saw that there was a lot more of it than she had first noticed. When she was standing over the ditch, she looked down and saw that it was in fact a red coat, and it was wrapped around a young woman, who was lying, lifeless, partly submerged in the bog water. She recoiled from the horror of the scene. Ignoring the fact that she was getting soaked to the skin, Ciara stood there for several minutes, her hand held to her mouth, and tears trickling from her big brown eyes. “God, what will I do?” she asked herself.

  She went back to the car, and took out her mobile phone, but of course there was no signal. The phone was of no use to her.

  “I’d better get help,” she thought, and decided to drive on into Clifden where she would be able to report it to the local Garda. They’d know what to do.

  * * *

  Ciara pulled up outside the Garda station in Clifden and got out of the car. The rain had eased off just a little, but it would be back soon with increased ferocity, of that she had no doubt. Although there was a light on outside the station, the door was locked, and it looked as if there was no one inside. Ciara knocked loudly on the door all the same. The station should still be manned at this hour.

  As she stood there, a man came along the footpath, huddled against the weather and saw Ciara banging on the door.

  “Is that you, Ciara?” he shouted against the wind. “Sure it is. Are you looking for the sergeant?” he said, answering his own question and asking another.

  “Oh hi, Séamus, yes, but he doesn’t seem to be here.”

  “Ah sure, don’t ye know he’ll be down at Cusheen’s having a pint before he heads home. He’s always there at this time,” the man said.

  “Ah you’re right of course, I had forgotten his routine. I’ll head down there now.”

  “Are ye OK, Ciara, you look a bit pale?” Seamus enquired.

  “Sure, I’m grand Séamus, don’t worry. I’d best be off to see himself. Good night.”

  Chapter Two

  Tuesday, 9:00 p.m.

  Sergeant Séan Mulholland took a long draw on his third pint of Guinness that evening. He sat alone at a table beside the warm turf fire in Cusheen’s Bar right in the centre of Clifden. He had almost finished reading the paper from cover to cover and was thinking he’d have just one more pint before going back out in the weather and on home.

  Mulholland was one of the eleven members of the force attached to Clifden and was officially known as the Member in Charge. Since the closure of tens of rural Garda stations in 2011, following the financial meltdown in Ireland, Clifden now covered most of West Galway from Recess out to beyond Letterfrack, where Westport Garda took over. Roundstone was still officially open, but it was a one-man station, and the Garda there spent most of his time assigned to Clifden in any case, especially if there was something serious going down. Clifden was supposed to have two Garda vehicles, but one of these had crashed, so the individual Gardaí used their own cars on an allowance basis, and had blue lights and sirens fitted to help them in their work.

  Mulholland was fifty-eight years old and could have retired on full pension, but being a bachelor and living on his own, he enjoyed the camaraderie that membership of the force afforded him, and the small amount of status that his years of service and his rank bestowed upon him. He was well known in the district, and if he wasn’t exactly adored by everyone, he was well respected.

  The lifestyle suited him well enough. Clifden had very little crime, and his time was mostly taken up with the renewal of shotgun licenses for the local farmers who shot rabbit out on the various headlands in the area. He had some other light administrative duties too that kept him busy at the station, completing monthly returns for Galway and managing the rosters for the other Gardaí at the station. Occasionally there had been some break-ins at some of the holiday cottages up along the Sky Road, or out towards Ballyconneely, but the thieves soon tired of that, as these places yielded little of value, and their chances of being caught were fairly high – there essentially being just three routes out of the town.

  The Garda station in Clifden was supposed to stay open from eight in the morning to eight in the evening each day, but Mulholland usually shut up shop at around half past six, especially in winter when there was nothing happening.

  “Sure, they know where to find me if the need me,” he would say, referring to his nightly routine of going to Cusheen’s for three or four pints and a quiet read of the paper before heading home out the Sky Road to his small, rather damp and very drab cottage.

  Cusheen’s was one of Clifden’s oldest and most traditional pubs. Unlike others in the town it had been spared the makeover that ran rampant through almost all the other pubs during the Celtic Tiger years. It was dark, simple, with a stone flagged floor, a decent bar, and a good array of comfortable chairs and small tables scattered around, and of course the obligatory turf fire which was most welcome on a night such as this.

  * * *

  Crashing through the double doors of the bar, Ciara spotted the sergeant seated at a table near the fire reading the paper.

  “Sergeant, I need to talk to you. It’s urgent,” she said, the words spilling out as she struggled to catch her breath.

  “Christ, Ciara, it’s yourself. You look drowned. Sit down there a minute. Can I get you a drink?”

  “No, I’ll not sit. You need to come with me now. See, there’s a body out the road,” she said, regaining a modicum of composure.

  “A body, is it. What is it? A sheep or a dog, or maybe a donkey,” he said smiling.

  “No, Sergeant, it’s a woman. She’s lying in the ditch in a red coat out by Ballyconneely. I think she’s dead,” she said.

  “Good God, why didn’t you say so. Let’s go and see what all this is about then,” said Mulholland rising from the table and draining the last of his pint.

  “You’d better drive, and we’ll go in your car,” he said.

  The two sat in silence as Ciara drove the little Ford back out the old bog road towards Ballyconneely. The rain had stopped for the time being, and the moon shone through the patchy cloud from time to time casting an eerie glow on the landscape.

  As they approached the bridge with its dry-stone walls Ciara spoke up. “It’s just here, Sergeant. She’s in the ditch down by the bridge. You can see a bit of her red coat.”

  The car came to a halt and they got out, the sergeant putting on his peaked cap, as if that would in some way make his presence more official. Mulholland shone his torch up and down the ditch until the beam landed on the pale blue face of the young woman half covered with her lank dark brown hair.

  “Good God,” he said out loud as he clambered down awkwardly to feel the woman’s neck for a pulse, and was not surprised to find that there was none.

  “She’s dead all right,” he proclaimed, “God this is awful. I’ll call Jim Dolan on the radio. I'll get him to call Galway and get an ambulance and an Inspector out, and then come on out here himself in the squad car. We need to p
reserve the scene,” Mulholland said, struggling back onto the side of the road, his training clearly cutting in, although he had never had to deal with anything like this before.

  * * *

  An hour later and they could see the blue flashing lights reflected in the low mist long before the vehicles came into sight. Garda Dolan had arrived twenty minutes earlier and slewed the ten-year-old white Mondeo across the road with its own blue lights winking in the gloom. He had attempted to put up blue and white tape around the scene, but the wind took most of it, with just a few well anchored strands fluttering about.

  The convoy of Galway vehicles arrived. In front, the newer Garda Hyundai estate car carried Inspector Mick Hays, two uniformed Gardaí and the pathologist from Galway Regional Hospital. Next came a Garda Toyota 4x4 with three scene of crime technicians along with a generator, three flood lights and an inflatable plastic tent. Bringing up the rear was an emergency ambulance with two paramedics and an array of medical kit, almost certainly of little use on this occasion.

  Hays was first out of the vehicles and as he walked over to where Mulholland and Ciara were standing said, “Hello Séan. Haven’t seen you for a while. What have you got here for me then?”

  “How are ya, Mick? Yes, it’s been a while. Ciara here,” he said, nodding to the girl who was standing off giving the two policemen some space, “Ciara here says she was on her way to Clifden when she came across a woman lying in the ditch.” Mulholland went on to outline the events leading to the call to the Regional Crime Centre in Galway where Hays was based.

  Mick Hays turned to Ciara, “Miss O’Sullivan, can you tell me what you were doing out along this road at nine-thirty at night?”

  “I was on my way to Clifden to see my mother. She’s not well, and I like to visit her every week if I can. She lives alone in the main street,” Ciara explained.

  “And where do you live yourself?” Hays enquired.

  “I have a place in Galway. I work there as a retail manageress, and I have my own flat.”