Amy Jordan lives by the sea with her husband and young children in Cork, Ireland. A former tutor at Munster Technological University, she worked in the Irish civil service for a number of years before pursuing her passion for writing crime fiction. Amy is a fan of thrillers and crime novels, and her love of suspense and plot twists flows into her writing.
The Dark Hours
Amy Jordan
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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This edition 2025
1
First published in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2025
Copyright © Amy Jordan 2025
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To Calum
12024
Julia Harte has found the perfect place to disappear: Cuan Beag, a secluded village on the east coast of Ireland. Home to fewer than one thousand residents, a popular day trip for tourists, it has proved to be a scenic corner in which to erase a life.
From her living room window she anxiously watches the night steal the remains of the evening sun, chasing the last of the day until even the shadows evaporate. Under the cover of night, the road beyond her short driveway is a gateway to possibilities, yet only residents’ cars travel this far from the village, and she knows the sound of the engines and the routines of the drivers. This corner of the world is so peaceful, at times it feels uninhabited; that’s why she chose to disappear here. But Julia knows anything is possible in the dark hours.
She snaps the blinds closed and draws the curtains, turning her back on the outside world, sealing off another day. Moving quickly through the rest of the cottage, she
follows her nightly ritual, checking that windows are closed and latched properly, that the alarm system light is blinking as it should. She double-locked the front door when she came inside earlier but pushes against the handle now as she walks past. A flashlight stands ready on the hall table and she flicks it on and off, then brushes her fingers against the cool steel of an old golf club resting against the wall. A golf club and a flashlight … all anyone needs to keep away the darkness.
Everything is as it should be. Safely locked in for another night inside her fortress, tucked into a corner of the world where her old life doesn’t exist.
In the kitchen her eyes rest on a single birthday card on the windowsill. She turned sixty last week; a milestone birthday, spent alone. The card is from an old friend, one of the few that know where to find her. Loneliness accosts her suddenly; sometimes she feels the quiet of Cuan Beag seeping into her soul, a cold chokehold that steals her breath, and wonders if she made the right decision. She shakes herself free of it; isn’t that how it goes when you leave your life behind? She imagines Philip rolling his eyes at her in those moments; she was never indecisive. In fact, her stubborn certainty that she was right was one of the things he loved about her in the early days. The solitude of this existence is exactly what she needs now. And if she feels lonely sometimes, well, that’s her penance.
In her small living room, Mutt is a tiny ball of white fur waiting patiently on the armchair near the hearth, his ears pricking up when she walks in. She smiles at him, the most ineffective guard dog she has ever met, and now, her only companion.
‘All tucked in for the night.’ She rubs his head as she walks to the dresser and pours a brandy into the same crystal glass that she has used for decades. It’s one of the few remnants of her life before; a wedding present, its twin long ago smashed into shards. She raises the glass to her wedding picture hanging on the wall and dips her head.
‘Night, Phil.’
Mutt rises onto his paws and circles to make room for her on the armchair. His age is showing, his movements slow, and she rubs his fur affectionately. She takes her first sip of brandy – it’s sharp and sears her throat, but she knows the second swallow will be gentler – and switches on the nighttime news.
The newsreader’s voice is hypnotic; updates from the White House in America, the stock exchange, a protest about climate change planned for Dublin city centre, no news on a young man who has been missing in Cork city for over a week. Her heart sinks at the last news item, but the woman who would have abandoned everything else to find that young man existed in a different life. Now, she sits with her dog on her lap and a brandy in one hand, happy to have escaped it all.
Her eyelids begin to close. But something startles her into alertness; a name. The newsreader’s baritone continues as it had before, but the words cause her to sit up straight. She feels her heart rate spike, a thudding that burns uncomfortably, her pulse sounding loud inside her head. The TV screen is blurring; she blinks rapidly and rests one hand heavier on Mutt’s fur, the other gripping the crystal glass like a vice.
‘A spokesperson from the psychiatric hospital has
confirmed that Mr Cox died suddenly earlier today. His conviction for several murders in 1994 and his subsequent incarceration in Cork—’
She’s breathless, fear tightening around her throat, dread that the news report might show photographs of him or even a film reel. Her heart is still pounding fast and hard, and she knows seeing James Cox again, even just a photograph, will be her undoing. And worse still, she might be in that photograph. Julia hadn’t intended to reach for the remote and change the channel but now she is watching highlights from a recent football match and beginning to breathe easier.
He’s dead.
Mutt stirs and she feels his eyes on her. His mouth twitches, anxious. He knows her moods by now. She pulls his face close and kisses him gently.
‘It’s all right, my little scruff. We might sleep easier tonight. The monster is dead.’
But she doesn’t sleep; she rarely does. With the dog breathing deeply and curled at her feet, she sits at a small desk in the second bedroom, the blue-white glow of the screen lighting up the room. She doesn’t feel the cold of the night. Her fingers tap the keys of her laptop, finding news articles, pausing to skim-read, searching for more. It’s almost thirty years since his arrest, and as the night passes, she relives that day as if it were yesterday. As the darkness fades into the weak light of dawn, she reads and rereads, then searches again.
He is dead. It’s confirmed by all the major news stations; cause of
death is a suspected heart attack, more details to follow. She allows her eyes to rest on the image of his face just once. He was handsome, in a way. A strong jaw, a high forehead, small, light-coloured eyes. He had benefitted from the best mental health care the state could offer, yet he was never released. She has been grateful for that mercy every day for decades.
Her head feels fuzzy. She resists the urge to trawl through archived newspaper articles detailing the worst of James Cox; she doesn’t need the words and images on a screen to remember the names of his victims, their faces, their families’ grief. Now that he’s dead, will those families have peace?
Will she?
Experience has taught her that now is not the time to relax. The media will dredge up the past again, will force the country to relive his crimes in all their gruesome detail. It will be a frenzy, less than it was thirty years ago, perhaps, but it will consume the front pages for a while. Will the articles mention her name? Will they show photographs of her? She can’t see why not. She and Cox are forever entwined, even in death.
This chapter of my life is over, she thinks, closing the laptop with a soft click, her eyes on Mutt, who is sleeping soundly, his weight reassuring and warm against her ankles. She just has to keep her head down for the next week while the media run their stories and it will all blow over.
Perhaps then she can finally lay the ghost of James Cox to rest.
Perhaps now she can stop being afraid of the dark.