Dead Girls Dancing

by Graham Masterton

  Detective Sergeant Noone, to Katie’s surprise, stood up and bowed. ‘I’m honoured to meet you, ma’am,’ he said, in a very Dublin 4 accent. ‘I’ve heard some very complimentary things about you, you’ll be happy to know.’

  ‘That makes a change,’ said Katie. ‘Especially up at Phoenix Park.’

  ‘Oh, the wind is changing, ma’am, now that Commissioner O’Sullivan has taken over, and the smoke will soon be blowing the other way. I’m a bit of an expert on political pyrophorics, as well as chemical ones.’

  ‘Well, let’s stick to the chemical ones for now,’ said Katie. ‘Do you know now what started that fire at Toirneach Damhsa?’

  ‘I have a very good idea, ma’am. It was almost certainly a TPA, which means a thickened pyrophoric agent. In this case, the residue found on the stairs and the floorboards and the wall plaster was triethylaluminium thickened with polyisobutylene. TPA is usually used in thermobaric incendiary weapons, like M74 rockets. It’s an alternative to napalm, which the Americans used to burn down villages in Vietnam when they thought Viet Cong soldiers might be sheltering there. It’s also used in the manufacture of semiconductors and some plastics.’

  ‘But how was it used to burn down the dance studio?’ asked Katie. ‘It wasn’t dropped in a bomb or fired in a rocket, was it?’

  ‘Oh, no, sure, of course not. But whoever applied it was even more of an expert in pyrotechnics than I am. When TPA is used for incendiary weapons, the thickener is usually six per cent or thereabouts. But you can make it much safer by adding other diluents, like n-hexane, right down to one per cent. What your arsonist appears to have done is spread the TPA over the staircase and also the attic. I can’t be sure yet what percentage of diluents was used, or what exactly the diluents were, but for a limited time they would have rendered the TPA non-pyrophoric. That’s until they evaporated – at which moment, whoomph! You would have had yourself a huge combined fireball of TPA and hexane vapours, or whatever else you might have used.’

  ‘I have you,’ said Katie. ‘He mixed it in such a way that it gave him time to leave the building before it exploded? Or she did, of course.’

  ‘Exactly that. I’ve known some TPAs take ten minutes or more to self-ignite – again, depending on what diluents are used.’

  Bill Phinner said, ‘The FIAI investigators believe that there was an initial explosive fire on the first-floor landing. That was so fierce that it consumed nearly all of the oxygen in the stairwell, and so for a while after that it died right down. It was only when one of the dancers opened the practice-room door that it burst into life again. And I mean burst. All of the evidence tells us that it was like an incendiary bomb going off. The girl who must have opened the door was cremated on the spot.

  ‘The remaining dancers tried to escape by going up into the attic, but an exactly similar scenario had been set up there. A TPA fire had self-combusted, but it had quickly been suppressed by lack of oxygen. The dancers would have stood more of a chance if they had tried to jump out of the studio windows. But they opened the attic door and fed the fire with a great rush of oxygen, and that was the end of them. One breath of superheated air and they were barbecued from the inside out.’

  Katie examined the piece of flooring. If the fire had done this much damage to varnished wood, she could only imagine what it had done to the victims’ lungs.

  ‘In your experience, Bryan, who might have the expertise or the experience to use TPA in the way that this was used? Are we talking about soldiers? Or demolition experts? Or maybe somebody involved with special effects for the film business? What about terrorists? Have you ever seen any kind of TPA used in this way before – by the Provos, say, or the Real UFF?’

  ‘Not here in the South, anyway,’ said Detective Sergeant Noone. ‘I’ve heard reports of some incidents of arson north of the border that may have been chemically started, but I’ll have to have a word with my friend in Forensic Science Northern Ireland to find out if any of them used the same or a similar formula to this one. I should be able to get more details for you in a day or two.’

  ‘You said that they use it for making semiconductors and some plastics. Are there any companies in Cork where the arsonist might have got hold of it?’

  Bill Phinner said, ‘There’s Troy Microsystems in Bishopstown, they use it, and Lee Plastics on Little Island. I don’t know of anybody else.’

  ‘I’ll have Dooley check them out to see if they’re missing any,’ said Katie. Then she turned to Detective Sergeant Noone. ‘Thanks, Bryan. I’ll look forward to seeing your final results.’

  ‘Oh, you’re more than welcome. This case has been interesting, to say the least. I spend most of my time firing bullets into tanks of water.’

  ‘Talking of that, Bill,’ said Katie, ‘how’s it going with the Niall Gleeson shooting?’

  ‘I’m having the bullet and the bullet fragments from both Niall Gleeson and the two dancers scrutinized even as we speak. We may even have a result for you later today so. That’s if my comparison macroscope isn’t banjaxed.’

  ‘Okay, Bill, thanks a million. You’ve given me a lot to be thinking about, I can tell you.’

  ‘Well, it’s not my place to supply you with anything more than forensic evidence, ma’am, but I’ll be pure surprised if this fire turns out to have had anything at all to do with dancing.’

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind,’ Katie told him. ‘You know what Abdul-Baha said – “This universe contains many worlds of which we know nothing.” The world of dancing could be one of those worlds.’

  ‘Abdul-Baha?’ said Bill Phinner. ‘Can’t say I ever came across the fellow. Where does he drink?’

  *

  Katie had been back in her office for less than ten minutes before Frank Magorian rapped at her open door.

  ‘Come in, sir,’ she said. ‘Are you leaving for Dublin now?’

  ‘I am, yes. I’m being driven back there now, but I’ll be coming down by chopper tomorrow, so I should be here in plenty of time for your conference.’

  ‘Oh, by chopper! It’s all right for some. But I’m pure pleased by your promotion, sir. I hope we can find a little time tomorrow to talk over some operational matters. The drug problem in particular. We’ve managed to close down one major supplier, but when you do that, of course, five others spring up in their place.’

  Frank Magorian looked around. The door to Moirin’s office was open, too, and Moirin was tapping away at her keyboard.

  ‘Do you mind if I say a word or two to you in private?’ he asked her.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Katie. She got up from her desk and closed the door, and then she went over and sat on one of the couches under the window. Frank Magorian came and sat next to her – not too close, but close enough for Katie to see that his blue tie had a combined pattern not only of forget-me-nots but of the square and compass of the Irish Freemasons.

  ‘You’ve really built yourself quite a reputation here in Cork,’ he told her. ‘I was talking about you only a couple of weeks ago to Michael Twomey, the Deputy Commissioner. Perhaps you don’t always go by the book, and perhaps you’ve rubbed one or two people up the wrong way, but there’s no arguing that you’ve managed to chalk up some fierce impressive prosecutions. Getting that pimp Michael Gerrety sent down – now that was a coup. Almost as good as nailing Martin “The Beast” Morgan, if only we could ever find something to nail him for.’

  He suddenly stopped talking and turned to look out of the rain-dribbled window for a few moments, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say next. Although he had started off by seeming so genial, Katie could now sense some tension in him. He had laced his fingers together and was squeezing them hard. She had seen businessmen do the same when she had questioned them about fraud – or paedophiles, when she asked them why they were loitering around playgrounds.

  ‘Is something wrong, sir?’ she asked him.

  ‘Wrong? Well, let me tell you this, Katie. I’ve always told the outright truth, n
o matter what. I don’t believe in hypocrisy or deceit, even if they might grease the wheels and make life a little easier. I’ve told you what I’ve thought about your record here and I mean it, every word of it.’

  ‘Yes, and I really appreciated what you said,’ Katie told him. ‘There’s nothing like an occasional pat on the back like. Sometimes it seems like the higher up the ladder you go in the Garda, the less recognition you get for what you’ve achieved.’

  ‘There’s another side to it, though,’ said Frank Magorian. ‘I always make a point of telling the truth, and I never forget a favour. But I never forget a disfavour, either.’

  ‘Fair play to you,’ said Katie. ‘I’m just praying that I haven’t done you any terrible wrong that I’ve totally forgotten about but you haven’t.’

  She was starting to smile, because she hadn’t come into contact with Frank Magorian since he was a chief superintendent at Templemore and she couldn’t imagine that she had upset him in any way in the intervening years. But when he turned away from the window the bleak look in his eyes told her that he didn’t find this amusing at all.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Oh! You never wronged me personal-like. Not me myself. But I was close friends with Jimmy O’Reilly, and you wronged him all right. You persecuted him until he had nothing to live for: no reputation, no job, and no lover. No wonder he blew his brains out. You might just as well have pulled the trigger yourself.’

  Katie stared back at Frank Magorian in disbelief. ‘Jimmy O’Reilly? Stop the lights! Me persecute him? Didn’t anybody tell you what he did? Didn’t you hear how he set up a phony gun-smuggling racket that never was, so that I’d get the sack for mounting a full-scale armed raid on a children’s birthday party? Apart from that, he was constantly cnaveshawling about me to Denis MacCostagáin, and to anybody else who would listen. As for his reputation, he’d been turning a blind eye for years to Bobby Quilty’s cigarette-smuggling business because Quilty was lending him money to pay off his boyfriend’s gambling debts.’

  ‘Jimmy rang me only about ten minutes before he took his own life, Katie,’ said Frank Magorian. ‘He said that you set up that arms-smuggling fiasco with the Callahan gang, just to implicate him, and that it was you who broke up his relationship with his partner.’

  Katie emphatically shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, sir. None of that was true. Jimmy O’Reilly was obviously under fierce intolerable stress, but every bit of it was all his own making.’

  For the past few months she had successfully blanked out the mental picture of Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly standing right in front of her in her office and shooting himself in the face, but now it came back to her as vivid and as gruesome as if it had just happened. Her stomach tightened and bile rose up in the back of her throat, which she had to swallow.

  ‘I’m not going to argue about this, Katie,’ said Frank Magorian, uncrossing his legs and standing up. ‘All I’m going to say to you is that I never once knew Jimmy O’Reilly to tell a lie.’

  ‘So what are you trying to say to me?’ Katie asked him, doing her best to sound defiant.

  ‘Listen, I’ve openly acknowledged the success that you’ve achieved. You haven’t done bad at all, considering you’re a woman, and everybody believes that I’m going to support you and encourage you. But I’m the Assistant Commissioner now, Katie, and I want to see the Southern Region run with discipline and efficiency. I want to know that all of my officers are loyal and trustworthy, and that none of them are undermining each other or stabbing each other in the back – not like you did with Jimmy O’Reilly.’

  ‘Sir, Jimmy O’Reilly went out of his way—’ Katie began, but Frank Magorian raised his hand to silence her.

  ‘Let me just finish by telling you this. You’re very attractive, but I can see that your looks have blinded some of your colleagues to the maverick way that you conduct yourself, and the irresponsible way that you run your cases. Just because you’re a woman, Katie, you can’t rely on that to keep your job. I don’t give a tinker’s whatsit about the Garda’s drive for equal opportunity. If you carry on the way you are, behaving like a diva with permanent PMT, I’m going to find a way to pay you back for what you did to Jimmy O’Reilly, and pay you back in spades.’

  Katie was so shocked by what he had said that she had to take several quick breaths before she could speak. When she did, she said, ‘Would you repeat that, sir? I want to turn on my phone, so that I can record it.’

  ‘What kind of a fool do you take me for?’ said Frank Magorian. ‘Those words were for you, and you alone, but don’t you forget them. Be wide from now on, Katie, and I’m not joking. In the meantime – in public, and in the media – I’m going to be giving you my full and unwavering backing. I’ll see you tomorrow so.’

  With that, he opened the door and left the office. Katie stayed where she was for a few moments, still stunned. In the back of her mind, though, a tiny bright seed had already been germinated. As a woman in An Garda Síochána she had always found it necessary to be highly self-protective, and that meant anticipating every attack that might be made on her, either physically or career-wise, and being well prepared to take evasive action at a moment’s notice.

  Her father had lost his job as a Garda inspector because of Jimmy O’Reilly and he had always told her, ‘Always keep sketch for the people who heap the most praise on you, Katie. They’re the ones who can’t hide how jealous they are, and they’re the ones who will tear you down first and fastest, and step-dance on you when you’re down.’

  Step-dance! thought Katie. How appropriate that I should remember that now.

  It was then that her iPhone pinged, and it was a text from Conor. Back late tomorrow. House all sorted. Clodagh mollified. Cant wait till hold you.

  Katie sat back, still feeling numb. Was that really how they saw her, those men who weren’t attracted to her, a diva with permanent PMT? Please God let Conor not be blinded, too.

  15

  It was early yet, but when Kyna walked into the Templegate Tavern there were ten or eleven men in there already drinking, as well as one elderly woman who was staring at a half-finished glass of Guinness as if she couldn’t remember what it was, and a younger woman with plump tattooed arms who was jiggling an equally plump toddler on her lap.

  All of them turned around and stared as Kyna came in, and the three men sitting at the table next to the stained-glass screen gave each other a nod and a wink.

  She gave them a challenging look in return and walked up to the bar. A bald middle-aged man in a short-sleeved shirt was polishing glasses with a tea towel and breathing on them to bring them up to a shine.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said, laying down the tea towel and giving her a grin with teeth the colour of peanut brittle. ‘What takes your fancy and I’m hoping it’s me.’

  Kyna perched herself on one of the bar stools, crossing her legs and hitching up her skirt. ‘I was wondering actually if you had any bar jobs going.’

  ‘Sure like, there might very well be,’ said the barman. ‘To tell you the truth I believe that there is. But I’m not the manager so I couldn’t tell you for certain and I wouldn’t myself be in a position to hire you, even though I would if I was. In fact, I’d hire you like a shot.’

  ‘Is the manager here?’

  ‘Not at the moment, love. He’s gone over to Lidl to stock up one or two bits and pieces like Taytos and nuts and stuff. And superglue, because the handle fell off of one of the beer pumps. But he’ll be back in maybe half an hour or so. Do you want to wait for him? You can have a drink while you’re waiting. On the house.’

  ‘Thanks a million,’ smiled Kyna. ‘And what’s your name?’

  ‘Patrick, and I know exactly what’s going through your mind. That’s a fierce unusual name, Patrick – what in the name of God were his parents thinking about when they christened him that?’

  ‘Patrick, you’re right... it is unusual,’ said Kyna. ‘It has a certain ring to it, though, do you know what I me
an? I’ll have a Pinot Grigio, please, Patrick.’ She made a point of pronouncing it pee-not griggio.

  Patrick opened a mini-bottle of Pinot for her and poured it out. As he did so, Murtagh McCourt came up to the bar, carrying three empty pint glasses.

  ‘How’s it going on, then, darling?’ he asked her.

  ‘She’s here for a job,’ said Patrick. ‘She’s just waiting for Roy to come back from Lidl.’

  ‘Was I asking you?’ Murtagh retorted, and Patrick visibly flinched. But then Murtagh turned back to Kyna and said, ‘If he doesn’t give you the job, tell him to come and speak to me, and I’ll sort him. Why don’t you come and join us while you’re waiting?’

  ‘Okay, that’s very friendly of you,’ said Kyna. ‘I’ll need to get to know all of the customers, won’t I, if I’m going to be working here. I think the personal touch is fierce important, don’t you?’

  ‘The personal touch?’ said Murtagh, looking at Patrick as Kyna slid herself long-legged off her bar stool. ‘With you, darling, I’d say that was practically mandatory.’

  She approached the table where Billy Ó Griobhta and Liam O’Breen were sitting, and Murtagh introduced her. ‘This is Billy and this is Liam and I’m Murtagh. We’re the hardcore regulars, do you know what I mean, but there’s others coming later so. We’ll be having a bit of a get-together this evening.’

  Liam dragged over another chair and Kyna sat down. ‘I hope I get the job anyway,’ she said, looking around. ‘This is a real nice pub now, isn’t it?’

  She had noticed that all three men were wearing black armbands, although Liam’s was only a thin length of black hair ribbon knotted round his upper arm.

  ‘What’s the armbands for?’ she asked them, as Murtagh brought over three fresh pints.

  Liam couldn’t take his eyes off her and he fumbled with his pint as Murtagh handed it to him and almost spilled it. ‘’Twas a good friend of ours, Niall Gleeson. Maybe you heard about it on the telly like. He was going to pick up his granddaughter from the nursery up the road here and somebody stopped his car and shot him.’