Dead Girls Dancing

by Graham Masterton

  *

  Douglas Cleary was crying. He was sitting at an angle in his chair in the interview room, with one hand pressed over his mouth, and tears were trickling down his cheeks and over his fingers. Just as Katie came in, Detective Scanlan was passing him a box of paper tissues.

  ‘Douglas here is still feeling very distressed about Saoirse,’ said Detective Scanlan as Katie sat down beside her.

  ‘Where’s O’Donovan?’ asked Katie.

  ‘He went to fetch some paperwork that he’s forgotten.’

  Katie nodded. The paper in ‘paperwork’ was usually wrapped round tobacco and Detective O’Donovan had almost certainly nipped outside for quick faggawn. She didn’t blame him. They had all been under enough stress since the dance studio fire and it was Detective Dooley’s funeral tomorrow. Anglesea Street was not only fraught but still in mourning.

  Douglas Cleary was a thin young man in a fashionably slim-fitting brown suit. He had a nose as sharp as the pointer on a sundial and a small Vandyke beard. Behind his hand he was quietly mewling and every now and then he would let out an agonized sob.

  ‘I knew there was something wrong between us,’ he wept. ‘I don’t know how I knew, but I did. Up until maybe a month ago Saoirse and me were that close, do you know what I mean? But then I don’t know... I started to get the feeling that she had her mind on something else. Or somebody else, as it turned out. But whatever – I would never have wished her dead. I would never have wished her dead, even if I had lost her.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Detective Scanlan sympathetically, while he dragged out another tissue and blew his nose. ‘But you must have been angry with her for cooling off you like that.’

  ‘Angry? No, I wasn’t angry. I was more like flummoxed. I didn’t really understand what was going on with her. I rang her when I was in Manchester and said that we needed to have a bit of a talk together when I got back, but of course—’

  Douglas Cleary started crying again, as painfully as a small boy.

  Katie said, ‘Did you know any of the dancers in Toirneach Damhsa?’

  ‘Some of them I knew, but not too well. Saoirse’s friend Catriona, and a fellow called Brendan.’

  ‘Did you know Ronan Barrett, the fellow they found with Saoirse?’

  ‘No. Well, I did by sight. I’d seen him in the dance studio, but I only recognized him when I saw his picture on the telly.’

  ‘And you didn’t suspect that he and Saoirse might have had something going on between them? Not that we know that for sure, Douglas. They were found in the attic together, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were having any kind of relationship.’

  Douglas Cleary took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘Does anybody know for sure why they were up in the attic together and not downstairs dancing with the rest of them?’

  ‘No, Douglas, we don’t,’ said Katie. ‘At the moment we have only theories.’

  ‘Did you know Nicholas O’Grady, the dance instructor?’ asked Detective Scanlan.

  Douglas Cleary nodded.

  ‘What did you think of him?’

  Douglas Cleary shrugged.

  ‘What would be the first word you would to use to describe him to somebody who didn’t know him?’

  ‘I suppose, gay. Not that I’m prejudiced or nothing like that. If somebody wants to be gay, that’s their business as far as I’m concerned. He was a bit one-two-three-whoops! though, wasn’t he?’

  ‘You mean flamboyant?’

  ‘That’s it. But Saoirse thought he was fantastic. Best dance teacher she’d ever had.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Danny Coffey, the owner?’

  ‘I bumped into him once or twice when I was picking up Saoirse after rehearsals.’

  ‘And how would you describe him?’

  ‘Okay, I’d say. Kind of humpy, but maybe I never met him on a good day like.’

  ‘Gay?’

  Douglas Cleary thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I remember thinking that it smelled like he’d emptied half a bottle of aftershave over himself, and he had this gold earring in his ear. But I know heaps of guys like that and they’re not gay.’

  ‘Did you ever see any spats between the two of them, Coffey and O’Grady?’

  ‘I never saw them together for long enough. There’s only one thing I remember and that was when one of the rehearsals was over and Coffey said to O’Grady, “So when’s that husband of yours going to be showing up? I have to lock up now!” I mean that kind of took me aback, a feller having a husband. First time I’d ever heard anybody say that.’

  ‘Did Saoirse ever mention any arguments between them?’

  Douglas Cleary shook his head. ‘Most of the time Saoirse talked about what kind of a wedding she wanted, and where we were going to go on honeymoon. Gran Canaria, that’s what she kept talking about. That’s until the last few weeks, anyway. Then she seemed like she was off in a world of her own.’

  Katie said, ‘How well do you know Davy Dorgan?’

  ‘Who? I don’t know of anybody by that name.’

  ‘You’re sure? How often do you drink at the Templegate Tavern?’

  ‘I’ve never been there. Is that up in Gurra? My flat’s on the corner of Watercourse Road, right next door to the Constellation. Why would I go up there?’

  ‘And you’ve never met Davy Dorgan? Or Davy Jepson, maybe?’

  ‘No. Don’t know either of them.’

  Detective Scanlan said, ‘That’s all for now, Douglas. We may need to speak to you again in the next few days, so don’t be leaving the country, will you? I’m just going to call a technician to come up and take your fingerprints and a DNA sample. It’s nothing to worry about, the DNA sample – you don’t get pricked like a blood sample. It’s just a swab in your mouth with a cotton bud.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Douglas Cleary. But as Katie stood up to leave he said, ‘Why didn’t she try to get out? That little girl got out, didn’t she? Why didn’t Saoirse try to get out?’

  Katie said, ‘There was a reason, Douglas. It’ll all come out later, I promise you.’

  ‘I just don’t understand why she didn’t try to get out.’

  After they had left Douglas Cleary with one of Bill Phinner’s technicians Katie and Detective Scanlan walked back to Katie’s office.

  ‘What’s your opinion?’ asked Katie.

  ‘I don’t think he had anything to do with it, to be fair. When he asked why his Saoirse hadn’t tried to escape from the fire, that pretty much convinced me. If he’d known that she’d been shot, he wouldn’t have been likely to ask that, even if he’d done it himself, or had some hit man do it for him.’

  ‘I have to say I tend to agree with you. Either he’s a pure good actor or else he’s too wet to think of killing anybody.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Detective Scanlan, ‘Robert’s friend Kenny MacCarty rang this afternoon, when you were out. He’d heard from Mrs Dooley that we wanted to talk to him about Danny Coffey and Nicholas O’Grady shifting each other in the Roundy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He confirmed it almost exactly word for word the way Mrs Dooley told you. Including the fellow with the Belfast accent bursting in and attacking Danny Coffey, and the bartenders throwing him out. I emailed Kenny a picture of Davy Dorgan, on the chance that it might have been him. He took a look at it, but he said he couldn’t be sure, because the place was black at the time and he only heard the scuffle rather than saw it.’

  ‘Mother of God, it seems like this Davy Dorgan’s everywhere,’ said Katie. ‘He’s like foot-and-mouth disease.’

  ‘Well, you know the cure for that, don’t you, ma’am?’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘Shooting, and then burning.’

  32

  Kyna was half an hour late in to work and when she arrived at the Templegate Tavern Davy Dorgan was already there. He was sitting at his usual table with his left leg thickly bandaged all the way up past his knee and covered in a white waterproof protector, and a pair of crutches was leani
ng against the wooden screen beside him.

  Liam and Murtagh and Billy were sitting around him, as well as Kevan with his spotted dartboard face and Alroy, who was already so langered that he was having trouble pronouncing the simplest words.

  Kyna had made a point of dressing much less provocatively this evening. She was wearing a simple black knee-length dress and black tights, and apart from her rings and earrings the only jewellery she was wearing was a necklace of shiny silver beads, almost as big as golf balls.

  ‘How about fetching some refreshment over here?’ Davy called out. ‘Have pity on the poor disabled!’

  ‘Gobshite,’ muttered Patrick, the barman, under his breath, but Kyna came out from behind the bar and went across to ask Davy what he wanted to drink.

  ‘My usual MiWadi, wee doll, and whatever these fellers want. What is it you’re drinking, Alroy?’

  ‘I’ll be having Muff – Muff – Muffies, of coursh. Widda Padda shaysha.’

  ‘Fetch him a pint of Murphy’s with a Paddy’s chaser, all right? Oh – and one more thing, wee doll, before you go.’

  There was something in the tone of his voice that made Kyna’s shoulders prickle. He looked up at her and he was smiling, but it was the deadliest smile she had ever seen on anybody’s face, ever – like the snake in Disney’s Jungle Book.

  He knows, she thought. He knows what Liam’s told me.

  She glanced across at Liam, but as soon as she looked at him he turned away. What a creep. He’s only been after snitching on me. And to think I made myself craw sick to get that information out of him.

  ‘Come on, sir, I’m up the walls here,’ she told Davy. ‘What is it you want?’

  Davy kept up that chilling, humourless smile. ‘Sometimes young men get themselves persuaded to let out secrets that they shouldn’t, did you know that?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, I believe you do. Now and again some manky floozie can cajole a young man into saying more than is good for his health, do you understand me now?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t a notion. Now, if you’ll let me get on, I’ll go and fetch your drinks for you.’

  Davy suddenly lurched out to grab her wrist, but Kyna stepped back and with his bandaged leg he almost toppled off his chair.

  ‘Don’t you try to take the piss out of me, wee doll!’ he hissed at her. ‘I know what your game is! You’re either a peeler or else you’re the RIRA, spying for that Gerry Monaghan! So which is it?’

  ‘You’re cracked,’ said Kyna. ‘You need to take yourself off to St Stephen’s, you do!’

  Davy was about to say something else, but he restrained himself and sat back, although he lifted one finger and pointed at Kyna, as if to say, Don’t you worry, I’ll have you. Make no mistake about it.

  Kyna went to fetch the drinks he had ordered. As she set them down on the table he said nothing, but he didn’t take his eyes off her and he didn’t blink. For her part, she didn’t look at Liam once. She could guess why he had woken up this morning and thought that it would be safer if he confessed to Davy that he had told her too much. If Davy had found about his blabbing only after it was too late for him to change his plans, Liam would have ended up in the Lee, castrated and with his throat cut.

  Kyna returned to the bar. ‘I have to nip to the ladies’ so,’ she told Patrick. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  She went through the back of the bar but she didn’t go the toilet. Instead, she took her short red coat off its peg and went straight out into the yard at the back, which was stacked with beer kegs and crates. The back gate was always locked, but she dragged over four beer crates, stacked them up, and then took off her high-heeled shoes and climbed up on to them. She balanced unsteadily on top of them for a moment, then dropped over into the alley behind the pub and started to run. She crossed diagonally over Cathedral Road and then down St Brigid’s Road and McSwiney’s Villas.

  She didn’t stop running until she had reached the white-painted frontage of another pub further down the hill, the Glenryan Tavern. Panting, she ducked into the entrance and pulled her iPhone out of her coat pocket. She glanced back up the road to make sure that nobody was following her and then she rang Katie.

  ‘It’s me, ma’am! I’m in the Glenryan Tavern, in Gurra!’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘It’s that Liam. He’s told Dorgan that I know about the hit on Ian Bowthorpe. Dorgan doesn’t know for sure if I’m police or Óglaigh na hÉireann or some other IRA splinter group, but he made it clear that he’s coming after me!’

  Katie said, ‘Where did you say you were again?’

  ‘The Glenryan Tavern. It’s down at the end of McSwiney’s Villas.’

  ‘I think I know it, yes. Look – I’ll come and get you. Stay there, but keep well out of sight. You’re sure you weren’t followed when you left the Templegate?’

  ‘I didn’t see anybody. I said I was going to the ladies’ and I was probably gone before Dorgan realized that I wasn’t coming back.’

  ‘All right. I’m only at the top of Summerhill at the moment so I won’t be more than ten minutes.’

  Two fat men in noisy waterproof jackets squeezed their way past Kyna in the doorway.

  ‘Are you coming in, darling, or are you coming out?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. I’m waiting for a friend.’

  ‘How about a scoop while you’re waiting? We promise we won’t jump on you.’

  ‘That’s pure sweet of you boys, but I’m on a diet.’

  ‘Sure like, darling, same as us two!’ said one of them, grinning and slapping his stomach. ‘We’re on the well-known Guinness and chips and drisheen diet! Does wonders for the waistline!’

  *

  Katie arrived in her car exactly ten minutes later. She parked right outside the entrance to the Glenryan Tavern and leaned over to open the passenger door so that Kyna could run across the pavement and climb straight in. Then she sped off straight away, glancing in her mirror as she did so.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Katie asked her. ‘Come on, fasten your seatbelt. I don’t want you flying through the windscreen.’

  ‘Shaken,’ said Kyna. ‘That Dorgan is a piece of work, isn’t he? I never met a man before who made me shudder like him, not even Bobby Quilty. Jesus! The way Dorgan looks at you, you feel like he’d have no hesitation at all in slicing you wide open, and that he’d relish it, too.’

  ‘You’re best out of there now, anyway,’ said Katie as they drove down Upper John Street towards the river. ‘If Dorgan hadn’t found out, it would have been a good idea for you to go in to work this evening, just in case he got suspicious about why you weren’t there... but you’re right, he’s a total head-the-ball.’

  ‘He’ll be sure to be changing his plan now that he knows that I know,’ said Kyna. ‘Maybe with any luck he’ll pull the plug on it and not try to shoot this Ian Bowthorpe after all.’

  ‘His hit squad haven’t turned round yet, Kyna. They’ve stopped in Kildare for the night at the house of a fellow called Tomas O’Bruadair who’s known to the NSU as a dissident. They were tracking them by GPS when they first came over the border, but now they actually have a Ghost Team on them in case they try and swap cars. I last had a report about them an hour ago. They arrived at O’Bruadair’s house at about half-past ten but there’s been no sign of movement since.’

  They started to drive along the river embankment. Kyna pressed one hand against her stomach and the other against her forehead.

  ‘You’re not feeling sick, are you?’ Katie asked her. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

  Kyna shook her head. ‘No – no thanks. I’m feeling the after-effects of Davy Dorgan, that’s all. He genuinely scared me.’

  ‘What do you want to do? Do you want me to drive you straight home? You can come back with me for a while if you like, but I’m staying overnight with Conor at the moment at the Gabriel guest house.’

  ‘Oh come on, you don’t want me intruding. Ju
st take me home.’

  ‘Look at the state of you la. You’re white as a ghost. At least come and have a drink and settle yourself down.’

  Kyna thought for a moment as they turned into MacCurtain Street. Then she said, ‘All right. But only for a while. You’re not my mother. You don’t have to baby me.’

  Katie patted Kyna’s thigh and couldn’t help laughing.

  *

  Conor was sitting in his midnight-blue dressing gown watching a TV programme about rhinoceros poachers when Katie and Kyna came in.

  ‘Con... I hope you don’t mind. Kyna’s had a fair bit of a fright, to say the least. She’s just come back for a drink and a chat to settle herself down.’

  Conor switched off the television and said, ‘Sure, that’s absolutely fine. What happened, or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Let’s just say that she was threatened. You don’t want to get yourself involved with the people she’s been involved with. It’s risky enough tangling with Guzz Eye McManus.’

  ‘What would you like to drink, Kyna?’ Conor asked her. ‘I have some West Cork single malt if you’d like some... a glass or two of that is usually enough to make anyone feel mellow.’

  Kyna took off her coat and sat down on the sofa and Katie sat next to her and held her hand.

  ‘Whiskey... that sounds perfect,’ said Kyna. ‘I’m sorry if I’m interrupting your evening... I seem to be making a habit of it.’

  ‘It’s not a bother at all,’ Conor told her. ‘If you want to have a relationship with a detective superintendent you have to tolerate all kinds of interruptions – that’s what I’ve learned, anyway. There’s always somebody interrupting you by murdering somebody else while you’re right in the middle of dinner together. If it’s not that, there’s some drug-dealer being stopped with ten kilograms of cocaine hidden in a chip van, just when you fancied going off for a walk on the beach.