‘Besides,’ he said, as he came over and handed her a large crystal tumbler of whiskey, ‘I know that you and Katie have a special relationship. I’m not blind, or deaf.’
Katie looked up at him. She knew how sensitive he was, not only to Barney’s feelings but to hers, but they hadn’t talked about her affection for Kyna before now. She found it a considerable relief that she no longer had to pretend that she didn’t find Kyna attractive.
Kyna must have felt the same way because she lifted her glass and said, ‘Sláinte chugat!’ and smiled.
They talked about Davy Dorgan and the three Authentic IRA men who were on their way to Cork. They talked about Cissy Dorgan, too. She would be taken into care tomorrow by Tusla, so Katie intended to go and see her in hospital one more time before she went.
‘We still need to know what she was doing in that attic,’ said Katie. ‘We also need to know if she saw what happened to Ronan Barrett and Saoirse MacAuliffe. The trouble is, she’s absolutely terrified of her brother.’
‘Holy Mary, she’s not the only one,’ said Kyna.
They also talked about Maggie Dennehy, and how she might have died. Dr Kelley had texted Katie to say that she would be able to carry out a post-mortem examination at about lunchtime tomorrow. After that, they told Kyna all about their raid on Guzz Eye McManus’s fiftieth-birthday dog-fight.
‘I never should have arrested him then and there,’ said Katie. ‘We should just have stayed back and observed and taken evidence. That’s what Inspector Carroll advised me. McManus would have ignored us and carried on with the dog-fighting. He doesn’t give a tinker’s for the law, nor the ISPCA inspectors. Neither do any of the rest of those dog-fighters.
‘I couldn’t help myself, though. I’m too fond of dogs, that’s my problem. When I saw all of those poor creatures there I couldn’t allow them to tear each other to pieces. I know they’re all dangerous, and most of them should probably be put down, but there’s no need for them to suffer like that – especially when they’re only suffering to line McManus’s pocket.’
‘Do you think you’ll manage to get McManus up in front of a judge?’ asked Kyna.
‘I don’t know. Hopefully. It depends on how determined Inspector Carroll is, and how devious McManus’s lawyers turn out to be.’
Kyna reached across and stroked Katie’s hair. ‘Don’t let it bother you. You did what you could and you saved a lot of dogs from being hurt.’
‘Only for a while, though,’ said Katie. ‘McManus will probably hold those fights all over again.’
Conor poured them some more whiskey and now their conversation turned to Detective Dooley’s funeral the next day. They were subdued for a while, but then they talked about the feis on Saturday, and about step-dancing, and both Katie and Kyna had stories to tell about their dance classes at school.
Katie said, ‘Sister Bridget always told me that I looked like Bambi but I danced like a mule.’
‘Oh, I was too springy, that was my problem,’ said Kyna. ‘“Anybody would think you were jumping up and down on a trampoline, Kyna!” that’s what my dance teacher told me.’
*
They heard bells chiming in the distance and Katie said, ‘My God, what time is it?’
‘Two o’clock,’ said Kyna, finishing the last of her glass of whiskey and standing up. ‘I need to get home. I’ll call for a Hailo.’
She staggered slightly as she reached for her coat. Conor held her elbow to steady her and Katie said, ‘Lookit, why don’t you stay? You’re too fluttered to go home on your own. I’m sorry, it’s our fault. We shouldn’t have given you all that whiskey.’
‘No, no, it’s not your fault at all. It’s my fault for drinking it. And anyway you’ve had just as much as me. Where’s my phone? I’ll call for a Hailo, don’t worry.’
She found her iPhone in her coat pocket and sat down abruptly on the sofa again. She squinted at the screen and said, ‘Hailo... where’s the app for Hailo? I’ve lost it! Where is it?’
Conor looked at Katie and raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s okay with me,’ he told her. ‘That time back at your house, I was wondering if I ought to join you then. And look – the bed’s plenty big enough.’
Katie knew that she herself was moderately drunk and that Conor’s suggestion went against every moral and religious principle she had ever been taught – as well as the Garda code of conduct. When she had joined the Garda she had sworn in particular ‘not to pursue any relationship that I know may create a conflict of interest, or any relationship with a person I come into contact with in the course of my work that might be an abuse of trust or power’.
But was her relationship with Kyna an abuse of trust or power? She might outrank Kyna, but emotionally and sexually Kyna was as powerful as she was. And she needed her now as much as she needed Conor, and Kyna needed her.
She also realized that Conor was as much aroused by the thought of them all going to bed together as she was.
Kyna was still fumbling with her phone, so Katie turned to her and gently took it away from her.
‘Stay,’ she said, and then leaned forward and kissed Kyna on the lips.
She sat back, and smiled, and then she kissed her again, and this time she parted her lips and licked the tip of her tongue. Kyna’s eyes closed and Katie raised her hands and ran her fingers into her fine blonde hair. She tasted of whiskey, but she also tasted sweet and Katie felt that it was like kissing and caressing ae sidh, a fairy.
Katie reached around and tugged down the zip of her plain black dress, all the way down to her waist. She gave her three more quick kisses and then she stood up and helped Kyna on to her feet, too.
Kyna laughed, bright-eyed, and said, ‘This is insanity, do you know that? We’re all wrecked and this is insanity! But I love it!’
She kicked off her shoes and then let her dress drop to the floor and stepped out of it. Without her shoes she was only two inches taller than Katie. She almost lost her balance, but she held on to Katie’s shoulders with both hands and kissed her again, and this time their kiss was deep and hungry and their tongues wrestled with each other.
Conor stood close behind Katie for a while, but then he went over to the bed, turned aside the dark red blanket and pulled the duvet open. Then he sat down, watching as Katie and Kyna continued to kiss and undress.
Kyna was wearing a black lacy bra and black tights, but no panties. Katie went around behind her to unfasten her bra and when it had fallen to the floor she reached around and cupped her small high breasts with both hands, rubbing and rolling her nipples. Kyna arched her head back and closed her eyes, and Katie kissed her hair and her ears and said, ‘Look at you, you’re lovely.’
She tugged Kyna’s tights halfway down her thighs and then Kyna pulled them down the rest of the way herself. She had a little blonde plume of pubic hair and a tiny tattoo of a rose on the left side of her vulva. Katie reached down and stroked her hair and her lips with the tip of her ring finger.
‘There’s a song about The Songbird Tattoo, isn’t there?’ she said. ‘I have a songbird, sweetheart tattooed on my arm it never sings, it never flies, but it reminds me of your charm…’
‘The Fenian Five sang it,’ said Conor.
Now Kyna unbuttoned Katie’s white blouse and unfastened her slim-fitting black trousers. When she took off Katie’s bra she let her large rounded breasts fall into the palms of her hands as if she was receiving some unexpected gift. She caressed them and massaged them, looking into Katie’s eyes, with her own eyes shining.
‘You two can join me if you like,’ said Conor. He reached across to the bedside table and switched off the main lights so that the bed was illuminated only by two pink-shaded lamps.
Katie sat down to take off her trousers and pop socks, and then her pink embroidered thong. When she stood up Kyna put her arms around her and held her close and kissed her again and again.
Naked, the two of them walked hand in hand over to the bed. Conor stood up and took off his dre
ssing gown and now he was naked, too. With his brown beard and the cross of brown hair on his chest, Katie had thought when she first saw him undressed that he looked like Jesus or one of his disciples. He had beautiful hands and feet, with long fingers and long toes, the same kind of hands and feet that El Greco had painted in his crucifixion scenes.
His penis was so stiff that it was almost vertical and as Katie approached she took it in her hand like a thick crimson baton and rubbed it up and down, and kissed him. He shifted himself across to the other side so that Katie and Kyna could join him.
Kyna reached across Katie and tapped Conor’s shoulder to get his attention.
‘I just have to say one thing to you, Conor, I think you’re a beautiful man. I do. In fact, I think you’re perfect. If I was different, I’d say you were a pure sexy biscuit.’
‘Well, thanks for the compliment,’ smiled Conor. ‘I think you’re the beuorest beuor I’ve ever met, with the exception of Detective Superintendent Maguire.’
‘Now then,’ said Katie. ‘I don’t pull rank in bed.’ She gave Conor a kiss and then she kissed Kyna.
‘I’m not going to kiss you, Conor, that’s all,’ Kyna told him. ‘I had to kiss that Liam and I swore to myself then that I was never going to kiss another man, not ever. Like, yuck!’
All three of them started to laugh, so hard that Katie could hardly catch her breath. They all knew that they were drunk, and that they shouldn’t be in bed together, but all three of them felt so happy that they didn’t care. They had all suffered so much stress that it was a huge release to think about nothing except their own physical pleasure and their love for each other.
Katie and Kyna started to kiss and fondle each other’s breasts again. The lamplight was shining like spun copper in Katie’s hair and fine gold in Kyna’s, and their perfumes mingled together, Daisy Blush and Exclamation. Conor reached across for the jar of Nivea cream that Katie had left next to the lamp and unscrewed it one-handed. He scooped out a dollop with his fingertips and smeared it between the cheeks of Katie’s bottom. Her vulva was already slippery, and so he mixed that juice in, too.
Holding his penis in his fist, he pressed it up against Katie’s anus and then gradually pushed it in. Katie gave a little jump, because it hurt her when it first went in, but she knew that the secret was to push against him, rather than tighten her muscles inwards.
Slowly, grasping her hips in both hands, he forced himself deeper and deeper inside her until she could feel his pubic hair tickling the cheeks of her bottom and his balls between her thighs. Now she could rhythmically squeeze her rectum and anus, and the sensation of his huge rigid penis inside her grew more and more thrilling with every squeeze. She started to gasp and to push her hips even harder down on him, even though he couldn’t be buried in her any further.
Conor held her shoulders now and gently tipped himself over on to his back, lifting Katie on top of him with his penis still inside her. She opened her thighs wide and reached down with both hands to part the smooth waxed lips of her vulva. Kyna knelt between Conor’s legs, dipped her head down, and started to lick at Katie’s clitoris.
‘Oh God you’re angels, both of you!’ Katie panted. ‘Oh God you’re angels!’
Kyna licked quicker and quicker and occasionally darted her tongue into Katie’s vagina. She licked her perineum, too, and around the tightly stretched ring of her anus, but she didn’t lick Conor’s wrinkled balls.
Even so, Conor suddenly climaxed. Katie was already on the very brink of a climax herself and the combination of Kyna’s licking and Conor’s convulsive shuddering was enough to make her world feel as if it were bursting apart. She had never been shaken by an orgasm like this before, ever. She almost blacked out, and she thought she would never stop quaking and shivering and her bottom would never stop flinching.
They lay there for minutes afterwards, sweating, not moving. Eventually Kyna fell back sideways and Katie slowly eased herself off Conor and lay beside her with her arms around her.
‘Are you all right?’ Katie asked Kyna. ‘You didn’t come, did you?’
Kyna gave her a dreamy smile. ‘I’m more than all right, Katie. I’m in heaven. I can still taste the taste of you.’
Conor kissed Katie’s neck and between her shoulder blades, which made her shiver.
‘I never noticed those before. You have some freckles there, in the pattern of Sirius.’
‘Sirius? What’s that?’
‘It’s a star in the constellation of Canis Major, the Dog Star. I was thinking about calling my agency Sirius before I called it Sixth Scents. In the end, I thought that not too many Irish people would get the reference. But Sirius, Katie – that’s the brightest star in the solar system. Like you.’
They continued to lie there, stroking and kissing each other occasionally, and the warmth and the sense of affection between them was unlike anything that Katie had ever experienced before. She knew that a night like this might never happen again, and that she would have to think seriously about her professional relationship with Kyna. Right now, though, tomorrow’s sun had not yet risen and she could forget about work-related problems until she had slept for a while and recovered from all that West Cork whiskey. They had drunk a whole bottle of it between them.
She stroked Kyna very gently between her legs, and sang, ‘You never know what life will bring what shadows and what pain but my heart sings like a songbird when you come home again…’
Together they softly sang the chorus: ‘I have a songbird, sweetheart tattooed on my arm it never sings, it never flies but it reminds me of your charm…’
33
The sun was shining when Katie arrived at the hospital the next morning. She went through to the mortuary first, even though she knew that Dr Kelley would not have arrived yet. One of the morgue assistants was already there, though – a worried-looking young woman with very small spectacles and a surgical cap. Katie asked her if she could view Maggie Dennehy’s body.
The assistant slid Maggie Dennehy out of the refrigerated drawer for her and lifted the green sheet that was covering her. Katie looked at her for a long time. Apart from the deep ligature groove around her neck, her body was dotted with small dark bruises, especially her thighs.
Rape, thought Katie. She had seen similar patterns on so many women’s thighs before. An archipelago of suffering.
‘Okay, thanks a million,’ she said, and the morgue assistant covered up Maggie Dennehy’s body and slid it back into the refrigerator.
When she went upstairs to see Cissy she found the garda outside her door eating a bacon sandwich. He hurriedly stood up and tried to hide it behind his back, but Katie waved her hand and said, ‘You’re grand altogether. Don’t worry. I suffer from bacon sandwich blindness.’
Cissy was sitting in her chair with Bindy in her lap, watching SpongeBob SquarePants, although she had a very solemn expression on her face. She was wearing a brown corduroy dress with a cream Aran sweater underneath, and cream-coloured tights, and a brown duffel coat was lying on her bed, next to a small overnight bag. She was all ready now for a representative from Tusla to come and collect her and take her to her foster home.
Katie went up to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.
‘Cissy,’ she said.
Cissy looked up at her and her eyes filled up with tears.
‘Yes, I know what your real name is,’ Katie told her. ‘Don’t be upset, please. There’s no reason for you to be frightened. Now that you’re nearly better some really nice people are going to take care of you.’
‘My brother will throw such a rabie,’ sobbed Cissy miserably.
‘Don’t you worry about your brother. You’re going to have a new life now. A nice new house to live in, and a new school, and new friends. You can forget about all of the bad things that happened before. Those days are all over now.’
Katie sat down on the bed close to her and stroked her hair.
‘It was Mrs McCabe who told us your name. She sounds
like a nice woman all right.’
Cissy nodded. ‘She is. She bought me Bindy for my birthday. Sometimes Davy didn’t come home and I was locked out and so I used to go round to her house for my tea.’
‘Well, the people who are going to be looking after you from now on are going to be just as nice as Mrs McCabe. And I’m going to keep in touch with you, too, just to make sure that you’re happy. Look – I fetched you this.’
Katie opened her soft black leather shoulder bag and took out a box containing an iPhone. She opened it up and gave it to Cissy and said, ‘I’ve charged it up already and before I go I’ll set it all up for you. You don’t have to worry about paying for it because it’s registered to my account. Don’t be afraid to use it whenever you want to, either. There’s only one condition – you ring me at least once a week and tell me how you are. If ever there’s anything wrong, or if you’re worried or unhappy, all you have to do is call me and I’ll sort it out for you.’
Cissy held the phone tightly and smiled through her tears. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
Katie waited for a moment, then she said, ‘There are one or two questions I have to ask you, Cissy. I think you probably know what they are.’
Cissy stared at her and said nothing. Katie realized that it was probably futile to reassure her that she wouldn’t allow her brother to come near her or threaten her, ever again. In spite of that, it was critical for her to find out what Cissy had been doing in the attic when fire broke out at the dance studio, and whether she had witnessed what had happened to Ronan Barrett and Saoirse MacAuliffe.
‘When did you go up into the attic at Toirneach Damhsa?’ Katie asked her. ‘Were those two dancers up there already when you went up there? When you first saw them, were they still alive?’
Cissy lowered her eyes and still said nothing.
‘If they were still alive when you first saw them, did you see who shot them? Or were they already dead when you got there? If they were already dead, why didn’t you go downstairs and tell Nicholas O’Grady?’
Dead Girls Dancing Page 32
