Dead Girls Dancing

by Graham Masterton

  Katie felt as if she were slowly being lowered into ice-cold water. She had to put one finger in her ear because the music was so loud and the audience were cheering and clapping in time.

  ‘When did this happen, Jenny?’

  ‘Not more than ten minutes ago. I tell you, I legged it all the way back to the house.’

  ‘Did any of the men say anything?’

  ‘Not a word, none of them. They just stopped, grabbed hold of Barney, and then they were gone.’

  ‘You weren’t hurt at all yourself?’

  ‘No – not at all. Fierce shook up, I don’t mind telling you. It put the heart crossways in me. But as soon as they’d snatched Barney away, the fellow let go of me.’

  ‘Can you describe any of them, these fellows?’

  ‘No. They were all pretty big, but they were all wearing them balumaclavas so you couldn’t see their faces.’

  ‘How about the van?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I wouldn’t know what make it was, but it was kind of a darky colour.’

  ‘What – black? Or grey? Or navy blue, maybe?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for certain. The street light isn’t all that clever along there.’

  ‘Did you see a number plate?’

  ‘I didn’t, no. I couldn’t be sure that it even had one.’

  ‘All right, Jenny. I’m sorry you’ve had such a shock, but I’m glad you weren’t injured. Can I ask you to do me a favour and ring Midleton Garda station? What’s the time? I think Cobh will probably be closed by now. Tell them who I am and exactly what happened, and try to remember as many details about those men and their van as you can. I’m stuck here at the Cork Opera House at the moment, Jenny, and I simply can’t leave, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  ‘That poor devil Barney. He must be so frightened. Pray God those fellows do nothing to harm him. Why do you think they took him?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jenny. It could have been because of me – somebody wanting to take their revenge on me for some reason. Either that, or they took him simply because he’s a fine-looking dog and they want to make some money out of him, for breeding or fighting or selling on – who knows?’

  ‘Right you are, then, Katie, I’ll ring the guards at Midleton directly. Is it okay if I call you back after?’

  ‘Sure, Jenny. Any time.’

  After Jenny had rung off, Katie stayed where she was for a while, with the garda still watching her. Inside the Opera House the music had changed now to ‘King of the Fairies’, but the whooping and stamping continued. She felt strangely light-headed and she desperately wished she was free to leave the Opera House right now and drive straight home to Cobh, even though she knew it would be pointless. Barney would either be dead by now or tens of kilometres away, depending on why he had been taken.

  As conscientious as they were, she knew that the Midleton gardaí wouldn’t regard this dog-napping as the crime of the century. Barney meant so much to her. John had given him to her after her first Irish setter, Sergeant, had been killed, and now John was gone, too. Not only that, Barney seemed to have such a special rapport with Conor, which made her think Conor was the right man for her. At the end of the day, though, he was only a dog, and one stolen dog couldn’t justify the time and expense of a major investigation.

  She gave the garda a rueful smile and went back into the auditorium.

  37

  During the interval, Kyna went to the bar and slowly circled around to see if she could recognize anybody there. She carried a glass of red wine in her hand so that she would look as if she were just another guest pushing her way back through the crowd to meet up with her friends. Almost all of the men smiled and winked at her as she breathed in to ease herself past them, and almost all of the women scowled. That secretly amused her, the way she felt about men.

  She had been hoping to meet up with Katie, but Katie was on the opposite side of the bar by the window, busy talking to Assistant Commissioner Frank Magorian and Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. The bar was too noisy and Kyna was too far away to hear what Katie was saying, but for some reason she looked worried. Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin had his hand on her shoulder as if he were reassuring her, and even Frank Magorian was looking concerned. Kyna would have to wait until later to find out what they were talking about, and even then Katie might not tell her. She was a detective superintendent, after all, and Kyna was only a detective sergeant, and there were plenty of policy matters and budgeting projections that she never discussed with her.

  A bell rang. It was time now for the second half of the feis, and the audience started to file back into the auditorium. Kyna set down her wine glass on the bar and followed them into the stalls. Ian Bowthorpe and his close protection officers had not yet taken their places in the front row, although two of his detectives were standing on either side of their seats and one of them was talking into his throat mic.

  The first performance of the second half was going to be a display by Laethanta na Rince, the dance troupe run by Steven Joyce. Because of that, the stagehands had used the interval to lay fifty oak doors flat on the stage, five across and ten down, almost completely covering it.

  Again, the Quarry Yard Martyrs began to scrape at their instruments, and one of them tuned up by playing a few bars from the ‘Lonesome Boatman’ on the penny whistle, which was followed by spontaneous applause.

  Ian Bowthorpe and his entourage hurried into the stalls and sat down just as the lights were dimming. The band struck up with ‘Job of Journeywork’ and Laethanta na Rince came dancing in from the wings to take up their formation on the stage. Their hard shoes thundered on the doors, far louder than the other dancers had sounded, and they were greeted with whistles and cheers.

  Kyna didn’t sit down. She walked slowly up the aisle at the side of the auditorium, carefully scanning the faces in one row after another. She saw Detectives O’Donovan and Markey sitting in the audience, and they saw her, but they deliberately didn’t acknowledge each other.

  She was beginning to think that when Katie had chased the AIRA men into the river she must have put an end to Davy Dorgan’s plot to assassinate Ian Bowthorpe for good. Either that, or Dorgan had never really had a realistic plan to kill the defence secretary, and he had simply been boasting to his gang in the Templegate Tavern.

  Some of the audience were up on their feet and cheering as Laethanta na Rince danced around in a circle, their shoes slamming harder and harder on the wooden doors and their steps becoming faster and increasingly complex. Kyna had reached the rear of the auditorium now, and she was turning around to watch them herself. As she did so, she looked out through the windows in the exit doors and glimpsed a stagehand hurrying past. She was startled to recognize him as Liam O’Breen.

  All of the stagehands at the Opera House this evening were wearing identical T-shirts with Oireachtas McGoldrick printed on them in green lettering, but she never could have mistaken those curled-up ears and that mass of wavy brown hair.

  She picked up the hem of her dress and half-ran and half-hobbled out into the foyer. She was just in time to see the door on the right-hand side of the foyer slowly closing, so she ran across to it and opened it. The lettering on it said STAFF ONLY, and it led along a plain whitewashed corridor to the back of the Opera House. She looked around. Three uniformed gardaí were standing by the entrance, chatting to the girl in the ticket office, with their Labrador sitting patiently beside them, but since everybody in the Opera House had been screened they weren’t paying Kyna any attention. She could hear Liam’s footsteps echoing along the corridor, so she tugged up her hem even higher and ran after him.

  She caught up with him just as he was opening a wide metal door that led underneath the stage. The clattering of the dancers’ hard shoes was deafening down here, combined as it was with the drum-like rumbling of the fifty oak doors and the fiddle and pipe music from the band.

  ‘Liam!’ Kyna screamed at him. ‘Liam!’

  Liam looked round,
shocked. He was swinging a large maroon duffel bag which looked as if it was stuffed full and very heavy.

  ‘Roisin?’ he shouted back at her. ‘What the feck are you doing here?’

  ‘I should be asking you the same question,’ she said. She went right up to him and pushed herself in between him and the open doorway.

  ‘Roisin—’ he said. ‘Get out of my fecking road, will you? Go on – feck away off!’

  ‘My name’s not Roisin, Liam, and I’m not a bar-girl.’

  ‘I said get out of my fecking road, you slag. Otherwise I’ll drop you, I swear it.’

  ‘What’s in the bag, Liam?’

  Kyna seized the nylon cords of the duffel bag and tried to tug them away from him, but he swung his left arm and caught her on the side of the head, just underneath her right ear, knocking her sideways. She fell against the metal door frame and jarred her shoulder, but she still made another grab for the duffel bag. As she did so, the gold chain that was holding her own purse snapped and the purse dropped on to the floor.

  ‘Would you feck off, Roisin, for the love of God, before I really hit you a box?’

  ‘I told you, you gurrier, my name’s not Roisin. I’m Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán and you’re under arrest!’

  ‘You’re fecking who?’

  ‘I’m a detective, Liam, and you’re lifted! So let go of the bag, will you, and come away out of here! That’s unless you want to spend the rest of your twenties in Portlaoise!’

  ‘What! You’re taking the piss, aren’t you? I don’t fecking believe you!’

  Again, Kyna tried to wrestle the bag away from him, but this time he punched her on the forehead and then again on the cheekbone and as she toppled backwards he kicked her on the hip. She tried to climb to her feet again, but he kicked her on the shin and then the kneecap. She rolled over, but then he lifted his foot and stamped hard on the small of her back.

  He said nothing else, but went in through the metal door and slammed it after him. Kyna lay on the concrete floor for a few moments, panting with pain. She managed to climb to her feet at last and try to open the door but Liam had locked or bolted it from the inside. Leaning against the wall, she looked around for her purse because her iPhone was in it, but realized that during the scuffle it must have been kicked inside.

  She limped her way back along the corridor as fast as she could, one hand held against her lower spine because it hurt so much. As soon as she came out into the foyer she shouted out to the gardaí standing by the entrance, ‘Clear the building! Get everybody out as fast as you can! There could be a bomb!’

  Two of them stared at her in bewilderment because they didn’t recognize her in her navy-blue evening dress, but the third was a sergeant she had met during her last firearms refresher course and he acted immediately.

  ‘Fire alarm!’ he shouted to the girl from the ticket office. To the two gardaí next to him, he snapped, ‘Haverty – into the stalls! Fagan – get up to the circle! Get inside there double-quick, but make sure there’s no panic!’

  He unclipped the mic from his lapel and put out a call to the ERU detectives who were protecting Ian Bowthorpe, and also to the gardaí stationed outside. As the alarm started to shrill, Kyna went over to him and shouted in his ear, ‘We need to clear the stage urgently! The bomb could be right underneath it! The suspect has a duffel bag and he’s wearing a McGoldrick T-shirt!’

  The sergeant gave her the thumbs up and spoke again into his mic. Kyna waited until he had finished and then quickly gave him a detailed description of Liam and told him where she had last seen him. Seven gardaí had come barging in through the Opera House doors, three of them armed, and the sergeant directed them to the door that led to the back of the stage.

  While he was doing that, Kyna headed for the stairs that led up to the dress circle. She needed to make sure that Katie was safe.

  *

  Katie stood up as soon as the fire alarm sounded, but the band didn’t immediately stop playing and the dancers carried on dancing on the doors.

  ‘Fire!’ she shouted. ‘Everybody out – quick! But stay calm!’

  The band kept on playing and the dancers kept on dancing, though when Katie looked down she could see that Ian Bowthorpe’s close protection officers were hurriedly pulling him out of the front-row seats in the stalls and Frank Magorian was helping the Lord Mayor to stand up, too.

  Members of the audience were beginning to get to their feet, looking around in confusion. There was no smoke and no flames, and Katie knew that the public would almost always ignore a fire alarm unless they could actually see or smell some reason for them to evacuate. She would have to do some pushing and shoving and shouting to make them appreciate that this could be a genuine emergency.

  Her iPhone rang and she was about to answer it when she was deafened by the loudest explosion she had ever heard in her life. She was thrown sideways over the row of seats behind her, on top of an elderly couple who had just begun to stand up, so that they tumbled to the floor, too. She hit her cheek hard against an armrest.

  A fifteen-metre-wide hole had been blasted open in the centre of the stage, and the fifty oak doors had been shattered into tens of thousands of lethal splinters. Some were only two or three centimetres long, but scores of them were as long as spears and viciously sharp. A woolly cloud of dark grey smoke rolled out from under the stage and disappeared up inside the fly tower, and at the same time pulleys and wires dropped clanking down on to the carnage below.

  Katie managed to climb to her feet, her ears singing. When she looked down to the stalls she saw that Ian Bowthorpe was lying in the left-hand aisle, flat on his face, with blood on his white shirt collar. Two of his close protection officers were lying a little nearer the stage and Katie could see that one of them had a metre-long shard of oak sticking out of the back of his neck.

  Scores of members of the audience had been sprayed with fragments of wood and in spite of her deafness Katie could hear them screaming and crying. Many had been hit in the face and blinded, and their faces were bloody red masks. One of the TDs had been pinned to his seat by a two-metre javelin that had pierced his abdomen just below the breastbone. He was lifting his arms up and down like a small child trying to get out of a high chair and bubbles of blood were bursting from between his lips.

  Although there were terrible injuries in the audience, the casualties on the stage were the most horrific. Almost all of the Laethanta na Rince dance troupe had been killed or seriously injured. Katie saw a girl no older than fifteen lying at the back of the stage, staring up at the ceiling. Both her arms had been blown off and her face was speckled all over with tiny sharp splinters. A young male dancer was perched right on the jagged edge of the hole that had been blown in the floorboards. He was gripping the broken boards to stop himself falling down into the darkness below, but his legs and pelvis had already disappeared and his intestines were hanging down from his waist in long pale loops, and were slowly beginning to unwind and slide out of sight.

  Two girls must have been dancing close together when the explosion occurred, because it was impossible to tell which of them was which. Their legs were tangled together and they looked like a single four-legged girl with two heads, one of which looked as if it was screaming.

  One of the broken doors was leaning upright at the side of the stage, its side panels blasted away, so that it looked like two crosses, one on top of the other. One of the male dancers was hanging from it with both arms extended, and he wore a crown of splinters.

  The fire alarm kept shrilling and shrilling and the cacophony of screaming and shouting and moaning grew even louder, and Katie thought the scene inside the auditorium was like the performance of some opera about hell.

  Although she was still badly shaken herself, she started to usher people out of the dress circle. She knew that she needed to get them out of the building as quickly as possible in case there was another explosive device planted somewhere in the auditorium to catch the first responders. It was
n’t easy, though, because all of them were in a deep state of shock, some women were hysterical, and several had fainted.

  As she was guiding them to the doors, Kyna appeared, grim-faced. She made her way down the aisle to Katie and briefly hugged her.

  Then she said, ‘Dorgan did it, I’m sure. He sent Liam in with a bag full of God knows what. I saw him downstairs and tried to stop him but he locked himself under the stage.’

  ‘He blew himself up?’ said Katie. ‘You mean like a suicide bomber?’

  Kyna pulled a face. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Liam probably thought that all he had to do was plant it and then get the hell out of there. But my guess is that when Dorgan heard the fire alarm he set it off remotely.’

  Katie said, ‘Let’s clear these poor people out of here. We can worry about Dorgan later.’

  After Davy Dorgan had disappeared from the house on Mount Nebo Avenue she had sent out an alert for gardaí to keep an eye open for him up at Cork airport and Kent railway station, and Ringaskiddy and Rosslare. If he had set off this bomb, though, he must still be in the country, and not too far away.

  Kyna looked down at the massacre on the stage and the bloodied casualties lying around the stalls. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep ever again,’ she said. ‘Not ever. Not after this.’

  38

  It was mid-morning before all the casualties were removed from the Opera House. Katie had set up a temporary office in Luigi Malone’s restaurant on the opposite side of Emmett Place, and Bill Phinner’s technicians had already erected a large blue tent outside the Crawford Art Gallery.

  For several hours ambulances were lined all the way along Lavitt’s Quay. Twenty-three people had been killed outright, most of them dancers from Laethanta na Rince and members of the audience who had been sitting in the front rows of the stalls. Ian Bowthorpe had suffered concussion and a deep cut on the back of his neck, and one of his close protection officers was in a critical condition with brain damage.