Dead Girls Dancing

by Graham Masterton

  In all, there were nearly two hundred other injuries and at least fifteen people had suffered permanent hearing loss. Katie could still hear a persistent singing sound and she kept jiggling her fingertips in her ears to try and relieve it.

  From her table at the front of the restaurant, Katie instructed Detectives O’Donovan and Markey to bring in as many known members of Davy Dorgan’s gang for questioning as they could find. Each gang member should have his hands and clothing tested for traces of explosives, and a sample of his DNA taken, too.

  She was talking on the phone to Dr Mulready, the pathologist, when an ordnance disposal technician from Collins Barracks came waddling into the restaurant, still wearing his yellowish blast-proof suit, although he had taken off his helmet.

  ‘I’ve put in a call to Professor Cassidy to inform her how many fatalities we have,’ Katie was saying. ‘Yes – she’s promised to send down Dr Williams to assist you as soon as she can. And yes, I do understand that you’ll be totally up the walls, Doctor, but this is the first time we’ve ever had to face a disaster on this scale. Like ever.’

  The ordnance disposal technician came up to the table where Katie was sitting. ‘I could murder a Coke if there’s one going, ma’am. This suit’s like a portable Turkish bath. Thirty-five pounds, it weighs, and that’s without the helmet.’

  Katie beckoned for the waitress and then she said, ‘No sign of any other EDs?’

  ‘No. None at all. We’ve carried out a thorough search with sniffer dogs under the stage and round the back of the building. That was a blast and a half, though. I reckon more than five pounds of C4. Here, look, this is your man.’

  He took out his camera and passed it across so that Katie could see the pictures he had taken. At first she couldn’t understand what she was looking at. Spread out across the floor was nothing but a pile of twisted red parcel string. It was only when the officer reached over and pointed out a blue running shoe that she realized that the pile of twisted red parcel string was Liam, blown inside out.

  *

  It was almost nine o’clock that evening before she returned to her office. The singing in her ears had subsided, but she still felt sick and didn’t feel like eating anything. One of the waitresses at Luigi Malone’s had brought her a vegetarian pizza and she had chewed one mouthful, but she hadn’t been able to swallow it and discreetly spat it into her napkin.

  She sat down and switched on her desk lamp. She sat there staring at the notes and paperwork in front of her, but she was unable to focus on them. Detective O’Donovan had left her a list of nine members of Davy Dorgan’s gang that he and Detective Markey had been able to locate and bring in to the station, but a cursory glance at his report told her that all of them had refused to answer any questions.

  She had been sitting there for almost ten minutes when her phone rang. She picked it up and said, ‘DS Maguire.’

  ‘Oh, you’re back at last,’ said a hoarse man’s voice. ‘This is about the fifty-eighth time I’ve tried to ring you today.’

  ‘Have you seen the news?’ Katie asked him. ‘I was fierce tied up, to say the least.’

  ‘The bomb at the Opera House. Oh, yes, I saw that all right. That was a shocker, wasn’t it? Were you there? All them young dancers getting blown up. Desperate.’

  ‘Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Well, there is, sure. It’s about that dog of yours, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Barney? Do you have him? Who are you?’

  ‘We do have him, yes. He’s perfectly safe, though. Don’t you be after worrying about that, Detective Super-duper Maguire.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘If I told you that, it would kind of defeat the whole object now, wouldn’t it? Because then you’d come after me and I wouldn’t have the leverage any longer.’

  ‘What leverage? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Come on, now, think about it. Who did you collar lately, and who’s on police bail waiting to have charges brung against him? Think “dogs” like.’

  ‘You’re calling for Guzz Eye McManus.’

  ‘That’s the very man. You have it.’

  ‘So what you’re telling me is that if I arrange for the charges against McManus to be dropped, you’ll let me have Barney back.’

  ‘Holy Christ on a donkey! No wonder you’re a detective! You have it exactly! If you forget about the charges against the Guzz, your Barney will be returned to you safe and well and that’ll be the end of it. We can let bygones be bygones and there’ll be peace on earth and goodwill to all men and women and one or two dogs, too.’

  Katie retched abruptly and had to press her hand over her mouth. Not Barney. For the love of God, please don’t let them hurt Barney.

  ‘Are you still there, Detective Super-duper?’ the man asked her.

  ‘Yes, I’m still here. I can’t give you an answer right now, though. The paperwork will already have been passed to the DPP.’

  ‘Ah sure, but that won’t be any kind of a problem, will it? All you have to do is tell them you made a bit of a batoon and that the Guzz is innocent after all. Maybe a case of mistaken identity. Well, maybe not. Fierce difficult to mistake the Guzz for somebody else. But you’ll think of some skit, I’m sure of it. You want your dog back, after all, don’t you?’

  Katie was shaking. It was all she could do not to scream at him and warn him that if he touched even one single hair of Barney’s glossy red coat, she would find him, however long it took, and she would make him sorry that he had ever been born.

  ‘How can I contact you?’ she asked him.

  ‘Don’t try tracing this call because it won’t get you anywhere at all, I can tell you that for starters. I’ll ring you back tomorrow about two o’clock, how’s that? That’ll give you enough time to sort everything out, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Ring back about two. But in the meantime, please don’t hurt Barney. Make sure you give him something to eat and drink and somewhere comfortable to sleep. If you do that, he won’t give you any trouble at all, I promise you.’

  ‘Not a bother, Detective Super-duper. You know us. We’ve years of experience when it comes to dealing with dogs.’

  Katie was about to say something caustic to him – I know what you’ve had years of experience doing to dogs, you sadistic gowl – but he rang off.

  At once she called down to Garda Greeley in communications and asked him to trace where the call had come from, even though she was in no doubt at all that her caller had been using a burner or a ghost phone. Then she rang Conor and told him what had happened. She had already rung him after the bomb had gone off to let him know that she was safe, but now she told him all about Barney being taken.

  ‘Don’t cry, Katie,’ he told her. ‘All you have to do is drop the charges against McManus.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she sobbed, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. ‘That would be giving in to blackmail, and think of all the other dogs he’s going to go on hurting if we let him get away with it.’

  ‘But you’re talking about Barney.’

  ‘Conor, I know, but if I drop the charges against McManus, Inspector Tiernan will want to know why, and so will Frank Magorian, and I’ll be guilty of professional misconduct.’

  Conor was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘I really don’t know, then. I’ll have to think about it. Let me see if any of my bent vet friends knows where they might have taken him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Katie. ‘You can tell them there might be a reward in it for them.’

  ‘I will,’ he told her. Then, ‘How are you now? I’ve been watching all about the bomb on the news.’

  ‘Shattered, to be honest with you. I’ll probably take a Nytol and see if I can get some sleep.’

  ‘Katie—’

  ‘Yes, Conor. I know you do. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow, when I’ve got over the shock.’

  *

  Although she took two sleeping pills, she hardl
y slept at all that night. The strangest feeling was that she was alone and that there was no Barney sleeping in his basket in the kitchen. She climbed out of bed at 5.30 a.m. and made herself a strong mug of coffee and some plain buttered toast. She stood in the living room eating it and staring out at the rain, feeling empty.

  She was back in the office by 7.15 a.m. She went over yesterday’s paperwork again, but at the same time kept her television on so that she could watch the continuously running news stories about yesterday’s bombing.

  The whole country was in a state of shock. The Taoiseach had made a statement saying that it was the greatest tragedy in Ireland this century, and the Bishop of Cork and Ross was holding a Mass to pray for the souls of those who had been killed, as well as their bereaved relatives, and for the speedy recovery of the injured. Two more dancers had succumbed to their injuries and died during the night.

  She had caught up on most of her texts and messages when Detective O’Donovan came in. His hair was still wet from the shower and he had sprayed himself a little too liberally with Lynx Iced Musk and Ginger.

  ‘Ah, Patrick, how’s it coming on?’ asked Katie. ‘I’ve been through the list of Dorgan’s cronies you fetched in. It doesn’t sound like they were particularly helpful.’

  ‘Sure like, what did you expect? They may not have been involved in blowing up the Opera House, not themselves, but they were bound to have been doing something else illegal when it happened. We surprised one of them counting out eight thousand Bulgarian cigarettes in his kitchen, so we’ve charged him anyway. No, they all refused to answer any questions – as of course they’re legally entitled.’

  ‘But? You look pleased about something.’

  Detective O’Donovan held up a clear vinyl folder. ‘Bill Phinner gave me these DNA results about five minutes ago. Out of the nine members of Dorgan’s gang we pulled in, four of them left traces of their bodily fluids inside Mrs Maggie Dennehy.’

  ‘Serious? Now it’s all starting to make sense again.’

  ‘Not only that, there may be a fifth. Dr Kelley took a DNA sample of some traces of fluid on Mrs Dennehy’s face and they appear to be a match with one of the gang. Bill Phinner has to test it again, though, because it was very degraded.’

  ‘So it was Dorgan’s gang after all who raped Dennehy’s wife, like we kind of suspected,’ said Katie. ‘Maybe they murdered her, or maybe she committed suicide because she’d been raped. But whichever it was, if that wasn’t Bernie Dennehy’s motive to go looking for Dorgan with a gun, then I don’t know what could have been.’

  ‘Scanlan is going out to talk to some of Maggie Dennehy’s friends and neighbours, to see if she confided in any of them about it. You never know.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Katie. ‘And have her chat to her relations, too – sisters or brothers – especially sisters.’

  They were still talking when Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin came in. Like almost everybody else in the station, he looked as if he hadn’t slept well, and his tie was crooked.

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

  ‘In some directions, sir, I think we’re making some progress,’ said Katie. ‘If we could only track down Davy Dorgan, I believe we’d be close to having this all wrapped up.’

  ‘I’ve just had Mathew McElvey on to me from the press office. It seems like the media are going to be making snáth bán of us later today. They’re all asking how that bomber could have managed to fetch so much explosive into the Opera House in spite of all of our security. I mean, Jesus, Kathleen, we had metal detectors and sniffer dogs and more officers around that building than you could shake a stick at.’

  ‘I know, sir, but we still don’t know how he got the bomb into the building and we’re still trying to find out,’ said Katie. ‘The bomber himself was a young fellow who was one of Davy Dorgan’s crowd. In fact, he was the same young fellow who gave Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán her information about those Authentic IRA men coming down from Larne.’

  ‘Do you know how bad this makes us look, though?’ asked Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘Do you think any foreign government will trust us to protect their VIPs ever again?’

  Katie said quietly, ‘We’ll find out how it was done, sir, believe me, and we’ll never let it happen again.’ She could tell by the tone of Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin’s voice that he was only repeating what Frank Magorian had shouted at him.

  ‘All right, then, fair play to you, Kathleen, but do everything you can to find out like yesterday. There’s a rake of important people asking a rake of fierce awkward questions, not only the media. We’ve had Enda Kenny on the phone, too. Well, Frank Magorian has. How do you think it looks if we invite the British defence secretary to Ireland to discuss our mutual defence and he almost ends up getting blown to smithereens?’

  39

  Conor came in to the station to see her just before lunchtime.

  ‘Are you sure I can’t take you out for a bite to eat?’ he asked.

  ‘No thanks, Conor. I’m grand altogether. I have absolutely no appetite at all. If you’d seen those young dancers all in pieces.’

  ‘And you’re pretty sure now that it was this Davy Dorgan who was responsible?’

  ‘There’s some headers in some of the other IRA splinter groups, but I can’t see any of them being mental enough to do this. The Opera House, that’s our city’s pride and joy. The best and biggest theatre in Ireland. And they didn’t even manage to kill the fellow.’

  Conor sat down by the window. In the grey light of a rainy morning, with his straight nose and his brown beard and his eyes as clear as Waterford crystal, Katie thought he looked like one of those romantic Irish poets, like Yeats or Kavanagh.

  ‘I’ve called up a few disreputable people,’ he said, picking at his thumbnail. ‘I’m afraid they all gave me the same story. None of them knew offhand where Barney might have been taken, although one or two of them said they might be able to find out. The problem is that this is the Guzz we’re talking about here and not one of them has the bottle to squeal on the Guzz.’

  ‘Did you tell them there might be some cash in it for them?’

  He nodded. ‘They still weren’t interested. One of them said, “What good is money going to be to me in St Joseph’s Cemetery, I’d like to know? There’s no shops there.”’

  ‘So it looks like I have only two choices, doesn’t it?’ said Katie.

  Conor stood up and came over and laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘This is one decision I can’t make for you, Katie. I know how much Barney means to you. I’m pure fond of him, too. But I can also understand the professional problem you’re up against. If a detective superintendent drops charges against an offender just because her dog’s been stolen... well, I can imagine what the Irish Times would make of it.’

  ‘You really don’t think you can find him?’

  ‘I’ve still a few more contacts to try. Not very reliable ones, but I’ll try them anyway. If I can’t get any kind of a result by two o’clock when this fellow rings you, see if you can stall him. I have to say this to you, though – if I can’t find him, then I don’t think anybody can.’

  ‘I know,’ said Katie very quietly. ‘Thanks for trying, anyway.’

  *

  She visited the Opera House again that morning. Emmett Place was cordoned off and there were still two fire engines parked outside, as well as three skip lorries which were being loaded with broken seats and shattered light fittings and splintered floorboards from the stage.

  She walked down the aisle to the orchestra pit, where Bill Phinner was talking to Assistant Chief Fire Officer Matthew Whalen.

  Matthew Whalen held out his hand as Katie approached and said, ‘We meet again, Detective Superintendent, I’m sad to say, and far too soon.’

  ‘We’re fairly sure it was C4,’ said Bill Phinner. ‘DS Ni Nuallán said the bomber was carrying a duffel bag and a bag like that could have easy contained anything up to three kilos of e
xplosive.’

  ‘Three kilos could do this much damage?’

  ‘Oh, easily,’ said Matthew Whalen. ‘C4 explodes at more than eight thousand metres a second and after the initial blast the force is all sucked back in again, so the human body doesn’t stand much of a chance.’

  Bill Phinner looked around and said, ‘We’ve found shreds of Mylar plastic film almost everywhere, and that’s usually used to seal each demolition block of C4. We’ve also carried out a quick preliminary test with thymol crystals and sulphuric acid. When you mix them with C4, they turn a rosy pink colour. Of course, we’ll be taking more samples back to the lab for X-rays and thin-layer chromatography. But – C4, almost certainly.’

  ‘I’m still wondering how the bomber got it in here,’ said Katie. ‘It’s detectable, isn’t it, C4, even before it’s been exploded?’

  ‘Generally, yes, because most of the C4 that Irish terrorist groups have been using comes from the States and American explosives are almost invariably mixed with a taggant, such as DMDNB, which makes them detectable to sniffer dogs. A sniffer dog can pick up the scent of DMDNB even if it’s only 0.5 parts in a billion.’

  Katie tried not to think of Barney when Matthew Whalen said that.

  ‘So – even if it was sealed with this plastic and well wrapped up, it’s unlikely that the bomb could have been brought in through our security screening?’

  ‘We’ll be able to tell you more when we’ve run our full range of tests,’ said Bill Phinner. ‘But, yes. Highly unlikely, I’d say, ma’am. Highly unlikely.’

  *

  By the time she returned to Anglesea Street three of the four suspects from the Maggie Dennehy rape case had been arrested and brought in to the station. Katie went downstairs to the interview rooms where they were being held waiting for their lawyers. She looked at each of them without introducing herself – Billy, Darragh, Kevan and Alroy – just because she wanted to see what kind of men they were.