Dead Girls Dancing

by Graham Masterton

  Detective Dooley followed Katie to the lifts, half-skipping to keep up with her.

  ‘They’re reporting it live on RedFM, the fire,’ he told her, as the lift sank down to the ground floor. ‘They were also talking on the phone to the fellow who manages the dance troupe – Danny Coffey? He said there were seventeen people in the building at least, sixteen dancers and their instructor. They were holding a last full rehearsal before next week’s feis.’

  ‘Danny Coffey, yes,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve heard of him. He started off with Michael Flatley, didn’t he? What’s the latest? Have any of the dancers managed to get out of there?’

  ‘Not so far as the reporter could tell, and we’ve had no update from Inspector Cafferty yet, either.’

  They quickly crossed the shiny-floored reception area towards the door that gave out on to the car park. They had nearly reached it when Katie caught the glint of the glass front doors being pushed open, and when she turned her head she saw Conor Ó Máille coming into the station.

  Mother of God, she thought. Not now. And not in front of Dooley.

  Conor caught sight of her at once and walked straight past the sergeant on the front desk. His dark brown beard was freshly trimmed and he was wearing a long olive-green raincoat and polished tan brogues. As he approached, Katie stopped and waited for him, although Detective Dooley took two or three paces back. Like everybody else in Anglesea Street, he knew that something had been going on between Katie and Conor. He had also heard that Conor’s wife had come into the station looking for him.

  ‘Katie?’ said Conor. He had a complicated look on his face, part pleading and part aggressive. Six-year-old Dalaigh with his steerinah might have smelled of toffee or wee, but Conor smelled of Chanel Bleu aftershave. His eyes were mahogany brown.

  ‘I’m on an urgent call-out, Conor,’ said Katie, lifting up both lapels of her high-viz jacket to emphasize the obvious. ‘You must have heard the sirens.’

  ‘I have of course. I just needed to talk to you.’

  ‘I need to talk to you, too. About the dog-fighting mainly. But it’ll have to wait until I get back. There’s people trapped apparently.’

  ‘All right,’ said Conor. ‘What will you do, ring me?’

  ‘Are you still at the Gabriel guest house?’

  ‘I am, yes, but I’ll be going back to Limerick tomorrow.’

  ‘You and Mrs Ó Máille?’ said Katie, although she immediately wished that she hadn’t.

  ‘Katie—’ Conor began, lifting his hand towards her.

  ‘I’ll ring you later so,’ Katie told him. ‘Meanwhile I have to go. There’s people trapped in a much more critical situation than you and me.’

  *

  They could see the dark pall of smoke hanging over the river as soon as they turned into Merchants Quay, and when they crossed Patrick’s Bridge they could see the blue lights flashing and the six fire appliances clustered on the pedestrian precinct in front of the Toirneach Damhsa dance studio. Jer Noonan, the undertaker, had moved his hearse further up Shandon Street to be out of the firefighters’ way and it was parked on the sloping corner of North Abbey Street with a dark oak coffin still inside it, and white roses spelling out DAD. A crowd of at least two or three hundred sightseers had gathered on the opposite side of the Griffith Bridge, and there were more along the North Mall on the same side of the river, but they were being held well back by Garda patrol cars parked diagonally across the road. Four ambulances were already lined up under the trees and Katie could see two more speeding on their way, their blue lights flashing along Bachelor’s Quay.

  The blue-painted Friary pub on the corner had been evacuated, but one drinker was still standing in the open doorway smoking a cigarette and holding a pint of stout, seemingly oblivious to the crisis all around him.

  As Katie climbed out of her car, she was overwhelmed by the noise of diesel engines roaring and firefighters shouting and the blasting of high-pressure hoses. Thick grey smoke blew past her and out across the river, and it carried a pungent smell of burned wood and plastic, and some other smell, too, which reminded her horribly of barbecues. Three ladders had been raised up against the white-painted façade of the dance studio building, two at the front and one in the alley at the side. The firefighters at the front had smashed the studio windows and were spraying the interior with powerful jets of water. The firefighter at the side was wrenching a rusted wire-mesh screen off the window frame so that he could gain access to the first-floor landing.

  Smoke was billowing out of the windows and the roof, speckled with orange sparks. Katie could see that some of the rafters must have burned through, because the grey slates had collapsed in the middle, and even as she was looking up at it the dormer window dropped out of sight behind the façade.

  Katie watched Detective Dooley cross the road to infiltrate the crowds and then she carefully stepped over the coils of red fire hoses to join Assistant Chief Fire Officer Whalen, who was standing close by with two of his fellow officers. She could see that several reporters were standing on the corner of Farren’s Quay watching her – Fionnuala Sweeney from RTÉ, Fergus O’Farrell from RedFM, Jean Mulligan from the Evening Echo and a freelance called Jimmy McCracken, who would probably be phoning the story in to the Examiner. If Katie had showed up, that confirmed to the media how serious this was.

  ‘What’s the story, Matthew?’ she asked Assistant Chief Fire Officer Whalen.

  Matthew Whalen was a big, stout man whose neck bulged over his collar and whose uniform belt strained around his belly. His cheeks were so scarlet that they looked as if they had been scorched from years of firefighting, and his ginger moustache and ginger eyebrows both bristled as if they had just burst into flame. Although he looked so explosive, Katie had worked with him before on several major incidents, including floods and gas leaks and building collapses, and she knew him to be steady and calm and highly experienced.

  ‘Ah, Katie, how’s it hanging? So far as we know like, there are seventeen persons altogether in the first-floor dance studio. That’s sixteen dancers and their instructor. We haven’t seen a sign of any of them yet. It’s unusually intense, this fire, I can tell you, and it’s going to take us a few more minutes at least before we can safely gain entry. The trouble is, the stairs have collapsed so we’re having to go in through the windows, and of course that’s feeding the fire more oxygen.’

  Katie could see that flames were still leaping up and down inside the studio, as if they were mischievously taunting the firefighters were who trying to extinguish them.

  ‘Any notion yet what might have started it?’

  Matthew Whalen shrugged. ‘I’m jumping to no conclusions about that. Once they catch alight, these old buildings have a tendency to heat up fierce quick, do you know, like a Boru stove. They’ve thick walls on the outside, all right, but inside they’re all wormy wood and varnish and ill-fitting doors. But like I say, this fire’s unusually intense. Without committing meself, though, let’s just say that it wouldn’t totally surprise me at all if we find out that it was set deliberate.’

  Through the drifting grey smoke, Katie could see that the firefighter at the side of the building had now levered out the window frame and dropped it with a splintering crash into the alley below. Wearing breathing apparatus, and boosted up from behind by another two firefighters, he climbed off the top of his ladder and in through the landing window.

  At the front of the building the firefighters were hosing down the last of the flames inside the studio. So much smoke was billowing out of the main windows that at times they completely disappeared from sight.

  ‘I’m holding out very little hope of survivors,’ said Matthew Whalen. ‘Jim here questioned some of the witnesses as soon as he arrived and none of them saw anybody waving at the windows or any other sign of life.’

  Third Officer Phelan nodded. ‘Flames, that’s all they could see. One of them said that it looked like hell in there. They couldn’t hear nobody screaming or shouting for help,
neither.’

  Inspector Cafferty had been supervising the crowd control, but now he came over and stood beside Katie. He was lean and thin and serious, with a beaky nose and a mole on his chin. ‘How are you going on, ma’am? Mother of God, this is desperate, isn’t it? I’d say that this is the worst fire I’ve ever witnessed, bar none. I mean, that blaze last month at the N-Steak House was bad enough, but at least nobody got hurt. I hope to God that some of the poor wretches got out of there somehow, but I don’t think there’s too much chance of it.’

  It was starting to spit with rain, very lightly, so when Katie raised her eyes to the top of the building she shielded her face with her hand. She didn’t exactly know why she looked up. Maybe it was the lurching sound of more rafters collapsing and the rattle of slates sliding into the attic. But she was sure she saw something dark bob over the top of the parapet. At first she thought it might have been a pigeon, but it seemed unlikely that a pigeon would settle on top of a burning building. Maybe she had glimpsed nothing more than the end of a fire-charred rafter toppling over, although it had seemed more rounded than that. It could have been a chimney-cowl.

  She was about to turn away to see what progress Detective Dooley was making in the crowd when the dark object bobbed up again, and this time it stayed in sight. To Katie’s horror, it was the head of a child, a little girl, with a white face and dark eyes and dark, braided hair. Almost everybody else’s attention was on the first-floor windows where five firefighters with breathing apparatus were now climbing inside, dragging their hoses in after them. But the little girl continued to stare down at Katie, though she didn’t cry out and she didn’t wave.

  ‘Matthew! Look!’ said Katie, seizing Matthew Whalen’s sleeve and pointing up at the parapet.

  ‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ said Matthew, as soon as he saw the girl looking down at them. ‘Jim! Patrick! There’s a kid up there!’

  Third Officer Phelan was on to his radio immediately. ‘Charlie Two! Charlie Two! Back yourself up to the front of the property and get that aerial platform hoisted up! Make a bust, will you? There’s a wain stuck up on the roof!’

  The firefighters hurriedly cleared the pavement in front of the studio building. Their Mercedes-Benz aerial platform appliance had been parked further along the quay, but now it started up with a bellow and reversed right up to the front door, in between the two ladders that were already propped against the studio windows. With two firefighters standing in it, the platform was raised with a high hydraulic whine, and within less than two minutes they had reached the parapet. Katie stepped back so that she could see more clearly, but there was still thick smoke blowing out of the studio and every now and then it blotted out her view of the roof completely.

  At last, however, she saw one of the firefighters standing on the roof. He lifted the girl out of the gutter behind the parapet where she had been crouching and between them he and his companion carefully lowered her into the platform. As the firefighters brought her down there was clapping and cheering and whistling from the crowds along the quays.

  Two paramedics from the Mercy hurried a trolley forward and the girl was helped up on to it. Katie guessed that she was about nine years old. She was very thin and leggy, wearing skinny black tights and a baggy pink cotton top with a sad-faced rabbit appliquéd on the front of it. Her face was smudged with soot and she was coughing, so the paramedics placed an oxygen mask over her face.

  Katie leaned over her, taking hold of her hand and giving her a reassuring smile. The girl stared at her with huge brown eyes, although they were reddened from the smoke and her eyelashes were stuck together with tears.

  ‘You’re safe now, sweetheart,’ Katie told her. ‘These nice people will take you to the hospital just to make sure you can breathe all right. I’ll come and talk to you later when you’re feeling better.’

  The girl continued to stare at her and coughed inside her oxygen mask.

  ‘Do you think you can manage one thing for me now?’ Katie asked her. ‘Do you think you can tell me what your name is?’

  One of the paramedics lifted the mask up from the girl’s face so that she could speak, but all she did was stare at Katie and then start coughing again. The paramedic put the mask back again.

  ‘That’s not a bother,’ said Katie. ‘Wait till you’re well. I’ll see you after so.’

  The paramedics wheeled the girl away and lifted her into the back of their ambulance. The rest of the ambulances were still parked in line, but although the smoke was gradually beginning to clear it seemed less and less likely that they would be taking any more survivors away to hospital.

  ‘Jesus, she looks about the same age as my own daughter, Orla,’ said Inspector Cafferty as the ambulance sped away. ‘God alone knows how she got herself out of there.’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ said Katie. ‘How was she able to climb up on to the roof but nobody else managed it? Maybe they all shut themselves in another room somewhere and they’re all unharmed. Well, I hope so, anyway.’

  She had hardly said that when Matthew Whalen came over to her, grim-faced, holding up his radio.

  ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Katie. There’s a rake of bodies in the dance studio and as far as they’re able to count they reckon there’s seventeen of them altogether. It looks like they tried to escape up into the attic but they never made it.’

  ‘Seventeen? That must be practically the whole dance troupe,’ said Inspector Cafferty. ‘Mother of God, we saw them performing at the Opera House only this summer, the Toirneach Damhsa. They were fantastic.’

  ‘Well, Inspector, I’m afraid they’ve danced their last jig now,’ said Matthew Whalen. He took off his cap and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘The next person they’re going to be entertaining is the state pathologist.’

  3

  ‘I’d say that’s well alight now, wouldn’t you?’ said Liam O’Breen. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the fire brigade isn’t breaking out the sausages.’

  Niall Gleeson said nothing, but took a last deep drag on his cigarette butt and then flicked it across the steeply sloping car park.

  They were standing in front of the Templegate Tavern on Gurranabraher Road, watching the dark grey smoke rising from Farren’s Quay, down in the city far below them. Liam was just twenty-one, pale-faced and podgy. His head was shaved at the sides so that his curly ears stuck out, but he had a mass of wavy brown hair on top, thick with dandruff. He was wearing a green GAA sweatshirt and baggy grey tracksuit trousers from Champion Sports.

  Niall was in his mid-thirties, although he looked older because his short-cropped hair was already turning grey. He was dressed in a bottle-green tweed jacket and black waistcoat, and dark grey trousers with turn-ups. He was short, with a thick bullish neck, and his eyes were always narrowed as if he were thinking hard, or focusing on some point miles in the distance.

  ‘Davy should be back soon,’ said Liam. It was starting to spit with rain, and he held out his hand and looked up at the clouds.

  ‘Did he say he was coming back?’ Niall replied. ‘You can never tell for sure with Davy. He’s one cute hoor, that fellow.’

  ‘He’s okay. He’s promised to get me a Glock.’

  ‘What? A fecking Glock? I wouldn’t trust you with a scuttering gun full of piss, let alone a fecking Glock.’

  ‘Oh g’way,’ grinned Liam, but Niall wasn’t smiling.

  The smoke from the dance studio fire was now piling up nearly three hundred metres into the air so that it was mingling with the low grey clouds. As Liam and Niall were about to go back into the pub, a white Garda helicopter appeared from the north-east and started to circle with a monotonous clattering drone over the quays.

  ‘You have to give Davy one thing,’ said Liam. ‘He doesn’t do things by halves.’

  ‘He’s a fecking header, if you ask me.’

  ‘Maybe he is like, but maybe we need somebody mad for a change, do you know what I mean? And he’s political
mad. Like Bobby was mad all right, but all Bobby cared about was raking in the grade. The politics was just an excuse as far as Bobby was concerned. Not Davy.’

  ‘What the feck do you know about politics, buke? And don’t speak ill of the dead. Bobby Quilty was fierce crabbit so he was. You haven’t the brains of a dying hen compared to him.’

  ‘I know about the Potato Famine and the Easter Rising and the Tan War. Learned about them in meánscoil.’

  ‘What you need to learn is how to stop making out you’re so fecking clever and keep your bake shut.’

  They were about to go back into the pub when a silver-grey Mercedes convertible came round the corner from Cathedral Road and parked in front of the Paddy Power bookmaker’s next door. A young man in a smart black waterproof jacket climbed out, reaching back inside for a briefcase. Then he came towards them, not smiling or raising his hand in greeting, but when he came close enough he said, ‘How’s it going on, lads?’

  ‘Oh, grand altogether, Davy, how’s yourself?’ said Liam. Niall said nothing. He was at least seven years older than Davy and he didn’t like being included in ‘lads’.

  Davy was Black Irish handsome, with tousled hair that curled over his collar and the angular, straight-nosed features of a male magazine model, with fashionable stubble. His eyes were grey, but instead of being seductively twinkling they always seemed to be challenging, even aggressive, bright and hard as two nail-heads. He rarely stayed still – Niall complained that he was always jumping around like a fiddler’s elbow – but he carried himself with an air of self-assurance that Niall in particular found more than simply irritating: he found it threatening. From the way Davy walked, he was obviously very fit. He didn’t smoke and he didn’t spend hours in the tavern with the rest of them, shooting pool and drinking Murphy’s with Paddy’s chasers and telling filthy stories.