Dead Girls Dancing

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Jesus. Rather you than me, ma’am. I always have nightmares after I’ve seen stuff like that. But who in the name of God would want to burn down a dance studio? That’s what I’d like to know. Like – a brothel or a crack house, or a bar maybe. Even a church. But what earthly harm could dancers have done to anyone?’

  ‘Maybe it was the people from the floor below,’ put in Detective Markey. ‘Maybe they were pissed off from all that stamping on the ceiling.’

  Katie gave him a sharp look and he said, ‘Sorry, ma’am. Not funny.’

  *

  The firefighters had erected a ladder in place of the collapsed staircase. Katie climbed up it with Detective O’Donovan close behind her in case she missed her footing. She was wearing blue Tyvek covers over her shoes, but even though the soles were non-skid the rungs of the ladder were wet and slippery.

  The staircase walls were blackened with smoke, like a crematorium chimney. Cascades of water were still clattering down from the upper floors and every now and then there was an echoing clang as scaffolding was brought up to support the ceiling. When she reached the first-floor landing two firefighters reached out their hands to help her step off the ladder.

  ‘I’m grand, thanks,’ said Katie, but one of the firefighters said, ‘Don’t want you falling like, that’s all. I think we’ve had enough fatalities here for one day.’

  Katie had never seen firefighters look so serious. Even when they were cutting the victims out of car crashes on the N7, or lifting drowned alcoholics out of the River Lee, they usually kept up a black sense of humour. They had to, for their own sanity – but not tonight.

  She lifted her mask over her face before she stepped gingerly over the banisters that had fallen sideways across the floor and made her way into the dance studio. Detective O’Donovan and Detective Markey and Bill Phinner followed close behind her. The studio was brightly illuminated by six LED floodlights that the technicians had set up on tripods all around it, so that it had the appearance of a film set rather than a real-life crime scene.

  The varnish on the parquet floor was blistered and bubbled. The curtains were nothing more than drooping grey strings, and all the chairs had been burned into skeletons, with lumps of brown melted foam in their seats. Katie looked up and across the ceiling she could see stormy swirls of soot. The heat had shattered the two chandeliers so that only their wire framework dangled down, like two gigantic spiders.

  Catriona’s body was lying close to the doorway, on her back. She had been cremated so completely that her cheekbones were shining through the black, flaked-off skin of her face, and her finger-bones were showing. Her arms and her legs looked like long sticks of charcoal, and her dance dress had turned to ash.

  ‘We’re guessing that this young lady was the first to burn,’ said Bill Phinner. ‘The forensic evidence will show us for sure, but it seems likely that the fire originated in the stairwell and she was caught in a backdraught when the door was opened.’

  Katie looked down at Catriona and crossed herself and whispered, ‘Whoever you are, girl, may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.’

  Next, she turned to look across the studio at the huddle of sixteen more bodies, all of them clustered around the open door to the attic. They were all charred and tangled together, arms and legs intertwined, so that it was difficult to tell at first sight how many there were. As Katie approached them the technical experts stood aside to let her have a closer look. She saw frizzled clumps of hair and faces distorted in panic and pain. It looked as if somebody had tossed a selection of grotesque carnival masks on to a bonfire.

  Although she, too, was bundled up in a Tyvek suit and her face was covered by a mask, Katie recognized the young forensic artist Eithne O’Neill, whose speciality was reconstructing images of badly mutilated faces. She was taking photographs of the dancers from all angles, although she wasn’t touching any of them. She looked across at Katie and gave her a quick, grim nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘It’s going to take us a fair while to separate all of these bodies,’ said Bill Phinner. ‘Some of them are almost melted together. After that we can lay them out properly and identify them. The girls are all wearing nothing but dancing dresses and the lads are wearing only shirts and trousers. Almost all of them have left their wallets and purses in the changing room. We’ll have quite a job matching them all up.’

  Assistant Chief Fire Officer Matthew Whalen came over. ‘What a tragedy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting out of here alive, none of them.’

  ‘It looks as if they were trying to escape through that door,’ said Katie. ‘Where does that lead? Up to the attic?’

  ‘That’s right. We haven’t been able to get up there yet because the roof has all fallen in. I’d say that when they opened that door, though, it had the same effect as when they opened the door to the staircase. It let in a whole rush of oxygen and created another backdraught. They might just as well have poured petrol all over themselves.’

  ‘And – just to repeat – you both think that this fire was set deliberately?’

  Bill Phinner and Matthew Whalen looked down at the heap of incinerated corpses and nodded.

  ‘There’s no doubt in my mind at all,’ said Matthew Whalen. ‘I’ve seen almost exactly the same pattern of combustion so many times. You remember that blaze last October at Reedy’s on Oliver Plunkett Street? Only one person was injured then, the fellow who was living in the flat over the shop, but it was the same double-backdraught situation. He tried to get out through the attic but when he opened the trapdoor the whole building went up like a bomb.’

  Katie couldn’t help noticing the curled-up hand lying on the floor close to her blue Tyvek-covered foot. It was a girl’s hand, red-raw like an upturned crab, with a silver engagement ring tarnished by the heat. Katie crossed herself again. Whatever had happened here, whoever had set this building alight, she felt that she had failed these poor dead dancers because no word about a threatened arson attack had reached her team beforehand. There was constant warfare between the drugs gangs and the pimps and the people-smugglers in Cork, but she hadn’t heard a whisper about a threat against Toirneach Damhsa, or any other Irish dancing troupe.

  ‘I have to talk to the media now,’ she told Bill Phinner and Matthew Whalen. ‘I’m not going to tell them yet that we suspect it was arson. First of all, I’d rather have absolute one hundred per cent forensic proof that it was, and not some freakish accident that looks as if it might have been arson. Second, if it was arson, I want the perpetrator to think that he or she might have got away with it.’

  ‘So what are you going to say to the media?’ asked Matthew Whalen.

  ‘Nothing that they don’t already know. There was a devastating fire and most if not all of the members of the Toirneach Damhsa troupe were tragically killed. The Technical Bureau along with experts from the Cork Fire Brigade are investigating the causes of it.’

  ‘They’re not going to be very satisfied with that,’ said Bill Phinner.

  ‘Seventeen young people have been burned to death in here, Bill,’ said Katie. ‘The only satisfaction I’m concerned about is theirs, these dancers – finding out who killed them and having them punished for it. The media – well, they can stall up for a while.’

  5

  Katie spent what was left of the night at the River Lee Hotel. She could have slept at the station, but it was always noisy there, with doors slamming and feet hurrying backwards and forwards, and distant phones ringing, and singing drunks being dragged in from the street. Whenever she slept there, too, she always woke up too early and instead of a proper breakfast she would eat a cheese and tomato sandwich or maybe a granola bar, sitting at her desk.

  After witnessing the burning down of the Toirneach Damhsa dance studio she wanted to think quietly about who might have done it, and why, and how she was going to set up her investigation. She took a long hot shower to wash off the smell of smoke and then at 3.15 a.m. she went t
o bed. She lay there for a while listening to the soft swish of traffic along the Western Road and the rain sprinkling against her window.

  She had trained herself to switch her mind off and sleep deeply whenever she needed it, but tonight she had a vivid dream – not about the black cremated bodies in the dance studio, but about Conor. It was a sunny afternoon and he was sitting in her back garden, tugging at Barney’s ears, with his back to her. He was wearing a brown hat with a floppy brim and a very white short-sleeved shirt so that she could see tattoos on his forearms which she had never seen when they were in bed together. A mermaid with flowing red hair – he had always called her his beautiful merrow.

  He kept saying, ‘You don’t understand, Katie. You have the wrong end of the stick altogether.’

  Her alarm woke her at six-thirty. Although she had to dress in the same rust-coloured suit and mustard sweater as yesterday, she always carried a clean pair of tights and a thong in her purse. She went downstairs to the terrace at seven o’clock, taking a notepad with her, and chose a table by the window so that she could look out over the river. It was gradually growing light, but although it had stopped raining the morning was relentlessly grey and the river was dull, like a fogged-up mirror. She ordered black pudding and poached eggs on a muffin, and a strawberry and mint lemonade, and a double espresso. Even when she was at home she would start the day with nothing more than muesli and yogurt, but today she had the feeling that she might not have the chance to eat again until very much later.

  While she waited for her food to arrive she sipped her lemonade and wrote down a list. Detective Dooley had asked the most important question of all: Who in the name of God would want to burn down a dance studio? There were several possible answers to that, but considering that seventeen people had been killed, either deliberately or accidentally, she thought some of the answers seemed highly unlikely. Still, as her father had told her after all his years of experience as a Garda inspector, ‘The whole world is highly unlikely, my darling, and after Waterford, Cork is probably the unlikeliest place of all.’

  In spite of its gangs, or perhaps because of them, Cork City had one of the lowest crime rates in Ireland, although it had more homicides than anywhere else. Katie put that statistic down to the gangs, too.

  But was this fire gang-related? Maybe there had been some long-running dispute over who owned the property. Maybe the arsonist had simply intended to burn down the building and hadn’t realized that the dancers would be trapped and have no way of escape.

  Maybe, on the other hand, he had borne a grudge against one or all of the dancers, or their coach, Nicholas O’Grady, or Danny Coffey, the troupe’s owner and manager. Danny Coffey would be coming back to Cork from Dublin sometime this morning and Katie would have him interviewed and his background thoroughly checked.

  Maybe the troupe had been suffering from financial problems and Danny Coffey had arranged for the arson himself in order to collect the insurance.

  She knew Nicholas O’Grady to be homosexual because only three or four months ago he had married his male partner in an ostentatious ceremony at the Ambassador Hotel. Maybe some jealous former lover had been out to punish him, or maybe some religious zealot had wanted to express disapproval of same-sex marriage.

  Maybe the fire had been set by a member of a rival dance troupe. The regional dance finals were being held at the Cork Opera House on Saturday next week and the competition was fierce, especially among the semi-professional troupes. Winning the championship could bring huge publicity and guarantee bookings both in Ireland and abroad. From what Katie had read about Toirneach Damhsa, they were one of the best step-dance companies in the country. She would send Detective Scanlan to have a word with An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha, the Irish Dance Commission, to ask if they had heard of any enmity simmering between the competing troupes.

  The red-haired waitress brought her plate of black pudding and poached eggs and so she put down her pen. She was tempted to ring Detective Sergeant Begley and ask how the extrication of the bodies from the dance studio was progressing, but she told herself to eat her breakfast first, and stay calm. If there had been any problems, either he or Bill Phinner would have texted her.

  It was only when she cut into her black pudding that she realized how much it resembled the charred flesh of the first dancer she had seen, lying on her back by the studio door. She held a lump of it on the end of her fork and told herself not to be so squeamish. She had once seen a woman whose husband had attacked her in the kitchen with a carving knife so that her intestines were hanging out, and that hadn’t put her off tripe.

  After more than half a minute, though, she realized that she couldn’t put it in her mouth. She put down her fork and pushed her plate away. She didn’t even feel hungry any more, even for the piece of farl that she had torn off and buttered to go with the black pudding.

  The waitress came over and said, ‘Is something wrong, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. No. Not at all. It’s not the food. The food is grand. It’s me. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.’

  ‘Would you like anything else at all? Some whiskey cream porridge, maybe?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll just finish my coffee. Tell the chef it wasn’t his fault. It was my digestion playing up, that’s all.’

  ‘Should I fetch you some Alka-Seltzer?’

  Katie smiled and shook her head. ‘That’s sweet of you. But Alka-Seltzer could never settle what my stomach’s suffering from.’

  *

  The morning was beginning to brighten, so she walked from the River Lee Hotel to Anglesea Street, going by way of Hanover Street and Sullivan’s Quay by the river. Her iPhone pinged six or seven times as she walked, and played ‘Fear a’ Bháta’ again and again, but she didn’t answer it. It would take her only a little over twenty minutes to reach the station and she felt that she needed the fresh air and exercise.

  She wanted to think about Conor, too. She wasn’t in love with him, but she was passionately fond of him. He was funny, and interesting, and understanding, and he was great in bed. She had found his lovemaking really exciting – and more than that, liberating. With him, she felt she could do whatever she wanted and ask him to do whatever she desired, without any embarrassment.

  Apart from that, he was one of only a handful of professional pet detectives in Europe, finding missing or stolen dogs and cats, and she found his rapport with animals made him even more appealing.

  Katie and Conor had gone together to Tipperary to search for dogs that had been stolen to take part in dog-fights organized by the notorious Guzz Eye McManus. They hadn’t yet gathered enough solid evidence to arrest McManus, but they had found out that a major dog-fight was pending and Katie had been hoping that when that took place Conor could help her to prosecute McManus and close down his racket for good. Each dog-fight easily made three times as much money as a drugs shipment or a bank robbery.

  But now what was she going to do? Although she found it difficult to admit it to herself, there had been a tiny hope glowing in some dark corner at the back of her mind that their relationship might last longer than just a few weeks, that it might outlive the secretive liaisons they had been enjoying at Conor’s hotel while they worked together on the McManus case. That was before a tall, attractive woman had walked into the station and announced herself as Conor’s wife. Katie had driven home that evening with tears blurring her eyes and she hadn’t spoken to Conor again, not until he had come into the station the previous morning.

  Of course, she could pursue her investigation into Guzz Eye’s dog-fighting without him, but it would be far more difficult. Conor had built up a comprehensive network of contacts among shady vets and boarding-kennel owners, and other people involved in the stealing and training of dogs for fighting. Without him, too, it would be far more dangerous. Guzz Eye was very influential in the Travelling community and he wasn’t the kind of man who tolerated interference in his affairs. The Tipperary gardaí already suspected him of having been invo
lved in the murder of Sean Moody, a dog trainer who had been found dead in a ditch at Saintpatricksrock last October, with his severed genitals stuffed in his mouth, a clear indication that he had been talking to people he shouldn’t.

  Yes, Kathleen, I deck it, she told herself, as she crossed the stone bridge over the south branch of the river. I know how totally rash I was to get involved with Conor at all. But she had been riven with guilt over the death of her erstwhile boyfriend, John, and Conor had given her so much affection and so much strength just when she needed it most. But could she continue to work with him, now that she had found out he was married and had been cheating on his wife with her? She could see all manner of trouble coming, like the bank of charcoal-grey clouds that were rolling over the city close behind her.

  As soon as she reached her office and hung up her high-viz jacket, her assistant, Moirin, came bustling in. Moirin was small and chubby, with a heart-shaped face like Snow White, and she looked as if she had only just left school, but in fact she was a single mother of two children and one of the most efficient assistants that Katie had ever employed.

  ‘Superintendent Pearse has been asking for you, ma’am, and so has DI Mulliken. They both said it was pure urgent. Would you care for a cup of tea in your hand?’

  Katie sat behind her desk and prodded her iPhone. ‘I’ve been answering nobody this morning,’ she said. ‘I wanted to give my head a little peace before I came to work.’

  ‘Oh, if only,’ said Moirin. ‘My two do nothing but scream and shout and beat the living daylights out of each other, morning till night.’

  ‘So, just the same as working here, really?’ said Katie. ‘Actually, I’ll have a cappuccino if you don’t mind. And a couple of those Cushendall biscuits if there’s any left.’