One of the gardaí looked up at the building and said, ‘Third floor front, you said?’
‘That’s right. The one with the droopy curtains. I doubt if he’ll give us much bother, like. Even his pals told me that most nights he’s either stoned or langered, and usually both.’
‘Okay. Ready?’ asked the garda with the Enforcer.
‘Bang away, boy,’ Detective Dooley told him.
The garda went up to the front door and positioned himself on the step with his feet well apart. The door was old, with peeling brown varnish, and Detective Dooley could see that there were two locks on it, a Yale and a Chubb, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if there were bolts on the inside, top and bottom. That wouldn’t be a problem: the Enforcer could break down doors much sturdier than this and with stronger locks. It was solid steel and weighed 16 kilos, and it was commonly known as the Big Red Key.
The garda swung the Enforcer and it slammed the door off its hinges with a single splintering blow so that it fell down flat in the hallway. It brought down with it a tall mahogany coat-stand and a wide rectangular mirror, which smashed.
‘Seven years bad luck there, Sean,’ said his partner.
Detective Dooley and Detective O’Mara stepped over the door and crunched over the broken glass. They made their way along to the narrow staircase at the end of the hallway, both of them switching on their flashlights. The building smelled strongly of drains and damp, as well as disinfectant and burned sausages. They climbed the stairs as quickly and quietly as they could, although the cheap brown carpet was worn right through to the string and some of the stairs squeaked like pigs.
They had only just reached the first-floor landing when a door was opened on the third floor up above them and light shone down the stairwell. A thick, clogged-up voice said, ‘Who the feck is that down there? What’s all that fecking crashing and banging? We’re trying to get some fecking sleep here!’
Only a split-second later, though, the detectives heard a woman’s voice screeching, ‘Dara! Dara! There’s only a fecking two-bulb outside!’
‘Shite,’ said Detective Dooley. He hurried along to the end of the landing, but the foot of the second flight of stairs was obstructed by a folded baby buggy and a large green plastic rubbish bin. Before the two detectives could lift them out of the way and start to climb up to the second floor, the door above them had been slammed shut and the stairwell was in darkness once again.
‘That’s your man Coughlan all right,’ said one of the two uniformed gardaí as he came along the landing to join them. ‘At least we didn’t bash down the door for nothing.’
Detective Dooley reached the second-floor landing. Close behind him, Detective O’Mara was beginning to pant with the effort.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I wish I hadn’t ate that vindaloo last night. It was mad hot. I’m going to puke my heart and soul up any second now.’
He paused halfway along the landing, holding on to the banister rail and bending over to catch his breath, while Detective Dooley started to mount the third flight of stairs. His flashlight showed up pale brown wallpaper with blackened spots of mould on it, and a brown fringed lampshade suspended from the ceiling like a giant spider.
He had climbed only three or four stairs when he heard the door open again, although this time the stairwell remained in darkness.
‘Dara! What the feck do you think you’re playing at?’ the woman screeched out.
Dara Coughlan didn’t answer her, but suddenly he appeared at the top of the stairs and Detective Dooley shone his flashlight on him. He was big, and blubbery, with a shaven head and swollen face so that he looked like Buddha’s uglier brother. He was wearing a stained white sleeveless vest and Detective Dooley could see his bulging tattooed neck and arms tattooed with snakes and naked women and GAA badges. His vast red nylon running shorts reached down to his knees, but exposed his tattooed calves.
In his right hand he was carrying a black plastic jerrycan with its yellow lid dangling open.
Detective Dooley stopped on the seventh stair. ‘How’s it hanging, Dara?’ he said, trying to sound friendly and briefly shining his flashlight on to his own face to show Dara Coughlan what he looked like. ‘I’m Detective Garda Dooley from Anglesea Street. I need you to come in to the station with me now to answer some questions.’
‘Get away to feck,’ Dara Coughlan growled back at him.
‘Listen, sham, I don’t want to have to arrest you. It would be better all round if you came in voluntarily-like, do you know what I mean? But I need to talk with you about the fire at the Toirneach Damhsa dance studio. It won’t take more than an hour or two, and if you can prove that you had no involvement in it at all then we’ll have you back here and tucked up in bed again before you know it.’
‘Are you deaf like, or what? I said get away to feck.’
‘Dara, I have two guards here with me, as well as Detective Garda O’Mara, and we can take you in by force if we have to.’
‘What’s going on, Dara?’ the woman’s voice screamed. ‘What do they want? What in the name of God have you done now, you stupid gowl?’
‘Shut your bake, Millie!’ Dara Coughlan shouted back at her. Then, to Detective Dooley, ‘Go on, piss off. I’ve done nothing wrong like, and I’m not going nowhere, not with you nor with nobody else.’
Detective Dooley took two more steps up the staircase towards him and Dara Coughlan lifted up the jerrycan in both hands.
‘Come on, Dara, don’t be an eejit,’ said Detective Dooley. By now Detective O’Mara was standing close behind him, and behind him the two uniformed gardaí.
‘I’m warning you,’ said Dara Coughlan. ‘You come up one step closer, boy, and I’ll fecking fry you, and don’t think I won’t!’
‘Spoken like a true arsonist,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘Now why don’t you put down that can and go back inside and put your runners on? Then we can all go to the station together and have a nice friendly chat about who’s been burning down what, and why. It’s only to eliminate you, Dara, for Christ’s sake, but you have to admit that you’ve set light to more buildings per capita than almost anybody else in Cork, so you can understand why we need to talk to you.’
Detective Dooley took another step up and it was then that Dara Coughlan swung the jerrycan upside-down and splashed petrol all over him. Detective Dooley was blinded and half- choked, and fell to his knees on the stairs, dropping his flashlight. Dara Coughlan carried on violently shaking the jerrycan until it was almost empty.
Detective O’Mara tried to push his way past Detective Dooley and the two gardaí started to heave themselves up the stairs, too. But Dara Coughlan dropped the jerrycan on to the floor so that it bounced back across the landing, still spraying out petrol, and tugged a book of matches out of the pocket of his shorts.
Just as Detective O’Mara managed to climb over Detective Dooley and make a grab for his arm, Dara Coughlan bent the matches over and struck the whole book at once. As they flared up, he dropped them and Detective Dooley exploded into flame.
He screamed, and tried to stand up, waving his arms. For the first few seconds he appeared to be made out of nothing but fire, like a wicker man, but as he grasped the banister rail and struggled to his feet his head appeared out of a collar of flames, with his hair already shrivelled and his cheeks sooty and his lips turning to crackling. His eyes were staring and bloody and already fried.
Some of the petrol had splashed on to Detective O’Mara’s clothes and flames were licking at his jacket and his trouser leg. The carpet on the third-floor landing was alight, too, where the jerrycan had tumbled across the floor, and Dara Coughlan’s bare feet were scorched scarlet. He let out an elephantine bellow, stamping his feet in pain, and then staggered back towards his open door, colliding first with the banisters and then with the wall.
All of Detective Dooley’s muscles were flexed by the heat of the fire that was engulfing him and he pitched over backwards. The two gardaí tried to hold on to him
, but only the garda who had been swinging the battering-ram was wearing gloves, and Detective Dooley was burning too fiercely. He tumbled and thumped all the way down to the bottom of the stairs and lay there, twisted into a swastika shape, with orange flames still rippling out of the charred black flakes that were all that remained of his suit.
Both gardaí wrenched off their high-viz jackets and piled them on top of him. They managed to suppress the flames, but he was quaking and shuddering and going into neurogenic shock. One of them switched on his radio and called for an ambulance and backup.
‘And as fast as you like, girl, he’s one of ours!’
The stairwell was filled with billows of smoke that smelled of petrol and burned flesh. Detective O’Mara had managed to smack out the flames that had scorched his clothes, and even though both his hands were badly blistered and his left leg was so sore that he had to limp, he crossed the landing and approached the dark open doorway into which Dara Coughlan had disappeared.
‘Dara!’ he shouted, his voice hoarse from the smoke. ‘Dara, this is Detective Garda O’Mara! You have to come out of there, boy!’
He kept his back to the wall and stayed clear of the fatal funnel, the triangular area where anyone who ventured into a room was most in danger of being shot. Just because Dara Coughlan was a serial arsonist, that didn’t mean his only weapon was petrol. He could easily have a pistol or a shotgun. He might rush out with a knife, or a machete, or an axe.
‘I’m giving you five to come out!’ Detective O’Mara told him, trying not to cough. ‘There’s more guards on the way, and they’ll be armed! You’ve no chance at all of getting away, Dara! You don’t have a hope in hell!’
He heard Dara saying something and then the woman’s voice again. ‘You’re stone mad you are! What did you think you were doing? You could have burned down the whole fecking house! You’re fecking botched in the head! Jesus!’
‘Shut up, will you, woman, for two fecking minutes!’
‘Well, what are you going to do now? You’ve just set fire to a guard, you lunatic! You think they’re going to tell you, “oh, it’s no bother at all, boy, think nothing of it,” and let you go?’
‘Shut up, will you! You’re wrecking my fecking head!’
One of the gardaí had come upstairs now to see what Detective O’Mara was doing. Detective O’Mara asked, ‘How’s Dooley?’
The garda shook his head. ‘Bad. I don’t know if he’s going to make it. The white van’ll be here in a minute, though, and they’re sending the RSU.’
Dara Coughlan and his girlfriend were still arguing inside the flat, and Detective O’Mara put his finger to his lips. ‘From what they’ve been saying, it doesn’t sound like he’s armed. In fact, it sounds like he’s totally mithered.’
‘I heard you shouting for him to come out like. Did he answer at all?’
Detective O’Mara shook his head. ‘I think we could risk going in after him. There’s no other way out of this flat. It’s more of a bedsit like. The fire escape’s back there, next to the jacks – and, look, that’s padlocked.’
They heard the brief whoop of an ambulance siren in the distance. The garda went across to the banister rail and looked down to where Detective Dooley was lying, with his partner kneeling next to him.
‘He’s still with us, just,’ his partner called up.
The garda came back to join Detective O’Mara. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s scoop the bastard.’
‘Dara!’ shouted Detective O’Mara. ‘You’re running out of time now, boy! Three – four – five! Are you coming out now or what?’
Dara Coughlan didn’t reply, but his girlfriend screamed, ‘Dara!’ at him. ‘Dara – what are you doing? Dara, will you get down from there!’
Detective O’Mara and the garda didn’t even have to look at each other. They jostled their way into the flat, their flashlights criss-crossing in the darkness. Detective O’Mara shouted, ‘Dara! Stay right where you are! Freeze! And put your hands up over your head!’
Dara Coughlan’s girlfriend switched on the single overhead light. Detective O’Mara had been right: it was a bedsit, with a messy double bed, a frayed basketwork chair, and a chipboard kitchen counter with a small stainless-steel basin and a microwave oven. The walls were papered with maroon and gold stripes and over the bed hung a large print of Jesus surrounded by children and puppies and kittens.
The room reeked of stale weed and body odour and Estée Lauder White Linen.
Dara Coughlan’s girlfriend was standing behind the kitchen counter, her left hand clasping her right elbow, looking more defeated than angry. She had a wild mess of bleached-blonde curls and a face that must have been babyish when she was younger but was puffy now, like a white marshmallow, with eyes blotched with mascara. She was wearing a black see-through negligée, and she, too, had tattoos all the way up her arms, including a Virgin Mary on her shoulder who looked so grumpy she could have been mistaken for Martin McGuinness.
When she first switched on the light, Detective O’Mara couldn’t immediately see where Dara had disappeared to. But his girlfriend nodded towards the heavy brown wool curtains and he realized that they were bulging inwards.
‘All right, Dara, you can come down off the window sill,’ said Detective O’Mara. He was trying to sound calm and authoritative, but he was beginning to feel the shock of being burned, and of seeing Detective Dooley set on fire, and wasn’t finding it easy to keep his voice steady. ‘You have to understand that I’m arresting you now for assaulting a police officer.’
‘Away to feck,’ said a muffled voice behind the curtains.
‘Come on, Dara, don’t be an eejit. There’s nowhere for you to go.’
They heard the window being opened and felt a draught.
‘Dara! What are you going to do, you headbanger?’ the girlfriend screamed out. ‘Jump out the fecking windie? Well, why don’t you, that’s the first and only time you’ll ever fly!’
‘Whisht up, will you, girl?’ the garda told her.
Detective O’Mara said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s a good ten metres to the ground. He’s not going to jump.’
He started to walk across to the window, but as he did so there was a shuffling sound and the curtains were sucked inwards and then blown outwards again. He heard a sharp crunch and a reverberating clang and then a cry like nothing else he had ever heard in his life. If it reminded him of anything at all, it was the cry of helplessness and bewilderment that his baby son had let out as soon as he was born.
He yanked back the curtains. The window was wide open and Dara Coughlan had thrown himself out of it. Instead of landing on the pavement, though, which might have given him a chance of survival, he had impaled himself on the metal pole of a No Parking sign. He was suspended horizontally two metres in the air, his tattooed arms and legs slowly waving as if he were swimming.
Dara Coughlan’s girlfriend rushed to the window, and when she saw him she collapsed on to the floor without saying a word. The garda peered out of the window and said, ‘Christ on a crutch.’
At that moment the ambulance turned out of Adelaide Street and came speeding down North Main Street, silently, but with its lights flashing. Detective O’Mara said, ‘I think you’d best be calling for the fire brigade, too. I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get him off that post.’
While the garda called for fire and rescue, Detective O’Mara managed to force his hands into the girlfriend’s plump and sweaty armpits and drag her on to the bed. She could only murmur and mumble, but her eyelids were flickering and she was still breathing. All the same, he would have to ask the paramedics to check her out. From the way she and Dara Coughlan had been behaving, it was likely that they had been taking heroin and N-bombs or fluorofentanyl, or all three.
‘Right, let’s go down and see the fecking harpooned whale,’ he said, although his voice was shaking.
As they came down the stairs they saw that a paramedic had arrived and was kneeling down next to Detect
ive Dooley and opening up her medical kitbag. She had short black hair and put Detective O’Mara in mind of one of the Nolans.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘Him outside there, did he leap out the window?’
‘High as a kite, more than likely,’ said Detective O’Mara. ‘He did this – threw petrol all over him. We’ve called for more backup and the fire brigade.’
At that moment, a grey-haired male paramedic came stamping up the stairs, followed by two armed gardaí from the regional support unit, both wearing body armour.
The male paramedic looked down at Detective Dooley and then he said, ‘Your man on the post downstairs, he’s gone to meet his maker.’ He said it in a flat, matter-of-fact way, as if he saw overweight tattooed men impaled on parking signs every night of the week. Then he hunkered down beside Detective Dooley and said, ‘How is he?’
‘What’s the form?’ one of the armed gardaí asked Detective O’Mara. ‘Did your man jump out the window or what? Who is he?’
‘Dara Coughlan his name is. He’s a record as long as your arm for arson. We came here to bring him in for questioning about that fire at the dance studio.’
‘And what? He chucked petrol at you?’
‘Dooley got the worst of it.’
The armed garda leaned over and looked at Detective Dooley’s blackened face. ‘Mother of God, is that Bobby Dooley? I went to the Pres with him! Oh, Jesus!’
‘Is there anybody else here we need to deal with?’ asked the second armed garda, grimly. He was carrying a Heckler & Koch MP7 sub-machine gun, with his finger pressed flat against the trigger-guard.
‘Only Coughlan’s girlfriend. She’s upstairs out of her brain on 4-FBF or something similar. God knows.’
The stairwell was lit up with bright flashing blue lights which showed that the fire and rescue team had arrived. Detective O’Mara said, ‘I’d better get myself down there and see what’s slicing. I’ll have to ring DS Begley and wake him up. He’s going to be delighted, not. We’ll need some pictures taken, too, and some forensics, so I’d better ring Bill Phinner.’
Dead Girls Dancing Page 17