Dead Girls Dancing Read online

  ‘What, like dead like?’ asked Kyna.

  ‘Well, of course. We wouldn’t be wearing the armbands if he wasn’t dead. His funeral’s tomorrow, which is why we’re having a bit of a get-together this evening. What you might call a dry run for the wake, although it won’t be very dry.’

  ‘Holy Jesus, that’s terrible. Do you know who shot him?’

  ‘There’s all kinds of theories, but the shades haven’t picked up anyone yet.’

  ‘I still reckon it was that Bernie Dennehy,’ said Billy, who had been leaning back in his chair and combing his Elvis Presley quiff. ‘I reckon he found out about Niall riding his missus. And you have to admit his missus isn’t a bad-looking knock, is she? You’d give her a poke if your telly was broke.’

  ‘I still reckon it was Óglaigh na hÉireann,’ said Liam. ‘The New IRA. They knew that he’d be taking over from Bobby and they wanted to stop him before he could even get started.’

  Murtagh jerked his head towards Kyna and frowned at Liam as if to tell him to keep his bake shut about business. But Kyna was sipping her wine and looking around the pub as if she wasn’t listening to them any more.

  ‘They have music here, do they?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right. In the pool bar,’ said Murtagh. ‘They had a fantastic guitarist here last week and there’s some singer coming on later.’

  ‘It’s fierce sad when somebody dies,’ said Kyna. ‘My gran died on Easter Sunday. Do you think we all go to heaven when we die?’

  ‘Not Niall,’ said Billy.

  ‘He wasn’t a bad man, was he?’ Kyna asked him.

  ‘Niall? Let’s say he’d done a few things in his life Saint Peter wouldn’t have approved of.’

  ‘Well, that’s for sure,’ said Murtagh. ‘I don’t think anybody who worked for Bobby will ever get past the pearly gates, not without an apostolic pardon, anyway.’

  ‘Who’s Bobby?’ said Kyna.

  ‘Bobby Quilty his name was, and if I was you, darling, I’d thank your lucky stars that you never came across him. He would have gone for a beour like you like a hippopotamus on heat. No, don’t you worry about the Big Feller. He’s gone wherever big fellers like him get sent to when there’s no more room in hell.’

  Kyna nodded as if she was only half listening. She had encountered Bobby Quilty, and the memory of it still made her feel sick. She had been undercover, trying to infiltrate his hugely profitable cigarette-smuggling business. He had attempted to rape her, and when he had failed to do that, he had forced her into the shower and relieved himself all over her. She could only agree with Murtagh that if hell had an overflow, that was where Bobby Quilty was now, burning for all eternity from head to foot.

  The conversation between the three men turned to the senior hurling championships, and how Midleton had beaten Sarsfield. Throughout their talk about rooters and mullockers and tidy players and Sarsfield being windy, Kyna stayed smiling and patient, trying to look interested, and she made a point of catching Liam’s eye whenever she could. She could see that he was really taken with her, and that could be very useful. She had been careful not to push her questioning about Bobby Quilty too far, in case Murtagh in particular started to suspect her of being more than just a flirty Gurranabraher bird, but if she managed to gain Liam’s confidence she might be able to find out much more than Murtagh was prepared to tell her.

  Billy was just starting to talk about the gearbox trouble he had been having with his new Kia when a dark-haired young man walked into the pub, wearing a black suit that Kyna guessed was probably Armani and must have cost him at least seven hundred euros. He was good-looking in a way that she found disturbing for some reason, with emphatic black eyebrows and a straight nose and lips that were slightly too voluptuous for a man. Maybe it was his eyes that unsettled her. He was smiling, but if she had seen the expression in his eyes in isolation, like looking through a letter box, she would have been sure that he was angry about something.

  Liam immediately stood up so that the young man could take his seat, and went over to the next table to fetch another chair for himself.

  ‘How’s it hanging, Davy?’ said Murtagh. ‘Want a MiWadi?’

  Davy ignored him and stared straight at Kyna. ‘Who’s this, then?’

  ‘She’s the new barmaid... or she will be when Roy gets back and hires her.’

  ‘So what’s she doing sitting here chatting to you clowns?’

  ‘Chatting, that’s all, what do you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes? And what about?’

  ‘Blowing up Collins Barracks,’ said Billy. ‘What the feck do you think we were chatting about?’

  Without warning, Davy took hold of Billy’s left ear and twisted it around so hard that it crackled. Billy let out a girlish shriek of pain.

  ‘You looper! You think that’s a laugh, do you, Billy?’ said Davy, still holding on to his ear and pulling his head down sideways towards the table top. ‘How many times do I have to tell you to watch your whist? Christ almighty, you don’t have a titter of wit, do you?’

  His accent when he had first started talking had sounded local, but now that he was annoyed Kyna could hear an underlying Belfast lilt to it, and no Norrie would say ‘titter of wit’.

  ‘Ow, I’m sorry!’ said Billy. ‘Let go of me fecking ear, will you! I’m sorry! We was only talking about the hurling!’

  Davy let him go and he sat up straight, rubbing the side of his head. ‘Jesus, you nearly pulled me fecking wiggy off. I could have been half-deafened for life.’

  ‘I’ll pull the both of them off if you don’t stop running your mouth off, you clampit!’ snapped Davy. Then he turned back to Kyna and said, ‘What’s your name, doll? Where are you from?’

  ‘And what if I don’t want to tell you?’ Kyna retorted. ‘What are you going to do, pull my ear too? I’d like to see you fecking try.’

  ‘I don’t have to pull your ear, doll. All I have to do is tell the landlord that you won’t be working in this pub, ever. And on top of that he’ll bar you for life.’

  ‘All right, boy, relax the cacks,’ said Kyna. ‘There’s no need to throw a rabie. My name’s Roisin MacColgan, and I’m from Fair Hill. Happy now?’

  ‘What street in Fair Hill?’

  ‘Jesus, the gardaí wouldn’t ask me that! Liam Healy Road, if you must know, number thirty. Do you want to know the colour of my toilet suite? Avocado, with gold handles!’

  ‘And what are you doing right now, Roisin?’

  ‘I’m sitting here answering all of your nosy-parker questions.’

  ‘I mean what kind of work do you do?’

  ‘No fecking work at all, or I wouldn’t have come in here looking for some, would I?’

  Kyna could see Liam with a smirk half hidden behind his hand, and Murtagh’s tangled grey eyebrows had bunched together in an anxious frown. It was obvious that neither of them usually dared to answer Davy back. For all his TV-actor looks, she could tell that he was both demanding and ruthless, although she also sensed that he trusted nobody. It was classic criminal psychology that she had learned at the Garda College. He dealt with his own fear by making everybody around him feel afraid.

  ‘Fair play to you, girl,’ said Davy. ‘But now you can chase yourself off and finish your drink by the bar. I have to talk to these boys in private.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Kyna. She unwound her legs again, stood up, and went back to perch on the bar stool. ‘I’ll just have to come and talk to you,’ she told Patrick. ‘Mr Antisocial there doesn’t seem too fond of female company.’

  ‘Spot on, girl,’ said Patrick. ‘Are you ready for another glass of wine?’

  ‘Yes, thanks a million, if it’s still on the house,’ said Kyna.

  Patrick opened another mini-bottle of Pinot and poured it into a freshly breathed-on glass for her. As he passed it across the bar she jerked her head in Davy’s direction. ‘Are you saying that he doesn’t like women?’

  Patrick made sure that Davy wasn’t looking and lea
ned forward confidentially. ‘A pal of mine has lamped him in the Ruby Lounge quite a few times now. You know, dancing and drinking and sizing up the eye candy.’

  ‘The Ruby Lounge? On Washington Street?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘But that’s where all the crafty butchers go, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you like,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Jesus, it shows you can’t tell just by looking, can you?’ said Kyna.

  In fact, she had suspected that Davy might be gay from the moment he had first walked in. Straight men almost always eyed her up and down and spoke to her flirtatiously. Occasionally they acted aggressively and tried to bring her down, but that was only a kind of reverse seduction by men who weren’t too sure of themselves. They were rarely as consistently hostile as Davy had been – except if she was arresting them.

  What few men realized when they first met her was that Kyna herself was gay. She knew the Ruby Lounge well because it was Cork’s most popular gay nightclub. She had been there several times herself on Thursday nights, which was lesbian night.

  ‘He’s not a friend of your manager, Roy, is he?’ she asked Patrick. ‘He said that if I upset him, he’d make sure that Roy wouldn’t give me a job.’

  ‘You’re codding me, aren’t you? Roy’s allergic to that subla, and so am I. He’s a right piece of work.’

  ‘So why don’t you find some excuse and bar him? It doesn’t look like the fellows he’s drinking with are enjoying his company much, either. Your man with the quiff, he almost screwed his ear off because he said something that got up his nose.’

  Patrick glanced over again to make sure that Davy wasn’t watching him. Then he said, ‘Let’s say that we’d be asking for big trouble if we barred him. They accused him of walking out of Hennessy’s the newsagent up the road here without paying for an Echo and the next thing we knew the shop was burned right out. As it is, he never pays for his drinks. But for the love of Jesus and all his disciples, don’t tell him that I told you.’

  ‘So him and those other fellows, they’re kind of a gang, are they?’

  ‘You’re fierce ins-quisitive, girl. If I was you, I’d mind my own beeswax. What you don’t know can’t harm you, especially when it comes to that crew.’

  ‘It’s only if I’m going to be working here, I’d like to know who I’m serving, you know, just in case I say something that accidentally vexes them. I mean, that Davy – he might be gay but he’s fierce humpy, isn’t he? He’s like a bulldog sucking piss off a nettle.’

  Liam came up to the bar and asked Patrick for two packets of dry-roasted peanuts. He stood close to Kyna and gave her a shy, nervous smile.

  ‘What’s the craic, then, Liam?’ Kyna asked him.

  ‘Oh, something and nothing. I was wondering if you fancied going down the Bodega tomorrow night. Ross Curley’s on the decks and he’s the best.’

  ‘I might,’ said Kyna. ‘It depends if I get a job here or not.’

  ‘We don’t have to go down till late. They charge admission after eleven-thirty but I’m not short of grade.’

  ‘I didn’t say you looked like a poverty-stricken pauper, did I?’

  Liam’s cheeks flushed cherry-red. ‘You’re pure pretty, Roisin, did anyone ever tell you that?’

  ‘Oh, sure, I’ve been told that I’m pretty often enough,’ said Kyna, batting her eyelashes at him. ‘I’m not so sure about the pure, though.’

  Liam flushed even redder. ‘I’ll catch you tomorrow night so,’ he said, and went back to join Davy and Murtagh and Bobby. As soon as he sat down, though, Davy laid a hand on his shoulder and at the same time turned around and gave Kyna a hostile stare. Kyna was sitting close enough to be able to catch some of what he said.

  ‘What were you two talking about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Liam.

  ‘Well, it was something, wee lad, because she was smiling at you like she was ready to drop her drawers at the blink of an eye.’

  ‘It was nothing at all, Davy, I swear.’

  ‘Didn’t you and me have a bit of a word about loyalty?’

  ‘Davy, it was just like “how’s yourself?” Nothing else.’

  Davy seized Liam’s right wrist and pressed his hand flat on the table top, palm down. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and took out his flick knife. He clicked out the blade and said, ‘Spread your fingers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. Spread your fingers. You’ve asked me to trust you. Now let’s see how much you trust me.’

  ‘Davy—’

  ‘Spread your fecking fingers, wee lad!’

  Liam spread his fingers as wide apart as he could. Davy then stabbed the point of his knife in between them, one after the other, into the table top. He started off slowly at first, but then he stabbed faster and faster, until Liam closed his eyes because he couldn’t bear to watch.

  ‘So what did you really talk about?’ Davy demanded, as he stabbed from one side of Liam’s hand to the other and back again, so fast now that the knife blade was a blur.

  ‘I told you, Davy,’ Liam squeaked at him. ‘I said “what’s the craic?” and she said “what’s the craic?” and that was all. Please, Davy – Jesus Christ Almighty.’

  ‘One more chance, Liam. Did you say anything about me? What did you say about me?’

  Kyna was tempted to go over and tell Davy that Liam had asked her to go to the Bodega with him and that he should stop being so paranoid. On the other hand, she didn’t want to antagonize him any more than she had already – not until she knew a lot more about him, and about Murtagh and Billy and Liam, too. If they had been working for Bobby Quilty, then they must have been cigarette-smuggling, and she guessed that they still were, even if they weren’t operating on the same county-wide scale as Bobby Quilty.

  ‘Come on, wee lad!’ said Davy, as he kept up the furious stabbing between Liam’s fingers. ‘What did you tell her?’ He was making no attempt to lower his voice and Kyna could see that Liam’s terror was making him increasingly excited.

  She looked around the pub and she could see that none of the other customers was showing any inclination to intervene, either – not even Patrick, although Davy was stabbing the point of his knife into the varnished mahogany table top. They were all keeping their faces turned away and pretending to continue with their conversations as if nothing untoward was happening at all. The young woman with the plump baby started bouncing him up and down on her knee and singing ‘I am the Wee Falorie Man’.

  ‘I have a sister, Mary Ann – she washes her face in the frying pan – and she goes out to hunt for a man – I have a sister Mary Ann.’

  Kyna thought that they might have a good reason for keeping their distance. Bobby Quilty had not only been involved in cigarette-smuggling, he had formed a dissident IRA splinter group which he called the Authentic IRA – Arm Barántúla na hÉireann. Over the past two years the AIRA had claimed responsibility for several grisly murders and mutilations, including the shooting of five rival cigarette-smugglers and two senior members of the New IRA. Kyna wasn’t sure if they were still active, but if they were, nobody was going to risk confronting them. There had never been sufficient evidence for the Garda to make any arrests and no witnesses had ever had the courage to come forward.

  Davy’s manic stabbing continued for a few more seconds and Liam continued to keep his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then Davy stopped, although he kept his knife lifted up and didn’t release his grip on Liam’s wrist.

  Liam opened his eyes. Murtagh and Billy had been watching with undisguised apprehension, but now they both sat back in their chairs and Murtagh lifted up his pint of Murphy’s in salute.

  ‘That’s some party trick, Davy, I’ll give you that, boy. You ought to go on Ireland’s Got Talent.’

  ‘Oh, this is no trick, Murtagh,’ said Davy, still holding the knife upraised. ‘This is what happens when I give somebody the opportunity to be straight with me, but they throw the opportun
ity right back in my face.’

  With that, he slammed the knife blade right into the middle of Liam’s hand, between his second and third fingers, pinning it to the table. Liam let out a shout of pain and surprise, and tried to pull his hand free, but Davy kept pressing the knife down hard.

  Patrick said, ‘Jesus.’ He bent down behind the bar and reappeared holding up a baseball bat, but without even looking over at him Davy called out, ‘Paddy – don’t you be thinking about interfering, big lad.’

  If she hadn’t been undercover, Kyna would have tipped Davy out of his chair and pinned him to the floor. She would have responded if Davy had been threatening Liam’s life, but instead she had to stay on her bar stool and watch as Davy dragged the knife towards him, little by little, slicing through the flesh in between Liam’s finger-bones. Blood ran across the table top and dripped quickly on to the floor.

  ‘Holy cack,’ said Billy.

  Davy lifted the knife away but he didn’t loosen his grip on Liam’s wrist until he had wiped the blade on the sleeve of the younger man’s denim jacket. Liam said nothing, but clutched his bloody right hand in his left hand, squeezing his fingers together to try and stop the bleeding, and staring in shock and disbelief at what Davy had done to him.

  Davy folded the knife and put it back in his pocket, but still nobody said a word to him. The young woman with the baby had stopped singing and was holding the baby close to her.

  ‘What are you all looking at?’ Davy demanded. ‘You never saw a drop of blood before? Paddy – bring over one of them bar towels, would you, big lad?’

  Patrick lifted up the flap at the end of the bar and came out with a stained white bar towel.

  ‘Hold your hand up high,’ he told Liam. ‘Now take your other hand away, so that I can take a sconce at it.’

  Davy’s knife had cut through the cephalic vein in the back of Liam’s hand and blood was pouring down his wrist and into his sleeve. Patrick bound the bar towel around his hand and knotted it, and then folded his sleeve down as far as his elbow.