Dead Girls Dancing Read online

  ‘You can head off home after this, Padragain,’ said Katie, as she climbed out of her car.

  ‘Thanks, but I doubt if I’ll be able to sleep. I must have drunk twenty cups of coffee since midnight.’

  ‘How’s the girl?’ Katie asked her. ‘Has she told us her name yet?’

  ‘She’s not uttered a single word. The nurses are calling her “Adeen” for now, because of course that means “little fire”. What’s really strange, though, is that nobody has been in touch yet to identify her. Mathew’s taken some more pictures and they’ll be running them in the Echo today and on the Six-One News this evening. But nobody’s been calling for her so far, and if we don’t have any response by Monday they’ll have her on Crimecall.’

  ‘Maybe the only people who might have missed her were burned up in the fire,’ said Kyna.

  ‘Well, that’s a possibility,’ said Katie. ‘How is she physically?’

  ‘She’s still suffering the effects of smoke inhalation and she has some fierce nasty scratches on her hands and arms and a burn on her left calf. The doctor wants to keep an eye on her for at least another three to four days, but if there’s no sign of any lung infection by then, they should be able discharge her – provided they have somewhere to discharge her to. I’ve already been in touch with Tusla in case she needs fostering, and Corinne Daley’s been in to see her.’

  Detective Scanlan led them up to the end of the first-floor corridor, where a uniformed garda was sitting on a small plastic chair, looking as if he was finding it hard to stay awake. The girl they were calling Adeen was lying in a small isolation room with pale green walls and a dark green carpet. It overlooked Millerd Street at the back of the hospital, but the blind was drawn down and the lights were switched on.

  ‘She acted pure frightened when the nurse tried to put up the blind this morning, as if she was scared that there was somebody out there, so that’s why we’ve left it down.’

  ‘Adeen’ was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows. She looked younger and skinnier than she had when Katie had seen her being lifted down from the roof of the burning dance studio, but that was probably because her bronze-brown plaited hair had been brushed out and washed, and she was wearing a spotted hospital gown that was two sizes too large for her.

  Her nose and mouth were covered by an oxygen mask and she was connected to a heart monitor and an IV drip. Her left eye was still bloodshot, but her right eye stared at Katie from over the mask, chocolate brown and appealing, almost like a Disney cartoon character.

  The nurse was short and plump with fiery red hair and freckles. She was sitting at the dressing table when Katie and Kyna and Detective Scanlan came in, furiously tapping two-fingered on a laptop.

  ‘Please – give me a minute, will you?’ she said. ‘The lab has just sent up the latest test results for smoke particles in her lower lungs.’

  ‘And?’ asked Katie.

  ‘So far, yes, her airways look reasonably clear. Fortunately for her, she was up on the roof, out in the open air. It might have been a different story altogether if she had been trapped indoors.’

  There was a chair on the opposite side of the bed, so Katie walked around and sat down. She took hold of the girl’s right hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she said, giving her a sympathetic smile. ‘My name’s Kathleen, but all of my friends call me Katie. My teacher at school used to call me Molly because my surname’s Maguire and I was always so bold.’

  She turned around to the nurse and said, ‘Can she take off the mask for just a moment?’

  The nurse came over and eased off the oxygen mask. Although the girl’s left cheek was still bruised, Katie could see that she was quite pretty. She had a pale, oval face with a turned-up nose and a very slight underbite. The underbite told Katie immediately that she probably didn’t come from a very well-off family, because by this age she should have had her teeth corrected. Either that, or her family were ignorant, or simply neglectful.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re not half as bold at school as I used to be,’ she continued. ‘In fact, I’ll bet you’re teacher’s pet.’

  Whenever she interviewed children, this question almost always provoked a furious denial, even from pupils who were top of the class and very well behaved. But this girl stayed silent, showing nothing more than – what was it? thought Katie, caution? suspicion? However she had found herself trapped on the roof of that burning building, she must still be suffering from shock.

  ‘I’ve told you my name, sweetheart. Do you think you can tell me yours? I know they’ve been calling you Adeen here, but it would help me so much if I knew your real name. You can just whisper it, if you don’t want anybody else to know what it is.’

  The girl stayed silent. Katie couldn’t tell from her expression if she had heard her, or even if she had, if she had understood her.

  ‘They’ve tested her hearing,’ said Detective Scanlan, as if she knew what Katie was thinking.

  ‘Maybe she’s an immigrant,’ Kyna suggested. ‘Maybe she only speaks Romanian, or something like that.’

  ‘They’ve asked her questions in the ten most common immigrant languages,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘She didn’t respond to any of them.’

  Katie held up the girl’s hand. She was wearing a plaited green wristband with a gold-coloured plastic clasp.

  ‘Does this mean anything to anybody?’ she asked.

  Kyna and Detective Scanlan both shook their heads. The nurse said, ‘We don’t usually allow patients to wear their own jewellery of any kind, but she became so distressed when we tried to remove that bracelet that we let her keep it on.’

  ‘So it obviously means something to her,’ said Katie. ‘Kyna, would you take a picture of it, please, and Google it, and give the picture to the media, too. You never know. It might have some special significance in whatever country she comes from.’

  ‘All of her clothes were bought locally,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘Her sweater and jeans are both from Penney’s, and her hoodie came from Dunne’s.’

  Those brand names reinforced Katie’s guess that the girl’s family possibly belonged to a lower socioeconomic bracket. She hadn’t been dressed in designer clothes from Mischief Makers or Brown Thomas. At Penney’s, a pair of jeans for a girl of her age would cost only €18, maybe less.

  Katie gave the girl’s hand another squeeze and said, ‘I’m going now, sweetheart, but my office isn’t very far away. If you decide you want to talk to me, ask the nurse and she can call me and I can be here in five minutes. It doesn’t matter what you want to talk about. It can be anything you like. You have a TV here, so you can watch your favourite films whenever you want. You like Frozen? That’s one of my favourites. And Finding Dory. Have you seen Finding Dory?’

  She waited, and kept smiling at the girl, but still she didn’t answer. The nurse came over again and said, ‘If you don’t mind, I have to put the mask back on now.’

  Katie let go of the girl’s hand and stood up. She had dealt with scores of cases in which the victims of fires or accidents or violent attacks had been so traumatized by what had happened that they were unable to talk about their experiences, but this was the first time she had come across a victim whose shock had been so great that they were unable to speak at all.

  As they went down in the lift she said to Kyna, ‘You know me. I don’t do hunches. But I have the strongest feeling that poor little girl can tell us everything about that fire – who set it, and why. I’ll just have to keep on working on her, and see if I can’t get her to talk.’

  ‘Well, don’t count on it,’ said Kyna. ‘I had to deal with a fellow in Dublin once who saw his daughter and his grandson open the front door and get shot dead right in front of him.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ said Katie.

  ‘Yes. It was a shotgun blast, and it was intended for him, which only made it worse. After that, he couldn’t speak. I dropped in to see him nearly every day for a year and a half on my
way to the station in the morning but I still couldn’t get him to say a single word. In the end he took an overdose of codeine tablets. We had a pretty fair idea of who the shooter was, of course, but the only man who could have identified him in a court of law was struck dumb.’

  Katie’s iPhone played ‘Fear a’ Bháta’. It was Detective Sergeant Begley. He sounded tired, too.

  ‘Danny Coffey’s arrived, ma’am, and there’s fire coming out of his arse from temper, if you’ll forgive me. He’s wanting to know why we haven’t hauled in anybody for burning down his dance studio yet and already had them tried and convicted and banged up for life. He says he’s sure who did it anyway.’

  Katie took a deep breath. ‘Thank you, Sean. I’ll be with you in five. Do me a favour, would you, and ask Moirin to have a cappuccino waiting for me? Thanks a million.’

  7

  Detective Sergeant Begley was right. Danny Coffey was in the filthiest of tempers. He was sitting in the reception area by the front desk, but as soon as Katie and Kyna came through the front doors he sprang to his feet and Katie could see him asking Detective Sergeant Begley, ‘Is that her?’

  Katie went over to him, holding out her hand.

  ‘Mr Coffey. Thanks for coming. I’m Detective Superintendent Maguire and this is Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. I’m sorry to hear you had a spot of trouble with your trains.’

  Danny Coffey was a short man in his mid-forties, probably no taller than five foot five inches, with a round face and washed-out green eyes. He was balding, with a comb-over that was stuck down with shiny hair-dressing, and he had no eyebrows, which made him disconcertingly expressionless. He was wearing a beige three-piece suit, so tight that he looked as if he might burst out of it at any second.

  ‘Trouble with my trains?’ he retorted, in a hoarse, screechy voice. ‘I don’t call it trouble. I call it the normal balla malla that you get from Iarnród Éireann. They should rechristen it the Solid Hames Railway, I swear to God.’

  ‘Well, you’re here now,’ said Katie. ‘Why don’t you come up to my office? How about a cup of tea in your hand? Or a coffee?’

  ‘I didn’t come here for refreshment, Detective Superintendent. I came here because my dancing studio was set on fire and sixteen of my dancers were burned to death, as well as my dance instructor, and I’d like to know why you haven’t yet locked up the subla what was responsible.’

  Katie took hold of Danny Coffey’s elbow to steer him towards the lift but he irritably twisted his arm away.

  ‘We haven’t yet made an arrest, Mr Coffey, because our investigation is still in its very earliest stages. We don’t even know for sure that the fire was started deliberately.’

  ‘Are you codding me?’ Danny Coffey protested, as he stepped into the lift. ‘I mean – are you codding me? What in the name of Saint Jude do you think it was, spontaneous combustification?’

  ‘I very much appreciate your texting us with the names and contact numbers of all of your dancers,’ said Katie, trying to calm him down. ‘We’re hoping that we’ll have them all positively identified by the end of the day. There were eighteen in the troupe altogether, is that right?’

  ‘That’s right. But Nicholas rang me and said that only sixteen of them had showed up for that final rehearsal. He got cut off before he could tell me who was missing. You don’t have to know who they all are, though, do you, before you bring in the fellow who killed them? There’s seventeen innocent people dead, no matter who they are.’

  ‘It’s like I say, Mr Coffey. We don’t have sufficient evidence yet to make an arrest.’

  ‘If I tell you who did it, can you arrest him then?’

  ‘You know who did it?’

  They had reached Katie’s office now. A cappuccino was waiting on Katie’s desk, as well as three files of notes and messages and correspondence. Sometimes Katie felt that she had been promoted to superintendent only because the male officers had wanted a glorified secretary to deal with all their endless paperwork.

  The four of them sat down on the oatmeal-coloured couches under the window and Moirin came in to ask if anybody else wanted a drink. Detective Sergeant Begley said that after all the salty rashers he had eaten for his breakfast he was parching for a cup of tea. Kyna asked for a Karmine apple juice. Danny Coffey shook his head and repeated, ‘I thought I made that transparent. I didn’t come here for refreshment.’

  ‘So then, who do you think’s responsible?’ Katie asked him.

  ‘It’s obvious. Steven Joyce. Who else would have anything to gain?’

  ‘You’ve lost me there, Mr Coffey. Who’s Steven Joyce?’

  ‘He’s the owner and manager of Laethanta na Rince – the Days of Dance. He and me were good pals about ten years ago. After I split up with Michael Flatley, me and Steven started Toirneach Damhsa together. When we started getting real successful, though, and making some serious grade, Steven demanded seventy-five per cent of the profits. He reckoned that he was like the creative force behind the company and I was nothing more than the fellow who answered the phone, and arranged the bookings, and drove the bus to the venues.’

  ‘So you fell out?’

  ‘We did, yes, big time. But it was fortunate for me that I had registered the name Toirneach Damhsa myself, so Steven couldn’t use it. Much more important than that, though, Nicholas, our dance instructor, stuck with me, and Nicholas is – was, anyway – a pure genius when it comes to the choreography. Anyway, Nicholas stuck with me and because of that so did most of our dancers.’

  ‘But Steven went off to start his own dance company, this Laethanta na Rince?’

  ‘That’s right. It almost bankrupted him, but he did it. The first time we competed against him in a feis was in Killarney, and that was three years ago. His dancers were good, I have to admit, although we beat them in the end. I went to congratulate him after, hoping that we could let bygones be bygones, do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I assume that he wasn’t so conciliatory?’

  Danny Coffey blinked, and Katie wasn’t sure that he understood what she meant by ‘conciliatory’. So she said, ‘Like, forgiving?’

  ‘Forgiving? He said that he hoped some maniac would come around to my dance studio and cut off all of my dancers’ feet with a chainsaw. And then he hoped that he would cut off my mebs and make me eat them in a blaa.’

  ‘I see. Do you have any record of him saying this to you?’

  ‘What do you mean? You don’t believe me?’

  ‘I’m not saying that I don’t believe you, Mr Coffey. I’m just asking if you have any evidence to substantiate what you’re telling me. Anything written or recorded that would stand up in a court.’

  ‘No, I don’t. But he said it all right, in the back bar of O’Connor’s pub in Killarney High Street, with his mouth half full of steak sandwich.’

  ‘Did anybody else hear him say it?’

  ‘How in the name of all that’s holy should I know? There was a woman next to us sounding like ten pigs stuck in a gate. For Christ’s sake, isn’t it enough that he threatened me? If it’s court you’re worried about, I’ll stand up in front of any judge you like and swear on the Holy Bible that’s what he said.’

  ‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘But can you think of anybody else apart from Steven Joyce who might have wanted to do you harm? Anybody from one of the other dance troupes?’

  ‘We’re all of us competitive, and if you come out on top of the feis it can make a fierce difference to your bookings. It can even give you the chance of your own show, if the right producers are watching, and then you could end up like Michael Flatley with a twenty-million-euro mansion.’

  Danny Coffey paused for a few seconds, his mouth working as if he were chewing on a particularly tough piece of meat. Then he said, ‘No... there’s one or two bastards in the business, but none of them would go so far as murder. Steven Joyce is the only one who holds that fierce a grudge against me. I’ll bet you anything you like that he’s kicking himself that I wasn’t
there in the studio, too, and got burned up with the others.’

  He paused again, and clenched his hands tightly together, and although his face was so expressionless Katie realized that he had tears in the corners of his eyes. When he spoke, his husky voice was so much softer that she could hardly hear him.

  ‘As it is, he killed Nicholas,’ he said. ‘He might just as well have killed me, too.’

  Katie glanced at Kyna and saw that she had caught that moment of emotion, too. There was more to this case than met the eye, she thought. Maybe Nicholas O’Grady had stayed with Danny Coffey when he and Steven Joyce had parted company out of something more than professional loyalty.

  ‘Has Steven Joyce contacted you at all since the fire?’ asked Katie.

  Danny Coffey cleared his throat. ‘Why would he, except to gloat?’

  ‘Well, we have no evidence so far that it really was him who started the fire, and that’s if it wasn’t accidental. And if it wasn’t him, he might have thought to offer you his condolences, no matter that you and he fell out so badly in the past.’

  ‘But it was him. I’m telling you. And it was no accident. From what I saw on the news, that building went up like a Halloween bonfire. That wasn’t no faulty toaster nor nobody dropping the guts of their smoke.’

  ‘Fair play to you,’ said Katie. ‘It’s going to take a while, but the Technical Bureau and the experts from the fire brigade are working on it. Meanwhile, would you be prepared to go down to the University Hospital and help us to identify some of the victims? We’ve managed to put a name to most of them because of relatives getting in touch with us, and through photographs, but of course hardly any of them were carrying any ID on them while they were dancing and some of them were very badly burned.’

  ‘I can’t say that I relish the idea,’ said Danny Coffey. ‘If it helps, though, yes. Is Nicholas there? Was he very badly burned?’

  Katie turned to Detective Sergeant Begley, who said, ‘Yes, Mr Coffey, he was, I’m sorry to say. It looks like he was opening up the door to the attic, trying to find a way to escape the initial blaze, I should imagine. When he did that, though, he must have caught the full force of the backdraught.’