Page 1 of Dublin's Danger Dancer

Chapter One

The last time I was outside Cork Garda station, I was giving my aunt the finger in the backseat of a rusty beige Ford Cortina being driven by a lady with a frizzy wine red perm. Back into the care system from which my aunt had ‘saved’ me. After struggling through what she called “eighteen months of pure unadulterated hell with the devil’s spawn”—me—she couldn’t take it anymore. When I was arrested, she’d called Mrs Bradbury, and that was it. At fourteen, I was back to Dublin and on to my ninth foster home.

It didn’t come as a shock that she’d cast me out so easily. My mammy had described her as having the charm of dog mess on a summer’s day. What did shock me was that after twenty years I was back in Cork, no longer a teenage hoodlum but a sergeant in the gardai.

I stop for a moment and look up at the clock. It’s almost 8AM. The last time I’d watched these clock hands tick over the gold Roman numerals, I’d been in handcuffs.

I suppress a smile, remembering how I’d denied shoplifting some glittery butterfly clips so vehemently. Though I was guilty as sin. That’s how I’d met Fergus.

I glance down at my bare arms happy to see the purple and green bruises forming a parallel line into the crook of my elbow.

After a week following my suspension from my undercover work as a stripper, it was strange for me to shower without seeing my inner thighs and elbows peppered green and purple and orange, a mixture of bruises and friction burns. I’d pole danced nearly every night for two years. I had, as an anthropologist might say “gone native”. Running didn’t help, so I installed a pole in my flat. There was something about swinging upside down and around and around, even without an audience that literally and figuratively made me feel in control. And made me believe that one day soon, before it was too late, I’d know who murdered my sister.

I pull my black roll top lycra jacket closed, zipping it up just under my nose. There couldn’t be a single distinguishing feature of mine caught on camera.

I walk through the red rimmed automatic doors smudged with milky dirty fingerprints.

I’ve paired my jacket with a plain black baseball cap and a pair of oversized mirrored aviators. Even the most advantaged facial recognition technology would have a hard job placing me. Especially since I’d be walking out later in a balaclava.

The only evidence I’d ever been here would be the sweet, malty smell of the hops from the local brewery already permeating my clothes.

Fergus is waiting anxiously for me at reception. Drumming his fingers on the side of the door that he is holding open with his foot.

A grey-haired man with one brown tooth is badgering the staff sergeant. Demanding he investigate who stole a plastic goose from his overflowing supermarket trolley.

I pull my hat lower as Ferg ushers me down a fluorescent lit empty corridor and through to the officers’ quarters. Why the Irish Gardaí painted the parts of each station, the public accessed white and the officers’ quarters prison grey, always perplexed me.

When I moved back to Dublin, Fergus became my juvenile liaison officer. They’d introduced him as my JLO. Much to Fergus’s annoyance, the acronym made me roar with laughter. The only thing that was JLO about Ferg was his enormous arse. Except his JLO posterior wasn’t the work of a celebrity personal trainer or a diet that ended with the word beach, but rather forged on a nourishing diet of Kit-Kats, pork scratchings and bacon flavoured crisps.

The same arse stops abruptly at a door marked female, pushes a key inside and closes it just as quickly as he opened it. The grey room stinks of cheap musky deodorant and sweaty sports bras. The female garda were clearly lower ranks and pay scales in Cork.

“Get geared up,” Fergus says to me, pointing at a stack of stiff black items laid out on a thin pine wood bench.

“How’s it going Ciara? Welcome to Cork Ciara,” I say, mocking him.

“The operation is starting Ciara,” he looks down at his smart watch. Obviously a present from his long-suffering wife, Wendy, to encourage him to walk more. “In six minutes,” he says opening a grey locker and pulling out two balaclavas and black helmets.

I whip off my jacket, cap, and sunglasses and begin to fit my gear. “I’m so used to taking my clothes off, I’ve forgotten how to put them on,” I say, struggling to tighten the straps of my bullet-proof vest around my narrow waist.

Fergus eyebrows shoot up. His forehead creases. He squints at the floor outside the locker room, searching for the slightest shadow. Heat flashes in his eyes as his mouth pulls into a thin growl. “We are part of an elite unit preparing to undertake one of the biggest human trafficking raids in European history. Be serious.”

“Ferg, I’ve personally delivered 142 people involved in trafficking. I couldn’t be more serious, but a bit of courtesy goes a long way. Especially,” I pause, moving towards him. “Since you’ve taken credit for my successes, because no one knows my name or anything about my existence.”

“You knew the score when you took the job. If it’s glory you’re looking for, being an undercover sergeant posing as a stripper won’t deliver it.”

“I don’t want glory. The only thing I feckin’ want, and deserve is trust,” I spit.

“Need I remind you that your suspension has been temporarily lifted pending an evaluation of your field readiness?”

“Need I remind you that since I’ve been suspended, Ireland has recorded a sixteen-fold increase in women being trafficked into this country?”

“That’s as maybe, but as your handler and intelligence commander on this operation, it seems I need to remind you of some fundamental rules. The first one I shouldn’t have to bleedin’ say is that you must stay absolute incognito. Your name is Claire if anyone asks. If anyone knew you were joining this raid, it would jeopardise the nearly two years of undercover work you’ve put in.”

I tighten my ammunition belt around my waist.

“The second rule, which I know you’re not used to playing by, is that this is a team operation and though no one is going to see your face, you are still part of the team.”

“Normally, rules come in threes. Do you have a third and final one?” I ask, clicking my radio into place over my shoulder.

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