Page 18 of Dublin's Danger Dancer

Liam sets both of our glasses down and pushes me back onto the bed. He climbs on top of me and runs his rough, calloused hands from the top of my shoulder down my arm. He licks his lips looking down on me.

“You’ve enjoyed teasing me for almost two years. And now, it’s finally my turn,” he says smiling.

His fingers brush along my collarbone as his lips press to my neck. He barely parts his lips, pressing small kisses around my ear.

His cock feels like it could hammer nails.

“You think you’re as good as me at teasing?”

He strokes down my body and over my sex. “I can bring you to your edge and keep you there,” he whispers into my ear. “And only if you’re a—” he pauses, “A really good girl, will I let you...” his voice trails off. I see the whites of his eyes roll back in his head. His huge body slumps into me.

I pulled him upwards under his arms, so it looks like he’d slept in more of a natural position, but his heavy, as solid as a cement block. After a lot of tugging, I manage to get his head partially on the pillow. I take our glasses to the kitchen and wash away the evidence.

My training had made me acutely aware of cameras watching my every move. CCTV evidence put away more criminals than detective work.

I search his apartment, discovering two poorly hidden cameras. One above the door and one on the TV.

In order to conduct a proper search, I need to turn them off. I leave his pristine, spacious side apartment and go back into the main house. My ears prick up at the slightest sound imaging one of his henchmen coming down the marble staircase, but there’s no one here.

I can only hear the crack of the thunder outside. I look round the bottom floor and discover a locked room where what sounds like servers hum. I take out my lock-picking tools. Within seconds, I’m inside. And as I suspected, there are cameras everywhere. I press stop recording on all nine of the video streams. I close the door carefully behind me, not locking it. I need to return later to press play.

Being inside Liam O’Shaughnessy’s mansion felt to me the way that a child must feel at Disneyland, but instead of rides and attractions. There was evidence and leads. I began my search downstairs looking through drawers of old papers. I find something that looked like ledgers. I photograph everything.

I enter a room that stank of stale cigars. It must be his da’s room. I open every drawer, looking under the mattress, feeling the mattress for any clue but there’s nothing here. I returned to Liam’s apartment, plugging in his code, wondering why he had chosen to live in one small section of this enormous house.

I begin to pull open every drawer in his kitchen, causing pots and pans to rattle. He had a collection of copper pans. He must like to cook. But I find nothing.

Exasperated, I push my palms down into the chrome top. Criminals were extremely gifted at hiding things. They expected police raids at any moment.

I look up at the sparkling chrome extractor fan above his gas stove. I look under the extractor fan and there is a leather bound laptop case. I feel inside. Carefully, I extract the case. I take it over to the leather sofa where moments ago, Liam had undressed for me.

I carefully unzip the leather case, keeping my ears pricked for any movements. Inside there are three ledgers. I photograph every page. I’ll have to make sense of them later. As I flip the pages, I realise it looks like it could be the coming and going of shipments at the dockyards.

I slip the ledgers back in place and carefully back behind the gleaming chrome extractor fan. I turn over the rest of his apartment, but after searching for nearly an hour, I draw a total blank. There’s nothing here except copies of GQ magazine and one lonely planet guide for South Korea.

I return to Liam’s bedroom. He is still laying on his back, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. His penis now noticeably flaccid in his boxing shorts.

I open the drawer of his side table. In it are condoms, but the drawer is slightly too shallow for the depth. I pull the whole drawer from its rudders and sit beside him on the bed with it. I lift the top out carefully. I discover what looks like at least a million euros in cash, four passports, and my heart stops. I stare down at the pink leather bracelet I’d braided together the week before Harry was murdered. I lift it up in total amazement. I lift it to my nose. It still smells like her, the cheap pineapple scented deodorant she loved to wear. The clasp is done up. I turn it over in my hand. There’s a speck of blood on the back.

Emotions rush through me like a tsunami. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m racing to the kitchen for a knife.

With a large serrated knife in hand, I run back into the room. I stand over Liam. Heat flushing my body. I kneel on the bed positioning the knife against a main artery on his neck.

The police detective in me begins to work the scene. I danced for him at the club. CCTV would show he’d picked me up in the rain and I hadn’t driven my bike home. Using the CCTV, forensics, and testimonies of his men, I would be convicted of a premeditated murder and spend the rest of my life in prison for killing the piece of shit who took my sister away from me.

This was too good of a death for him, for what he did to her. I pull the blade away from his neck, but it inches back.

A tear springs from my lower lid and rolls down by my nose as I skirt his neck with the knife.

He wasn’t even aware. He’d die thinking he’d finally won me over. I pull the knife back, this time with both hands.

I stare down at the serrated, glittering grey edge of the knife and then my eyes flick to the bracelet sitting on the white top of his bedside drawer. Did he know she had a sister? Did he ever think about what will happen to me after the only family member I had left was murdered by him.

When I’d identified her body, I’d looked for the bracelet on her on that cold slab. I pushed my thirteen-year-old hands over her cold corpse, searching for it. When I didn’t find it I fell to the floor and wept.

Two police officers picked me up and escorted me, kicking and screaming, from that room. That was the last time I would see my sister’s body. She couldn’t have an open casket. The corpse had decayed too much in the water.

I look at the knife’s serrated edge. How easy it would be to kill him now. I run it against his arm, wondering what his blood would look like seeping from his wrists. Perhaps it’s possible for me to make this look like a suicide.

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