Page 6 of Dublin's Danger Dancer

I put my index finger to my lips. I reach into my pocket and produce four €500 notes. “This is €2000. It won’t last long, but if you use it right to get a job, you shouldn’t have to return to your step da.”

The girl looks down at the purple notes in astonishment. “Why are you helping me?”

“I was once in your place. Now get back in the wardrobe. We don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”

The heavy footsteps of my fellow officers echo behind me. I pull open the blinds of the room to mask the sound of her closing the wardrobe door.

Just as the door opens, I call “all clear”.

Fergus looks around the room just as our radios beep. “We have eyes on the suspect,” the commander announces. “He’s shimmying down the water pipe at the back of the house. He is about to pass the second floor. Suspect is wearing a blue tweed suit with another man dressed in black. Be advised, they are armed.”

“We can intercept here,” says Fergus into the radio. He quickly exits the room and pushes up the sash window at the end of the corridor, causing the thin glass to rattle in the frame.

“Uniforms are on foot.” Says the commander, “but we need some of our lot on the ground.”

The two men beside Ferg and I race down the stairs reporting their movements en route.

I push my head out of the window to see two men scaling down the black painted pipes. They were lucky it was an old house and that the pipes were made of lead because plastic pipes would have ripped clean away from the wall with their weight.

“Give it up lads,” shouts Fergus, “you’ve three guns trained on you.”

“What type of self-defence is it to shoot lads on a water pipe?” It’s Liam’s voice. Light and airy. Not the slightest quiver. It sounds more like his giving a correct answer on a game show than about to be shot on a lead pipe.

“We have lads at the bottom to pick you up. Games up!” shouts Fergus.

“Ah, sure your boys are too fat to get down here that quickly.” shouts Liam, allowing himself to fall the last stretch to the ground.

It wasn’t easy to get to the back of the building. They’d have to go around the whole block. That was the problem with these old Georgian townhouses.

“I’m gonna go down,” I say, reaching into my backpack for the rope and hook. “It won’t carry your weight,” I say, attaching the crosshatched arrows onto the ledge and throwing the rope out.

Fergus turns away from the window and says into the radio. “We are pursuing the suspect from above.”

Liam and his buddy are almost across the fence next door as I climb out of the window. I kick off the brick wall and sail down, the impact of landing painfully reverberating up my ankles and into my calves.

Liam’s leg is over the top of the fence. He stops and stares at me, knitting his eyebrows together as if trying to place me. Then he winks, swings the other leg over and disappears.

I hear Fergus cursing “Shiite” from the sash window.

“Suspect is moving east towards Hawthorne Road. I’m following on foot,” he says.

I quickly scale the smoky creosote soaked fence. The slickness of the varnish makes me slip into the heaped rubble lining the floor.

Liam’s long legs appear to be making him fly across the rubble whilst I stumble, trying to gain footing to shoot from.

I point my gun at Liam and push my tongue back in my mouth to project a deep, manly voice. “Stop or Iwillfire!” I shout loudly.

He and Aaron don’t stop. They run under a brick archway that borders the busy road parallel to the string of Georgian houses.

A white builder’s van pulls up, the side door slides opens and like a puff of smoke. He’s gone and I’m left pointing my weapon at thin air, wondering if he recognised me.

“Suspects entered white builders’ van heading north,” I say breathlessly into my radio.

“Registration number?” The commander asks.

“Negative sir. I only saw the van from the side.”

“Stand down, team.” Comes the disappointed commander’s voice.

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