In the Woods

Outside, the light was beginning to dim towards evening; the skateboard kids' calls floated up, faint and crystalline through the glass. I thought of Katy Devlin alone in the studio, watching the mirror with detached absorption as she moved in slow spins and dips; the lift of a pointed foot; streetlamps throwing saffron rectangles across the floor, Satie's Gnossiennes on the crackly record player. Simone seemed pretty sérieuse herself, and I wondered how on earth she had ended up here: above a shop in Stillorgan, with the smell of grease wafting up from the chip shop next door, teaching ballet to little girls whose mothers thought it would give them good posture or wanted framed pictures of them in tutus. I realized, suddenly, what Katy Devlin must have meant to her.

"How did Mr. and Mrs. Devlin feel about Katy going to ballet school?" Cassie asked.

"They were very supportive," Simone said, without hesitation. "I was relieved, and also surprised; not every parent is willing to send a child that age away to school, and most, with good reason, are opposed to their children becoming professional dancers. Mr. Devlin, in particular, was very much in favor of Katy going. He was close to her, I think. I admired this, that he wanted what was best for her even if it meant letting her go away."

"And her mother?" Cassie said. "Was she close to her?"

Simone gave a little one-shouldered shrug. "Less, I think. Mrs. Devlin is…rather vague. She always seemed bewildered by all of her daughters. I think perhaps she isn't very intelligent."

"Have you noticed anyone strange hanging around in the past few months?" I asked. "Anyone who worried you?" Ballet schools and swimming clubs and scout troops are pedophile magnets. If someone had been looking for a victim, this was the obvious place where he might have spotted Katy.

"I understand what you mean, but no. We look for this. About ten years ago a man used to sit on a wall up the hill and look into the studio through binoculars. We complained to the police, but they did nothing until he tried to convince one little girl to get into his car. Since then we're very watchful."

"Did anyone take an interest in Katy to a level that you felt was unusual?"

She thought, shook her head. "No one. Everyone admired her dancing, many people supported the fund-raiser we held to help with her fees, but no one person more than others."

"Was there any jealousy of her talent?"

Simone laughed, a quick hard breath through her nose. "These are not stage parents we have here. They want their daughters to learn a little ballet, enough to be pretty; they don't want them to make a career of it. I'm sure a few of the other little girls were envious, yes. But enough to kill her? No."

She looked, suddenly, exhausted; her elegant pose hadn't changed, but her eyes were glazed with fatigue. "Thank you for your time," I said. "We'll contact you if we need to ask you any more questions."

"Did she suffer?" Simone asked abruptly. She wasn't looking at us.

She was the first person to ask. I started to give the standard non-answer involving the post-mortem results, but Cassie said, "There's no evidence of that. We can't be sure of anything yet, but it seems to have been quick."

Simone turned her head with an effort and met Cassie's eyes. "Thank you," she said.

She didn't get up to see us out, and I realized it was because she wasn't sure she could do it. As I closed the door I caught a last glimpse of her through the round window, still sitting straight-backed and motionless with her hands folded in her lap: a queen in a fairy tale, left alone in her tower to mourn her lost, witch-stolen princess.

* * *

"'I'm not going to get sick any more,'" Cassie said, in the car. "And she stopped getting sick."

"Willpower, like Simone said?"

"Maybe." She didn't sound convinced.

"Or she could have been making herself sick," I said. "Vomiting and diarrhea are both pretty easy to induce. Maybe she was looking for attention, and once she got into ballet school she didn't need to any more. She was getting plenty of attention without being sick-newspaper articles, fund-raisers, the lot… I need a cigarette."

"Junior Munchausen syndrome?" Cassie reached into the back, dug around in my jacket pockets and found my smokes. I smoke Marlboro Reds; Cassie has no particular brand loyalty but generally buys Lucky Strike Lights, which I consider to be girl cigarettes. She lit two and passed one to me. "Can we pull medical records on the two sisters as well?"

"Dodgy," I said. "They're alive, so there's confidentiality. If we got the parents' consent…" She shook her head. "Why, what are you thinking?"