The poster showed Katy Devlin, though it took me a second to recognize her. She was wearing a gauzy white smock and had one leg raised behind her in an effortless, impossible arc. Below her it said, in a large font, “Send Katy to the Royal Ballet School! Help Her Make Us Proud!” and gave the details of the fund-raiser: St. Alban’s Parish Hall, 20 June, 7:00 p.m., An Evening of Dance with the Pupils of the Cameron Dance Academy. Tickets a10/a 7. All Proceeds will Go to Pay Katy’s Fees. I wondered what would happen to the money now.

Under the poster was a newspaper clipping, with an arty soft-focus shot of Katy at the barre; her eyes, in the mirror, gazed out at the photographer with an ageless, intent gravity. dublin’s tiny dancer takes wing, The Irish 60

Tana French

Times, 23 June: “ ‘I guess I’ll miss my family, but I still can’t wait,’ Katy says. ‘I’ve wanted to be a dancer ever since I was six. I can’t believe I’m really going. Sometimes when I wake up I think maybe I dreamed it.’ ” No doubt the article had brought in donations towards Katy’s fees—another thing we’d have to check up on—but it had done us no favors at all: pedophiles read morning papers, too, and it was an eye-catching photo, and the field of potential suspects had just widened to include most of the country. I glanced at the other notices: tutu for sale, size 7–8; would anyone living in the Blackrock area be interested in setting up a carpool to and from the intermediate class?

The studio door opened and a flood of matching little girls streamed past us, all chattering and shoving and shrieking at once. “Can I help you?”

Simone Cameron asked, in the doorway.

She had a beautiful voice, deep as a man’s without being in the least mannish, and she was older than I had thought: her face was bony and deeply, intricately lined. I realized that she probably took us for parents coming to ask about dance classes for our daughter, and for a moment I had a wild impulse to play along with it, ask about fees and schedules and go away, leave her her illusion and her star pupil a little longer.

“Ms. Cameron?”

“Simone, please,” she said. She had extraordinary eyes, almost golden, huge and heavy-lidded.

“I’m Detective Ryan, and this is Detective Maddox,” I said for the thousandth time that day. “Could we speak to you for a few minutes?”

She brought us into the studio and set out three chairs in a corner. A mirror took up the whole of one long wall, three barres running along it at different heights, and I kept catching my own movements out of the corner of my eye. I angled my chair so I couldn’t see it.