Blood Never Dies (31 page)

The dance school was near the corner, and must have had the phallic Centre Point tower visible from the windows of the studios where little girls learnt that frappés did not always come in Starbucks cups. It was an old, brick-built edifice, and probably would have been handsome if it weren’t for the decades of rain-streaked soot that disfigured its facade. It took the space of perhaps three or four shops, long enough anyway to have
ARKADY SCHOOL OF DANCE AND DRAMATIC ART
spelled out just under the first-floor windows in large screwed-on metal capitals. There was an alley down one side of the building that seemed to lead into a rear yard. The main door was in the centre: double, half-glazed, imposing, set back with two shallow steps up to a black-and-white tiled landing. Atherton saw that there was a second, single door at the end of the facade, and as he approached it opened and a lithe-looking young man with a drawstring bag over his shoulder trotted out and strode off and across the road to disappear into the crowd. The door that had closed behind him had a sign on it that said
NO ENTRANCE – SENIORS ONLY
.

Atherton went to the main door and pushed in to a hall with the same black-and-white tiles, though they looked a little worse for wear and were chipped here and there, and the walls were scuffed and marked by hands and bodies and swung bags. It smelled like a school, he thought, a dusty, worn sort of smell with an undertone of sweat and liniment. On one side the wall was taken up with an enormous and well-used notice board, set into a varnished wooden frame with a sort of curly carved pediment on top, with the words painted in gold
ARKADY SCHOOL OF DANCE AND DRAMATIC ART – PRINCIPAL MISS M LYNN
.

Occupying the same space on the other side of the hall was a shallow glass display case with a hand-printed notice in the top saying
SCHOOL SHOP
and showing a variety of different kinds of shoes, leotards, tights, practice dresses, hair bands, and other necessities including the same kind of drawstring bag he had seen the young man carrying – made of thick, glazed black cotton and labelled
SHOE BAG
– all neatly arranged and priced. Judging by some of the prices, he thought they must make a nice little side earner from all this stuff.

Beyond these a corridor ran off to left and right, and straight ahead of him was a pair of part-glazed swing doors, from behind which came the grating thud of a piano being played with grim determination for rhythm rather than musicality. Atherton suppressed a smile and went in. A dozen skinny little girls in leotards, each with an exiguous frill round the middle, were lined up like so many frenched lamb cutlets, while the teacher in front of them put them through their paces, her back to the barre and mirror that covered the entire wall. The pianist was just inside the door on the left, and on the right was a bench all along the wall with coat hooks above, and a jumble of outdoor clothes, shoe bags, and a few mothers with nothing to do between chauffeuring duties.

Atherton’s appearance brought all this worthy activity to a halt. The pianist, her attention on the music, whacked out a few more bars before she realized the little girls had sprawled to a halt, and eighteen pairs of eyes swivelled round to regard Atherton with enquiry not unmixed with horror. The teacher was the first to move. She hurried to place herself between her pupils and the invader, and said, ‘Can I help you?’ in the sort of tone that really said,
I believe you to be the sort of pervert who likes looking at little girls and I’m on the brink of calling the police
.

‘Are you Miss Lynn?’ he asked, reaching into his pocket for his brief. Her eyes followed the movement with alarm that was only slightly abated by the sight of what he brought out. ‘I’m a police officer. Detective Sergeant Atherton.’

‘No, I’m not her,’ she said. ‘Did you want to see her? What’s it about?’

‘Is she here today?’ Atherton asked instead of answering.

‘She’s taking a class,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s her day for private pupils.’

‘Would you take me to her? It is rather urgent,’ Atherton said, and tried a reassuring smile.

She stared a moment longer, then shook herself into action. Turning back to her class, whose eyes were out on stalks, she clapped her hands briskly, and said, ‘Girls, to the barre. Twenty-four
ronds de jambe
with the left leg, turn and repeat with the right. And if I’m not back, continue with twenty-four
demi-pliés
.’

She ushered Atherton out into the hall. Just round the left-hand corner was a door with a sign saying
WAITING ROOM
on it, and she almost shoved him in. ‘Stay here. I’ll fetch her,’ she said, and was gone, closing the door hard behind her as if to emphasize that he must not stir. It was a municipally dismal room, about ten by twelve, painted in pale green gloss to half way up and matt cream above, with a row of hard wooden chairs down either side and a low table at the far end with some desperately geriatric magazines on it. Miss M Lynn with an alphabet soup of letters after her name needed to work on her PR skills, he thought. Or perhaps it was intended to deter visitors.
Repelling boarders
, the phrase wandered through his mind and out again. The only window was high up and had frosted glass in it. The reading matter, he discovered, was old copies of the National Trust magazine and the supplements from various Sunday papers.
Nice touch
, he thought.

Fortunately, the threat of his unfettered presence about the hallowed precincts of this temple to Terpsichore evidently got them motivated, for in quite a short time the door opened, and a woman came in. She was wearing a black practice tunic with a grey crossover cardigan on top, footless grey tights and ballet slippers. Her hair was short and fair, and formed natural feathery curls in a halo round her head. ‘I’m Miss Lynn,’ she said.

So far so good; but what had come in the door with her was such a powerful aura of physical attractiveness it made Atherton’s scalp tingle. It was something a few, rare women had – he had met perhaps two before – and it was nothing they did or said and not even really to do with the way they looked. They just had it, a magnetism that made every man’s eye turn to them when they came into a room or walked down the street. She was tall, about five foot eight, and slim of course, in the muscular, dancer’s way, and she was probably in her early forties, though it was hard to tell; likewise it was hard to tell anything about her features, except that she had fine eyes and a sensationally beautiful mouth, because what she had was not looks but this – this
thing
that threatened to turn his knees to water and his brain to mush.

He heard himself introducing himself, and without meaning to he extended his hand. Hers was smooth and warm and strong, and the handshake was brief. He was glad she disengaged herself because he wasn’t sure he could have, or not in time to avoid embarrassing himself.

‘You wanted to see me?’ she said, to help him along. ‘You said it was urgent?’

Her voice was warm, too, and full of suppressed amusement, and made you think that uniquely among womankind, she would really
understand
you. He shook himself mentally.

‘I wanted to ask you about Jesse Guthrie,’ he said. ‘He was a pupil here – a star pupil, I believe.’

She looked sad. ‘Yes, he was. Poor Jesse. It was a dreadful thing, his dying so young. Drugs take a terrible toll on our young people, and tragically it’s so often the really talented ones that are the most vulnerable. I don’t know why. Perhaps the strain of brilliance – we are meant to be ordinary, don’t you think?’ she said with a small smile that was anything but. ‘And when we’re not . . . Humankind cannot bear very much reality.’

‘Eliot,’ he said, out of his dream. So she was educated, too.

‘But, forgive me, poor Jesse’s death was some time ago,’ she went on, ‘and you said the matter was urgent?’

‘Some aspects of the case relate to another murder we’re investigating,’ he said.

A small start of surprise. ‘But Jesse’s death was an accident, surely?’

‘It may have been. Things have come up recently – I’m not at liberty to tell you all the details, I’m afraid. But please tell me about Jesse. How and when did he first come here?’

She had been thinking; now the slight frown smoothed out and she said, ‘Perhaps we’d better sit down.’ He took a chair, and she sat opposite in that disjointed, dancer’s manner, perching well forward on the seat, her knees fallen apart, her hands linked together between them. The room was so narrow – and they were both on the tall side – that his knees were almost touching hers. He felt her closeness almost like the heat from a fire.

‘Jesse came to us when he was twelve for two classes a week, and full-time from the age of sixteen. He came from a disadvantaged background – his father had walked out on the family and his mother was not much of a coper. By all the rules Jesse should have gone to the bad, but the dance saved him. He came for an audition for a bursary, and I saw straight away he had something I could work with. We took him on, and – all credit to him – he worked hard, though it can’t have been easy for him at home, and facing up to the teasing of other boys. There were times when he wanted to give up, but we wouldn’t let him. When he came full-time, I taught him myself, and I was glad afterwards to be able to get him started with a professional company.’

‘I suppose you have lots of contacts in that world,’ Atherton offered. ‘Producers and directors and so on.’ She assented with a slight nod. ‘And the backers of shows – what do they call them – angels?’

‘It’s a rather old-fashioned term – mostly they’re just called backers these days.’

‘But they must be important people to know. Nothing can happen without the money.’

‘That’s true,’ she said, as if she wondered where this was going.

‘David Regal – do you know him? He’s quite a keen backer, I believe.’

Was there the tiniest hesitation? ‘I’ve heard of him. I don’t remember if I’ve actually met him. There are quite a number of them, you know,’ she added with a smile.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Go on about Jesse. You got him several jobs, I believe.’

‘I was glad to put him in the way of work. He was very good.’

‘But then he gave it up – why was that?’

She sighed and looked down at her hands, which were clasped tightly. They looked very knuckly that way – not very feminine. ‘I don’t know. It was a great disappointment to me. I suspect it was the drugs. I think he must have started using by then. He got a very menial job with a pop band, and I didn’t see him again. The next thing I heard, the poor boy was dead. I understood it was an accidental overdose.’

Now she looked up, and he had to withstand the full force of meeting her eyes. Hazel, they were hazel, he discovered; and they almost glowed.

He had to ask something to distract her. ‘Have you had the school long?’ he managed to make it sound conversational.

‘It will be twenty years this autumn,’ she said. She didn’t seem to mind the change of direction. ‘We’re planning a Gala Day for parents and ex-pupils, and a special entertainment – a performance of
Alice In Wonderland
. Lots of animal parts for the younger ones. Parents do like to see their offspring on stage before they write a cheque.’ She made a comical moue. ‘Roof repairs, and the plumbing is not what it ought to be,’ she explained. ‘Sadly, as school principal one has to attend to the practical side as well as the artistic.’

‘Will you be taking a part?’

‘In
Alice
? Good heavens, no. It’s for the pupils.’

‘But I can see you were a dancer.’

‘I
was
ballet trained,’ she said. ‘I was a ballet-mad little girl, and my sole ambition was to dance professionally, but in my teens I grew too tall. When I realized I could never go as far as I wanted – and my ambition in those days was limitless – I had to swallow the pill. So I started to teach. Vicarious fame, you see,’ she said with another smile to show she wasn’t bitter. ‘Then I met a generous backer who enabled me to buy this school, and – here we are. It isn’t dancing on stage, but I find there are compensations to running a school like this.’

‘You take the older pupils, I suppose?’

‘A few special ones, but my time is mostly taken up with administration now. Though I do find time for some of my ex-pupils, those who are out in the world, dancing professionally. They come to me for private coaching. As a dancer you never stop taking class, you know. It’s the bedrock of all dance – class every day.’

‘The school takes boys as well as girls?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re lucky to be popular with boys. Statistically there are always fewer of them so we have to cherish every one we get. They’re so much more fragile and easily put off.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Forgive me, I’ve enjoyed talking to you but I do have a pupil waiting for me. What was it in particular you wanted to ask me?’

He brought out the mugshot of Corley and handed it to her. ‘I believe you were approached for lessons recently by this young man.’

She looked at the photo for a long time – or perhaps it only seemed like a long time in this quiet room with his intense awareness of the woman in front of him. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I don’t know this face. What’s his name?’

‘Robin Williams,’ he said.

‘No, I don’t know him,’ she said, and tried to hand it back.

He didn’t take it. ‘He knew Jesse Guthrie, and we have a very strong suggestion that he came here to ask for lessons.’

‘I don’t know him,’ she said again, still holding out the picture.

‘Perhaps he might have approached another member of your staff?’

She met his eyes, and they were so bright he had to look at her mouth, which was a mistake. ‘It’s possible he approached someone else. Leave this with me, and I’ll ask the others, and let you know. Do you have a card?’

He gave her one, and they both stood up. She examined the card, and ran a finger over his name. ‘Atherton,’ she said. Her voice felt like velvet. ‘What an interesting name. Is it Danish in origin?’