Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

lot of help from insiders. They’re available, but the money involved . . . ?”
    “I thought it would be simple.”
    “Might’ve been. But you should’ve talked to me first. Before, not after. Laying trails? Far easier than erasing them.”
    “You’re supposed to be an expert, Bryan. I pay you what I pay you to be the best.” Doughty heard Emily’s derisive guffaw. He frowned at her. She didn’t need to make the situation worse.
    “I am the best but that means I have the kind of contacts you need in all the places you need them. It doesn’t mean I’m Superman.”
    “Well, you need to
become
Superman. And you need to do it now.”
    Emily, obviously, could take no more, for she burst out with “This is just great. It’s all made in heaven. I
told
you this was something we needed to stay away from. Now I’m telling you again. Why won’t you believe me?”
    “We’re in the process of making ourselves as clean as newborns,” Doughty said. “That’s what this meeting is all about.”
    “Have you ever
seen
a newborn?” Emily demanded.
    “Point taken,” Doughty said. “Bad analogy. Given time, I’ll think of another.”
    “Wonderful,” she said. “You don’t
have
time, Dwayne. And it’s your thinking that got us into this position.”
    SOHO
    LONDON
    Esteban Castro’s dance studio was situated next to a car park at the midway point between Leicester Square and what went for Chinatown. Barbara Havers found it without much difficulty directly after work. Getting to it was more of a challenge, however. It was on the top floor of a six-storey building sans lift, and as she huffed and puffed her way up the stairs to the sound of postmodern music growing ever louder, Barbara gave serious thought to eliminating smoking from her life. Fortunately, as she liked to think of it, she’d recovered her sanity, if not her breath, by the time she got to the translucent half-glass door of Castro-Rourke Dance. So she dismissed the idea of committing herself to tobacco abstinence as the product of a moment’s mere idle thought.
    She entered the dance establishment and found herself in a small lobby replete with posters. These featured both Dahlia Rourke in tutu mode, adopting various exotic positions suggestive of contortion, and Esteban Castro in every mode imaginable: from tight-clad and leaping through the air, to arse-pointed-outward and arm flung upward in a flamenco stance. Other than the decorative posters, the lobby had nothing else in it but a counter on which were spread brochures for various dancing classes. These appeared to run the gamut from ballroom to ballet.
    There was no one in the lobby. From the noise level, though, it seemed that dancing classes were happening on both sides of it, where closed doors led to other rooms. The noise comprised the postmodern music she’d heard on the stairway, which stopped and started and stopped in one of the rooms—broken by a shout of “No, no, no! Does that actually feel to you like a toad experiencing delight and surprise?”—and loud commands of
royale! royale!
, which came from the other. The
no
s were spoken by a man, presumably Esteban Castro, so Barbara went for that door and swung it open. No one to announce her? Not a problem, she thought.
    The room she entered was a good-size space with mirrored walls, ballet barres, a row of folding chairs along one side, and a pile of garments—costumes perhaps?—in one corner. In the middle on the smooth hardwood floor stood the man himself, and facing him at the far end of the room were six dancers—male and female—in various leotards, legwarmers, and ballet shoes. They looked abashed, impatient, irritated, weary. When Castro told them to “resume the starting position and
feel
it this time,” no one looked exactly thrilled by the idea. “He likes the motorcar,” Castro snapped at them, “and
you’ve
got a plan, all right? Now for God’s sake,
you
be a toad and
you
be five foxes so we can get out of here before midnight.”
    Two of the dancers had clocked Barbara at the doorway, and one of them said, “Steve,” to Castro and jerked his head in her direction.
    Castro swung round, took in Barbara, and said, “Class doesn’t start till seven.”
    “I’m not—” she began.
    “And I hope you’ve brought other shoes,” he added. “Doing the foxtrot in those? Not going to happen.” He was, of course, referring to her high-top trainers. He hadn’t yet got a clear glimpse of the rest