by F. G. Cottam
She came down heavily on the side of deficit. She was an ambitious woman, defined by her achievements. She couldn’t help being that. She didn’t think she was cold or ruthless or even particularly superficial. But she existed to her own mind on what she’d accomplished and this evening, she didn’t think it honestly amounted to very much.
Technically, the rehearsal had gone better than she’d hoped it would. Royal Ballet choreographers were not noted for their compassion or tact and she’d spent forty minutes of the session watched by Alain Prideaux. It was not to his steps she was dancing. She assumed he’d been drawn there out of curiosity. Come-backs were notoriously tricky. They could be triumphant, which they were rarely, or they could be tragic, which was far more often the case.
She’d danced the principle role in two of Alain’s settings for the company and he would have noticed any deterioration in technique or athleticism or just the basic energy required to perform to the highest level.
He watched. He studied. He frowned. Finally he put his hands together as she paused after completing a particularly difficult passage and said, ‘Bravo!’
‘Really?’
‘Obviously you’ll never again have what you had when you were 17.’
‘You mean a hymen?’
‘I mean promise, darling. I mean potential.’
Sweat trickled at the small of her back as the price of exertion. At the nape of her neck, her hair clung damply with it. She was all but out of breath. Alain was a French-Canadian with an eye for an ingénue.
‘The lay-off has been good for you. I’d say it’s worked as a period of recuperation from some of the old injuries, the persistent ones?’
She nodded. She knew all about the persistent injuries. She’d danced through them, as every prima ballerina did.
‘With a few more weeks of work, who knows?’
‘I’ve some weight to lose.’
He shrugged. He scrutinized. ‘More a question of tone than inches,’ he said. ‘You’ll do it, sweetheart. You’ve the muscle memory and the will. You’ve always had the talent.’
‘Thank you.’
‘This story could have a happy ending.’
She was 34. She’d retired at 32. She’d taken time out in her mid-20’s to have the children and, like most women who were essentially professional athletes, had discovered that the experience of having them had made her physically stronger. But the story wouldn’t have a happy ending. How could it? She didn’t have the freshness or exuberance she’d had when she was in her 20s. The bloom had faded and the spotlight would expose the fact.
Coming back was a strategy born of desperation. It was a gamble probably doomed to failure. At best, she might have another two years at the pinnacle as a performing artiste. She felt fairly sure she would be offered roles beyond the one for which today had been the start of her preparation. She might be about to inflict permanent damage on her own legacy, but she honestly didn’t know what else to do.
She’d retired to bouquets and ovations and unanimous press plaudits two years ago. The world had looked then like an open invitation to make the money she hadn’t really earned as a dancer. Ballet didn’t pay what people assumed it did and with her marriage in trouble, the opportunities looked very inviting.
Except that the cook book hadn’t sold. Neither had the children’s stories she’d written. They’d been callow and unimaginative and ghosted and rushed. In retrospect, she could see everything wrong with them. And they’d had to compete with the excellent stories from established authors she was familiar with from reading to her own children.
The television work had been a disaster. She was telegenic and wittily fluent on screen and the polls suggested she remained personally very popular with the viewing public. But the formats had been clumsy and misconceived and audience ratings had dropped off as one light entertainment commentator put it, ‘Like lemmings off a cliff.’
She’d reached the north side of Lambeth Bridge. A fellow pedestrian smiled at her as they waited together for a green light at the crossing. A passing cabbie hooted his horn and waved from his open driver’s window. She was famous and well-liked, despite the career failures, even if she didn’t, at that moment, very much like herself.
Her charity work was the reason for this public affection. A bit older and frumpier and in this weird age she was living through of emotional incontinence, she thought she’d probably qualify as a National Treasure. She’d begun the fund-raising after her son, Nicholas, was diagnosed with leukemia when he was just less than two years old.
Her son’s illness had done two things, really. It had put an intolerable strain on her marriage and it had gifted her with the empathy to raise money for the treatment of sick children. Now there was a new ward named after her at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She’d been honoured with a CBE. Strangers smiled at her at pelican crossings and cabbies not only waved through their windows, but quite often refused to take her fare at the end of a journey.
It was something, she thought, treading the paving stones of the river embankment on tender feet and sore tendons, painfully aware of every ounce of the weight of her poorly conditioned body. It was something to console herself with as she returned to the stage for a stop-gap couple of years and wondered what the hell to do with the rest of the life left to her. And Nicholas was free of cancer. Her son was well. There was that, the precious, priceless reprieve for which she would always feel grateful.
Her children were her greatest achievement. Nicholas and Molly were happy and healthy and well-adjusted. She’d let herself into the flat and they wouldn’t be there. The poignant reminders, the toys and clothes and crayoned sketches had all been tidied away that morning. Coats and hats belonging to them would be the first bright objects she’d see, hung on their hooks in the hallway of their new home.
The place would feel empty, but they’d be back soon, wouldn’t they? If Charlotte’s future lay largely in her past, at least theirs held a golden sort of promise. A satellite channel had wanted to make her dance comeback the subject of a reality TV series. Nick and Moll were the reason she’d found the dignity to say no.
‘Fuck it,’ she said out loud to herself. She’d go for a drink. She didn’t do much spontaneously, but there was a boat moored just to the west of the south footing of the bridge that functioned as a bar. It was a quarter to nine. It was warm enough to sit outside. She’d go and have a couple of glasses of wine at a table on the deck of the boat and watch the sun go down. It was a tempting alternative to going home alone. She’d earned a drink. The exertions of the day, the start of her effort to resurrect her glorious past, had surely burned off a couple of thousand calories.
The sky turned rosy over Battersea. Charlotte treated herself to the indulgence of a pack of salt and vinegar crisps. She watched shadows lengthen and the traffic thin and the river take on an orange tinge that gradually matured into pink. She rooted around at the bottom of her bag. She salvaged a crumpled soft-pack of Marlboro Lights containing still only a single cigarette. She borrowed a lighter from the guy tending the bar. The smoke tasted slightly stale and guiltily delicious.
The ghosts of her bunions were returning to her toes. She could feel their familiar, half-forgotten throb. It wasn’t just muscle in the body that possessed a memory. But she was okay with that. After half a bottle of red, she was reasonably philosophical.
The river was inky and the current strengthening in urgent braids between the patches of slack water when she finally rose for the 20 minute trudge home. The cars had their headlamps switched on. Another day was drawing towards its conclusion. She thought that even in the absence of the children, she would sleep very soundly tonight. She felt buoyed by the wine, her mood improved. Life would have a lot to offer if she could only stop being so bloody hard on herself. There were far worse predicaments than hers.
She was at her front door and the key had been inserted into the lock when the feeling of approaching hazard hit her without warning. It was worse t
han hazard, wasn’t it? It was brutal and inhuman harm. She shuddered like someone would under the impact of a physical blow. Her mind blackened and reeled and terror filled her and her fingers trembled uselessly on the key fob. She swallowed and realized as she tasted it that her throat had filled with bile. Her bag slipped from her shoulder, spilling her damp tights and towel and leotard onto the lobby floor as she lost control of her bladder and felt the hot gush of urine down her thighs.
Charlotte turned and fled. She fled on foot. She did not dare take the route to the underground space and her car. She could not endure even the thought of the confinement of the lift or the gloom of the basement car park. She felt animal panic and beyond the immediacy of that, a craving for light and space that seemed instinctive and the only sane priority. Except that she could barely move. She progressed along the lobby to the communal entrance door like someone wading through treacle.
‘Please God,’ she said, ‘Please God.’
The door felt weighted by lead. It was an impossible obstacle. She pushed her way through it feebly and stumbled, turning an ankle with an audible tear of cartilage down the small flight of exterior steps. She fell and banged her face on the concrete, bloodying her lips and loosening a tooth. She clambered and crawled her way back to her feet and lurched onward like someone drunk.
She had limped half a block, lame and soiled when she staggered as something seared her synapses and a single word was branded into her mind. She saw it there. It was spoken too in a rusty, sardonic chuckle it chilled her skin into gooseflesh to have to hear.
The voice was very deep and impossibly old, a bass croon of amusement. ‘Kismet, my dear,’ it said, ‘Kismet.’
‘We had a report of an odd incident earlier tonight.’
‘How was it odd?’
‘Why are you still up?’
‘I’m involved with stuff. I never go to bed before midnight. I’m not a child.’
‘Have you heard of a woman named Charlotte Reynard?’
‘She did a tightrope walk across Cheddar Gorge for charity last year. It was televised live. She used to be a dancer with The Royal Ballet. I’ve seen her children’s books in the remainder bookshop on Lower Marsh. She hasn’t been killed, has she?’
‘I wouldn’t describe a murder as an incident, Jacob. I’m a plain speaker.’
‘No new message?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you telling me?’
‘I’m telling you to keep you in the loop. She seems to have had some kind of premonition outside her front door when she arrived home not long after dark. She was found in a distressed state on Vauxhall Bridge Road. Officers have examined her home but have found nothing out of the ordinary. She can’t be persuaded to return.’
‘She didn’t look the nervous type on that tightrope. She did it without a harness or a safety net.’
‘Have you heard of a play called Miss Julie? There was a televised version you’d be too young to remember. Janet Suzman, I think; maybe Glenda Jackson.’
‘It was Helen Mirren. Donal McCann played the valet, unless you’re referring to the version with Janet McTeer?’
‘Stop showing off, Jacob. All you’re telling me is that you don’t get out enough.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Julie Longmuir was preparing to play the title role in Strindberg’s play when she was murdered. The play was written in 1888.’
‘Theologically, it’s an insignificant year. The Seventh Day Adventists held their Minneapolis General Conference. I’ll check for sure, but I very much doubt the subject of the End of Days came up for discussion.’
‘Charlotte Reynard was planning a comeback. She’d chosen a fairly esoteric vehicle for doing so. I get the impression she wanted to regain lost credibility, re-establish her credentials. Ballet audiences aren’t as militant as opera lovers, but they can still be a bit sniffy.’
‘Go on.’
‘She chose a Russian ballet entitled The Vestal, choreographed by Petipa, with music by Ivanov. She was to play the role of Amata.’
‘And The Vestal premiered in 1888.’
‘You’re learning.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m completely in the dark.’
‘It’s the year of the Whitechapel Murders.’
‘He doesn’t think he’s Jack the Ripper, Jane. He thinks he’s someone far older and more important than that.’
‘A belief the Whitechapel killer might have shared?’
There was silence on the end of the line. It went on for so long that Jane began to think the connection broken.
‘Jacob?’
‘I’m thinking about what he said in the last message. He said that the next killing would be a cause of grief. No doubt Charlotte Reynard was a world-class ballerina in her day, but what she’s mostly famous for is raising money for children’s charities. She’s amassed millions for good causes, hasn’t she? She’s practically a what-do-you-call-it?’
‘She’s practically a national treasure. That thought’s occurred to us, too. I think that she had a very lucky escape tonight and has her intuition to thank for it.’
‘Blimey.’
‘You said you were going to subject the messages to proper scrutiny. Have you done that yet?’
‘I’m doing it now. But he’s offering you clues beyond the messages, isn’t he? There’s a causal link between Julie Longmuir and Charlotte Reynard, isn’t there? It isn’t just that they’re not prostitutes or that they have high public profiles. He’s telling you something.’
‘He’s goading us, or trying to, because tonight, it seems he failed to accomplish what he’d boasted he’d do.’
‘Does that give you any satisfaction?’
‘None, frankly, Jacob, it just makes me more fearful about what he might do next.’
‘You used the past tense just now, talking about Charlotte Reynard’s comeback. Has she had a change of heart?’
‘She’s damaged her ankle. I don’t think she’ll be doing any dancing for a few weeks.’
‘Have you spoken to her?’
‘I’m about to. She’s here in an interview room. Can you do something for me?’
‘You mean as a reward for keeping me in the loop?’
‘I mean as part of a major murder investigation.’
‘Sorry, of course.’
‘Have a think about what kind of individual might be in possession of the academic credentials the Scholar has. Have a think about how and where he might have acquired them. I want to narrow the field. I want a precise picture of who we’re looking for and you can help provide that.’
‘Do you ever stop working? Do you ever sleep?’
‘I’ll go home and grab a few hours after I’ve spoken to Charlotte Reynard. I really don’t think this setback will discourage him. I’ll rest once he’s caught.’
‘Good luck.’
‘One more thing: what do you think of when I say the word ‘kismet’?’
‘It’s a Hollywood film starring Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich.’
‘You need a hobby, Jacob. Something like sailing or hiking would be good.’
‘It’s an old word from the Muslim cultural tradition. It’s Arabic in origin and refers to a predetermined course of events we’d describe in English as fate or destiny. You find the same word with the same essential meaning in the Persian and Turkish languages.’
Charlotte Reynard was a smaller woman than she expected. Television cameras made everyone bigger than they were in life. And ballerinas had bodies with lots of detail because there was no fat to conceal it. But they were petite as a breed, weren’t they? They had to be shorter than the male leads sometimes lifting them. They had to perform precise and dainty steps without it seeming comical.
She looked younger, too, than her age. Jane was a good and practiced judge and would have put her at no more than about 28. She had pale blue eyes with almost a transparency about them. Her face wore the grey paleness of a freshly inflicted bruise. Her lips wer
e full but almost bloodless. The lower lip was swollen on the left side from its earlier impact with the pavement. She wasn’t far off a state of shock.
She wasn’t alone in the room. There was a family liaison officer Jane assumed was responsible for the sweet-smelling mug of tea on the table at which the dancer sat. Tea was a marvelous restorative beverage in some circumstances. It wasn’t going to work, though, on this occasion. She nodded at the officer to leave and, when she’d risen from her chair and done so, sat down opposite the nearest person the case had so far given them to a witness.
She introduced herself.
Charlotte smiled, or tried to. It was a brave attempt but the result was more like a wince. She said, ‘You’re the detective in charge of the Scholar investigation. I caught the midday news.’
‘How long have you possessed your psychic gift?’
‘The police don’t believe in that sort of thing.’
‘You’d be surprised. Could you answer my question?’
‘You can’t make this public.’
‘And you have my word that I won’t.’
‘I’d been vaguely aware of it since my teens. I could do the tombola at the school fete and I’d know which numbers would come up. Not always, but more often than not. More than the law of averages would allow.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I ignored it. It got much stronger after my children were born. They were born quite close together. Hunches became certainties.’
‘Go on.’
‘I knew that my son was ill. There were no visible symptoms when that came to me. He was playing happily with his building bricks on the rug and the pile came tumbling down and I knew.’
‘It must be disconcerting.’
‘The early diagnosis gave him a fighting chance. And when Nick was having chemo, when he was wasted in a hospital bed all tiny with drips and his hair all fallen out I knew he’d live. So it works both ways. I believe it saved my life tonight.’
‘I believe it too.’
Charlotte sniffed and pulled a piece of tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her nostrils, which were raw. She said, ‘That’s just bizarre. You’re a senior police officer.’