The Fire Dance (11 page)

Before they went home for the day, Irene told Tommy that she was planning to reach Marcelo. “Good,” Tommy replied. “I’ll try for another chat session with Angelika. It’s about time we meet again—it’s been fifteen years.”

He smiled an odd smile as he said this, and Irene was left with a nagging sense of worry.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Irene headed straight for Högsbo and the House of Dance; it was not that far out of the way from her office. This “Mecca of a dance school,” as the website proclaimed, was an old, red brick school building built in the late fifties not far from Axel Dahlström Square. Then, twenty years ago, a brand new school was built less than a kilometer away since there was no room for expanding the older building. Instead, the House of Dance moved in—and after some time, the School of Dance joined them. The schoolhouse building had been renovated bit by bit. Walls were ripped out, ceilings were raised. The remaining inside walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. There were
also spaces for theoretical instruction, changing rooms and administration. At present, the School of Dance was seen as one of the premier institutions for dance instruction.

It was exactly 8
A
.
M
. when Irene walked through the entrance to the House of Dance. On one side, she saw a coatroom and on the other a large cafeteria. A few young people were hanging around a table with steaming mugs. They did not match Irene’s image of serious dance students. These kids had dyed hair and the same kind of clothes as any other arts students. Irene was reminded of Jenny, who was finishing up her last year of high school as a fine arts major in music.

Irene noticed one pale girl who wore all black. She’d dyed her hair pink and was wearing it in two braids across the top of her head, Gretchen-style. Irene could see an inch of her blonde roots showing at the back of her neck. An ebony-skinned young man sat beside her. He was yawning so widely that Irene, in spite of the distance, could see into his throat. He was wearing an oversized knit hat, which appeared to have been created from the motley remnants of various balls of yarn.

Farther down the hallway was a white sign with the word
ADMINISTRATION
. Irene thought it wise to start her search there. When she went to push open the door, she found that it was locked. The glass doors that barred the entrance to the rest of the school were also locked. Obviously, outsiders were forbidden to go past the cafeteria.

The girl with the pink braids called out to her. “The bell is broken. Knock hard and someone will come.”

Irene knocked on the glass panel to the door, and almost immediately a woman wearing a light-blue leotard and white knit leg warmers came down the stairs. She was exactly what Irene had imagined a stereotypical dance student looked like. She was most likely one of the teachers. Her black hair,
streaked with grey, was pulled back into a tight bun, and the lines in her face revealed that she was middle-aged. The woman smiled and opened the door for Irene without asking who she was or what she was doing there.

Bad security here
, thought Irene. She changed her mind during the time they walked up the stairs. She realized that she hardly appeared to be either a potential student or a crazy terrorist. Perhaps she gave off the “cop” smell from yards away.

The stairs ended in a reception area. Irene continued toward an older woman sitting behind a counter, introduced herself and told her why she was there.

“Marcelo Alves? I believe I recognize the name, but I’m not sure. Wait a moment while I go find Gisela.”

The sprightly white-haired woman walked down the hallway and knocked on a door. She entered and, a moment or two later, returned with a tiny woman in tow who held out her hand to Irene.

“Hello, I’m Gisela Bagge. I’m in charge of instruction here at the House of Dance.”

Gisela appeared almost transparent. Her light blonde hair was cut in a short style with wisps springing up around her head. Her round blue eyes and her smile made Irene think of an angel. Her white dress completed the picture. The turtleneck collar was as wide as it could be without sliding off her shoulders and falling straight to her ankles. She wore a wide red ribbed belt, which perfectly matched her suede boots.

“Let’s go into my office,” Gisela Bagge said.

She spun gracefully on her high heels and led Irene down the hallway to her office, a surprisingly small room with large windows facing the old schoolyard. Gisela sat down behind her desk and gestured for Irene to sit in the opposite chair. Irene could see the autumn mist and the emptying branches of the chestnut tree outside.

Gisela got right to the point. “Lilly told me you were looking for Marcelo Alves.”

“That’s right. It’s part of our ongoing investigation into the murder of Sophie Malmborg. I understand Marcelo rents an apartment from her.”

“I know. I was the one who put him in touch with her. Sophie usually rents … rented rooms to our visiting instructors at low cost. She started the practice after her father died.”

“Marcelo has no telephone we can reach, so I thought I would try to find him here,” Irene said, smiling.

Gisela smiled in return, and in the harsh light from the ceiling lights, Irene could see thin lines spread from the corners of her eyes like rays from the sun. Irene suspected that Gisela was about forty years old, but could easily be mistaken for twenty-five.

“If you want Marcelo, you have to come by later in the day. He rarely arrives here before two in the afternoon. Often later.”

“But he has to be here in time to teach class, right? He is an instructor here,” Irene said, puzzled.

“Yes, indeed, but we’ve scheduled his classes as late in the day as possible. Often in the evenings, in fact. You see, he’s from South America—Brazil.”

Gisela’s expression indicated that she thought that should explain everything, but Irene didn’t get it.

“I know he’s Brazilian, but why would that keep him from giving lessons during the day?”

“Because he’s Brazilian,” Gisela repeated. She rolled her eyes and, laughing slightly, continued, “Marcelo has no sense of time. It’s like the clock has no meaning for him. He just wanders in whenever he feels like it.”

“It must be really difficult to have an instructor like that on the staff,” Irene exclaimed.

“In the beginning, we fussed about it, but no more. He’s usually here by the time his classes are supposed to start, and even though they’re in the afternoons and evenings, they’re full. The students love him.”

“What kind of dance does he teach?”

“South American. He teaches students from the school and the House of Dance, but he also has classes for the general public. Salsa, merengue and lambada are especially popular. Marcelo has also given a class in focho, which is a Brazilian variation of foxtrot. Though, to be honest, I don’t see much resemblance to our European foxtrot. That course appeals to a group we usually don’t see here: the retirees. The class is extraordinarily popular and the participants idolize Marcelo. He flirts with the ladies and jokes around with the men, and when they leave, they look twenty years younger! It’s truly amazing, especially when you realize he hardly speaks Swedish.”

She laughed heartily at the same time she opened the top drawer of her desk. She rummaged around and handed a brochure to Irene. It was in a language Irene did not understand.
Capoeira. Boa vontade. Mestre Canelão. Nata—Brasil
. Above the text was a photograph of two muscular men with bare chests and wide, white pants. One of them was upside down, balancing on one hand and aiming a kick at the other man while managing to keep the rest of his body in the air. The other man was dodging the kick by bending deeply at the knees so that his body was on a level plane with a hand on the floor behind him for balance. Irene knew, after many years of training in martial arts, that these men were strong and the kick would have been deadly if it had hit its mark.

“And if that’s not enough, he wants to start a group in capoeira,” Gisela said, with a nod to the brochure.

“But this doesn’t look like dancing at all,” Irene protested.

“Oh, it’s a kind of dance. And then again, it isn’t.”

“How so?”

Gisela seemed to think for a moment and then said, “Let me show you.”

Before Irene could say another word, Gisela stood up and led the way to the door. They walked down the stairs and into the hallway. Gisela opened the glass doors that closed off the rest of the building, and they passed through. The smell of sweat and the sound of rhythmic African drumbeats let Irene know they were heading toward the practice rooms. They stood in front of a closed door now, and from within the room, Irene could hear a wailing stringed instrument above the drums.

Gisela pressed down on the door handle, and they walked into a spacious training room. A group—two girls and four boys—was warming up in front of one of the mirrored walls. The dark-skinned young man Irene had seen in the cafeteria had shed his knit Jamaican cap and no longer appeared at all tired. Hundreds of small braids hung down his back. Whenever he moved his head, the wooden beads at the end of each braid clicked softly. Like the men pictured on the school brochure, he was bare-chested and wore wide, white pants. He was in great shape. As Irene later learned, the man was Felipe Medina.

The girl with the pink braids was warming up next to him. She wore white jazz pants and a lime green top. The girl was as thin as Irene had guessed when she’d seen her in the cafeteria, but now the girl’s muscles were apparent beneath her pale skin.

The warm-up was different than what Irene was used to with her jiujitsu. The music was upbeat and the movements were swifter. Irene watched as the music segued to something smoother, and everyone in the group turned upside down to stand on their heads. Felipe, maintaining his headstand, let his legs fall into a split, while the girl in the pink braids kept
hers straight in the air. The entire group remained upside down for quite a few minutes. The tempo increased, and they abandoned their positions and began to roll around on the floor, moving faster and faster as the music became more frenzied. The bare chests of the boys glistened with sweat.

Then, as if a secret sign were given, they formed a semicircle and began to clap their hands in time with the music. Felipe Medina and one of the boys stepped out of the semicircle to face each other and began to move in what appeared to Irene to be an advanced
kata
. They changed positions at a lightning pace. Irene recognized much of their basic technique, but at the same time she could see a great deal of difference between capoeira and jiujitsu. In capoeira, there was no bodily contact. Like karate, the blows were made into the air. Of course, Irene knew there were full-contact karate competitions, seldom held, because any physical damage would be serious. Powerful kicks were another similarity between karate and capoeira. Periodically, Felipe rose into the air and spun his legs like the blades of a helicopter. Irene could see that the power behind a kick like that could be deadly. Other movements were pure acrobatics, yet everything followed the beat of the music. It was dance, but then again, it wasn’t, just as Gisela had said.

Gisele and Irene left the capoeira practitioners and returned to the hallway. The beat of the drums still echoed in Irene’s ears.

“I understand what you meant when you said it was more than just dance,” Irene said.

Gisela Bagge nodded and smiled.

“Capoeira is an old African dance style. Slaves sold to plantations in Brazil kept up the tradition, and so that the slave owners would not forbid it, they said that it was nothing more than a traditional African folk dance. The name capoeira derives from an indigenous language of Brazil.
It means ‘bush.’ When the slaves escaped, they hid in the bushes, and some local tribes told the masters that they were in the capoeira. The dance is alive and well in Brazil, and it’s even become popular as a martial art. Now it’s also starting to come to Europe. It’s a good sport for dancers because there are so many dance movements in it.”

“Can Marcelo do capoeira?”

“Yes. He offered an intensive course this past summer. That’s why Felipe and those boys became so good so quickly. On the other hand, all of them had dance training from the get-go.”

They entered the cafeteria, and they each picked up a paper mug of coffee. Irene withstood the temptation to throw a five-krona piece into the machine vending various pastries. She was overwhelmed by the same feeling she’d had fifteen years ago when she first met Angelika, as if she were size XXXL. On the other hand, anyone could feel hefty beside the ethereal Gisela.

They walked back to her office. Irene put her mug down on the desk and blew her fingertips.

“I still have quite a few questions. Do you have time to talk?”

“Sure. I have a meeting at ten o’clock, but I’m at your service until then. Lilly will take my phone calls so we won’t be disturbed.”

“Thanks. Tell me, how did Marcelo end up here at the House of Dance?”

“He came here just over a year ago. The students wanted a course devoted to salsa, which is still quite popular. An acquaintance of mine in Oslo knew Marcelo, who had made a name for himself as a dance instructor over there. I managed to lure him here and he felt at home with us. Last semester he commuted between here and Oslo, but he stayed here in Göteborg this semester. Sophie had a great deal to do
with that. Marcelo felt at home in the space he rented from her.”

Irene felt this was the best opening to ask an important question. “Do you know if she and Marcelo were a couple?”

Gisela gave Irene a long look before she replied, “Both Marcelo and Sophie are … shall we say … problematic. Let’s start with Marcelo. His problem is that he has no trouble at all with women, though I have to say, he does not see this as a problem. He sleeps with anyone he wants, and he often wants different women. For some reason, they never get angry with him. They seem to be grateful that he gives them some of his attention and warmth, even for a moment. The devil knows how he gets away with it!”