Atherton let himself appear to consider. ‘You’re very kind, but I really think I had better speak to Mr Regal in person.’
She gave him another long, considering look, and then reached into a drawer and brought out a large desk-diary. ‘Perhaps I can make you an appointment. May I ask your name and company?’ she said, opening it and leafing through. Atherton raised himself a little on the balls of his feet, but she tilted it towards her in such a way that he could not get a good look at the pages. Still, in the instant before she did that, he got the impression there was nothing, or next to nothing written there.
‘Detective Sergeant Atherton, Shepherd’s Bush Police,’ he said, watching her face for reaction.
There was nothing, so much of nothing that it was suspicious in itself. Not a twitch. Not a flicker. She looked up and said smoothly, ‘Mr Regal will be in the office on Monday and I can squeeze you in in the afternoon, if that would suit. But if it’s urgent, if you would care to tell me what it’s about, perhaps he could meet you somewhere else before then.’
To stir or not to stir? Only instinct to go on. ‘It’s concerning the death of Robin Williams,’ he said. ‘But I won’t put you to any trouble. I can just as easily contact Mr Regal at home myself.’
He thought she would argue about that, but after another look that felt as long as the Pleistocene era and about as warm, she said, ‘As you please.’ And she poised her hands over the keyboard in a form of dismissal.
Atherton gave her a final, ‘Thank you so much,’ and left. Outside he stepped to one side, so that his shadow wouldn’t be on the glass, and listened. There was no sound of typing, though he had heard it through other doors he had passed, so it couldn’t be a question of soundproofing. What had she been doing before he arrived? There was nothing on her desk. Had she seen his shadow pause and concealed whatever she was working on? Or, more suspiciously, had she not been working, but perhaps reading a novel or knitting to pass the time? Was she, in fact, just a caretaker of the address? Because it came to him that the telephone had not rung once while he was within earshot, and while his visit had been short, in his experience solicitors’ phones rang all the time.
As it was Saturday, Slider had stopped on his way in and bought doughnuts for everyone. He put the box on the table in the CID room, and a crowd formed and dispersed rather magically, like one of those starling displays. Atherton, last up, peered in and said, ‘There’s one left. Who hasn’t had one?’ Mumbled sugary denials left only McLaren, sitting forlornly behind his desk with something red and watery in his mug – it looked like fruit tea, Slider concluded in wonder.
‘Maurice?’ Atherton said. McLaren shook his head. ‘Go on! It’s one of those with custard in the middle – your favourite.’
‘No thanks,’ McLaren said, as joyfully as a man refusing the blindfold.
‘Right, let’s get on with it!’ Mr Porson arrived at that moment, carrying his cup with the saucer balanced on top as usual. ‘Are these for anyone?’ he asked, and took the last doughnut after a pause for denial so brief Planck would have had trouble measuring it. Did Slider hear a little broken sigh in the background, or was it just the idle wind?
He described his meeting with Lillicrap, and then Atherton recounted his visit to the office of Regal Forsdyke.
‘Looks like an accommodation address,’ Porson grunted, licking sugar off his lips. ‘Set up to repel boarders – anyone making casual enquiries, looking for someone to write his will or sell his house, gets a polite put-off from the madam.’
‘There’d be a certain amount of official business connected with Random – and Apsis, if he’s their representative,’ said Slider.
‘I checked, boss, and Regal Forsdyke is named for Apsis as well,’ said Swilley.
‘And since there’s no Mr Forsdyke . . .’ Atherton added.
‘Someone would have to deal with the paperwork,’ Slider went on. ‘And if the landline number Mrs Kennedy gave us goes to that address, I’d imagine the answer machine was in that other office.’
‘That was my thought,’ said Atherton. ‘If it rings and Regal’s not in the office, the secretary bird listens to the message and passes it on to Regal, who phones them back – or not, as the case may be.’
‘So you’re getting round to thinking David Regal is the big boss of your suppostitious drugs ring?’ Porson said to Slider. ‘The capo di monte, or whatever it’s called. What do we know about him?’
‘Not much, sir,’ Hollis answered. ‘He’s got a big house in Highgate – we had a look on Google Earth, and it’s right grand, got big gates and a high wall right round it. Regal bought it fourteen years ago for five million and change. Islington police say there’s never been any trouble there. They didn’t like me asking about him. Not keen to have their rich ratepayers upset. They said he gives generously to charity.’
And probably, Slider thought, police charities were numbered among them. He didn’t say it aloud, but he didn’t need to. They all knew how it worked.
‘He’s married,’ Hollis went on. ‘The wife’s a Sylvia Scott, apparently well known in the field of theatrical costume design.’ He shrugged in a way that said, but I’ve never heard of her. ‘They’ve been married twenty-three years, couldn’t find mention of any kids anywhere,’ Hollis went on. ‘He drives a Bentley convertible. Wife’s got a Mercedes S class.’
‘And that’s it?’ Porson said when he paused. ‘You don’t know much, and that’s a fact. All right, our boy’s a careful boy. Wouldn’t last long in this business if he wasn’t. We’ll assume, for the sake of argument, that it’s drugs and he’s the big boss. So who did the murders?’
‘The two we know about follow a pattern,’ Slider said. ‘Corley and Flynn each had an encounter with a woman, involving a visit to a nightclub – certainly, in Flynn’s case, and probably, in Corley’s – before going back to his house in the early hours, when there are few people about so the chances of being seen going in or out are small. With Guthrie we don’t know if he met anyone, but of course it’s possible. In all three cases, music was put on – presumably to hide any incriminating noise – and left on. Drugs were ingested in all three cases, throat-cutting was employed in two of the three, and there was no struggle by any of them.’
‘Presumably the purpose of the drugs,’ Atherton put in.
‘In Guthrie’s case,’ Slider resumed, ‘it could have been accidental death, or just possibly suicide, but other evidence suggests murder. The other two were certainly murder.’
‘So he’s got two different women doing the killing for him?’ Fathom said.
‘Why not the same woman?’ Atherton said. ‘From what we’ve learned she was reluctant to let anyone get a good look at her face.’
‘But one was a redhead and one had black hair,’ Fathom objected.
Atherton gave him a sidelong gawd-’elp-us look. ‘Ever heard of a wig?’
There was an instant of electric silence. In the days when Porson had earned his nickname of The Syrup because of his hideously obvious hair piece, no one had ever dared mention the word ‘wig’ anywhere within a radius of thirty miles of him. Now everyone desperately tried to think of something to say to take away attention from the blunder, and came up dry.
It was Porson himself who spoke, with no apparent consciousness of his subordinates’ brief agony. ‘All right, maybe this woman is an accomplish, but she may not be the killer. She might just be bait. That Flynn throat-cutting was a bit drastic for a woman.’
‘Doc Cameron said it took determination rather than great strength,’ Slider said.
‘But in Corley’s case it could’ve been black-sack man who did the murder,’ Mackay offered.
‘Black-sack man could’ve been a woman,’ Hollis added helpfully. ‘The woman Corley was with that evening was dressed in black trousers, the same.’
‘But black-sack man was wearing a beanie,’ Mackay objected. ‘Where’d she hide that while she was wining and dining the victim? And the black sack?’
‘Them big handbags women carry these days, she could’ve easy had the hat stuffed in there. And if Corley didn’t have a black sack under his sink, which he probably did, she could’ve had one of those in there as well. A whole roll of ’em, if she wanted.’
‘But who was the woman, or women, and how does she relate to Regal?’ Porson asked. ‘Regal looks like an iffy character, I grant you, but where’s the evidence of this drugs ring?’
‘We’ve got him linked to Guthrie,’ Hollis said, ‘and Flynn worked for one of his companies. Guthrie was a known pusher and Flynn was a big user and sold stuff to his friends. And he’s obviously rich, sir, without doing anything for it.’
Spoken out loud, Slider thought, it didn’t sound like very much. There was just the gut feeling to go on, that accretion of odd and wrong things about a certain figure.
‘If Regal is the head of a drugs ring,’ he said, ‘then according to DCI Lillicrap, we have to find out where the drugs are being distributed from, and where the money goes to. The only two businesses we know Regal is involved with are the clubs, under Apsis Leisure, and the porn films under Ransom House.’
‘Boss, about Ransom House,’ Swilley said. ‘You know I’ve been looking at their finances, and there’s something weird about it. As they’re a branch of a foreign company, they only have to provide simplified accounts to the Revenue and pay their tax, and as long as the Revenue’s getting its cut it won’t bother them. Well, they’re posting a turnover of about fifty million. I mean, what does an adult DVD cost? A legal one. Call it twenty quid, to give us a round figure. That means they’re selling two and a half million of ’em. That’s not a lot for a Hollywood DVD, but it is for a niche movie. And where are they all? I rang round every place I could find in the Yellow Pages, and nobody had a copy of any of the Office Orgy series. A couple of guys I spoke to said they hadn’t seen them in years, and they’d never seen any of the later ones – nothing after Office Orgy Five. Same with the other series. I know it’s not exactly a scientific experiment, but still. A lot of people have heard of them – they seem to be an urban legend – but when you press them, nobody’s actually watched one.’
Slider turned to Mackay. ‘You were enthusiastic about the series when it was first mentioned. You said they were witty.’
‘That’s what everyone says,’ Swilley objected.
Mackay looked sheepish. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘I haven’t actually watched one for years. Not to say, the real thing. I think number three or four was the last I’ve seen. But everybody’s heard of ’em. And there’s any number of knock-off versions around. It’s like a genre in its own right, Office Orgy. And I’ve met loads of people who said they’ve seen one.’
‘Like you did,’ Swilley said witheringly. She turned to Slider. ‘Boss, could that be where the money goes – how it gets laundered? Because if they’re admitting to fifty million, it could be ten times that sum that’s really going through.’
‘There has to be a point to Ransom House,’ Slider said cautiously. ‘Paul Barrow’s early training was as an accountant. But maybe the DVDs all go for export. They’ve got that warehouse near Heathrow.’
‘We ought to have a look at that,’ said Atherton.
Slider looked at Porson. ‘DCI Cliff Lampard at Hayes is a friend of mine – he used to be at Uxbridge. I could ask him to have a little look, find out what’s going on down there.’
‘All right,’ Porson nodded. ‘But softly softly,’ he added. ‘Don’t want ’em to go tramping in with their size twelves and frightening the horses. But I wish we had something to go on, apart from vague suspicions. You can’t make bricks without fire. What else have you got to follow up?’
‘Boss, there’s one thing I got yesterday,’ Connolly said to Slider. She had spent the day with the borrowed bodies from uniform still going through the Wynnstay flat.
‘Tell me you found a memory stick,’ Atherton begged.
‘No, but it’s interesting,’ she said. ‘It was in one of your man’s jacket pockets – a little bit of paper.’
She showed it – a piece four inches square of the sort that you tore off a desk note block, which had been folded in half. She unfolded it, and on it was written in hasty script, Arkady Dance School Tott Ct Rd, and a phone number.
‘The writing matches various bits of Corley’s we’ve found around the place, and there’s a pad on the desk that matches this, so it’s likely he wrote it down while he was in his office, maybe on a phone call or surfing the net,’ she said. ‘And the Arkady school—’
‘Is the one Guthrie went to,’ Atherton concluded for her. ‘So at the very least he could have been checking up on Guthrie. I wonder if that was before or after Guthrie got topped?’
‘And how long before Corley got topped?’ Connolly added. ‘No way of knowing. But it’s got to be worth a look? I had a squinny on the Internet. Arkady School of Dance and Dramatic Art – that’s full handle. Principal, Miss Mary Lynn and a bunch of letters – sure your wan’s a genius if all that lot mean anything. Ages twelve to eighteen. Private tuition and adult classes by arrangement. If Corley took a notion to dance, maybe he tried to arrange lessons.’
‘What about this Mary Lynn?’ Slider asked. ‘Anything on her?’
‘Practically nothing, boss. She’s a shrinking violet all right. No criminal record. There’s fourteen million entries for the name Mary Lynn, and a stack o’ pictures, but it’s not an unusual name and most of ’em aren’t for the same woman. The only photo I could find that’s reliably her we’re looking for is not a very good one. She’s in a line-up with the cast of some show she must have been involved with.’
‘May I see?’ Slider said, holding out his hand.
‘Work away,’ said Connolly, passing over the printout.
It was one of those ‘Back row, left to right,’ efforts, and she was on the far left, but the resolution was poor, and all you could see was an impression of attractiveness and the short, curly fair hair.
‘Well, we haven’t got so very much to go on,’ Slider said with a sigh. ‘Might as well follow it up. Atherton, do you want to head over there now. Saturday morning’s a good time to look at a dance school, isn’t it?’
As everybody dispersed, Mr Porson beckoned Slider aside with a look, and turned to him to say, ‘You know, if this is a drugs ring and Regal turns out to be the big cheese, we’ve got to tread carefully. Ought really to hand it over to the drugs squad.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said unhappily. ‘But if we do that—’
‘Corley gets mothballed,’ Porson finished for him. ‘I know, laddie. I’m not saying hand it over now, but tread a bit careful, that’s all. There’s a lot of toes to be put out of joint. If you can get something good and strong linking Corley’s death with any of these people, I can swing it, but if it’s just vague superstitions – well, there’s a limit. A couple more days, and unless you get something it’ll have to go. Savvy?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Porson nodded and went away. Slider sat down, picked up the phone, and dialled Cliff Lampard’s number.
Where the bad end of Oxford Street makes a junction with Tottenham Court Road there’s a strange little area, a little seedy and shabby-looking, but filled with interesting small enterprises. Print shops and kebab shops, sandwich bars and adult books ’n’ mags, bureaux-de-change and language schools; electronics and camera shops where the staff and customers converse almost entirely in numbers; surgical appliances, stamps and coins and airfix model kits and all sorts of specialist goodies in shoplets with dedicated if nerdy staff.
On one corner of the crossroads the glass and concrete office tower, Centre Point, rears its thirty-four stories like a sore finger, the Cenotaph of folly and greed. Otherwise the area is all low-rise, a shop floor at street level with three or four storeys above, joined in seamless terraces on either side along Tottenham Court Road and New Oxford Street; and up from Tottenham Court Road tube station boils such a mix of humanity it is probably
the best place on earth to go unnoticed.
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.
Blood Never Dies Page 24