‘I never wanted David to be killed,’ she cried several times. ‘I know he was a weak link, like Mary said, but I was fond of him. I didn’t want him to be killed, but Mary insisted.’
She was terrified, too, of Paul Barrow, and of nameless ‘others’ in the organization who ‘never forgave mistakes’. She didn’t want to be released – she wanted protective custody, because once they knew she’d spoken to the police, they’d come after her. Remembering Tommy Flynn, Slider thought she might be right. Which gave them the necessary lever against the solicitor advising her to say nothing.
While the interview was going on, a joint operation between the Uxbridge police and the drugs squad had gone into the warehouse in Staines, where they had discovered packing cases marked as containing Ransom House DVDs waiting for export. They, however, proved only to be in the nature of a false wall: behind them there were crates and crates of – ballet shoes. They were made by a Japanese company, at a factory in Portugal, and despite the proximity to Heathrow they came over by lorry. Portugal being a favourite entry-point into Europe for drugs from South America, it had not deeply surprised the squad to discover that under a top layer of pink practice pumps and pointe shoes there were neatly plastic-wrapped parcels about the size of so many packets of sugar.
‘Ballet shoes!’ Porson had said almost gloatingly afterwards. ‘All lying there like pink baby mice. Genius! You’d feel like a brute even turning ’em over, let alone suspecting they were hiding anything!’
The news, telephoned to Slider and relayed by him to Jonny Care, had allowed Care to direct the rest of his interview like a targeted missile. They knew pretty much everything now – always the best position from which to ask questions. It was for Sylvia Regal to confirm and fill in the detail.
‘Fancy using the same warehouse for both companies,’ Porson snorted. ‘I suppose that was Barrow, trying to save money. Once an accountant, always an accountant. But there’s such a thing as false economy, you know.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look a vodka and tonic in the face again,’ Atherton said, lounging elegantly on Slider’s sofa. Outside summer rain pattered down with the relentlessness of heartbreak or a Bank Holiday; but Emily was beside him, and inside it was bright with lamps and friendship.
‘Good thing too,’ Joanna said. ‘It’s a silly drink. A drink for people who don’t like drink – in which case, why drink it?’
‘So many drinks in one sentence, and not one in my hand,’ Atherton mourned.
‘I’m coming as fast as I can,’ Slider said, coming in from the kitchen with a tray. ‘Here. One gin and tonic. Wrap your gills around that.’
The tumbler was blue with gin and smelled like a forest in the high mountains. Ice clinked and jostled like the Arctic spring calving. ‘Aah!’ said Atherton. ‘That’s more like it.’
Slider handed out the other drinks, G and T for Emily and himself, a glass of wine for Joanna and a beer for his father, and raised his glass in a toast. ‘To a job well done.’
‘And all hazards survived,’ Emily said. ‘I’m not sure I shall ever get over your inviting a murderess into our house. Especially a seductive murderess.’
‘Just doing my job,’ Atherton said. ‘Without her witnessed attempt on me, we mightn’t have enough on her for the CPS.’
‘Without it, we might not have got everything out of Sylvia Regal,’ Slider added, ‘so it was all in a good cause.’
‘So it turned out to be Mary Lynn who was the big boss?’ Joanna queried, making herself comfortable in the old armchair with her feet tucked under her. ‘There’s no glass ceiling in crime, then?’
‘Not if you have determination,’ Slider said. ‘And she had plenty of that.’
The Scott sisters had lost both their parents when Mary was eighteen and Sylvia sixteen. Their nearest relative was their paternal grandmother, who was widowed and quite frail, not up to bringing up teenaged girls. Under her nominal guardianship, Mary had taken charge of their lives and they had more or less fended for themselves.
Both were at the Barbara Speake school, on scholarships, but Sylvia went into the acting side while Mary had always wanted to be a dancer. It turned out that Mary had all the talent as well as all the looks, and there had always been an unacknowledged undercurrent of resentment in the younger sister, which perhaps helped to push her into giving up Mary when the police had her cornered.
Sylvia, with no real future in acting, had tried stage management for a bit, which was somewhat of a dog’s life. She met David Regal, who took a fancy to her. They married, and then she discovered a minor talent for costume design which he was happy to encourage. He helped her career with his contacts, and she gathered enough talented people around her to do quite well.
‘And meanwhile,’ Emily asked, ‘Mary was becoming a professional dancer?’
‘Yes,’ Slider said, ‘but she knew early on she could never make it to the top. She taught ballet, then met Paul Barrow, got hitched up with him, and bought the dancing school with his money. At some point was recruited by the Marylebone Group. Exactly how that happened Sylvia doesn’t know and we haven’t got Mary to tell us yet. I suppose she’s afraid of reprisals too.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that woman could be scared of anything,’ Atherton said feelingly.
‘Well, it’s fear or loyalty, take your pick,’ said Slider. ‘According to Sylvia, Barrow was supposed to be quite a player, and maybe it was his air of power that attracted Mary. And maybe it was Barrow who introduced her to Marylebone. He was already working in the clubs. But he blotted his copybook – kept getting into trouble with the police, and Marylebone couldn’t have that. So Mary overtook him. Marylebone had the clubs for distributing to end users, but they needed a way to get the product to the middle men. Mary set it up through her school – what could be more innocent than a ballet school, after all? And laundering the money through Ransom House was genius, because everyone would assume that a porn-film business would have to be whiter than white.’
‘So how did David Regal get into it?’ Joanna asked.
‘He really was a solicitor, but his business was suffering because he spent more time chasing Adonises than working. So Mary got him the sinecure as legal representative for Ransom House and Apsis. He bought out his senior partner, and it gave him a nice income, social status, and lots of time left over for boy-chasing. Of course, she shouldn’t have used him – he was always going to be a danger to security. But she did it for Sylvia. It was odd that she showed so much loyalty to her sister. I suppose everyone has their weak spot.’
‘I hope Sylvia appreciated it,’ Emily said, with a sort of grim humour.
‘But then a series of little problems rolled together into a disaster,’ Slider said. ‘She’d been grooming Guthrie, and recruited him into the drugs trade when he came back to London to join Les Miz. But he got involved with David and quit the show, and then David got him the job with the girl band, where he was flashing drugs about like a card sharp in a street market. So Mary decided he had to go.’
‘I suppose it was the fight with Ben Jackson that triggered it?’ Emily asked.
‘Oddly enough, no,’ said Slider. ‘She’d already decided to kill Guthrie, and Sylvia says the fight didn’t bother her. These things happen in show biz. And we had thought it was probably Barrow who reported to her when Corley, as Mike Horden, started asking questions, but in fact he didn’t register him either, just kicked him out and forgot about him.’ He shook his head. ‘Corley had two narrow escapes. If only he’d left it at that. But at the Hot Box he managed to get close to David Regal, who was extremely smitten. Mary kept a distant eye on Regal’s paramours, just in case, and when Corley turned up at the ballet school as Colin Redgrave, asking questions and mentioning Regal, alarm bells rang.’
‘So he had to go,’ Atherton concluded.
Slider nodded. ‘She’d been stringing him along to keep tabs on him. Of course, Corley was only too willing to be strung. She arrange
d to have dinner with him, then obviously took him on to a night club until it was late enough, and let him invite her back to his place. She hoped to find out what he knew before killing him, but according to Sylvia he was a tougher nut to crack than Mary had reckoned. So she topped him and took away everything, including his laptop.’ He paused. ‘It was a well-executed murder, except for her not noticing that he was left-handed.’
‘And forgetting to wipe the vodka bottle,’ Atherton added.
‘Still, that wouldn’t have helped us without her to suspect,’ Slider said. ‘If she’d left it at that, she’d have been safe. I don’t suppose we’d have ever caught her.’
‘But she went on to kill Tommy Flynn?’ Emily suggested.
‘Yes. That was triggered by our visit to Ransom House, of course. Barrow reported it to Lynn, naturally enough, and it was only then that they connected Mike Horden with Colin Redgrave. She never did know him as Robin Williams – until Atherton turned up at her school asking about him.’
‘The Flynn murder was a clumsy business,’ Atherton commented.
‘It was supposed to look like suicide, but either she didn’t know her own strength or she lost her temper,’ Slider said. ‘And finally, we get to David Regal. He’d already put himself on the to-do list over Corley; but with Corley neutralized he might have stayed on probation. According to Sylvia, it was Angela Kennedy who blew the gaff. I’d asked her not to say anything to Regal about my visit, but she obviously had second thoughts, and left a message on the answer machine that the police had been asking about him and his friend who’d killed himself. The secretary, of course, reported it to Mary – who was her real boss.’
‘How much did she know?’ Joanna asked. ‘The secretary, I mean?’
‘Almost nothing, though I imagine, being reasonably intelligent, she guessed there was something dodgy going on. According to Sylvia, she and the Ransom secretary, Alice, and Ewan Delamitri, and the two blokes from the plant in Solihull, were all legit, whatever they might have suspected. Where was I?’
‘David Regal,’ Joanna reminded him.
‘Oh, yes. Well, that phone call moved him up the agenda. She told Sylvia that he had to go, and when Sylvia objected she pointed out that she would inherit his money.’
‘Oh, that’s cold,’ Joanna winced.
‘I dare say some threats were applied as well. And Sylvia was fond of him, but she was fonder of her comfort. He hadn’t been a proper husband since the early days and he was older than her. The idea of being a rich widow and finding a new, younger husband must have appealed. But she pointed out that if she was going to inherit his money, she would have to have a cast-iron alibi. I suppose Mary thought the further Sylvia was out of it, the better, because Sylvia is not the brightest sparkler in the packet. Hence Sylvia’s sudden dash to York.’
‘And then,’ Atherton said, ‘I turned up at the school asking to speak to Mary. It must have been a terrible shock, just when she thought she’d stopped all the leaks.’ He shuddered. ‘I can’t help remembering how natural and relaxed she seemed when I was talking to her, when she’d been murdering David Regal only hours before.’
There was a brief silence.
Slider broke it. ‘She certainly is the most cold and heartless killer I’ve met in a long time,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘She doesn’t seem to have any remorse or feeling at all. She was simply determined to make her little empire work for her, in her own way. Nothing was allowed to get in her way.’
‘A case of absolute power corrupting,’ Mr Slider commented. ‘It’s not a natural way for a woman to live. Neither of them sisters had any kids, you notice.’
‘Not every woman wants children,’ Emily said mildly. Atherton glanced at her, wondering if she was sending him a message. They hadn’t talked about it yet, but he’d started thinking that it might be rather nice . . .
‘Well,’ Slider said, ‘it was panicking that trapped her. If she’d kept her head after killing Corley, we probably wouldn’t have been able to bring it back to her. And her attack on you –’ to Atherton – ‘was very ill-advised. She knew you were a policeman.’
‘She believed in her power over men. After all, she’d proved it often enough,’ Atherton said. ‘And killing gets easier the more often you do it. You see it with serial killers. It’s almost like greed – you want one more and one more and—’
‘Don’t,’ said Emily.
‘Oh, now here’s an interesting little titbit,’ Atherton added to her. ‘It was Sylvia’s insistence that when Mary killed David Regal, she had to do it somewhere it wouldn’t make a mess.’
‘You’re kidding me,’ Emily said suspiciously.
‘Seriously. After all, it was her house and she had to go on living there. I just love the thought of Mary dragging the unconscious Regal into the downstairs loo, puffing and straining, and cursing her sister under her breath for being so house-proud.’
‘That’s not nice,’ Emily said sternly.
‘You’re taking all the fun out of it.’
‘Steady, children,’ Slider admonished.
‘Everybody’s nerves’ll be a bit on edge after a case like this,’ Mr Slider said peaceably. ‘Supper must be just about ready. I’ll go and have a look, and maybe you ladies’ll lay the table?’
Left alone, Slider and Atherton looked at each other and Atherton shrugged. ‘We’ll be talking about this one for a long time,’ he said.
‘Probably,’ Slider said. He felt exhausted. There was almost more work in the aftermath of a case than when investigating it: everything had to be got together for the CPS file, every t crossed and i dotted, top brass briefed, explained to and placated. And there was the drugs angle in this one as well. He was glad he had Porson to stand between him and the abyss when the pip hit the spam about why they hadn’t handed it over sooner.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t other deaths we don’t know about yet,’ he said. ‘I somehow can’t believe that she started her killing career with Guthrie – it was too well carried out. And I have my suspicions of Barrow. We ought to start looking back through unsolved cases and sudden deaths where the same elements were involved.’
‘You’re a devil for work,’ Atherton said, stretching himself languidly. ‘Anyone would think you were on commission.’
‘We should go and see if Dad needs help,’ Slider said, standing up.
‘He won’t,’ said Atherton. He had had to learn to leave people alone when they were cooking in their own house. Cooking had always been his release from the tensions of the Job, and he had never been able to stand by idly and watch someone else do it. But now he had Emily.
Oh, wait, to be truthful his release had been cooking and sex. But, again, now he had Emily.
‘One thing that does intrigue me,’ he said, following Slider out. ‘When Corley finally got to meet Mary Lynn, which was pumping the other harder, her or him?’
‘We’ll never know,’ said Slider.
‘Wish I’d been a fly on the wall, though,’ said Atherton.
Securing a large haul of cocaine and getting a definite line on the Marylebone Group put the SOs and the big brass in such good humour they were able to overlook the fact that they ought to have been brought in on it sooner. In fact, in breaking up the drugs ring in a purple cloud of publicity and self-congratulation, they managed to forget that Slider and his firm had been involved in it in any way, which suited Slider down to the ground. The CPS had decided they were going to proceed against Mary Lynette Scott for the murders of Benedict Jackson Corley and David Edward Regal, and at some point in the proceedings, the press were bound to pick up the connection and toss it all over the papers; but sufficient unto the day, Slider thought.
So when the last file went off, all there was left was to have the firm’s usual post-case drinkie-do at the Boscombe Arms. They made it a double celebration, with the news that Gascoyne had been accepted into the CID and would be joining Slider’s firm. Gascoyne shuffled and blushed as they congra
tulated him, and then, just as Connolly was thinking God love him altogether, the wee dote, he proved his mettle by telling the story about the desert unit and the camel in such delicately obscene language that it was clear he had found his spiritual home.
It was a memorable celebration, and not just because of the magnitude of the case. McLaren turned up alone, although at the last couple of firm’s drinks he had insisted on bringing his new woman, Jackie. No one asked him about her, because they didn’t want to encourage him another time. Nobody had really liked her, and they didn’t like the way she had dispirited McLaren – though Swilley, for one, said Jackie would always have her gratitude for getting rid of Maurice’s nostril hair. ‘You’d sometimes think he was keeping a couple of hamsters up there.’
Slider thought McLaren was looking somehow different when he arrived through the door, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Then the food was brought out, and McLaren dived straight for the pork pies. They weren’t the little cocktail ones, they were the intermediate size about two inches across, and knives and plates had been provided, but McLaren cut straight to the chase and put one into his mouth whole.
Slider waited until he had finished chewing so as not to risk choking him, and then said, ‘I thought Jackie didn’t approve of your eating pastry.’
McLaren swallowed noisily and licked the glorious, greasy crumbs off his lips. ‘We broke up,’ he said.
There was a stunned silence.
‘Why?’ Slider asked at last, on behalf of all of them.
‘Ah – I got fed up. All that dieting and grooming. I’m not a bleeding racehorse.’ He looked around the staring faces, and then added, compelled by honesty, ‘Anyway, she’s met this new bloke. It was her broke up with me, really.’ He sniffed. ‘I dunno what she sees in him,’ he added. ‘He’s a right scruff-bag.’
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