Blood Never Dies (36 page)

It was Jonny Care. He sounded excited. ‘I’ve got something on Sylvia Regal,’ he said.

It seemed that she had not been invited to the opening night in York after all, but had invited herself. Her booking at the Royal York was made at the last minute; she had come into the theatre after the start via the stage door, and watched from the wings. And, at the end of the play, when the curtain calls were being taken, she had simply walked on when the producer did. Everyone had been too polite to object, had allowed her to take her part of the ovation, and had invited her to the party. There she had almost mugged the Yorkshire Post correspondent to be interviewed. The Yorkshire Post correspondent being a young man – and Sylvia Scott being tolerably famous and reasonably good looking – had not put up much of a struggle. The costumes had, in fact, been very good, and she made a good photo, so he didn’t mind submitting her along with his other bits.

‘So she was manufacturing an alibi?’ Slider said.

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Care agreed. ‘And combined with her mistake over her husband’s car, we’ve got enough to put pressure on her. She’s already jittery as hell – I think she’ll break. Obviously she didn’t do the actual killing, but I bet she was in on it. Once she understands she’s just as liable as the murderer, I think she’ll give it up. I’m going to have a crack at her this morning. Want to come?’

‘What’ll your boss say?’

‘I’ve squared it with him. He knows you’ve got an interest in Regal. He says as long as you’re not in the room. We’ll put her in the pokey and you can watch through the glass.’

‘I’ve got some news, as well,’ Slider said, and told him about Mary Lynn.

Care whistled. ‘That puts a different complexion on it. What’s the betting sister Mary did the actual job? What are they like!’

‘A blest pair of sirens,’ said Slider.

‘Well, with all that, if we can’t make her sing I’m a monkey’s uncle. You coming?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for worlds,’ said Slider.

Presented with the evidence about her alibi, her mistake about her husband’s car, and some pointed questions about who would inherit his fortune, Sylvia Regal had been rattled; topped off with the news of the arrest of her sister for murder, it had been enough to break her. She sang, and kept singing, urged on by a terror of prison and the golden glimmer held out to her that turning Queen’s evidence might get her off more lightly.

‘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 arranged 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 . . .