Shelly flounced over to the chair she'd been sitting on earlier. She plopped down and began to sulk, arms crossed over her bony chest. Barbara speculated briefly on the uneasy future of a relationship between two women when one of them was so perilously dependent. Vi ignored the demonstration of pique.
They all had ambitions, she told Barbara. Terry had his Destination Art and Vi and Nikki had plans to start up a first class escort business. They also had a need to support themselves once Nikki broke with Adrian Beattie. Both operations depended upon an infusion of cash, and the music looked like a potential source of it. “See, I remembered when Sotheby's—or whoever it was—was set to auction a piece by Lennon and McCartney. And that was just one single sheet that was supposed to fetch a few thousand quid. This was a whole packet of music. I said Terry ought to try to sell it. Nikki offered to do the research and find the right auction house. We'd split the money when the music sold.”
“But why cut you in?” Barbara asked. “You and Nikki. It was Terry's find, after all.”
“Yeah. But he was soft on Nikki,” Vi said simply. “He wanted to impress her. This was the way.”
Barbara knew the rest. Neil Sitwell at Bowers had opened Terry's eyes to copyright law. He'd handed over the address for 31-32 Soho Square and informed the boy that King-Ryder Productions would put him in touch with the Chandler solicitors. Terry had gone to Matthew King-Ryder with the music in hand. Matthew King-Ryder had seen it and had realised how he could use it to make himself the fortune that his father's will denied him. But why not just buy the music from the boy right then? she wondered. Why kill him to get it? Better yet, why not just buy the rights to the music from the Chandler family? If the production that resulted from the music was anything like the King-Ryder/Chandler productions from the past, there would have been plenty of lolly to go round in royalties even if fifty percent of it went to the Chandlers.
Vi was saying “—couldn't get the name,” when Barbara roused herself from her thoughts. She said, “What? Sorry. What did you say?”
“Matthew King-Ryder didn't give Terry the solicitor's name. Didn't even give him a chance to ask for it. He booted him out of his office as soon as he saw what Terry'd brought with him.”
“When he saw the music.”
She nodded. “Terry said he called security. Two guards came up straightaway and threw him out.”
“But Terry had gone there just for the Chandler solicitor's address, hadn't he? That's all he wanted from Matthew King-Ryder? He didn't want money? A reward or something?”
“Money's what we wanted the Chandlers to give him. Once we knew the music couldn't be auctioned.”
A nurse came into the room then, a small square tray in her hand. A hypodermic needle lay on it. Time for pain medication, the woman said.
“One last question,” Barbara said. “Why did Terry go up to Derbyshire on Tuesday?”
“Because I asked him to,” Vi said. “Nikki thought I was being a fool about Shelly—” Here the other woman raised her head. Vi spoke to her rather than to Barbara. “She kept sending these letters and hanging about and I was getting scared.”
Shelly raised a thin hand and pointed to her chest. “Of me?” she asked. “You 'as scared of me?”
“Nikki laughed them off when I told her about them. I thought if she saw them herself, we could plan to take care of Shelly some way. I wrote Nikki a note and asked Terry to take it and the letters up to her. Like I said, he was soft on her. Any excuse to see her. You know what I mean.”
The nurse interposed at this juncture, saying, “I really must insist,” and holding up the syringe.
“Yeah, okay,” Vi Nevin said.
Barbara stopped for groceries on her way back to Chalk Farm, so it was after nine by the time she got home. She unpacked her booty and stashed it within the cupboards and the munchkin-size fridge of her bungalow. All the time in her mind she picked through the information that Vi Nevin had given her. Somewhere within their interview was buried the key to everything that had happened: not only in Derbyshire but also in London. Surely, she thought, a mere assembling of the information in the right order would tell her what she needed to know.
With a plate of reheatable rogan josh from the grocery's precooked section—of which Barbara had quickly become an habitué nonpareil when she'd moved to the neighbourhood—she settled herself at her tiny dining table next to the bungalow's front window. She accompanied her meal with a lukewarm Bass and laid her notebook next to the coffee mug from which she was reduced to drinking, since several days of crockery, cutlery, and glassware had piled in her kitchen's diminutive sink. She took a gulp of the ale, forked up a portion of the lamb, and flipped to the notes from her interview with Vi Nevin.