The Publicist, page 21
Gonna be late. Launch in Leicester Square is going on and on. And on. Yawn. Put mine in the fridge. We can watch the next ep of Succession when I get in x
Tyler smiled to himself. Mary was at a top showbiz party, but she’d rather be at home watching TV – like most of the people at these parties, as she often told him. They were there because they had to be, contracted by film studios, or, like Lola, watching over their clients. The only people who honestly enjoyed them were reality stars, who drank too many cocktails and slept with each other, basking in the inevitable headlines that followed.
He liked living here in Chelsea. Mary didn’t have friends, only acquaintances, people who were of use to her. Tyler knew he was probably one of them. But he’d got clean, he was living in a gorgeous house, he had money, and he didn’t have to wash greasy plates or be fucked bareback by frustrated married men. He’d enjoy it however long it lasted.
Her plan sounded simple. First, they’d find him a small flat to rent in Wandsworth, and a worthy job that would suit someone just out of rehab. A charity would be ideal. Then he’d go along to the weekly local AA meeting, which Sam Stevens always visited unless he was on location. He’d been an addict, so he’d know what to do and say. Mary wanted Tyler to befriend him. Worm his way into his circle. Win his trust with his ‘pretty face’. Tyler was just his type, apparently. The fact Tyler was straight was irrelevant. He’d be playing a role. And finding out Lola’s secrets, which Mary would then leak to the press.
He filled a pan with water and put it on to boil, chopping the tomatoes and basil on a large wooden board. Mary promised once she’d destroyed Lola’s reputation, Tyler could move back here to Chelsea. Did he trust her? Not really. Did he think Sam Stevens would be interested? Not in a million years. But he was happy to go along for the ride.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LOLA
I wake up to the sound of a machine beeping. My eyelids feel heavy, too heavy to open, and there’s something around my arm.
‘Status epilepticus,’ a voice said. ‘Basically, a seizure that doesn’t stop. We’ve treated her with a large dose of benzodiazepines.’
‘I didn’t know she had epilepsy.’ It’s Sue voice, concerned and caring.
‘There’s nothing about seizures in her notes, though she may have seen a private GP. But she was extremely dehydrated. She had anorexia as a teenager. Judging by her weight, and the abnormal heart rhythms we’re picking up, I’d say she still does. That could have triggered it.’
‘What about stress?’
‘On its own, in an average person, unlikely. But in her case, taking everything into account, her low bodyweight, then yes, it could.’
‘When can we talk to her?’
‘The meds should wear off enough for that in a few hours. But you’ll have to be brief. I know you’re on that missing persons case but I don’t want my patient stressed out. Fortunately the ambulance crew got oxygen and meds into her rapidly, but we won’t know if there’s any lasting damage until she wakes up.’
‘What sort of damage?’
‘To the brain. Possibly the body too, if there’s been a stroke. You realise this could have killed her.’
I hear their words, but I can’t process them. I’m lost in a fog, a place where time has slowed down, a strange, drifting landscape of sounds and words, unconnected, alone. I try to think, but everything is hazy, my body unmoving, thick and leaden. Then she walks towards me, surrounded by light.
‘Olivia?’
I whisper it, and I feel a hand on my arm.
‘Rest, Lola.’
Sue’s voice is soft, gentle. There are footsteps, she’s gone, and I drift into the unknown.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THURSDAY
Mary Olivia Carter sat in the interview room, composed and controlled, the duty solicitor at her side, her handcuffs removed, and a large, cool cup of tea in front of her. Across the table, Sue was sifting through her notes. Dev snapped on the tape.
‘Interview with Mary Olivia Carter, Thursday 8 September. Present are DCI Sue Fisher, DI Dev Basu and duty solicitor Sarika Chopra.’
‘Would you like me to call you Mary, Olivia or Ms Carter?’ Sue asked. The woman in front of her seemed so calm, so demure, so emotionless.
‘Mary.’ She sipped her tea.
‘Tell us about your relationship with Tyler Tipping.’
‘He’s my brother. Well, half-brother. But you already know that.’
‘We’ve found Tyler dead at your parents’ home in Winchcombe.’
There were no tears, but Sue could tell Mary was rattled. The first flicker of emotion.
‘Yes. In the bunker where Sam Stevens was being held. And he’s dead, too. You put Sam in there, Mary, didn’t you?’
The solicitor laid his hand on Mary’s arm, and whispered ‘no comment’ in her ear, but she brushed him away.
‘Tyler and I both did. But it was my idea,’ she added. Sue sensed a sickening sense of pride. ‘I’m guessing he went back to try and rescue him.’ She snorted. ‘It was on his conscience. I knew I shouldn’t trust a junkie.’
‘What about Dafydd and Gwen Morgan, Sam’s parents?’
‘I killed them,’ Mary replied triumphantly. ‘The carving, that was Tyler. He got high, got carried away.’
‘So you planned this meticulously?’ Mary was clearly proud of this plan she’d executed, and Sue was sure she’d want to show off.
‘Yes. I found Tyler online a couple of years ago. My mother,’ she spat the word out, ‘was always being photographed with Sam Stevens and I thought I’d get a job at her agency. See if I could befriend him, dig around, get some dirt on her for the press.’
‘So how did Tyler come into this?’
‘He didn’t, at first. Not in any clear way. I thought there would be some kind of use for him. But he was a junkie. And he was my brother. My only family. I paid for rehab, got him straightened out, and he moved in to the Chelsea house with me.’
‘So how did you get the job at Lola Lovett PR?’ Dev asked.
‘I turned up every day, on the doorstep, with my CV. Ambushed my mother and waved it in her face. After a week of it she agreed to an interview. They needed a new intern. It was unpaid, but I had plenty of money. My adoptive father, Jonathan, gave me a generous allowance. Anything to keep me out of the house.’
‘Why Sam? Why target him?’ Sue asked.
‘Because my mother doted on him. I’d seen it on photos and videos before I started there, but working with her made it even worse. It was almost incestuous. She fussed over him endlessly, Sam this and Sam that, cancelling anything that got in the way of her plans for him. She loved him.’ Mary’s voice was becoming more animated now, revealing a deep, blinding rage that Sue had seen in other killers.
‘So you engineered this relationship between Sam and Tyler? How?’ Sue asked.
‘Easy. He always went to an AA group near Wandsworth if he was in town. My mother seemed to like me – the irony – and promoted me to her assistant, so I had access to Sam’s diary. Tyler was pretty, and straight, but he’d been a sex worker so had no problem doing what it took. It was a gamble. I don’t like risk.’ She paused. ‘I studied maths at uni. I’m logical.’
‘Why did you risk it?’
‘Because I sensed Sam had dirt on Lola. Major dirt. I heard them arguing on the phone a few times, though I didn’t know what it was about. There was trouble brewing, I could feel it, so trying to get Tyler into that mix seemed like a sensible shout.’
‘Did you find out what it was?’
‘Tyler said Sam shouted at her about a guy called Des Lethbridge. He wasn’t happy with how Lola had treated him.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe another actor? Or a fan? I couldn't find anything about him.’
‘So why kill Sam? Why not let Tyler stay living the high life until he found out more about this beef between Sam and Lola?’
‘Because Tyler started using again. It made him unpredictable, dangerous. I couldn’t be sure what he’d told Sam. He might have revealed everything about me. Sam was away a lot on shoots, and Tyler had the time, the money. He was bored. Sam even rented him a flat. He only did drugs there, never in any of Sam’s houses. Or so he told me.’
‘How did you know he was using?’
‘He started becoming paranoid, almost psychotic. That was the crystal meth. He’d phone me up and rant about Sam’s parents. He was obsessed with what they’d done to Sam. Especially the father. Rejected him, told him he was worthless. Sam didn’t make any secret of that, but he also told Tyler his father was active in the men’s public lavatories back in Wales, at Talbot Green. He’d been in there one night when his father came in. It was the hypocrisy that got to him. But Sam would never out him because he loved his mother.’
‘So you killed them?’
‘I had to do something. Tyler was determined to dish out justice. He was totally screwed up by what happened to him in care, and his hatred for Sam’s father tapped into that. My plan was to kill Sam’s parents and frame Sam for the murder. Case closed. No one would look for anyone. Sam could just disappear.’
‘Why not just kill Sam, then?’ Sue asked. ‘Why tie him up and leave him to die slowly? You talk about risk…’
‘There was no risk,’ Mary said flatly. ‘No one ever goes near the bunker, except for the occasional dog who strays off the footpath. I didn’t want Sam Stevens to drift to his death in a happy, drug-filled haze. I wanted my mother to spend years wondering where he was. And then, when I sold the house and disappeared abroad, the truth would come out. She’d know how he’d suffered. How her beloved baby, as she called him, had spent his final days screaming and rotting in his own filth.’
‘But wouldn’t you have to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder? Even if you were overseas.’
‘It would have been worth it. Anyway, I’d found someone on the dark web to get me a fake passport. I’d have had enough money to do whatever I liked. To disappear and start again.’
‘You pushed Tyler into that bunker with him, didn’t you?’ Sue went on ‘Forensics suspect he didn’t fall in. Someone pushed him. He had marks on his wrists and ankles where he’d previously been bound. Like Sam. He’d become a liability.’
‘I’ve already told you. I didn’t.’
‘So, Dafydd and Gwen Morgan. Talk me through what happened.’
‘I had the day off, Friday, and drove to Tonyrefail. Penelope’s carer, Sonia, keeps a stack of aprons and PPE at the house so I’d taken some in advance and changed into it when I arrived. I told them I was there to give them their next Covid jabs.’
‘And they let you in?’
‘Without any problems at all. Didn’t even ask why it was going directly into a vein. They just kept thanking me and the NHS, bless. Tyler had scored the heroin and benzos earlier, and we’d mixed it together. Once they passed out, I gave them a second injection, just to make sure.’
‘Why not leave them there?’
‘That’s what I would have done. But Tyler was obsessed with Camber Sands and I needed to keep him on side. They’d had a trip there from the children’s home. Bad things happened. Very bad. He said it was a place that needed to be put on the map. Like Soham. Remembered for the hell that happened there. Only for that. He found the empty bungalow on a website he’d used when he was squatting that lists empty properties. I wrapped their bodies in plastic and put them into a couple of cheap wheeled suitcases. Drove back to Chelsea and waited for Tyler to finish work. Late that night we went down to Camber. Tyler had said the bungalow was “remote”. When we got there, it damn well wasn’t. I’d never have gone there, or taken the Jag, if I’d known. But Tyler was off his head, unpredictable, determined to go through with it. We put dark coveralls on with hoods, gloves too, and got the cases inside.’
‘That’s when he mutilated them?’
‘Yes. I planned to leave them on the bed, but Tyler got carried away. He had a scalpel and I didn’t feel safe stopping him. Besides, the carving just pointed the finger even more at Sam. My main worry was sobering him up before he met Sam on Saturday.’
‘But you managed it?’ Dev asked.
‘I took him back to Soho, cleaned him up and put him to bed. Next morning, I stuffed him with black coffee and breakfast. All he had to do was get the train down to see Sam, act normal until Sunday. Which, somehow, he managed to do. We needed the bodies to be found, and we wanted your lot to think Sam was the suspect. Tyler needed an alibi for Sam’s disappearance.’
‘So who put Sam in the bunker?’
‘I did. That was easy. I drove to Cobshott, gave him some “urgent” scripts to look at, and slipped a massive dose of sleeping tablets in his cocoa. Tyler didn’t want to get involved at all. He’d started developing a conscience.’
‘Is that why you killed Tyler?’ Sue looked straight into Mary’s cold eyes.
‘I didn’t. Why would I lie?’
‘Because he’s your brother?’ Sue ventured. ‘Because somehow killing your own brother crosses a line? Because he could have grassed you up?’
Mary shook her head and sipped her tea. ‘All valid reasons. I can see why you’d think that. I had been wondering how to silence him. He started acting randomly, telling you guys Sam was on drugs again, which was clearly nonsense. So he was a risk. But no, I didn’t do it.’
‘And the tip-off call to Lola’s agency? About the bodies in Camber?’
‘Tyler put a call in from a burner phone. All we needed to do was have an incoming call logged on the office phone records as I knew you'd check.’
‘So, if your plan had worked, and Sam was blamed for his parents’ deaths, what was your plan after that?’
‘Walk away happy, knowing I’d ruined Lola’s life. Wait for Penelope to die and move back into Winchborough. Tyler could have come with me. And then, if and when I wanted to deliver the final agonising blow to Lola, sell the house, start a new life abroad with a new identity, and let his body be found.’
‘If only you hadn’t lost patience with Tyler.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Interview terminated.’ Sue snapped off the recorder.
‘What happened to Mother?’
‘In hospital. She’ll live.’
‘Good. The scandal this court case is going to whip up will kill her.’
Back in her office, Sue asked Dev to order a full psychiatric assessment.
‘There’s something, Dev. My guess is that she’s a psychopath. Cold as ice. Won’t affect the sentence – she knew right from wrong – but it will help explain what she did.’
‘The defence might push for insanity.’
‘They might. I don’t care. So long as she’s locked up. Charge her with the murder of Sam Stevens, Dafydd Morgan and Gwen Morgan. She’s just denying Tyler’s murder as one final attempt to keep control. I’m sure she killed him too, even if we can’t yet prove it. I’m going to go back to the hospital, see Lola.’
‘There’s an email from DCI Lauren Brown, in case you haven’t seen it. We’re both copied in. Says she can’t go into details, but they’re still chasing leads from the Onslow Avenue paedophile ring and linking it to Lavington Place will really help. It will take time. Years, maybe. There’s so much to investigate.’
‘These things do. That’s good to hear though. It’s never too late to make abusers pay for what they’ve done.’
‘Oh, and that paparazzo has turned up. Jim L. Full name is Ryan James Stewart-Longton. He’d gone sightseeing in Norfolk for a few days with his Daily News cash. Lots of photos of windmills.’
‘Any luck on this Des Lethbridge character that Mary mentioned?’
‘There’s a record of a Desmond Lethbridge dying of an overdose in a Camden alleyway a few years ago. Aussie backpacker. Entered the UK from Greece. Bipolar, and off his meds, according to the medical records and post mortem. No suspicious circumstances.’
‘Hmm. I’ll run his name past Lola Lovett, see what she says. Though I doubt there’s anything in it.’
Mike appeared in the doorway.
‘Sue, we need to talk.’ His voice was firm, controlled.
‘I’ll get on it, boss.’ Dev nodded to Mike as he left the room.
‘We’ve got her, Mike. The woman who killed Sam Stevens. And his parents.’
‘Sue, listen to me. It’s Tom.’
Sue sat in her office, pale and silent, her eyes red, as Mike gently placed a strong cup of tea in front of her.
‘Drink this,’ he said gently. ‘Three sugars. It’s good for shock.’
‘H-how did you find him?’
‘He called me. From the cliffs at Beachy Head.’
‘It’s all my fault, Mike. I’ve been a terrible parent. You kept trying to warn me that something was wrong. I knew something was wrong. And I didn’t do anything. He must have been in so much pain. I’m sorry for everything, Mike.’
Mike picked up the tea and held it to her lips. ‘Drink, Sue. Don’t blame yourself.’
Sue took a sip of tea. ‘W-where is he now? I need to see him.’
‘I’ll take you to him.’
The hospital room was dark, and cool. Tom was laid out on the bed, a sheet over him.
‘It’s all right,’ Mike said softly, taking her hand.
Sue sat down beside the bed and rested her hand gently on Tom’s.
‘I love you so much, Tom. And I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.’
Tom rolled over. His face was pale, his eyes dark. Sue took him in her arms and held him close to her, breathing in the smell of his hair, his skin, his life. ‘I don’t care about the drugs, Tom. I love you with all my heart. All of it. I couldn’t bear to lose you. And we will get through this together.’
He began to cry, tears falling from his eyes on to her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum…’
