His van bumped down the stony puddled track that led from the cottage, the tools in the back rattling like a prisoner’s chains. The track wound through woodland that covered the mountainside. The tops of the fir trees were wreathed in mist. He loved this place, had chosen it for his home simply because it reminded him of his favourite book. He knew the words by heart, could quote them in chunks. ‘Soon we were hemmed in with trees which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel; and again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side.’
He took the left fork, even though it meant he had to drive an extra mile before he hit the main road. This way he would miss the truckstop: it was safer. There was always the danger that Rhodri would spot him as he drove past the kiosk and wave him over for a chat. Things were quiet at this hour and Rhodri was incurably nosey. He would want to talk about the havoc wreaked by the storm of the previous afternoon and ask where Daniel was heading and why.
He was a cautious driver but in the early morning traffic was light on the A55 and inside two hours he had reached the outskirts of Liverpool. He did not care for cities and kept well clear of them unless there was a special reason to endure their dirt and dust and noise. Nudging through the rush-hour queues, he found a parking space in a multi-storey off Paradise Street. Still he was early. He decided to kill time by striding over to the waterfront. Although the weather had calmed, here and there he saw relics of the gales’ ferocity: smashed fencing, skewed road signs and shattered panes in a hot dog stand.
He gazed across the Mersey, peering through the haze to see if he could make out Moel Famau in the distance. He was unfamiliar with the old port but he’d bought a book about it in a second-hand shop in Bangor. He wanted to learn about the city where the man he was seeking lived. Now he had arrived, his whole body was taut with excitement. He’d had a lifetime’s practice in suppressing his emotions, though, and he would not let his control slip today. No-one who met him would guess how he felt, deep inside. They would see a tall lean man whose dark hair was splashed with grey around the temples. The leather jacket, sweatshirt, jeans and boots all reflected his taste for black.
A glance at the clock on the Liver Building told him it was almost nine. Time to move. Leaving Mann Island, he crossed the six-lane Strand with care and headed up James Street before turning off into a narrow side street. Half a dozen stone steps led down to the basement of a tall Victorian building, the upper floors of which were decorated with fading To Let signs. A stainless steel nameplate outside the door told him that he had arrived at the headquarters of the Liverpool Legal Group.
He stepped inside and found himself in a large room. The far wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a young woman with her back to him was leafing through a thick looseleaf volume. The decor was aggresively unDickensian: spare and Scandinavian with lots of spiky pot plants and uncomfortable-looking chairs. A table was piled high with leaflets emblazoned with the legend No Win - No Fee. A woman in her mid-forties sat behind the front desk, languidly examining her make-up in a pocket mirror. A paperback was turned upside down on her desk, its title How To Cope With Stress At Work. A badge on her beige jacket announced that her name was Pamela and that her title was Reception Executive.
When Daniel coughed, she looked up with a start. Something in his expression seemed to unsettle her and she gabbled, ‘Good morning, welcome to the offices of Liverpool Legal Group, how may I help you?’
‘I believe you keep a register of lawyers here?’ As was his habit, he spoke so softly that it was almost a whisper.
‘A database of solicitors and barristers, updated monthly, that’s right,’ Pamela said, getting into her swing with well-rehearsed brightness. ‘We receive funding from both the Law Society and the Bar Council, but we remain an independent registered charity committed to the promotion of local legal services for the benefit of clients in Liverpool and the wider community of Merseyside.’
As she paused for breath, Daniel said, ‘I’m interested in one solicitor in particular.’
Two spots of colour appeared on her powdered cheeks. His demeanour was evidently bothering her. Perhaps it was the sheer intensity of his gaze. She said, ‘I - I can check for you, if you’ll just bear with me. They’ve put in a new computer system and I’ve not quite got the hang of it yet.’
As if alerted by the tremor in her voice, the woman at the back of the room looked up. She put her book down on a table and met Daniel’s gaze. She was painfully thin with slanting green eyes and high cheekbones. Her scarlet lipstick made a vivid contrast with the pallor of her skin. The black hair which she’d swept back from her forehead reached down to her waist.
She said softly, ‘Perhaps I can help, Pamela. Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhearing.’
Her eyes met his. He guessed she was accustomed to attracting attention. Yet it wasn’t simply her looks that jolted him, made him feel as if he’d had an electric shock. No mistake about it; there was something about her that was extraordinary.
She hesitated, as if having second thoughts about interrupting. Perhaps somehow she had sensed the intensity of his reaction to her and been disturbed by it. But it was too late for her to walk away. She cleared her throat. ‘I used to work in one of the law firms round here. Can you tell me the name of the person you have in mind?’
‘Yes,’ Daniel Roberts said. ‘He’s called Harry Devlin.’
Harry had arrived home at four in the morning. He’d not even attempted to sleep after the police had finished with him. Predictable as the interviewing process had been, he’d found it an ordeal. The best thing that could be said was that it had sobered him up. The morose sergeant who was first on the scene was someone he’d never met, but it was obvious from his manner that he didn’t like solicitors. His ideal outcome was plainly that one lawyer would confess to having killed another: two birds with one murder. Harry’s head kept thudding as he stumbled through his version of the evening’s events. The sergeant listened to the tale with Eeyore-like gloom and it was a relief when an inspector called Mitch Eggar, whom Harry did know, finally turned up. Eggar suggested pleasantly that it would be best if Harry, Juliet and Linda came down to the station as volunteers to help with inquiries while the forensic boys did their stuff. It was futile to say no. Talk to you tomorrow, Harry mouthed at Juliet as she was ushered out of the cottage ahead of him.
The three of them were taken in separate cars to different police stations. The police were taking no chances about collusion. Harry finished up at Birkenhead with Eggar. He wrote out the statement himself, blinking at the perjury declaration, but telling himself that he had no choice but to stick to the plan he’d agreed with the women. Lying about the reason for his visit to the cottage was the lesser of two evils.
‘Presumably you crossed swords with Carl Symons from time to time?’ Eggar said. He was a well-fed man with a red face and thinning sandy hair. In his younger days, he’d been a useful cricketer and now he umpired on summer weekends. Harry could recall an occasion during his own playing days when he’d turned out for the Legal Group against the Police. Mitch had given him out leg before, a dubious decision given with a beam that brooked no argument. As an interrogator, he favoured an amiable, confiding style. Over the years, it had lured a number of Harry’s clients into the trap of self-incrimination.
‘We were on other sides of the fence. I won’t pretend we were bosom buddies. But there are plenty of prosecutors I know better than Carl. He hadn’t been around all that long.’
‘Ever have any run-ins with him?’
‘None worth mentioning. He was good at his job. When Carl took a case to court, you could bet he was going to win it. I never had any complaints.’
‘You liked him?’ Eggar gave Harry a father-confessor smile.
‘Different question. He’d win no prizes in a charm contest. But you don’t climb the greasy pole by being Mr Nice Guy all the time.’
Eggar pursed fleshy lips. ‘We’ll need to talk
again later. But that’s enough - for now.’
The moment Harry got back to his flat, he stripped off his clothes and climbed into the shower, as though hoping that the water could cleanse him of everything that had happened overnight. Driving back through the old tunnel under the river, he’d felt guilt gnawing at him, like a rat nibbling inside his stomach. It was as if his affair with Juliet was somehow responsible for the death of Carl Symons. But although he stayed in the shower until his body could no longer bear the sting of the hot water jets, he found it impossible to drown the picture that kept bubbling to the surface of his mind: the sight of the decapitated body in the silent cottage.
As he gulped down a mouthful of coffee, fatigue began to hit him, the cumulative weariness of work, frustrated lust and horror. It was nothing new for him to spend the night in a police station: that was the way he earned his living. But usually he was observing, murmuring a few words of advice whenever the questions took a dangerous turn. Having to find the answers himself was a thousand times harder. He lay down on his bed, but his eyes stayed open as his thoughts swirled around in circles. He’d left his CD player on in the living-room and the words of sixties soul songs swirled around in the air. Aretha Franklin’s classic cover of ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ struck a chord. He needed a little help from up above to get through this in one piece.
Eventually he rolled off the bed, shaved, dressed and strode in the direction of the city centre. For once he was glad of the cold morning gusts from the river smacking his cheeks. Anything to help him stay awake: it was going to be another long day. He didn’t wish to be alone, wondering what would happen if Casper May ever found out about his liaison with Juliet. It was safer to keep himself occupied. He had work to do, but there was something else, something that mattered more. Carl Symons was dead and he wanted the mystery solved. The sooner people lost interest in what he’d been doing out at Dawpool, the better. Besides, despite the horrors of the past few hours, he felt the familiar hunger for understanding. Why had someone wanted to destroy Carl with such savagery?
He decided to patronise the early morning cafeteria close to the law courts. Queen Victoria scowled disapprovingly at him as he crossed Derby Square. The forces recruitment office had windows full of advertisements for those who might be seduced by the prospect of learning to operate ‘the most sophisticated weapons systems in the western world’. Perhaps he should have considered a career in the army. Right now it seemed like a safer kind of existence.
The Condemned Man served cheap and coronary-inducing breakfasts immensely popular amongst people who used the courts. It was owned by a woman formidable in her girth, temper and disdain for the laws of food hygiene. Cynics reckoned that to all intents and purposes Muriel Scawfell enjoyed immunity from prosecution: her customers included half the city’s judges, while the portly members of a masonic lodge played darts in her back room every lunchtime.
It was early yet and the place was deserted except for a melancholic court usher and a couple of doe-eyed constables, who were holding hands at a corner table. Muriel’s vast bulk loomed behind the counter. Not for the first time Harry couldn’t help wondering if her blue and white apron had been made up from a circus top.
‘Usual, Harry?’ she bellowed.
He approached the counter, but shook his head. The smell of frying bacon which wafted over from the kitchen made him want to heave. He could almost taste the grease of the sausages on his tongue. As for black pudding - well, he’d had enough of blood products at Dawpool to last a lifetime.
‘Just a coffee. Mug, not a cup.’
Muriel’s double chins wobbled suspiciously. ‘You all right, young man?’
Harry wasn’t flattered; anyone under forty-five was young to Muriel. ‘Yeah, sure. A bit short of shut-eye, that’s all.’
‘You’re not the only one. Have you heard the news?’
He realised at once that she was talking about the death of Carl Symons. Muriel’s customers included scores of policemen for whom the high-fibre, low-cholesterol menus now favoured by their own canteens were anathema. What she didn’t know about crime in the city wasn’t worth knowing. Senior detectives despaired at the money spent on a new computer system when the most formidable intelligence-gathering network since the Stasi’s prime could be found down a passageway off Lord Street.
‘What news would that be?’ he asked cautiously.
‘That creep from the CPS has been found dead. You know, the ugly bugger. Carl Symons.’
He opted to feign bewilderment. Acting baffled was something he was good at; often it wasn’t much of an act. ‘Seriously?’
‘I’d say it’s pretty serious for him,’ Muriel said with a laugh that sounded like a clap of thunder. She prided herself on her macabre sense of humour. ‘Used to brag about never eating meat, y’know. Reckoned it shortens your life. Load of bollocks, I say. Fat lot of good all those lentils and beansprouts did him, eh?’
Muriel’s hatred of vegetarians was legendary. She regarded the craze for healthy eating as a sinister conspiracy designed to cheat decent working folk of honest employment. Never mind abhorrence of cruelty to animals; if it were left to Muriel, all the trendy nutritionists and their disciples would be dispatched to the abattoir without a second thought.
‘What’s the word?’
Muriel tapped the side of her nose with a beefy forefinger. ‘Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies, young man. All I’ll say is that I’m told foul play is suspected.’
Harry breathed an inward sigh of relief. So word hadn’t yet reached her on the grapevine of his own involvement. Before long she would find out and be furious that he hadn’t told her what he knew. But he was prepared to face her wrath on another day. This morning, he could not bear to talk about his visit to Carl Symons’ house.
‘Hard to believe,’ he mumbled.
‘You think so? I’m not so sure.’ She spooned enough coffee into a vast mug to keep him awake until the evening. ‘He rubbed folk up the wrong way, you know. I had an inspector in here only last week playing merry hell because Symons wouldn’t prosecute a couple of drugs dealers from Kirkdale. According to Symons, there was only a fifty-fifty chance of getting a conviction. He liked to back winners, did that feller. It’s not the way to make friends and influence people.’
Harry stared. ‘You’re not suggesting a disgruntled copper killed him?’
She disappeared behind a haze of steam as she filled the mug with hot water from a tottering urn that had somehow escaped the notice of the health and safety apparatchiks. ‘Course not. But he had enemies. Take it from me, there’s more than one person in this city who’ll be dancing on his grave.’
‘For instance?’
‘Now, Harry Devlin. Am I a blabbermouth?’
Does peeling onions make you cry? ‘Perish the thought, Muriel. Sorry. I never meant to ask you to tell tales out of school.’ He picked up the mug and turned towards the tables.
‘Mind, I’m not sworn to secrecy or anything like that,’ she said quickly. ‘As I said to that young sergeant half an hour ago, I reckon it’s only right to pass information on if they think it might be relevant.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. Muriel was leaning over the counter, her bosom casting a shadow over a large tray of crockery. ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘Your public duty, really.’
‘My very words! Well, I’d say no more, but at least you’re another one who can hold your tongue when it suits you.’
‘Sure.’ He moved towards her and lowered his voice. ‘Matter of fact, I seem to remember that he had a row with his partners when he was in private practice. Nerys Horlock and whatsisname.’
‘Brett Young,’ she said. ‘That’s right. There was a massive bust-up. Mind, I won’t hear a word said against Nerys. Not after the way she stuffed that good-for-nothing ex-husband of mine. I don’t suppose that pair will shed many tears for Carl Symons. But I was thinking of someone else.’
‘You were?’
She pu
t a finger to her lips. ‘This is strictly between you and me, all right?’
‘Swear to God and hope to die,’ he said, his fingers crossed behind his back.
‘That black girl had it in for him.’
Harry frowned. ‘Black girl?’
‘You know the one. Has all the fellers with their eyes out on stalks. She leaves her blouse unbuttoned when she thinks she can get away with it. Suki Anwar.’
Well, well. Suki worked for the Crown Prosecution Service, part of the Riverside branch like Carl Symons. She was attractive, and she knew it, but that didn’t make her a trollop. Muriel would have threatened a writ if anyone had suggested she was a racist, but Harry had never noticed a black face serving behind her counter. Mind you, she wasn’t unique amongst Liverpudlian employers in that.
‘Suki and Carl didn’t get on?’
Muriel stretched her head and upper body so far forward over the counter that he feared she would lose her balance. ‘At one time they did. One of my regulars told me he’d seen them together in the court building. Symons had his hand on her bum when he thought no-one was looking and from what I heard, she wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming about it. Later on, things changed.’
‘Did they have an affair?’
‘If they weren’t,’ Muriel said darkly, ‘it strikes me he had a funny idea of teaching her the ropes about prosecuting.’
‘Okay, suppose they had something going at one time. Suppose even that he chucked her. She’s a good-looking woman. Why should she worry about missing out on Carl Symons? I’d say it was a lucky break. She could do much better for herself with someone else.’
‘Men,’ Muriel said with a shake of her thinning curls. ‘You don’t understand women that well, do you?’
First Cut is the Deepest (Harry Devlin) Page 5
