First Cut is the Deepest (Harry Devlin)

by Edwards, Martin

  ‘Never pretended to,’ he said with a weary sigh.

  ‘Maybe it was just because Suki does fancy herself that she took it so badly when she and Carl Symons broke up. I heard her confiding in Nerys Horlock. Not that I got every word, mind, I’m no eavesdropper. They were sitting at that table over there. Suki had been crying and Nerys was telling her she ought to do something about it.’

  ‘Are you sure they were talking about Symons?’

  ‘I know what I heard, Harry Devlin, even though she did try to change the subject when she spotted me clearing the cups from the next table. There was hatred in her voice when she mentioned his name.’ Muriel’s bloodshot eyes gleamed with malice; she was almost salivating as she repeated herself: ‘And I’ll tell you something else. She said she wished he was dead.’

  Chapter Five

  Deep in thought, Harry trudged across from the Condemned Man to his office in Fenwick Court. He had learned over the years that it was a mistake to underestimate Muriel, but all the same he boggled at the idea that Suki Anwar had crept out to the Harbour Master’s Cottage and butchered Carl Symons. He’d come across her several times since she’d moved up from London. She was young with a lot to learn and although he didn’t know her well, he could not bring himself to believe that she was capable of such savage violence.

  Back in his room, he pulled a matrimonial file out of the cabinet. At ten o’clock he was due to attend an appointment before the district judge with counsel and a client who was seeking a divorce. Her husband was a property speculator who had made a small fortune out of construction projects around the marina. To celebrate their wedding anniversary, he’d bought his wife a sapphire eternity ring. Her pleasure in the gift had been compromised when, on going through his pockets, she had found a receipt from Boodle and Dunthorne for two identical rings and she had kicked him out of the house within half an hour. He was now living with the other recipient of his generosity, a svelte nineteen-year-old called Tammy.

  Next stop the law courts. The whole building buzzed with conversation. As well as the usual hum of minor villains making last-minute business deals on their mobile phones, groups of lawyers were huddled together eagerly exchanging gossip. A single name was on their lips. Harry heard it time and again as he took the steps of the main staircase two at a time.

  Carl Symons. Carl Symons. Carl Symons.

  The men and women who made their living here were accustomed to crime. Murder trials were commonplace. But this was something new. One of their own was dead: a man who had often strode down these corridors, conferring with counsel, shaking his head at any hint of a last-minute plea-bargain. For once a killing had come close to home.

  Harry wanted to learn more about Carl Symons. If he could understand the man, he might have a chance to fathom why he had been killed. Only if the case was wrapped up soon would he be able to breathe again. If the inquiry stalled, the police might put him under the microscope - and he didn’t want that. He couldn’t deny that he’d had the opportunity; they might use their imagination so far as motive was concerned.

  Turning right at the top of the stairs, he headed for the rooms reserved for legal representatives. In the consultation rooms there was no sign of Suki Anwar or any of the other prosecutors. Neither his client nor the barrister instructed on her behalf had yet arrived and he wasn’t in the mood for exchanging prurient tittle-tattle with his professional brethren. Especially if word had seeped out that he’d been the one to find the body. The law library should be open by now; he might as well skulk in there until it was time for his conference.

  After the hubbub downstairs, the silence in the library was as welcome as breeze in a heatwave. Feeling like a barbarian at the gates of Rome, he gazed at the long rows of books. Finally he pulled down a fat and ancient volume from the metal shelving. Broom’s Legal Maxims. On his rare visits here as a trainee solicitor, he had always indulged himself by stealing a glance at its solemn precepts. Their remoteness from the real world of legal practice never failed to divert him. He opened the page at random and picked out a Latin phrase, freely translated for the benefit of those who lacked a classical education. Ubi jus, ibi remedium. Where there is a wrong, there is a remedy. He grunted: who was old Broom trying to kid?

  He put the book back and moved into the area by the counter where the librarian was peering at a computer screen. Hunched over a desk on the other side of the room was a woman whose back was turned to him. But the leather jacket draped over the back of her chair was unmistakable. A doorstop of a textbook, Rayden and Jackson on Divorce, lay unopened in front of her. She was staring out through the window, but Harry was sure that she was not spellbound by the prospect of the Mersey beyond the office blocks outside. He wondered if in her mind she was picturing the tableau at the Harbour Master’s Cottage, with the SOCO team clustered around Carl Symons’ body.

  He sidled up to her and murmured, ‘Finished with Rayden?’

  Her head jerked. He couldn’t remember ever having seen Nerys Horlock look startled before. She always liked to be in control and relished her reputation for ruthlessness. Other lawyers nicknamed her Cruella. Possibly she’d had more in common with her old partner Carl Symons than people thought. She had her own firm these days, a low-overhead operation in a Toxteth waste land. A temp who had once spent a fortnight with Crusoe and Devlin had come straight from a period working there. She’d had the unenviable task of providing holiday cover for Irma, Nerys’s famously long-serving and long-suffering secretary, and she’d hated every minute. According to her, Nerys didn’t subscribe to the fashionable nostrum that her firm’s human resources were her most important asset. For her, employees - other than the eternally loyal Irma - came some way down the list, well below paper clips and staples. Harry thought of her as the archetypal sole practitioner and found it hard to imagine her sharing power with Symons and Brett Young. Perhaps that was the point: their firm had scarcely lasted five minutes before the inevitable break-up.

  ‘Checking a point of law?’ she asked. Her accent was unvarnished Scouse. She’d never forgotten her origins - born and bred in Toxteth, daughter of a stevedore and a lollipop lady - and there was no danger of her letting anyone else forget them, either. This morning she was full of cold and more catarrhal than ever. ‘Not like you, Harry.’

  ‘There’s a first time for everything.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so.’ She shoved the book towards him and with her other hand stifled a yawn. There were bags under her eyes and Harry thought she looked as weary as he felt. ‘So - taking your deerstalker out of mothballs, then?’

  ‘I hardly knew Carl Symons,’ he said evasively.

  ‘You didn’t miss much.’

  ‘So I gather.’ He took a breath and said, ‘Sorry he’s dead?’

  Hard blue eyes bored into him. ‘No.’

  ‘At least that’s honest.’

  ‘We do enough fibbing in the course of duty every day of the week, don’t we?’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Come on,’ she said wearily. ‘You’re no saint yourself.’

  His mind flashed back to the previous evening and he gave an uneasy shrug. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And by the way, don’t think I didn’t notice. You avoided my question. Going to poke your nose into this one? Fancy playing the poor man’s Sam Spade again?’

  ‘It’s a bad habit,’ he said. ‘I keep telling myself to break it. Leave everything to the professionals. They know what they’re about.’

  She made a scoffing noise. ‘You sound like an errant husband, promising to keep his dirty little paws off the dolly birds. They never do, y’know.’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t pretend I’m not intrigued. All the same, this is one case I’d rather sit out.’

  ‘Too many suspects? After all, Carl didn’t exactly court popularity.’

  ‘That’s one reason. I’d never have time to talk to them all.’

  ‘You’re not making a bad start. My name’s sure to come up when the p
olice decide to check out whether my late lamented ex-partner had any enemies. Their only problem is, they’ll be inundated.’

  ‘I heard the split was bitter.’

  ‘Yeah, the three of us finished up hating the sight of each other. Looking back on it, Symons, Horlock and Young was a marriage made in hell.’

  ‘Most marriages are,’ Harry said on impulse.

  She gave a harsh laugh. ‘At least it’s one trap I never fell into.’

  He guessed that probably she frightened most men off. And yet, even full of cold, she exuded both sexuality and danger. He knew enough about perfume to recognise ‘Poison’ and even here, in the sober surroundings of the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, he could believe that beneath the crisp dark lawyer’s suit lurked a creature of the wild. Her teeth were small but sharp. Easy to imagine her snarling and biting, taking pleasure in savagery. Without thinking, he took half a pace back.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He faked a coughing fit. ‘Sorry. I had a bad night.’

  ‘You and me both. I didn’t get a wink.’

  He raised his eyebrows. But teasing Nerys Horlock was about as wise as tickling a tiger.

  ‘You needn’t get excited,’ she said drily. ‘I wasn’t locked in the throes of passion. It couldn’t have been more mundane, actually. You’ll have noticed I’ve got the dreaded lurgi. I can’t even remember what it feels like to breathe normally. In the end, I got out of bed and started snuffling over a set of month-end accounts.’

  ‘Beats counting sheep.’ He paused. ‘So, you found Carl Symons impossible to work with?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. He was a smart lawyer and he worked hard. That’s why I went in with him. Same goes for Brett Young. But I soon realised it was a big mistake.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘Well, the government didn’t help, sticking the knife into the legal aid budget. That fat cat on the Woolsack slashed our income and all the time he was living it up like a medieval pope.’

  ‘Come on. There must have been more to it than that.’

  She coughed. ‘Let’s just say I prefer the single life.’

  ‘And Carl?

  ‘I suppose he was a loner too.’

  ‘Which just left Brett?’

  Nerys bit her lip. ‘He wasn’t made of the right stuff, if you ask me. He wanted to keep the ship afloat, but it was never going to work. We bitched at each other constantly. Of course, Brett had most to lose.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  She hesitated. ‘Well, he’d bought a swish new house in Formby, his borrowings were sky high.’

  Harry sensed that she was keeping something back. ‘Surely you were in the same boat?’

  ‘At least when I baled out, I managed to pay off what I owed and set up on my own with the minimum of capital outlay. Carl didn’t fancy being self-employed any longer, so he became a prosecutor. We cut our losses. For Brett, it was - different.’

  ‘I’ve not seen him lately. Last I heard, he was temping for a cowboy outfit which handles tribunal cases for a contingency fee. What’s he doing now?’

  ‘God knows. We don’t keep in touch.’

  ‘How did he react when you broke up the firm?’

  She coloured. ‘There was nothing he could do. Last time I bumped into him, he said his house was being repossessed. It wasn’t a long conversation. He told me he found it impossible to forgive and forget. He said I’d let Carl destroy him. You see, Carl was the one who issued the formal papers dissolving the partnership.’

  Harry stared at her. ‘You’re not suggesting that he killed Carl?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, Harry,’ she said fiercely. ‘And by the way, aren’t you forgetting that you’ve resolved not to take an interest in this particular can of worms?’

  ‘Sorry. You’re right. I made the mistake of having breakfast at the Condemned Man this morning. Carl’s death was Muriel’s sole topic of conversation. I suppose I shouldn’t have listened.’

  ‘Muriel?’ Nerys’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did she have to say?’

  ‘She made it clear she was a member of your fan club.’

  Nerys shrugged. ‘Her old feller deserved to be taken to the cleaners. Bad case of middle-aged-man syndrome. But never mind that. If anyone has picked up any inside information about the murder already, it will be Muriel. Did she tell you anything?’

  Her curiosity intrigued him. ‘She didn’t put you in the frame, if that’s what you’re wondering. On the contrary. She reckoned that Symons’ worst enemy was neither you nor Brett.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘Suki Anwar.’

  Nerys started. ‘Suki?’

  ‘A woman scorned, that’s Muriel’s theory. She reckons Suki and Carl had an affair.’

  ‘For Chrissake!’ Nerys was hoarse with anger. ‘I never heard such bullshit!’

  ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  ‘You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about!’ She shoved the textbook towards him. ‘Here you are. I have to get on with my work.’

  As she hurried out of the library, Harry put Rayden back on the shelf. One thing he’d learned was that the answers to the puzzles that really mattered to him were never to be found in legal textbooks. Or in Latin maxims.

  Daniel Roberts ground his teeth as Pamela experimented with the search facility on her computer. The dark-haired woman was standing by his side, shifting from one foot to another. Maybe she shared his impatience, maybe she was simply ill-at-ease. She was nothing like the few double-chinned lawyers he’d come across over the years. He had an impression of suppressed tension as she stared at the screen, sensed that she was trying to shut out the consciousness of his presence beside her. Was she afraid of him? Instinct told him that she was. He could even guess why. He felt exhilarated, yet he knew he mustn’t surrender to his obsession. This wasn’t the time to let things get out of hand.

  ‘What - what do you want to know about Harry Devlin?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  ‘He’s a partner in a small firm called Crusoe and Devlin. They have an office in Fenwick Court, five minutes from here.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I’ve met him briefly and I’ve heard a bit about him.’

  ‘What have you heard?’

  The woman turned to face him, her eyes wide. ‘His wife was murdered.’

  Pamela gave a little gasp. She’d been like a spectator at the ring-side, watching boxers sparring before the main fight. The mention of murder gave her an opportunity to edge her way back into the conversation. But neither of the others paid her any attention. Daniel Roberts’ gaze was fixed on the younger woman. He was taken aback, but he contrived not to reveal it, save for a momentary flickering of the eyelids.

  ‘And - when was that?’

  ‘Two or three years back, I think.’

  ‘The person who killed her was caught?’

  ‘No-one ever faced trial. From what I gather, the murderer died or disappeared or something. There was a mystery about what actually happened.’ She was talking rapidly, as if glad to have found a safe topic of conversation. ‘By all accounts, Harry Devlin’s been mixed up himself in one or two murder cases since then. I once heard someone say that he fancies himself as an amateur detective. Criminal law’s his main speciality, so perhaps it’s not too surprising.’

  Pamela resumed her pressing of buttons on the keyboard, apparently at random. Choosing his words with care, Daniel said, ‘Sounds like an interesting character.’

  ‘Bit of a loner, I think.’

  ‘There are worse things than being a loner.’

  Suddenly Pamela exclaimed in triumph. ‘Ah, here are his details! It’s just a question of knowing the right directory to check. Now you can read it for yourself.’

  Daniel peered at the screen. The text listed the name, address, phone and fax numbers of Harry’s firm. It revealed that he had taken his law degree at Liverpool Polytech
nic and learned his trade with Maher and Malcolm before setting up with Jim Crusoe. He dealt with crime, family law and civil litigation.

  ‘Is that what you were looking for?’ Pamela asked, basking in her new-found command of the technology.

  ‘It’s a start.’ Daniel frowned. ‘But it doesn’t tell me much. Where can I find out more?’

  ‘Why don’t you give him a call? Our job is to help promote firms like Crusoe and Devlin. If you like, I can print this data up and then you can fix up an appointment.’

  ‘I’d be grateful for the print-out. But - I don’t wish to meet him just yet. How could I find out more about him?’

  The dark-haired woman studied him as Pamela printed the file. ‘Difficult to say. If you could give me some idea of what you’re trying to discover…’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, picking up the sheet as it slipped out of the machine on her desk. ‘I need to give this a little more thought. You have both been very helpful. Thank you.’

  With that he was gone. As the door closed behind him, Pamela turned to her companion and said, ‘Creepy, wasn’t he, Andrea? What was all that about, do you think?’

  The other woman shivered. ‘I have no idea. No idea at all. But you’re right. I wonder if Harry Devlin knows that someone is asking questions about him.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Mrs May called you,’ Suzanne the receptionist said as Harry walked through the door. ‘I said you were out on a court appointment, but she asked if you’d ring back as soon as you got in. Said she needed to speak to you urgently.’

  His stomach lurched even as he forced himself to give an elaborately casual nod. It wouldn’t do for Suzanne to pick up the idea that Juliet was anything more than a tediously persistent marketing consultant. The switchboard girl had a genius for gossip; in comparison, Muriel Scawfell was the soul of discretion.

  ‘I’ll give her a buzz when I have a moment.’

  ‘Do you want me to ring her back now?’

  ‘It’ll keep,’ he said, with an effort of will. ‘I expect she simply wants me to proof-read the text for the advertisement we’re planning.’