First Cut is the Deepest (Harry Devlin)

by Edwards, Martin

  ‘I was, as it happens. Only one slight problem. On the night of the storms, fares were thin on the ground. To the point of non-existence. People heard the gale warnings in good time and decided to stay put.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘You’re telling me. I spent a couple of hours driving round in the hope that there would be someone who was stranded by the weather, but there was nothing doing, so I pulled up off Sefton Park, turned off the radio and had a kip. One of those things. You don’t earn easy money in this job.’

  ‘And the police were happy with that?’

  ‘Obviously not. But what could they do? Arrest me?’ Brett’s voice was becoming shrill. ‘Even our local constabulary usually requires some shred of evidence before slapping on the cuffs. And if they don’t, the prosecutors certainly will. Fact is, if I’d killed him, I’d have been too proud of myself not to admit it.’

  ‘And Nerys Horlock, what about her?’

  ‘She stood back and let it happen.’ Brett swallowed hard. ‘You see, I thought I could trust them. One for all, all for one. Uberrimae fidei, the relationship of utmost good faith. You know, I was daft enough to believe all that crap about partnership they teach you at law school. I tell you, Harry, I’ve made some mistakes in my time, but that was the worst.’

  They were cruising along Upper Parliament Street; the Anglican Cathedral, floodlit yet strangely menacing, loomed to their left. A bare-legged woman in a leather mini-skirt twenty years too young for her was leaning against a phone box. As they passed, she caught Harry’s eye and gave him a gap-toothed smile. Harry recognised her and smiled back. Not that he wanted to become one of her clients: she was one of his.

  ‘What brought you together - you, Carl and Nerys?’

  ‘I’d been working for Ogley and Mulhearn out at Huyton and I wanted to make a break. I was fed up with working long hours, slaving away in the hope that one day they’d offer me a slice of the equity. I thought it was time to get my own snout in the trough. I’d met both Carl and Nerys in the courts. They were both seasoned litigators, seemed to have the right stuff.’

  Brett was talking quickly again. The car, too, was moving faster. Harry glanced at the speedometer and saw that they were well over the limit. ‘One day Nerys told me she and Carl fancied setting up on their own and wondered if I’d like to join them. I’d need to put in some capital, help get the show on the road, but they thought the business had a bright future. I jumped at the chance.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ Harry asked, silently bracing himself. Any minute now, they would hit something coming the other way.

  ‘You name it. I suppose we all skipped too many practice management seminars. Cashflow was never more than a trickle. We had plenty of work-in-progress, we just never seemed to get paid fast enough. I persuaded the others we needed more finance. They wouldn’t budge, so I traded with them. I’d take the lion’s share of the profits and in return I’d take out another loan, give the firm another capital injection.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Call it a calculated risk, if you like. Like jumping this traffic light - now.’

  Brett suddenly shoved his foot down hard. The car crashed through the red light and slewed into a side road. Harry found himself curling into a ball for fear of impact. He shut his eyes, but nothing happened. When he looked again, Brett had taken one hand off the wheel and and was clenching his fist in a kind of savage jubilation.

  ‘See? Sorry, but you’ll take my point. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you get away with it. Hundredth time around, you get flattened by a juggernaut.’

  ‘Do you play the percentages with all your passengers?’ Harry gasped. It felt as though all the breath had been knocked out of him.

  ‘Believe me, the law of averages is on my side. I’ve already run into one juggernaut. I was still hoping that we’d turn things round when Carl and Nerys decided that they’d had enough and dissolved the partnership. So much for good faith.’ He nodded to the right and said, ‘Nerys’s new office is half a mile up that road, you know. She’s fallen on her feet.’

  ‘I suppose from their point of view…’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about their point of view, all right?’ Brett shouted. ‘They did the dirty on me, don’t you understand? They ruined my bloody life!’

  After a minute of silence, Harry said, ‘Look, Brett, wouldn’t it be an idea to ease off on the pedals? I promise, I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘You’re not? Good!’

  Suddenly the car skidded to a halt. Harry’s stomach lurched. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘This is where I live,’ Brett said, waving at an old house with a battered green door and steel shutters on the ground floor windows. ‘If you’re not pushed for time, come in for a drink. I’m up to here with driving for one night. I could use a beer and maybe you feel the same.’

  Right now, there was nothing Harry wanted less. Still, better be tactful. He’d watched Taxi Driver too many times to have any desire to antagonise a cabbie whose nerve ends were showing. Brett Young looked nothing like Robert De Niro, it was true. But you could never be sure.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ he said later, putting his tankard down on the threadbare strip of carpet.

  ‘Have another drink.’

  Brett was sprawled across a bed-settee that had leaked a spring. Under the suede jacket, Harry had discovered, he was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend My client went to prison and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. His scuffed trainers were resting on an unopened six-pack of Tetley’s. The smoke from his cigarette hung in a haze in the little room, competing with the odour of damp from a patch above the floorboards. His mood had mellowed and for the past half hour he’d been recounting tales of life on the road. The propositions from legless women he brought home from clubs, the need to avoid thugs who would pull a knife rather than pay their fare. The stories palled with inebriated repetition. Every time Harry tried to steer the conversation back round to Carl or Nerys, Brett changed the subject. In the end, he’d abandoned the effort and savoured the taste of the beer on his tongue, waiting for a break in the conversational flow so that he could make his excuses and leave.

  Brett hadn’t bothered much with home furnishings. A few books: a dog-eared copy of Learning the Law, a paperback about pot-holing and a slim volume called Merseyside’s Underworld. Harry raised his eyebrows at the latter. Some kind of guide to Liverpudlian gangsters? He wondered grimly if Casper May rated a chapter all to himself. On a small cassette player, an Elvis Costello track was playing. One of his best: ‘God Give Me Strength’. You could say that again. Harry reached out and turned the music down a shade. Was it his imagination or could he hear the gentle swish of a cane from next door and the low snorts of pleasure from a satisfied customer?

  ‘Thanks, but I need to be up early. I’m in court first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Brett belched. ‘Anything out of the ordinary?’

  ‘This couple Jim bought a house for. They’ve had a run of bad luck and they’re blaming a poltergeist. So they decided to sue the sellers because they should have given vacant possession.’

  Brett’s eyes began to gleam. ‘Didn’t Andrea once tell me there was a case like that in New York? As I recall, the court decided that as a matter of law, the house was haunted. But I don’t think the precedent has ever been followed in this country.’

  ‘That’s why the clients were keen to bring the case in Liverpool,’ Harry said. ‘Anywhere else and they wouldn’t have had a ghost of a chance.’

  Brett guffawed. ‘Come on, have one for the road. I’ll drop you off later.’

  ‘For God’s sake, you can’t drive again tonight.’ Harry was out of his chair, standing over Brett with his arms folded. ‘You’re way over the limit. Don’t even think about it. I’m walking. The air will do me good.’

  Brett sprang to his feet. ‘You don’t have to go!’

  ‘It’s late,’ Harry said. ‘Look, I hope you patch it up with Andrea.’


  ‘We’re finished,’ Brett muttered. ‘Finished.’

  ‘Hey, don’t get things out of proportion. You know what that bastard Spendlove’s like.’

  Brett seized his wrist. ‘I know what she’s like. Yes, I do now. I know what she’s really like.’

  ‘That hurts,’ Harry said, trying to disentangle himself.

  Brett’s eyes were wide. They didn’t seem quite focused. ‘She’s dangerous, you know, Harry. She’s wearing me down, I can feel it. One day she’ll kill me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m afraid of her. God’s own truth.’

  Harry managed to pull free and took a couple of steps towards the door. ‘You’ve had too much to drink. You’re not making sense. Go to bed and sober up, eh?’

  Brett advanced towards him. ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he mumbled. ‘You don’t understand what I’ve been going through.’

  ‘I do, actually. You’re pissed. Simple as that.’

  Brett flung a punch at him. Harry dodged to one side and saw the fist miss his cheek by inches. Brett lost his footing and finished up on his knees. Tears were trickling down his cheeks.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he repeated. ‘She’s killing me.’

  ‘I suppose it’s fair to say that infidelity made me what I am today.’

  Jack Nicholson’s voice oozed over the titles to The Two Jakes. The belated sequel to Chinatown was a film Harry loved; he was protective about it, felt irked when people said it didn’t hold a candle to Polanski’s masterpiece. Thinking about the movie in the old Sierra had made him want to watch it again when he ought to be in bed, gathering strength for courtroom battle the following day. Perhaps he had a kinship with Jake Gittes, a detective haunted by memories.

  ‘You can’t forget what has happened in your life, any more than you can change it.’

  Of course it was true. On the long walk back from Toxteth, he’d decided he oughtn’t to spend any more time trying to unravel what had happened to Carl Symons, let alone attempting to make sense of Brett’s boozy ramblings. But he knew he could never scrub from his mind the picture of the blood-soaked body he’d seen in the gloom of the cottage by the riverside. The image would stay with him for ever.

  As he’d made his way down Myrtle Street, he’d spotted Peanuts Benjamin, a pimp and old client for whom he’d been acting at the time of Liz’s death. Peanuts was arguing with one of his girls’ customers and Harry hurried on, easily resisting any temptation to mediate. But the near-encounter had set him thinking about Liz again - and now he was afraid of sleep. He knew that when he dreamed, he would dream of the woman who had betrayed him, the woman whom he could never let go. Even in death, he realised, she meant more to him than Juliet. Jake was right: the footprints and the signs from the past are everywhere.

  ‘Everybody makes mistakes,’ Jake muttered as Harry began to doze. ‘But when you marry one, you pay for it for the rest of your life.’

  Fire and Rain

  …but it was butcher work; had I not been nerved by thoughts of other dead, and of the living over whom hung such a pall of fear, I could not have gone on. I tremble and tremble even yet, though till it was all over, God be thanked, my nerve did stand. Had I not seen the repose in the first face, and the gladness that stole over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realisation that the soul had been won, I could not have gone further with my butchery. I could not have endured the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam. I should have fled in terror and left my work undone.

  Yesterday I cut my wrist. A flesh wound only, little more than a scratch. I scarcely felt pain as the dark red fluid streaked across the pale skin. I bent my head so that my lips brushed against the wrist. The taste was spicy on my tongue. I couldn’t help but shudder as I sensed the life force flowing through me, greedily absorbed all the nourishment.

  I don’t deny that I’m drawn to blood - how could I? I think about it day and night and when I take it in, it makes me high. Yet it isn’t a disease: I’m not sick, whatever you might think. Consider it rather as a craving, like the fat man’s lust for chocolate cake.

  The trouble is that I want more and more. I lack restraint, I’ve lost all sense of shame. Never mind the rules, forget those old taboos. How many times have I dreamed that one day our blood would mingle - that we might explore eternity together?

  Chapter Ten

  ‘You were out late last night,’ Rhodri Nash said.

  Daniel Roberts glared across the formica-topped table. ‘Keeping watch, were you?’

  ‘Hey, no need to lose your rag. I was only commenting.’

  ‘When I need your comments, I’ll ask for them, all right?’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  Rhodri sounded hurt. He was a pudgy little man in his forties who had worked at the truck stop for as long as Daniel could remember. They spent a good deal of time together, especially at break times and when they had a coffee together at the end of a shift. Business wasn’t brisk outside the summer months, especially since the new road had taken away a good deal of the traffic and when the manager wasn’t around, they had little to do but chat. But they didn’t have much in common except their jobs. Daniel preferred to lose himself in his imaginings, Rhodri liked to talk even when he had nothing to say. That was the trouble. If his curiosity was aroused, he might mention it to other people. Daniel was a private person; he didn’t want to become a topic of conversation. Better try to put things right.

  ‘Sorry I bit your head off,’ he said. ‘But I had a bad night. I was out yesterday and the van broke down.’

  Rhodri grinned. He didn’t bear grudges, was always happy to accept an apology. Anything to keep the conversation trundling along. It was his break-time and they were in the café, but the place was deserted except for the buck-toothed girl in the check overall and she didn’t count. Serving a cup of tea was about Bronwen’s limit.

  ‘Hard luck. Battery on the blink again?’ In response to Daniel’s nod he added. ‘Told you so, boy.’

  ‘Should have listened to you, shouldn’t I? I’ll know better next time than to argue with the expert.’ On the rare occasions when Daniel made the effort, he could be gracious.

  Encouraged, Rhodri said, ‘Not much I don’t know about vans. So where did you get to, then? Haven’t seen you around so much lately. Time was when you never stirred beyond this place for one week after another.’

  Daniel’s jaw tightened. ‘Felt like a drive, didn’t I?’

  ‘You were out for hours. I called at the cottage when I knocked off mid-afternoon, see. I wondered if you fancied coming round for a pint in the evening, maybe watch the big match. There was no sign. Then, when I was closing the curtains before bed, I saw your lights coming up the track.’

  ‘You had a late night yourself. That must have been around one.’

  ‘Good game. Close thing, though. Went to extra time, then penalties.’ Rhodri shook his head. ‘Me, I can’t think of anything crueller than penalties.’

  ‘Shame I missed it.’ Daniel finished his coffee and stood up. ‘I’d best be going. Work to do.’

  Rhodri squinted at him. ‘That’s the second time this month you’ve said something about working. Not got a second job, have you? Or is it just a spot of DIY? What exactly do you get up to in that lonely little cottage of yours? I’ve often wondered.’

  Daniel ground his teeth. ‘Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’

  Rhodri smirked. ‘Secret, is it? Now you’ve got me wondering, you have.’

  ‘Nothing to wonder about.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll pop round one day, take a look-see.’

  Daniel gripped the top of the chair, squeezing it so hard his hand hurt. He had to force himself to keep his tongue civil; it was important not to make things worse. ‘When I want company, you can be sure you’ll be the first I ask round.’

  He waved to Bronwen as he left the café. His shoulders w
ere stiff with suppressed tension, but he knew it would be a mistake to let it show. Blame it on the van breaking down. It had been yet another long sleepless night. He was tired, but he’d done what he set out to do. Everything was going according to his plan. He mustn’t lose his nerve. Soon the moment he’d been waiting for would arrive at last and he would come face to face with Harry Devlin.

  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ Juliet said as soon as Suzanne put her through.

  Harry bit his lip, tasted a trace of blood. He had a sick feeling in his stomach that she wasn’t just worrying about the possible postponement of Crusoe and Devlin’s onslaught on the media. She sounded as though she were throwing down a gauntlet, expecting him to say ‘What do you mean, “we”?’

  Striving for calm, he said, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Not on the phone.’

  ‘Okay. Where and when?’

  ‘Are you free now? I don’t want to wait. But I can’t come to your office. We might be overheard. And we need to be careful about being seen together anywhere else.’

  He’d only just returned from Widnes County Court and he had plenty to do. In particular, he wanted to talk to Nerys Horlock again. Before leaving home, he’d checked his answering machine; he’d been too tired to do so the previous evening. Nerys had left a message whilst he was out at the Titanic Rooms. She’d never called him at home before.

  ‘There’s something I wanted to tell you about,’ her disembodied voice had said. ‘I almost mentioned it when we met at the magistrates’, but it didn’t seem right somehow. On second thoughts, I’d like to have a word in your ear. Why don’t you ring me? Later this evening if you like. I’ll be on the office number until ten. Plenty of paperwork to catch up with.’

  He threw a guilty glance at the letters spilling out of his in-tray and remembered Willis Arkwright’s strictures on the need to prioritise. Well - first things first.

  ‘I’m starving,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we have a sandwich together?’

  ‘I don’t think I could manage anything to eat right now. I just want to talk. In private. Not in your office. Jim will start getting suspicious.’