First Cut is the Deepest (Harry Devlin)

by Edwards, Martin

  ‘Fancy a cheddar surprise, sir?’

  Startled, he took a pace back. A plump assistant in the smart green overall was thrusting a biscuit barrel under his nose. Her voice resonated with evangelical zeal. The biscuits had an irresistibly tangy new taste, she assured him.

  ‘It’s a special promotion. Try one and see. You’ll want another, take my word.’

  He took a bite from the biscuit she handed him, conscious of her expectant gaze. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘Let me savour it,’ he said, reluctant to tell her that it seemed indistinguishable from the average cream cracker. The woman caught the eye of a passing housewife and launched into her sales patter. Harry seized the chance to slink away. His trolley was almost full and he pushed it towards the racks of wine and beer. A twelve-pack of Tetley’s completed his shop; now he was equipped if his nerve began to crack.

  As he unloaded his purchases at the checkout, he told himself that Andrea Gibbs must be mistaken. There was bound to be a simple explanation. The Welshman had been looking for legal advice from a small firm who wouldn’t charge the earth, but then found someone else to consult. She’d spotted him before the Legal Group meeting and jumped to the wild conclusion that he was some kind of stalker. If so, he wasn’t conspicuously patient; there had been no sign of him when Harry had come out of the Titanic Rooms.

  The cashier, a fierce young woman evidently fresh from a training course in cross-selling techniques, unleashed a volley of questions as she swiped the bar code on each product. Did he need his car-park ticket validated? Swipe. Would he like any extra cash? Swipe. Was he interested in twenty-four hour banking? Swipe. The bargain offers in kitchen hardware were available for one day only. Swipe. How about redeeming the loyalty vouchers he had earned? He could exchange them for a citrus press or opt for the long haul and put them towards a family picnic hamper. Groggily, Harry crammed things into unco-operative carrier bags. Never mind the Welshman, the challenges of everyday living were enough to cope with. Life was too short to worry about the wilder speculations of a woman with nerves as ragged as Andrea’s.

  The car park was full by the time he wheeled his purchases outside. Drivers were circling like carrion crows, scanning the lanes for an empty space, heedless of the people weaving back through the traffic to their vehicles. As Harry tried to cross to his MG, brakes squealed and he scuttled back to the safety of the pavement, losing control of his trolley in the process. It careered into another coming in the opposite direction and piled high with carrier bags. The accident sent both trolleys crashing into the wall of the supermarket.

  ‘What the fucking hell do you think you’re playing at?’ a thick voice demanded. ‘For two pins…’

  Harry’s first instinct was to tense as he prepared to defend himself against an acute manifestation of trolley rage. His second impulse was to glance again at the man in the sheepskin coat who was waving his arms in such a menacing fashion. Thought so. It was Rick Spendlove. His face was grey, his eyes bloodshot, but after his performance at the Maritime Bar, it was a miracle that he’d managed to crawl out of bed.

  ‘Sorry, Rick,’ he said breezily. ‘I just didn’t see you there. We’d better not come to blows, eh? The ranks of the Liverpool lawyers are thinning out as it is.’

  ‘Oh.’ Spendlove choked back whatever expletives had been on his lips. Perhaps he’d been on the point of threatening to issue a writ. ‘It’s you.’

  Harry retrieved the trolleys and tossed a couple of the bags which had fallen from Rick’s heap of goodies back inside. He was pleased to discover that even hard-bitten business lawyers consumed Sugar Puffs and Wagon Wheels as well as plentiful supplies of Alka-Seltzer. Spendlove spotted the smile that played on his lips and turned the colour of beetroot.

  ‘I have the girls over every other Sunday,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Unless my first wife decides to punish me for some misdemeanour, real or imagined. You know how it is.’

  ‘Not really. I never had children.’ Never divorced, either. He’d always hoped that one day Liz would change her mind and give their marriage a second try. One night his dreams had come true and she’d returned, although only out of fear. Within twenty-four hours she’d been knifed to death.

  ‘Unlucky.’ For a moment the hard features seemed to have a softer edge. ‘Kids almost make marriage worthwhile. That, and being able to leave it to the wife to do the bloody shopping. Oh well, price of freedom, eh? Work hard, play hard, that’s my credo.’

  ‘Feeling better after last night?’ Harry asked. He wondered if he’d caught a glimpse of the real man beneath the business lawyer’s braggadocio, but after seeing Rick’s behaviour towards Suki, he wasn’t inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. So he contented himself with the chilly smile he usually reserved for interviewing child-molesters.

  ‘You were there?’ Spendlove groaned. Harry could smell the stale whiff of alcohol. ‘Christ, I can’t remember much about it, tell you the truth.’

  ‘Probably for the best.’

  ‘Made myself look a right prat, didn’t I?’ Spendlove’s flat Yorkshire vowels were more in evidence than usual today. He pushed a hand through his curly black hair and scanned Harry’s expression for reassurance. Finding none, he added, ‘These young girls, you know what it is. Bloody feminism. They come into the profession - they’re outnumbering us now, it’s a statistical fact! - and think they’re God’s gift. Trouble is, the likes of Anwar, they don’t have much of a sense of humour. Give me an older woman any day. They don’t yell and they don’t tell.’

  ‘All the same in the dark, eh?’

  Spendlove clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re right, Harry. You know a thing or two.’

  Harry sighed. ‘One thing you mentioned last night that I didn’t know. Something about Suki having a tattoo?’

  ‘Oh, that. Well, maybe the less said the better, eh?’

  ‘I was intrigued, that’s all.’

  ‘I bet. You fancy giving her one, then?’

  Harry’s immediate urge was to bury his boot into Spendlove’s private parts, but he simply said, ‘It’s not that. You said that Carl Symons told you about the tattoo. I didn’t even realise you and he were pals.’

  ‘Wouldn’t say we were. Business acquaintance, that’s all. He consulted me when his practice was on its uppers. He was worried about being made bankrupt. As it turned out, he got off lightly. He and Horlock did a deal which left Young carrying the can. Why the stupid bastard fell for it, I don’t know.’

  ‘You were involved in the negotiations?’

  ‘Bit of background advice. Nothing meaty. There’s not a lot of money in winding up a small legal practice. A Chancellor of the Exchequer who wants to make a name for himself by restructuring the economy, that’s what you need if you want to make a few bob in my line of business.’

  ‘Didn’t you have something going with Nerys at one time?’

  Rick frowned. ‘It was all exaggerated. Tell you the truth - this is just between us, all right? - she gave me the cold shoulder.’

  ‘You kept in touch with Symons, though?’

  Spendlove shook his head. ‘Our paths hardly ever crossed. It was like you and me. I mean, no disrespect, but you’re not a member of my golf club, your firm doesn’t sponsor concerts at the Liverpool Philharmonic. We may both be lawyers, but what else do we have in common?’

  Certainly not our taste in breakfast cereals and chocolate biscuits. ‘When did he tell you about the tattoo?’

  ‘Must have been a couple of months back. I bumped into him at the Maritime. He didn’t drink there often, but he was celebrating some case or other and we got talking. The way you do. He said something about Anwar and I said I wouldn’t mind a piece. He gave me a sly look and told me about the tattoo.’

  ‘He’d had an affair with her?’

  ‘Let’s put it this way,’ Spendlove said in a judicial tone, ‘he was certainly keen to give me the impression that he had.’

  ‘Showing off?’
<
br />   ‘Sure. Obviously whatever had been going on between them was over. Maybe she dumped him, I don’t know. He was trying to act like a man of the world. Only trouble was, the poor bastard was so fucking ugly, a woman would have to be desperate before she’d let him inside her knickers. I suppose Anwar must have been after promotion. It happens, Harry. It happens.’

  Harry said, almost to himself, ‘Suki was involved with Carl Symons and friendly with Nerys Horlock. Now both of them are dead.’

  ‘What are you suggesting? That Anwar killed them?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just wondering why two lawyers who’d once been partners came to be murdered.’

  Spendlove sniggered. ‘You disappoint me, Harry. To think you once had a name for being a kind of Scouse Sherlock Holmes. I’d have thought it was obvious to anyone who’s ever had to cope with the shit that gets shovelled at a meeting of partners in a law firm. Elementary. Who had cause to hate that pair the most? The partner they stitched up, surely?’

  Harry didn’t drive straight home from the supermarket. He wanted to see for himself whether Andrea was right and Brett had disappeared without a trace. A short detour took him to Toxteth and five minutes later he was parking outside the disused butcher’s shop. The street was quiet except for a couple of bespectacled students carrying bags full of books. He could hear them arguing as he walked down the side passage and rang Brett’s doorbell.

  ‘Call it a masterpiece of jurisprudential analysis? I read it from cover to cover and there wasn’t a single reference to the moral imperative.’

  ‘But you have to face it. Law is simply a system of rules.’

  Harry grinned. A couple of years filling in legal aid forms would knock all that out of them. There was no answer from Brett. He banged hard on the door with his fist, but to no avail and was on the point of giving up when a middle-aged woman came under the archway, her high heels clomping on the paving stones. She had cropped red hair and a crooked nose. He had to look twice as she fished in a huge handbag for a Yale key. Her name, according to the card by the door, was Madame Brigitte.

  ‘Who are you after, chuck?’ she asked.

  ‘Have you seen Brett Young lately?’

  She pouted, a mannerism that probably wouldn’t have been attractive even when she was twenty years younger. ‘He’s getting more bloody visitors than me all of a sudden. I keep hearing people ringing his bell. The busies have been round. Journalists, too. Has he done something, then? What’s it all about?’

  Her voice, he thought, was eerily reminiscent of the young Cilla Black’s. It wouldn’t have come entirely as a surprise if she’d repeated her question by declaiming the first line of ‘Alfie’.

  ‘I’m a friend of his. He’s gone missing.’

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

  ‘His girlfriend’s raised the alarm. A couple of old friends of his have died recently and she’s worried he might have done something silly.’

  ‘Oh, is that it? I think I know the girl you mean. Looks as though she could do with a good square meal inside her?’ Madame Brigitte giggled. ‘I shouldn’t worry. He does seem a bit moody, but it’s true, y’know. The quiet ones are always the worst. Well, I saw him the night before last. Getting on for ten, it must have been. We passed on the stairs. I’d been saying goodbye to a friend, your mate was on his way out. What’s the betting he’s playing away from home? He’s probably had a lady passenger who invited him in for a cup of cocoa. Twenty to one, he’ll still be there. That’s cabbies for you.’

  Harry stepped aside to let her put the key in the lock. The passageway gave on to a small yard ringed by a wall topped with spikes for security. The sharp tips were rusting but they were still more than a match for even the most determined burglar. There was a scattering of broken bricks, odd lengths of pipe and bits of wooden pallet. Convolvulus sprouted through cracks in the uneven concrete and strands of ivy clung to the back wall of the building. Set into the wall was a steel door.

  ‘How long since the butcher’s shop closed down?’ he asked.

  ‘Search me. Twelve months, maybe more. Before my time.’

  ‘Was the place left empty?’

  She nodded. ‘Went out of business because of mad cow disease. Quite right, too. Me, I never eat meat. You’ve got to look after yourself, haven’t you?’

  With that, she gave him a brilliant smile marred only by the gaps in her front teeth and waved goodbye. As the door swung shut behind her, he heard the clatter of the high heels as she began the climb upstairs to her torture chamber.

  He walked round to the front of the building and tried to peer in through the minute gaps between the boards in the window. The security people had done a good job; in this neck of the woods, they had plenty of practice. He could see nothing but darkness.

  Suddenly he heard a car approaching and stepped back. When he looked round, he saw that it bore the insignia of Merseyside Police. He put his hands in his pocket and ambled over to his MG. Two young constables sprang out of the police car and cast him a glance before marching under the archway.

  No sense in hanging around here. He drove home, unloaded the food and set off on a walk along the riverside in the hope of clearing his head. It was a dull damp day and wisps of mist were still hanging over the Mersey. Every now and then dogs being taken for walks snapped at his ankles, but he paid them no heed.

  It was nonsense, he decided, to suspect Brett of murder and decapitation simply because he happened to live above a derelict butcher’s shop. There was no reason to suspect that he had even rudimentary skills in sawing off the head of a corpse. It certainly didn’t form part of the curriculum at the College of Law; not even the probate course. But it wouldn’t help if Madame Brigitte, who’d not be keen to antagonise the forces of law and order, told the constables that she had seen Brett leave his flat on the night of Nerys’s death. When they heard that, he would be installed as their prime suspect - if he wasn’t already. And perhaps, Harry thought, they were right and Brett was guilty. It had to be more likely than Ken’s farrago about the vampire-killer.

  His mind flashed back to the scene at the Harbour Master’s Cottage. The bloodied head with its ghastly smile. The thought that he might have spent the evening before last swigging beer with a man who could commit such savagery turned his stomach.

  It was drizzling as he ambled towards the entrance to the flats at Empire Dock. As he approached, a figure emerged from the shadows by the side of the huge old building and moved as if to intercept him before he reached the door. Peering through the gloom, he saw a woman in a closely fitted dark coat. She was wearing a headscarf and glasses; he could not make out her face. He drew nearer and, raising her arm, she hissed his name.

  He stopped in his tracks. Impossible to mistake that voice, even though she was disguising it with a huskiness that made Lauren Bacall’s throaty tones sound like falsetto. Yet Juliet and he had agreed she would never call on him at home. If she were recognised, a visit might prove impossible to explain away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  As she reached his side, she gripped his wrist so tightly that he winced. She was wearing no make-up and her cheeks were ashen.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she panted.

  Casper has found out. He couldn’t help shuddering.

  ‘Have you told him about us?’

  She stared at him, horrified. ‘For Christ’s sake! What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your husband knows, doesn’t he?’

  ‘No, no. You couldn’t be more wrong. In fact - I think we’re safe. For ever, with any luck.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘It’s terrible. I don’t mean to dance on his grave or anything like that. God, no. It’s terrible. But at least our problem’s solved.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Peter Blackwell died last night.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  At first the words didn’t ma
ke any sense to him. For a few moments he lost the power of speech. It was as if this latest shock had caused his vocal cords to seize up. Then he managed to clear his throat and find a few words. ‘You - you’d better come into the flat.’

  She took off the spectacles to look at her Rolex. He could see dark rings around her eyes. ‘I’ll have to leave in ten minutes. I’ve been hanging around here for half an hour and I’m due back home soon. I mustn’t be late.’

  ‘We don’t want to attract attention. I’ll go in first and you follow.’

  ‘No point. I’ve already spoken to your caretaker.’ When he winced, she said, ‘I had to. How was I to know which was your flat? I suppose I should have rung first, but I didn’t think. I assumed you’d be here.’

  The casual phrase struck Harry like a slap on the cheek. As far as Juliet was concerned, he had no life outside the office and their relationship. Then again, was she far wrong?

  ‘Listen, I was desperate to see you, to tell you the news. The caretaker said he’d seen you going out for a walk. He expected you back any time, so I thought it was worth hanging on. I told him I was a client. He offered to let me wait in his cubby-hole, but I said I’d rather keep a look-out for you in the car park.’

  ‘All right. Come inside and tell me about it.’

  He waited until she’d put the glasses back on and then led the way inside and nodded to Griff on the desk. ‘Found him, then?’ the caretaker asked, giving Juliet’s figure an appreciative appraisal.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ she said with a forced smile.

  Harry grunted, said nothing. Once they were inside the flat, she shrugged off her coat, rubbing her hands as he hung it up. She was wearing a white sweater and leather trousers and the thought struck him that, whatever the crisis, she contrived never to look less than gorgeous. But she was restless, like a cat wanting to sniff out unfamiliar territory. He waved her to the sofa but she wandered around the flat, picking up books, glancing at the covers, putting them back in the wrong place.