First Cut is the Deepest (Harry Devlin)

by Edwards, Martin

  ‘Wouldn’t mind a spot of whisky. It’ll warm me up. God, it was freezing in that bloody car park.’ She looked around and shivered. ‘So this is where you live. I’ve always wondered about it. Pictured you on your own at night, watching the late movie, then pulling the curtains back and staring out over the river. I’ve wanted to be here with you, dreamed of spending the night in your bed.’

  ‘Peter,’ Harry said, his tone harsher than he had intended. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘It was an accident,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Car crash?’

  ‘No, not that.’

  ‘What, then?’ He felt a surge of impatience. Was it his imagination, or did she sound defensive, afraid of his reaction?

  ‘He must have had too much to drink last night. You remember that steep flight of stairs leading up to his flat? He fell all the way down to the bottom. Broke his neck.’

  He stared. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I’ve never been more serious, darling. Now, how about that whisky?’

  He found a bottle of Bell’s and poured for both of them. ‘Linda was still staying with him, presumably?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the terrible thing. She found his body. Poor woman, it’s a wonder she hasn’t lost her mind. First her husband dies, then her only child.’

  He wrinkled his brow, trying to get things straight in his mind. ‘You mean - she was there when he fell down the stairs?’

  ‘No, no.’ She seemed to hesitate. ‘I don’t mean that. She’d been so worried about him lately. Drinking heavily, not bothering to eat. These last few weeks, she said it herself, he’d been like a different person. The old Peter, you know, he would never have threatened me in the way he did on the telephone. Linda couldn’t get through to him. She was still badly shaken herself. Her house wrecked, all the stuff about her neighbour being killed. She wanted a break from it. So she went for a walk along the sea front, leaving him alone with his bottles while she tried to clear her head. When she got back, she opened the front door - and found him lying there. Of course she dialled 999. But it was no good, he died on his way to hospital.’

  Harry swore. His mind was in a whirl. Part of him thought: he’ll never threaten us again. But he couldn’t help feeling guilty at his selfishness. Besides, in his heart, he was not sure that they were yet safe.

  ‘She rang me from Arrowe Park Hospital that night. Of course, she was in a dreadful state. The medics wanted to keep an eye on her, but she hates hospitals. She just wanted to get away, have some time to herself. To start grieving. Trouble was, she had nowhere to go. Her own house is still a wreck. She couldn’t face going back to the place where she’d found Peter. So I drove over there and brought her back to Parkgate. We have plenty of room. There’s a sort of granny annexe. I’m putting her up there for the time being.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘How do you imagine? Of course, she’s devastated, not thinking straight. It’s only to be expected.’ She sipped the whisky. ‘Jesus, that’s better. One way or another, it’s been quite a few days.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘Even though I’ve never had a kid,’ she said sombrely, ‘I can imagine it’s the worst nightmare any parent can experience. To have your only son die before you.’

  ‘I suppose there’s never been any suggestion that Peter …’ he began tentatively.

  ‘Threw himself down the stairs? It did cross my mind. He was a mixed-up guy, but poor Linda says this was a genuine accident, not suicide.’

  ‘Mothers aren’t always the best judges. She wouldn’t want to face up to the possibility that the son she loved so much had killed himself.’

  ‘Maybe, but all the same she convinced me. She reckons he was so fuddled, he opened the main door and stepped out into thin air, believing he was walking into the kitchen or bedroom or something. From what she says, the police see it that way too.’

  After a few moments’ silence, he said, ‘I suppose there’s no question of - anyone else being involved?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she snapped.

  ‘I mean - is it possible he had a helpful push?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ She scowled and said through gritted teeth, ‘I never heard such a crazy idea! Honestly, you have murder on the brain.’

  ‘Is it so surprising? Two lawyers I know have been killed within the past week. You know about the woman who died, Nerys Horlock? She used to be Carl Symons’ partner.’

  ‘Sure, I read about it in the newspaper. But take it from me, Peter’s death is something else. An accident, pure and simple. Understand?’

  There was a menace in her voice that he’d never expected to hear. Flinching, he remembered that this was Casper May’s wife. Her husband might beat her up every now and then, but she wasn’t soft. He bit his lip. He was familiar with every inch of her body, had kissed her all over, from head to toe. But it was beginning to dawn on him that, despite all that had happened between them, he still didn’t know her very well.

  Struggling to lighten the mood, he put his hands up in a gesture of appeasement. ‘Okay, okay. I give in. It was an accident.’

  She swallowed the whisky. ‘Sorry if I bit your head off. Is it any wonder my nerves are frayed after the last few days?’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She eyed him over her tumbler. ‘You may be a worrier, but you don’t actually lose it. You don’t panic. I’ve noticed that.’

  ‘There’s no need to panic, is there?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘No, there isn’t. You know, I hate to say this. Linda’s a good friend of mine and I would never have wished unhappiness on her. But I’d be lying if I said I was heartbroken. Shocked, yes. I can’t believe he’s dead. We both know what it means, though. No-one will ever find out about us.’

  ‘You think so?’

  She frowned. ‘Of course. He was the one person - apart from Linda - who knew what really happened on the night of the storm. Now he’s dead, there’s no danger any more. No risk that Casper will ever find out. We’ve been lucky - we’ve got away with it.’

  He shuffled his feet. ‘Let’s not count our chickens. You’re forgetting Linda.’

  ‘I told you before,’ she said sharply. ‘I trust her.’

  He didn’t feel reassured. He was painfully aware of his own occasional gullibility. But he couldn’t pretend to himself that her judgment was wholly to be relied upon. After all, she’d chosen Casper May for a husband. Himself for a lover.

  ‘You trusted Peter at first.’

  ‘I’ve known Linda a lot longer than I’ve known you.’ She was snapping again. He suddenly realised she was on the verge of tears. ‘She’d never betray me.’

  He moved to her side and put his arm around her, but she pulled away with a grunt of distaste and blew her nose fiercely.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘Casper will be wondering where I am. So will Linda. I made up a story to get away. I wanted to tell you what had happened.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m glad you did.’

  ‘Can you fetch my coat, please?’

  He smelled her perfume as he helped her to guide her arms into the coat sleeves. For a moment he was seized by the urge to nuzzle her neck, but he thought better of it.

  ‘When you see Linda, will you tell her how sorry I was to hear the news?’

  ‘You needn’t worry,’ she said. Her tone was bleak. ‘With all Peter’s faults, she worshipped him, you know that. His death may destroy her. I hope not, but I’m afraid for her. One thing’s for sure. She’ll have other things on her mind than gossiping about our affair.’

  ‘Sure. Look, I didn’t mean to…’

  ‘Just don’t say any more, all right?’ she snapped. ‘Don’t make things worse than they already are.’

  He wasn’t in the mood to eat any of the stuff he’d bought that morning. After Juliet had gone he poured himself another whisky and lay on the sofa, his feet hanging over the side, turning over and ov
er in his mind the news she had brought.

  He had taken a dislike to Peter Blackwell and the threat which Juliet had recounted in the park at Wavertree had frightened him. She was probably right. Peter’s death would solve everything; he had no reason to doubt that Linda could indeed be relied upon to keep her mouth shut. Yet he had not wished the man harm and he felt sickened at the picture conjured up by his eternally active imagination. He could visualise the crumpled heap lying at the foot of the staircase in the shabby seaside building.

  At least he’d found something that took his mind off Andrea’s mystery Welshman, something else to worry about. Suppose that he hadn’t been so far off the mark when he’d wondered aloud if Peter might have been murdered? Juliet had done her best to scotch the idea. He couldn’t deny that she was right; at present, he did have murder on the brain. But that didn’t mean that Peter’s death was bound to have an innocent explanation. The police might not be as easily satisfied as Juliet suggested; after all, Peter had recently been interviewed in connection with a murder inquiry. It occurred to Harry that he might himself be in the frame. Never mind the lack of the vampiric hallmarks which had excited Ken Cafferty. Mitch Eggar might still try to link the case with the deaths of Carl and Nerys. But there was a yet more chilling possibility. The only person, apart from himself, who appeared to have a motive for silencing Peter Blackwell was Juliet.

  Harry replayed the conversation with her. She was no fool. He suspected that she’d been angry and defensive because she’d guessed he might wonder if she had killed Peter. Understandable. Then again, it might simply be that she was feeling guilty and unable to hide her emotions.

  Wearied by the torments of the last few days, he began to doze. When he awoke, it was after seven. As he rubbed his eyes, he decided he wasn’t in the mood for any more fretting this evening. Too many people had died. There were too many unsolved mysteries and only one solution. Peter Blackwell and Rick Spendlove weren’t perfect role models, but nonetheless the time had come to take a leaf out of their book. He would go out and get pissed.

  He didn’t want to visit one of his usual haunts and he didn’t want to have too far to stagger back home. The Jesse Hartley, a trendy pub on the waterfront named after the stern Yorkshireman who had built the Albert Dock, fitted the bill. At least half the clientele worked in television and local radio and each of the bars was dominated by a huge screen showing baseball or American football on satellite television.

  After buying himself a pint, he wandered over to the jukebox. Mostly seventies stuff. It wasn’t a sacrifice to pass on Gary Glitter, Showaddywaddy and T Rex. He deliberated for a while, then chose Rod Stewart’s cover of ‘First Cut is the Deepest’. It wasn’t as achingly wonderful as P. P. Arnold’s original, but the words still had resonance for him; he’d given his heart to Liz and even after all this time, he still hadn’t got over her betrayal. As for Juliet - well, she was many things, but she wasn’t Liz.

  ‘Harry Devlin! Just the man I wanted to see!’

  The voice interrupting his reverie sounded familiar. He turned to discover that it belonged to a slender young man in impossibly tight fawn trousers. He wore a medallion with his open-neck lumberjack shirt and a precisely trimmed toothbrush moustache. At one time he’d worked as a clerk in the employment tribunal office a short distance away at Cunard Building. Harry had always found him amiable but tediously loquacious. His real name was Eric but everyone called him Errol.

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Lovely, thanks. I’m a personal assistant to Gavin Lacey now, you know.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  Gavin Lacey was a weatherman with a broad Lancastrian accent who was celebrated for apologising with an ostentatious wink whenever his predictions proved inaccurate. What he lacked in meteorological savvy he more than made up for in camp charm and his regular forecast of wet patches in Wallasey had become a much-parrotted catchphrase and earned him a cult following.

  ‘You probably read in the papers, he’s actually been offered the chance to host that new game show, Pink Prizes.’

  Somehow Harry had missed that little titbit of tabloid showbiz gossip. As they moved away from the jukebox, he smiled vaguely and squinted round to check the possibilities of escape. They were few and far between. He suddenly realised that he had missed the sign on the door proclaiming that this was Proud Gays Night at the Jesse. He became conscious that, on the other side of the room, a small man who looked like Rowan Atkinson’s younger brother was moving in time to the music and giving him a toothy smile.

  ‘You know, it really is a stroke of luck bumping into you like this. You may be able to help.’

  ‘Sure,’ Harry said, who was wishing that he’d stayed in his flat. Perhaps he should have bided his time until the Jesse dedicated a theme evening to Guilty Heterosexuals.

  Errol leaned forward and said sotto voce, ‘I heard the gossip, I know you found Carl Symons’ body. So you’re bound to have an interest in what happened to Nerys Horlock.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ So even here there wasn’t any escape from murder.

  ‘You see, it’s like this. I have some information - and I simply don’t know what to do with it. It’s been keeping me awake at nights. Whether to tell the police or forget all about it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then again, it may not mean anything at all. That’s what Gavin thinks.’

  Never mind bloody Gavin, get to the point. ‘Try me,’ he hissed.

  ‘Well. On my last morning at the tribunal, my very last morning, I picked up a fax from Nerys Horlock. I knew Nerys, she’d acted for me once when she was with Symons, Horlock and Young. I had a car accident, suffered whiplash. It wasn’t too bad, I even hesitated before I took any legal advice. She sorted out the other driver’s insurance company. I picked up enough compensation to pay for a holiday for two in the West Indies. So I owed her one. But she wasn’t an employment lawyer. I’d hardly ever seen her in the tribunal.’

  ‘So what was the fax about?’

  ‘I was coming to that. There was a covering letter and a form claiming sex discrimination. Sexual harassment, to be precise. But you’ll never guess who the respondent was.’

  Harry said instinctively, ‘Rick Spendlove.’

  Errol’s thin eyebrows shot up. ‘The chap from Boycott Duff? No, no, you’re miles out. Between you, me and the gatepost, that wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. I think he’s been on the receiving end of three separate claims during the past couple of years. They all settled out of court. He’s quite a naughty boy, that Mr Spendlove, he really is.’

  ‘So who was the culprit?’

  ‘Carl Symons.’ Errol breathed rather than spoke the name.

  Harry was startled. ‘Nerys was complaining that Carl had harassed her?’

  ‘No, no, my word, you’ve got it all wrong. The claim was about an incident at the Crown Prosecution Service, after the partnership broke up. The claim named Carl and his employers. They would have to pay up if a tribunal found him guilty. But there was a snag. The incident had happened three months earlier and the time limit for bringing a claim is three months, too. She was sending the claim in by fax at the last minute, to make sure it was in time. Once the three months are up, that’s usually the end of the road. You know how it is. Rules are rules.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Errol had always had a streak of the jobsworth in him.

  ‘But in the covering letter, you see, she was asking us not to serve the papers on Carl or the CPS.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She said she was still awaiting formal instructions from her client about whether to proceed. She wanted a few days’ grace until she found out whether she could get the go-ahead.’

  ‘Any problem with that?’

  ‘Oh my goodness me, yes. Yes, there was. The law says you can’t do it. It’s quite plain, it’s down there in black and white. Once the tribunal receives the claim, it’s duty bound to send it on to the respondents. In this case, both the CPS and Car
l Symons. I decided to give her a call to tip her off. I owed her that.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said she’d speak to her client and ring me back. An hour later, she called again. It was extraordinary. I’d always thought she was a strong woman, but it sounded to me as though she was choking back tears at the other end of the line. Oh yes, she was! I could tell it was a claim she felt passionately about. Nerys was like that, you know. For her, every case was a crusade.’

  ‘What had her client said?’ Harry leaned forward, making sure that he could hear the reply above the cheery exuberance of the Village People singing ‘In the Navy’. One thing was for certain: Errol had caught his attention now.

  ‘She didn’t want to go ahead. Nerys had obviously pleaded with her, but the answer was no. Nerys asked me to tear the claim up. I suppose I shouldn’t have done it, but what the hell? I was on my way out of the tribunal and she’d been good to me. So I did as she asked and that dreadful person Carl Symons never even knew what a lucky escape he had. It wasn’t justice.’

  ‘Who was Nerys acting for?’ Harry asked, although he’d already guessed.

  ‘The woman’s name was Anwar. She was a junior prosecutor.’

  ‘And what was Carl Symons supposed to have done to her?’

  Errol lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘According to her, they’d been working together in the office late one night. He’d made a pass at her and she’d said no. Then he raped her.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  My work is almost complete. The time has come for me to make the final journey and undertake my last and most terrible task. I cannot deny that I dread to think what the next few hours may have in store, but my nerve will not fail me, not now. I have already endured so much. Heard the scream of horror as the stake drives in. Watched the writhing body, the lips that foam.

  Soon it will be over. I shall be able to pity that wretched soul as at last it experiences the wholesome sleep of death. Death, that should have come so long ago. And, reminding myself of the mission entrusted to me, passed on from one generation to another, I shall myself find peace, even at the moment when my knife severs the head from the neck.