First Cut is the Deepest (Harry Devlin)

by Edwards, Martin

  ‘He made you do things?’

  He could see tears forming in the corners of her eyes. ‘It was partly my fault. I was a fool. I wanted to get on. To begin with, he was happy to offer a quid pro quo. My first appraisal was marvellous. The countersigning officer asked with a twinkle in his eye if I’d written it myself. Of course I had. But afterwards, I was Carl’s prisoner, you see. He started to demand things - that weren’t on offer. He threatened to out me if I said no. When I retaliated, said I’d ruin his career, he pointed out that if he was destroyed, he’d take me with him. He was ambitious, but he had a reckless streak too. He’d risked everything just by visiting the Handcuff Hotel. I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t ruin my career as well as his. He was a gambler, I realised. He might have been bluffing. But I couldn’t take the risk.’

  ‘And then,’ Harry said softly, ‘he raped you.’

  She inclined her head. The tears were trickling down her cheek. Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘I won’t go into details, okay? Not for you or anyone else. All I’ll say is that even Symons realised afterwards, he’d gone too far. He’d robbed me of every last shred of dignity. I’d reached the point where I’d almost stopped caring whether I lived or died, let alone what happened to my brilliant career in the CPS.’

  ‘So he backed off?’

  ‘Yes, he might have been a risk-taker, but he was a coward beneath it all. He knew he’d gone too far. I presented at least as much of a danger to him as he did to me. Especially when I started seeing Nerys.’

  ‘You met her in the courts?’

  ‘Yes, I’d decided I was off men for good by that stage. She offered a shoulder to cry on. Then something more. She was lonely. She was a workaholic, she’d spent years on the law, the whole law and nothing but the law. Once she said to me, “I’ve spent all this time, fighting to get to the top. And when I did, there was nothing there.” We became very close.’

  ‘How much did you tell her about Carl?’

  ‘I was highly selective. I didn’t give her all the gory details of the rape, let alone mention the Handcuff Hotel. I didn’t think she’d sympathise. I was afraid she’d see it as something of a betrayal of feminism. Maybe she wouldn’t, maybe she’d have understood. Too late now to find out.’

  ‘So when you pulled the plug on the tribunal claim, she was angry because she didn’t understand?’

  ‘Exactly. I was furious with her, too. She had no right to put a claim in behind my back, when I’d already told her I wanted to let it drop. We had a blazing row, and that was that. The two of us split up.’

  ‘What about Rick Spendlove?’

  She dried her face with a napkin and gazed across the table at him. ‘Building up quite a case for the prosecution, aren’t you?’

  ‘You’re the expert in that field.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He embarrassed you at the Maritime Bar when he mentioned the tattoo on your bum.’

  She gave him a cool look. Already she was beginning to recover her composure. ‘If you think that’s a credible motive for murder, you’re not as smart as I thought.’

  ‘I never claimed to be smart. I only said I don’t give up.’

  ‘Whatever. Tell the police if you think the tattoo matters. Personally, I wouldn’t want to distract the forces of law and order if I were you. They have their man in the frame. For what it’s worth, I didn’t kill any of the victims, let alone all three. I wasn’t physically strong enough, apart from anything else. Since we last spoke, I’ve talked to a few people and found out more about how Symons and Nerys died. To cut off their heads’ - she gave an involuntary shudder - ‘that would have required brute force. Or a lot of skill.’

  ‘Maybe. But you’re young and fit. It wouldn’t have been physically impossible, especially if you’d knocked them out first. And you could easily have killed Spendlove. Unless you’ve managed to come up with an alibi for the night when he was killed.’

  ‘Afraid not. Terrible lack of foresight.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘This is a game to you, isn’t it? You don’t seriously believe I’m a murderer.’

  ‘No, it’s not a game.’

  ‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Brett’s gone over the edge. He’s the one the police are looking for. Symons must have found out that he wasn’t qualified. It explains a lot.’

  ‘Nerys knew as well, didn’t she?’

  ‘She never mentioned it to me,’ Suki said. ‘But I think Symons had told her. Looking back, on the odd occasions when she mentioned Brett, there was a sub-text. I never paid much attention at the time, but now I think that she’d discovered he should never have been in a solicitors’ partnership in the first place. So she had no sympathy when things began to get rough for him.’

  ‘And Spendlove?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he was rogering Brett’s bit of stuff.’

  ‘So you think Brett’s a triple killer?’

  ‘Put it this way, he’s going to need a bloody good lawyer himself after the police have caught up with him. And they aren’t so easy to find around here. He only has himself to blame for thinning the ranks. Perhaps he’ll give you a ring.’

  She treated him to a dazzling smile. Harry was struck by the way her confidence had returned during the course of the conversation. She was even sitting up straighter in her chair. She reminded him of a suspect in a police interview room who suddenly realises that the detectives don’t have enough evidence to make a charge stick. Or perhaps she had simply persuaded herself that he would keep the secret of her past to himself.

  He tried to catch the waitress’s eye. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean this to take so long. Thanks for your time.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ She picked up her briefcase. ‘But now I really must dash. See you around.’

  He watched her go, hips swinging jauntily beneath her sober black skirt, and wondered if she was right. For Suki, Brett was a convenient scapegoat. If only he could find the man. And find him alive.

  One of the old ladies was saying that she’d always been a martyr to arthritis and that hip replacements weren’t all they were cracked up to be. The waitress had abandoned the task of ringing up the price of the coffees on the till in favour of a chat with a brawny youth who had emerged from the kitchen. Harry wasn’t bothered; he was in no hurry to get back to the office and resume his onslaught on the backlog of desk work. He turned in his seat and scanned the café. There was an information board on the pillar behind him. A picture on it caught his eye. It depicted a pipe-smoking Victorian patriarch, complete with top hat and walking stick. The caption was The Mole of Mason Street - King of Merseyside’s Underworld. The phrase caught his attention and, craning his neck, he read the rest of the paragraph and the acknowledgment of its source.

  As the words sank in, an idea began to form in his mind. He clambered hastily to his feet, knocking his chair over in the process. The old ladies glanced at him and tutted audibly. Another black mark for the younger generation - if he still qualified for membership of the younger generation. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and tossed Casper May’s business card on to their table.

  ‘In case you ever need looking after,’ he murmured, giving them a wolfish smile as he hurried to the counter.

  The waitress paused in her conversation to say she wouldn’t be a minute.

  ‘I haven’t got a minute,’ he said, tossing a fiver at her and hurrying for the door. If his guess was right, it just might be that every second counted.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Half an hour later, he was reversing his MG into a small unmarked car park on a slope off Smithdown Lane. He yanked a book out of the glove compartment and crammed it into his jacket pocket. It was a paperback he’d bought from the shop in the Bluecoat Art Gallery after leaving the Pool of Life. One chapter was entitled ‘Joseph Williamson - The Mole of Edge Hill.’

  Harry had skimmed through the pages every time he hit a traffic light on the way here. He’d heard of Wi
lliamson; his name cropped up in newspapers or on regional television once in a while. Yet beyond the fact that Williamson had built a network of tunnels under nineteenth-century Liverpool, he knew little about the man. The King - aka the Mole - of Edge Hill was the sort of person who fascinated tourists; locals took their city’s past for granted.

  Williamson’s story was strange but simple. A tobacco merchant celebrated for his eccentricity, he’d been smart enough in his younger days to marry the boss’s daughter. He’d made a fat fortune and after giving up work at fifty he’d bought a tract of barren land in Edge Hill on which he proceeded to build an estate. His retirement coincided with the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and the city’s first wave of mass unemployment and poverty. Troubled by the signs of deprivation all around, he recruited an army of men from the neighbourhood and offered them wages in return for hard work. Because he had few material needs, he set them to build huge brick arches behind the houses in Mason Street, where he lived. When that was done, he had them dig below ground. As time passed they constructed a maze of tunnels and caverns, stretching for miles beneath the city streets.

  It was, Harry reflected as he stuffed the book into his jacket pocket, the ultimate job creation scheme. Williamson had spent a fortune paying people to do work that lacked any purpose. Nowadays, he would probably have been in charge of the Millennium Dome. Yet it was impossible not to admire him. His heart had been in the right place. He’d given people the chance to regain their self-respect.

  It was beginning to drizzle as Harry turned into Smithdown Lane and paused to check his bearings. In the books were maps and pictures of the area. The sandstone wall which ran alongside the pavement had been crudely repaired over the years with brick and concrete. According to the text, the wall had marked the boundary of Williamson’s land. He found himself outside a forbidding pair of metal gates, through which he could see a derelict courtyard. This must be the old Lord Mayor’s Stable Yard. His destination was on the other side of the gates. Just two little snags. First, the site was plastered with signs saying Smithdown Security - Eternal Vigilance; their logo was uncompromising, a mailed gauntlet inside a ring of barbed wire. Second, on the opposite side of the road towered a six-storey police station. A burly man in shirt sleeves was watching him curiously from a first floor window. Harry gave him an anxious nod and began to retrace his steps.

  He passed an old bricked-up house and climbed a mound next to the car park. Now he was above the stable yard and could see the tops of the old buildings. Slates had been stripped from some of the roofs and he could see huge nettles and bushes growing in between the cobbles on the ground. A tall fence topped with razor wire bordered the site for twenty yards, then give way to another sandstone wall. This time the old blocks hadn’t been mended. Time and vandals had made gaps which might afford hand-holds if he were desperate to explore the courtyard. And he was desperate.

  He looked over his shoulder. A tattooed youth in frayed jeans was wandering around the car park, casually testing the vehicle doors. Harry took his wallet out and called out to him. ‘A tenner if you give me a leg up over the wall.’

  The lad stared at him. He evidently found it difficult to reconcile the near-respectability of Harry’s sober if aged suit with a reckless determination to indulge in an apparently pointless act of trespass in broad daylight.

  ‘There’s no harm,’ Harry urged. ‘I’m a surveyor for the people who are going to develop this site and I’ve left my padlock key back in the office.’

  ‘Yeah, and Everton just signed the Pope as first team coach.’

  ‘Come on, mate. I can’t do it on my own. It’s good money for ten seconds’ work.’

  ‘Piss off. How do I know you’re a fucking surveyor? Besides, have you seen the traffic? That’s a main road over there. I’d have to be out of my mind.’

  ‘Twenty quid.’

  ‘All right. But get a move on.’

  The money changed hands and the lad bent down. With his help, Harry managed to haul himself up the wall. There was a loose coping stone on the top and for a moment he thought he was about to fall, but he managed to cling on. As the lower half of his body dangled over the wall, he glanced in the direction of the main road and spotted a motorist in a passing car staring at him. Brakes screeched as the car almost collided with a van overtaking in the opposite direction. The lad had vanished. Harry could hear the echoes of footsteps pounding across the gravelled car park and into the distance. He jumped down to the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of his body. He felt a sharp pain in his damaged leg and his ribs began to ache. But at least he’d made it.

  Gasping with the effort, he limped across the cobbles. The ground was overgrown with weeds and old tyres and bits of iron lay all around. Old stable buildings fringed the yard. Their windows had been blocked with sheets of corrugated iron, some of which were peeling away from their fixings. He glanced through one of the gaps, but the stables were empty except for litter and other rubbish. He checked in his book and made for the corner of the yard. Trees formed a natural tunnel; at the end there was a large arch, lined with brickwork. An entrance to the labyrinth. He peered into the darkness and saw that the passageway was filled with rubble. Better give that one a miss.

  To the right was a small opening. Again he looked inside. The roof of the opening was lined with bricks. Stalactites were hanging from it. A musty smell hung in the air. He consulted his book, only to be told that the passage led to an underground well and no further.

  ‘Brett!’

  He could hear his voice bouncing back off the walls of the chamber. No reply. Perhaps it had been stupid to imagine that Brett might be lurking in such a hell-hole. He moved towards the right-hand corner of the yard. He could see a gap there. As he drew nearer, it became clear that there was another opening in the brickwork. The second entrance to the tunnel. He bent down and called Brett’s name again. No answer. He felt foolish and glanced over his shoulder. If anyone had noticed his illicit entry into the stableyard, they had yet to give chase. Encouraged, he stepped into the darkness.

  He’d bought a pocket torch on his way from the Bluecoat to the car. He switched it on, and although the beam was weaker than he had hoped, it lit up the cave. The floor was uneven and strewn with stones and bits of rubble. The far end seemed to be walled up. Careful not to miss his footing, he advanced with care and found that he wasn’t confronted by a dead end after all. There were two gashes in the rock. Bending down, he entered the right-hand passageway, but soon found that the roof sloped down and that further progress was impossible. Retracing his steps, he took the left-hand entrance.

  He hadn’t expected it to be so cold. He found himself wishing he’d come better prepared. A thermal vest wouldn’t have gone amiss. Yet he’d persuaded himself that he dare not delay. It wasn’t the first time in his life he’d surrendered to impulse and then had cause to regret it. As he moved forward, the tunnel began to shrink around him. He was breathing unevenly, suffering the first pangs of claustrophobia as he was forced to bend double. His feet slipped on the algae-slick ground and when he put a hand out to steady himself he cut his wrist on a jag of rock. Soon, he thought, he would be crawling on his hands and knees. Suitable for praying that there wouldn’t be a roof-fall.

  Suddenly the tunnel opened out into a vast cavern. Relief washed over him, then he put his hands on either side of his mouth and bellowed, ‘Brett! Are you there?’

  As the question echoed around him, he closed his eyes and concentrated, breathing in the stale underground air. What was the movement that he could hear - surely something more than the nervous scurrying of a disturbed rat?

  ‘It’s Harry Devlin!’

  His name reverberated in the cavern. An egotist’s dream. Carl Symons would have loved it. Again he thought that he could hear an answering noise in the distance. He had to believe that he’d guessed right, that he’d found Brett Young.

  ‘I’m alone!’ he shouted. As soon as the words left his lips, it oc
curred to him that they were unwise. If Brett were the murdering kind, he might need little encouragement to add to his tally of victims. It would have been more sensible to imply that a squad of armed detectives were bringing up the rear. Too late now.

  He moved forward. The cavern floor was silted and wet. Peering though the gloom, he could see a number of dank holes leading from the cavern. Brett might be hiding in any of them.

  ‘Let’s talk!’

  At last he heard a sound he believed he could identify. Boots clambering over rock. The noise was coming from the tunnel to his left. He crept towards it. Somewhere in the darkness, boulders clattered.

  ‘Shit!’

  Brett’s voice, hoarse and tired, but unmistakably Brett’s voice. Harry clenched his fists. He’d guessed right. No, deduced right.

  ‘Come on,’ he hissed, shining his torch into the tunnel. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  He couldn’t see Brett, but was sure that he was drawing nearer. He could hear scraping sounds, as if the other man was carving a path through mounds of debris. Finally, his torch picked out a shape emerging from the gloom.

  Brett looked like an extra from The Night of the Living Dead. His jacket, jersey and jeans were tattered and torn. His face and hands were dirty and bruised. Blood was seeping from a cut on his cheek. His eyes were blank, expressionless.

  ‘What do you want here?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Brett’s voice rose. ‘Why couldn’t you leave me alone?’

  ‘Like you left me alone when you hit me in the car park at Empire Dock?’

  Brett bowed his head. ‘It was an accident.’

  Harry leaned back against the sandstone wall and folded his arms. In a casual, chat-over-a-garden-fence tone, he said, ‘Sure, but you didn’t stop to find out how bad an accident, did you?’

  A pause. Brett took a couple of stiff paces towards him. Now he was so close that Harry could feel sour breath on his cheek. ‘I didn’t mean to kill you.’

  ‘I realise that. The accident was my fault, not yours. I was trying to get away from someone and I stumbled in front of your taxi. I suppose you panicked.’