‘I’ll be there.’
He put the receiver down wishing that he could share the win-a-few-lose-a-few outlook of a man like Roy Milburn. At least he’d been given a little time to become accustomed to the idea of her departure for London. And at least he’d met Juliet May.
But Juliet’s out of bounds, he told himself. Stop thinking of her.
The phone rang again. Stephanie, this time. She sounded exasperated. ‘You’ll never guess. Jonah discharged himself from hospital last night. He refused to stay there a moment longer, the cussed old thing. I said he ought to listen to the doctors, that it would serve him right if he dropped down dead the moment he got home, but he wouldn’t be told. I’m over at his flat now. Of course, as soon as he arrived back here, he found out he was still very weak. He’s spending his time watching telly and complaining about the programmes.’
‘So you won’t be free this afternoon?’
Driving back from North Wales, they had agreed to follow up another lead that Stephanie had picked up from Charles Kavanaugh’s neighbours. Vera had mentioned that she came originally from Warrington and the plan was to try to check out her past and see how far it varied from the story she had been telling.
‘Not a bit of it. Jonah’s insisting we pursue the inquiry. I think he’s afraid of me using his illness as an excuse for slacking off. Can you pick me up here in half an hour?’
On his way through a downpour to Jonah’s flat, Harry reflected that perhaps he had more in common with the old battleaxe than he would like to think. Since the death of their wives, they had both tried to lose themselves in their work, in solving other people’s puzzles. It wasn’t simply a way of killing time: it made it easier to forget the past.
The last time Harry had visited the flat, it had been as chaotically disordered as his own, with dishes piled high on the draining board and a layer of dust on every surface. It was a single man’s home, somewhere to doss down for a chap who contended that life was too short for housework. But things had changed. As Stephanie showed him in to the living-room, he almost had to shield his eyes from the shine on the brasses adorning the opposite wall. It was as if they were expecting to host a photo-shoot for Ideal Home.
Only Jonah made the place look untidy. He was hunched up in an armchair, wearing a mutinous scowl and a cardigan that looked as though it dated back to the days of clothes rationing. He looked up from the Radio Times and said, ‘Load of bloody rubbish. That licence fee is daylight robbery.’
‘Do I gather you’re on the mend?’
Jonah grunted and jerked a thumb in his niece’s direction. ‘To hear some people talk, you’d think I was at death’s bloody door.’
‘If you don’t keep your promise to the doctor about no more roll-your-own cigarettes, you’ll be slamming the door behind you,’ Stephanie said.
‘The sooner I get back to normal, the better.’ Jonah indicated their surroundings with a melancholic wave. ‘She’s even tried to do a bit of tidying. Didn’t ask first, of course. I used to know where everything was. Now I can’t find a bloody thing.’
Harry grinned. ‘Better be careful. If you don’t keep your eyes open, she’ll be making you redundant.’
Jonah snorted. ‘Oh aye, I’ve heard all about yesterday. The two of you got a lucky break, fair enough. But believe me, the case is only over when the money from the client is safely in the bank.’
Stephanie raised her eyebrows to the heavens and said, ‘We’d better go, Harry, before the temptation to strangle him overwhelms me. Lucky break? Huh!’
‘So what do we know about Vera’s connection with Cheshire?’ Harry asked as they drove along the M62.
‘She actually mentioned growing up in a black-and-white manor house just outside the town. She became all nostalgic and complained about the government taking part of the family estate when a viaduct was being built for the motorway. I know the area quite well.’ She coloured. ‘As a matter of fact, I used to go out with a boy from Stockton Heath. I spent quite a bit of time there before he ditched me, the bastard. One thing I’m sure of. There’s only one motorway viaduct, on the M6 at Thelwall. That should make life easier for us.’
The rain had stopped and the grey-blue sky had begun to brighten. As he glanced to his right, Harry saw the huge chimneys of the power station at Fiddler’s Ferry glinting in the sunlight. He told himself that it didn’t take long for things to take a turn for the better. There was nothing to be gained by agonising over Kim. Stephanie was no Juliet May; she was little more than a kid. But even if Colwyn Bay and Warrington were hardly Miami Beach, he was keen to make the most of his chance to play the detective. Besides, she was good company.
‘So you always had your heart set on working with Jonah?’ he asked.
‘Why not? There are plenty of worse fates. A girl on my course at uni started working part-time as a stripper to pay off her student loan. Another took a job as a guide at some tea-towel museum down on the south coast.’ She grinned. ‘I remind myself of them whenever I get fed up with studying for my NVQ.’
Harry was puzzled. ‘NVQ?’
‘National Vocational Qualification.’
‘Yeah, I know, but what in?’
She sighed at his ignorance. ‘Private investigation, of course. It’s a recognised subject. Gone legit, you might say. There are thousands of us now, you know. Even though we’re not overseen by any statutory body.’
‘Don’t be in a hurry to invent one. You might end up with something like the Law Society.’
‘There are too many cowboys in this job,’ she said seriously. ‘It damages the reputation of all of us. This is the consumer age. We need to offer proper client care.’
‘Don’t tell Jonah or he’ll have a relapse,’ Harry said.
She laughed. For all her earnestness, she didn’t lack a sense of humour. It was one of the things he liked about her. The ex-boyfriend had been a fool as well as a bastard. ‘So what’s the appeal of detective work to you?’
‘Put it down to insatiable curiosity. I’ve always liked puzzles and mystery stories. Trouble is, the mysteries keep spilling over into real life - and I can’t resist getting involved.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve even started wondering if I might have a clue about the identity of the Scissorman.’
Stephanie’s eyes widened. ‘Tell me more.’
He explained the theory that Davey might be the Scissorman which had remained obstinately at the back of his mind. ‘For what it’s worth, he did turn up in town just before the Scissorman killed a Liverpool girl for the first time.’
‘It’s not much to go on.’
‘I realise. And of course, he might be entirely innocent.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ he said helplessly. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘That must be it,’ he said after they had parked on the road which ran under the Thelwall Viaduct. Between their lay-by and the hump-backed bridge which carried the road over a canal was a gatepost marked Massey Brook Manor. A curving drive led up to a splendid black-and-white building of the type often found in Cheshire. At one time it must have been one of the finest homes in the area. The only problem was that now it commanded a spectacular view of eight lanes of motorway traffic. Harry wound down the car window, which was beginning to mist up, but the roar from the viaduct almost deafened him.
She pointed to a sign which informed them that the place was a residential home for the elderly. ‘I suppose it’s lovely if you’re hard of hearing. You know what? It wouldn’t surprise me if Vera did live here once. But I can’t see it as her ancestral home. Maybe she was a live-in care assistant, something like that. Shall I tell them about my dear old uncle who thought the sun shone out of her? Yes, I think I’ll invent an older brother for Jonah: someone as trusting as he is cynical.’
Her guess about Vera’s past prov
ed to have been inspired, but the voluble deputy matron who talked to them evidently found it hard to swallow a story which elevated Vera to near-sainthood. It turned out that she had left them in the lurch nearly ten years earlier and the deputy matron had yet to forgive her.
‘Oh aye, she was local. Grew up in Statham, I gather, but she always liked to give herself airs and graces. She’d worked in several other homes before she landed up here. She certainly took in Mr Edghill, the chap who used to own the Manor. I always said that men were fools about Vera. They could never see through her, though any woman could.’
Harry nodded. He was thinking about Geoffrey Willatt. ‘How did she get on with the residents?’
The deputy matron frowned. ‘With the blokes, too well, if you want my honest opinion. She toadied to them. I didn’t care for it at all. Of course, I was quite new here myself, I couldn’t do anything about it. But she was constantly trying to wheedle things out of them. They never cottoned on, of course. They were just flattered. Heaven knows what they saw in someone so brassy.’
‘Why did she leave?’ Stephanie asked. ‘Was there a row?’
‘Oh no, Mr Edghill pleaded with her to stay. Quite ridiculous, we were well rid of her, if you ask me. But she found a comfier billet for herself, it was as simple as that. She’d worked out that there was more money to be made from looking after lonely old men on their own. One night she went out to a pub and met a retired farmer who didn’t have any family to inherit his business.’ The woman shook her head at the naïvety of the male sex. ‘He didn’t stand a chance. And less than twelve months later he was dead.’
‘So Vera Blackhurst turns out to be a serial beneficiary,’ Stephanie reported to Jonah when they were back in Liverpool.
‘How did the farmer kick the bucket?’ Jonah demanded. ‘Another convenient stroke?’
‘You’re wasting your time if you want to pin a murder on her. I’m sure that isn’t her style. No, this fellow went into hospital for a gall bladder operation and had a heart attack from which he never recovered. Vera made a good show of being mortified, but she had half his fortune to cheer her up. The other half went to charity. Same story: he’d changed his will shortly before his demise. This is one very persuasive lady.’
‘Vera isn’t the only one,’ Harry told Jonah. ‘Your niece is a born detective. The way she coaxed the story out of the woman had me lost in admiration.’
Stephanie blushed. ‘We aim to please.’
‘You never told me that before, Jonah,’ Harry said with a grin.
The old man grunted. ‘You realise she’s put a lot of time into this job? It’ll cost, y’know.’
As Stephanie showed him out half an hour later, Harry whispered, ‘How is he, really?’
A cloud passed across her face. ‘He still can’t adjust to the fact that he’s not a well man. That’s what worries me. But I do think he’s on the mend. He’s starting to fuss about money again and that must be a good sign. Except for our clients.’
‘Don’t worry about the trustees. I’ll make sure they cough up.’
‘You’re sure they can still afford my services, despite their financial problems?’
‘You’re not seriously worried about that, are you?’
‘Jonah didn’t want me to tell you this, but he did get me to make one or two discreet enquiries about the Trust to make sure they were good for the money. I know a chap who is involved with the Charity Commission and he suggested that the Trust’s finances were causing his people a bit of concern.’
‘I didn’t know they had wind of any problem.’
‘Don’t underestimate them. They may not move like greased lightning, but they’re no fools. They are starting to sniff around. Not so long ago, the Trust had money to burn. Now it’s on its uppers. Where has the money gone?’
‘They are a philanthropic organisation,’ Harry said. ‘They dole out money right, left and centre to people in the arts world who apply for it. That’s the reason Gervase set the Trust up in the first place. A spot of carelessness here, one or two iffy investments there - and before you know where you are, you’re strapped for cash.’
‘Maybe. But from what I hear, I don’t think it accounts for anything like the whole of the problem. And I guess you think much the same. Which makes me wonder - why did Luke Dessaur let things slide?’
‘You’re not suggesting he was on the take? I simply can’t believe that.’
‘He killed himself, or so most people think,’ Stephanie pointed out. ‘Guilty conscience?’
‘Listen, I haven’t met many men I’d describe as honest through and through. Most men have their price. But Luke was an exception.’
‘Okay, okay. But maybe his control wasn’t as tight as it should have been.’
‘Could be. But if you want the truth, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the perennially poverty-stricken treasurer has been blowing the dust off his wallet lately.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, well.’
An angry voice from the sitting-room demanded, ‘What the bloody hell are you two whispering about?’
‘You’d better go,’ she said, ‘before he accuses me of chatting you up. He seems to think I’ve only got to meet an unattached man to want to have my wicked way with him.’
‘Keep in touch,’ Harry said. And on the way back to Empire Dock, he couldn’t help thinking that, an unattached man, it would be lucky if Stephanie did have her wicked way with him.
‘I suppose you’ve guessed what I have to tell you,’ Kim said that evening.
They were in her sitting-room, having a drink before dinner. She was looking as lovely as he had ever seen her, in a cream silk shirt and black trousers. Once or twice in the past he’d risked her wrath by saying that the baggy sweaters and crumpled corduroys she favoured didn’t make the most of her slim figure. As soon as she’d opened the door to him, his heart had sunk. If she was staying in Liverpool, she wouldn’t have made such an effort to please him.
‘It’s the right decision,’ he said. ‘For you.’
‘Yes, it is. Though that doesn’t mean it was easy to take.’
‘Thanks for thinking twice.’
‘I owed you that, at least.’
‘You don’t owe me anything. If you hadn’t accepted MOJO’s offer, you’d always have regretted it. One thing I’m sure of is that they need you as much as you need them. You’ll make a difference.’
‘I hope so.’ She sighed. ‘I’m excited about the challenge, of course I am. But I’ll miss you.’
‘You’ll let me know how you get on?’
‘I wouldn’t dare not to. We must keep in touch.’
‘Yes, we must,’ he said. But he felt they were like two holiday-makers who had enjoyed a brief romance with the aid of sun and sand and Sangria. Once check-out time came, they would go their separate ways. It would be better not to see each other again. Memories were always more comfortable if they were not disturbed by fleeting, ill-at-ease reunions.
He raised his glass. ‘To the future.’
‘To the future, Harry.’
During the meal she let out a small exclamation and clapped her hand to the side of her head. ‘I almost forgot.’
‘Mmmm?’ For once she had forsaken her vegetarian cookbook and Harry was relishing the Châteaubriand.
‘Your friend, the Great Timothy. I remembered where I’d come across him before. It was after he killed his mother.’
‘What?’
She laughed. ‘Do I have your full attention now? Yes, he strangled his dear old mum.’
‘Tim Aldred? You’re pulling my leg.’
‘Gospel truth. Mind you, there were extenuating circumstances.’
‘Like what? Did she throw his conjuring set in the dustbin?’
‘It was a mercy killing
. And joking apart, it was a sad case, one of the saddest I can recall. I was only on the fringe of it, though. It all happened while I was an articled clerk. My principal acted for Tim Aldred. I simply did some of the leg work.’
‘What happened?’
‘As far as I can remember, he lived at home with the old lady. By then his wife had already run off with the kids. His mother suffered very badly from arthritis. The pain was agonising and the doctors could do nothing for her. Even the maximum dosage of morphine couldn’t touch it. To cut a long story short, she begged him to kill her. For a time, he resisted, but in the end he granted her wish. He tried to make it look as though she’d committed suicide, but he wasn’t as good at covering his tracks as he should have been. Perhaps his skills as an illusionist weren’t so well-developed in those days. The police began to ask questions and although at first he denied having helped the old girl out of her misery, eventually he started contradicting himself. Before long, his story fell apart. So they charged him with murder.’
Harry swore. ‘Was there any financial gain?’
‘She owned a house and she’d put a few pounds away in the building society. He was an only child and everything was due to come to him anyway. No motive for murder on any sensible view of the case. The two of them were very close. His marriage had failed and as soon as he was charged he lost his job.’
‘So he wasn’t made redundant, as he claimed?’
‘No. I remember feeling sorry for him at the time. He was turfed out by the company before the case ever came to trial. They seized on it as an excuse to avoid a hefty pay-out, I suppose. That was Tim’s trouble. He was one of life’s losers. I only met him the once, that’s why I didn’t recognise him straight away, even though the case made a great impression on me. By the time it came up at court, I’d qualified and joined another firm. I read about it in the papers, though. He wasn’t even lucky in his judge. We thought he’d get a suspended sentence at worst, but he came up across old Womble. The bastard jailed him.’
Harry whistled. ‘So he’s served time?’
‘Yes, though on appeal the sentence was cut and he got out fairly soon. I can understand why, with that experience, he concentrated on magic. The real world had let him down badly.’ She looked at him. ‘Is any of this important?’
The Devil in Disguise Page 16
