Claire followed, her face red with embarrassment or rage or both. A pace behind came a young man in leather biking gear. Thick black hair fell forward over his pallid face. He had a sullen mouth which might have been purpose-made for registering a sneer. A gold earring glinted from one lobe.
“You want to be a lawyer, don’t you…” - Stirrup ostentatiously reached into his memory for the young man’s first name - “… Peter? Well, this is my company’s solicitor. Mr. Harry Devlin - meet Peter Kipper.”
“Kuiper,” snapped Claire. She pronounced it “caper.”
Stirrup smiled and Harry guessed the mistake had been deliberate. Stretching out a hand, he said, “Pleased to meet you.”
Peter Kuiper curled his lip as if an attempt were being made to contaminate him with a social disease.
“I don’t intend to practise law.” He had a faint South African accent. “There’s too much routine in legal work to satisfy me. It’s just a qualification, a mental discipline, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’ll change your tune when the taxpayer stops paying your board and lodging,” said Stirrup with breezy confidence.
Kuiper bestowed a look of pity upon the girl. Her face crimsoned again and she said, “Peter’s got too much imagination to be a wage slave.”
Harry decided to mediate. “I can do without the competition anyway,” he said affably. “So what are your plans, Peter?”
Permitting himself a smile of superiority, Kuiper said, “To make money. In an interesting way.”
“Do me a favour, then. When you discover the secret, let me in on it.”
Claire didn’t bother to hide her boredom with the conversation. “Peter can’t stay long.” She shot a resentful glance at her father and waved a hand towards the dining room table. “And I suppose I’ll have all the meal to clear up. So if you don’t mind…”
“You can use the living room,” said Stirrup, exuding magnanimity.
“It’s okay, I’m going soon,” said Kuiper. “Just called to say hello. Got plenty of things to do.”
Distress blotched the girl’s face. “But you said…”
“Only a flying visit, I told you. I’ll give you a call.”
As the young man left the room, Stirrup said with a glance at his watch, “Nice to see you again, er - Peter. Better look sharp, though. You’ve only a couple of hours or so left today to make any headway towards your first million.”
Kuiper responded with a just-you-wait scowl and was gone, Claire hard on his heels. Harry and Stirrup could hear the two of them talking in the hallway. Their voices were low, urgent.
Stirrup broke the silence as soon as he realised that he could not hear what was being said without overt eavesdropping. “See what I mean? The surly young bastard’s not fit to lick her boots.”
Harry was not convinced that Claire and Kuiper were unsuited to each other, so he simply shook his head in a gesture that might have meant anything.
Stirrup sighed. “It’s not easy for the girl, you know. I can’t be mother as well as father to her. I work long hours, you know that. There ought to be an older woman about the place.”
The front door banged. They could hear Claire going into the kitchen; her footfalls had a defeated sound. Harry seized the opportunity to turn the conversation in the direction which interested him most.
“Maybe Alison will be back home soon.”
“You think so? I don’t know, Harry boy, I just don’t know.”
“A woman doesn’t walk out on all this” - Harry’s wave of the hand encompassed the magnificence of the room - “without a good reason. Any idea what it might be?”
“If I only knew. Any road, least said, soonest mended. Come on, have a look round the rest of the house?”
Stirrup led the way with the pride of a mother showing off a new-born child. The billiard room, the study, the conservatory. It was like seeing a Cluedo gameboard brought to life.
“Not bad, eh?”
They climbed turning stairs to a galleried landing half the floor area of Harry’s flat. Doors led off to bedrooms. “Mine,” said Stirrup, pointing to one of them. “Alison’s. Claire’s. Couple more for the guests, plus an attic upstairs.”
So the husband and wife occupied separate rooms? Even as Harry mulled that one over, his client sought to forestall curiosity.
“Always each had our own room, Ali and me, right from when we were first married. The coppers raised their eyebrows when they came round the first time, but I told them, don’t read anything into it. Things were all right between her and me. But you don’t spend a fortune on a place like this and then stint yourself for space. Besides, I’m a bit of a snorer and Alison sleeps light. But we had plenty of nights together with no time for either snoring or sleeping, let me tell you.”
Harry ignored Stirrup’s do-you-want-to-make-anything-else-of-it gaze. Like so many clients, he was protesting too much.
He strolled into Alison’s bedroom. His first impression was that everything was blue. The carpet, the curtains, the elaborate patchwork quilts hanging from the wall. No fluffy feminine touches for Alison Stirrup. The room matched her appearance and her personality - or at least, as much or as little of her personality as she had cared to reveal. Immaculate, attractive, but cool and remote as Lapland.
He bent to examine the contents of the bookcase. Other people’s taste in literature always intrigued him. Alison, it seemed, enjoyed the Victorians. Cranford, North and South, Villètte and Silas Marner stood side by side with Winifred Gérin’s life of Elizabeth Gaskell. And they were sandwiched by a clutch of books on patchwork techniques.
“Ali always had her nose in a book. Either that or she was busy with her needlework.” Stirrup jerked a thumb at one of the wall hangings, a five-foot wide hexagon composed of innumerable blue and green triangles. “Not bad if you like that sort of thing. I used to say, turn your hobby into a business, make a few bob out of it.”
Harry wondered what Alison had ever seen in her husband. Not a shared love of cultural or artistic pursuits, that was for sure. Money must be the answer. It usually was, whatever the question. But if she was still alive, what was she using for money now?
As they went downstairs Stirrup said, “Fancy a game of snooker before you go?”
Harry realised, for the first time, the man’s sense of isolation. If he was as bemused by Alison’s vanishing as he claimed, life must at the moment seem an unexplained mystery.
“One game, then.”
They played on a full-sized Thurston table, talking spasmodically about this and that. Stirrup drank liqueurs steadily, but they neither affected his calculation of angles nor prompted him to volunteer anything more about Alison. Harry matched his opponent shot for shot and, with only a few balls left on the table, Stirrup needed snookers to win. But Harry let his mind wander. What was Valerie up to? When he missed an easy pot, Stirrup didn’t try to hide a grin. He seized his chance and finally sank the black to win the game.
“You let it slip,” he said. “I’d not have made that mistake in your shoes.”
Harry nodded rueful agreement.
“Know the secret, Harry boy? I’ll tell you. It’s simple. And it’s the same in love or war, business or snooker.” In high good humour he slapped his solicitor matily on the back. “You need the killer instinct.”
Chapter Five
“Hanging would be too good for him,” said Bernard Gladwin.
Harry’s mind was on whether Stirrup had killed his wife and disposed of the body. Where might the corpse be hidden, if he had? Surely not at Prospect House - Stirrup wouldn’t be so naive as to court almost inevitable detection. The police had already with his permission taken a cursory look round the building and grounds. Finding nothing. So far they had stopped short of digging up the overgrown garden, although Harry guessed that if Alison did not reappear soon, Bolus would insist on a much more thorough search.
A touch of steel across his neck brought Harry back to the here and now. His barbe
r was talking about The Beast, not Jack Stirrup, and had momentarily paused for breath. To give Harry the chance to confirm him in his prejudices.
The razor’s reflection gleamed in the wall mirror. Harry gazed back at it, not letting his expression give a clue to his thoughts.
“What punishment do you suggest? The guillotine?”
Bernard grunted. “I’d be willing to do the job myself if no else had the bottle.”
He emphasised the point with a flourish of his shaving arm, causing Harry to flinch in anticipation of a severed jugular.
Bernard was a burly, red-faced man who cut hair with the same ruthless simplicity with which he expressed his views on law and order. And yet Harry had never surrendered to logic and taken his custom elsewhere. He found something compelling in Bernard’s unashamed awfulness. Coming here was a bad habit, like eating chocolate fudge cake or watching a TV soap.
“The bloody streets aren’t safe to walk these days. I blame the government. To say nothing of the bloody social workers.”
Harry forbore to point out that none of The Beast’s victims had been accosted in the street. Fine distinctions would be as wasted on Bernard as would piped music or comfy chairs in this place of his.
Bernard’s wasn’t a hairdressing studio or a unisex salon. It was a barber’s and proud of it. There was even a red and white striped wooden pole outside the door. Sitting on a ledge beside a card display of unbreakable combs and a tub of styptic pencils was a scruffy box of condoms, its contents no doubt long past their useful life. A pin-up calendar provided the only touch of glamour; June’s lovely lady rejoiced in the name of Inge. Occasionally, Harry noticed in the mirror, Bernard would glance at Inge, as if to refresh his memory about the exact dimensions of her ballooning breasts.
“The bloody police aren’t much better. Months this pervert’s been on the loose, and has anyone been arrested? Have they buggery!”
“Difficult case,” said Harry to plug a gap in the conversation while Bernard tried to take a lump out of his left ear.
“What is it - six attacks now, seven? All in public places. Surely to God they ought to have an idea who’s responsible.”
“There’s no pattern. He strikes at different times of the day. And all over Wirral, isn’t that right?”
Bernard nodded. “Birkenhead Park, Eastham Ferry, the Wirral Way, Raby Mere. You name it.”
“Hard to catch up with someone like that.”
“Bloody disgrace.” Bernard held up a hand mirror. “How’s that? Bit more off the sides? Anyhow, see that identikit picture in the Echo! Could have been anyone. Might be you. Might even be me.”
He bared large yellow teeth in an angry grimace and finished snipping. “All right? Want anything on it, keep it together?” Without waiting for a reply, he squirted a dented metal canister of something ozone-unfriendly at Harry’s head, then stepped back to admire his handiwork.
Waiting while Bernard brushed bits of hair off his shoulders, Harry turned his mind to The Beast. Beyond reading the reports in the Press, he had not given the assaults much thought. What intrigued him were the quirks and oddities of human life and death. A plot, a puzzle, a hint of mystery whether on film, in a novel or in the real world, all could fire his imagination. But the recent spate of attacks across the water had seemed commonplace in a dangerous age. Harry had assumed that the perpetrator would soon be caught. Their paths were only likely to cross if The Beast wanted Crusoe and Devlin to act as his solicitors.
Bernard was right, though. Upwards of half a dozen attacks in public parks and other open spaces since spring and the police seemed no nearer to arresting The Beast than to nailing Jack the Ripper. Meanwhile he was becoming more violent. At first he had been content to flash at a couple of pre-pubertal girls. Then he had touched one. Next he turned to rape. Each attack seemed more brutal than the one before. Now the police were warning that the man might kill. And in the past few weeks the Press had made a running story out of two common themes linking the attacks. The Beast always wore a rubber mask with the snarling face of an animal - a dog, a leopard, a wolf - of the kind currently popular and sold in shops up and down the country. And each young victim’s hair was blonde.
“Know what I’d do if I got hold of him?” asked Bernard.
Harry handed over his money with a hasty word of thanks “I can guess,” he said. He was about to leave when the door opened and through it a familiar figure hobbled on arthritic legs clad in cavalry twill trousers which had seen better days.
“Hello Jonah. About time you had those shaggy locks trimmed.”
“Very funny.”
The newcomer had a cover of grey hair as thin as a spider’s web. He was a stocky man, sixty if a day, and Harry found it impossible to imagine his leathery face ever having yielded a carefree smile. Despite the heat, over a white shirt with fraying cuffs he was wearing an old maroon cardigan.
“Sure you’re warm enough?” asked Harry. Like everyone else, he’d never been able to resist teasing Jonah Deegan.
“Nothing better to do with your time than crack silly jokes?”
“As it happens, I’m glad I’ve seen you. There’s something you can do for me.”
Although he must have scented business, Jonah’s watery eyes didn’t flicker. He said to Gladwin, “With you in a minute, Bernard. Just let me have a word with Clarence Darrow here.”
They stepped to one side and the barber made a token effort at sweeping the floor whilst trying to eavesdrop.
“What can I do for you?”
“Still got contacts over the water?”
Jonah had been in the Merseyside police from leaving school until retirement. He’d been a good detective by all accounts, though the sights and sounds of the city’s twilight world had soured his view of the human race. Long since divorced, he lived in a flat near the Anglican cathedral with an endless supply of foul-smelling cigarettes for company. Nowadays he worked for himself, mostly chasing - or limping after - the occasional debt. And what he lacked in social graces he made up for with cussed persistence.
“I’d like you to find the answer to a question for me.”
“Ask away.”
Harry explained about the police interrogation of Jack Stirrup. “Someone’s stirring them up. Must be. Missing persons usually rate low on the priority list.”
Jonah nodded. “And you want to know who’s stirring? I’ve heard of this Bolus. He’s just a whippersnapper. Doubt if he’s thirty. I’ll have a word round.”
“Thanks.”
“It’ll cost, mind.”
“Jack Stirrup can afford it.”
“The price went up when you made the crack about this cardigan.”
“You’re a hard man, Jonah. Give me a ring at the office when you have any news.”
Outside the sky was cloud-free. Mid-afternoon on the hottest day of the year so far and Liverpudlians were relishing it, equally careless of sunstroke and skin cancer. In Church Street, opportunistic vendors bellowed the price of dark glasses whose provenance and effectiveness were both in doubt. Shirt-sleeved old men sat on benches, picking their noses and eyeing the women who passed them by.
Harry looked at the women too. Overweight middle-aged ladies panting as they lugged heavily-laden shopping baskets towards the bus stop. Mothers in sleeveless dresses, dragging fractious children away from ice-cream barrows. And teenagers in tight tee-shirts and shorts, displaying figures good, bad and indifferent. One redhead had emblazoned on her ample chest: I’m not fat - just pregnant.
Several girls had fair hair and Harry wondered how many of them feared that one day soon they might become a name in the paper when The Beast struck again. As surely he would. The thought angered Harry. Why should they not be safe? Why should their sex and their age and the colour of their hair make them vulnerable to a man for whom they were not living individuals but simply lumps of female flesh? His head said that Bernard’s lynch-mob justice never worked. His heart was not so sure.
All was qui
et back at the office. He was greeted by Francesca, the temp who was deputising whilst his secretary and her family sunned themselves on the Algarve. A slender girl whose perm resembled an exotic form of marine life, Francesca had a Shakespearean indifference towards consistency in spelling. The shortness of her skirts and the smoothness of her bare legs were scant compensation for her inability to type accurately at speed.
“Too hot to be inside working on a day like this!”
Ten times at least that week she had greeted him with the same remark. Harry responded with a weary smile and asked if there were any messages.
“On your desk, together with your post.”
Down the corridor, a door swung open and a big, bearded man emerged. Jim Crusoe, his partner, back after a morning spent with an old lady in Formby who wanted to add an umpteenth codicil to her will. Rumour claimed she had ambitions for a place in The Guinness Book of Records. More testamentary dispositions than she had personal effects.
“Good lunch? Christ, old son, call that a haircut? You haven’t been to Sweeney Todd’s again? He could make a Rasta look like Dennis the Menace.”
“Does wonders for my street cred down at the magistrates’.”
“Don’t bank on it. Anyway, what’s the latest on Jack Stirrup?”
Harry described his visit to Prospect House. “He’s holding back on me, Jim. I’m certain of that, but nothing else.”
“You think Alison’s dead?”
“Wish I knew.”
“You know your trouble.”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You’re too interested in the truth to be a defence lawyer. If I’d killed someone, I’d want a brief who wasn’t too fussy about right. A Ruby Fingall. No wonder he’s cornered the market in big league villainy.”
“Stirrup’s not short of a few bob.”
“But he’s an amateur in crime, isn’t he? No track record. Piling the booze high and flogging it cheap is no training for a career in homicide.” Jim put a huge hand to his mouth in mock embarrassment. “Sorry. You’re going to remind me about the golden thread. Our client’s guilty until proved innocent and all that leader column garbage.”
Suspicious Minds (Harry Devlin) Page 4
