Valerie was out of town on a trial and when Harry phoned Balliol Chambers, David Base said he thought the case would run on until tomorrow afternoon.
“Can I take a message?”
Unreasonably, Harry found the clerk’s willingness to please grating and he had snapped, “No message,” before banging the phone down.
His small office felt like the inside of an oven, yet if he opened the window traffic noise and roadworks made coherent thought impossible. Time for a positive decision. He would abandon the job for the rest of the day and go and get drunk instead.
On his way to The Dock Brief, he picked up an evening paper. BEAST LINK IN SCHOOLGIRL MURDER? demanded a headline. He leaned against a makeshift timber wall surrounding a redevelopment site and scanned the story.
From the front page a photograph of Claire looked out at him. A head and shoulders portrait of her in a school uniform. Her expression matched the Mona Lisa’s for complacency. As if she were pandering to an adult’s whim in having her picture taken. She’d been at least as arrogant as her boyfriend, Harry reflected. He wasn’t sentimental about speaking ill of the dead. Yet nothing she might have done justified the squeezing away of her life, the consigning of her body to that dark, dismal cavern-tomb.
The journalist, Ken Cafferty, had improved bare facts with a skilful blend of innuendo and speculation. The old identikit picture of The Beast appeared next to the story. A nondescript face, stripped of all individuality. What had Bernard Gladwin said? Might be you. Might even be me. The picture had been composed, Harry suspected, ninety percent from guesswork and ten percent from the fleeting impression of a victim who might have felt she had some sense of the features beneath the animal mask.
Only on a close, lawyer’s re-reading of the story could Harry tell that the police were not officially connecting Claire’s death with the earlier attacks of The Beast. They were simply declining to rule The Beast out as a possible culprit. Cafferty made no mention of The Beast’s supposed predilection for blondes: it didn’t fit with the story. Nor did the red roses, of which he must be unaware. Bolus had made it clear to both Harry and Stirrup that no one else should be told about the strange garland which the killer had left on the girl’s corpse.
What did the roses signify? Nothing Harry knew about Claire suggested that anyone had a rational motive for murdering her. No grudge against her father, however bitterly held, could explain the savagery of her death. If Kuiper was innocent of the crime, as Harry still believed, the only credible alternative theory was that she had fallen prey to a maniac.
But there remained the question of the library books. Why had she lied about them?
He tucked the paper under his arm and strode to The Dock Brief. The pub was crowded but the hum of conversation disturbed him less than the knowledge that he was impotent to make good Jack Stirrup’s loss. Midway through his fourth pint, his reasoning was fuzzier than before and his dismay at Claire’s death had still not been submerged by the booze. As he gazed into the cloudy depths of the drink, he felt a hand grasp his arm.
“We meet again.”
Trevor Morgan. Glancing over his shoulder, Harry found Morgan’s second-hand grin and unfocussed eyes as depressing as the beer fumes which enveloped him like poison gas.
“Pull up a stool.” At least Trevor was probably too far gone to spot the lack of enthusiasm in his words. “How are you doing?”
“Never better, Harry. Never better. A pint glass in my hand and no one to hassle me. What more could any man ask me, tell me that?”
“Sorry to hear about Catherine.”
In his present state, Morgan was unlikely to recall that their last meeting he had pretended his wife was still living with him. Having a word now might minimise future embarrassment if they met again. Nothing unusual in a spouse’s desertion these days. But the one left behind still often felt a sense of shame and of failure as well as the pain of isolation. Harry knew that from personal experience.
“What? Ah!” Morgan’s free hand made a lavish easy-come, easy-go gesture. “Women. You’re better off without them. Don’t you think so, boy?”
Harry thought about Liz, about Brenda, about Valerie.
“Maybe.”
“No maybes about it.” Morgan poked Harry in the ribs with his forefinger. “They’re bad news. Only good for one thing, if you ask me, and most of ‘em aren’t so bloody keen on that. A feller can only put up with so much. Some things he shouldn’t have to take.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Morgan’s voice was beginning to rise and Harry wanted to pacify him, not debate the numberless shortcomings of the other sex.
“Anyway, let’s not talk about the bitches. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“‘Nother pint? I owe you one after you sent me to that feller Fowler. Good man, that. Good man.”
The prospect of a night-long drinking session with Trevor Morgan was sobering Harry fast. He checked his watch, then pushed his glass to one side.
“No more, thanks. I’ll have to be on my way now. But let me buy you one before I go.”
Morgan’s face darkened. Mention of Fowler had led his rambling thoughts down a new track. “No way. You’d be paying with that bastard Stirrup’s money. I know you’re in hock to him up to your eyeballs.”
“He’s only a client, Trevor.”
“Only a bastard.” Morgan stared moodily at his glass. “Ought to be taught a lesson.”
There was no arguing with him. Harry prepared to mutter an apology and make his getaway.
“A lesson,” repeated Morgan stubbornly. “Bloody murderer. I say, bloody murderer.”
His voice was rising again. Harry saw that, even in The Dock Brief’s early evening hubbub, one or two people were turning round. Not in a spirit of censure. The regulars enjoyed watching a good fight every now and then.
“Cut it out, Trevor.”
He laid a restraining hand on Morgan’s upper arm. With a bellow of rage the Welshman threw it off.
“Let go of me! You’re no better than he is. The bloody murderer!”
“Take it easy. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Oh, don’t I? And who do you think you are to tell me that, Mister Smart-Arse Solicitor? Who do you think you are? Sucking up to that bloody murderer. All right. This is what I think of you!”
Harry saw the swing of the arm holding the empty glass at the last possible moment. He ducked instinctively and the wild flailing movement swept over the top of his head. Someone screamed as the glass caught a man passing by on the side of the head. The man staggered and yelled at the same time. Harry lost his balance and felt, rather than saw, an answering blow shave his chin as one of the victim’s friends aimed wildly at Trevor.
Within seconds the place was in pandemonium. Women were screeching, men were shouting, glass was breaking. Harry rolled over and saw Trevor hit the ground with a skull-cracking thud. His assailant, a young man in a leather jacket, was on him at once, firing indiscriminate punches to head and chest before a shirt-sleeved barman managed to pull him off. The man whom Trevor had hit was sitting in a pool of beer and debris, rubbing his temple and blinking back tears of pain. Trevor lay still. He certainly wasn’t dead, but it would be a while before he rhapsodised again on the joys of single life. Blood oozed from a diagonal cut on the side of his forehead.
“Get the police,” someone said.
“And an ambulance, by the looks of things.”
Harry rubbed his eyes. The decent thing to do was to hang on, to see that the incident was explained to the police’s satisfaction and that Trevor was shipped off to Casualty with minimum delay. But Harry’s capacity for doing the decent thing was finite and he had been involved with enough police questioning for one day.
Time to go. In the confusion no one seemed to notice him clamber to his feet and totter towards the door. Outside the evening was still bright and warm. People wandered up and down the street, oblivious of the shenanigans inside the pub. He sucked in a lungful o
f the warm evening air before heading back to Empire Dock.
And as he walked, Trevor Morgan’s drunken words kept reverberating in his mind.
Bloody murderer. Bloody murderer.
Chapter Sixteen
All the way home, Harry strove to dismiss Morgan’s words as the babbling of an alcoholic who couldn’t tell fact from fantasy. Whether Morgan was making a stupid, drunken accusation that Jack Stirrup had killed his own daughter or simply guessing that Jack had done away with Alison, it was inconceivable that he had evidence to back up either claim.
Yet as he took a TV dinner out of the microwave, Harry recalled Stirrup’s evasiveness during their conversation the previous afternoon at New Brighton and all his old anxieties about his client surfaced again. Chewing a pizza, he sifted in his mind through the debris of Stirrup’s life, hoping in vain to turn up something that would put an end to doubt.
Could Kuiper help? Whilst he ate, Harry wondered at the young man’s telephone call. Possibly Claire had told the boyfriend something about either her father or her step-mother that would help to solve the mystery.
He glanced at his watch. Half-eight. Kuiper had suggested a rendezvous in New Brighton. According to Stirrup, Claire had first met her boyfriend at The Wreckers, a pub-disco on a promontory overlooking the Mersey. Might he be there tonight?
A long shot, but tonight Harry felt that any shot was better than none. Pushing aside his half-finished pizza, he decided he would go to The Wreckers and see if he could find the young man. At least so doing would give him an illusion of doing something positive, not only on his client’s behalf, but also to identify the murderer of that spoilt fifteen-year-old girl. Unlikeable she may have been, but she had not deserved to die.
The drive through the Queensway Tunnel was swift. Up above, unseen and unheard, the river flowed, dividing Liverpool and Wirral. Harry let his mind roam again around the events of the past few days, trying to find a pattern to them. Trouble was, he couldn’t be sure there even was a pattern. Perhaps he was wrong in trying to make all the hints and allegations add up when all the time they might be random elements, like bits of a brain-teaser in a magazine spattered with printer’s errors.
The Wreckers, a concrete and glass excrescence which might have been named after the architects responsible for its design, made the average amusement arcade look like St. George’s Hall. Outside the main door a group of leather-jacketed youths congregated, laughing and swearing. Every time a girl walked past them on her way into that place they treated her to a serenade of whistles and cat-calls. The girls pretended not to notice but the giggling remarks they exchanged with each other suggested this was all part of a ritual they would be lost without.
A dozen motorbikes were parked round the corner. Harry did not know either the registration number or make of Kuiper’s bike, but he spotted one which looked familiar and which had a thin layer of mud smeared over its number plate. He decided to take a look inside.
Stepping into The Wreckers, he felt like a maiden aunt blundering into a wife-swapping party. The room heaved with bodies pressed close together. No one looked over twenty. Rap music droned from overhead speakers. If this was the pub, Harry wondered, why bother with the disco? He pushed past cuddling couples half his age and finally made it to the bar.
Drawing breath, he glanced round. Almost immediately he caught sight of his quarry. Kuiper was standing with his back to the bar, talking to a small fair-haired girl in a red and white striped tee-shirt. He was wearing his James Dean face and seemed to have his listener spellbound. Harry inched forward to get a better view of her and saw the smooth features of a girl no older than Claire. Kuiper obviously liked them young.
With difficulty and many apologies, Harry moved through the scrum of lads at the bar until he was close enough to touch Peter Kuiper. The student had slipped his hand inside the back of the girl’s tee-shirt and didn’t appear to be meeting any resistance. It hadn’t taken him long to get over the loss of one girlfriend and find another, Harry thought.
“Peter,” he shouted. “I made it after all.”
Alarm brought a strange light to the young man’s eyes as he turned round. His cheeks were flushed; the lager he was drinking was not his first of the night. He glanced over Harry’s shoulder, as if he expected a posse of policemen to be fetching up the rear.
“What do you want?”
“To talk. You want that too. Well, here I am.”
Kuiper jammed his eyelids shut, as if to help him think. Then he made up his mind. He bent down to the girl and spoke into her ear. Dismay drained the colour from her face. He patted her head as if she were a pet spaniel and nodded at Harry.
“Okay. Let’s talk.”
“Not here,” Harry bellowed. “Outside. Where we can hear ourselves think.”
“I don’t want to be conspicuous. The filth are looking for me.”
“Come on.”
Harry seized the collar of the student’s jacket and frog-marched him to the door. Once they were standing outside and Harry had released his grip, Kuiper ostentatiously dusted himself down. The exertion seemed to have sobered him.
“That’s a common assault, you ought to know that.”
“Peter, don’t provoke me any more. You rang me this afternoon wanting my advice. The first piece of it is - stop acting like a child. This isn’t a game. Claire’s dead. If you didn’t kill her, you’re behaving like a fool. As well as distracting the police from tracking down the real murderer.”
“What makes you so sure I didn’t strangle her?” Impossible for Kuiper to keep a sneer off his lips for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Did you?”
The intensity of Harry’s tone and expression seemed to register. Kuiper shifted from one foot to the other.
“No. Believe me, I’d never have harmed her.”
“For what it’s worth, I do believe you. Thousands wouldn’t. Certainly not Jack Stirrup. He’s baying for your hide.”
“The stupid old sod.”
“His daughter’s dead - he wants a scapegoat. So grow up, and answer a few questions. Where have you been since Saturday afternoon?”
“Here and there. Out in the open, mostly. No problem in this weather. Last night I was out of my head after hearing about Claire on the tranny. Slept it off on Moreton shore.”
“Why do a flit?”
“I didn’t want to get involved with the filth. Simple as that.”
“Why not?”
“I just didn’t, okay? Anyway, it’s not for you to cross-examine me. You could do with minding your own business.”
“Peter,” said Harry softly, “that’s not possible. What you do is my business, so far as it affects my client. Jack Stirrup’s daughter has been raped and strangled, don’t forget that.”
“Am I likely to? She was my girlfriend.”
Harry pointed to the door of The Wreckers. “In there you weren’t exactly wearing sackcloth and ashes.”
“What do you want, blood?”
“Unfortunate choice of phrase in the circumstances.”
“Yeah, well. Anyway, old man Stirrup’s got nothing to feel holier than thou about. He didn’t understand Claire, couldn’t give her what she wanted most. Couldn’t even keep his old lady happy, come to that, could he? Never mind a fifteen-year-old kid who thought there was more to life than doing up a musty old dump of a house that should have been condemned long ago.”
“So what did Claire want most?”
The sneer returned. “You wouldn’t understand either.”
“Try me.”
“Okay.” The student gave a triumphant look. “She wanted to take risks. She wanted to be rich. And most of all she wanted to make an impact.”
“She wasn’t exactly destitute,” said Harry. “And what sort of impact did she have in mind?”
“To capture people’s attention,” he said slowly. “To dare to be different. It’s easy to be one more face in the crowd. We wanted to make people sit up and think
.”
“And how did you plan to do that?”
Kuiper shrugged. Harry had spent most of his professional and married lives being lied to; he recognised the gesture as a prelude to evasion.
“She’s managed it now, hasn’t she? She’s a household name. The girl The Beast murdered.”
“How do you know she was killed by The Beast?”
“I read the papers.”
“Don’t give me that. How do you know?”
“I don’t.” Kuiper looked at the ground. “Honestly. But what other explanation can there be?”
“Were you with her last Friday night?”
“No. She was seeing another girl she knew from school, I think. I don’t know who.”
“When were you last in touch with her?”
“That evening. She rang me at my flat, around half-five. She used to do that, before her father got home. He was mean about the phone bill.”
“What did she say?”
“She’d met some old prat her father had hired to find her step-mother. Claire reckoned he was so decrepit he’d be lucky to find his way back to Liverpool. That didn’t bother her, she was glad to see the back of Alison.”
“And her manner?”
Kuiper considered. “Fine. Giggly, even. Said something about giving me a surprise when I came round on Saturday afternoon. She was a bit of a pain, to be honest. Teasing. Said she liked to dangle men on a string, make them do as she wished.”
“Men? Did she have any other boyfriends?”
Kuiper was cocksure. “No way. I promise you that. She just liked to pretend she was irresistible.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all I can tell you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Kuiper stared at him insolently. His bravado was returning.
“Really? Well, to be frank, Mr. Devlin, I don’t give a fuck. Now if you don’t mind I’ll be on my way.”
He had chosen his moment well. As he turned away, a group of young men emerged from The Wreckers, shouting drunkenly. A pair of massive bouncers looked out from the doorway, following the gang’s progress. Harry hesitated, realising that if he tried to detain Kuiper, the odds were on a free-for-all as the prospect of a fight attracted young men with fire as well as booze in their bellies.
Suspicious Minds (Harry Devlin) Page 11
