Harry’s professional shoulder had been there for her to cry on and she seemed to value that as much as his advice on the matrimonial proceedings. When the case was over and the file closed he had once or twice wondered what would have happened if he’d taken her to bed instead of confining himself to a chaste farewell kiss on the cheek. It never could have worked out, he told himself, for two vulnerable people there would have soon have been an end in tears. Whether he really believed himself was another story.
“You sounded very mysterious on the phone,” she said.
“Sorry. It was - quite strange talking to you again after all this time.”
“I was glad to hear from you. As you ought to have guessed. But what is all this about Gina? How can she help you?”
“As I said, Claire Stirrup’s father is a client of mine. I gather she went to the same school as Gina and a girl called Stephanie Elwiss. I was speaking to Stephanie last night. She told me that Gina had been attacked by The Beast.”
Sally’s eyes clouded. “That’s right. Four weeks ago and a night hasn’t passed since without her waking in the night, crying out for me to help her.”
“Christ, Sally, it must be hell to live through something like that.”
“And yet, what else can you do but live through it? You can’t simply give up the ghost. Life goes on. We all ought to count our blessings. And all the other clichés I’ve heard a thousand times. You know what I mean.”
“She’s lucky to have you to lean on.”
“You think so? I feel very inadequate sometimes.”
He looked at her, his face grave. “Not you, Sally.”
“Well… you’re still kind, still good for my morale. Anyway - what can we do for you?”
“Claire came to visit Gina last Friday night, I believe.”
“Yes, she did. The police asked about it. Apparently they saw all the girls poor Claire knew at school, but Gina came in for special questioning simply because she was one of the last people to see Claire alive. I doubt she could tell them much they didn’t already know, but obviously they think the man who raped her may also have murdered Claire.”
“Were you surprised when Claire came to visit on Friday?”
“To tell the truth, I was. This sounds dreadful after what happened to her, but I’d always thought of her as a self-centred girl. She and Gina were never close. Not that Gina has many good friends, poor girl. At least not of the two-legged variety. You’ll remember she’s crazy about horses? Or was, before…”
“Sally, would you mind if I talked to Gina about that evening? I’m trying to piece together what Claire was up to just before she was killed.”
“Why, Harry?”
“Because I think it may help me to understand why she was murdered.”
“Surely the police…”
“Don’t ask me to explain yet, Sal. I’m not sure I could if I tried. My mind’s a jumble at the moment. All the same, I think Gina could help me clear things up, if you and she were willing.”
“It’s all right by me. I know you’ll be sympathetic when you talk to her.”
“Sit in with us if you like. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”
“No. I spoke to her after you called. She liked you. That time she came with me to your office, she remembers it to this day. Take her for a walk along the front, it’s a beautiful afternoon. I want her to start trusting men again, to be willing to be alone with them. Within reason, of course. She’s got to learn that you’re not all brutes.”
“Sometimes I wonder about that myself.”
“Nonsense. There are good men and there are bad men. We all have to make our judgements about which are which. No one can go through life expecting the worst of everyone they meet. I’ll call her down now. If you want me later, I’ll be in the kitchen.”
She left the room and he heard her calling her daughter’s name. There was the soft sound of footsteps coming down the carpeted steps, then the creak of the door as someone came in behind him.
He got to his feet, “Gina, how are you?”
The girl’s fair hair had been as long as her mother’s when last he had seen her; now it was cropped short. All the colour seemed to have been washed out of her cheeks and she was painfully thin. Immediately he suspected anorexia and wished he hadn’t asked the conventional question.
To his surprise, she answered in a level tone. “Okay, could be worse, could be better.”
“I was sorry when I heard…”
It was another sentence which he regretted as soon as he started to utter it. Gina was not the first rape victim he had met. He had acted for clients who had been attacked, as well as several who were attackers. Why he felt so awkward with this girl, he wasn’t sure. Was it the sense of intruding on misery, the awareness that to satisfy his own curiosity he must force this child to recall the worst moments of her short life?
She shrugged away the brief embarrassment. “I’m getting over it. You may not think so to look at me. But I am.”
“Good.” He was uncertain how to continue.
Again she rescued him. “Mum told me you work for Claire’s father. She didn’t know what you want from me, but she said you wouldn’t ask to see me if you didn’t have a good reason.”
“So is it okay with you that we talk?”
When she nodded he went on, “Your mother suggested a stroll along the promenade. How does that sound to you?”
“Selfish.” Gina managed a smile. “It means she can listen to her Barry Manilow records in peace for a few minutes. Shall we go?”
Once outside they crossed the road and leaned on the railings, looking across the estuary towards the three small islands, Hilbre, Middle Hilbre and Little Eye, each of them so near and yet somehow so remote. The sanctuary where monks had once lived a life of penance and prayer had long ago crumbled. Now the islands were home to terns and wading birds rather than men of God. All that remained was the air of peace; you could sense it even from the mainland.
For a few minutes neither of them spoke. Harry guessed the girl was summoning up her courage to talk about her ordeal, trying to draw strength from the tranquillity of the scene.
At last he heard her take a deep breath before turning to face him and saying, “Are you buying the ice creams, then?”
He grinned and went to buy a couple of 99s from the kiosk down the road. Munching the chocolate flake, they ambled along the promenade.
“I gather Claire came to see you a couple of times.”
“Yes. After it happened - well, word soon got round somehow. Even though my name’s never been in the papers. There’s a law against that, isn’t there? Anyway, she popped in with some of the girls from school. A nice thought, I suppose, looking back on it, but I simply wasn’t in the mood at the time. And anyway, she and I had never been all that close. Plus the fact she spent most of the time going on about her boyfriend.”
She concentrated on the cornet for a moment, deep in thought, and then said, “Of course, I shouldn’t say those nasty things. She’s dead now.”
“I want to know the truth, Gina. Not what you think you ought to say. You didn’t have much in common with Claire. So were you surprised when she paid a second visit on her own?”
“Yes. I’d started making an effort to get back to normal. Not that I’m there yet, even now, though Mum’s been terrific. And when I heard Claire had been killed - I felt sick. As well as a bit guilty. Because I soon got fed up with her when she was here last week.”
“Why?”
“Oh, she was so ghoulish. If the idea was to cheer me up and take my mind off things, she went about it in a funny way. Every time the conversation veered off you-know-what, she made this big effort to drag it up again.”
“In what way?”
Gina gazed towards the hills of Wales. Harry waited for her to continue.
Not looking at him, she finally said, “She wanted to know what he was like.”
“The man who attacked you?”
&
nbsp; “Yes. The Beast. Beast is too good a word, though.”
“And?”
“I didn’t want to talk about it. I know I can’t simply forget everything, I’ve got to come to terms with it and I think I’m starting to do that now. But I couldn’t understand what she was after. She seemed fascinated by what had happened to me, like some real sicko. She even wanted to know if he’d kissed me… oh God, I’m sorry.”
Her voice broke and tears welled in her eyes. Harry put his arm round her shoulders, an unthinking gesture of support. Feeling her body stiffen with anxiety, he cursed his instinctive reaction. She wasn’t yet ready for physical contact with any man after her ordeal.
What had Claire been after? There must be a link between her call on Gina and her own fate. Whether she knew it or not, Gina might hold the key. Yet he could not find it within himself to cross-examine her further. One last question, he said to himself, and then leave her alone.
“Would you recognise his voice again?”
“The police asked me that. I can’t be sure. He was very cold, but he spoke quietly, barely above a whisper.” Gina hesitated. “You know, this has never crossed my mind before, but perhaps he was almost as frightened as me.”
They had reached the end of the promenade now. For a few minutes they watched the little boats bobbing on the water, then Gina added, “I was glad when Claire went home. Of course I never dreamed that twenty-four hours later…”
“No one could have foreseen that.”
“It’s such an incredible coincidence, that within such a short space of time the same man should have murdered her. It sounds horrible to say so, but I feel almost grateful, that perhaps I got off lightly after all.”
Harry studied the skin-and-bone young girl with her pale cheeks and fearful eyes. Maybe she was learning to cope with the assault on her, but it would be a long time before she would ever be able wholly to trust a man again. Maybe suspicion would always lurk at the back of her mind.
“I don’t think you got off lightly,” he said.
And though he did not say so, he did not believe that the murder of Claire Stirrup was such an incredible coincidence, either.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Atlantic waves were crashing against the sea wall at Miranda Beach. Through the night air drifted the sound of a band playing “That Old Feeling.” Ned Racine had that old feeling, too. He flirted with the blonde in the white dress who caught his eye as she walked out of the concert.
“You’re not too smart, are you?” she asked.
Harry was spending the evening at his flat with a bottle of Johnnie Walker for company. For the twentieth time he was running his old tape of Body Heat, although he knew the dialogue so well he hardly needed to glance at the images on the screen. Racine, the gullible small town lawyer and second rate Romeo. Sometimes Harry worried that he might have more in common with Ned than he would like to admit.
He wasn’t being too smart about Valerie, that was clear. She hadn’t been in touch all day and he didn’t think ringing her was the right thing to do. Was he being childish, letting pride elbow aside his need to be with her? To press too much now might destroy their relationship. And yet, while he stayed here she might be spending her time with Julian Hamer, drawing nearer to him, forgetting that she didn’t yet want to be imprisoned by commitment.
Come to think of it, he’d not been too smart over Brenda Rixton or Sally Jean-Jacques either. Two older women, with either of whom he might still be involved had he played his cards differently. Now they were fixed up elsewhere. As the evening wore on and the whisky warmed him and blurred his memory of the past, he recalled Brenda’s soft flesh and the interest he had once seen in Sally’s eyes and he realised that he had no idea what he wanted from women, or whether he would ever find it.
At least Racine knew. Racine, who had sniggered when Matty Walker said, “I’m a married woman,” not realising how easy it was to walk into a snare. Racine, who suspected nothing until it was too late. Easy to identify with him.
The pictures moved. Now Oscar, the black detective, was sitting in the snack bar, hat tipped on the back of his balding head.
“When it gets hot, people start to kill each other,” he was telling Racine.
Violence. There was no escaping it. It had found Gina, had killed Claire. And possibly Alison too. Might her body, like that of her step-daughter, be lying undiscovered somewhere beneath the ground? She must be dead, surely. The victim, if not of her husband, or of the man who had murdered Claire, of another sex killer who had seized and violated her. What else could explain her sudden disappearance, her failure to make any contact with either her husband or her mother?
In the film, things were starting to fall apart for Racine. His lover’s husband was dead, the money seemed to be there for the taking. But there was that funny business over the will and his friends, the policeman and the prosecutor, could tell that he was heading for disaster.
“She’s trouble, Ned. Big time, major league trouble.”
Might Alison have been trouble, as well? The notion swam around in Harry’s mind like a solitary fish in a pool. If she had contrived her disappearance, what could be the reason? To set her husband up - for what? If she was alive, it seemed extraordinary that she had claimed nothing from Stirrup when up to fifty percent was hers for the taking. And she could claim nothing unless she re-emerged from the shadows.
If she was alive, he was overlooking something, making a false assumption somewhere. He toyed with possibilities. They all seemed ludicrous. Might Alison and Doreen Capstick, for instance, be conspiring to keep a deadly secret? A secret connected with Claire, perhaps? Doreen had no love for either her son-in-law or his daughter from his first marriage. She wouldn’t scruple to tell the lie direct. Yet Harry could not credit that she was so good an actress. And it was impossible to see how Alison could gain from such an elaborate charade. She was in no position to cash in on the police interest in Jack which Doreen had inspired. No, he was letting his imagination run riot.
Ned Racine had been equally slow on the uptake. Even as the evidence mounted, still he was unwilling to accept he’d been betrayed. Bitterness edged his voice as he confronted the woman who had contrived his downfall.
“Experience shows I can be convinced of anything.”
Ned’s just like me, thought Harry wearily. It’s so easy to believe what you want to believe. How to strike the right balance between trust and naiveté? As for the mess with Stirrup and his missing wife, a clue must exist to help make sense of all that had happened. Earlier, driving back after talking to Sally, he had felt on the edge of something that would lead him to the truth, but then he had arrived home, poured himself one drink, then another, and the answers to his questions had slipped further out of reach.
“It was so - perfect,” said Racine at last.
And for a moment Harry thought he caught a glimpse in his mind’s eye of what had happened. But he was on the point of sleeping and soon he was absorbed in a dream about Liz. She was alive again and had come home for good.
He woke late the next morning, still lying cramped on the sofa. His back ached and he felt dirty and dishevelled. The red light on the video recorder blinked at him as if in reproach. In his dream he had talked to his wife, they had put things right with their marriage. He had stroked her black hair and felt her tongue on his lips, her teeth rubbing at his neck. To be awake and alone seemed much less like real life.
A cold shower couldn’t wash away the anti-climax of returning to the quiet morning world of the Empire Dock. At least the sun was glinting down on the water’s surface and he recalled his father’s favourite cliché as he walked the short distance to Fenwick Court.
“Every day’s a bonus,” the old man had liked to say. “Every day’s a bonus.” Poor old bugger, he hadn’t earned enough bonus days.
Harry’s first client, an angry young man accused of kerb crawling in Falkner Square who claimed merely to have been practising for his advanced driving t
est (but for forty minutes round the same block?), had just been dispatched when Suzanne put Jack Stirrup through.
“I’m getting out,” he said without preamble.
“Out of what?”
“Of everything. The house. Merseyside. The business.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Never more so.”
“Jack, I don’t think this is a good time to be making hasty decisions.”
“Name me a better time. My oldest mate’s suing me for sacking him. My wife’s pissed off God knows where and the police think I’ve done her in. My daughter’s been butchered by a fucking nutcase and her bloody boyfriend’s been using my cellars as a terrorist base. No thanks, Harry boy, I’ve had enough. There’s nothing down for me round here. You can tell that slob Morgan I’ll pay him a year’s money in full and final settlement, by the way. Though he’ll drink it away in no time if I’m any judge.”
To reason with Stirrup in this mood was, Harry knew, like trying to halt a damburst with a sieve. All the same, he had to try.
“Jack, things couldn’t have been tougher for you lately. No one knows that better than me. If you only…”
“Listen. I thought you’d have understood. I can’t take any more. Got that? I’ve bloody had it up to here. But if you’re not the man I thought you were and pounds, shillings and pence are all that count where you’re concerned, the sums add up, don’t you worry. Grealish has come up with an extra five hundred grand for my shares in the company. No strings.”
If the news hadn’t taken his breath away, Harry would have whistled. Half a million more, unconditionally. The price they had put on Stirrup Wines as a try-on, an opening shot in those abortive negotiations earlier in the year. Grealish had rubbished the offer then, claiming neither his accountants nor the bank would support an acquisition at such an over-value. So, at last he had yielded.
Suspicious Minds (Harry Devlin) Page 15
