“He’s given me the sack.”
“He did say he’d had a barney with you.”
“About Alison. I refused to give him her address. Did he try to pump you?”
Jonah looked uncomfortable. “As it happens, he did.”
Harry could already guess the answer to his question, but he asked it anyway.
“And?”
For the first time in their acquaintance, Jonah Deegan showed traces of embarrassment. His leathery cheeks went pink and he started fiddling irritably with the hairs that grew from his nostrils.
“He’s a client. I owe him a duty. As a professional man, you know the score.”
“I know you’ll be wanting your bill paid.”
“It’s not a question of money. He hired me to find her. He had a right to know.”
“He told Alison he’d killed his first wife. That’s why she hid herself away.”
“Doesn’t make him a murderer.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. I’d best be off. I ought to phone Alison, put her on her guard.”
“I can save you the trouble. After Stirrup told me the background, I phoned her myself. Thought it best. She made a bit of a fuss. Seemed to blame you. Scared of some rough stuff, I reckon. I told her not to fret, that I’d heard more false confessions than fog warnings on the Mersey. Stirrup simply can’t keep his mouth shut, that’s all.”
Harry eyed the old man. Neither of them could be sure whether Stirrup had killed his first wife. Both of them knew he would never be punished.
“Stirrup’s not the only one.”
A couple of minutes later he was back in the office. Clients weren’t beating a path to the door. The reception area was deserted and Suzanne on switchboard was immersed in the problem page of a woman’s magazine. As he headed for his own room, Jim Crusoe stepped out of the typists’ room and hailed him.
“Hey, there’s a stranger in town. All right?”
“All right? In the last twenty-four hours I’ve lost a girlfriend and the firm its biggest client. Give me a week and I’ll have us both in Parkhurst.”
Jim Crusoe’s solid features didn’t flicker. “Sorry to hear about Valerie. Want to talk about it?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Stirrup, then. Have the police pulled him in? Has he opted for Ruby Fingall’s tender mercies?”
“No. Alison’s alive and well.”
“What’s the problem, then?”
Glad of the chance to unburden himself, Harry described Jonah’s detective work and his own visits to Knutsford and Prospect House.
Jim rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “So you reckon he did kill whatshername - Margaret?”
“I could be wrong. I haven’t been guessing well lately.”
“Think he’ll try to harm Alison?”
“Maybe not. At least Deegan’s tip-off should give her time to clear out. But in any case, Claire’s murder has hit him hard. And he must realise the marriage is dead. The main reason he wanted to know where she lives was wounded pride, I suppose. But the police will lose interest now and with Rita Buxton to offer home comforts, maybe Jack will lose interest in any sort of confrontation with Alison. Looking back on last night, perhaps I should have given him the address. Then we’d still have him as a client.”
Jim shrugged. “Win a few, lose a few. You did the right thing.”
It wasn’t as simple or as obvious as that, and both of them knew it.
“Thanks.”
“And what about his daughter’s murder? Have you heard anything?”
“From the police and from Stirrup, nothing. As you’d expect, that hasn’t stopped my imagination working overtime. With the result that I’ve done my best to get us blacklisted by Balliol Chambers.”
Harry found himself describing the contretemps in the Law Courts that morning. His partner listened as if to nothing more melodramatic than a discourse on the law of registered title.
“It all seemed to make sense,” said Harry, reflecting on the logical steps he had taken on the road to his conclusion about Julian Hamer’s guilt. “The way the girl behaved at the con. Her interrogation of Gina Jean-Jacques. The secret rendezvous last Saturday - presumably with the man who killed her.”
“It might still make sense.” Jim was trying to let him down lightly. “Stand back for a moment. Your clues may have more than one meaning. Remember that old case about the interpretation of a will? The man who left his estate ‘all to mother’? It wasn’t the gift it seemed. ‘Mother’ was his name for his wife.”
Harry nodded. In his mind, suspicions began to reform like patterns in the fireside blaze.
Tolerantly, Jim said, “The look on your face tells me I’ve started you off again. Just try not to pin anything on the Bishop of Liverpool this afternoon, old son. We can use all the divine assistance we can get just now.”
Harry glanced heavenwards. “This time, I’ll be glad to be wrong.”
He hurried to his own room and dialled a Wirral number. At last he’d remembered the question he had meant to put to Gina Jean-Jacques.
“Gina, is that you? This is Harry Devlin. No, it doesn’t matter that your mother’s out. I wanted to ask you one more question. When Claire asked you what it was like being kissed by The Beast… what did you tell her?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I never knew a boy so quiet,” said Mrs. Warner. “He was never any trouble to either Hubert or me.”
She sat back in her floral-patterned armchair and sipped her tea contentedly. A large, comfortable widow with white hair, varicose veins and nothing to be ashamed of. Harry was sure she had done her best for her nephew after his mother’s death a dozen years ago and that she had not the slightest inkling of the dark thoughts that must lurk deep within his brain.
When she learned that the quiet boy had become The Beast she had read and gossiped about, her life would disintegrate like an old dock warehouse attacked by a demolition gang.
Harry finished his tea, uttering a silent prayer that his suspicion should prove as unjust and absurd as in the case of Julian Hamer. He cringed when he thought of the accusation he had levelled at a sick man - was it only four hours earlier? Valerie was right to feel disgust.
Yet now he dreaded the prospect of another mistake far less than the possibility that for once he might be right. It seemed like an act of cruelty to sit in this well-kept room, engaging Elsie Warner in friendly conversation, letting her believe his cock-and-bull story. He had said this was no more than a casual call on a professional acquaintance’s home, whilst passing through New Brighton, on the off-chance that her nephew might be around. Guileless, she had invited him in. In truth he was seeking corroboration for the theory he had reconstructed about the identity of Claire Stirrup’s murderer.
Gina Jean-Jacques’s puzzled answer to his intrusive question had confirmed Jim’s point. The fatal sequence of events became clear when you stood back and looked at it afresh. But he knew that this piece of guesswork, like the last, could bring nothing but misery. If only it were untrue. And yet everything Mrs. Warner willingly told him about her nephew helped to paint a picture that she herself could never recognise. A portrait of a murderer.
According to Mrs. Warner, her nephew had always been a lonely young man with very few friends. His parents’ marriage had broken down when he was still in short trousers. The father had been violent, a drunkard and a womaniser whose wife had been prepared to tolerate his blows and infidelities for the sake of the child. But when, in a final beery rage, the man had thrashed the boy, she could take no more. She walked out with her son and they had lived in a scruffy council flat until one day the boy had come home from school and found his mother lying on the bedroom floor in her underclothes, dead after a massive stroke.
“We took him in, of course, Hubert and me,” Mrs. Warner reminisced. “We never had children of our own. I was already turned fifty, but there was no one else to look after him. Of course, there was a what-you-call-it - a generation gap. But w
e did our best.”
Harry wondered what it is that turns a man sour against women, against life. Of all the inadequates he had defended, he’d never found one common factor to unite them all, to mark them as men whom society should spot and lock away before they could do harm. There had been no lack of love in this household. Perhaps in the boy’s life it had simply come too late.
A gilt-framed photograph on the scrupulously dusted sideboard caught his eye. A head and shoulders shot of a small-featured woman with curly blonde hair, smiling shyly at the camera. A picture Harry had seen before.
Mrs. Warner followed his glance.
“That’s poor Emma, of course.”
Harry looked inquiringly and the story soon came out. Emma had been a girlfriend, the one and only so far as Mrs. Warner knew. A pleasant girl from Liscard Village. The couple had got engaged on her twenty-first birthday; a wedding had been planned for the following June. A month later she was dead. She had suffered from anorexia nervosa since her early teens; the doctors reckoned it put the strain on her heart which had killed her.
“A tragedy, it was. Such a bolt from the blue. No one could believe it. And of course, he would never talk about it afterwards. Just bottled it all up inside. It’s not the best way, Mr. Devlin, it’s not the best way.”
“No.”
“I keep hoping he’ll find someone else. He’s not a bad-looking young chap, though I say so myself as shouldn’t. But he seems somehow to have lost all interest in girls.”
If only he had, thought Harry.
“Ah, well. It’s a pity you missed him,” said Mrs. Warner, not for the first time.
“You said he’d gone out for a walk,” prompted Harry.
“Yes, he often goes out on his own like that. Says he likes to be alone with his thoughts. I’m not sure it’s a good thing, but what can you say? He’s upgrown now, it’s none of my business how he spends his time. Probably he’s just set off for a stroll on the front. Though it’s so muggy I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in for a storm.”
“Might stretch my legs myself before it pours. Any idea where I’d most likely bump into him?”
“You could try the prom.”
“I will.” He stood up and cast another glance at the photograph of the dead girl. “Thank you for the tea. It was kind of you.”
“Think nothing of it, Mr…. Devlin, was it? Nice to meet one of his business friends and have a chat, it makes a change for me. Might see you again some day if you care to pop in. Though normally of course he’s working on a weekday. He’ll be sorry he was out when you called.”
Harry bit his lip. Even sorrier when he finds out that I know the truth.
“Goodbye,” he said and averted his gaze from the old woman’s kind eyes.
Outside the heat had become oppressive, like a threat of war. Harry sensed a feverishness in the air, as if the passers-by expected thunder and were scurrying madly, trying to make the most of the sunshine before the rain pelted down. When he came to the seafront he slackened his pace, looking for any sign of the man he was hunting.
Should he tell the police what he knew? In principle, yes - but what exactly did he know? He had no proof, no hard facts, nothing much other than surmise. Thank God he had said nothing about Julian Hamer; to have disgraced himself in front of Valerie was disaster enough. No, for the time being it made sense to keep his suspicions to himself. But what if he did catch up with his man? After the débâcle of the morning, Harry simply did not know what he would do.
He passed the Majestic and noticed a brand new Mercedes open top sports car with personalised number plates in the park. BG1. So Grealish had changed his motor. Perhaps he was celebrating the acquisition of Stirrup Wines. Harry wondered how long Stephanie would last before her lover tired of her lissom charms and traded her in for a new model too.
Hordes of kids shrieked around the paddling pool and formed a straggly queue outside the kiosk that sold ice cream. A little farther on a shop was doing a roaring trade in Kiss-me-quick hats. A couple of young women were trying them on, giggling all the while.
Harry leaned over the sea wall, remembering the sickness he had felt at the news of Claire Stirrup’s death. She ought to be here now, exchanging silly jokes with other girls of her own age. Her murder had been a waste of life and the senselessness of it appalled him, made him sad and angry both at the same time.
Watching the waves, he realised that he felt much the same about Claire’s killer, The Beast; that figure, enlarged into a nightmarish giant in the public imagination by lurid news stories, was in real life a man people would pass without a second glance. How else had he escaped the law’s net for so long? In attacking blondes, did he think he was taking revenge on them for being alive when the girl he loved was dead? Did he gain pleasure from either the sex or the violence? Harry didn’t try to answer himself. He didn’t want to get inside the man’s head, when all he was likely to find there was a tangled web of frustrations, jealousies and pain.
He kicked a pebble along the promenade. The sky had become overcast: one or two passers-by were looking up anxiously, making calculations about how long it would take to get back home.
The two giggling women had overtaken him. They were chattering together on the other side of the road. Both were leggy blondes; one had long hair, the other a tight perm. The girl with shoulder-length hair waved goodbye to her companion and sauntered off past the Floral Hall in the direction of The Wreckers. Standing with his back to the sea, Harry idly followed her progress. Her denim shorts were very short, her bare legs and arms richly tanned.
Suddenly a movement across the road caught his eye. A man coming out of an amusement arcade. A man in a pale grey tracksuit and trainers. A slightly built man with neat brown hair and a pleasant but anonymous face, a man easily overlooked in a seaside town.
Except that Harry recognised him as the man he had come to New Brighton for. The man he now believed to be The Beast.
“Could be anyone,” Bernard Gladwin had said of The Beast. But the killer had proved to be someone Harry had known for years. Someone Claire had indeed recognized when accompanying her father to Balliol Chambers.
David Base glanced to his right and began to quicken his pace. The blonde girl was fifty yards ahead of him. Harry realised that, like Gina Jean-Jacques, she bore a faint resemblance - something in the bone structure, perhaps - to Emma. Emma of the photograph at David’s home and in Balliol Chambers.
Fear trickled down Harry’s spine. There was only one reason for David to follow the girl. The hunger must have seized him again. Harry began to move briskly too. He must not let them get out of sight.
The girl swung her hips without a trace of self-consciousness. From behind she looked very good to Harry. He didn’t know what ideas were flowing through David’s mind. Did not want to know.
He felt something strange and unfamiliar touch his face. Yes, a drop of rain. People here and there were beginning to unfurl umbrellas. He felt another drop and another and another.
The girl strolled past The Wreckers. David Base was keeping the same distance between them. Feeling sick, Harry recognised that David was tracking his prey with an ease born of long practice.
As David walked, he took a peppermint from his trouser pocket and absent-mindedly tossed it from hand to hand before popping it into his mouth. That habit of his had been a giveaway. Claire must have noticed it when she spotted him close to Prospect House on the Wirral Way, minutes before he came upon Gina and raped her. No doubt she had seen him repeat the trick at Balliol Chambers before Harry arrived for the conference. Why else ask Gina about the taste of The Beast’s kisses? Why else sound so excited when Gina said the man had not kissed her, but his breath had smelt of peppermint?
She hadn’t been mooning over David, as her father thought. After the first shock of recognition, her moodiness had concealed the working of her mind as she devised a way to exploit her suspicion of his guilt. She wanted to savour having him in her power. Have him bri
ng her roses. Presumably she’d phoned him and arranged a rendezvous in West Kirby. But she’d underestimated his desperation and had too much faith in her own skill at self-defence.
As the road came to an end and the riverside walkway began, Harry fell in directly behind the barristers’ clerk. He was only thirty yards ahead. What if he turned round and saw Harry in pursuit? He did not have any idea what he should do or say.
The girl came to the gate marking the entrance to Vale Park. There she paused, as if uncertain what to do. David Base slowed at once. So did Harry. No need to worry. The clerk was intent on the object of his quest.
She turned into the park. David Base went after her. Harry reached the gate, then hesitated. Vale Park was as quiet as usual, a small oasis of trees, neatly tended flower beds and grass parched from the long drought. A place for relaxation and reflection, not for clandestine and cruel crime. Harry saw the rose garden was deserted. There wasn’t even anyone exercising a dog.
The girl had taken refuge from the rain under the old bandstand with its domed roof and Doric columns. She was nibbling at her fingernails. She glanced upwards and caught sight of Harry. Then she turned her head quickly away.
David Base was nowhere in sight. Where had he gone?
The girl looked round carefully. She seemed to be wondering whether to make a run for it and risk getting wet until the worst was over.
She made up her mind and stepped out from underneath the shelter. But she did not hurry. Instead, she strolled, as if in slow motion. Almost inviting trouble. Harry was tempted to shout about the danger she faced. But instinct told him to wait until David showed himself again.
Numb with apprehension, he watched her follow the path towards the exit at the far end of the park. Suddenly she ducked and disappeared beneath a thick clump of bushes. Then he began to stride rapidly down the path. His heart was thudding. He was afraid of what David Base might be about to do. He cursed himself for waiting too long. Now he must get to her first.
What happened next was never entirely clear in his mind, no matter how many times he replayed the scene. Within seconds he was conscious of a girl’s scream and a blur of action as she staggered back into his line of vision. She stumbled as her pursuer, wearing the mask of a snarling panther, leaped forward and caught hold of her. But then she cried out not in terror, it seemed to Harry, but in exultation. For all at once the park was full of people and a voice of command was bellowing: “Police!”
Suspicious Minds (Harry Devlin) Page 20
