I Remember You

Chapter Eighteen

Harry could hardly restrain himself from punching the air in triumph as he absorbed the impact of Kim’s news. So — he had guessed right. Finbar’s killer was already under lock and key. Justice would be served. Sladdin must have moved with impressive speed.

Giving Jim a thumbs-up sign, he strove to keep his voice calm. ‘Already? When did they pick her up?’

‘You talk as though you were expecting it,’ said Kim Lawrence, sounding nonplussed. ‘The police took her in for questioning at two o’clock yesterday.’

He thought either he had misheard or she was mistaken.

‘Two? Are you sure?’

‘Of course! I accompanied her to the police station.’

‘So they released her on bail?’ The whole scenario was incredible. God, if she’d walked straight out of there and at once murdered her husband, someone would be in deep, deep trouble.

‘No,’ said Kim Lawrence, ‘she was kept in overnight and released on bail this morning. I’ve just come back from court.’

Harry stared blindly at the telephone, unable to believe what he was being told.

‘Are you still there?’ asked Kim.

‘I don’t follow. What’s — what’s the charge?’

‘Criminal damage. The fire and the bomb. Originally there was talk of attempted murder, but they quietly dropped that after they learned someone else had actually done Rogan in that very evening.’

‘So — you mean there’s no question of her having committed that crime?’

‘Of course not.’ Kim sounded angry that the possibility had even crossed his mind. ‘The present charges are serious enough, but not even a hard case like Sladdin can claim Sinead ran Rogan down when at the estimated time of death he was personally subjecting her to the third degree.’

Harry swore silently. A few minutes earlier he had thought he had solved the mystery — now he was more confused than ever.

‘Can we talk? I mean, now?’

‘Yes, if you want to,’ Kim said after a pause.

‘I’ll meet you outside your office in five minutes.’

‘Outside? In this weather?’

‘This mist isn’t anything compared to the fog in my brain.’

She grunted. ‘Suit yourself. And perhaps you can tell me a little more about how your client came to die. The police are playing their cards very close to their chest.’

Of course — she was after any information which might help her build her client’s defence. Or, more realistically, a plea in mitigation.

‘I won’t pretend I know much more than you, Kim, but I’d welcome a chat all the same. See you shortly.’ He put the phone down and turned to Jim, who had been following the conversation with mounting bewilderment. Quickly, he explained what had happened.

‘Look, I have to see Kim. Why don’t you go home? You’re in no fit state to be out of the house.’

‘Are you telling me you’re in a fit state to run our business?’

‘No need to moan, I know there’s a ton of work to do.’ A pang of guilt prompted him to add, ‘Listen, I’ll make you a promise. Let me poke around just for the rest of today and after that you can chain me to the desk. There are a few questions I have to ask one or two people about Finbar’s death. I owe him that much.’

‘You owe him nothing. He gave you the run-around when he was alive — don’t let him do the same now he’s dead. Anyway, what do you propose to do about the Graham-Browns?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort out their file. Promise. Things need to come to a head if we’re to have any hope of keeping them as clients. By tomorrow I’ll be more than ready to leave detecting to the real detectives. Okay?’

Jim gave a resigned shrug. ‘That will be the day.’

Harry accompanied his partner to the front door, then raced over to the neat bare garden outside the stone-faced building which housed Kim Lawrence’s office. She was waiting for him as promised, a pale and slender figure standing in the shadow of Liverpool Parish Church.

She moved towards him. Long hours spent with Sinead and the police had left her looking tired and defeated.

‘So, Harry. Your client’s dead.’

He nodded. ‘And yours is facing jail. Perhaps we should have put more effort into marriage guidance.’

She smiled and turned up the collar of her raincoat. The air was damp as well as cold.

‘I’d sooner have tried to persuade Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves to get back together.’

‘Do I take it Sinead didn’t shed too many tears when she heard Finbar had been killed?’

‘What do you expect? She’s no hypocrite and she didn’t pretend remorse she could never feel. She never intended him to die, but I think she sees it as a case of just desserts.’

‘Does she care less for the lives of people than animals?’

Kim gave him a sharp look. ‘Not at all. You forget the dance he led her during their marriage. She’s entitled to feel bitter. You’ve read her affidavit — it’s a catalogue of betrayal. I almost wonder that she didn’t turn to violence long ago. But I promise you, she wouldn’t commit murder. At least I assume it is murder. What exactly happened to him?’

He told her what he knew, then asked, ‘Has Sinead told you her motive for launching these attacks on Finbar?’

‘She was distraught after hearing about that girl Eileen McCray. You remember, words were exchanged about her at the Divorce Registry?’

‘I remember.’

‘Apparently Rogan got Eileen pregnant and she died while having an abortion. Sinead found out from the girl’s mother only a short time ago; apparently the story had been doing the rounds up at the Irish club, the De Valera. The McCrays had known the Rogans for years and they were devastated. As far as Sinead was concerned, Rogan had gone too far. He’d been careless about wrecking her life, now he’d started destroying others too. She hates the idea of abortion and she felt he deserved to be punished. And then she was presented with an opportunity she felt she couldn’t waste.’

‘Which was?’

‘The animal rights group she belonged to wanted to hit a shop in Williamson Lane. It sells mainly leather goods, but the man who owns it also trades in furs. The idea was to warn him off, maybe put him out of business altogether. When she realised the shop was directly below her husband’s studio, she volunteered for the job. It gave her the chance to kill two birds with one stone.’

Harry swore. ‘If the fire had really taken hold, she might have killed more than birds.’

‘Oh, she never meant Rogan to die. The way she saw it, she was teaching him a lesson. The man was a menace — even you must agree with that.’

‘What did Sinead have to say about the bomb?’

‘After the court hearing went so badly, she lost control. She told me she felt provoked beyond endurance.’ Kim saw Harry’s eyebrows rise. ‘I’m not excusing what she did: obviously it was wrong. Even so, I can understand her sense of anger and despair.’

‘She could have made herself a murderess.’

Kim became the defence lawyer again. ‘I already said, she wanted to give him the fright of his life, not kill him. The bomb had a simple timing device and she was on the scene when it was due to explode, doing her best to make sure no one walked down the side street at the wrong moment.’

‘Very public-spirited.’

‘There’s no need to take that tone! Sinead was misguided, of course, I don’t deny it. What she did was a crime. But there are two sides to every story.’

And even if there aren’t, thought Harry, someone like you or I will be paid to create them. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that she picked up the bomb-making equipment through her connections with FAN!’

Kim nodded. ‘It’s a small group which splintered off from the mainstream animal lib movement. I’ve acted for several of its members over the past few years. They favour direct action.’

‘Don’t tell me — against “legitimate targets”, right?’ He could not contain his despair at the senselessness of it all. ‘Another mob as keen on euphemisms as they are on blowing innocents to bits.’

‘That’s a ridiculous over-simplification! Activists’ methods may be crude and sometimes illegal, but they do have a point. Sinead says all life is sacred — and she’s right. I’m a committed supporter of animal rights myself.’

‘I might have known it.’

‘For Heaven’s sake! Are you aware of the terrible things done each day to defenceless creatures in our so-called civilised society? Do you realise that — ’

‘Okay, okay, okay.’ He dismissed her protestations with a sweep of the hand. He cared about animals himself; on another day and in other circumstances he might have agreed with much that she had to say, but right now he wasn’t in the mood to debate vivisection. His greater concern was for human life.

‘So these characters have their own bomb factory, do they?’

‘Naturally, Sinead has refused to implicate any of her fellow activists, although the police put her under tremendous pressure to do so. But, yes, they have gelignite stored somewhere. She did say it had been stolen from a quarry in Wales and she’d been trained in how to use it.’

‘How did she know he was carrying on at the Blue Moon?’

‘Simple. She waited in her car outside his girlfriend’s house that morning and when she saw him set off, she followed. He parked his car off the main road, out of sight. If you know what you’re doing, it doesn’t take long to affix a bomb to the underside of a vehicle.’

Harry kicked a stone into an empty flower bed: a trivial gesture to relieve the frustration he felt, the sense of impotence when confronted by the brutal absurdities of human behaviour. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘Sinead must have been out of her mind.’

‘A lot of my clients are. Yours too, I guess. Alone, short of money, they’re at the bottom of the heap. Sanity doesn’t always stay around for long in those circumstances. I tried to calm her after the court hearing, of course. She talked about revenge, but that’s not unusual in the midst of a divorce case. Of course I had no idea what she would do.’ Kim’s voice faltered. ‘You know, I can’t help feeling guilty. Irrational, maybe, but I keep thinking I should have realised she wasn’t merely letting off steam.’

It occurred to Harry that she needed someone to listen to her whilst she tried to disentangle the knot of her own divided loyalties. In a gentler tone, he said, ‘We can’t always read our clients’ minds. Thank God.’

She sat down on a bench looking out beyond the main road towards the Mersey and he perched on the arm rest beside her. The Liver Building was visible, but the river itself was still wrapped in its grey blanket.

‘Sinead says Finbar was the most selfish bastard she’d ever met. And everything I’ve heard about him tells me she’s right.’

‘Selfishness isn’t a capital offence. If it was, the mortuaries would have standing room only. Of course Finbar had his faults: don’t we all? But he didn’t deserve to die because of them.’

She said nothing and he contemplated her sombre expression. She wore no make-up and her face was pinched by distress as well as by the cold. It seemed to him that Sinead’s arrest had scraped off a layer of Kim’s professional outer skin. He had never thought of her as vulnerable before. Stupid of him, really — he knew as well as anyone that a brisk courtroom manner is no less a disguise than a barrister’s wig.

‘You are certain that Sinead wasn’t connected with his murder?’

‘Positive. As you would be if you’d seen the surprise on her face when they gave her the news. Even the police are convinced. They didn’t object to bail.’

She gazed out at the Titanic Memorial. Euphemists of days gone by had inscribed the stone monument with a dedication to ‘Heroes Of The Machine Room’ in order to avoid giving passengers boarding ocean liners a direct reminder of the risk of tragedy. But Harry understood there was no escaping the reality of death.

‘Thanks for your time,’ he said.

‘What do you intend to do?’

‘I’d like to find out who killed Finbar.’

‘Isn’t that a job for the police? If you interfere, they are sure to disapprove.’

He gave her a crooked grin. ‘When did you or I ever let that stop us?’