Suspicious Minds

Chapter Thirteen

“Are you saying I killed my own daughter?”

Jack Stirrup sounded like a man in the midst of a combat course. Identifying Claire’s corpse had been a physical as well as emotional ordeal. Anger burned in his eyes as he jabbed his forefinger at Bolus, who stood on the other side of the table in the small room at the back of the police station.

For a moment no one spoke. In one corner a fan whirred, seeming unnaturally loud in its vain effort to dispel the heat of the day. Dark patches of sweat were visible on Stirrup’s once-white shirt, beginning to spread from underneath his arms down each side of his body.

With a slight movement of his shoulders to emphasise his disclaimer Bolus said, “We have to check everything.”

Harry said, “It’s okay, Jack. Tell the man what he wants to know.”

Stirrup scowled. For an instant Harry thought his client was about to make a futile lunge at his inquisitor. But then he bit his lip and started to describe again the sequence of events on Saturday morning and afternoon.

Harry knew further enquiries would be made about the times when the bus driver had dropped Claire off and when, later, Stirrup had searched West Kirby for sight or sound of her. Bolus needed to calculate whether it was possible for the father to have picked up the daughter in town — she would trust no one more, after all — taken her to New Brighton on a pretext, and there violated and murdered her. Detectives could afford neither to overlook anything nor to have any illusions about a human being’s capacity for evil.

All this Harry understood. Police routine did not make him fear for his client. Studying Stirrup, seeing the agony carved in the lines round his mouth and eyes, listening to him and hearing the harsh distress of every word he had uttered this afternoon, no one could believe him guilty of this crime.

“Thank you,” said Bolus. He thought for a moment and rubbed his chin. “I realise this is difficult for you, Mr. Stirrup, but I’d be grateful if you’d tell me more about your daughter. What sort of girl she was.”

“What do you mean?”

“It may help me to find the man who did this if I can understand her. What made her tick.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about. Fucking hell, there’s a killer out there!” Stirrup flailed an arm towards the narrow window at the rear of the room. “Why aren’t you out there too, hunting for him?”

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Stirrup. That goes without saying. And many of my officers are engaged on the enquiry at this very moment. No time has been lost since the boys who found your daughter called us. All the same, we need to learn as much as possible about her. The way she behaved. Her friends, her interests. Anything at all.”

Stirrup glanced at Harry, who nodded.

“All right, have it your way.”

Leaning forward in the cheap orange plastic chair, Stirrup began to talk.

Harry watched Bolus listening. The policeman was young for his rank. Well-spoken, no doubt a graduate on a fast track for promotion. More than likely better educated than either Harry or his client. Today, enmeshed in a murder enquiry, he looked older, no longer like a boy doing a man’s work. Thin, with carefully combed hair and blue eyes glinting behind steel-rimmed spectacles, he had a habit of quirking his lips every now and then to indicate disbelief. How long before this joyless job soured him as it had soured Jonah Deegan years ago?

“Course I idolised her,” Stirrup was saying. “She was my only kid. And after her mother died we became closer than ever. Had to. As a way to survive. All right, maybe I spoiled her. But I was out seven days a week, building the business up so she would never go short. There were girls I had in. Live-in au pairs, that sort of thing. None of them much good. Things weren’t easy. I was glad when I met Ali. Thought it would give Claire a bit of home life. A bit of stability.”

“And did it?”

Belligerently, as if accused of child neglect, Stirrup said, “She had a step-mother at last, didn’t she? Another woman she could talk to. All right, the two of them weren’t cut of the same cloth. But Claire never lacked for anything, let me tell you. Any present she wanted she could have. Alison used to say I doted on her. Well, what if I did? She hadn’t had it easy. She deserved the best.”

And expected it too, thought Harry.

“What about boyfriends?”

“There weren’t any. Not until lover boy showed up. Kuiper.”

“How did they meet?”

“At a place in New Brighton. The Wreckers, I think.”

“That’s no youth club, Mr. Stirrup. Your daughter was only fifteen. Why did you let her go to such a dive?”

Guilt slid across Stirrup’s face, making his cheeks glisten. He rubbed them with the flat of his hand.

“Didn’t know, did I? She said she was going out ten-pin bowling with some of the girls from school. When she came in I gave her down the banks and she promised never to do it again. Too late. She’d met the bugger by then.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Precious little, and even that’s too much. He’s a student, isn’t he? A layabout.”

“Did you try to break it up?”

“I’m not that daft. No, I let her bring him to the house. Not in her room, mind. They’d go for walks round the grounds, that sort of thing. I hoped it was a phase. A crush. You know what teenage girls are like. Easily impressed.”

“Anything else you can tell us about him?”

“Look, do you think Kuiper — did this to her?”

“I’m not saying that, Mr. Stirrup. But Peter Kuiper still hasn’t returned to his digs. We don’t know why. So we need to see him, if only to eliminate him from our enquiries.”

“By Christ, if he — ”

Harry judged it was time to intervene. “What about The Beast, Inspector?”

“What about him, Mr. Devlin?”

“This is a sex killing of a teenage girl. You’ve a man on the loose who has been terrorising young women for months. Surely that’s no coincidence.”

“I don’t need you to teach me my job,” Bolus said. It was the first time he had been betrayed into even a hint of temper or impatience. “And you can rest assured that we are already taking steps to — what’s the phrase in that old film? — round up the usual suspects. Even so, we need to investigate whether there may have been a more personal link between the murderer and your client’s daughter.”

“Are you bothered because Claire didn’t have blonde hair?” Harry persisted. He wanted to provoke Bolus into showing more of his hand. “Worried simply that this crime doesn’t fit the nice little offender profile your people have built up?”

“No,” said the detective. “We think Claire knew her killer.”

“What makes you say that?” demanded Stirrup.

Bolus took off his glasses and slowly polished them with a bit of cloth he had pulled from his pocket. Taking time to think. Weighing up, Harry felt sure, the relative tactical advantages of frankness and concealment.

“It’s like this,” Bolus said eventually. “You’ll remember, Mr. Stirrup, that when we took a look at your daughter’s bedroom on Saturday we removed with your consent a number of personal items?”

“Odds and ends, that’s all.”

“One of them was your daughter’s personal organiser.”

Harry remembered. Expensive, in black leather, with Claire’s initials in gold on the front. A present from last Christmas, Stirrup had said.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Bolus. There wasn’t anything in the diary part for Saturday. I looked. She wasn’t much of a one for writing up a diary.”

“Yes, Mr. Stirrup. But a page of brief notes in the memo section caught our attention. A list of items. Things you might expect to appeal to a young girl. Like a bottle of perfume by Christian Dior. A gold ankle chain. All of them crossed out — except for the last.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Stirrup.

“What was last on the list, Inspector?” Harry asked.

“A dozen red roses.”

Stirrup said, “So bloody what?”

Bolus brushed an errant strand of hair from his eyes. Harry felt himself tensing, awaiting the revelation.

“When your daughter’s body was found,” the detective said, “scattered over it were a dozen red roses.”