Suspicious Minds

Chapter Fourteen

“Imagine how the kids who found her must have felt,” said Jack Stirrup. He was gazing blindly out towards the Irish Sea and Harry guessed he was seeing Claire’s face in his mind. “Two young scallywags larking about. I bet their parents have something to say to them. Everyone knows those caves are dangerous.”

At last his control broke and his heavy body began to shake with the strain of suppressed emotion. Harry slipped an arm round his shoulder in mute support. He and Jack Stirrup would never be close friends, but Harry had not forgotten how it felt to have someone ripped out of his life by brutal murder.

“The bastard, the bastard, the bastard.” Stirrup spoke softly; he might have been uttering a prayer. Harry could sense the tension in the man as he made an effort to steady himself and took a lungful of air before speaking again.

“Whoever did that to her, I’ll find him. You wait and see. I’ll find him, no matter how long it takes. And when I do, I’ll kill him.”

Harry moved his arm away. “Leave it to the police.”

Even as he uttered the words, he had a clammy feeling of hypocrisy. After Liz’s death, he had experienced the same primitive urge for revenge. Nor did he regard that urge as unhealthy. To react less fiercely to the murder of the person whom one loved most in the world would surely be unnatural. And in the end, he hadn’t carried out his own threat. At least, not directly.

They were sitting on a bench overlooking the front at New Brighton. In different circumstances, it would be pleasant to be here instead of cooped up in the office at the end of another glorious afternoon. But this was one day when no sun could warm them.

Behind them, out of sight but at the forefront of their minds, bramble-covered cliffs marked the original line of the coast. At one time, waves had lapped where they were now sitting. A few hundred yards away, opposite the swimming pool, outcrops of brightly coloured sandstone stood out against the greenery. The Noses. Yes, Harry remembered, that was the silly name given to them. The Red Noses and the Yellow Noses. Caves ran beneath the rocks, caves where once, according to local legend, smugglers had hidden their contraband. In days gone by, wreckers had plied their trade here. Forget Frenchman’s Creek and all that Cornish crap, Harry could remember once telling Liz, after a glance at some local history book had aroused his interest in New Brighton’s discreditable past. This is where the action used to be.

And so it was again today. Stirrup had insisted on coming here, as soon as Bolus had finished with him. He wanted to see where his daughter had been found and, unable to dissuade him with anything short of physical restraint, Harry had agreed to drive him here. The police were still on the scene, combing it for forensic clues. They had succeeded where Harry had failed in preventing the bereaved father from entering the cave. At last, Stirrup yielded to the inevitable and agreed to leave the investigators to their work. Yet he refused to go far, and from their bench they could hear the sound of crackling walkie-talkies wafting through the air.

“Look at them,” Stirrup said after a short while. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the crowd of sightseers which had gathered by the edge of the cordon which the police had thrown round the caves. “Carrion crows. Feeding off the dead.”

It was good that he had chosen anger, thought Harry. A positive response. The alternative would be to surrender to the senselessness of it all. Let him start to work the rage out of his system now, with violent, cathartic words. But not deeds.

“They’ll be telling their mates about it in the pub tonight,” muttered Stirrup. “Trying to picture it. The body in that cold hole in the rocks. My daughter. My bloody daughter.”

Two ten-year-old boys had found Claire. The caves were supposed to be sealed and inaccessible to the public, but the kids had found an entrance to an old passageway at the bottom of the garden of Hasbrook Heights, a small guest house standing under the shelter of the cliffs. They had found a gap in the perimeter fence which was, Bolus said, visible from a nearby path. Any local person might be aware of how to gain access to that particular cave. It even had a nickname in the neighbourhood. The Mouse’s Hole.

And so the boys had trespassed through flower beds, broken into the cave through a trapdoor of rotting wood set in the lawn, squeezed down a narrow chimney-like shaft and discovered something that would haunt them the rest of their lives. Propped against the sandstone wall, the earthly remains of Claire Stirrup.

“Suppose I should be glad those kids found her when they did,” said Stirrup after a long silence. “At least the waiting’s over. Soon as she disappeared, I knew it meant trouble. And I knew I hadn’t killed her, despite what the police thought.”

“You were never a serious suspect.”

“Are you kidding? There’s nothing those bleeding idiots wouldn’t accuse me of. Look at the way they’ve hounded me over Ali.”

Harry said gently. “It’s time you told me the truth. What happened the last time you saw Alison?”

Stirrup chewed his lip, evidently thinking hard. Harry felt a spurt of excitement. The man was checking off pros and cons, asking himself whether to reveal whatever he had been hiding from everyone for the past few weeks. For a second, Harry realised that he had now put the question he had long disciplined himself not to ask. What if the answer compromised him? What if Stirrup finally unburdened himself and confessed to committing murder?

The dilemma was stillborn. Stirrup stood up, lifting his chin and rocking back on his heels before he spoke again.

“Nothing happened, I told you. We had a few words, about nothing in particular. The mess in the house, I think. The builders’ lack of progress. That’s all.”

“So you don’t know why she left?”

Stirrup looked straight at him and shook his head. “And I don’t know where she is, either.”

Harry was first to break eye contact. He inclined his head and looked back towards the knot of sensation-seekers. A haze of despondency blurred his vision. Stirrup had opted to keep his own counsel. From their long acquaintance, Harry was sure of it. Like most battle-scarred businessmen, Stirrup could lie without shame. And instinctively Harry sensed that he was lying now.

“I want the full story, Jack.”

“I’ve told you the full story.”

“I don’t think so.”

Stirrup reddened. “Prove it. Lawyers always go on about proof, don’t they? Well, prove that I’m not telling the truth.”

For a long time neither of them said anything. Harry contemplated the scorched grass beneath his feet; the drought had led to a hosepipe ban in Merseyside, and lawns and parks were suffering because of it. Bare patches were showing through too in Harry’s relationship with his client.

“Another thing,” he said. “When Bolus asked if you know of anyone who bore you a grudge, why did you say no?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Come on, Jack. Let’s not kid ourselves. You have enemies.”

“Like who?”

“Trevor Morgan, for one.”

“Trev? Do me a favour. He knew I had no choice but to give him the elbow.”

“And Grealish, too.”

Stirrup snorted with contempt. “He’s nothing.”

“You aren’t popular with either of them.”

“For fuck’s sake, Harry, will you listen to yourself? Business is tough, or haven’t you noticed? You get knocks all the time. Trevor Morgan and Bryan Grealish have nothing to do with — with what happened to Claire. Even Bolus could tell you that.”

“You didn’t give him the chance, because you never mentioned them.”

“Listen,” Stirrup leaned towards Harry so that their foreheads almost touched. “All I want is for that lad to be found. Nothing else matters. I don’t want Bolus fishing after any more red bloody herrings. He’s wasted enough time accusing me of doing away with Ali.”

“The lad? You mean Kuiper?”

“Who else?”

“What makes you so sure he killed Claire?”

Stirrup glanced briefly skywards. “Come on, Harry boy. Use your nut. At first, when they told me the news, I was like you. I thought it might be the madman. The Beast. But the roses now…” He made a choking sound, perhaps picturing the scene in the dark cave almost below their feet. “The roses… they must mean something.”

“What?”

“She knew the man who killed her, of course. It wasn’t the fucking Beast after all. Not Morgan, or Grealish either. They might be pricks, but they wouldn’t kill Claire just to settle a score with me. I don’t believe it. So who’s left? It must Kuiper.”

“Or what about some other boyfriend, someone you know nothing about?”

“No chance. You saw the way she behaved when that lad was around. She idolised him, she…”

Again he was on the verge of tears. After bowing his head for a moment while composing himself, he lifted it again and looked Harry straight in the eye.

“She must have had a purpose,” he said, “going out to catch that bus into West Kirby without her library books.”

“Unless she simply forgot them. It has been known for kids to forget things.”

“I don’t believe it,” Stirrup said doggedly. “She’d fixed to meet Kuiper and he’d promised to bring her some roses. He brought her here on his bike. They had a row. I can guess what about, can’t you? The randy little shit. And — well, you know the rest.”

Harry said nothing. The idea was plausible, he had to admit. And yet, if Stirrup was right, why had the student returned to Prospect House on the Saturday afternoon?

“All I want is five minutes with him,” Stirrup said. “Five minutes, that’s all I ask. I’ll get the truth, even if it kills me.”