Suspicious Minds

Chapter Fifteen

“He says it’s a matter of life and death.” Suzanne yawned as she spoke. Crusoe and Devlin’s clientele had an infinite capacity for exaggeration. The switchboard girl never disguised her resentment of callers who interrupted her enjoyment of sex-and-shopping fiction with their petty worries about moving house or breaking parole.

Earlier in the afternoon Harry had instructed her to divert all calls to Francesca while he tried to make inroads on the work which he had abandoned the previous day after receiving Bolus’s summons. Yet, like a gambler unable to resist one last bet, he reminded himself of the one-in-a-hundred chance that the caller’s crisis might be genuine.

“Who is it?”

“Name of Peter Kuiper. He’s ringing from a phone box.”

During the twenty-four hours since the discovery of Claire Stirrup’s body, Harry had kept asking himself where the student was hiding. And why. Now his mouth went dry. A long-locked door might at last be about to open. What would it reveal?

“Put him through… Peter?”

“Mr. Devlin, I need to talk to you urgently.”

The student’s voice was barely recognisable. Gone were the sneer and the hint of swaggering smart-alec remarks to come. What remained was the sound of a young man, frightened and vulnerable.

“Where are you, Peter?”

“Never mind that.” Vulnerable, but nonetheless wary. “I want your advice. Can you help me?”

“Is it about Claire?”

“It’s true, isn’t it? She’s dead, murdered. I read the story in the paper last night. I couldn’t believe it. Went out and got myself pissed to take my mind off things. She was so — so… Shit! I don’t know how to tell you what’s going through my mind.”

“Calm down, Peter. Take it slowly. One thing at a time. Why do you need me?”

“I might be in trouble with the police. It hasn’t happened yet. May not happen at all.”

“Connected with Claire?”

“In a way.”

Was he worrying about an underage sex charge? When that had been an unspoken possibility, he had seemed supremely unconcerned. Now his girlfriend had been killed and so had the chance of any prosecution. So what was he afraid of?

“Tell me.”

“We — no, you don’t need to know that. Besides, you still haven’t answered your question. Will you act for me?”

“I must know more before I can give you a straight answer, Peter. Surely you realise that? Advising you could put me in a conflict of loyalties — between you and Jack Stirrup.”

“I don’t know any other solicitors,” said Kuiper. “That’s a laugh, isn’t it, for someone studying law? True, though. Besides, you know the background. And I think I can trust you not to tell anyone where I am or what I’ve been doing. There’s a place I go to in New Brighton. Will you meet me there tonight?”

“Let’s get one thing clear before we go any further. Unless you’re completely up front with me, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

To Harry’s anguish, the pips started to go.

“I haven’t any more money. Your girl took an age to put me through.”

“Give me a number where I can phone you back. Come on, Peter, there isn’t much time.”

“No. I must think it over. I see that now. You’re Stirrup’s lawyer after all, you’re in his pocket.”

The line died before Harry could utter another word. He slammed the receiver down and let out a loud groan of despair. Francesca, passing by, poked her head round the door.

“You all right? I’ve got some Alka-Seltzer if that’s any use.”

“No, thanks. Honestly.”

“Suit yourself.” She assumed a martyred expression and disappeared in the direction of the loo, banging the door behind her with the finality of one who has mistyped her last letter of the day.

When she was out of earshot Harry swore quietly, aware that he was no wiser than before Kuiper’s call. He stared disconsolately at the pile of unfinished paperwork languishing in front of him. The heat had drained him of energy and the evening ahead promised nothing.

Valerie was out of town on a trial and when Harry phoned Balliol Chambers, David Base said he thought the case would run on until tomorrow afternoon.

“Can I take a message?”

Unreasonably, Harry found the clerk’s willingness to please grating and he had snapped, “No message,” before banging the phone down.

His small office felt like the inside of an oven, yet if he opened the window traffic noise and roadworks made coherent thought impossible. Time for a positive decision. He would abandon the job for the rest of the day and go and get drunk instead.

On his way to The Dock Brief, he picked up an evening paper. BEAST LINK IN SCHOOLGIRL MURDER? demanded a headline. He leaned against a makeshift timber wall surrounding a redevelopment site and scanned the story.

From the front page a photograph of Claire looked out at him. A head and shoulders portrait of her in a school uniform. Her expression matched the Mona Lisa’s for complacency. As if she were pandering to an adult’s whim in having her picture taken. She’d been at least as arrogant as her boyfriend, Harry reflected. He wasn’t sentimental about speaking ill of the dead. Yet nothing she might have done justified the squeezing away of her life, the consigning of her body to that dark, dismal cavern-tomb.

The journalist, Ken Cafferty, had improved bare facts with a skilful blend of innuendo and speculation. The old identikit picture of The Beast appeared next to the story. A nondescript face, stripped of all individuality. What had Bernard Gladwin said? Might be you. Might even be me. The picture had been composed, Harry suspected, ninety percent from guesswork and ten percent from the fleeting impression of a victim who might have felt she had some sense of the features beneath the animal mask.

Only on a close, lawyer’s re-reading of the story could Harry tell that the police were not officially connecting Claire’s death with the earlier attacks of The Beast. They were simply declining to rule The Beast out as a possible culprit. Cafferty made no mention of The Beast’s supposed predilection for blondes: it didn’t fit with the story. Nor did the red roses, of which he must be unaware. Bolus had made it clear to both Harry and Stirrup that no one else should be told about the strange garland which the killer had left on the girl’s corpse.

What did the roses signify? Nothing Harry knew about Claire suggested that anyone had a rational motive for murdering her. No grudge against her father, however bitterly held, could explain the savagery of her death. If Kuiper was innocent of the crime, as Harry still believed, the only credible alternative theory was that she had fallen prey to a maniac.

But there remained the question of the library books. Why had she lied about them?

He tucked the paper under his arm and strode to The Dock Brief. The pub was crowded but the hum of conversation disturbed him less than the knowledge that he was impotent to make good Jack Stirrup’s loss. Midway through his fourth pint, his reasoning was fuzzier than before and his dismay at Claire’s death had still not been submerged by the booze. As he gazed into the cloudy depths of the drink, he felt a hand grasp his arm.

“We meet again.”

Trevor Morgan. Glancing over his shoulder, Harry found Morgan’s second-hand grin and unfocussed eyes as depressing as the beer fumes which enveloped him like poison gas.

“Pull up a stool.” At least Trevor was probably too far gone to spot the lack of enthusiasm in his words. “How are you doing?”

“Never better, Harry. Never better. A pint glass in my hand and no one to hassle me. What more could any man ask me, tell me that?”

“Sorry to hear about Catherine.”

In his present state, Morgan was unlikely to recall that their last meeting he had pretended his wife was still living with him. Having a word now might minimise future embarrassment if they met again. Nothing unusual in a spouse’s desertion these days. But the one left behind still often felt a sense of shame and of failure as well as the pain of isolation. Harry knew that from personal experience.

“What? Ah!” Morgan’s free hand made a lavish easy-come, easy-go gesture. “Women. You’re better off without them. Don’t you think so, boy?”

Harry thought about Liz, about Brenda, about Valerie.

“Maybe.”

“No maybes about it.” Morgan poked Harry in the ribs with his forefinger. “They’re bad news. Only good for one thing, if you ask me, and most of ‘em aren’t so bloody keen on that. A feller can only put up with so much. Some things he shouldn’t have to take.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Morgan’s voice was beginning to rise and Harry wanted to pacify him, not debate the numberless shortcomings of the other sex.

“Anyway, let’s not talk about the bitches. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“‘Nother pint? I owe you one after you sent me to that feller Fowler. Good man, that. Good man.”

The prospect of a night-long drinking session with Trevor Morgan was sobering Harry fast. He checked his watch, then pushed his glass to one side.

“No more, thanks. I’ll have to be on my way now. But let me buy you one before I go.”

Morgan’s face darkened. Mention of Fowler had led his rambling thoughts down a new track. “No way. You’d be paying with that bastard Stirrup’s money. I know you’re in hock to him up to your eyeballs.”

“He’s only a client, Trevor.”

“Only a bastard.” Morgan stared moodily at his glass. “Ought to be taught a lesson.”

There was no arguing with him. Harry prepared to mutter an apology and make his getaway.

“A lesson,” repeated Morgan stubbornly. “Bloody murderer. I say, bloody murderer.”

His voice was rising again. Harry saw that, even in The Dock Brief’s early evening hubbub, one or two people were turning round. Not in a spirit of censure. The regulars enjoyed watching a good fight every now and then.

“Cut it out, Trevor.”

He laid a restraining hand on Morgan’s upper arm. With a bellow of rage the Welshman threw it off.

“Let go of me! You’re no better than he is. The bloody murderer!”

“Take it easy. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Oh, don’t I? And who do you think you are to tell me that, Mister Smart-Arse Solicitor? Who do you think you are? Sucking up to that bloody murderer. All right. This is what I think of you!”

Harry saw the swing of the arm holding the empty glass at the last possible moment. He ducked instinctively and the wild flailing movement swept over the top of his head. Someone screamed as the glass caught a man passing by on the side of the head. The man staggered and yelled at the same time. Harry lost his balance and felt, rather than saw, an answering blow shave his chin as one of the victim’s friends aimed wildly at Trevor.

Within seconds the place was in pandemonium. Women were screeching, men were shouting, glass was breaking. Harry rolled over and saw Trevor hit the ground with a skull-cracking thud. His assailant, a young man in a leather jacket, was on him at once, firing indiscriminate punches to head and chest before a shirt-sleeved barman managed to pull him off. The man whom Trevor had hit was sitting in a pool of beer and debris, rubbing his temple and blinking back tears of pain. Trevor lay still. He certainly wasn’t dead, but it would be a while before he rhapsodised again on the joys of single life. Blood oozed from a diagonal cut on the side of his forehead.

“Get the police,” someone said.

“And an ambulance, by the looks of things.”

Harry rubbed his eyes. The decent thing to do was to hang on, to see that the incident was explained to the police’s satisfaction and that Trevor was shipped off to Casualty with minimum delay. But Harry’s capacity for doing the decent thing was finite and he had been involved with enough police questioning for one day.

Time to go. In the confusion no one seemed to notice him clamber to his feet and totter towards the door. Outside the evening was still bright and warm. People wandered up and down the street, oblivious of the shenanigans inside the pub. He sucked in a lungful of the warm evening air before heading back to Empire Dock.

And as he walked, Trevor Morgan’s drunken words kept reverberating in his mind.

Bloody murderer. Bloody murderer.