Suspicious Minds

Chapter Twenty-One

The sun was high over the River Dee as Harry drove slowly along the promenade at West Kirby, checking the numbers of the houses to his left. Hearty businessmen who had slipped away from work early to take advantage of the glorious afternoon were filling the air with plummy-voiced camaraderie as they tinkered with boats on the marina. The atmosphere was so genteel that it was hard to believe that on the peninsula’s other coast, no more than seven miles away, were the scruffy novelty shops and litter-strewn burger bars of New Brighton.

Harry identified a smartly painted three-storey maisonette as the place he was seeking. As he rang the doorbell, he became aware of an unexpected nervousness, a weak feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Sally Jean-Jacques answered at once. She was as attractive as he had remembered. He knew her to be forty but her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair was as fine as that of any teenager and her sky blue jump suit displayed a figure still slender and tempting.

“Harry, how good to see you again.”

When they had spoken earlier on the phone, he had recalled how her gentle way of speaking had always appealed to him. There was nothing strident about her. She was one of those people who, even after a gap in time, can pick up a friendship or acquaintance as if it had continued without interruption for half a lifetime.

“Thanks for being willing to talk, Sally.”

She didn’t offer to shake hands; she wasn’t someone whom formality appealed. Instead she smiled and said, “Come in. You’ll have to take us as you find us, I’m afraid. I haven’t bothered to dust or anything since you called.”

“Are you well?” He didn’t ask out of mere politeness. He hoped she was fine; she deserved to be.

“Speaking for myself, seldom been better,” she said, leading him into a large living room with a vast Indian rug draped over the floor and Oriental hangings suspended from the picture frame. “Take a seat. Would you like some tea?”

“No thanks, I won’t take up too much of your time.”

“No hurry.” They sat down facing each other and she smiled at him. “Hughie works long hours. He isn’t due until half-seven. We won’t be eating till after then.”

“Hughie?”

“The new man in my life,” she said with a laugh. “Hughie Wakefield. He runs a business which digs holes in the ground and then fills them in again at a large profit. I always knew business works in a mysterious way, but I never realised how mysterious till I met Hughie.”

“Wakefield Waste?” Harry nodded. “I know them. Big company.” Unexpectedly, he felt a sense of disappointment at her news, which was as irrational as it was unfair. Sally had known hard times. Why should he begrudge her a little pleasure?

As if she could read his thoughts, she said, “It took a while for me to get over Clive. Now I’m simply spreading my wings again.”

“I’m glad,” he said. And, after his momentary pang of envy, he meant it.

Three years earlier he had acted for Sally Jean-Jacques in her divorce. She had been widowed at thirty and left a tidy sum by her first husband, a dentist twenty years her senior who had died of cancer. Too quickly Sally had re-married, to a marketing consultant from Bermuda whom she had met while taking a hard earned holiday after months of nursing a dying man. Clive Jean-Jacques had been fun when times were good between them, violent when they were not. After he had fractured her jaw in a fit of drunken temper she had decided that enough was enough and had walked out with Gina and returned to her roots in Merseyside.

Harry’s professional shoulder had been there for her to cry on and she seemed to value that as much as his advice on the matrimonial proceedings. When the case was over and the file closed he had once or twice wondered what would have happened if he’d taken her to bed instead of confining himself to a chaste farewell kiss on the cheek. It never could have worked out, he told himself, for two vulnerable people there would have soon have been an end in tears. Whether he really believed himself was another story.

“You sounded very mysterious on the phone,” she said.

“Sorry. It was — quite strange talking to you again after all this time.”

“I was glad to hear from you. As you ought to have guessed. But what is all this about Gina? How can she help you?”

“As I said, Claire Stirrup’s father is a client of mine. I gather she went to the same school as Gina and a girl called Stephanie Elwiss. I was speaking to Stephanie last night. She told me that Gina had been attacked by The Beast.”

Sally’s eyes clouded. “That’s right. Four weeks ago and a night hasn’t passed since without her waking in the night, crying out for me to help her.”

“Christ, Sally, it must be hell to live through something like that.”

“And yet, what else can you do but live through it? You can’t simply give up the ghost. Life goes on. We all ought to count our blessings. And all the other cliches I’ve heard a thousand times. You know what I mean.”

“She’s lucky to have you to lean on.”

“You think so? I feel very inadequate sometimes.”

He looked at her, his face grave. “Not you, Sally.”

“Well… you’re still kind, still good for my morale. Anyway — what can we do for you?”

“Claire came to visit Gina last Friday night, I believe.”

“Yes, she did. The police asked about it. Apparently they saw all the girls poor Claire knew at school, but Gina came in for special questioning simply because she was one of the last people to see Claire alive. I doubt she could tell them much they didn’t already know, but obviously they think the man who raped her may also have murdered Claire.”

“Were you surprised when Claire came to visit on Friday?”

“To tell the truth, I was. This sounds dreadful after what happened to her, but I’d always thought of her as a self-centred girl. She and Gina were never close. Not that Gina has many good friends, poor girl. At least not of the two-legged variety. You’ll remember she’s crazy about horses? Or was, before…”

“Sally, would you mind if I talked to Gina about that evening? I’m trying to piece together what Claire was up to just before she was killed.”

“Why, Harry?”

“Because I think it may help me to understand why she was murdered.”

“Surely the police…”

“Don’t ask me to explain yet, Sal. I’m not sure I could if I tried. My mind’s a jumble at the moment. All the same, I think Gina could help me clear things up, if you and she were willing.”

“It’s all right by me. I know you’ll be sympathetic when you talk to her.”

“Sit in with us if you like. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”

“No. I spoke to her after you called. She liked you. That time she came with me to your office, she remembers it to this day. Take her for a walk along the front, it’s a beautiful afternoon. I want her to start trusting men again, to be willing to be alone with them. Within reason, of course. She’s got to learn that you’re not all brutes.”

“Sometimes I wonder about that myself.”

“Nonsense. There are good men and there are bad men. We all have to make our judgements about which are which. No one can go through life expecting the worst of everyone they meet. I’ll call her down now. If you want me later, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

She left the room and he heard her calling her daughter’s name. There was the soft sound of footsteps coming down the carpeted steps, then the creak of the door as someone came in behind him.

He got to his feet, “Gina, how are you?”

The girl’s fair hair had been as long as her mother’s when last he had seen her; now it was cropped short. All the colour seemed to have been washed out of her cheeks and she was painfully thin. Immediately he suspected anorexia and wished he hadn’t asked the conventional question.

To his surprise, she answered in a level tone. “Okay, could be worse, could be better.”

“I was sorry when I heard…”

It was another sentence which he regretted as soon as he started to utter it. Gina was not the first rape victim he had met. He had acted for clients who had been attacked, as well as several who were attackers. Why he felt so awkward with this girl, he wasn’t sure. Was it the sense of intruding on misery, the awareness that to satisfy his own curiosity he must force this child to recall the worst moments of her short life?

She shrugged away the brief embarrassment. “I’m getting over it. You may not think so to look at me. But I am.”

“Good.” He was uncertain how to continue.

Again she rescued him. “Mum told me you work for Claire’s father. She didn’t know what you want from me, but she said you wouldn’t ask to see me if you didn’t have a good reason.”

“So is it okay with you that we talk?”

When she nodded he went on, “Your mother suggested a stroll along the promenade. How does that sound to you?”

“Selfish.” Gina managed a smile. “It means she can listen to her Barry Manilow records in peace for a few minutes. Shall we go?”

Once outside they crossed the road and leaned on the railings, looking across the estuary towards the three small islands, Hilbre, Middle Hilbre and Little Eye, each of them so near and yet somehow so remote. The sanctuary where monks had once lived a life of penance and prayer had long ago crumbled. Now the islands were home to terns and wading birds rather than men of God. All that remained was the air of peace; you could sense it even from the mainland.

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. Harry guessed the girl was summoning up her courage to talk about her ordeal, trying to draw strength from the tranquillity of the scene.

At last he heard her take a deep breath before turning to face him and saying, “Are you buying the ice creams, then?”

He grinned and went to buy a couple of 99s from the kiosk down the road. Munching the chocolate flake, they ambled along the promenade.

“I gather Claire came to see you a couple of times.”

“Yes. After it happened — well, word soon got round somehow. Even though my name’s never been in the papers. There’s a law against that, isn’t there? Anyway, she popped in with some of the girls from school. A nice thought, I suppose, looking back on it, but I simply wasn’t in the mood at the time. And anyway, she and I had never been all that close. Plus the fact she spent most of the time going on about her boyfriend.”

She concentrated on the cornet for a moment, deep in thought, and then said, “Of course, I shouldn’t say those nasty things. She’s dead now.”

“I want to know the truth, Gina. Not what you think you ought to say. You didn’t have much in common with Claire. So were you surprised when she paid a second visit on her own?”

“Yes. I’d started making an effort to get back to normal. Not that I’m there yet, even now, though Mum’s been terrific. And when I heard Claire had been killed — I felt sick. As well as a bit guilty. Because I soon got fed up with her when she was here last week.”

“Why?”

“Oh, she was so ghoulish. If the idea was to cheer me up and take my mind off things, she went about it in a funny way. Every time the conversation veered off you-know-what, she made this big effort to drag it up again.”

“In what way?”

Gina gazed towards the hills of Wales. Harry waited for her to continue.

Not looking at him, she finally said, “She wanted to know what he was like.”

“The man who attacked you?”

“Yes. The Beast. Beast is too good a word, though.”

“And?”

“I didn’t want to talk about it. I know I can’t simply forget everything, I’ve got to come to terms with it and I think I’m starting to do that now. But I couldn’t understand what she was after. She seemed fascinated by what had happened to me, like some real sicko. She even wanted to know if he’d kissed me… oh God, I’m sorry.”

Her voice broke and tears welled in her eyes. Harry put his arm round her shoulders, an unthinking gesture of support. Feeling her body stiffen with anxiety, he cursed his instinctive reaction. She wasn’t yet ready for physical contact with any man after her ordeal.

What had Claire been after? There must be a link between her call on Gina and her own fate. Whether she knew it or not, Gina might hold the key. Yet he could not find it within himself to cross-examine her further. One last question, he said to himself, and then leave her alone.

“Would you recognise his voice again?”

“The police asked me that. I can’t be sure. He was very cold, but he spoke quietly, barely above a whisper.” Gina hesitated. “You know, this has never crossed my mind before, but perhaps he was almost as frightened as me.”

They had reached the end of the promenade now. For a few minutes they watched the little boats bobbing on the water, then Gina added, “I was glad when Claire went home. Of course I never dreamed that twenty-four hours later…”

“No one could have foreseen that.”

“It’s such an incredible coincidence, that within such a short space of time the same man should have murdered her. It sounds horrible to say so, but I feel almost grateful, that perhaps I got off lightly after all.”

Harry studied the skin-and-bone young girl with her pale cheeks and fearful eyes. Maybe she was learning to cope with the assault on her, but it would be a long time before she would ever be able wholly to trust a man again. Maybe suspicion would always lurk at the back of her mind.

“I don’t think you got off lightly,” he said.

And though he did not say so, he did not believe that the murder of Claire Stirrup was such an incredible coincidence, either.