Suspicious Minds

Chapter Twenty-Five

As darkness fell Harry drove back towards Liverpool, wondering once again whether Jack Stirrup was a murderer.

After leaving Patches he had eaten in a Knutsford pub with low beams, an inglenook and a real fire. The locals were preparing for a quiz night, tossing trivial questions and obscure answers back and forth like Wimbledon stars knocking-up before a Centre Court final. Who wrote the music for Psycho? Where did Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria die? What was discovered by the brigantine Dei Gratia in 1872? The home team’s captain, a bespectacled youth who consumed bitter over mild as if there would be no tomorrow never seemed at a loss. Harry had half a mind to seek from him a second opinion on Alison’s story.

There was not a shadow of doubt that she was telling the truth. Yet that did not necessarily make Stirrup a killer. Hence his dilemma. There was no master of ceremonies with the answer already written down in a book, he would be unable to groan it-was-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue when the truth came out. If it ever did.

Alison’s account of her last weeks as a wife had been candid. She did not absolve herself of blame for the collapse of the marriage: it had been a union of two incompatible people. After deciding that her future lay with Catherine Morgan she had scarcely bothered to conceal her contempt for either Jack Stirrup or his daughter. Rows between the three of them became ever more frequent and bitter.

For her part, Cathy vowed not to tell Trevor, out of work and hitting the bottle, about her impending departure until a suitable opportunity arose for Alison to break the news to Stirrup. The two women were arranging to start up Patches in secret in the meantime. Alison’s fear of her husband’s tempers was rooted in experience. He had struck her once in a rage, a year or so earlier, and she was afraid that if he found out she was leaving him for another woman he would lose all control. So it was vital to pick the right moment; yet the right moment never seemed to come.

As things turned out, it never did. A quarrel about Claire’s rudeness escalated one night. The girl had gone to her room, weeping and saying she hated Alison. Stirrup, tense at a time of sticky negotiations with Grealish for the sale of his business, had bellowed with anger until he was hoarse.

“Do you want me to go?” Alison had asked. Perhaps the time had come, perhaps it was worth risking his fury. This endless fighting couldn’t continue.

“What do you mean?” Stirrup had spoken with a sudden softness. She recognised it as a danger sign, like the intensity of his stare.

“You’re not happy with me. And I’m not happy with you. It makes sense for me to move out.”

“Listen!”

He’d grabbed her wrist, hurting her, making her afraid that he was about to break it.

“You’re moving nowhere. No one walks out on me, do you understand? No one. I’d sooner kill you.”

She had squirmed in his grip, trying in vain to escape. It only made him tighten his hold and hurt her more.

“Don’t be stupid. I don’t belong to you. Marriages do go stale. Ours has. What else can I do?”

“You’re my wife, got that? My wife! And you don’t move out. You stay here and toe the line. I meant what I said.”

She’d summoned up her courage or maybe her folly and spat at him. As if he’d had an electric shock, he let go of her, but within a moment lifted his right arm and smashed it against the side of her head, sending her spinning to the floor. Luckily he’d aimed high and wide and her hair had taken some of the sting out of the blow. Two inches lower and a little straighter and he’d have broken her cheekbone for sure.

Standing over her, he spoke harshly. “I’d sooner kill you. Do you believe me? You ought to.”

Looking up at him through pain-misted eyes, she’d said, “What are you talking about?”

“Margaret… your bloody predecessor! You thought her car simply went out of control, didn’t you? That it was an accident?”

“What are you saying?”

“The brakes, Alison. I fixed them. Quite a coincidence, she was about to leave me. She’d gone head over heels for some other fool, so I made sure he’d never have her again. She should’ve realised I’m not a man to mess around. The truth was, she couldn’t care less about Claire or me. I tried to reason with her at first. Then I warned her. No good, her mind was made up. I’d told her I’d never let her humiliate me, but she took no notice. She brought it on herself.”

So that was it. Jack Stirrup’s confession to murder. Listening to Alison describe the scene, Harry could visualize his client, breathing hard, speaking with a furious passion. Easy to imagine Alison full of horror as she heard her husband condemning her either to a life sentence of misery or to death. No wonder she’d chosen a clandestine escape route.

She and Cathy resolved that nobody must guess their plans. At least Stirrup and Morgan were no longer in touch; they were unlikely to put their heads together, but even so it was important that the disappearances of their respective wives should seem unconnected. Cathy left Trevor at once; it was easier for her, she’d been dealing with the business arrangements and the cottage purchase in Knutsford. She put a curt note of farewell on the kitchen table so as to eliminate any suspicion that she’d been abducted or killed.

They agreed that Alison should somehow hang on with Stirrup for a little longer and pretend to make an effort to heal the rift. The activities of The Beast gave her an idea. She was a blonde, a potential victim. He might be thought responsible when she vanished. The thought that Stirrup might be suspected of her murder had occurred to Alison; the idea held an ironic appeal, but since no one had ever suggested he was responsible for the death of Margaret, it seemed more like wishful thinking. She’d never anticipated that Doreen Capstick would point an accusing finger at her own son-in-law. Abandoning Doreen herself had been no hardship. On the contrary, she said, it ranked as a bonus.

“I read about Claire, of course. It did cross my mind to get in touch. But what good would it have done? He would only have kept looking for me. The fact you’re here now shows how determined he is to track me down. I didn’t even realise I could have cleared him of suspicion of killing me. Though I must be honest, Harry. When I think of the misery I suffered when we were together, I can’t pretend I’m sorry he’s been through the mill lately. Jack’s used people all his life. It’s time he understood how it feels.”

“I think he does.”

“A sadder and wiser man? I’ll believe it when I see it. Only I don’t want to see it.”

“You’re wrong, Alison. He wouldn’t follow you to ends of the earth to wreak revenge.”

“Really? Then what are you doing here?”

“Blame my insatiable curiosity.”

As he explained the sequence of events since her disappearance — Bolus’s inquisition, Stirrup’s idea that tracing her might silence Doreen Capstick and put him in the clear, Jonah Deegan’s sleuthing — he juggled facts and impressions for his own benefit too. Facing the issue he’d dodged for so long. Trying to decide whether Stirrup’s behaviour smacked of guilt or innocence.

And now, as he reached the end of the M62 and headed down Edge Lane towards the centre of Liverpool, certainty continued to elude him. The Stirrup he knew was capable of claiming in the heat of the moment to have committed a crime which had only taken place in his imagination. Harry had not known Stirrup in the days of Margaret; his knowledge of that marriage was confined to odd snippets of conversation over the years, filed away in his memory. Yet the man had spoken of his first wife with affection, not unmixed with grief at her death. She was, after all, the mother of his beloved Claire.

Alison, however, was in no doubt.

“I realise you’re bound to tell him I’m alive. I can’t expect you to do anything else. And of course the police must know. Can’t have them wasting any more time over me. But Harry, will you do one thing for me? For God’s sake, don’t say where I am. Lie to him, say I’ve gone abroad. Anything. But if you don’t want to have a crime on your conscience, I’m begging you not to give him any hint that Cathy and I are here.”

Harry didn’t have to say a word. He and Alison had never been close. He owed her nothing. She was a fellow human being, though, and one look at the uncharacteristic, imploring expression on her face was enough to make up his mind.

“All right, Alison. I promise.”

As the words had left his mouth, he heard the rattle of a key in a lock. Catherine Morgan was back. Alison jumped to her feet and ran out into the hall to explain in frantic whispers about their visitor.

“So,” said Cathy Morgan as she walked into the sitting room, “a face from the past.”

Her own face was as grim as Harry remembered. It seemed to be composed entirely of straight lines. No curves, no compromises, no nonsense. Harry hadn’t expected her to be overjoyed to see him — their brief acquaintance had been polite, no more than that — but he would have preferred not to be examined with the kind of distaste most people reserve for the appearance of dogshit in the middle of their previously immaculate lawn.

Nor did she disguise her distrust for his links with Jack Stirrup. Harry’s tentative suggestion that Stirrup might have made up the story about killing his first wife met with scorn.

“You’re fooling yourself,” Cathy Morgan had said; she might have been chastising a child who claimed to have seen a ghost. “You wouldn’t waste your time with any such idea if you’d seen the state this poor girl was in even twenty hours after that bloody man made his threat.”

This poor girl was now sharing the sofa with her lover, curled up in the crook of a comforting arm. She seemed to have shrunk the moment Cathy walked through the door. Harry had no trouble in guessing who wore the trousers in this particular household. Was it too cynical to think that Alison had merely exchanged one form of tyranny for another?

No scope existed for further debate. Harry said thanks for the tea and it was time he was going and Alison did not persuade him to stay. Cathy followed him out into the narrow hallway.

“Look,” she said as she opened the front door, “Alison means everything to me, do you hear? Everything. I won’t have her harmed. You may think you mean well, but your finding us is the most dangerous thing to have happened since we came out. How can we trust you to be discreet?”

“I hate to sound pompous, Cathy, but I’m a man of my word.”

“You’re a man. Full stop.”

“Part of the dreaded freemasonry, is that what you mean? Shitty, deceitful, not to be depended on?”

“Something like that.”

Harry had sympathised with Alison, understood her motives and fears. Yet Doreen Capstick and Jack Stirrup, whatever their faults, had suffered through not knowing her fate. He suspected Cathy of stiffening Alison’s resolve not to get in touch and felt a surge of dislike for this large, powerful woman, with her cynical green eyes and her manipulative ways.

“Then you’ll just have to wait in suspense wondering when my weak knees will finally give way.”

With that, he had shambled down the street towards the nearest pub. Now in the dark warmth of the M.G. he asked himself for the first time whether he would indeed cave in when Jack Stirrup pressed, as he surely would, to be told where his wife was hiding?

Speeding through a traffic light as amber turned to red, he decided that attack must be the best form of defence. Rather than fret about Stirrup’s demands for information, he must seize the initiative. A road sign loomed up: straight on for the Mersey Tunnel. He put his foot down. No time like the present. He would go to Prospect House tonight and find out for himself whether Jack Stirrup was a killer or simply a crude hoaxer.