Suspicious Minds

Chapter Four

Driving through the boulevards of West Kirby on the way to Jack Stirrup’s home, Harry wondered if Valerie was at that very moment with Julian Hamer. See you later. Hamer’s casual farewell to her must have been literally meant. Since Liz’s death, Harry had lived without jealousy and it was a shock to recognise envy nibbling like a rat at his guts.

Maybe he was doing Valerie an injustice. Starting out on her career, she was bound to be busy some nights. And if she were seeing Hamer, what of it? As professional colleagues they might have a dozen good reasons to socialise from time to time. But that argument held no more water than a recidivist’s alibi.

Harry bit his lip. No point in agonizing — life was too short. Better by far to do something positive to occupy his mind. Such as puzzling over Alison Stirrup’s disappearance.

Stirrup lived in affluent Caldy, at the end of a lane which petered out into an unmade track leading to the crest of a sandstone hill overlooking the Dee. Harry approached the house by way of a drive which wound through beech and lime trees, finally revealing after the last bend a large redbrick building with a much-gabled roof and a mass of small, irregularly-placed mullioned windows. Prospect House dated back to the eighteenth century and according to Jim Crusoe, who had handled the conveyancing, so did the plumbing. Outside the front door, a tarpaulined builder’s lorry and a skip full of rubble signified that the repair programme still had a long way to go.

As Harry locked his car Stirrup appeared at the front door, two glasses of beer in his hands. His short-sleeved designer leisure shirt did not flatter his paunch.

“Glad you could make it. Here, quench your thirst. Care for a quick trip round the estate?”

He led Harry along a path of crazy paving which rambled around the side of the house. The overgrown gardens extended for acre after acre. Rhododendron bushes loomed on either side, blocking out the low evening sun. Brambles poked at the two men with tendrils like the fingers of menacing strangers. They walked past an empty greenhouse with cracked and cobwebbed panes and a tumbledown stable block. Even the estate agents’ particulars had described the place as a challenge.

Harry guessed that the most diplomatic course was to admire the view. Doing so was no hardship: a heat haze shimmered over the river, making the grey-green Welsh hills beyond seem remote and mysterious. Stirrup enthused about the sunsets in this part of the world, then apologised for the state of the grounds.

“Can’t find a gardener, believe it or not. You’d think people would be glad of a job. Anyway, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Thought I’d concentrate on the house first. Christ, I knew it was a big job when I started, but if I’d realised…”

He launched into a jeremiad about the tribulations of modernising an old property. The expense, the defects not revealed even by an expensive survey, the delays, the inadequacies of tradesmen. Harry speculated that Alison might simply have grown tired of the inconvenience of living in an approximation to a builder’s yard.

When they went inside, the progress made became apparent. The entrance hall boasted polished walnut wainscoting, a low ceiling with exposed beams and half-timbering in the old Cheshire style. All it lacked was a life-size portrait of the lord of the manor.

“Woodworm treatment alone cost me a bloody fortune,” grumbled Stirrup, although there was a note of pride in his voice.

Harry was making all the right noises when a door banged and a girl appeared. She glanced theatrically at her watch.

“You’d better be sitting down in the next two minutes.”

“Hello, Claire,” said Harry. “Sorry we’re late, your dad’s been showing me round outside.”

Stirrup’s daughter was the child of his first marriage. Her mother had died in a car crash when the girl was still at infants’ school. Her figure had filled out since Harry had last seen her. A tight jersey and narrow-waisted jeans did nothing to disguise curves which, for a fifteen-year-old, were generous. A year or two ago she had been a quiet daddy’s girl, a flat-chested, androgynous kid with the abstracted appearance of someone who has spent too long listening to a personal stereo. Round-framed spectacles had been abandoned in favour of contact lenses and she had grown her black hair to shoulder length. Her nose was too big, and her jaw too long, for her to claim prettiness, but she was now unmistakably a young woman. She even had the sulky look which in Harry’s teenage memories was inseparably associated with girls who had just become aware of their power to appeal to men.

“You remember Mr. Devlin?” asked Stirrup, all paternal good humour.

“Yeah.” She turned her back on them. “I’m putting the stuff out on the table this minute, okay?”

Stirrup winked at Harry, who had never fathomed why so many parents regard their offsprings’ rudeness as a source of amusement. They went into the dining room, a large oak-panelled place. The round table was set for two.

“Claire ate earlier on,” explained Stirrup. “Busy young lady, you know, she wanted the rest of the evening to herself.”

As the girl served them with melon, Harry recalled that her father had told him that she had her heart set on a career in catering. He asked if that was still the case and she nodded curtly before withdrawing, leaving Harry to reflect that he found it no easier to converse with fifteen-year-old girls than he had done when he was the same age.

Over the meal — beef cooked in wine, simple but excellent — Stirrup talked about his company, interrupting himself only to shove forkfuls of food into his mouth. Loudly he bemoaned the iniquities of the tax system, the greed of customers and the unreliability of suppliers. And above all, the difficulty of finding competent staff.

“What’s the latest on Trevor?” asked Harry, pouring the last of the wine.

“Morgan? Christ knows. No one’s asked me for a reference. Last time I asked around, he was drinking more than ever. The man’s a fool to himself.”

Harry put the wine bottle down guiltily. “Pity,” he said. “You and he were close at one time.”

“Close?” Stirrup leaned over the table and snapped his fingers. “We were like that, Trevor Morgan and me, ever since the days when I had one off-licence and a scratty little wine bar in Wrexham called The Stirrup Cup. Claire was just a toddler then, it was in the days when Margaret was still alive. He and I have been together ever since. If he could have kept his hands off the female staff, he’d be with me now. But he went too far.”

“How did Cathy take his sacking?”

“No idea. Never seen her from that day to this. Tell you the truth, I could never stick the woman. Hard-nosed bitch. She gave Trev a hard time, no wonder he played away from home. Ali got on with her all right, reckoned she was cultured. But once I’d given Cathy’s old man the push, that was the end of it. The girls could scarcely keep on socialising.”

Claire came in, bearing mints and cups of coffee. Harry congratulated her on the meal and received a shrug in response. Stirrup said genially, “She still fancies going to catering college. Sometimes I worry I’ve bred a female Bryan Grealish, God help us. I keep telling her to go to university, take a degree in law. Make yourself a fortune like that feller Devlin, I keep on saying.”

As he bellowed with laughter, his daughter looked briefly at the heavens and went out again.

“I didn’t go to university,” said Harry mildly. The Polytechnic had been good enough for him. Studying in his spare time while he took a succession of casual jobs to keep his head above water. After the death of his parents, money had always been tight.

“What? Well, you know what I mean. No way will a solicitor ever starve. Not while…”

He was interrupted by the roar of a motorbike engine coming close to the house before cutting out. A look of anger darkened his face for a moment, then was gone. Harry heard footsteps: Claire hurrying to the back door.

Lowering his voice, Stirrup said, “That’ll be lover boy. Sly little creep.”

“Claire’s young man?”

Stirrup made a noise, part belch, part expression of disgust. “Not so young. Twenty years old, would you believe? Claire’s only a kid yet. Oh, yes, I know she’s got a figure. And she can cope with any lad who tries to go too far. She’s got a yellow belt in karate, would you believe. All right, things are different from when you and me were young. All the same, I don’t like it. A cradle snatcher, that’s what he is.”

Harry didn’t think a five-year age gap put the lad in Bryan Grealish’s class as a cradle snatcher. Nor was he thrilled to be bracketed with Stirrup in age.

“Don’t get me wrong, Harry boy. I’m no Mister Bloody Barrett of Wimpole Street. I know a thing or two about the younger generation, how they behave. Forbidden fruit and all that. My girl’s no angel, she’s flesh and blood. I haven’t asked her not to keep seeing him. That’s the mistake my first wife’s old man made with me. Margaret and me, we simply ran off and got married. No, matter of fact, I encourage her to bring him into the house. Let her see him in surroundings she knows, not some back street pub or disco. That way she’ll realise soonest he isn’t for her.”

“What does the lad do?”

“Not a bloody hand’s turn! That is, he’s a student. Studying law, would you believe? At the Poly though, not a proper university.”

Words failed Harry this time, but his host was unaware of it. Stirrup wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up, gazing through the dining room window. After a moment he strode from the room. Harry could hear him shouting to Claire, urging her to invite her friend inside. The reply sounded mutinous, but within a couple of minutes Stirrup was back, wearing the complacent expression of a man who has scored a point.

Claire followed, her face red with embarrassment or rage or both. A pace behind came a young man in leather biking gear. Thick black hair fell forward over his pallid face. He had a sullen mouth which might have been purpose-made for registering a sneer. A gold earring glinted from one lobe.

“You want to be a lawyer, don’t you…” — Stirrup ostentatiously reached into his memory for the young man’s first name — “… Peter? Well, this is my company’s solicitor. Mr. Harry Devlin — meet Peter Kipper.”

“Kuiper,” snapped Claire. She pronounced it “caper.”

Stirrup smiled and Harry guessed the mistake had been deliberate. Stretching out a hand, he said, “Pleased to meet you.”

Peter Kuiper curled his lip as if an attempt were being made to contaminate him with a social disease.

“I don’t intend to practise law.” He had a faint South African accent. “There’s too much routine in legal work to satisfy me. It’s just a qualification, a mental discipline, as far as I’m concerned.”

“You’ll change your tune when the taxpayer stops paying your board and lodging,” said Stirrup with breezy confidence.

Kuiper bestowed a look of pity upon the girl. Her face crimsoned again and she said, “Peter’s got too much imagination to be a wage slave.”

Harry decided to mediate. “I can do without the competition anyway,” he said affably. “So what are your plans, Peter?”

Permitting himself a smile of superiority, Kuiper said, “To make money. In an interesting way.”

“Do me a favour, then. When you discover the secret, let me in on it.”

Claire didn’t bother to hide her boredom with the conversation. “Peter can’t stay long.” She shot a resentful glance at her father and waved a hand towards the dining room table. “And I suppose I’ll have all the meal to clear up. So if you don’t mind…”

“You can use the living room,” said Stirrup, exuding magnanimity.

“It’s okay, I’m going soon,” said Kuiper. “Just called to say hello. Got plenty of things to do.”

Distress blotched the girl’s face. “But you said…”

“Only a flying visit, I told you. I’ll give you a call.”

As the young man left the room, Stirrup said with a glance at his watch, “Nice to see you again, er — Peter. Better look sharp, though. You’ve only a couple of hours or so left today to make any headway towards your first million.”

Kuiper responded with a just-you-wait scowl and was gone, Claire hard on his heels. Harry and Stirrup could hear the two of them talking in the hallway. Their voices were low, urgent.

Stirrup broke the silence as soon as he realised that he could not hear what was being said without overt eavesdropping. “See what I mean? The surly young bastard’s not fit to lick her boots.”

Harry was not convinced that Claire and Kuiper were unsuited to each other, so he simply shook his head in a gesture that might have meant anything.

Stirrup sighed. “It’s not easy for the girl, you know. I can’t be mother as well as father to her. I work long hours, you know that. There ought to be an older woman about the place.”

The front door banged. They could hear Claire going into the kitchen; her footfalls had a defeated sound. Harry seized the opportunity to turn the conversation in the direction which interested him most.

“Maybe Alison will be back home soon.”

“You think so? I don’t know, Harry boy, I just don’t know.”

“A woman doesn’t walk out on all this” — Harry’s wave of the hand encompassed the magnificence of the room — “without a good reason. Any idea what it might be?”

“If I only knew. Any road, least said, soonest mended. Come on, have a look round the rest of the house?”

Stirrup led the way with the pride of a mother showing off a new-born child. The billiard room, the study, the conservatory. It was like seeing a Cluedo gameboard brought to life.

“Not bad, eh?”

They climbed turning stairs to a galleried landing half the floor area of Harry’s flat. Doors led off to bedrooms. “Mine,” said Stirrup, pointing to one of them. “Alison’s. Claire’s. Couple more for the guests, plus an attic upstairs.”

So the husband and wife occupied separate rooms? Even as Harry mulled that one over, his client sought to forestall curiosity.

“Always each had our own room, Ali and me, right from when we were first married. The coppers raised their eyebrows when they came round the first time, but I told them, don’t read anything into it. Things were all right between her and me. But you don’t spend a fortune on a place like this and then stint yourself for space. Besides, I’m a bit of a snorer and Alison sleeps light. But we had plenty of nights together with no time for either snoring or sleeping, let me tell you.”

Harry ignored Stirrup’s do-you-want-to-make-anything-else-of-it gaze. Like so many clients, he was protesting too much.

He strolled into Alison’s bedroom. His first impression was that everything was blue. The carpet, the curtains, the elaborate patchwork quilts hanging from the wall. No fluffy feminine touches for Alison Stirrup. The room matched her appearance and her personality — or at least, as much or as little of her personality as she had cared to reveal. Immaculate, attractive, but cool and remote as Lapland.

He bent to examine the contents of the bookcase. Other people’s taste in literature always intrigued him. Alison, it seemed, enjoyed the Victorians. Cranford, North and South, Villette and Silas Marner stood side by side with Winifred Gerin’s life of Elizabeth Gaskell. And they were sandwiched by a clutch of books on patchwork techniques.

“Ali always had her nose in a book. Either that or she was busy with her needlework.” Stirrup jerked a thumb at one of the wall hangings, a five-foot wide hexagon composed of innumerable blue and green triangles. “Not bad if you like that sort of thing. I used to say, turn your hobby into a business, make a few bob out of it.”

Harry wondered what Alison had ever seen in her husband. Not a shared love of cultural or artistic pursuits, that was for sure. Money must be the answer. It usually was, whatever the question. But if she was still alive, what was she using for money now?

As they went downstairs Stirrup said, “Fancy a game of snooker before you go?”

Harry realised, for the first time, the man’s sense of isolation. If he was as bemused by Alison’s vanishing as he claimed, life must at the moment seem an unexplained mystery.

“One game, then.”

They played on a full-sized Thurston table, talking spasmodically about this and that. Stirrup drank liqueurs steadily, but they neither affected his calculation of angles nor prompted him to volunteer anything more about Alison. Harry matched his opponent shot for shot and, with only a few balls left on the table, Stirrup needed snookers to win. But Harry let his mind wander. What was Valerie up to? When he missed an easy pot, Stirrup didn’t try to hide a grin. He seized his chance and finally sank the black to win the game.

“You let it slip,” he said. “I’d not have made that mistake in your shoes.”

Harry nodded rueful agreement.

“Know the secret, Harry boy? I’ll tell you. It’s simple. And it’s the same in love or war, business or snooker.” In high good humour he slapped his solicitor matily on the back. “You need the killer instinct.”