Suspicious Minds

Chapter Five

“Hanging would be too good for him,” said Bernard Gladwin.

Harry’s mind was on whether Stirrup had killed his wife and disposed of the body. Where might the corpse be hidden, if he had? Surely not at Prospect House — Stirrup wouldn’t be so naive as to court almost inevitable detection. The police had already with his permission taken a cursory look round the building and grounds. Finding nothing. So far they had stopped short of digging up the overgrown garden, although Harry guessed that if Alison did not reappear soon, Bolus would insist on a much more thorough search.

A touch of steel across his neck brought Harry back to the here and now. His barber was talking about The Beast, not Jack Stirrup, and had momentarily paused for breath. To give Harry the chance to confirm him in his prejudices.

The razor’s reflection gleamed in the wall mirror. Harry gazed back at it, not letting his expression give a clue to his thoughts.

“What punishment do you suggest? The guillotine?”

Bernard grunted. “I’d be willing to do the job myself if no else had the bottle.”

He emphasised the point with a flourish of his shaving arm, causing Harry to flinch in anticipation of a severed jugular.

Bernard was a burly, red-faced man who cut hair with the same ruthless simplicity with which he expressed his views on law and order. And yet Harry had never surrendered to logic and taken his custom elsewhere. He found something compelling in Bernard’s unashamed awfulness. Coming here was a bad habit, like eating chocolate fudge cake or watching a TV soap.

“The bloody streets aren’t safe to walk these days. I blame the government. To say nothing of the bloody social workers.”

Harry forbore to point out that none of The Beast’s victims had been accosted in the street. Fine distinctions would be as wasted on Bernard as would piped music or comfy chairs in this place of his.

Bernard’s wasn’t a hairdressing studio or a unisex salon. It was a barber’s and proud of it. There was even a red and white striped wooden pole outside the door. Sitting on a ledge beside a card display of unbreakable combs and a tub of styptic pencils was a scruffy box of condoms, its contents no doubt long past their useful life. A pin-up calendar provided the only touch of glamour; June’s lovely lady rejoiced in the name of Inge. Occasionally, Harry noticed in the mirror, Bernard would glance at Inge, as if to refresh his memory about the exact dimensions of her ballooning breasts.

“The bloody police aren’t much better. Months this pervert’s been on the loose, and has anyone been arrested? Have they buggery!”

“Difficult case,” said Harry to plug a gap in the conversation while Bernard tried to take a lump out of his left ear.

“What is it — six attacks now, seven? All in public places. Surely to God they ought to have an idea who’s responsible.”

“There’s no pattern. He strikes at different times of the day. And all over Wirral, isn’t that right?”

Bernard nodded. “Birkenhead Park, Eastham Ferry, the Wirral Way, Raby Mere. You name it.”

“Hard to catch up with someone like that.”

“Bloody disgrace.” Bernard held up a hand mirror. “How’s that? Bit more off the sides? Anyhow, see that identikit picture in the Echo! Could have been anyone. Might be you. Might even be me.”

He bared large yellow teeth in an angry grimace and finished snipping. “All right? Want anything on it, keep it together?” Without waiting for a reply, he squirted a dented metal canister of something ozone-unfriendly at Harry’s head, then stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Waiting while Bernard brushed bits of hair off his shoulders, Harry turned his mind to The Beast. Beyond reading the reports in the Press, he had not given the assaults much thought. What intrigued him were the quirks and oddities of human life and death. A plot, a puzzle, a hint of mystery whether on film, in a novel or in the real world, all could fire his imagination. But the recent spate of attacks across the water had seemed commonplace in a dangerous age. Harry had assumed that the perpetrator would soon be caught. Their paths were only likely to cross if The Beast wanted Crusoe and Devlin to act as his solicitors.

Bernard was right, though. Upwards of half a dozen attacks in public parks and other open spaces since spring and the police seemed no nearer to arresting The Beast than to nailing Jack the Ripper. Meanwhile he was becoming more violent. At first he had been content to flash at a couple of pre-pubertal girls. Then he had touched one. Next he turned to rape. Each attack seemed more brutal than the one before. Now the police were warning that the man might kill. And in the past few weeks the Press had made a running story out of two common themes linking the attacks. The Beast always wore a rubber mask with the snarling face of an animal — a dog, a leopard, a wolf — of the kind currently popular and sold in shops up and down the country. And each young victim’s hair was blonde.

“Know what I’d do if I got hold of him?” asked Bernard.

Harry handed over his money with a hasty word of thanks “I can guess,” he said. He was about to leave when the door opened and through it a familiar figure hobbled on arthritic legs clad in cavalry twill trousers which had seen better days.

“Hello Jonah. About time you had those shaggy locks trimmed.”

“Very funny.”

The newcomer had a cover of grey hair as thin as a spider’s web. He was a stocky man, sixty if a day, and Harry found it impossible to imagine his leathery face ever having yielded a carefree smile. Despite the heat, over a white shirt with fraying cuffs he was wearing an old maroon cardigan.

“Sure you’re warm enough?” asked Harry. Like everyone else, he’d never been able to resist teasing Jonah Deegan.

“Nothing better to do with your time than crack silly jokes?”

“As it happens, I’m glad I’ve seen you. There’s something you can do for me.”

Although he must have scented business, Jonah’s watery eyes didn’t flicker. He said to Gladwin, “With you in a minute, Bernard. Just let me have a word with Clarence Darrow here.”

They stepped to one side and the barber made a token effort at sweeping the floor whilst trying to eavesdrop.

“What can I do for you?”

“Still got contacts over the water?”

Jonah had been in the Merseyside police from leaving school until retirement. He’d been a good detective by all accounts, though the sights and sounds of the city’s twilight world had soured his view of the human race. Long since divorced, he lived in a flat near the Anglican cathedral with an endless supply of foul-smelling cigarettes for company. Nowadays he worked for himself, mostly chasing — or limping after — the occasional debt. And what he lacked in social graces he made up for with cussed persistence.

“I’d like you to find the answer to a question for me.”

“Ask away.”

Harry explained about the police interrogation of Jack Stirrup. “Someone’s stirring them up. Must be. Missing persons usually rate low on the priority list.”

Jonah nodded. “And you want to know who’s stirring? I’ve heard of this Bolus. He’s just a whippersnapper. Doubt if he’s thirty. I’ll have a word round.”

“Thanks.”

“It’ll cost, mind.”

“Jack Stirrup can afford it.”

“The price went up when you made the crack about this cardigan.”

“You’re a hard man, Jonah. Give me a ring at the office when you have any news.”

Outside the sky was cloud-free. Mid-afternoon on the hottest day of the year so far and Liverpudlians were relishing it, equally careless of sunstroke and skin cancer. In Church Street, opportunistic vendors bellowed the price of dark glasses whose provenance and effectiveness were both in doubt. Shirt-sleeved old men sat on benches, picking their noses and eyeing the women who passed them by.

Harry looked at the women too. Overweight middle-aged ladies panting as they lugged heavily-laden shopping baskets towards the bus stop. Mothers in sleeveless dresses, dragging fractious children away from ice-cream barrows. And teenagers in tight tee-shirts and shorts, displaying figures good, bad and indifferent. One redhead had emblazoned on her ample chest: I’m not fat — just pregnant.

Several girls had fair hair and Harry wondered how many of them feared that one day soon they might become a name in the paper when The Beast struck again. As surely he would. The thought angered Harry. Why should they not be safe? Why should their sex and their age and the colour of their hair make them vulnerable to a man for whom they were not living individuals but simply lumps of female flesh? His head said that Bernard’s lynch-mob justice never worked. His heart was not so sure.

All was quiet back at the office. He was greeted by Francesca, the temp who was deputising whilst his secretary and her family sunned themselves on the Algarve. A slender girl whose perm resembled an exotic form of marine life, Francesca had a Shakespearean indifference towards consistency in spelling. The shortness of her skirts and the smoothness of her bare legs were scant compensation for her inability to type accurately at speed.

“Too hot to be inside working on a day like this!”

Ten times at least that week she had greeted him with the same remark. Harry responded with a weary smile and asked if there were any messages.

“On your desk, together with your post.”

Down the corridor, a door swung open and a big, bearded man emerged. Jim Crusoe, his partner, back after a morning spent with an old lady in Formby who wanted to add an umpteenth codicil to her will. Rumour claimed she had ambitions for a place in The Guinness Book of Records. More testamentary dispositions than she had personal effects.

“Good lunch? Christ, old son, call that a haircut? You haven’t been to Sweeney Todd’s again? He could make a Rasta look like Dennis the Menace.”

“Does wonders for my street cred down at the magistrates’.”

“Don’t bank on it. Anyway, what’s the latest on Jack Stirrup?”

Harry described his visit to Prospect House. “He’s holding back on me, Jim. I’m certain of that, but nothing else.”

“You think Alison’s dead?”

“Wish I knew.”

“You know your trouble.”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You’re too interested in the truth to be a defence lawyer. If I’d killed someone, I’d want a brief who wasn’t too fussy about right. A Ruby Fingall. No wonder he’s cornered the market in big league villainy.”

“Stirrup’s not short of a few bob.”

“But he’s an amateur in crime, isn’t he? No track record. Piling the booze high and flogging it cheap is no training for a career in homicide.” Jim put a huge hand to his mouth in mock embarrassment. “Sorry. You’re going to remind me about the golden thread. Our client’s guilty until proved innocent and all that leader column garbage.”

“So you think he killed her?”

Jim Crusoe looked him in the eye. “Let’s just say I’ve seen him lose his rag a time or two and I wouldn’t like to be in his way when it happens. And I went over to Prospect House during the sale negotiations. The grounds are a jungle. You could hide half the bodies from West Kirby cemetery there.”

“Careful, I may start thinking you’re the one who got the police to swarm over there.”

“Not me, old son. I’d hate to be proved right and see Jack behind bars. Believe me, we need his fees.”

They parted and Harry had done an hour’s much-needed desk work when the phone rang and Jonah Deegan spoke his name.

“Got something? That was quick.”

“I can still pull a few strings.” Jonah could make even a boast sound like a lament.

“And?”

“Name Doreen Capstick mean anything to you?”

“Stirrup’s motherin-law.”

“Right. She’s the one who’s agitating. Ringing the station by the hour complaining about the lack of progress in finding her daughter. She’s convinced the marriage was on the rocks and that Stirrup topped the girl rather than see her run back to mummy.”

Even from his brief acquaintance with Alison, Harry doubted whether she would have been eager to take refuge with her loud and tiresome mother except as a last resort.

“Anything else?”

“It’s a genuine mystery.” Jonah didn’t give the impression of being intrigued. “No evidence to pin anything on your bloke. And no explanation of the woman’s disappearance. The betting is, she had another man on the quiet. But if so, it was very, very quiet.”

“Thanks, Jonah. Send me your bill.”

“I posted it five minutes ago.”

While Harry mulled over the news, Francesca came in and left her day’s work for him to check, together with a handful of phone messages. He rifled through the papers, cringing at the ragged margins and mistakes in the correspondence, signing all the letters which were not so ineptly presented as to make re-typing essential. This week’s investment in correction fluid alone could send the firm into the red.

Two of the telephone calls made him pause. Valerie had rung — it must be her from the return call number, though Francesca’s spelling of Kaiwar was imaginative and wildly inaccurate. sorry can’t make it tonight call tomorrow and fix something up was the message, printed out in a child-like, unformed hand. Harry swore, crumpled the piece of paper into a ball and hurled it into the litter basket.

And Stirrup had been on as well. The message was stark. ring back asap. Such a command from a blue-chip client was not to be ignored, but Harry allowed himself a few moments of speculation before picking up the phone. Were the police pressing harder? He found himself hoping desperately that there was good news at last, that the woman had by some miracle reappeared.

As soon as Stirrup’s voice came on to the other end of the line, Harry realised the social mood of the previous evening had evaporated.

“I want you to do something for me and do it fast.”

Words to make any solicitor quail. Harry said cautiously, “What’s the problem, Jack?”

“That bitch! That bloody bitch!” The disembodied voice was choking with anger. “Capstick, I mean. Would you believe it? She’s written to Claire — Claire of all people — suggesting that I killed the kid’s step-mother.”

Harry gazed heavenwards in despair. “I think,” he said carefully, “that I’d better take a look at that letter.”

“You’ll do more than bloody look at it. I’ve been libelled. In a letter to my own bloody daughter, I’ve been called a murderer. The bitch, how dare she? I want you to issue a writ at once. Take her for every penny she’s got.” Stirrup took a deep breath. “I want to destroy her.”