Yesterday's papers

Chapter Fifteen

The voice was unmistakeable: the wobbling breasts right under his nose belonged to Edwin Smith’s one-time girlfriend. He was conscious that all eyes in the restaurant were upon him. Leaning back in his chair, he returned her smile.

‘Thanks for letting me see you, Mrs Grierson.’

A pair of nipple tassels rotated mesmerically. ‘Renata, please. I’m not one for formal introductions.’

‘I’ve guessed as much.’

The lines on her face hardened. ‘So you’re poking around in a case best left dead and buried?’

‘Like Edwin? I’d like to know the truth about the murder of Carole Jeffries. I think he may have suffered an injustice.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Though at one time I reckoned he deserved what he got.’

‘When can we talk?’

‘The waiters are lovely lads, but speed of service isn’t their strong point. By the time you’ve had your meal, I’ll be through.’

She smiled again before tilting her body away from him and started to glide to the next alcove. As he watched her go, Harry reflected that, had things worked out differently, Edwin Smith might now be a henpecked fifty-year-old married to a belly dancer instead of pushing up daisies in a prisoner’s grave. Some people might not be sure which was worse.

At the end of the evening, Renata timed her return to perfection. While he stood at the till signing the credit card slip, she appeared beside him. Gone were the anklets and the finger cymbals. Even her perfume seemed less oppressive. In her tartan jacket and black leggings she looked like any other middle-aged woman who likes to dress young.

‘Thanks for being willing to talk,’ he said as he followed her down the stairs.

‘That’s all right. I’ve kept quiet long enough.’

‘But you contacted Ernest Miller.’

Her tone became grim. ‘I didn’t much like the sound of him on the phone. He had a slimy voice. But I found myself starting to answer his questions. He said he had this idea Edwin was innocent. His late wife had worked for Edwin’s brief and she’d told him that Edwin withdrew his confession before the trial — but the solicitor didn’t believe him and bloody Edwin didn’t have the bottle to slug it out in a courtroom.’

‘So you said he was right, but didn’t explain why?’

‘I wanted to do it face to face. You see, Mr Devlin, the whole thing’s been bothering me since 1964. I’d like to get it off my chest.’ She forced a smile. ‘Anyway, where are you taking me?’

He spread his arms. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Don’t tempt me, young man. How about a drink in the Demi-Monde? Don’t worry, I won’t show you up. Now I’ve changed out of my dancing clothes, anyone would think I was respectable.’

A couple of minutes later they were sitting at the nightclub’s bar and Harry had learned that Renata’s tipple was a daiquiri and coke.

‘Thanks, love. I need this. All that shimmying is thirsty work.’

He had to raise his voice to be heard above the thudding nineties musak. ‘How long have you been doing it?’

She moved a little closer to him. ‘On and off, for ten years. I love Egyptian dancing, it’s perfect for me. For one thing, it’s a positive advantage to have a big bum. Besides, it takes me out of myself. And at my age, how else could I get a whiff of the steamy passions of the caliph’s harem?’ She gave him a direct look and, even in the darkness of the disco, he felt himself blushing. ‘Now, love. I’ve no-one to go home to at the moment. My feller drives an HGV and he’s down south tonight, so my time’s my own. So what can I tell you about that poor sod Edwin?’

‘How did you get to know him?’

‘On a bus ride into the city centre. He started chatting me up. I was between boyfriends, so even though he was nothing to look at, I didn’t give him the cold shoulder. Besides, it was obvious his family had a penny or two. he might have been a wimp, but his old feller had been a successful businessman and they had a posh house opposite Sefton Park to prove it.’

‘So the two of you got together?’

She gave him a crooked smile. ‘Oh, I played hard to get for a while. At least a week, as I recall. At first, he wouldn’t introduce me to his mum. I gather she was a bit of a dragon, but all the same, I took it as a bad sign. Then one day he invited me round to the house. I was desperate to have a look at the place, so I could see if the Smiths were as well off as I guessed.’

‘You were interested in a long-term relationship, even though he was a wimp?’

‘Oh, I don’t pretend it was a burning passion. I’m no angel, Mr Devlin, never have been. In 1964 I was a one-woman permissive society. School did nothing for me — the teachers said I was bright enough, they just couldn’t control me. At the time I met Edwin I had a job in a tongue factory. I can remember the stench of the mess sloshing around on the works floor to this very day. I wanted to escape. If that meant getting hooked up with a creep like Edwin, I was game.’

‘And so you went home with him?’

He could feel her warm breath on his cheek, see every line that time had dug around her made-up eyes. ‘Maybe I was more innocent than I thought. I actually believed he was going to introduce me to his mum that afternoon. He pretended to be surprised when she wasn’t there and it wasn’t long before we finished up in his bedroom.’ She paused. ‘I’ll never forget it. The date was the twenty-ninth of February 1964. Leap Year Day, but no way was I going to propose to him. Not after that fiasco.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Edwin admitted his mum was visiting someone in Yorkshire and wouldn’t be back till the following day. He’d planned it to perfection so the two of us could have a wild time in bed without any fear of being disturbed. There was only one slight problem.’

‘Which was?’

She wriggled a little on her bar stool. ‘He couldn’t make love to me, could he? His thing was as soft as a piece of plasticine. No matter what I did, it made no difference. I tried kindness and kinkiness, but none of it was any good. He admitted he’d never had a girl before. Not properly.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘After a while he climbed off the bed. He was in tears. I remember that he parted the curtains and looked out. That was what suited him in life — looking, not doing.’

Harry sensed she was about to tell him something important. ‘And do you know what he saw?’

‘I got up and joined him.’ Renata’s voice was abstracted and he could tell she was reliving that Leap Year Day. ‘He was watching a young girl walking into the Park through the gates opposite his bedroom window.’

He guessed what was coming next. The explanation to the conundrum that had been troubling him. ‘A blonde girl, wearing a brown sheepskin jacket, black boots and a green scarf?’

‘Got it in one. Carole Jeffries. At that time, I’d never heard the name, of course. Edwin told me she was a neighbour. I asked if he fancied her and he admitted he did, but said she had no time for him. I pulled him back on the bed, spread my legs wide and told him to make believe that I was her.’ She shook her head. ‘God, the things I’ve done for men in my time. But it was no good. His imagination — or something — simply wasn’t up to it.’

‘How long did you stay there?’

‘For another couple of hours. In the end, my patience snapped. I felt I’d been short-changed. I didn’t laugh at him, Mr Devlin, I’m not one of those women who mock a man who can’t perform. Christ, if I was, I’d have been murdered myself a dozen times over. But I’d had enough.’

‘What did Edwin do?’

‘Begged me to stay, didn’t he? I often wonder, you know, if things would have turned out differently if I had. But I’ve learned it’s no use fretting over what might have been.’

It was a lesson of life Harry was still struggling to absorb. He signalled for more drinks and asked, ‘What time did you leave?’

‘I was dressed again and out of the house by ten past six. I went out through the back gate, so as not to attract any attention. For once in my life, I wanted to be on my own. I felt bitter and frustrated, you have to remember that. The gate gave on to a path which took me to the main road and I caught a bus home. My mum was there, pissed out of her mind as per usual. I never had a father.’

‘And after you got home?’

‘Packed a bag and caught the last train to London, didn’t I? I thought maybe I’d make a fresh start. I didn’t leave a note, mum would only have used it to light the fire.’

‘How long did you stay down there?’

‘Until the winter. By then I’d realised the streets weren’t paved with gold. And after I get back here with my tail between my legs, what do I find? Only that Edwin Smith has just topped himself and everyone thinks it’s good riddance to a self-confessed strangler.’

‘Did the police ever approach you?’

She took a sip from her replenished glass. ‘No, why should they? As far as I can make out, Edwin never put me forward as an alibi. Too ashamed of his lack of performance, I suppose. And I didn’t even hear about the murder in Sefton Park while I was down in London.’

‘Seriously?’

‘I didn’t have a telly in those days and I never bothered with the London papers. It was only when I got back that I read a few snippets in the Echo about the case. I worked out that this Carole was his neighbour, the girl he’d watched from the window. At first I thought that after I left he must have gone out himself, caught up with her and done her in. But then I realised it simply wasn’t possible.’

‘Why?’

She banged her glass down on the bar and concentrated her attention on him. In a fierce voice she said, ‘Listen, I arrived at the house at half two. Looking forward to afternoon tea in the lap of luxury, bloody young idiot that I was. The earliest Edwin could have strangled the girl was a quarter past six.’ She drained her glass, as if in need of strength. ‘Yet the Echo said Carole Jeffries was murdered sometime between four o’clock and five at the latest. I couldn’t make sense of it, so I rang the reporter, telling him some cock-and-bull story. But he was definite: there was no mistake. They could fix the time because Carole only left her parents’ house at four and by five a courting couple had started canoodling on a bench only yards away from the bushes where her body was found. As the man said to me, the pair of them may have been engrossed with each other, but no murderer in his right mind was going to take the risk of dragging a corpse right under their noses whilst they were snogging.’

‘Did you discuss this with anyone?’

‘Who? Edwin had confessed, hadn’t he? If he’d wanted to take the blame, who was I to stand in his way? Besides, he was beyond my help by then. It wasn’t as though he was about to be hung — or even spend the rest of his days inside.’

‘And what about his mother? She had to live with the belief that her son was a murderer.’

‘I was seventeen,’ said Renata helplessly. ‘I’d never met her and besides, I didn’t want to be any more involved with the police than I had to. While I was down in London, you see, I’d picked up a conviction. Soliciting. So much for the bloody glamour and the bright lights.’ She finished the rest of her drink. ‘Any chance of another?’

When it came, she tossed it all down in two or three gulps. ‘Look, when I saw Miller’s advert, I knew I had to give him a call. I’ve been married twice and had more men that you’ve had hot dinners, but until last week I’d kept my secret in silence. It’s been preying on my mind for so long. When I spoke to Miller, it was like a dam bursting.’ She shook her head. ‘All this time, I’ve been wanting someone to realise that, for all his faults, that pathetic little creep Edwin never murdered anybody in his life.’

And as Harry watched, she cradled her head in her hands and, oblivious of the barmaid’s baffled stare, began to weep for the young man she had walked out on thirty years before.