Yesterday's papers

Chapter Seven

Harry licked his forefinger and turned back through the file to find the copy of the statement in which Edwin Smith had confessed to murder. How plausible was the young man’s claim to have strangled the girl? In this bundle of papers, surely, must lie the answer.

He read slowly and, to his surprise, with a sinking heart. For the terms of the statement were unequivocal and he realised he had from the outset been hoping that Miller’s instincts were sound and that the Sefton Park case was a mystery unsolved.

Edwin explained how he knew Carole Jeffries as a neighbour. He had always regarded her as pretty but unattainable. She had given barely a sign that she was aware of his existence, but he sensed she knew of his two criminal convictions: one for exposing himself to a woman walking her dog in Otterspool and another for the theft of knickers from a nearby washing line. He guessed that, if she ever thought of him at all it was with disgust and he did not blame her for such a reaction: sometimes he disgusted himself.

On the last afternoon of Carole’s life he had been on his way home when he saw her a few yards ahead of him and on the other side of the road, walking along the path which skirted the boundary of Sefton Park. She seemed to be wandering aimlessly and when he caught sight of her face as she passed beneath a street lamp, he saw that her expression was miserable, which made him sad, since he thought a girl who had everything ought surely to be happy all the time.

Something prompted him to change course and follow her into the park. Perhaps he would be able to cheer her up and thereby earn her favour. He described her as wearing a brown sheepskin jacket and green silk scarf, as well as black leather boots. After a couple of hundred yards or so he caught up with her and tried to strike up a conversation.

‘Bitter weather, isn’t it?’

Carole took no notice.

‘You look a bit fed up,’ he ventured.

She continued walking.

‘My mum says, a trouble shared is a trouble halved.’

She didn’t falter in her stride as she said, ‘Why don’t you just piss off?’

He kept pace with her in silence for another couple of minutes. It was a grim winter’s evening, cold and dark enough to have deterred even the most resolute of dog walkers, and the park was deserted. Their path took them by the side of the lake for a while before branching off through a dip in the landscape bordered on either side by large spiky shrubs.

Edwin decided to dare everything. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this. But the truth is, I really fancy you.’

At last he’d got through to her. She halted and faced him. ‘You fancy me? So what am I supposed to do? Grovel with gratitude at the admiration of a subnormal little pervert like you? You’re pathetic, Smithy. Now fuck off and go and play with yourself like you usually do in that garden shed of yours and leave me alone.’

The harsh response would always stay in his memory, word for word. Yet according to Edwin, it was the contemptuous sneer on her pretty face that made him snap. He wanted her and he had the chance to do something about it. Without another word, he seized hold of her and dragged her into the bushes. She struggled and screamed as he tried to undo her jacket. He was not a strong young man and, once she had recovered from the initial shock, she fought back fiercely enough to make him fear she was about to break free. He had no weapon to frighten her. All he could see ahead was misery and humiliation. He felt he must do something to avoid that. Anything.

So he pulled the silk scarf tight around her neck. She kicked out wildly, but he did not let go. As he increased the pressure on her throat, gradually her resistance weakened. Within moments — or so it seemed to him — she was limp in his arms. He had not meant to kill her. The sight of her blue face horrified him, repulsed him too. He shoved her body aside and ran blindly down the path, desperate to make his escape before the park keeper came to lock him in for the night with his victim’s corpse for company.

Harry read every word of the confession before he put it down. Each page was initialled and at the very end was a terse paragraph.

This statement is true. I make it of my own knowledge and belief and I have been told that I may alter, add or delete anything in it with which I do not agree.

Underneath was a large, childishly scrawled signature, Edwin Smith, followed by the date.

It was as clear and convincing an admission to murder as any Harry had read. Its simplicity gave it the ring of truth and so did the crucial corroborative details. Edwin knew what the girl had been wearing when she met her death. Even more significantly, he knew how she had been killed, and with what ligature. Harry was certain that such information would not have been public knowledge at the time Edwin was taken in for questioning. The police were bound to have held it back. Even in the sixties, attention-seekers with a taste for confessing to crimes were not unknown and a detective wishing to verify a witness statement would be looking for precisely the kind of specific and accurate information that Edwin Smith had been able to provide.

Harry sighed. So what was he to believe? Flicking again through the mass of paper, he concentrated with the ease of long experience on the key points to emerge from the documents, tracing every development in the case.

Carole had died on a Saturday. According to a statement taken from her father — still devastated by the killing and by his own admission scarcely able to take it in — she had gone shopping in the city centre during the morning, leaving home at around the same time as he set off to meet a group of his students. From the statements of Shirley Basnett, Benny Frederick and Ray Brill, it appeared that Carole had called in at Benny’s shop for a chat, even though it was her day off. Ray had called in while she was there before he drove down to London for a gig. Carole and he had had a tiff — about nothing in particular, he claimed — and she had left, saying she was going to catch the bus back home.

Clive Doxey had visited the Jeffries’ house shortly after lunch, hoping to catch Guy. The two of them were working on an idea for a book called Liberty, Law and Labour and Clive had come up with some fresh thought for the synopsis. Carole had been alone in the house at the time and she had seemed her usual self — warm and vivacious was how he described her. They had chatted for a while, but although Carole said she expected her father home soon, Clive could not stay.

Guy Jeffries missed his friend, Carole told him, by a few minutes only. He explained that he had been delayed by a colleague from the University and his daughter gave him a brief summary of her morning, implying that she regarded the squabble with Ray as something and nothing. After that Guy had retired to his study, to work on an article for The New Statesman for which he had a strict deadline. At about four o’clock, whilst he was bent over his typewriter, Carole had popped her head round the door and said she was going out for a stroll in the park, but would not be long. He had not, he told the police, even bothered to turn his head to catch a glimpse of his daughter for the very last time. The article had absorbed all his attention and only when Kathleen arrived back from Manchester shortly after six and Carole was still nowhere to be seen had he started to become anxious about her fate. He had looked round the part of the park nearest to the house but found no trace of her. Calls to her friends yielded no result. Eventually, at Kathleen’s insistence, they had called the police.

Vera Smith, Edwin’s mother, had confirmed that she was out of the house for most of the weekend in question, paying a visit to an old schoolfriend who lived on the other side of the Pennines. She could not give Edwin an alibi. All she could do to help was instruct Cyril Tweats to act on her son’s behalf.

‘Your first mistake,’ muttered Harry under his breath.

The file contained a careful note of Cyril’s interviews in prison with his client. At their first meeting, Edwin had been uncommunicative. Psychiatric reports indicated that he had a low IQ and poor self-image. He appeared to be dazed by all that had occurred since the police had picked him up. When they met again, however, the young man was more eager to talk. The gravity of his own position had finally dawned on him and he began by insisting that he was not a murderer. He claimed to have made up the confession, although he did not allege that the police had beaten it out of him. But when Cyril had pressed for more information, he had retreated into his shell, refusing to explain how he could have known how Carole was dressed and how she was killed. The following day, he summoned Cyril again and formally retracted his protestations of innocence.

Cyril had briefed Mr Hugo Kellerman of Brasenose Chambers to act as defence counsel. In his written instructions he had referred to the discussion in which Edwin had denied his guilt. Yet he had made little of it and no barrister would have experienced any difficulty in reading between the lines. Cyril thought his client knew too much and had confessed too readily for there to be any chance that he was innocent.

Kellerman had evidently taken the same view when Edwin had discussed the case with his legal advisers. According to Cyril’s notes on the conference, the pros and cons of a guilty plea had been debated. There was no evidence of undue pressure on the part of the police and the prosecution had not only the confession but also Edwin’s damning knowledge about the scarf. The chances of an acquittal were negligible and if Edwin pleaded guilty he would not have to cope with the intense strain of giving evidence in hostile surroundings, knowing that his life might depend on it.

How would I have reacted if I had been unjustly accused of murder? Harry asked himself. An easy one to answer: he would have striven to defend himself to the last drop of blood. Yet experience had taught him that many criminal clients saw the world differently. They were fatalists, not fighters, people who saw life as a lottery in which they were destined to lose.

As Cyril completed his preparations for the trial, the news came through that Edwin had been found in his cell by a warder, more dead than alive. He had used a shoelace to try to hang himself. The file did not explain how he had obtained the means for suicide, but Harry knew that prisons were places where blind eyes were often turned and anything was possible. Somehow, he felt, it was characteristic of Edwin that he had even bungled his first attempt to kill himself.

Eventually Edwin’s injuries healed. They wanted his neck to be perfect, with the skin unbroken and the wounds all healed — so that they could put it in a noose, thought Harry, remembering what Miller had told him. He found it difficult to choke back revulsion at the picture in his mind of doctors checking the prisoner, to make sure no-one would be embarrassed by a beheading when the time came for him to mount the scaffold. Harry had in his own life met murderers who, he felt, deserved to die, but he hated the cold-bloodedness of capital punishment.

The trial took place at last in the classical surroundings of St George’s Hall, scene over the years of cases more celebrated by far than that of the wretched murderer of Carole Jeffries. Its outcome had been swift and certain. The judge described Edwin as a savage and dangerous young man and, donning the black cap, sentenced him to death for his heinous crime.

The file contained a short note recording that straight after the trial Cyril had visited his client in the cells. Apparently Edwin had thanked him for his efforts. No question of any appeal arose and there was no indication as to whether anything passed between the two men other than anodyne, half-embarrassed remarks. The purpose of the note was to help justify Cyril’s fees — and, no doubt, to cover his back: if his legal skills had ever matched his survival instinct, Cyril would have made it to the House of Lords.

A press cutting that Cyril had preserved in the file announced that, in the August before judgment was passed on Edwin, two men had been hanged for murder, Gwynne Evans at Strangeways in Manchester and Peter Allen at Walton Jail here in Liverpool itself. They had the dubious distinction of being the last men to go to the gallows in Britain. In October, a Labour government came to power and the end of the death penalty was in sight. Cyril conferred with Kellerman and they debated the possibility of a reprieve. And then they learned that their client had saved everyone a great deal of trouble. He had again attempted to commit suicide and this time, for once in his wretched life, he had achieved success. He had slashed his own throat and bled to death on the floor of his cell before anyone felt inclined to raise the alarm.

A messy end and yet one which, Harry guessed from the faintly relieved tone of the final letters on file, Cyril had regarded as bringing the case to a neat conclusion. Dead clients don’t complain. Nor are they in a position to revive their claims of innocence. Until Ernest Miller had come along and started to ask questions, no-one had doubted that Carole Jeffries’ killer had suffered poetic justice at his own hands after the legal system had flinched from inflicting the ultimate retribution.

Harry wondered what to do. It was easy to understand why Cyril had taken the line of least resistance. Edwin was one of those clients who don’t help themselves. The likelihood was that he had sought to withdraw his confession only when the extent of his peril had begun to sink in. When he came to understand that there was little hope of escape, he’d given up.

Yet Harry had in his time known other inadequates prepared to accept punishment for crimes they had not committed. The old file did not disprove Miller’s theory, although if Edwin was innocent, much was unclear. How had he learned about the scarf and what Carole had been wearing? What had prompted him to confess? And did he have any idea, however remote, of the identity of the true culprit?

The telephone rang. Suzanne, the switchboard girl, had a clutch of messages for him.

‘I’m on my way out,’ he said hastily. After the unexpected adjournment of the Kevin Walter case, he told himself, he could afford an hour or two off. It was past one o’clock and his breakfast at The Condemned Man was no more than a distant memory. He decided to escape in search of a sandwich and the opportunity to muse about Edwin Smith’s fate free from the intrusion of clients and computer salesmen alike.

At the bottom of the steps which led from the building, he ran into Leo Devaney, who ran the second-hand record shop in the basement in partnership with a boyfriend called Simon. A thin man in his late forties who seemed to have worn the same scuffed leather jacket and jeans since his student days, Leo had the pallid skin of someone who regards fresh air as a health hazard and the pinched, abstracted look that comes from endless hours spent listening to music on ill-fitting headphones.

‘Harry, I was meaning to call you. That old Dionne Warwick album you were asking after has come in.’

‘I’m looking for another record at present. Do you have anything by the Brill Brothers?’

Leo shook his head. ‘Sorry, madrigals by Meat Loaf are easier to find.’

‘Don’t tell me the records of such a minor duo have become collectors’ items?’

‘You’d be surprised how sought after many of those sixties albums are, especially those in good condition. Bear in mind that the records weren’t manufactured in big numbers. They were always sure to prove scarcer than something like Sergeant Pepper, which sold by the million. But I’ll keep an eye out for you, if you like. Record fairs are often the best bet and there’s a good one at Empire Hall next week. Simon and I will have a stand there and you might like to look in.’

‘Sure. In the meantime, what can you tell me about the Brill Brothers?’

Leo pondered for a second, then began to speak rapidly. ‘Formed in late ’61, a couple of good-looking lads who met at the Cavern and decided they could do as well as the acts on stage. They soon proved themselves right. Ray Brill sang like a gospeller, Ian McCalliog was a quiet boy who played the bass. Like most of their rivals they covered hits from the States. “Please Stay”, an old Drifters track, was one, Chuck Jackson’s “Any Day Now” another. Most of them were written in the Brill Building song factory in New York. Some people even thought Ray took his surname from the place, but in fact it appeared on his birth certificate. A pleasing coincidence.’

As Leo paused for breath, Harry said, ‘Now I see why you were asked to contribute to The Pop Encyclopaedia.’

‘If only I knew as much about balance sheets as I do about pop, I’d be rich enough to buy out Richard Branson.’

‘What happened to the Brill Brothers?’

‘Overshadowed by the Beatles, like everyone else. When the young girls stopped screaming for them, they lacked the originality and the staying power to survive. No shame in that, they did well enough for a couple of years. They were managed by Warren Hull and after their own Svengali died, they soon began to run out of steam.’

‘Warren Hull? I’ve heard the name. Wasn’t he a sort of poor man’s Brian Epstein?’

‘Got it in one. Warren was a pianist who accompanied several acts in the fifties without ever making the big time. When rock ’n’ roll came along, he turned to pop star management with mixed results. So the story goes, he let Brian have the Beatles because he didn’t like their looks. I can’t believe it’s true, because by all accounts he would have fallen head over heels for both Lennon and McCartney.’

‘So Hull was gay? What happened to him? Did he kill himself, by any chance, like Epstein?’

‘I think you’re wrong about Brian. The best guess is that he took an accidental overdose. In any event, Warren Hull’s death was very different. He was battered to death in his own bedroom. The police found his naked body there. Presumably he said the wrong thing at the wrong moment and his rough trade turned violent.’

‘Who killed him?’

‘God knows, some back-street rent boy, I suppose. As far as I’m aware, no-one was ever charged.’ Leo grimaced. ‘Let’s face it, we’re talking about the dark ages, long before the age of equal opportunities. Gay love was illegal and the police weren’t going to bust a gut to avenge someone they’d have been happy to give a good kicking themselves.’

‘This was when?’

‘The Christmas of ’63.’

‘Did you know Ray Brill’s girlfriend was strangled a couple of months later?’

‘Murder’s more your province than mine, Harry.’ Leo gave him a searching glance. ‘Am I right in guessing that’s why you’ve taken a sudden interest in a couple of guys who were hardly in the class of the Everlys or the Righteous Brothers?’

‘Turning detective yourself? Yes, you’re spot on. I wonder — do you happen to know what Ray Brill is up to now?’

‘He stayed in the business, of course, after the two of them split and Ian found himself a proper job as a number-cruncher for some shipping line. He formed a foursome which he called the Brilliants, but it didn’t last long. Once the Beatles moved on and Merseybeat’s golden age began to look a little tarnished, he found it as hard as everyone else. Nobody is forgotten as fast as yesterday’s teen idols.’

‘I’m almost glad I never was one.’

‘Personally, I could have coped with the adulation. Anyway, Ray kept recording solo for as long as he could find people willing to invest in pressing his vinyl, but none of his songs meant a light after he went on his own. Now, can I take some money off you for that Dionne album?’

Harry followed Leo downstairs into the Aladdin’s cave that was Devaney Records, but his mind was no longer on the record he had spent twelve months hunting for. What fascinated him at the moment was the Sefton Park case and the mixed fortunes of the people linked to it.

Two people close to Ray Brill, his manager and his sweetheart, had been brutally slain. One of the crimes had never been solved; the other had seemed at the time to be an open and shut case. It had all happened within the space of a couple of months. A fatal coincidence — and Harry wondered how much it had scarred Brill.

‘Any idea where I could find Ray?’

‘You’re not just after his autograph, are you?’

‘No, I’m interested in the girlfriend who was killed — but that makes me interested in Ray as well. Didn’t he have a reputation as a ladies’ man?’

Leo winked. ‘It takes all sorts.’

‘I suppose he married eventually, did he?’

‘Three times, at the last count. Ray was alway unlucky in love, you might say. The first was an air hostess — she soon blew off with a pilot. Then came a barmaid and after that a black girl who was on the game. None of them stayed with him for long, but it was his own fault. He liked them young and willing and he liked plenty of them. And he was a betting man as well. Not just an odd flutter on the gee-gees, but anything at all. When I saw him doing a gig in one of Southport’s seedier clubs a year ago, he had a couple of teenagers making eyes at him and he was giving odds as to which of them he’d manage to lay first. He was incorrigible. I think he was living up there at the time, though whether he’s still in the neighbourhood, I haven’t a clue.’

‘You’re sure he is still alive?’

Leo grinned. ‘Certain of it. The price of his merchandise would have shot up if he’d gone to the Cavern in the sky. Have you ever wondered why so many pop stars die young? It’s a great career move, that’s why. No, Ray Brill isn’t dead yet.’ He paused and added, ‘Though with his lifestyle, he bloody well ought to be.’