Martin Edwards - I Remember You

Stuart Graham-Brown, another man and a woman came out into the street and walked past Harry without a glance. They were engrossed in their discussion and made straight for the wine lodge. Harry saw their reflections clearly, despite the dirt and fingermark smudges on the shop window. Graham-Brown’s female companion was a hard-faced blonde in her late thirties and she had her arm wrapped around him. It was clear they were more than just good friends. The other man was Dermot McCray.

Startled, Harry abandoned his idea of confronting his client; whilst Dermot McCray was about, it made sense to steer clear. But why was McCray here? And who was the woman with Graham-Brown?

Bewildered, he retreated to a nearby pub called the Plimsoll Line. It was a new place which occupied the basement of Exchange Precinct, a whimsical architect’s pastiche of a pyramid, funded by grants from the Pharaohs of the European Community. Here, ground-floor shops offered holograms, Japanese wall coverings and cruelty-free cosmetics to a public which preferred to look rather than buy, while most of the offices up above were unlet. According to Stanley Rowe, the rents here were as high as the St John’s Beacon. The mediaeval traders who had once swarmed around Leather Lane, Hackins Hey and Tobacco Court must be turning in their graves.

Over a pint as cloudy as a Merseyside morning, he asked himself why Graham-Brown would plan a flit to Spain with his wife whilst conducting an affair with another woman. Did he intend to ditch Rosemary? And could there be some extraordinary connection between Merseycredit and the attacks on Finbar? None of it made sense.

He finished his drink and went back to the wine lodge. Standing in an alcove just inside the door, he could see McCray arguing with Graham-Brown. As he watched, the quarrel reached its climax. Graham-Brown folded his arms, an elegant but decisive gesture; he had spoken his last word. McCray’s face was purple with rage. He turned on his heel and marched out, passing within a couple of feet of Harry, who had pressed himself against the wall.

Graham-Brown smiled at the blonde and put his hand on her knee. She straightened his tie. Harry toyed with the idea of confronting his client. But what could he say? I know you’re on the fiddle? I’ve discovered you’re deceiving Rosemary, though for the life of me I can’t understand why you prefer a woman with a face as sharp as the edge of an axe?

Lost in thought, he walked home through the city, his progress slowed by a crowd outside the Town Hall protesting to councillors arriving for an emergency evening meeting, called in a hopeless effort to balance the books. These days demonstrators campaigned for the right to work: not so many years ago, they had been fighting for the right to strike.

Back in the flat there was, to his relief, no sign of Finbar. He spent the evening working his way through a six-pack and watching a tape of Vertigo . The way his head was spinning, the choice of movie seemed peculiarly apposite.

Shortly before eleven, the telephone shrilled. Harry suspected it might be the police, calling him in on behalf of a car thief or house burglar — or, even worse, bloody Finbar, wanting a roof over his head for one more night. He poured himself another drink and did not move. But the phone persisted and eventually his resistance crumbled.

‘Hello?’

‘Harry! Thank God you’re there. I was about to give up hope.’

‘Is that you, Melissa? What’s bothering you at his late hour?’

‘I need you here urgently. In my flat.’

‘Melissa! This is so sudden.’

‘Listen, I’m not joking. I wouldn’t disturb you if it wasn’t desperate, but you’re the only lawyer I know.’

‘And why do you need a lawyer at this time of night?’

‘It’s about Finbar.’

Who else?

‘What’s he done now?’

‘I have the police here. They’ve told me he’s been found dead. And they think I killed him.’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything,’ said Sladdin.

Sitting next to Harry on the sofa in the lounge of her flat in Mossley Hill, Melissa began to shake. She buried her head in her hands and made muffled sobs.

For his part, Harry felt groggy, as if he’d taken a punch full in the face. Finbar’s life had always seemed charmed; it was impossible to believe it was suddenly over. The Irishman had survived so much, he’d come to seem indestructible, and his death had shocked Harry profoundly; it gave him a chill reminder of every man’s mortality. Despite his daze, he had been trying to listen to Melissa’s disjointed answers as intently as the detective, in an effort to chart the course of Finbar’s last day of life. But he was hazily aware that, for the girl’s sake, the time had come for him to intervene.

‘Look, Inspector, Miss Keating has told you all she knows. She’s made it clear that Finbar Rogan was alive and well when he left here this afternoon. And from what you say, I gather he was killed after darkness fell but no later than six.’

‘That is broadly correct,’ said Sladdin in a guarded tone.

Harry sensed the detective was far from certain whether he was interviewing a lover tragically bereaved or a callous murderess; he certainly wasn’t giving more away than was necessary. And the timing was critical. For if Finbar had been dead by six o’clock, Dermot McCray could not have killed him, on the evidence of Harry’s own eyes. It must have been twenty past six when the builder had stormed out of the wine lodge and into the night. Harry could remember checking his watch against the Town Hall clock when he passed the demonstrators five minutes later.

The alarm had, according to Sladdin, been raised by a teenage courting couple, who had come across Finbar lying in the middle of a road running alongside the derelict site of Colonial Dock, a place long abandoned by shipping and nowadays frequented by lovers rather than stevedores. They had walked down the road an hour earlier, on their way to the disused hut where they used to make love each evening after school, and the body had not been there then. The sight of it as they headed back for home was one they would never forget.

A car had run over Finbar. Not once, but several times. Even described in Sladdin’s clipped tone, the picture that formed in Harry’s mind was dark with horror. But he knew he must banish the image of the crushed corpse from his thoughts; it was the stuff of nightmares. With a huge effort, he dragged himself back to the here and now.

‘I still don’t see why you’re not treating Finbar’s death as a straightforward accident.’

‘We’re not ruling any possibility out as yet. Nonetheless, the circumstances are suspicious.’

Harry bit his lip. He desperately wanted to hear that Finbar had not been killed on purpose. For if the death was not mischance, and McCray was not responsible, he scarcely dared contemplate an alternative explanation.

‘Remember,’ he insisted, ‘it must have been difficult to see anything at Colonial Dock when the car struck him. I’ve not been that way for years, but as far as I can recall there’s no street lighting there. And the world’s full of hit-and-run joyriders.’

‘Very true,’ said Sladdin, ‘but this particular driver was at the wheel of the car Mr Rogan himself hired earlier today. And as I explained before, having run over him once, the same person reversed and repeated the job a couple of times for good measure. Scarcely an innocent mistake, or even a careless one.’

Melissa lifted her head. Harry sensed she was finding it almost impossible to maintain a semblance of self-control.

‘So Finbar must have been murdered?’

‘As I say, we have to consider everything. And that’s why I asked you if you could think of any reason for Mr Rogan to be visiting Colonial Dock this evening.’