Martin Edwards: I Remember You

They were at a Guy Fawkes celebration in Sefton Park. Heather and the kids were a couple of yards away, munching treacle toffee and parkin. For the Crusoes this was a major event in the family calendar and Jim, back in the office again, had urged Harry to join them. Harry could see his partner was bursting with curiosity about the case and he felt talking about it might help him get the whole mess into perspective. Besides, he had reasons of his own to avoid being alone on November 5th.

‘You were asking if I thought she fell by chance? I doubt it, but I can’t be sure and neither can Sladdin. Either way, nothing will ever be proved.’

‘You’ve talked with the police?’

‘At length. Any doubt they had about Penny’s guilt evaporated when the witnesses from Colonial Dock turned up: a contract manager from a computer company and his secretary. He’d been hoping his hardware would be compatible with her software, but after seeing Penny drive back and forth over Finbar’s body, they didn’t feel in the mood for love any longer. Penny’s fingerprints were on the car and the fact she didn’t wear gloves or even wipe the vehicle tends to confirm she hadn’t planned to kill him and panicked when she realised what she had done.’

‘Presumably she could have got off lightly with a good brief?’

‘People often do. Even some of my own clients.’

‘How has Baz reacted?’

‘How do you imagine? In the space of forty-eight hours he lost both his job and his girlfriend.’

The Bank That Cares had put Radio Liverpool into receivership, pulling the plug within hours of Nick Folley’s arrest for suspected drugs offences. The station had been losing money hand over fist; only the bankers’ belief that Folley had the acumen to turn the business around had kept it going so long. As soon as they learned the main source of his income, panic set in.

It seemed the Drugs Squad had been keeping an eye on Folley for months. But evidence had been lacking until the day after the party, when Harry had finally persuaded Melissa to seek long-term treatment for her habit and tell the police all she knew about her former boss’s dealings in coke. The Graham-Browns, too, were now helping with enquiries.

Released on bail, Folley had called a press conference. You had to admire his nerve, if nothing else. Sophie Wilkins had been by his side; he’d introduced her to the media as his fiancee and next day the papers had been full of pictures of the glamorous woman willing to stand by her man through thin as well as thick. There could be no sterner test of true love, said Folley.

Questioned about the folding of his company, he had blamed the economic climate and the fickleness of financial institutions. He said he pleaded guilty to having faith in local radio and the good people of Liverpool. The drugs business he described as a stitch-up. He vowed to bounce back.

In closing, he’d paid a special tribute to a junior employee whose death had — he said with a catch in his voice — overshadowed his own personal misfortunes. He hinted that Penny Newland had slipped and fallen into the river while taking a breather from the Hallowe’en broadcast because her mind was distracted by anxiety for the station in which she, like her boss, believed with all her heart.

‘Does Baz know the truth?’ asked Jim.

‘That she killed Finbar for the love of him? No, and the odds are he never will. The inquest is bound to be tricky, but most coroners are discreet. Besides, there’s every chance of a verdict of accidental death.’

‘And how do you feel about your client, now you’ve discovered how he treated Penny Newland?’

‘I never pretended he was an angel. Dermot McCray put his finger on it when I spoke to him in the De Valera. He said Finbar had always been the same, playing with women like a small kid messing about with his toys. He kept forgetting people are flesh and blood. McCray was thinking of his daughter, but he might as well have meant Sinead or Sophie, Melissa or Penny. The day had to come when the toys grew tired of being flung out of the cot.’

A roar of approval from the crowd greeted the latest rockets to climb towards the moon and dissolve in a spectacular cloudburst of red, white and blue. Harry could not quell the memory of a Guy Fawkes Night in the past, when he’d gone to watch the display at Albert Dock and there met the dark-haired Polish girl who would later become his wife. On each anniversary of that first encounter he found himself replaying old moves, like a defeated chess master, trying to see precisely where the game had begun to slip out of his grasp. With each year that passed he saw more clearly that the outcome had been ordained long before the day he actually lost his queen. They had, from the first, been ill-matched.

Jim’s wife and children squelched through the mud towards them; Harry noticed Heather clasping Jim’s hand in a gesture of security and shared affection. It made him feel superfluous.

‘I’ll take a look at the bonfire,’ he said.

He walked towards the huge pile of rubbish which was already well ablaze. Young boys and girls jigged and shrieked in front of it: primitives celebrating an ancient rite. A middle-aged woman was collecting for charity and he thrust his hands in his pocket to find some change. As well as the coins he brought out a dog-eared piece of paper. As the woman stuck a badge on his lapel to record him as a giver, he re-read the note he had received that very afternoon.

Harry

I changed my mind and decided to go to Spain after all. I called Phil on the phone — reverse charge! — and he offered to pay my fare out. He’s making a killing over there, he says. So, I thought, why not give it a try?

I’d still like to see you again, to say goodbye properly and thanks for everything. I’m leaving next Saturday. Give me a ring. My mum’s number is in the book.

Debbie

The flames writhed before him like exotic dancers feigning ecstasy. The last fire he had seen had been in Williamson Lane; its vigour was still vivid in his mind. He could still hear Finbar gasping that the heat was a foretaste of hell. Where was the Irishman now?

He moved closer and gazed into the bonfire. Patterns formed and reformed in the blaze. For a second it seemed to him that he saw there the outlines of a familiar face. It belonged not to the girl who had passed herself off as Rosemary Graham-Brown, but to his murdered wife. He squeezed his eyes shut with so much force it hurt.

In this new darkness he could not escape images of violence and death. Before coming out tonight, he’d caught the six o’clock news: in Armagh a man, said to be an army informer, had been gunned down in his own front room, before the eyes of his wife and daughter. Meanwhile FAN! had claimed responsibility for an explosion at a cottage owned by a scientist known for performing experiments on live animals. In interview, a spokesperson for the group stroked a puppy and said he would decline to utter facile words of condemnation. It would not be principled to do so, he explained, when he could understand the frustrations of those who carried out the attack.

Harry thought too about Finbar Rogan. And about Eileen and Sinead and Penny. He’d started by searching for a culprit, but had found only victims.

Opening his eyes, he hurled the note from Debbie into the bonfire. Memories were as treacherous as passions. Maybe there was no escaping them, but he suddenly knew he must break with the past.

The blaze was dying. Its fury was spent and little remained but the dull glow of the embers. The piece of paper lodged on the spike of a scorched twig, where it curled, browned and crumpled, and he watched until nothing was left.

By that time, the face in the flames had disappeared.