Martin Edwards - Suspicious Minds

“Listen,” Stirrup leaned towards Harry so that their foreheads almost touched. “All I want is for that lad to be found. Nothing else matters. I don’t want Bolus fishing after any more red bloody herrings. He’s wasted enough time accusing me of doing away with Ali.”

“The lad? You mean Kuiper?”

“Who else?”

“What makes you so sure he killed Claire?”

Stirrup glanced briefly skywards. “Come on, Harry boy. Use your nut. At first, when they told me the news, I was like you. I thought it might be the madman. The Beast. But the roses now…” He made a choking sound, perhaps picturing the scene in the dark cave almost below their feet. “The roses… they must mean something.”

“What?”

“She knew the man who killed her, of course. It wasn’t the fucking Beast after all. Not Morgan, or Grealish either. They might be pricks, but they wouldn’t kill Claire just to settle a score with me. I don’t believe it. So who’s left? It must Kuiper.”

“Or what about some other boyfriend, someone you know nothing about?”

“No chance. You saw the way she behaved when that lad was around. She idolised him, she…”

Again he was on the verge of tears. After bowing his head for a moment while composing himself, he lifted it again and looked Harry straight in the eye.

“She must have had a purpose,” he said, “going out to catch that bus into West Kirby without her library books.”

“Unless she simply forgot them. It has been known for kids to forget things.”

“I don’t believe it,” Stirrup said doggedly. “She’d fixed to meet Kuiper and he’d promised to bring her some roses. He brought her here on his bike. They had a row. I can guess what about, can’t you? The randy little shit. And — well, you know the rest.”

Harry said nothing. The idea was plausible, he had to admit. And yet, if Stirrup was right, why had the student returned to Prospect House on the Saturday afternoon?

“All I want is five minutes with him,” Stirrup said. “Five minutes, that’s all I ask. I’ll get the truth, even if it kills me.”

“He says it’s a matter of life and death.” Suzanne yawned as she spoke. Crusoe and Devlin’s clientele had an infinite capacity for exaggeration. The switchboard girl never disguised her resentment of callers who interrupted her enjoyment of sex-and-shopping fiction with their petty worries about moving house or breaking parole.

Earlier in the afternoon Harry had instructed her to divert all calls to Francesca while he tried to make inroads on the work which he had abandoned the previous day after receiving Bolus’s summons. Yet, like a gambler unable to resist one last bet, he reminded himself of the one-in-a-hundred chance that the caller’s crisis might be genuine.

“Who is it?”

“Name of Peter Kuiper. He’s ringing from a phone box.”

During the twenty-four hours since the discovery of Claire Stirrup’s body, Harry had kept asking himself where the student was hiding. And why. Now his mouth went dry. A long-locked door might at last be about to open. What would it reveal?

“Put him through… Peter?”

“Mr. Devlin, I need to talk to you urgently.”

The student’s voice was barely recognisable. Gone were the sneer and the hint of swaggering smart-alec remarks to come. What remained was the sound of a young man, frightened and vulnerable.

“Where are you, Peter?”

“Never mind that.” Vulnerable, but nonetheless wary. “I want your advice. Can you help me?”

“Is it about Claire?”

“It’s true, isn’t it? She’s dead, murdered. I read the story in the paper last night. I couldn’t believe it. Went out and got myself pissed to take my mind off things. She was so — so… Shit! I don’t know how to tell you what’s going through my mind.”

“Calm down, Peter. Take it slowly. One thing at a time. Why do you need me?”

“I might be in trouble with the police. It hasn’t happened yet. May not happen at all.”

“Connected with Claire?”

“In a way.”

Was he worrying about an underage sex charge? When that had been an unspoken possibility, he had seemed supremely unconcerned. Now his girlfriend had been killed and so had the chance of any prosecution. So what was he afraid of?

“Tell me.”

“We — no, you don’t need to know that. Besides, you still haven’t answered your question. Will you act for me?”

“I must know more before I can give you a straight answer, Peter. Surely you realise that? Advising you could put me in a conflict of loyalties — between you and Jack Stirrup.”

“I don’t know any other solicitors,” said Kuiper. “That’s a laugh, isn’t it, for someone studying law? True, though. Besides, you know the background. And I think I can trust you not to tell anyone where I am or what I’ve been doing. There’s a place I go to in New Brighton. Will you meet me there tonight?”

“Let’s get one thing clear before we go any further. Unless you’re completely up front with me, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

To Harry’s anguish, the pips started to go.

“I haven’t any more money. Your girl took an age to put me through.”

“Give me a number where I can phone you back. Come on, Peter, there isn’t much time.”

“No. I must think it over. I see that now. You’re Stirrup’s lawyer after all, you’re in his pocket.”

The line died before Harry could utter another word. He slammed the receiver down and let out a loud groan of despair. Francesca, passing by, poked her head round the door.

“You all right? I’ve got some Alka-Seltzer if that’s any use.”

“No, thanks. Honestly.”

“Suit yourself.” She assumed a martyred expression and disappeared in the direction of the loo, banging the door behind her with the finality of one who has mistyped her last letter of the day.

When she was out of earshot Harry swore quietly, aware that he was no wiser than before Kuiper’s call. He stared disconsolately at the pile of unfinished paperwork languishing in front of him. The heat had drained him of energy and the evening ahead promised nothing.

Valerie was out of town on a trial and when Harry phoned Balliol Chambers, David Base said he thought the case would run on until tomorrow afternoon.

“Can I take a message?”

Unreasonably, Harry found the clerk’s willingness to please grating and he had snapped, “No message,” before banging the phone down.

His small office felt like the inside of an oven, yet if he opened the window traffic noise and roadworks made coherent thought impossible. Time for a positive decision. He would abandon the job for the rest of the day and go and get drunk instead.

On his way to The Dock Brief, he picked up an evening paper. BEAST LINK IN SCHOOLGIRL MURDER? demanded a headline. He leaned against a makeshift timber wall surrounding a redevelopment site and scanned the story.

From the front page a photograph of Claire looked out at him. A head and shoulders portrait of her in a school uniform. Her expression matched the Mona Lisa’s for complacency. As if she were pandering to an adult’s whim in having her picture taken. She’d been at least as arrogant as her boyfriend, Harry reflected. He wasn’t sentimental about speaking ill of the dead. Yet nothing she might have done justified the squeezing away of her life, the consigning of her body to that dark, dismal cavern-tomb.

The journalist, Ken Cafferty, had improved bare facts with a skilful blend of innuendo and speculation. The old identikit picture of The Beast appeared next to the story. A nondescript face, stripped of all individuality. What had Bernard Gladwin said? Might be you. Might even be me . The picture had been composed, Harry suspected, ninety percent from guesswork and ten percent from the fleeting impression of a victim who might have felt she had some sense of the features beneath the animal mask.