Martin Edwards - Suspicious Minds

A long shot, but tonight Harry felt that any shot was better than none. Pushing aside his half-finished pizza, he decided he would go to The Wreckers and see if he could find the young man. At least so doing would give him an illusion of doing something positive, not only on his client’s behalf, but also to identify the murderer of that spoilt fifteen-year-old girl. Unlikeable she may have been, but she had not deserved to die.

The drive through the Queensway Tunnel was swift. Up above, unseen and unheard, the river flowed, dividing Liverpool and Wirral. Harry let his mind roam again around the events of the past few days, trying to find a pattern to them. Trouble was, he couldn’t be sure there even was a pattern. Perhaps he was wrong in trying to make all the hints and allegations add up when all the time they might be random elements, like bits of a brain-teaser in a magazine spattered with printer’s errors.

The Wreckers, a concrete and glass excrescence which might have been named after the architects responsible for its design, made the average amusement arcade look like St. George’s Hall. Outside the main door a group of leather-jacketed youths congregated, laughing and swearing. Every time a girl walked past them on her way into that place they treated her to a serenade of whistles and cat-calls. The girls pretended not to notice but the giggling remarks they exchanged with each other suggested this was all part of a ritual they would be lost without.

A dozen motorbikes were parked round the corner. Harry did not know either the registration number or make of Kuiper’s bike, but he spotted one which looked familiar and which had a thin layer of mud smeared over its number plate. He decided to take a look inside.

Stepping into The Wreckers, he felt like a maiden aunt blundering into a wife-swapping party. The room heaved with bodies pressed close together. No one looked over twenty. Rap music droned from overhead speakers. If this was the pub, Harry wondered, why bother with the disco? He pushed past cuddling couples half his age and finally made it to the bar.

Drawing breath, he glanced round. Almost immediately he caught sight of his quarry. Kuiper was standing with his back to the bar, talking to a small fair-haired girl in a red and white striped tee-shirt. He was wearing his James Dean face and seemed to have his listener spellbound. Harry inched forward to get a better view of her and saw the smooth features of a girl no older than Claire. Kuiper obviously liked them young.

With difficulty and many apologies, Harry moved through the scrum of lads at the bar until he was close enough to touch Peter Kuiper. The student had slipped his hand inside the back of the girl’s tee-shirt and didn’t appear to be meeting any resistance. It hadn’t taken him long to get over the loss of one girlfriend and find another, Harry thought.

“Peter,” he shouted. “I made it after all.”

Alarm brought a strange light to the young man’s eyes as he turned round. His cheeks were flushed; the lager he was drinking was not his first of the night. He glanced over Harry’s shoulder, as if he expected a posse of policemen to be fetching up the rear.

“What do you want?”

“To talk. You want that too. Well, here I am.”

Kuiper jammed his eyelids shut, as if to help him think. Then he made up his mind. He bent down to the girl and spoke into her ear. Dismay drained the colour from her face. He patted her head as if she were a pet spaniel and nodded at Harry.

“Okay. Let’s talk.”

“Not here,” Harry bellowed. “Outside. Where we can hear ourselves think.”

“I don’t want to be conspicuous. The filth are looking for me.”

“Come on.”

Harry seized the collar of the student’s jacket and frog-marched him to the door. Once they were standing outside and Harry had released his grip, Kuiper ostentatiously dusted himself down. The exertion seemed to have sobered him.

“That’s a common assault, you ought to know that.”

“Peter, don’t provoke me any more. You rang me this afternoon wanting my advice. The first piece of it is — stop acting like a child. This isn’t a game. Claire’s dead. If you didn’t kill her, you’re behaving like a fool. As well as distracting the police from tracking down the real murderer.”

“What makes you so sure I didn’t strangle her?” Impossible for Kuiper to keep a sneer off his lips for more than a few minutes at a time.

“Did you?”

The intensity of Harry’s tone and expression seemed to register. Kuiper shifted from one foot to the other.

“No. Believe me, I’d never have harmed her.”

“For what it’s worth, I do believe you. Thousands wouldn’t. Certainly not Jack Stirrup. He’s baying for your hide.”

“The stupid old sod.”

“His daughter’s dead — he wants a scapegoat. So grow up, and answer a few questions. Where have you been since Saturday afternoon?”

“Here and there. Out in the open, mostly. No problem in this weather. Last night I was out of my head after hearing about Claire on the tranny. Slept it off on Moreton shore.”

“Why do a flit?”

“I didn’t want to get involved with the filth. Simple as that.”

“Why not?”

“I just didn’t, okay? Anyway, it’s not for you to cross-examine me. You could do with minding your own business.”

“Peter,” said Harry softly, “that’s not possible. What you do is my business, so far as it affects my client. Jack Stirrup’s daughter has been raped and strangled, don’t forget that.”

“Am I likely to? She was my girlfriend.”

Harry pointed to the door of The Wreckers. “In there you weren’t exactly wearing sackcloth and ashes.”

“What do you want, blood?”

“Unfortunate choice of phrase in the circumstances.”

“Yeah, well. Anyway, old man Stirrup’s got nothing to feel holier than thou about. He didn’t understand Claire, couldn’t give her what she wanted most. Couldn’t even keep his old lady happy, come to that, could he? Never mind a fifteen-year-old kid who thought there was more to life than doing up a musty old dump of a house that should have been condemned long ago.”

“So what did Claire want most?”

The sneer returned. “You wouldn’t understand either.”

“Try me.”

“Okay.” The student gave a triumphant look. “She wanted to take risks. She wanted to be rich. And most of all she wanted to make an impact.”

“She wasn’t exactly destitute,” said Harry. “And what sort of impact did she have in mind?”

“To capture people’s attention,” he said slowly. “To dare to be different. It’s easy to be one more face in the crowd. We wanted to make people sit up and think.”

“And how did you plan to do that?”

Kuiper shrugged. Harry had spent most of his professional and married lives being lied to; he recognised the gesture as a prelude to evasion.

“She’s managed it now, hasn’t she? She’s a household name. The girl The Beast murdered.”

“How do you know she was killed by The Beast?”

“I read the papers.”

“Don’t give me that. How do you know?”

“I don’t.” Kuiper looked at the ground. “Honestly. But what other explanation can there be?”

“Were you with her last Friday night?”

“No. She was seeing another girl she knew from school, I think. I don’t know who.”

“When were you last in touch with her?”

“That evening. She rang me at my flat, around half-five. She used to do that, before her father got home. He was mean about the phone bill.”

“What did she say?”

“She’d met some old prat her father had hired to find her step-mother. Claire reckoned he was so decrepit he’d be lucky to find his way back to Liverpool. That didn’t bother her, she was glad to see the back of Alison.”