Martin Edwards - Suspicious Minds

“Do you want me to go?” Alison had asked. Perhaps the time had come, perhaps it was worth risking his fury. This endless fighting couldn’t continue.

“What do you mean?” Stirrup had spoken with a sudden softness. She recognised it as a danger sign, like the intensity of his stare.

“You’re not happy with me. And I’m not happy with you. It makes sense for me to move out.”

“Listen!”

He’d grabbed her wrist, hurting her, making her afraid that he was about to break it.

“You’re moving nowhere. No one walks out on me, do you understand? No one. I’d sooner kill you.”

She had squirmed in his grip, trying in vain to escape. It only made him tighten his hold and hurt her more.

“Don’t be stupid. I don’t belong to you. Marriages do go stale. Ours has. What else can I do?”

“You’re my wife, got that? My wife! And you don’t move out. You stay here and toe the line. I meant what I said.”

She’d summoned up her courage or maybe her folly and spat at him. As if he’d had an electric shock, he let go of her, but within a moment lifted his right arm and smashed it against the side of her head, sending her spinning to the floor. Luckily he’d aimed high and wide and her hair had taken some of the sting out of the blow. Two inches lower and a little straighter and he’d have broken her cheekbone for sure.

Standing over her, he spoke harshly. “I’d sooner kill you. Do you believe me? You ought to.”

Looking up at him through pain-misted eyes, she’d said, “What are you talking about?”

“Margaret… your bloody predecessor! You thought her car simply went out of control, didn’t you? That it was an accident?”

“What are you saying?”

“The brakes, Alison. I fixed them. Quite a coincidence, she was about to leave me. She’d gone head over heels for some other fool, so I made sure he’d never have her again. She should’ve realised I’m not a man to mess around. The truth was, she couldn’t care less about Claire or me. I tried to reason with her at first. Then I warned her. No good, her mind was made up. I’d told her I’d never let her humiliate me, but she took no notice. She brought it on herself.”

So that was it. Jack Stirrup’s confession to murder. Listening to Alison describe the scene, Harry could visualize his client, breathing hard, speaking with a furious passion. Easy to imagine Alison full of horror as she heard her husband condemning her either to a life sentence of misery or to death. No wonder she’d chosen a clandestine escape route.

She and Cathy resolved that nobody must guess their plans. At least Stirrup and Morgan were no longer in touch; they were unlikely to put their heads together, but even so it was important that the disappearances of their respective wives should seem unconnected. Cathy left Trevor at once; it was easier for her, she’d been dealing with the business arrangements and the cottage purchase in Knutsford. She put a curt note of farewell on the kitchen table so as to eliminate any suspicion that she’d been abducted or killed.

They agreed that Alison should somehow hang on with Stirrup for a little longer and pretend to make an effort to heal the rift. The activities of The Beast gave her an idea. She was a blonde, a potential victim. He might be thought responsible when she vanished. The thought that Stirrup might be suspected of her murder had occurred to Alison; the idea held an ironic appeal, but since no one had ever suggested he was responsible for the death of Margaret, it seemed more like wishful thinking. She’d never anticipated that Doreen Capstick would point an accusing finger at her own son-in-law. Abandoning Doreen herself had been no hardship. On the contrary, she said, it ranked as a bonus.

“I read about Claire, of course. It did cross my mind to get in touch. But what good would it have done? He would only have kept looking for me. The fact you’re here now shows how determined he is to track me down. I didn’t even realise I could have cleared him of suspicion of killing me. Though I must be honest, Harry. When I think of the misery I suffered when we were together, I can’t pretend I’m sorry he’s been through the mill lately. Jack’s used people all his life. It’s time he understood how it feels.”

“I think he does.”

“A sadder and wiser man? I’ll believe it when I see it. Only I don’t want to see it.”

“You’re wrong, Alison. He wouldn’t follow you to ends of the earth to wreak revenge.”

“Really? Then what are you doing here?”

“Blame my insatiable curiosity.”

As he explained the sequence of events since her disappearance — Bolus’s inquisition, Stirrup’s idea that tracing her might silence Doreen Capstick and put him in the clear, Jonah Deegan’s sleuthing — he juggled facts and impressions for his own benefit too. Facing the issue he’d dodged for so long. Trying to decide whether Stirrup’s behaviour smacked of guilt or innocence.

And now, as he reached the end of the M62 and headed down Edge Lane towards the centre of Liverpool, certainty continued to elude him. The Stirrup he knew was capable of claiming in the heat of the moment to have committed a crime which had only taken place in his imagination. Harry had not known Stirrup in the days of Margaret; his knowledge of that marriage was confined to odd snippets of conversation over the years, filed away in his memory. Yet the man had spoken of his first wife with affection, not unmixed with grief at her death. She was, after all, the mother of his beloved Claire.

Alison, however, was in no doubt.

“I realise you’re bound to tell him I’m alive. I can’t expect you to do anything else. And of course the police must know. Can’t have them wasting any more time over me. But Harry, will you do one thing for me? For God’s sake, don’t say where I am. Lie to him, say I’ve gone abroad. Anything. But if you don’t want to have a crime on your conscience, I’m begging you not to give him any hint that Cathy and I are here.”

Harry didn’t have to say a word. He and Alison had never been close. He owed her nothing. She was a fellow human being, though, and one look at the uncharacteristic, imploring expression on her face was enough to make up his mind.

“All right, Alison. I promise.”

As the words had left his mouth, he heard the rattle of a key in a lock. Catherine Morgan was back. Alison jumped to her feet and ran out into the hall to explain in frantic whispers about their visitor.

“So,” said Cathy Morgan as she walked into the sitting room, “a face from the past.”

Her own face was as grim as Harry remembered. It seemed to be composed entirely of straight lines. No curves, no compromises, no nonsense. Harry hadn’t expected her to be overjoyed to see him — their brief acquaintance had been polite, no more than that — but he would have preferred not to be examined with the kind of distaste most people reserve for the appearance of dogshit in the middle of their previously immaculate lawn.

Nor did she disguise her distrust for his links with Jack Stirrup. Harry’s tentative suggestion that Stirrup might have made up the story about killing his first wife met with scorn.

“You’re fooling yourself,” Cathy Morgan had said; she might have been chastising a child who claimed to have seen a ghost. “You wouldn’t waste your time with any such idea if you’d seen the state this poor girl was in even twenty hours after that bloody man made his threat.”

This poor girl was now sharing the sofa with her lover, curled up in the crook of a comforting arm. She seemed to have shrunk the moment Cathy walked through the door. Harry had no trouble in guessing who wore the trousers in this particular household. Was it too cynical to think that Alison had merely exchanged one form of tyranny for another?