Martin Edwards - Suspicious Minds

Mrs. Warner followed his glance.

“That’s poor Emma, of course.”

Harry looked inquiringly and the story soon came out. Emma had been a girlfriend, the one and only so far as Mrs. Warner knew. A pleasant girl from Liscard Village. The couple had got engaged on her twenty-first birthday; a wedding had been planned for the following June. A month later she was dead. She had suffered from anorexia nervosa since her early teens; the doctors reckoned it put the strain on her heart which had killed her.

“A tragedy, it was. Such a bolt from the blue. No one could believe it. And of course, he would never talk about it afterwards. Just bottled it all up inside. It’s not the best way, Mr. Devlin, it’s not the best way.”

“No.”

“I keep hoping he’ll find someone else. He’s not a bad-looking young chap, though I say so myself as shouldn’t. But he seems somehow to have lost all interest in girls.”

If only he had, thought Harry.

“Ah, well. It’s a pity you missed him,” said Mrs. Warner, not for the first time.

“You said he’d gone out for a walk,” prompted Harry.

“Yes, he often goes out on his own like that. Says he likes to be alone with his thoughts. I’m not sure it’s a good thing, but what can you say? He’s upgrown now, it’s none of my business how he spends his time. Probably he’s just set off for a stroll on the front. Though it’s so muggy I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in for a storm.”

“Might stretch my legs myself before it pours. Any idea where I’d most likely bump into him?”

“You could try the prom.”

“I will.” He stood up and cast another glance at the photograph of the dead girl. “Thank you for the tea. It was kind of you.”

“Think nothing of it, Mr…. Devlin, was it? Nice to meet one of his business friends and have a chat, it makes a change for me. Might see you again some day if you care to pop in. Though normally of course he’s working on a weekday. He’ll be sorry he was out when you called.”

Harry bit his lip. Even sorrier when he finds out that I know the truth.

“Goodbye,” he said and averted his gaze from the old woman’s kind eyes.

Outside the heat had become oppressive, like a threat of war. Harry sensed a feverishness in the air, as if the passers-by expected thunder and were scurrying madly, trying to make the most of the sunshine before the rain pelted down. When he came to the seafront he slackened his pace, looking for any sign of the man he was hunting.

Should he tell the police what he knew? In principle, yes — but what exactly did he know? He had no proof, no hard facts, nothing much other than surmise. Thank God he had said nothing about Julian Hamer; to have disgraced himself in front of Valerie was disaster enough. No, for the time being it made sense to keep his suspicions to himself. But what if he did catch up with his man? After the debacle of the morning, Harry simply did not know what he would do.

He passed the Majestic and noticed a brand new Mercedes open top sports car with personalised number plates in the park. BG1. So Grealish had changed his motor. Perhaps he was celebrating the acquisition of Stirrup Wines. Harry wondered how long Stephanie would last before her lover tired of her lissom charms and traded her in for a new model too.

Hordes of kids shrieked around the paddling pool and formed a straggly queue outside the kiosk that sold ice cream. A little farther on a shop was doing a roaring trade in Kiss-me-quick hats. A couple of young women were trying them on, giggling all the while.

Harry leaned over the sea wall, remembering the sickness he had felt at the news of Claire Stirrup’s death. She ought to be here now, exchanging silly jokes with other girls of her own age. Her murder had been a waste of life and the senselessness of it appalled him, made him sad and angry both at the same time.

Watching the waves, he realised that he felt much the same about Claire’s killer, The Beast; that figure, enlarged into a nightmarish giant in the public imagination by lurid news stories, was in real life a man people would pass without a second glance. How else had he escaped the law’s net for so long? In attacking blondes, did he think he was taking revenge on them for being alive when the girl he loved was dead? Did he gain pleasure from either the sex or the violence? Harry didn’t try to answer himself. He didn’t want to get inside the man’s head, when all he was likely to find there was a tangled web of frustrations, jealousies and pain.

He kicked a pebble along the promenade. The sky had become overcast: one or two passers-by were looking up anxiously, making calculations about how long it would take to get back home.

The two giggling women had overtaken him. They were chattering together on the other side of the road. Both were leggy blondes; one had long hair, the other a tight perm. The girl with shoulder-length hair waved goodbye to her companion and sauntered off past the Floral Hall in the direction of The Wreckers. Standing with his back to the sea, Harry idly followed her progress. Her denim shorts were very short, her bare legs and arms richly tanned.

Suddenly a movement across the road caught his eye. A man coming out of an amusement arcade. A man in a pale grey tracksuit and trainers. A slightly built man with neat brown hair and a pleasant but anonymous face, a man easily overlooked in a seaside town.

Except that Harry recognised him as the man he had come to New Brighton for. The man he now believed to be The Beast.

“Could be anyone,” Bernard Gladwin had said of The Beast. But the killer had proved to be someone Harry had known for years. Someone Claire had indeed recognized when accompanying her father to Balliol Chambers.

David Base glanced to his right and began to quicken his pace. The blonde girl was fifty yards ahead of him. Harry realised that, like Gina Jean-Jacques, she bore a faint resemblance — something in the bone structure, perhaps — to Emma. Emma of the photograph at David’s home and in Balliol Chambers.

Fear trickled down Harry’s spine. There was only one reason for David to follow the girl. The hunger must have seized him again. Harry began to move briskly too. He must not let them get out of sight.

The girl swung her hips without a trace of self-consciousness. From behind she looked very good to Harry. He didn’t know what ideas were flowing through David’s mind. Did not want to know.

He felt something strange and unfamiliar touch his face. Yes, a drop of rain. People here and there were beginning to unfurl umbrellas. He felt another drop and another and another.

The girl strolled past The Wreckers. David Base was keeping the same distance between them. Feeling sick, Harry recognised that David was tracking his prey with an ease born of long practice.

As David walked, he took a peppermint from his trouser pocket and absent-mindedly tossed it from hand to hand before popping it into his mouth. That habit of his had been a giveaway. Claire must have noticed it when she spotted him close to Prospect House on the Wirral Way, minutes before he came upon Gina and raped her. No doubt she had seen him repeat the trick at Balliol Chambers before Harry arrived for the conference. Why else ask Gina about the taste of The Beast’s kisses? Why else sound so excited when Gina said the man had not kissed her, but his breath had smelt of peppermint?

She hadn’t been mooning over David, as her father thought. After the first shock of recognition, her moodiness had concealed the working of her mind as she devised a way to exploit her suspicion of his guilt. She wanted to savour having him in her power. Have him bring her roses. Presumably she’d phoned him and arranged a rendezvous in West Kirby. But she’d underestimated his desperation and had too much faith in her own skill at self-defence.