Martin Edwards - Suspicious Minds

As the road came to an end and the riverside walkway began, Harry fell in directly behind the barristers’ clerk. He was only thirty yards ahead. What if he turned round and saw Harry in pursuit? He did not have any idea what he should do or say.

The girl came to the gate marking the entrance to Vale Park. There she paused, as if uncertain what to do. David Base slowed at once. So did Harry. No need to worry. The clerk was intent on the object of his quest.

She turned into the park. David Base went after her. Harry reached the gate, then hesitated. Vale Park was as quiet as usual, a small oasis of trees, neatly tended flower beds and grass parched from the long drought. A place for relaxation and reflection, not for clandestine and cruel crime. Harry saw the rose garden was deserted. There wasn’t even anyone exercising a dog.

The girl had taken refuge from the rain under the old bandstand with its domed roof and Doric columns. She was nibbling at her fingernails. She glanced upwards and caught sight of Harry. Then she turned her head quickly away.

David Base was nowhere in sight. Where had he gone?

The girl looked round carefully. She seemed to be wondering whether to make a run for it and risk getting wet until the worst was over.

She made up her mind and stepped out from underneath the shelter. But she did not hurry. Instead, she strolled, as if in slow motion. Almost inviting trouble. Harry was tempted to shout about the danger she faced. But instinct told him to wait until David showed himself again.

Numb with apprehension, he watched her follow the path towards the exit at the far end of the park. Suddenly she ducked and disappeared beneath a thick clump of bushes. Then he began to stride rapidly down the path. His heart was thudding. He was afraid of what David Base might be about to do. He cursed himself for waiting too long. Now he must get to her first.

What happened next was never entirely clear in his mind, no matter how many times he replayed the scene. Within seconds he was conscious of a girl’s scream and a blur of action as she staggered back into his line of vision. She stumbled as her pursuer, wearing the mask of a snarling panther, leaped forward and caught hold of her. But then she cried out not in terror, it seemed to Harry, but in exultation. For all at once the park was full of people and a voice of command was bellowing: “Police!”

“Are you a Believer?”

The well-scrubbed young man sitting next to Harry had a face as pink as the carnation in his buttonhole. TRUST IN THE LORD exhorted the badge which adorned his other lapel. On the top table Brenda Rixton — sorry, Redpath, Harry mentally corrected himself — and her new husband exchanged smiles, oblivious to the bit-part players at their reception.

“‘Fraid not.”

This was the first dry day since the storm which had signalled the end of the long hot spell. But Harry’s stock of weather small talk was limited and he was glad when the toastmaster demanded silence for the best man’s speech.

As the happy couple heard their virtues recited, Harry cast his mind back to that torrential downpour when it seemed the heavens were trying to cleanse the land following the capture of The Beast. But rain cannot wash away everything. No one could tell how long it would take for the community’s scars of fear to fade.

With a shudder he remembered how near he had come to ruining the covert operation to entrap David Base. Scores of times he had asked himself what would have happened if he had caught up with and confronted David. A confession? Resistance? He was glad he would never find out.

When the police had arrested David in Vale Park, tucked into his tracksuit they found a ligature, a knotted strip of cord. Even Ruby Fingall would have been hard pressed to explain that and the mask away, let alone the one in ten million match between David’s DNA and the traces found on Claire’s corpse. The clerk hadn’t given his defence the opportunity to test its powers of imagination. He’d been willing to talk straight away, according to the local legal grapevine. Almost as if glad that it was all over.

The scale of the undercover effort to catch The Beast had become public knowledge. Since Claire’s murder, police had patrolled the peninsula’s parks, its open spaces, with as much manpower as resources allowed. And womanpower. The leggy blonde and her companion whom Harry had first seen trying on Kiss-me-quick hats had both been policewomen. Even now Harry couldn’t quite believe that their skimpy beachwear had concealed panic buttons and a two-way radio.

“And on that note,” said the best man, putting his memory cards face-down on the table, “it only remains for me to give you a toast: the bride and groom!”

Everyone stood and raised their glasses solemnly. As they resumed their seats Harry’s neighbour whispered, “Brenda really does look delightful.”

Bland as background music the young man might be, but he wasn’t wrong. Today Brenda might have passed for ten years younger than forty-five. The blue chiffon two-piece suited her, as had the broad-brimmed hat she’d worn outside. As Colin Redpath stumbled through his speech, she gazed up at him, intent and loving. For an instant a memory surfaced in Harry’s mind, a memory of a caring, anxious face and a soft, white, yielding body underneath his. He banished the image angrily and told himself to be glad she had found Colin and a new way of life.

The Redpaths were not alone in making a fresh start. Harry had rung Alison Stirrup a couple of times. A self-imposed sense of responsibility had made him fear for her safety. But she and Cathy were back in their Knutsford shop within days of moving out. Alison said her husband had never contacted her. In their conversations she had been uncommunicative, keen to get off the phone. When Harry referred to Stirrup’s claim to have murdered his first wife, Alison was dismissive.

“You said it yourself, he made that story up to frighten me. I over-reacted. Surely you can understand why. The marriage breakdown. Coming out. It’s been a strain. I got everything out of proportion. I simply needed to escape. From him, from my mother. That’s all.”

“He told you he’d fixed the brakes on Margaret’s car.”

“For God’s sake don’t repeat that. I don’t want to be had up for slander.”

Jack Stirrup had had his fill of defamation law, reflected Harry grimly. And after cooling down he’d changed his mind about a showdown with Alison. He was no fool. He knew there was a limit to how many times you could get away with murder. Whilst she evidently intended to scrub the marriage from her mind as if it were no more than a dirty stain on her life.

According to a gossipy item in last night’s local paper about the sale of his business, Jack was planning to emigrate to Bermuda. “The last few weeks have been so traumatic, I’ve realised there’s more to life than making money. It’s time to put my feet up,” he was quoted as saying. A fuzzy photograph showed him overweight and cheerful, everyone’s favourite uncle. He had his arm round Rita Buxton, who was described as his fiancee and was looking at him as tenderly as if he were a pension policy.

“And now pray silence for the cutting of the cake.”

The toastmaster exuded bonhomie, flashbulbs popped, the newlyweds laughed with embarrassed pleasure as they wielded the knife together.

“A day to remember,” enthused Harry’s neighbour. “And a jolly nice meal, too.”

Harry agreed. No worries about strychnine in the soup or mercury in the meringues here in the squeaky clean meeting place of the evangelical group to which Brenda and Colin belonged. Anyway, the poisoning career of Peter Kuiper was at an end. Quentin Pike reckoned the kid was planning to write a book about his experiences. One way of passing his time inside.