Martin Edwards: Suspicious Minds

“If I only knew. Any road, least said, soonest mended. Come on, have a look round the rest of the house?”

Stirrup led the way with the pride of a mother showing off a new-born child. The billiard room, the study, the conservatory. It was like seeing a Cluedo gameboard brought to life.

“Not bad, eh?”

They climbed turning stairs to a galleried landing half the floor area of Harry’s flat. Doors led off to bedrooms. “Mine,” said Stirrup, pointing to one of them. “Alison’s. Claire’s. Couple more for the guests, plus an attic upstairs.”

So the husband and wife occupied separate rooms? Even as Harry mulled that one over, his client sought to forestall curiosity.

“Always each had our own room, Ali and me, right from when we were first married. The coppers raised their eyebrows when they came round the first time, but I told them, don’t read anything into it. Things were all right between her and me. But you don’t spend a fortune on a place like this and then stint yourself for space. Besides, I’m a bit of a snorer and Alison sleeps light. But we had plenty of nights together with no time for either snoring or sleeping, let me tell you.”

Harry ignored Stirrup’s do-you-want-to-make-anything-else-of-it gaze. Like so many clients, he was protesting too much.

He strolled into Alison’s bedroom. His first impression was that everything was blue. The carpet, the curtains, the elaborate patchwork quilts hanging from the wall. No fluffy feminine touches for Alison Stirrup. The room matched her appearance and her personality — or at least, as much or as little of her personality as she had cared to reveal. Immaculate, attractive, but cool and remote as Lapland.

He bent to examine the contents of the bookcase. Other people’s taste in literature always intrigued him. Alison, it seemed, enjoyed the Victorians. Cranford , North and South , Villette and Silas Marner stood side by side with Winifred Gerin’s life of Elizabeth Gaskell. And they were sandwiched by a clutch of books on patchwork techniques.

“Ali always had her nose in a book. Either that or she was busy with her needlework.” Stirrup jerked a thumb at one of the wall hangings, a five-foot wide hexagon composed of innumerable blue and green triangles. “Not bad if you like that sort of thing. I used to say, turn your hobby into a business, make a few bob out of it.”

Harry wondered what Alison had ever seen in her husband. Not a shared love of cultural or artistic pursuits, that was for sure. Money must be the answer. It usually was, whatever the question. But if she was still alive, what was she using for money now?

As they went downstairs Stirrup said, “Fancy a game of snooker before you go?”

Harry realised, for the first time, the man’s sense of isolation. If he was as bemused by Alison’s vanishing as he claimed, life must at the moment seem an unexplained mystery.

“One game, then.”

They played on a full-sized Thurston table, talking spasmodically about this and that. Stirrup drank liqueurs steadily, but they neither affected his calculation of angles nor prompted him to volunteer anything more about Alison. Harry matched his opponent shot for shot and, with only a few balls left on the table, Stirrup needed snookers to win. But Harry let his mind wander. What was Valerie up to? When he missed an easy pot, Stirrup didn’t try to hide a grin. He seized his chance and finally sank the black to win the game.

“You let it slip,” he said. “I’d not have made that mistake in your shoes.”

Harry nodded rueful agreement.

“Know the secret, Harry boy? I’ll tell you. It’s simple. And it’s the same in love or war, business or snooker.” In high good humour he slapped his solicitor matily on the back. “You need the killer instinct.”

“Hanging would be too good for him,” said Bernard Gladwin.

Harry’s mind was on whether Stirrup had killed his wife and disposed of the body. Where might the corpse be hidden, if he had? Surely not at Prospect House — Stirrup wouldn’t be so naive as to court almost inevitable detection. The police had already with his permission taken a cursory look round the building and grounds. Finding nothing. So far they had stopped short of digging up the overgrown garden, although Harry guessed that if Alison did not reappear soon, Bolus would insist on a much more thorough search.

A touch of steel across his neck brought Harry back to the here and now. His barber was talking about The Beast, not Jack Stirrup, and had momentarily paused for breath. To give Harry the chance to confirm him in his prejudices.

The razor’s reflection gleamed in the wall mirror. Harry gazed back at it, not letting his expression give a clue to his thoughts.

“What punishment do you suggest? The guillotine?”

Bernard grunted. “I’d be willing to do the job myself if no else had the bottle.”

He emphasised the point with a flourish of his shaving arm, causing Harry to flinch in anticipation of a severed jugular.

Bernard was a burly, red-faced man who cut hair with the same ruthless simplicity with which he expressed his views on law and order. And yet Harry had never surrendered to logic and taken his custom elsewhere. He found something compelling in Bernard’s unashamed awfulness. Coming here was a bad habit, like eating chocolate fudge cake or watching a TV soap.

“The bloody streets aren’t safe to walk these days. I blame the government. To say nothing of the bloody social workers.”

Harry forbore to point out that none of The Beast’s victims had been accosted in the street. Fine distinctions would be as wasted on Bernard as would piped music or comfy chairs in this place of his.

Bernard’s wasn’t a hairdressing studio or a unisex salon. It was a barber’s and proud of it. There was even a red and white striped wooden pole outside the door. Sitting on a ledge beside a card display of unbreakable combs and a tub of styptic pencils was a scruffy box of condoms, its contents no doubt long past their useful life. A pin-up calendar provided the only touch of glamour; June’s lovely lady rejoiced in the name of Inge. Occasionally, Harry noticed in the mirror, Bernard would glance at Inge, as if to refresh his memory about the exact dimensions of her ballooning breasts.

“The bloody police aren’t much better. Months this pervert’s been on the loose, and has anyone been arrested? Have they buggery!”

“Difficult case,” said Harry to plug a gap in the conversation while Bernard tried to take a lump out of his left ear.

“What is it — six attacks now, seven? All in public places. Surely to God they ought to have an idea who’s responsible.”

“There’s no pattern. He strikes at different times of the day. And all over Wirral, isn’t that right?”

Bernard nodded. “Birkenhead Park, Eastham Ferry, the Wirral Way, Raby Mere. You name it.”

“Hard to catch up with someone like that.”

“Bloody disgrace.” Bernard held up a hand mirror. “How’s that? Bit more off the sides? Anyhow, see that identikit picture in the Echo ! Could have been anyone. Might be you. Might even be me.”

He bared large yellow teeth in an angry grimace and finished snipping. “All right? Want anything on it, keep it together?” Without waiting for a reply, he squirted a dented metal canister of something ozone-unfriendly at Harry’s head, then stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Waiting while Bernard brushed bits of hair off his shoulders, Harry turned his mind to The Beast. Beyond reading the reports in the Press, he had not given the assaults much thought. What intrigued him were the quirks and oddities of human life and death. A plot, a puzzle, a hint of mystery whether on film, in a novel or in the real world, all could fire his imagination. But the recent spate of attacks across the water had seemed commonplace in a dangerous age. Harry had assumed that the perpetrator would soon be caught. Their paths were only likely to cross if The Beast wanted Crusoe and Devlin to act as his solicitors.