Martin Edwards: Suspicious Minds

Bernard was right, though. Upwards of half a dozen attacks in public parks and other open spaces since spring and the police seemed no nearer to arresting The Beast than to nailing Jack the Ripper. Meanwhile he was becoming more violent. At first he had been content to flash at a couple of pre-pubertal girls. Then he had touched one. Next he turned to rape. Each attack seemed more brutal than the one before. Now the police were warning that the man might kill. And in the past few weeks the Press had made a running story out of two common themes linking the attacks. The Beast always wore a rubber mask with the snarling face of an animal — a dog, a leopard, a wolf — of the kind currently popular and sold in shops up and down the country. And each young victim’s hair was blonde.

“Know what I’d do if I got hold of him?” asked Bernard.

Harry handed over his money with a hasty word of thanks “I can guess,” he said. He was about to leave when the door opened and through it a familiar figure hobbled on arthritic legs clad in cavalry twill trousers which had seen better days.

“Hello Jonah. About time you had those shaggy locks trimmed.”

“Very funny.”

The newcomer had a cover of grey hair as thin as a spider’s web. He was a stocky man, sixty if a day, and Harry found it impossible to imagine his leathery face ever having yielded a carefree smile. Despite the heat, over a white shirt with fraying cuffs he was wearing an old maroon cardigan.

“Sure you’re warm enough?” asked Harry. Like everyone else, he’d never been able to resist teasing Jonah Deegan.

“Nothing better to do with your time than crack silly jokes?”

“As it happens, I’m glad I’ve seen you. There’s something you can do for me.”

Although he must have scented business, Jonah’s watery eyes didn’t flicker. He said to Gladwin, “With you in a minute, Bernard. Just let me have a word with Clarence Darrow here.”

They stepped to one side and the barber made a token effort at sweeping the floor whilst trying to eavesdrop.

“What can I do for you?”

“Still got contacts over the water?”

Jonah had been in the Merseyside police from leaving school until retirement. He’d been a good detective by all accounts, though the sights and sounds of the city’s twilight world had soured his view of the human race. Long since divorced, he lived in a flat near the Anglican cathedral with an endless supply of foul-smelling cigarettes for company. Nowadays he worked for himself, mostly chasing — or limping after — the occasional debt. And what he lacked in social graces he made up for with cussed persistence.

“I’d like you to find the answer to a question for me.”

“Ask away.”

Harry explained about the police interrogation of Jack Stirrup. “Someone’s stirring them up. Must be. Missing persons usually rate low on the priority list.”

Jonah nodded. “And you want to know who’s stirring? I’ve heard of this Bolus. He’s just a whippersnapper. Doubt if he’s thirty. I’ll have a word round.”

“Thanks.”

“It’ll cost, mind.”

“Jack Stirrup can afford it.”

“The price went up when you made the crack about this cardigan.”

“You’re a hard man, Jonah. Give me a ring at the office when you have any news.”

Outside the sky was cloud-free. Mid-afternoon on the hottest day of the year so far and Liverpudlians were relishing it, equally careless of sunstroke and skin cancer. In Church Street, opportunistic vendors bellowed the price of dark glasses whose provenance and effectiveness were both in doubt. Shirt-sleeved old men sat on benches, picking their noses and eyeing the women who passed them by.

Harry looked at the women too. Overweight middle-aged ladies panting as they lugged heavily-laden shopping baskets towards the bus stop. Mothers in sleeveless dresses, dragging fractious children away from ice-cream barrows. And teenagers in tight tee-shirts and shorts, displaying figures good, bad and indifferent. One redhead had emblazoned on her ample chest: I’m not fat — just pregnant.

Several girls had fair hair and Harry wondered how many of them feared that one day soon they might become a name in the paper when The Beast struck again. As surely he would. The thought angered Harry. Why should they not be safe? Why should their sex and their age and the colour of their hair make them vulnerable to a man for whom they were not living individuals but simply lumps of female flesh? His head said that Bernard’s lynch-mob justice never worked. His heart was not so sure.

All was quiet back at the office. He was greeted by Francesca, the temp who was deputising whilst his secretary and her family sunned themselves on the Algarve. A slender girl whose perm resembled an exotic form of marine life, Francesca had a Shakespearean indifference towards consistency in spelling. The shortness of her skirts and the smoothness of her bare legs were scant compensation for her inability to type accurately at speed.

“Too hot to be inside working on a day like this!”

Ten times at least that week she had greeted him with the same remark. Harry responded with a weary smile and asked if there were any messages.

“On your desk, together with your post.”

Down the corridor, a door swung open and a big, bearded man emerged. Jim Crusoe, his partner, back after a morning spent with an old lady in Formby who wanted to add an umpteenth codicil to her will. Rumour claimed she had ambitions for a place in The Guinness Book of Records . More testamentary dispositions than she had personal effects.

“Good lunch? Christ, old son, call that a haircut? You haven’t been to Sweeney Todd’s again? He could make a Rasta look like Dennis the Menace.”

“Does wonders for my street cred down at the magistrates’.”

“Don’t bank on it. Anyway, what’s the latest on Jack Stirrup?”

Harry described his visit to Prospect House. “He’s holding back on me, Jim. I’m certain of that, but nothing else.”

“You think Alison’s dead?”

“Wish I knew.”

“You know your trouble.”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You’re too interested in the truth to be a defence lawyer. If I’d killed someone, I’d want a brief who wasn’t too fussy about right. A Ruby Fingall. No wonder he’s cornered the market in big league villainy.”

“Stirrup’s not short of a few bob.”

“But he’s an amateur in crime, isn’t he? No track record. Piling the booze high and flogging it cheap is no training for a career in homicide.” Jim put a huge hand to his mouth in mock embarrassment. “Sorry. You’re going to remind me about the golden thread. Our client’s guilty until proved innocent and all that leader column garbage.”

“So you think he killed her?”

Jim Crusoe looked him in the eye. “Let’s just say I’ve seen him lose his rag a time or two and I wouldn’t like to be in his way when it happens. And I went over to Prospect House during the sale negotiations. The grounds are a jungle. You could hide half the bodies from West Kirby cemetery there.”

“Careful, I may start thinking you’re the one who got the police to swarm over there.”

“Not me, old son. I’d hate to be proved right and see Jack behind bars. Believe me, we need his fees.”

They parted and Harry had done an hour’s much-needed desk work when the phone rang and Jonah Deegan spoke his name.

“Got something? That was quick.”

“I can still pull a few strings.” Jonah could make even a boast sound like a lament.

“And?”

“Name Doreen Capstick mean anything to you?”

“Stirrup’s motherin-law.”

“Right. She’s the one who’s agitating. Ringing the station by the hour complaining about the lack of progress in finding her daughter. She’s convinced the marriage was on the rocks and that Stirrup topped the girl rather than see her run back to mummy.”