Martin Edwards - Yesterday's papers

‘And you seem to be short of evidence, as well,’ said Jock, stroking his beard.

‘You know as well as I do that when the police take a close look at everything that has taken place, it’s a pound to a penny that they’ll be able to tie you in with Ray’s murder. I see it as a panic measure, am I right?’

‘I had no alternative. He’d kept his mouth shut about Warren for thirty years, but I couldn’t trust him any longer. He was down on his luck, he knew I had a few pennies put by. He saw me as his pension. I couldn’t have that, Harry, I’m sure you understand.’

‘How did he know you had killed Hull?’

‘I admitted it, of course.’ Jock shook his head. ‘I was only a boy, remember. A frightened wee boy.’

‘What happened?’

‘Warren fancied us, of course. He had a reputation for sleeping with his acts, though I didn’t know that when he signed us up. In the early days, he had his eyes on Ray, and Ray was crafty enough to hold him off whilst encouraging him to think that his defence might one day slip. To keep him interested in us, that’s all. No-one was straighter than Ray, in the sexual sense at least.’

‘But in the end Warren turned his attention to you?’

‘When we started to hit the big time — or the biggest time we ever hit, at any rate — Ray could afford to be brave and to tell Warren where to get off. The man was no fool, he knew he couldn’t risk exposure. So he started to spend more time with me.’

‘And you were glad of his attention?’

Jock gave him a sharp glance. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I’ve never thought about it coherently until now, but I suppose I’ve sensed subconsciously that you may be gay. You’re not married, are you?’

‘So what?’

Jock had raised his voice and Harry guessed he had touched a nerve. Well, this was no time for tact. ‘And I guess you like the company of young boys like Adrian, your saxophonist friend.’

‘There’s been nothing between Adrian and me,’ said Jock fiercely.

‘But you wouldn’t have said no, had the opportunity arisen, would you?’ Harry’s tone softened. ‘I suppose society was different in the sixties. Gay sex was a vice. You were young and unsure of yourself, easy meat for an experienced predator like Warren Hull.’

‘He was a cruel man,’ said Jock. Suddenly the fight seemed to have gone out of him and he closed his eyes for a moment as he cast his mind back down the years. ‘Selfish and cruel. I was flattered by his overtures, yet frightened at the same time. One night he invited me back to his flat on a pretext. I think I knew what would happen, but I couldn’t find it in me to refuse.’

‘And?’

‘He raped me,’ said Jock flatly. ‘If I’d dared to hope for anything, it was for romance. I’d left my family behind in Glasgow, come down to Liverpool to make my fortune, changed my name. I found it a lonely place and, once I got to know him, I disliked Ray. You could say I was vulnerable.’

‘Not as vulnerable as Warren Hull when he was lying naked on his own bed.’

‘No,’ admitted Jock, ‘but he was a brutal man and my life was in ruins. Certainly, it was never the same again. While he was sleeping, I picked up a lampstand and just lashed out. God, I’ve never seen so much blood and mess. I watched as the life oozed out of him and laughed hysterically. It took me half an hour to come to my senses, but at last I did so. As I said, my survival instinct is well developed, it has had to be. So I cleaned myself up…’

‘I gather it was a frenzied attack,’ said Harry, watching carefully for the reaction.

‘So the papers said. I suppose it was a case of the famous red mist — another phrase you’ll never find in the pages of Ross Macdonald, eh? Afterwards I blotted the whole thing out of my mind. You have no choice, otherwise it’s simply too much to bear. I took care to remove any trace of my presence — fingerprints and all that stuff — and then I scurried off home. No-one saw me.’

‘Did you have an alibi?’

‘Thanks to Ray.’

Harry stared. ‘How come?’

‘As soon as the news came out and we had a chance to be alone together, he confronted me. He was no fool, he knew that Hull had been chasing me. I soon broke down under his questioning and told him the truth. I begged him for mercy and I’ll never forget the moment when he laughed in my face and promised that of course he would say we’d spent the evening together. He kept his word and the police were never any the wiser.’

‘Why was he willing to save your neck? You’ve admitted you were hardly bosom buddies.’

‘He pretended he was glad that I’d been a worm who turned. Warren Hull made his flesh creep, he never concealed that. The two of them were perfectly matched, I’ve often thought, they were both trying to screw each other for everything they could get.’

‘And the real reason?’

‘Simple. The publicity would have destroyed him. He realised that if I were charged with the murder, the bad press would have dragged him down with me. He reckoned we were successful enough to prosper without Warren, but much as he despised me, he knew that he couldn’t risk losing both his manager and me and still hope to keep the hits rolling. So for the sake of the Brill Brothers, he lied through his teeth and I was saved. Only trouble was, after we lost Warren, we soon stopped making the charts.’

‘The day you killed him was also the day the music died?’

‘You could say so — though Warren was no Buddy Holly.’

‘And in the end the Brill Brothers broke up anyway.’

‘Yes, I was sick of it all. The phoney glamour, the stupid screaming schoolgirls. And most of all I was sick of Ray. Never mind that he’d given me the alibi, it came to a point when we couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I’d done well at school in Scotland before I moved south, and now I had the chance of a job in the shipping business. We were never going to recapture the glory days, so I jumped at it. I found I enjoyed the book-keeping. When you’ve killed another human being, Harry, I suppose something dies inside you as well. It was enough for me to play around with figures in a ledger. In time I did well, earned promotion, moved to a better position with the Byzantium Line. Where I stayed until they made me redundant.’

‘So you finished up here?’

‘That’s right. And let me tell you, I’ve loved it. I’m my own boss in my own kingdom. No-one bothers me and I bother no-one. And I enjoy meeting the likes of you.’

‘A pity I’m even keener on playing the detective than you.’

‘Yes,’ said Jock sorrowfully, ‘it is.’

‘Tell me about Miller. How did he find you?’

‘He rang me at home out of the blue, said he thought a chat might be to our mutual advantage. From the moment I heard his voice, I knew he meant trouble. He’d met Ray and pestered him about Carole Jeffries. Ray was pissed and must have said something to suggest he knew someone who had got away with murder. Miller wormed enough information out of him to track me down. There aren’t many McCalliogs in the Merseyside phone book. I already knew from you that someone was sniffing round the Sefton Park case.’

‘You arranged to call on him?’

‘Yes. I rang Ray first to find out what he’d been saying. He was relatively sober and he admitted he’d been indiscreet. His attitude was devil-may-care, as if after all this time nobody would care what had happened to a man like Warren Hull. I felt I must meet Miller, find out what he wanted. I expected a straightforward blackmailer, but Miller was something else, one of the strangest men I ever met. You know, I don’t think he was interested in money. What intrigued him was simply the idea of committing a murder and then escaping detection. He seemed to gloat over his knowledge about what I had done, and he was more anxious to discover the details of the crime than to make anything from it.’