Martin Edwards: Yesterday's papers

In the end he found it on a compilation of sixties pop. He put the record on the turntable, poured himself a glass of whisky and listened to the echo-laden voice of Ray Brill. The singer invested the simple lyric of heartache with a genuine anguish and as soon as the track came to an end, Harry played it again, and then again.

Could it be that, when he sang about the end of an affair, Ray was conveying pain he had felt in his own life after losing the girl he loved? By the time the needle reached a movie song from Gene Pitney on the next track, Harry was on his third drink and his eyelids were beginning to droop. He couldn’t care less about the man who shot Liberty Valance. But for the sake not only of the truth but of an old woman in a Woolton home whom he had never met, he wanted to find out whether Edwin Smith was indeed the man who had strangled Carole Jeffries.

That night Harry dreamed he was in the dock. Counsel for the prosecution recited his numberless crimes in a damning monotone. The judge’s features had grown dark with contempt. A low murmur of hatred came from the people in the public seats and several of the jurors had started weeping at the horror of it all. Harry became aware of the aching of his limbs and suddenly realised he was handcuffed to the railings and wearing huge leg irons. He knew he was innocent, yet when he tried to speak, to explain the Crown’s mistake, no words came. As the prosecutor droned on with his litany of lies, Harry could feel the noose cutting into the flesh of his neck. At last his own advocate stood up, seizing a final chance to plead for him. Harry strained with every muscle for a sight of the face beneath the wig, the face of the man who could save his life.

Oh God, no hope left. His defender was Cyril Tweats.

Fear woke him. He was shivering uncontrollably, but as it dawned on him that he was lying in his own bed in his own home, he almost cried out with joy. No wonder he felt frozen: in his restlessness he had cast the duvet to the floor, and on the coldest night of the year so far. Forcing his body into motion, he stumbled to the window and parted the curtains.

The black starless sky merged with the river. From his vantage point in the Empire Dock development he peered towards the lights of Wirral. Birkenhead itself was invisible. So were the dying yards where once so many ships had been built — Ark Royal, Achilles and Prince of Wales — and their incongruous neighbour, the ruined twelfth-century priory. On the water itself, nothing moved. Harry had heard talk lately of plans to bring new life to the river. The old days of colonial trade had gone, never to return, but the country’s jails were overflowing and some bright spark in Whitehall had dreamed up the idea of putting a prison ship on the Mersey. Harry suspected that if some of his clients went on board, it would make the mutiny on the Bounty seem like a squabble on Southport’s boating lake.

Turning, he squinted at the harsh red digits of his bedside alarm. Five-twenty. Although he felt only half awake, he was sure he would never get back to sleep again. He swore at the memory of Ernest Miller’s farrago about murderous injustice. If only he hadn’t agreed to listen to the man and absorbed into his subconscious the nightmarish prospect of having his fate rest in the hands of Cyril Tweats.

Yet, looking at his hollow-eyed reflection in the bedroom mirror, he found himself unable to resist a smile. That incompetent old sod Cyril, who could give the kiss of death to the strongest case. How had he managed for so many years to escape professional disaster?

Then he reminded himself of the money Cyril had made out of the law and the comfortable life he now led in retirement. Perhaps he was not such a fool as he seemed. Even so, could Miller be right? Was it possible that if only — that phrase again! — Edwin Smith had chosen to be competently represented, he might not merely be alive today, but walking the city streets a free man?

As he made his way towards the bathroom, Harry reminded himself of the stern New Year’s resolution he had made a couple of weeks before: no more ‘if onlys’. The trouble was that he had a restless mind; he could never resist the temptation to speculate. And so his good intention had gone the way of so many other vows made during the dying hours of old years in an optimistic whisky haze.

The stinging heat of a shower began to revive him. Standing motionless under the sharp jet of water, he wondered whether to respond to Miller’s request for help. He had promised nothing, saying merely that he would check to see whether the old file remained in existence amongst the lorry load of dusty documents that Crusoe and Devlin had inherited on acquiring Cyril Tweats’ practice. Miller had not pressed him for a yes or no within a specified time, perhaps reckoning he would not be able to conquer the compulsive urge to involve himself with the Jeffries case.

And in that, he acknowledged with wry self-awareness, bloody Ernest Miller was spot on.

Within half an hour he was well wrapped against a cutting wind and walking the short distance to his office in Fenwick Court. The giant buildings on the waterfront towered above him in the early morning gloom and the Liver birds watched as the rest of the city began to stir. Milk floats and trucks full of groceries moved in stealth through the deserted streets and from time to time a police Rover slid past on its way back to headquarters at the end of the night shift.

At the last moment before unlocking the front door of New Commodities House he remembered to switch off the burglar alarm. A week before Christmas he had come here in the small hours to finish preparing an important case, only to risk a heart attack and permanent deafness on triggering the security system. Convincing the sceptical occupants of a passing panda car that he was not an opportunist thief had tested his persuasive skills to the limit. But as he had pointed out to a gum chewing constable, only a madman would bother to rob Crusoe and Devlin. Even the second-hand record shop in the basement offered richer pickings.

Once inside, he made rapid progress with the mound of papers on his desk. Lucy, his secretary, had left him a note complaining about his failure to sign his mail the previous evening. He tacked on a sentence authorising her to send the stuff first class and, cheekily virtuous, added the time of his arrival before taping it above her desk. Never mind the cost of the stamps, he thought, preparing himself for the heavenward glances of his cost-conscious partner. If Kevin Walter’s compensation claim succeeded, Crusoe and Devlin would be quids in.

Hunger started to grind at his stomach and he hurried off in search of a plate piled high with bacon, sausage and eggs. His destination was at the bottom end of a passageway linking Lord Street with Derby Square: a cafeteria called The Condemned Man.

Within seconds of his sitting down, the massive bulk of Muriel, the proprietress, loomed over him. Her complexion and figure bore testimony to a lifetime devoted to fat and greasy food and she was wielding a pencil and pad like truncheons.

‘In court this morning, Harry?’

He nodded. ‘My client’s Kevin Walter.’

Muriel’s bosom gave a seismic heave. Harry had often marvelled that nylon overalls were made in her size and he feared that now the garment would finally burst.

‘That’s your case, is it? Wrongful imprisonment, so called? A little bird tells me the plaintiffs have briefed Paddy Vaulkhard.’

Muriel’s business was geared to the morning trade and most of it was connected with the courts. Barristers, solicitors, ushers, transcript-takers, policemen, journalists — as well as the soon-to-be-convicted, stopping off here for their last hearty breakfast before sampling Walton Jail’s cuisine. What Muriel did not know about law and order in Liverpool was not worth knowing. According to rumour, she was the Chief Constable’s agony aunt.