Martin Edwards: Yesterday's papers

‘He’s very good,’ said Harry, a shade reluctantly.

‘You don’t care for him, eh?’ demanded Muriel. ‘Can’t say as I blame you. All the same, if he gets his teeth into a witness anything like the way he tackles my fried bread, he’ll take some stopping. Though all I can say is, the Walter family have been customers here for years and if Kevin really was innocent, my name’s Myra Hindley.’

‘Now be fair,’ he said, though remonstrating with Muriel was like urging the merits of agnosticism on a hellfire preacher. ‘The man spent years inside for a crime he didn’t commit.’

She grunted. ‘I’m a plain woman…’

He gave a cautious smile, but honesty triumphed over good manners and he did not argue with her.

‘…and I speak plainly. But any road, I hear the busies are worried sick about the case. They wanted it settled out of court. Could be your lucky day.’

‘I’m not counting any chickens yet.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Muriel, whose willingness to express an unequivocal opinion on the basis of slender data would have made her a first-class expert witness. ‘Paddy Vaulkhard will love a case like that. And the fees you’ll make won’t do you any harm, either.’

She considered his ageing suit and loosely knotted tie; contrary as ever, he had resisted the temptation to dress to impress the television cameras he expected at court today. Her disfavour was suggestive of Judge Jeffreys presiding over the Bloody Assizes.

‘Time you smartened yourself up a bit and started acting for a better class of criminal.’

‘I’d love to, if only a few more drug-pushing peers of the realm or sleek insider traders beat a path to my door.’

She banged a mug of hot tea — good old English Breakfast, none of your Darjeeling muck for Muriel — on the fraying gingham tablecloth and lumbered off to exchange gossip about a kinky vicar case with a loose-tongued girl from the Crown Prosecution Service.

As he battled through the fried hillock on his plate, Harry wondered whether he should worry about having his appearance criticised by a woman for whom a duelling scar would have represented a cosmetic improvement. No point, he decided. There was always a core of truth at the heart of Muriel’s exaggerations. He consoled himself with the thought that his clients might feel ill at ease with a solicitor who was a model of sartorial elegance. Dress code in the Liverpool Bridewell was not quite the same as in the Old Bailey.

By the time he had drained the last drop from his chipped mug, it was close on half eight. If he moved fast, he might be able to pick up the old file on Edwin Smith before meeting Vaulkhard to discuss battle plans. He paid the bill and flirted briefly with the pretty young cashier before setting off in the direction of the Pierhead.

The icy blast coming in from the river slowed his progress as he crossed the Strand and headed for Mann Island. He half-closed his eyes and, although he knew he should be preparing mentally for his day in court, found himself scraping the barrel of his memory for scraps of information he might have picked up over the years when reading about the Sefton Park Strangling.

The murder had never been a mystery, but rather a pointless act of brutality which had brought nothing except disaster for everyone concerned. Two loving parents had lost their only child and seen their own lives blighted forever. The same was equally true of Edwin Smith’s mother. Smith had killed himself and so, fifteen years later, had his victim’s father — although to all intents and purposes, Guy’s life had ended on the day his daughter died. Harry knew that murder spreads its ripples wide. Close friends as well as family would never find things the same again.

Since the era of Merseybeat, for example Ray Brill’s reputation as a free-spending womaniser had overshadowed his musical achievements; it was impossible to think of one decent Ray Brill single since ’64. At least Clive Doxey and Benny Frederick had prospered; presumably Benny in particular had been less close to the girl. How would the three men react if confronted with the notion that Carole had not died at Edwin Smith’s hands? Would they pooh-pooh it as absurd — or resent an attempt by a stranger to rake up a past they might prefer to forget? Or was it possible that one or two skeletons might be ready to tumble out of cupboards?

First things first. He was building too much on a single conversation. He must look up the file and then speak to Miller again, with a view to pressing for more concrete information. The old man’s conviction that the case deserved further investigation had been strangely compelling, but Harry knew himself well enough to beware his own eagerness to find a puzzle where once there had been none.

Fighting for breath in the teeth of the gusts, at last he came in sight of his destination. A hundred yards from the ferry terminal stood a small and inconspicuous hut with a steel door. Thick mesh grilles sealed the windows of the building and no sign or nameplate gave a clue to its purpose. He fished a large key from his pocket.

As he locked the door behind him, he found his teeth chattering. The place seemed even colder than the windswept waterfront outside. He peered through the gloom to the other end of the small landing on which he stood, where a flight of steep stone steps disappeared down into the black unknown.

Flicking a switch, he swore when the light failed to come on. The air was damp and the surface of the steps greasy. He gripped the iron handrail and started counting as he put one cautious foot in front of another and edged his way downstairs.

With each step he took, the place smelled mustier. No matter how many times he came here, he could never acclimatise himself to its atmosphere. It always put him in mind of decline and decay. He found himself yearning for a quick return to daylight.

‘Twenty-four,’ he said to himself at last, uttering a silent prayer of thanks as his feet touched solid land.

Groping for the basement light, he found to his relief that it was working. The fierce glare from the naked bulb made him blink as he tried to adjust to his surroundings. He had arrived in a large square chamber cut into the sandstone. An opening led off into a narrow passageway and he walked towards it.

He was about to enter the Land of the Dead.

On the right-hand side of the passage were two double glass-paned doors, in front of which he paused. Above them in faded paintwork he could barely distinguish the legend PIERHEAD BALLROOM. Through the dusty panes he could make out the dim shapes of chairs, desks and cupboards heaped on top of each other as if in anticipation of Bonfire Night. Not since Hitler marched into Poland and changed the world forever had the smart couples of Liverpudlian society taken the floor in there.

The open space in which he stood had once been the lobby. A fenced-off shaft occupying the far side now lacked the lift that had whisked people up to street level. During the war, the cavernous ballroom had become an air-raid shelter. It had survived the might of the Luftwaffe, but peacetime austerity had seen it utilised for storage and the main entrance hall above the ground had been demolished to make room for a car park.

Next to the shaft, a complex mass of sewage pipes climbed one wall, in macabre parody of wisteria festooning a country cottage. Walking on, he heard the echoing of his footsteps. Even in the middle of the day this was a place which belonged, he felt, to lost souls. He could almost believe he heard from behind the double doors the faint strains of a band playing Jerome Kern numbers and the delicate tread of ghostly figures in evening dress, dancing cheek to cheek.