Waterloo Sunset

by Martin Edwards

  ‘We have to break in.’

  Ken puffed out his cheeks. ‘Can’t do that, Harry. The coroner’s house? We’d need a bloody good reason to smash her back window in.’

  ‘If the shit hits the fan, you can blame me.’

  ‘I’ll blame you anyway.’

  ‘That’s settled, then.’

  ‘She might have gone shopping.’

  Harry nodded towards the gabled garage. Through its back window he made out the sleek contours of Ceri’s red BMW.

  ‘On foot?’

  ‘Why not? She’s not a bloody invalid.’

  ‘You don’t really believe she’s out shopping. She’s not answering her mobile, yet she once told me she keeps it switched on 24/7.’

  ‘It comes with the territory, when you’re City Coroner. An unexplained death may occur at any time of day or night.’

  ‘Ever known her blip off the radar like this before?’

  Ken shook his head. ‘She’s obsessive about making herself available, I never knew a woman so committed to her work.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘Hold your horses. Her mobile might be malfunctioning or out of range.’ Ken shifted from foot to foot. ‘What if this turns out to be a false alarm?’

  ‘What if we forget about it and go back home, and then it turns out this wasn’t a false alarm?’

  ‘Speaking of alarms, suppose we set off her security system and the police show up?’

  ‘I’m a defence lawyer and you have more mates on the force than the Chief Constable. If we can’t talk our way out of it…’

  Ken weighed this up. ‘All right, you silver-tongued bastard. You win.’

  Harry pointed to a kitchen window. It didn’t seem completely shut. The sash had stuck.

  ‘Reckon that’s the best bet?’

  ‘You should have been a burglar.’

  ‘Maybe one day, if staying on the right side of the law doesn’t work out.’

  Ken shook his head. ‘I really don’t know what to make of you.’

  ‘Just get us inside the house, mate, I’ll jump on the psychiatrist’s couch later.’

  ‘It’s going to be tight.’ Ken patted his stomach. ‘I wish now I’d said no to that second helping of steak and kidney pud last night.’

  It must have been imagination, but Harry thought he could hear the relentless tick, tick, tick of his own wristwatch.

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  It took Ken less than thirty seconds to force open the lower window. So much for home security. First he helped Harry climb up and haul himself inside, and then with much grunting and swearing he managed to squeeze his own bulk over the sink and granite-topped breakfast bar and into the kitchen.

  ‘Just don’t have a heart attack,’ Harry muttered. ‘It’s not a good time.’

  ‘No way,’ Ken panted. ‘I’ve not got round to changing my will since Elsie left me and I moved in with Sharon. I’m buggered if I’m going to keel over and let that old battleaxe inherit.’

  Everything was tidy. No unwashed breakfast things, no lingering smell of bacon or coffee. Spice jars were arrayed in a rack, a telephone sat in its cradle. On the wall was a photograph in a chrome frame of a couple of newly-weds outside a registry office. Ceri was kissing a self-consciously handsome man with a carnation in the buttonhole of his three-piece suit. His arm was draped around her, his demeanour possessive.

  Ricky Hussain in happier times. Years before someone else had photographed him, taking Denise Onuoha into the Adelphi.

  Next to a cork notice-board, half a dozen keys were arrayed in a rack. No spaces remained for any that Ceri might have taken with her. It looked as though she hadn’t left the house.

  No time to lose.

  ‘Ceri!’ he bellowed. ‘This is Harry Devlin!’

  ‘If she is in here, you’ll frighten the poor woman to death,’ Ken grumbled as he dusted his trousers.

  Harry wiped his brow. He was sweating hard, and not just from the exertion of clambering in through the window.

  ‘Frightening her is the least of my worries.’

  The internal kitchen door was shut. He threw it open and hurried into the hallway. The first door he opened was a walk-in cupboard. The second gave on to the living room. Someone was lying on the sofa. He glimpsed dark, familiar hair and bare feet hanging over the arm-rest.

  ‘Ceri!’

  He ran in and crouched on the carpet beside the sofa. His knees still hurt, but it didn’t matter. She was wearing a claret and blue striped rugby shirt and black corduroy jeans. Her feet were slender, her toenails unpainted. Her eyes were closed and for a sickening moment, he thought she was dead. But she was still breathing, though it was a rough and laboured sound.

  He seized her wrist. In his hand it seemed so fragile, it might break at any moment.

  ‘Wake up! Wake up!’

  She groaned, and saliva trickled from the corner of her mouth. He’d never before seen her without a dab of lipstick. But you wouldn’t bother with lippy, would you, the day you meant to kill yourself?

  Ken’s heavy tread came up behind him. ‘She’s taken an overdose. The silly cow, what’s going on here?’

  Harry glanced up at a couple of empty packets of pills on a coffee table near the sofa. There was a bottle of whisky, too, and an empty tumbler. He could smell the drink on her. She’d swallowed the tablets and alcohol, then lain down on the cushions, waiting to die.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he snapped. ‘Dial 999.’

  Colour had drained from the big man’s face. ‘Right you are.’

  As Ken headed back for the kitchen, Harry hooked his arm round Ceri. Cradling her, he choked back a sob.

  ‘Talk to me.’

  Her head moved, as if in a feeble gesture of dissent, and her eyes opened a fraction. Her gaze lacked focus and he wasn’t sure if she was seeing him, or some horrid image from a nightmare. Harry heard Ken bellowing into the phone. He shut out the noise. He must keep Ceri awake until help arrived.

  ‘Please, say something.’

  The pale lips twitched. She’d tried to speak, but he couldn’t catch the words. He bent closer.

  ‘What is it? Tell me.’

  Her skin was puffy. He’d never seen her look her age before. As he held her tight, he felt her breasts against his arm. What wouldn’t he have given for such intimacy a couple of nights back? But never like this, when she’d chosen death instead of life.

  ‘It’s Harry. Come on, everything’s going to be all right, I promise.’

  He uttered the lie without a second thought. But a lie it was. Ceri’s life would never be all right again.

  Her lips moved again. ‘Mur…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mur-murder.’

  So this was it.

  She wanted to confess.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ceri’s eyes closed and her head slumped against his hand. Was she losing the fight?

  ‘Murder?’ He shook her hard. ‘Ceri, please!’

  Ken lumbered back into the room. ‘They should be here soon. Look, why has the coroner taken an overdose?’

  ‘She paid Tom Gunter to kill Lee Welch.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake! Have you lost your mind?’

  Harry was holding her tight. ‘No, but Ceri did.’

  She stirred in his arms. ‘I…I worked too hard. Ricky couldn’t cope…’

  ‘Prozac wasn’t enough to make him feel good, was it? He hired prostitutes. Escorts.’

  A frail hand flapped towards a bookcase opposite the door. Ceri’s literary taste was sober and respectable. Thomas Hardy side by side with hardbacks of Margaret Atwood and Annie Proulx. Propped up against a Folio Society box set of novels by Trollope was a large brown envelope. In elegant script, verging on calligraphy, she’d written Harry Devlin.

  Ken picked up the envelope and passed it to Harry without a word. Four sheets of notepaper covered in the neat handwriting slipped out, together with a photograph. Another print of the shot of Ricky
Hussain taking Denise Onuoha into the Adelphi. He turned it over. On the back someone had written Nesta Borth inquest – verdict natural causes.

  A message from Malachy; perhaps Casper had a hand in it too. As a threat, it was laughably unnecessary once Professor Afridi showed up. Poor Ceri. She must have been afraid that Lee Welch had sent her the photograph and was putting on the squeeze. Ceri probably thought the girl was Malachy Needham’s lover, hence the attempt to clear his name.

  Harry said softly, ‘Lee knew you’d covered up for Ricky, didn’t she?’

  Ceri strained to speak. Veins stood out on her forehead.

  ‘You’ll say I was crazy. But I loved him. Despite everything.’

  ‘I know.’

  He also knew Ceri couldn’t afford a breath of scandal. She wouldn’t see everything she’d worked for destroyed without a fight.

  Her voice rasped. ‘He…he’d told me he’d killed her. Because she laughed when he couldn’t…’

  ‘He took Denise Onuoha to a beach one night and then she mocked him because he couldn’t get an erection?’

  A nod of the head.

  So it came down to this. The frantic ego of a loser who made the mistake of marrying a perfectionist. To a habitual womaniser whose life had fallen apart, an escort girl’s contempt was the last straw. As Ceri said, he’d been on the edge and Lee, unknowing, had tipped him over. For a few fatal moments, weakness boiled up into savagery.

  ‘He strangled her, then hacked out her tongue?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ken swore again. All at once he looked old and past it.

  ‘Lee eavesdropped when you were talking to Ricky?’

  ‘He told me he…wanted to die. Pay the price. I told him…not to be stupid.’

  Harry glanced at the whisky bottle and the empty pill packets. Stupid was right.

  Ceri whispered, ‘By the time I got home…’

  ‘Ricky was dead. Meanwhile Lee had heard enough to demand money to keep her mouth shut. I suppose you knew she was an escort, too? Denise probably confided in her about seeing Ricky.’

  ‘I was…in so deep.’

  Undeniably true. Ceri had encouraged her husband to cover up his murder of a prostitute. If word got out, then never mind becoming Chief Coroner, she’d be lucky to stay out of prison.

  She’d been struck by Tom Gunter’s ruthlesss determination to save his skin. Maybe she identified with it, maybe she persuaded herself he could save her skin too. He had a track record of getting away with murder. Through discreet enquiries it would be easy to discover that he’d been in custody on the night Ricky killed Denise. A stroke of fortune – Tom could make it look as though the same man had strangled and mutilated both girls.

  Problem solved.

  He said in a whisper, ‘You panicked?’

  She inclined her head, though if they’d been in court, she would have rebuked him for such a leading question.

  Her lips parted, as though she intended a mirthless smile. ‘Too much gin.’

  ‘So you offered Tom a small fortune to kill Lee?’

  ‘The next day,’ she croaked, ‘I changed my mind. Too late.’

  ‘Yes, far too late. He’d have joined the queue of blackmailers, if you hadn’t gone through with it.’

  So she’d stuck to her plan. Tom strangled Lee and chopped out her tongue. Nobody would believe Ricky had killed Denise once an identical crime occurred after his suicide. The morning after the murder, Harry confronted Tom in St Nicholas Gardens. No wonder he seemed so out of it. His jerky gait had reminded Harry of a marionette, but he’d never guessed Ceri was pulling the strings.

  ‘I saw Tom on Monday. On his way to collect the rest of his fee from you, I suppose. Did he mention our encounter?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Ken said, ‘The ambulance is here.’

  The coroner’s officer had stationed himself by the window that looked down the cul-de-sac. Soon the paramedics would take charge. Harry stood up, but his legs felt flimsy, and he’d lost his sense of balance. He needed to clutch on to the bookshelf for support.

  Ceri closed her eyes. Guilt must have played havoc with her nerves, knowing that he’d acted for Tom, and was notorious for his unhealthy fascination with murder. She needed to get closer to him. Already he believed Tom to be a killer. What if he started sniffing around?

  And to think that he’d felt flattered by her interest in him.

  The moment he arrived back at his flat, he tore off his trainers and threw himself on to his bed. His body ached as if he’d crawled away from ten rounds in a bare-knuckle fight. On Monday, when Tom Gunter decided not to kick his head in, he’d experienced a giddy rush of excitement. From then on, he’d suffered a non-stop pounding.

  The paramedics had rushed Ceri to A&E and the police had taken custody of her suicide note. He’d only read it once, but the story was emblazoned on his mind. When Ken Porterfield had asked if he was all right, he’d said of course. It wasn’t true, and they both knew it, but Ken understood that he needed to be left on his own. When he drove home, the car veered along Jericho Lane and through the old Festival Gardens as though he’d had too much to drink.

  He’d worked out most of the story and her note filled in the blanks. After Tom killed Lee, his mood became volatile. He was sick of Kay, and had forced her to become an escort simply to prove he could bend her to his will. He bugged their phone and heard her arrange to meet Harry. He’d followed her to the riverbank and strangled her. His final betrayal was to cut out her tongue. He wanted to make the police think it wasn’t a domestic, but a third series killing. But those size 11 footprints gave him away.

  When he called Ceri, she said she couldn’t cope with the guilt. He threatened to cut her tongue out too, but she told him the killing must stop, whatever price she had to pay. He changed his tune and said that if she kept quiet, everything would be fine. But Harry was a wild card, and once the police had cornered Tom, she knew it was finished. When they checked Tom’s belongings, they’d be able to trace the cash to her.

  You see, I’m not a very efficient criminal. It was crazy, why did I fool myself that I could get away with such wickedness?

  ‘God alone knows, Ceri,’ Harry muttered to himself. ‘God alone knows.’

  He tried to think himself into her head and understand that fuzzy desperation. In the note, she said she’d cared for him – why indulge in deception when she was about to die? But she’d deceived him more than once and he was no longer sure what to believe.

  The clock on his bedside table sounded louder than usual as it ticked off time. When the hour chimed, he opened his eyes and contemplated the ceiling. It could do with a lick of paint. Yet did it matter if the bedroom looked shabby? After the Ceri Hussain fiasco, he wouldn’t bring anyone back here in a hurry.

  The doorbell rang. Joints protesting, he heaved himself off the bed and padded into the hallway. The way things were going, he wouldn’t have been surprised to be confronted by the Grim Reaper, scythe in hand. When he peered through the spyhole and saw Carmel Sutcliffe standing on his threshold, his shoulders slumped as the tension seeped out of him and he let out a gasp of relief as he opened the door. To his dismay, he felt a pricking at his eyes.

  She stared. ‘Who were you expecting, Ceri Hussain?’

  That did it. He felt a fat tear run down his cheek.

  ‘Me and my big mouth,’ she said ten minutes later.

  They were on the sofa and she had her arm round him. He felt her fingers brush his neck and hair. Her breath was soft and sweet.

  ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘Ceri was too good to be true. But I would never have…’

  ‘I’ve told you the story,’ he snapped. ‘Let’s not talk about it any more.’

  ‘OK.’ But she couldn’t let it go. ‘Why on earth did I ever feel envious of Ceri Hussain?’

  Good question. Envy never made sense to Harry. Greed he could understand, sloth certainly, lust beyond a doubt. But why waste your life worryin
g about what others had? You never saw inside their souls, never felt the private agonies they endured. It wasn’t only in nightmares that people you thought you knew wore disguise.

  While Carmel made them both a pot of tea, he chose a CD at random and Karen Carpenter’s melancholy voice crooned about people playing games, but fooling only themselves. We are lost in a masquerade, she sang. Plaintive, lovely Karen, she too had died young. Wealth and fame hadn’t been enough, and she’d starved herself until her heart could no longer bear the strain.

  He looked at Carmel out of the corner of his eye. Her nose was beaky, her skin had blemishes, and yet an air of sensuality clung to her. She’d worked for him, she lived with his business partner, he counted her as a friend, and yet did he know her so much better than Ceri? How easy to take friends and acquaintances for granted. Because they were always there, you never gave them the consideration they deserved. He needed a little distance to put his thoughts in order and he edged along the sofa, away from her.

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  She frowned. ‘Why do you think?’

  He took a breath. Mustn’t succumb to paranoia. You had to take risks and give your trust. Even if people you trusted sometimes let you down.

  ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful.’

  ‘I wanted to make sure you were all right. You might not have liked Tom Gunter, but to watch him die…’

  ‘It was over in an instant.’

  ‘Even so. I was concerned for you – and that was before I heard about Ceri.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She looked him in the eye. ‘This week, I came close to losing Jim. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’

  The phone wailed five minutes after Carmel left. He picked up the receiver and crushed it against his palm at the sound of a familiar voice, a voice that kept creeping into his mind, a trespasser he could never quite evict.

  ‘This is Juliet.’

  ‘Hi.’