‘Why not come clean?’
‘Are you serious? It would have finished any chance I had with him. Who wants to sleep with a terrorist’s tart? And more than that - I’d done nothing to stop Cato killing John. I could have called the security forces, I’ve asked myself a thousand times since why I didn’t. The truth was, I was scared. It was as much as I could do to pluck up the courage to run away.’
‘You could have explained.’
‘Baz would never have understood. Believe me, I know him. He was - and is - so bitter about Cato, I knew I’d be tainted for ever in his eyes if he found out the truth. No, it was all the more important for me to keep my identity as Penny Newland if I wanted to win him. And I did. Anyway, in the end Baz started taking notice of me and for a time everything was wonderful.’
‘Until Finbar arrived on the scene.’
‘He simply would not take no for an answer. The blarney didn’t cut any ice with me, but I couldn’t shake him off. For God’s sake, someone was trying to murder him: the fire, the bomb in the car. And yet he still had only one thing on his mind.’
‘He wanted to sleep with you?’
‘Well, he dressed it up a little, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I grew up a lot during my time in Dublin, and Liverpool was my finishing school in self-preservation. I didn’t find it difficult to resist him. But yesterday he came to see me and said he was going to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He said he’d finished with Melissa and Sophie and would I like to go out with him for a couple of hours in the evening. To talk about old times, he said - there’s a euphemism, if ever you heard one!’
‘And you agreed?’
‘Not at once. I tried to give him the brush off. Looking back, maybe I sounded too cold. Anyway, he dug his heels in and gave a veiled hint that if I didn’t say yes, the world and his wife would find out about my background. He knew about John - either Melissa or Sophie must have told him - and he could see Baz was my weak spot. I wouldn’t dare do anything which might let the cat out of the bag.’
‘Where did you arrange to meet?’
‘Outside the Adelphi. He’d hired a car and he’d said he would take me out to some swish place in Crosby. Needless to say, we never made it.’ She bowed her head and lapsed into silence. Harry said nothing. He sensed that, in her own good time, she would bring the story to its conclusion.
‘He parked up at Colonial Dock,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t have much choice but to get in the back of the car with him - I’ll spare you the details. Anyway, after a while he decided he needed a pee. He pulled himself off me and got out of the car. I saw him stagger thirty yards down the road, then start pissing into a grid. I thought how much I wished him dead. All the time he’d been on top of me, I’d been worrying, what if this isn’t the end, but just the beginning? He had a hold over me. All right, most of the time he was harmless enough - but every now and then, when his girlfriend of the day let him down and walked out of the door, he’d remember me. The woman who never would dare to say no.’ She sighed, a long low sound. ‘You can imagine the rest. I hauled myself into the front of the car. His key was in the ignition and I started the engine the moment he straightened up and turned back to rejoin me. Sweet Jesus, I don’t think he even bothered to zip his fly!’
Her eyes were unfocused as she remembered. ‘I can still see his look as I accelerated towards him. Disbelief was written all over his face. He stood frozen in the road, he didn’t even try to dive out of the way. So I hit him.’
‘Then drove over him again to make sure.’
She spread her arms, in defensive response to the bitterness in his tone. ‘So, Harry Devlin, what will you do? Tell the police? Turn me in?’
‘You have a case for claiming it was manslaughter. Find yourself a slick defence lawyer - this city’s full of them, we get enough practice. You might only be looking at a couple of years’ probation.’
‘That doesn’t sound like justice. I killed a man.’
‘According to you, he as good as asked for it.’
She stepped towards him and a splash of light from the lamps outside fell across her face. He could see in her expression how she was haunted by the past, tormented by what she had done.
‘Don’t you understand? When I was with Cato, I had enough of death and deceit to last a dozen lifetimes. I thought it hadn’t corrupted me, but I was wrong. Killing’s got into my blood and no Liverpool lawyer can suck it out.’ She laughed, a sharp scornful sound. ‘Not even if he’s another vampire.’
‘So you’ll go to the police?’ He swallowed, knowing he had to act. He couldn’t let her walk free, like Debbie. After all, a man had died. ‘If you don’t, I must.’
‘Of course you must. But right now, I need time to think - face up to things, if you like. Do you mind?’
‘I’m not one for making citizen’s arrests. Do all the thinking you need.’
She touched his hand before walking towards a door which led out to the river. For a moment she paused with her hand on the metal bar, as if she meant to say something else. But then she stepped into the foggy night and he sensed he would never speak to her again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Did Penny do it deliberately?’ asked Jim Crusoe, five days later.
‘Oh, she meant to kill Finbar, all right,’ said Harry, ‘although I’m sure it was a spur of the moment - ’
‘No, no,’ his partner interrupted. ‘I was talking about her own death.’
The swollen body of Edna Doyle, also known as Penny Newland, had been washed up at Botanic Dock on the morning of All Saints’ Day. A homeless teenager, sleeping rough in the ruins of a disused boatyard, had discovered the corpse. No one could tell how she had come to drown.
‘The post mortem confirmed she was alive when she went into the Mersey. There’s no question of murder and it may be she lost her footing soon after leaving me. Conditions were treacherous on Hallowe’en. Quite apart from the fog, there were patches of ice on the ground and vandals had made a gap in the walkway railing.’
‘Do you seriously believe ... hey, look at that!’
Jim was distracted by the first flowering of the fireworks against the night sky. The slivers of silver shone in the dark with a brilliance that shamed the stars.
They were at a Guy Fawkes celebration in Sefton Park. Heather and the kids were a couple of yards away, munching treacle toffee and parkin. For the Crusoes this was a major event in the family calendar and Jim, back in the office again, had urged Harry to join them. Harry could see his partner was bursting with curiosity about the case and he felt talking about it might help him get the whole mess into perspective. Besides, he had reasons of his own to avoid being alone on November 5th.
‘You were asking if I thought she fell by chance? I doubt it, but I can’t be sure and neither can Sladdin. Either way, nothing will ever be proved.’
‘You’ve talked with the police?’
‘At length. Any doubt they had about Penny’s guilt evaporated when the witnesses from Colonial Dock turned up: a contract manager from a computer company and his secretary. He’d been hoping his hardware would be compatible with her software, but after seeing Penny drive back and forth over Finbar’s body, they didn’t feel in the mood for love any longer. Penny’s fingerprints were on the car and the fact she didn’t wear gloves or even wipe the vehicle tends to confirm she hadn’t planned to kill him and panicked when she realised what she had done.’
‘Presumably she could have got off lightly with a good brief?’
‘People often do. Even some of my own clients.’
‘How has Baz reacted?’
‘How do you imagine? In the space of forty-eight hours he lost both his job and his girlfriend.’
The Bank That Cares had put Radio Liverpool into receivership, pulling the plug within hours of Nick Folley’s a
rrest for suspected drugs offences. The station had been losing money hand over fist; only the bankers’ belief that Folley had the acumen to turn the business around had kept it going so long. As soon as they learned the main source of his income, panic set in.
It seemed the Drugs Squad had been keeping an eye on Folley for months. But evidence had been lacking until the day after the party, when Harry had finally persuaded Melissa to seek long-term treatment for her habit and tell the police all she knew about her former boss’s dealings in coke. The Graham-Browns, too, were now helping with enquiries.
Released on bail, Folley had called a press conference. You had to admire his nerve, if nothing else. Sophie Wilkins had been by his side; he’d introduced her to the media as his fiancée and next day the papers had been full of pictures of the glamorous woman willing to stand by her man through thin as well as thick. There could be no sterner test of true love, said Folley.
Questioned about the folding of his company, he had blamed the economic climate and the fickleness of financial institutions. He said he pleaded guilty to having faith in local radio and the good people of Liverpool. The drugs business he described as a stitch-up. He vowed to bounce back.
In closing, he’d paid a special tribute to a junior employee whose death had - he said with a catch in his voice - overshadowed his own personal misfortunes. He hinted that Penny Newland had slipped and fallen into the river while taking a breather from the Hallowe’en broadcast because her mind was distracted by anxiety for the station in which she, like her boss, believed with all her heart.
‘Does Baz know the truth?’ asked Jim.
‘That she killed Finbar for the love of him? No, and the odds are he never will. The inquest is bound to be tricky, but most coroners are discreet. Besides, there’s every chance of a verdict of accidental death.’
‘And how do you feel about your client, now you’ve discovered how he treated Penny Newland?’
‘I never pretended he was an angel. Dermot McCray put his finger on it when I spoke to him in the De Valera. He said Finbar had always been the same, playing with women like a small kid messing about with his toys. He kept forgetting people are flesh and blood. McCray was thinking of his daughter, but he might as well have meant Sinead or Sophie, Melissa or Penny. The day had to come when the toys grew tired of being flung out of the cot.’
A roar of approval from the crowd greeted the latest rockets to climb towards the moon and dissolve in a spectacular cloudburst of red, white and blue. Harry could not quell the memory of a Guy Fawkes Night in the past, when he’d gone to watch the display at Albert Dock and there met the dark-haired Polish girl who would later become his wife. On each anniversary of that first encounter he found himself replaying old moves, like a defeated chess master, trying to see precisely where the game had begun to slip out of his grasp. With each year that passed he saw more clearly that the outcome had been ordained long before the day he actually lost his queen. They had, from the first, been ill-matched.
Jim’s wife and children squelched through the mud towards them; Harry noticed Heather clasping Jim’s hand in a gesture of security and shared affection. It made him feel superfluous.
‘I’ll take a look at the bonfire,’ he said.
He walked towards the huge pile of rubbish which was already well ablaze. Young boys and girls jigged and shrieked in front of it: primitives celebrating an ancient rite. A middle-aged woman was collecting for charity and he thrust his hands in his pocket to find some change. As well as the coins he brought out a dog-eared piece of paper. As the woman stuck a badge on his lapel to record him as a giver, he re-read the note he had received that very afternoon.
Harry
I changed my mind and decided to go to Spain after all. I called Phil on the phone - reverse charge! - and he offered to pay my fare out. He’s making a killing over there, he says. So, I thought, why not give it a try?
I’d still like to see you again, to say goodbye properly and thanks for everything. I’m leaving next Saturday. Give me a ring. My mum’s number is in the book.
Debbie
The flames writhed before him like exotic dancers feigning ecstasy. The last fire he had seen had been in Williamson Lane; its vigour was still vivid in his mind. He could still hear Finbar gasping that the heat was a foretaste of hell. Where was the Irishman now?
He moved closer and gazed into the bonfire. Patterns formed and reformed in the blaze. For a second it seemed to him that he saw there the outlines of a familiar face. It belonged not to the girl who had passed herself off as Rosemary Graham-Brown, but to his murdered wife. He squeezed his eyes shut with so much force it hurt.
In this new darkness he could not escape images of violence and death. Before coming out tonight, he’d caught the six o’clock news: in Armagh a man, said to be an army informer, had been gunned down in his own front room, before the eyes of his wife and daughter. Meanwhile FAN! had claimed responsibility for an explosion at a cottage owned by a scientist known for performing experiments on live animals. In interview, a spokesperson for the group stroked a puppy and said he would decline to utter facile words of condemnation. It would not be principled to do so, he explained, when he could understand the frustrations of those who carried out the attack.
Harry thought too about Finbar Rogan. And about Eileen and Sinead and Penny. He’d started by searching for a culprit, but had found only victims.
Opening his eyes, he hurled the note from Debbie into the bonfire. Memories were as treacherous as passions. Maybe there was no escaping them, but he suddenly knew he must break with the past.
The blaze was dying. Its fury was spent and little remained but the dull glow of the embers. The piece of paper lodged on the spike of a scorched twig, where it curled, browned and crumpled, and he watched until nothing was left.
By that time, the face in the flames had disappeared.
Excerpt from Yesterday’s Papers
Chapter One
I killed her many years ago
‘Mr Devlin, I would like to talk to you about a murder.’
Harry Devlin stopped in his tracks on his way out of the law courts. For a fantastic moment he thought the man who had hurried to catch him up and lay a hand on his shoulder was an arresting officer.
Twisting his neck to see his assailant, Harry found himself staring not at one of Liverpool’s finest but at a scrawny old man in a soup-stained bow tie and a shiny blue suit. Although he was wheezing with the exertion, his bony grip was surprisingly fierce, as if he feared Harry was about to take flight. The thick lenses of his spectacles magnified the shape and size of his eyes and made them seem not quite human.
Harry guessed the fellow was one of the city’s courthouse cranks who sat in the public galleries each morning and afternoon, watching scenes from other people’s lives distorted by the fairground mirrors of litigation. Most lawyers disdained the spectators as voyeurs, brushing by them in the corridors and on the stairs, but sometimes Harry would pause in passing to exchange a casual word. He could not resist feeling sympathy for anyone whose life was so barren that this place became a second home.
‘Want to make a confession?’ he asked and gestured towards a man in an overcoat striding past them towards the exit. ‘The detective sergeant there specialises in them. Don’t worry, he doesn’t need much. Just give him your name and he’ll invent the rest.’
The man released his hold and bared crooked teeth in a conspiratorial smile. His shoulders were stooped, his wrinkled skin the colour of parchment. In one claw-like hand he was carrying a battered black document case and his breath seemed to Harry to have the whiff of mildewed books.
‘It is your help I need, Mr Devlin. No-one else will do.’
He enunciated each syllable with pedantic care, as if English was not his native tongue. But it was the urgency of his tone that quickened Harry’s interest.
‘Are you in some kind of trouble?’
‘No, no. You misunderstand. The murder I am speaking of occurred almost thirty years ago. Nonetheless, I believe you are able - if you will pardon the phrase - to assist me with my enquiries.’
‘Thirty years ago?’ Harry shook his head. ‘I sometimes screamed blue murder as a babe in arms, but I never committed it. Sorry I can’t help, Mr...’
‘Miller, my name is Ernest Miller. Let me explain. I am looking into one of this city’s most notorious crimes. You will have heard of the case, I’m sure. The newspapers, in their melodramatic way, dubbed it the Sefton Park Strangling.’
‘It rings a bell.’ Harry sifted through old memories. ‘Wasn’t it a young girl who was killed, the daughter of a well-known man?’
‘Yes, the case attracted a great deal of publicity in its day. Carole Jeffries, the victim, was only sixteen years old. More importantly, to secure her lasting fame in death, she was a pretty girl with a good figure and a taste for short skirts.’
‘And I seem to remember the murderer was a neighbour of hers?’
‘A young man named Edwin Smith who lived nearby was arrested, it is true. Before long he confessed to having strangled Carole, but twenty-four hours before his trial was due to open, he tried to anticipate his fate by hanging himself. In that, as in so much else during his short life, he failed. A warder arrived in time to cut him down and save him for the gallows. Even so, the day of reckoning was postponed. Although the court proceedings were expected to be a formality, the authorities were reluctant to hang a man with an injured neck.’
‘The executioner preferred more of a challenge?’
‘I see you indulge in black humour, Mr Devlin. The best kind, I quite agree. But I think you miss the point. In those days - we are talking of 1964, you will recall - the campaign to abolish capital punishment was intensifying. The establishment dreaded a newsworthy incident.’
I Remember You Page 21