She wriggled away from him. ‘Behave. I meant - this idea that your half-brother…’
‘If he is who he says he is.’
‘Come on. You don’t seriously believe he’d go to the trouble of pretending to be related to you? Imagine the damage it will do to his credit rating.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Any time. Look, it’s a wonderful thing that has happened to you, can’t you see that? It’s amazing. Why must you keep looking for the downside? You can’t jump to the conclusion, simply because he’s writing a book about someone who slaughters vampires, that he has anything to do with the murders. What about the presumption of innocence?’
‘Jim said much the same,’ Harry confessed. He guessed she was thinking that he’d jumped to conclusions about her possible guilt, as soon as he’d heard that Peter Blackwell was dead. ‘I suppose you’re both right. I’m still in a daze. Nothing seems to add up any more. So - what do you think I should do?’
‘Get to know the man, of course.’ Juliet’s own hand slipped under the covers, reached inside his pyjama shirt, began to stroke. ‘It’s the chance of a lifetime. At last you have someone.’
‘And I don’t have you, you mean?’
The hand stopped moving and she fixed her gaze on him. ‘We always said we were having fun together. Nothing too heavy. Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?’
He chewed at his lower lip. ‘I don’t know my own mind at all right now.’
‘Listen, you and Daniel Roberts belong to each other. You’re family. It’s pretty special, if you ask me.’
‘I can’t get over the thought that my mum kept her secret all those years…’
She withdrew her hand altogether and wagged a finger at him. ‘That’s what hurts, is it? I understand what you mean, but you shouldn’t torment yourself. How well can we know another person? You mustn’t be angry with her. At least she found happiness with your father.’
He put up his arms in mock surrender; the sudden movement made his ribs protest. ‘All right. I give up. So what’s the latest from the outside world? Has Brett Young turned up yet?’
‘I was wondering when you were going to ask about him.’
The smug note in her voice teased Harry. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Don’t tell me Mitch has arrested him.’
She grinned. ‘Could it be that you’ve changed your mind? If Daniel’s in the clear, the poor old plods might be right after all.’
‘There’s a first time for everything.’
‘I don’t see why you’re so reluctant to accept that Brett is guilty. Let’s face it, he ran you down and didn’t stop. Hardly the behaviour of a pillar of the community.’
‘He panicked. I’ve been thinking it over. He must have come to see me. I was one person he could trust, so he showed up at Empire Dock. It was my misfortune to run straight under his wheels. When that happened, his nerve snapped. He thought the police were bound to pull him in.’
‘You’re too forbearing. My money’s on Brett. He has no alibi for either murder. Plus he had the motive.’
‘A partnership split isn’t a reason for committing murder. If it was, the mortuaries would be full of lawyers and accountants.’
‘Sounds tempting. But there is something you don’t know.’
At that moment the ward door opened and Linda Blackwell walked in. As she reached his bedside, Harry found himself groping in vain for words of condolence. She was, as usual, well-dressed and carefully made up. Even from his sick-bed, he couldn’t help admiring her legs; they might have belonged to a woman half her age. But there was a defeated slope to her shoulders that no smart suit or face powder could disguise.
‘How are you, Harry?’
‘On the mend, thanks. More important, what about you?’
‘Oh, you know. Trying to come to terms with things. I’ve had some practice at that lately. More than I would have wished.’
‘You’re doing fine,’ Juliet said. ‘You just need to take it easy, that’s all, not keep gallivanting all over the place.’
‘I’m not an invalid,’ Linda told her. ‘I can’t expect you to look after me all the time. Besides, it’s better if I keep myself busy. I need to stand on my own two feet.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘No buts,’ Linda said. Turning back to Harry, she gave a wan smile. ‘Juliet passed on your good wishes. Thanks. I wanted to repay the compliment, see for myself how you were getting on. One way or another we’ve all been in the wars lately, haven’t we?’
‘It’s kind of you.’
Juliet said, ‘We were talking about the murders. Harry knows this man Brett Young. He has this theory that Young is innocent.’
Linda raised her eyebrows. ‘Have you seen the latest, though, Harry?’
‘I was just about to break the news,’ Juliet said. She bent down and rooted around in her bag, pulling out a copy of the evening newspaper. A crimson fingernail pointed at a headline on the front page. Missing Man Was Bogus Lawyer.
‘What’s this?’ Harry demanded.
‘Read it.’
He scanned the piece quickly. Even if it hadn’t carried Ken Cafferty’s by-line, he would have recognised the breathless prose style, quoting ‘sources close to the investigation’. An officially inspired tip-off, presumably designed to intensify pressure on Brett Young while keeping media interest in the case alive. Apparently the police had made a check with the Law Society. Brett had never been admitted to the Roll of Solicitors. He’d studied at the College of Law, but flunked his exams and never retaken them. Detectives were anxious to interview him, but he couldn’t be found. The only clue was the Sierra he’d abandoned in Hope Street; at first they’d assumed he hadn’t gone far. Now they were having second thoughts.
‘Jesus.’ It was difficult to take in. Harry had never heard anyone express any doubt about Brett’s competence as a lawyer. But it seemed he lacked the pieces of paper which would have entitled him to practise, let alone set up in partnership.
‘The sad bastard,’ Juliet said. ‘I mean, of all the fantasies to choose. I don’t wish to be unkind, darling, but living a lie by pursuing a phoney career in the legal profession does suggest a certain poverty of imagination. Pretending to be a heart surgeon or an angel of mercy, that I could understand. But who in their right mind would want to bluff their way into the Liverpool County Court?’
‘You’re so good for my ego,’ Harry said.
‘Listen, of all the things I like about you, the fact that you’re a lawyer has to be bottom of the list.’
He decided not to push his luck by asking what came top of the list. He was conscious that Linda was staring at him earnestly, as if trying to read his thoughts.
‘This man Young. You know him, I take it?’
‘Not as well as I thought I did, obviously.’
‘Does he strike you as someone who might have done - that terrible thing to my next-door neighbour?’
‘I was with him the night Nerys Horlock was murdered. He was pretty hyped up, no question of that. And he’d had a few drinks. All the same, when I left his flat, I never…’
‘Nobody’s blaming you,’ Linda said quickly.
‘Not yet,’ Harry grunted.
‘Ever the pessimist, darling?’ Juliet asked. ‘Anyway, what do you make of this latest development?’
‘Obviously it changes things.’
Fragments of conversation were coming back to him, even as he spoke. Brett explaining the fascination the law held for him, the edge to his tone when he described how Andrea had been helped to earn admission as a solicitor after the firm she’d been working for fell apart.
She folded her arms. ‘Too right it does.’
He frowned at the newspaper. ‘You don’t have to read too far between the lines of this report to grasp the sub-text. Carl Symons presumably found out the truth, maybe let Nerys in on the secret. Perhaps Brett was blackmailed. That would explain why he came out of the bust-up so badly in comparison to th
e other two.’
‘Plus the fact it would also give him a pressing motive for murder.’
‘Okay, okay. I hate to say it, but you’re right.’
Linda said, ‘It’s a criminal offence to pretend to be a solicitor, isn’t it?’
‘I sometimes feel nervous about having my own collar felt on that account.’
Juliet grinned. ‘There you are, then. Linda and I were working it out on the way over here. Even on what little the two of us know, the pieces fit so easily. Carl was a nasty piece of work. He soaked Brett for every last penny and then found a good job for himself as a prosecutor. Nerys may have been in on it, for all we know. At any rate, she made sure she was sitting pretty with her new firm. Leaving Brett Young bled dry, with only a rented taxi and a mountain of debts to his name. Together with a burning urge to take revenge.’
Bled dry. The phrase chilled Harry. He was picturing Brett in the loneliness of his flat, telling himself that there is only one sure way to kill a vampire. Drive a stake through the heart and cut off the head so that never again can the creature rise from the dead.
Chapter Nineteen
‘What else do you remember?’ Daniel asked eagerly. ‘Did she always live round here? I suppose the Bradys were a Liverpool family?’
Harry rubbed his stubble. He hadn’t shaved since leaving hospital. One bonus about not going in to work this week was that he could experiment with a beard. Juliet had once told him that she fancied Sean Connery like mad. All right, so it would take more than a bit of facial hair for women to swoon at his approach. He could dream.
‘She grew up in Penny Lane, a stone’s throw from the bus-shelter on the roundabout. Her father - our grandfather, he died when she was ten - had a window cleaning round. John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi was one of his customers, back in the mists of time. Mum went to the Cavern Club a couple of times, but she reckoned more to Rory Storm than the Beatles. One thing she lacked was a crystal ball.’
‘She was keen on pop music?’
‘Sure. She once told me she’d had a crush on Elvis in his “Love Me Tender” days. To say nothing of the young Cliff Richard. You weren’t her only dark secret, you see.’
They were walking round Sefton Park, their pace slow because Harry’s strapped ribs were still aching. It was his first attempt at exercise since leaving the General. Daniel had arranged to call on him at Empire Dock as soon as he was back on his feet. Harry hadn’t been able to say no; nor had he wanted to. Yet he dreaded raking over the past. He found it difficult to picture the happy, capable woman he’d worshipped giving up her illegitimate child for adoption. He would have preferred his memories of her to fade untouched, but Daniel’s arrival in his life had made that impossible. The past had seemed certain, unchanging, a reassuring contrast to the nervous present and the unguessable future. Now he was faced with the need to relearn his own history. He felt bitter that his mother had kept her secret from him. She’d given up her first-born. Surely she had never stopped mourning her loss. Jealousy gnawed at him. Daniel’s story made him feel insecure, unable to place his trust in anything that he had once taken for granted.
Of one thing he was sure. Daniel was telling the truth: they were blood relatives. No need for a DNA test or anything like that. Neither of them was physically demonstrative - that didn’t run in the family - and there hadn’t been any hugs, nor any tears. Yet there was a strange kind of intimacy between them, something unspoken and impossible to define. It wasn’t just a matter of a birth certificate or that Daniel’s story hung together. Harry had only to look at his brown eyes, or hear the inflection in his voice when he asked a question, to be reminded of their dead mother and of the fact that she had taken her secret to the grave. Would she have told him the truth when he grew older? He wanted to believe that she would have confided in him, that she wouldn’t have kept him in the dark for ever.
Daniel had turned up earlier than arranged, at a time when Harry was still half-asleep. Perhaps that was the price of a morning meeting with an insomniac. Within a couple of minutes of crossing the threshold, he’d begun talking about their mother. Firing questions about what she was like. To gain a breathing space, Harry had suggested that, as the rain was holding off, they might as well go for a stroll in the park. They had driven out here in Daniel’s van, but the inquisition had continued with barely a pause.
As they neared the Palm House, Daniel stopped and leaned against a thick oak trunk. ‘I haven’t inherited a taste for music from her, I’m afraid. Tone deaf, that’s me.’
‘I’m not saying she was musical. Her singing voice was almost as bad as mine. My first childhood memory is of Mum crooning “The Story of My Life” to me, hopelessly out of tune. She’d met Michael Holliday once in a pub, she told me. It was a brush with fame.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Liverpudlian, gay. Tricky combination in the fifties. He committed suicide, but Mum had this weird theory that he was murdered.’
‘So she’s the one who inspired you with a love of mystery?’
‘She liked a puzzle. I used to raid her bookcase when I was ten or eleven,’ Harry admitted. ‘She had a stock of Agatha Christie paperbacks.’
‘Which was her favourite?’ Daniel asked, leaning forward, unable to contain his thirst for knowledge, any fragment of information about the woman he would never meet. It was as if he were pasting every anecdote, every hazily recalled incident, into a vast mental scrapbook.
Harry buttoned up his jacket. The temperature was in the low single figures and after so long in the warmth of the hospital and his flat, the cold November air was gnawing at his bones. ‘It’s a long time ago, I’m not sure I can…’
‘Sorry,’ Daniel said quickly, ‘I’m being selfish. I’ve done nothing but bombard you with demands for chapter and verse since I arrived this morning. You’ll be punch drunk soon.’
Harry gave him a weary grin. ‘It’s good for my soul. Next time I’m in court, I’ll remember what it’s like to face an intensive cross-examination. I’m beginning to think the wrong son became the lawyer.’
‘It’s just that - well, there’s a lot of catching up to do. I want to know so much about her. You too.’ Daniel bowed his head. ‘Do you know, when I showed up in the hospital, it was the first time in my entire life that I’d ever had a conversation with someone who was really related to me?’
Harry swallowed, allowing the thought sink in. ‘You never wanted to marry, have kids?’
‘I never told anyone this before,’ Daniel said, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘When I was a student, I fell in love with a girl on the same course. A blue-eyed blonde from Manchester. I’d had no real experience with the fair sex before that. I could hardly believe my luck. We had a fling during our second term. When she broke the news after the Easter holiday that I’d got her pregnant, I had mixed emotions. Scared, yes, but excited too. She was startled by my reaction. She said, “Don’t you understand? I’ve already had the abortion, of course.”’
‘Shit.’
‘When I lost my temper, she told me it was her body, her decision. She was right, no question, but I’ve never got over it. Never. It froze me, the thought that I might have had a child of my own - and the chance had been snatched from my grasp.’
Harry said slowly, ‘After a time it might have been possible…’
‘Don’t tell me there are always plenty of fish in the sea. Please.’ Daniel folded his arms and stared straight into Harry’s eyes, as if challenging him to disagree. ‘I’m not a fool. I realise it’s not logical to allow that pathetic little episode to stifle my life, to use my mother’s dependence on me as an excuse for avoiding any other sort of commitment. The problem is, sometimes we can’t behave logically. Simple as that. Maybe that’s why discovering the truth about my own origins has come to mean so much for me.’
Harry aimed a desultory kick at a stone. ‘I can’t live up to your expectations, you realise that? I’ve shown you the photographs, the bits and pieces I’ve hung
on to because they remind me of her - and my old man. But it was all such a long time ago.’
‘You knew her,’ Daniel said. ‘You knew her.’
‘Did I? Looking back, I wonder. I never got to know either Mum or Dad properly, not in an adult way. I was an only child, if I ever gave the purpose of their lives a second thought, I’d have assumed it was simply to take care of me. I didn’t spend much time wondering if they had any private lives, things they might be hiding from me.’
Daniel seized him by the wrist. The pressure of his bony fingers made Harry wince. ‘It’s only natural. You assumed you had all the time in the world. Perhaps what happened to you was the cruellest. Your parents were snatched from you. I never had the chance to get to know mine. Perhaps what you never have, you never miss.’
‘If that were true, you wouldn’t be giving me the third degree right now.’
‘I suppose so,’ Daniel said, releasing his grip. ‘All the same, I’ll lay off for a while. For Heaven’s sake, I don’t want to bore my only living relative into a stupor.’
They started walking again, back towards where they had parked the car. ‘Tell me more about yourself,’ Harry said. ‘It’s mostly been one-way traffic today. You’ve heard all about Mum’s taste in television and where she liked to go for her holidays. Let’s take a break for a while. How’s your writing? Are we going to see your name up in lights when the novel’s published?’
‘If it’s published,’ Daniel grunted. ‘I suppose you could say The Journal of Quincy Harker is a homage to Bram Stoker. I’ve adored Dracula ever since I first came across it. You’ve read it, of course?’
‘Flicked through the pages when I was a kid. But mostly I know the story through the films.’
‘The book’s a thousand times better.’ Daniel’s voice trembled with proselytising zeal. ‘Take it from me, Harry, its reputation is no accident. The writing’s so atmospheric. People had written vampire stories before Stoker and God knows they’ve written plenty since. But Dracula is unique. He never matched it.’
‘I’ll have to give it another try. Maybe it will even cast a little light on the murders.’
First Cut is the Deepest (Harry Devlin) Page 24