‘Didn’t I say so in there?’
‘What you say and what you mean don’t always coincide.’
‘Ah well. Maybe I deserved that.’
‘Too right. Look, I’ve been thinking — you implied yesterday you were involved in some way with the death of this girl Eileen. Have you…’
‘You do too much thinking,’ said Finbar. There was no mistaking his unease. ‘Don’t play the detective with me, Harry. This can’t be anything to do with Eileen McCray. Remember, you’re my brief and my pal; that’s enough of a burden for any man to bear.’
‘Fair enough. Let’s drop the subject for now. What are you going to tell Melissa?’
Finbar relaxed into a conspiratorial smile. ‘Y’know, I’ve been wondering the very same thing. If all else fails, I may have to fall back on the truth.’
‘You must be worried.’
‘Hey, whose side are you on? If I have to come clean, I’ll make it clear Sophie was nothing more than a passing fancy. Going by the fuss she made earlier on, I’ve queered my pitch there good and proper.’
‘Win a few, lose a few, eh?’
Finbar clapped him on the back. ‘You took the words off the tip of my tongue. Tell you what, we’ll nip round to the Dock Brief and have a quick pint. You can help me summon up the courage to face the music.’
‘Sorry, I must go and see how Jim is. Besides, you go home smelling like a brewery and the music will make Wagner sound like The Cuckoo Waltz.’
‘All right, all right. For once I’ll take your advice. Jases, I pay enough for it! Give my best to Jim.’
Harry was halfway to the hospital before he remembered that the last couple of bills he had sent to Finbar were still outstanding. The last time he’d given the Irishman a reminder, he’d been fobbed off with a promise to put a cheque in the post. Credit control wasn’t Harry’s strong point; it was a wonder he’d never been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.
A Nurse Ratchet clone whose glare was sufficient to inspire any patient into an instant recovery gave Harry terse directions to Jim’s ward. In the maze of white-walled corridors he soon got hopelessly lost and might have found himself attending a birth had he not been rescued by a dreadlocked porter who sent him to the other end of the building.
Harry was shocked by the sight of his partner. Jim was wired to a drip and resembled a character from a Christmas television campaign warning about danger and death on the road. He and Heather were having one of those jerky conversations about nothing in particular which seem so common at hospital bedsides. Harry noticed that Heather kept snatching glances at her husband’s battered face, then looking hurriedly away with thinly veiled dismay.
‘Not as bad as it looks, old son.’ The voice was croaky but audible.
‘It couldn’t be, really, could it?’ asked his wife.
‘I suppose you’ll be skiving off tomorrow as well, then?’ said Harry.
Jim made a ghastly attempt at a grin. ‘Give you a chance to do a bit of proper work for a change!’
‘Conveyancing and probate? Piece of cake. In fact, if all your clients are as lovely as Mrs. Graham-Brown, I’ll be putting in for a permanent transfer.’
‘Oh yes? And who is Mrs. Graham-Brown?’ asked Heather.
‘A lady who fancies leaving Liverpool for the south of Spain,’ said Jim with an effort. ‘Strange, you may think, but it takes all sorts. And Crusoe and Devlin certainly has all sorts of clients.’
‘Including victims of terrorist outrages,’ said Harry. ‘You’ll never guess where I’ve been until now.’
He told them about the afternoon’s excitement. Jim absorbed himself in the story, his craggy features darkening as Harry described Finbar’s infidelity and apparent unwillingness to tell all he knew.
‘The Irish connection, you suppose?’
‘What else? Finbar may have upset a few husbands in his time, but the time-honoured remedy is a fight behind a pub. Same goes for discarded mistresses. I can see someone slashing his tyres; even, maybe, torching his studio. But car bombs are something else.’
‘Did you know he had links with terrorists?’
‘I don’t even know it now. He disclaims all knowledge, except for this old acquaintance he tattooed in days gone by who was killed by the other side a couple of years back. But there must be some terrorist connection. After all…’
His voice trailed away as a thought struck him.
‘Watch him,’ said Jim Crusoe to Heather in a stage whisper. ‘When Harry gets that inspired look, everyone around ought to dive for cover. Solved the mystery, then?’
Harry said nothing, but his mind was working frantically. He had realised that the mysterious Eileen’s surname was the same as that of a man in a tough business traditionally associated with the republican movement: a man who might have access to bomb-making equipment.
Dermot McCray. The Irish builder and ‘old acquaintance’ whom Finbar, at Fenwick Court, had been so anxious to avoid.
Chapter Ten
The notice in the foyer of Empire Hall announced the title of the lunchtime seminar in garish purple: how to establish a small company in liverpool.
‘Easy,’ said Harry to his companion. ‘Start with a big company, then sit back and wait.’
The man by his side chuckled, a reaction as unexpected as a snigger from a corpse. Stanley Rowe was a cadaverous individual whose pallor and mournful expression had earned him an appropriate sobriquet. But life hadn’t been too hard on Death Rowe; he had sold his estate agency to an insurance company with more money than sense at the height of the property boom in the late eighties and had bought it back for half the price after the bottom fell out of the market a couple of years later.
Some bright spark on the city council had designated this as ‘Liverpool Business Day’ — although cynics argued that, given the state of the city’s industry, twenty minutes would have sufficed. Jim had booked to attend a series of events due to be held here, ranging from a breakfast meeting to an early evening exhibition. In a moment of weakness at his partner’s bedside the previous night, Harry had volunteered to act as stand-in for at least one session, with the idea of picking up a few clients and keeping their professional contacts warm.
‘I see the discussion is being led by Geoffrey Willatt,’ said Rowe. ‘I suppose your paths seldom cross?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Harry, ‘but he was once my principal.’
Rowe’s skeletal features twitched and his eyes widened a fraction; it was his equivalent of registering amazement. It was as if he’d heard the Krays claiming to be on first name terms with the Queen.
‘You trained with Maher and Malcolm? Good God.’
‘How they ever came to offer me articles, I’ll never fathom. It’s not as if my family was named in Debrett or I took a double first from Cambridge. And I met Jim whilst I worked there, believe it or not. Of course, we both escaped long before there was any chance of our making our fortune. I can’t say either of us ever learned much from old Geoffrey about how to run a practice funded on legal aid and house sales.’
They walked into the room where the seminar was being held and sat at the back. A glance around the audience suggested that solicitors, accountants, stockbrokers and financiers outnumbered Liverpool’s would-be entrepreneurs by at least five to one.
Geoffrey Willatt had been born, Harry suspected, in a pinstripe suit. Senior partner of one of the largest legal practices outside London, he was Chairman of the Law Society’s Standing Committee on Legal Etiquette and author of a racy little monograph entitled The Property Lawyer’s Vade-Mecum. Now he spoke about investment, cash flow and debt recovery with his accustomed authority; but for Harry it was like listening to the owner of Fortnum and Mason offer advice on the running of a corner shop. As the talk shifted to terms of trading and employment costs, he closed his eyes. He did not doze — although the temptation was strong — but pondered again whether Dermot McCray might want Finbar Rogan dead.